Thanks for very ably demonstrating the sour residual Remoaner Remainer mindset. I do understand where you are coming from.
To the committed Europhile, it was totally unthinkable that a majority would vote against their wishes because they considered themselves to occupy the intellectual, moral, and political high ground.
It’s not going too far to say they considered themselves to be some sort of Ubermenschen, and anybody who disagreed with them was an inferior specimen of humanity, even “lunatics” and in the worst cases some Remainers said outright that they considered Leavers to be sub-human! That’s the reason we saw and heard phrases like “gammon”, “ignorant”, “xenophobe”, and “anybody in their right mind”,
In fact they had a good excuse for this sort of behaviour: for forty years or so we’d been letting all sorts of undeservedly, entitled, arrogant arseholes get away with it, as they assumed a tighter grip on the reins. This time though, they were about to get their comeuppance, although they did not know it. The reason they did not know it was the usual one for being wrong - they gazed at poor samples fed into a spreadsheet and concluded that they could not lose.
So firmly convinced were they that they could not lose that the inherent unpleasantness of some of these individuals was allowed full rein, and their campaign took on a very spiteful demeanour. (Some of which continues today) As usual though they had not analysed the data correctly. They had not analysed the convictions of marginal voters nor taken into account the actions of the “don’t knows”.
So nasty was some of the Remain campaign that it caused a section of waverers to be loath to be associated with them. How much difference that made is a moot point, but the fact remains that from the Leave perspective the other side pushing votes to you is an incredible bonus. And yet not one of them could see it and thus no attempt was made to curb the incivilities of the more flamboyant zealots.
You can see it in their prosework even today. They claim to have had an education, but if they have it certainly wasn’t in the trivium because not one of them comprehends even the basis of rhetoric and that well-done rhetoric can be a powerful tool to your cause but clumsily handled pieces will in fact cause your potential adherents to flee to the other camp.
They can't construct a compelling narrative; they’ve never had a reason to, the insulting,screaming and shouting has always worked in the past and the reaction has become something of a Pavlovian one with them.
More level heads attempted to present economic prediction intermingled with the spite; but as we all know, economics, like fluid dynamics, is subject to the idiosyncracy of chaotically-moving systems and therefore to a Navier-Stokes; it’s impossible to fully resolve any movement in Newtonian fluids en masse and that’s with rational materials that have little choice but to obey nature.
How much more difficult to resolve a system denuded of rationalities like the rise and fall of economies?
It is said that an economist is a man who will spend the beginning of each working day explaining why the prophecies he expounded yesterday afternoon failed to manifest, and the end of each working day explaining why the prophecies he made in the middle will be much better tomorrow. (Sounds about right.)
And deep down most intelligent people know that drunken chimps with darts would have an equal track record to the economic experts. This approach would and could do nothing except entrench the already converted in their positions. Which, when one believes that one cannot lose, is entirely the correct approach. When one is wrong about that, it’s entirely the course that will steer too close to the sandbanks, and if left unchecked will see your cause run aground and dismasted.
As we saw.
They will never blame themselves though, and in fairness the blame is only slightly on them; whilst it is true that they had no skilful Cicero nor Voltaire on their side, it’s because they are devoid of talent and one can hardly blame the ungifted for their lack of competence in the field, can we?
I suppose we could blame the EU. Ursula they can’t Writethen.