Are leave voters happy with how this is playing out so far?

[Bearbehind]

Inpsired by Boris Johnson’s sister’s Tweet about people saying we are where we are but nobody having a clue where that is; which group of Leave voters are happy with how things are panning out?

From what I’ve seen the Leave voters seem to fall into these categories, in no particular order:-

1. People who heard nothing more than the word ‘immigration’ and voted based on all the borders being closed and every immigrant being deported on Friday
2. People who believed the nonsense touted by the Leave campaign about £350m for the NHS etc
3. People who voted as a protest to get their voice heard
4. People who believed leaving the EU was a good thing for their own spurious reasons (to get our own back for Eurovision, to get UK tomatoes, to not have to watch the Euros football, to stop the Germans stealing our sunbeds etc) but had no idea of the other consequences
5. People who truly believe we should not be governed by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels

Taking each group in turn, I can’t see how they have got what they want

1. Doesn’t even merit a response as it was such an appalling reason to vote
2. These have been proven to be lies as soon as the vote was over
3. This was a self defeating protest as it handed the control to the very people they were protesting against
4. Some of those people are now worried about job loses, the value of the pound, the drops in the stock market as they didn’t foresee that
5. There is no plan to get out of the EU- Boris seems to think we can have our cake and eat it but the EU aren’t having that

Is there another group of people who are genuinely happy with the way things are shaping up?

If remain had won then both parties would still have a leader and the economy wouldn't be in the toilet. Sure there might have been some uncertainty about the future but hey, the UK might at least have one.

To use the moving house analogy, what's just happened is that the public have said that they want to move, that's all! What happens next is the start of the house moving process, and that's not something that happens in a few days!

No, it's more like the public saying, we want to move, so we will burn this house down, with a few more catching fire in the process, and then saying, that it's the job of someone else to rehouse them.

“What I don’t understand is that those who want to leave are totally unable to tell us what they want,” Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission, said after Cameron’s final EU summit on Tuesday. “I thought that if you wanted to leave you had a plan ... they don’t have it.”

Even Juncker is at the lack of plan.

caitlin presumably you are aware that the Leave campaign discussed whether they should have a plan and decided they could get away with not having one by claiming that they were merely 'a campaign group'?

The reasons they didn't want to have a plan were because it would be too difficult to write one without ballsing it up, a clear plan would alienate voters who thought they would be voting for something different, and because voters wouldn't understand the plan anyway.

Dominic Cummings, the Campaign coordinator for Leave writes ' This approach would enable NO to build a coalition between a) those who think we should just leave (about a third) and b) those who dislike the EU but are worried about leaving (about a third) and who may be persuaded that ‘Cameron’s deal is bad and we should try to get a better one but the only way to force this is to vote NO’'

dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2015/06/23/on-the-referendum-6-exit-plans-and-a-second-referendum/

I won't be happy until article 50 is triggered

Same here. And I'm very concerned that it might never be.

Exactly noble! Athough I liked this link more :

www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/20/accuracy-is-for-snake-oil-pussies-vote-leaves-campaign-director-defies-mps?

"I think it would have been impossible for either side to have had a rigid 'Plan' when so much now depends on negotiations that could not have begun until after the vote."

But what's the plan about what is being negotiated for?

In theory (and I'm not saying it's actually something that would happen, obviously it's complete hyperbole) the government could decide to leave the EU and the single market and become the 51st state of the USA, or form a brand new political union with Russia so we're subject to all their laws...

But technically they'd have carried out the results of the referendum by leaving Europe, because without any plan for what is wanted from it, it could theoretically lead to anything.

It's literally a case of leave, we don't care what happens after that in any way, do what you want if there's no plan for afterwards.

noblegiraffe The economy is not in the toilet, come on. It's been less than a week, it's far too early to make those sorts of sweeping statements, everyone agrees on that.

Perhaps one of the reasons that Remain lost is that both Corbyn and Cameron have been Eurosceptics their whole life, and didn't really believe in what they were trying to sell.

To use the moving house analogy, what's just happened is that the public have said that they want to move, that's all!

I despair.

That is not at all what has happened and Leave voters are deluded if they even begin to think that.

They've burnt the fucking house down and now have no choice but to move only it's looking like its going to be to something much worse than they had at their old house as the insurance isn't paying out either.

noblegiraffe The economy is not in the toilet, come on

Yeah, who needs that credit rating, all those investors that are freezing or pulling out and the ability to buy dollars anyway? The economy is just peachy from where I'm standing.

I won't be happy until article 50 is triggered

Same here. And I'm very concerned that it might never be.

Why? triggering it sets the time bomb ticking on this whole sorry mess.

After 2 years we get kicked out regardless of what we've negotiated- doesnt exactly put us in a strong position to negotiate does it?

noblegiraffe I repeat, it's only been a few days. Read this, which is a pretty balanced view of what was likely to happen put forward in the Guardian back in Feb. And seriously, Mervyn King's take on Monday here

I thought we didn't listen to experts any more caitlin?

Yeah. I thought the British public were sick of experts.

It's bizarre, caitlin, you've linked to that Guardian article like it's some sort of plan but all it is is speculation about what might happen to the markets.

What is needed is a plan. What to do about Scotland, Ireland, Gibraltar. They've been dropped in it and no one knows what to do. What sort of trade deal should we go for? When are trade negotiations going to start? Who with? By whom?

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-uk-cannot-have-single-market-a-la-carte-say-eu-leaders-a7109141.html

Childish much?

I might have misunderstood but didn't King say in that link that things are going to get quite bad before settliing down and ending up only a tiny bit worse than what they were?

How is that positive?

It's like saying "Okay, we've fucked up. We broke the economy, but don't worry, with a bit of superglue and gaffa tape it will probably be nearly as good as it was before. You'll hardly be able to tell we broke it."

noble it's not bizarre, it's an article I remember reading at the time which highlighted that there was likely to be a smaller impact on the economy in the long term than either side was claiming, and that the key factor will be how politicians manage negotiations, which haven't even started yet. Lack of leadership is the problem right now. You can blame Westminster for that. I think any anger here should be more productively directed at them.

motherofbleach He says that in the long term we are likely to look back on this and in terms of the economy at least, we will say "what a lot of fuss about nothing". It reiterates the point that the economy is not the critical factor, it's how well our politicians and civil servants do their job having been told by the electorate that we would quite like them, and not Brussels, to be in charge thanks very much.

Caitlin, are you trying to argue that while the economy might look terrible right now, it might be fine while completely ignoring all the other issues with Brexit like Northern Ireland?

I note you haven't even mentioned the piece by Cummings I linked to. No plan was the plan, in order to win the vote. Nothing to do with seeing how the economy is or how negotiations play out.

Nope, I've listened to it again. He defininately says that things will be rocky i.e bad economically in the short term but in the long term the difference will be negligible either way.

in other words the whole fucking palaver is for nothing. We might be a tiny bit better off (unlikely according to other experts) or we might be a tiny but worse off (the best outcome we can hope for according to other experts.

noblegiraffe I haven't mentioned everything, no, because I was addressing specifically what you said about the economy. I won't pretend to understand Irish politics. I don't remember anyone from Remain predicting that N Ireland would vote differently to England, and it wasn't a factor in my decision. What influenced your decision by the way? You seem very certain, were you always so?

And I think I have already said that I think both campaigns were badly handled, and it continues to be badly handled. You won't find me defending Farage or Johnson, nor do I feel remotely sorry that Cameron is out of a job.

motherofbleach that's exactly the point, which is what the first article "it's not about the economy, stupid" (his title not mine!) says. The main reason for voting Leave for most people was about sovereignty and democracy, not the economy, and since the economy is likely to be the same either way, it comes down to this one ideological question.

The problem with Northern Ireland wasn't about them voting differently, it was a predictable problem. Northern Ireland won't be in the EU. The republic will. The leave campaign want to take back control of our borders and the north/south is therefore now a border to be controlled. Except trying to put up a border between the North and Republic of Ireland given the Troubles and the years of painstaking peace negotiations would be a little, er, problematic.

Leave have no solution? No surprise.