If leaving the EU is a complete and utter disaster, who will you blame?

[fakenamefornow]

Ten years down the line, the economy is struggling because of it, troubles in NI are inflamed again, I'm scared to even think what might go wrong in Gibraltar or a split with Scotland. Anyway, if it is a huge mistake, who will be at fault?

Sorry where are my manners

Please

No-one would have bothered painting the £350M lie on the side of a bus if they did not think it would have the effect of manipulating a particular type of person to vote in a particular way. It is disingenuous for the people who did this to say, afterwards, 'ah... but it only said could give the money to the NHS,' as if the whole thing was just a playful little matter of semantics.

Those people knew perfectly well what they were doing and that the Advertising Standards Authority's powers do not extend to political campaigns. It was a cynical exploitation of the type of voter who does not (or cannot) research the implications of their vote, but who can be led by appeals to their emotion - an 'alternative fact' designed to elicit an emotional response to a beloved institution (the NHS)

I agree two

Just waiting for the other examples of lies

I am being very patient, checking regularly, and i said please

And if within the next 10 years the EU has gone horribly wrong and caused massive problems for member countries, who will you thank?
If we didn't get out and we're drawn into massive financial and social issues because of it I know who I would blame.
I am more firm on my out vote now than I was at the time of the referendum.

Still no lies

< sidles in after a long , long day at work with homemade onion rings , to share >

So Pale do you fancy an onion ring , batter made with fizzy water for more oomph ?

twofingerstoGideon

Remember that lovely big red poster that Boris stood in front of which stated "Let's give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week - Vote Leave" ? Will that be explained away as mere semantics?

Oh, and here's a slightly different version of the poster with IDS, but with the same explicit statement.

Redtoothbrush,

I am afraid the Euro is a necessary condition for the EU. You cannot have a long term free trade zone allowing countries to play competitive games with FX and tax.

Now that is a fact that just about every economist will concur. So, if you believe in the single market you have to embrace the Euro (and, ultimately, tax harmonisation).

Nafta contains 3 different currencies.

Cameron, who agreed to hold the referendum just so he could be PM again but also the leave voters who had no idea WHY they voted leave.
I know a few people who voted leave and not one of them is under 60. Obviously they have as much right to vote as the rest of us but the thing that really pisses me off is that they have no clear idea of why they voted to leave.
" too many Muslims"
" poles taking our jobs"
"Need to take our country back"
" it's why we fought 2 world wars"
And other meaningless bollocks

The 2 world wars thing really upsets me about Brexit.
It feels like we are ripping up so much of those good political intentions after WW2 to keep nations working together and people living less divided lives.. I really worry that we're going backwards.

I imagine the Conservatives will make cutbacks of 450million to the NHS and then tada, make the special addition of the 350million to fulfill that referendum promise.

There were lies and misleading stats from both campaigns. IFS estimated £110m net weekly contribution to Brussels. I shall post the misleading Remain camp figures another time, not that many people on this board care about those. But does anybody seriously think the result would have been different if the bus said 110m? It probably could have said 10 pence a week, people were feeling so voiceless.

To keep to the thread and offer an answer the OP's question, the tone from some on this board is the perfect example of one of the key reasons Leave won. If you want someone to blame for Brexit, you can partly blame anyone who has stereotyped Leave voters as racist and ignorant for concerns about the massively high net immigration, the rate of which quadrupled under Tony Blair (and has probably quintupled now) Net immigration simply wasn't a big political issue before this massive increase.

Ignoring, mocking and demonising people only builds up trouble. Very like the nobility's attitude to the peasants before the French Revolution and unfortunately Remain got its head cut off.

I also think many (not all) people would have been OK with staying in a straightforward trading bloc of EEC nature but have taken issue with the EU specifically. As part of that, the EU's insistence on freedom of movement on principle from its outset has been a major contributor to Brexit. Instead of waiting, like some advised, until member economies had more parity, pursuing freedom of movement was implemented too soon due to ideology and led to the unbalanced migration between EU countries that we have seen, most notably as poorer country after poorer country was admitted. It was a big mistake and while Leave voters have other issues with the EU I do not think that that Brexit would have happened without the immigration factors.

You could read the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee yourself Rufus.

But here's point 44. "The Stronger In campaign’s claim that the cost of imports could rise by “at least” £11bn as a result of Brexit–and associated claims that leaving the EU would raise household bills–assumes that the UK will place the same tariffs on imports as does the EU currently. Given that the pursuit of an independent trade policy is at the heart of the case for leaving, this seems to be an implausible assumption. The figure of £11bn is therefore unhelpful and tendentious and should not be used without extensive explanation."

"50. It is misleading to claim, as some campaign groups continue to do, that 3 million jobs are dependent on EU membership. Britain Stronger in Europe, the lead remain campaign group, has at least made clear in evidence to this Committee, if not in some of its literature, that its use of the 3 million figure should not be taken to represent the number of jobs dependent on EU membership, but the number associated with trade with the EU. Without an estimate of how much trade would be lost as a result of Brexit, the impact on job losses cannot readily be estimated. The wider public might form the mistaken impression that all these jobs would be lost or at risk if the UK left the EU. Campaigners should be clear that 3 million jobs may be associated with, but would not necessarily be dependent on, our membership of the EU."

"71. Figures purporting to measure the overall impact of EU membership or Brexit on GDP and household incomes are only meaningful if the counterfactual–the assumed alternative to EU membership–is clearly spelled out ...This is not the case for the £3,000 figure used by the Stronger In campaign, or indeed any number that combines the findings of different studies with different counterfactuals."

73. Even if the assumptions underpinning it are considered to be reasonable, the Treasury’s £4,300 figure is the result of two economic modelling exercises and a further assumption about the relationship between trade and economic productivity. Each of these three stages introduces uncertainty. Any specific numbers emerging from such an analysis should be subject to caveats and seen within the context of the forecast range presented by the Treasury. Indeed, the limitations of the Treasury’s approach are exposed by some counter-intuitive results from their analysis, buried in 69 Q1958 70 ...

74. Presenting the figures on the impact of Brexit on a per household basis, as the Stronger In campaign has done, is likely to be misconstrued by readers, especially in the heat of a campaign, and probably has confused them. It may have left many readers thinking that the figures refer to the effect of leaving the EU on household disposable income, which they do not. The Remain campaign should have been alert to this risk, although this is a well understood hazard, and it is a generally accepted way that economists convert complex numbers into something more comprehensible. The Treasury’s analysis contains a foreword from the Chancellor suggesting that “families would be £4,300 worse off” as a result of Brexit. But this is not what the main Treasury analysis found ; the average impact on household disposable incomes would be considerably smaller than this number, which refers to the impact on GDP per household. Neither Government Departments nor other spokespeople for the remain side should repeat the mistaken assertion that household disposable income would be £4,300 lower than if we were to remain in the EU; the £4,300 figure refers to GDP per household. To persist with this claim would be to misrepresent the Treasury’s own work.

I'm sure anyone who wants to will convince themself that Leave Lied while Remain merely 'misconstrued' but hey ho. They too were told to stop their 'mistaken assertions'.

I think the vast majority of people made up their minds long before the campaigns anyway.

My bolds

Q854 Chair: "As the Chairman of this body, you led the campaign. You have launched it and made several speeches using this figure [the £3000 one]. It is prominently fronted on your website. You have also used the figure in a newspaper article. You have defended it several times in the media, including on the Today programme, and you have also elaborated on it to claim that there is an investment to be derived from the net contributions that we are making to the EU. You have used the counterpart to that figure of £3,000 in order to obtain your investment. All of those claims are things that need careful examination. That is what we are doing this afternoon.

I will now give you the facts. Two of these five are not UK-specific; they are just general studies about the EU. None of the studies about the UK have been done in the last 10 years. They give widely varying answers based on wholly incompatible methodology. They are not capable of being added up and then averaged out. To do so would be, frankly, not just statistically incorrect but nothing short of a scandal. That is exactly what you have on your website. You purport to be leading a major campaign supporting one particular view in a decision that is very important to this country. What I would ask you to do is go back and take a look at this figure very carefully and think hard about whether you want to carry on giving out such misleading statistics. Do you even know how the CBI have described this figure in their own literature?

Lord Rose: Mr Tyrie, you have made it quite clear that you think the information that I have put out is absolute rubbish, and you are obviously entitled to your own opinion. I stand by what I have said. You are perfectly entitled to call my credibility into doubt, but you are effectively saying that the CBI, which is a much respected organisation in the UK representing business, is actually putting out propaganda that is untrue. Frankly, I find that quite incredible.

Q855 Chair: Do you know what the CBI have said about their own figure in the document? Did you read how they described this in their own document? This document was published three years ago by the CBI and is called “Our Global Future”. Have you actually looked at the document?

Lord Rose: I have read millions of documents, Mr Tyrie.

Q856 Chair: I am not asking you about the millions of documents. I am asking you about whether you have actually ever looked at the document that you have been quoting directly in this campaign so far.

Lord Rose: I do not know which document you have in front of you. I am sure you are about to tell me. I have read all of the documentation that we have put out about this campaign and I am confident that the numbers that we are putting out are, to our best estimates, accurate. We are trying to put out best estimates. As you pointed out at the beginning of this conversation, it is very hard to get absolutely hard facts that are provable all the time. We are trying to give a general direction of travel. The general direction of travel proves, not only from this survey but many others, that actually the benefits of being in EU are outweighed by the costs. That is the fundamental debate that we are having. I stand by what I say.

Q857 Chair: You have told me that you have read this document. I am not absolutely clear from your answer whether or not you have in fact read it. Are you aware that the CBI have not described this as a fact, as you have? They have described this conclusion as an inference. They have said, “It is not unreasonable to infer”.

Lord Rose: I will only quote what the CBI said on 5 February. They reaffirmed their views, sticking to the 4% to 5% and £3,000 figure. That is what they said on 5 February.

Q858 Chair: They have not described it as a fact. To do so strikes me, and I think any reasonable observer, as a scandalous misuse of data. Do you not even see any aspect of the suggestion that I am making that there is intellectual dishonesty in persisting with this? "

These are all transcripts from select committee hearings btw. Oh and the Chair, Andrew Tyrie MP declared as voting Remain.

Net migration most certainly was a political issue before the increase in the noughties. In the very, very white corner of England that I grew up in, it was a regular feature on the news (via our right wing local mp) in the 90s, the target being people from the Indian subcontinent. There has always been a vocal minority in England that don't like anyone "other" on their patch. Do I think that's racist? Yes, frankly, I do.

Good interview with Gina Miller's QC Lord Pannick in the Sunday Times yesterday. He will be voting to trigger Art 50 in the House of Lords. He was withering about "the sheer sloppiness of the way the referendum was put together.

"Most ministers and MoP thought it highly unlikely that people would vote to leave....little preparation was done and very little thought given to what the consequences of leaving were...the referendum bill did not address the consequences both political and constitutional. SInce June we've been running to catch up with what it means"

I blame Cameron as leader of the Government at the time for the undue haste with which he launched the referendum without giving 100% to the negotiations for "a better deal" with the EU and for the lack of preparation.

Thank you pale

In the scenario you describe the 52% will either blame the EU or immigrants (as we will still have immigration).

Thank you Pale for trawling through a weighty and dry document .

I saw all the 'lies' that the Remain campaign told us during the run up to the referendum . I saw them as hastily put together statisical possibilities . I still voted Remain because I honestly believed that being in the EU was better than being out of it . I have nursed people who still had the scars from their treatment in Japanese prisoner of war camps , people who survived the holocaust , people who lost parents, siblings and lovers during the war . It was a very long time ago now , but it is still etched on the memories of many . I want Europe to be united , to never fall under the spell of those who want to blame 'others' for all their ill's , but at the same time celebrating the differences that make each individual country what and who they are .

Glad I came back to check on this thread thank you Pale very informative post