Were there any LD supporters who voted Leave?

[optionalrationale]

I am a "natural" Labour supporter and former party member. I supported Labour Leave in the EU Ref and will be voting Conservative for the first time in my life in the GE. I wondered if there were any LD Leavers. I know this might be rare but I wondered if there were any at all. Or is LD Leaver an impossible combination.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom#Cases_involving_the_UK_before_the_European_Court_of_Human_Rights

"Duplication" - See this list of the most notable cases brought before the ECHR. There may be one or two you disagree with, but the vast majority are, imho, judgements which improved our rights in the UK:

Notable cases involving violations of the Convention include:

Criminal sanctions for private consensual homosexual conduct (Dudgeon, 1981);
Refusal to legally recognise transsexuals (Rees, 1986);
Different ages of consent for homosexuals and heterosexuals (Sutherland, 2000);
Parents' rights to exempt their children from corporal punishment in schools (Campbell and Cosans, 1982);
Sentencing a juvenile young offender to be "birched" (Tyrer, 1978);
Wiretapping of suspects in the absence of any legal regulation (Malone, 1984);
Restrictions on prisoners' correspondence and visits by their lawyers (Golder, 1975);
Routine strip-searching of visitors to a prison (Wainwright, 2006);
Allowing the Home Secretary rather than a court to fix the length of sentences (Easterbrook, 2003);
Admitting testimony obtained under coercion as evidence (Saunders, 1996);
Keeping a suspect incommunicado in oppressive conditions without access to a solicitor (Magee, 2000);
Extradition of a suspect to the United States to face a capital charge (Soering, 1989);
Granting the police blanket immunity from prosecution (Osman, 1998);
Shooting of Provisional Irish Republican Army suspects in Gibraltar without any attempt to arrest them (McCann, 1995);
Killing of a prisoner by another mentally ill detainee with whom he was sharing a cell (Edwards, 2002);
Investigation of an unlawful killing by police officers conducted by the police officers who participated in the killing (McShane, 2002);
Failure to protect a child from ill-treatment at the hands of his stepfather (A, 1998);
Failure by a local authority to take sufficient measures in the case of severe neglect and abuse of children by their parents over several years (Z, 2001);
Ineffective monitoring of a young prisoner who committed suicide during a short sentence (Keenan, 2001);
Keeping a disabled person in dangerously cold conditions without access to a toilet (Price, 2001);
Granting of an injunction against the Sunday Times for publishing an article on the effects of thalidomide (Sunday Times, 1979);
Injunction against the Sunday Times for publishing extracts from the Spycatcher novel (Sunday Times (no. 2), 1991);
Ordering a journalist to disclose his sources (Goodwin, 1996);
Agreement obliging employees to join a certain trade union in order to keep their jobs (Young, 1981);
Keeping a database of DNA samples taken from individuals arrested, but later acquitted or have the charges against them dropped (Marper, 2008);
Forcing individuals to work for private companies without pay,[323] under threat of having their social security payments stopped (Reilly, 2012, leading to the passing of the Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Act 2013 as an ex post facto law,[324] itself also criticised for violating human rights treaties[325]).

I second your questions to Danny at 14.34 optional. I had been wondering exactly the same thing myself - who is clever enough to make political decisions, and who gets to decide who is clever enough?

And can I add a question of my own for Brexshit?

FWIW I really don't buy your 'ex-Labour activist' spiel at all on the basis of your willingness to knowingly vote for the most extreme right government we've seen in decades

Ignoring your inability to comprehend that left wing people are finding themselves in the very odd position of planning to vote Conservative at the GE, please would you explain your reasons for your belief that this is an extreme right government? I ask because, whilst I don't agree with all the government's policies by any stretch, I really don't agree with this characterisation and I would be interested to hear what you base it on.

Dannythechampion What ordinary people think is often far from reality"

For me this is really interesting. It tells me that the Remain camp have a deeply anti egalitarianist mind set. It probably explains why they so often resort to "You disagree with us, therefore you must be stupid" tactic

But can I just say I don't agree with this. It shows that the poster who said it has an anti egalitarian mind set, not remain voters. As squishy says above, it is as important to avoid accusing all remain voters of insulting leave voters as it is to avoid insulting leave voters.

"Some most things in this world are very complicated. Admitting that it is difficult for everyone to fully understand the complexities of something is not elitist, or undemocratic."

What else is it?
As soon as governments go down the path of "this stuff is too complicated for your pretty little head, run along now", you are giving them the power to take us towards autocracy.

BTW The argument you make here is exactly what caused the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/8 . "Experts" invented complicated financial derivative s and gave them fancy names like Collateralized Debt Obligations. Even their bosses were too afraid to ask what the hell they were and what risk they constituted. It was only until after the shit hit he fan and their bosses were hauled up in front of MPs in parliament, did our MPs have the guts to say "Explain this to me like I'm a five yeat old" wasmit rebealed thay these hugelyy complicated financial derivatives were nothing than a Ponzi scheme.

Unfortunately by then hundreds of thousands of "ordinary people" had lost their jobs

OP, is there any chance of you telling us about all the things we have to look forward to outside the EU which are going to counter all the adverse affects which are going to happen?

The May obsession with the ECHR is curious and, right now, counter productive. Those with a long enough memory will remember that the previous conservative manifesto promised to repeal the HRA within 100 days of the 2015 election.

Turned out to be a bit more complicated than that, notably because it forms part of the Good Friday Agreement. So the government's commitment got pushed back several times, before being abandoned completely under cover of brexit.

Brexit is hard enough for NI without ripping up the GFA altogether. I find May's attitude to NI thoroughly irresponsible.

What else is it?

There is no shame in admitting that something is complicated and you don't understand it. Psychology tells us that the less expert someone is, the more likely they are to overestimate their degree of expertise.

That's in part why I support representative democracy rather than direct democracy. We elect representatives who in turn appoint a government which in turn works with experts to develop and implement policy.

No one is an expert in everything; most people are genuinely "expert" in only a very narrow range of skills. This applies even to national figures acknowledged as being experts in their field: there's a good reason why Mark Carney is not the government chief scientific advisor and why Prof Mark Walport is not the governor of the BoE.

May's obsession with the ECHR is probably a reflection of the fact that she is extremely ignorant of European history.

The LDs used to be the only party promising a referendum.

Their refusal to accept the public vote is the main reason I won't vote for them.

"As soon as governments go down the path of "this stuff is too complicated for your pretty little head, run along now", you are giving them the power to take us towards autocracy."

Actually I get more suspicious of people who try to tell me that something is very simple, and that it can be summed up in (for example) a three word slogan. But lets not start that again!
Mistigri summed it up very well in her last post.
Transparency isn't the same as simplicity. Admitting that experts know more than non-experts is not the same as calling non-experts (of a specific subject) stupid. The government should be listening to experts more - not less.

"BTW The argument you make here is exactly what caused the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/8"

Like hell did the arguments I'm making cause the financial crash.
A number of factors, including totally inadequate regulation caused the financial crisis. Guess what many of the Tory right are agitating for post Brexit? Relaxed banking regulation!

And you still haven't bothered to highlight which ECHR protections you think we can do without - I have already proved to you that our own laws are not a duplicate, with the cases in my previous post. If UK law already provided the same level of protection, those cases would never have reached the ECtHR. Looking at the more recent ones, I can see why the hard right might want to do away with them though.

squishy: I like Isaac Asimov's quote:
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

^^ This. X 100.

And the alternative isn't autocracy. It's supposed to be parliamentary sovereignty.

I've found the quote as an image rebel:

Mistigri, Squishy, RebelAlliance
I am gald you're not trying to hide your elistism. It shines a light on the EU design, its supporters and origins.

Squishy your faith in "experts" is the same as the "faith" bank bosses placed in whizz kid quants who invented the complex derivatives leading up to the GFC. They created a culture of even asking what one of their acronyms stood for invariably brought about a sneering, supercilious, eye-rolling response. If their bosses didn't understand what the fuck they were signing up (for fear of being called "a bit dim") , you can be sure as hell the regulators would not have had a Scooby. Regulators put locks on stable doors from when the last horse bolted. They haven't got the foggiest about the "experts" are dreaming up to line their own pockets for the next get rich quick scheme

Mistigri, Squishy, RebelAlliance
Your faith in experts highlights a similar set of questions I posed to Danny.

1. Who are the "experts" in e.g. what powers a parliament should / shouldn't have
2. How do you know they are experts? Cos another "expert" gave them a piece of paper for agreeing with them?
3. How would you mitigate for the risk of their expertise being biased, outdated, flawed or based on a particular ideology (e.g. plebs are dumb)?
4. Who should experts be accountable to? Other experts?
5. How would you mitigate for the risk of experts using their "expertise" to hoodwink you into doing something for their own gain?

Today 18:29 RebelAllianceUK
squishy: I like Isaac Asimov's quote:
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge"

Who decides what is "ignorance" and what is "ignorance" ?

Sorry meant to say
Who decides what is "ignorance" and what is "knowledge"?

Today 16:51 roarityroar
"The LDs used to be the only party promising a referendum. Their refusal to accept the public vote is the main reason I won't vote for them."

Great point Roarityroar.

OR so if you fall ill and are offered a Consultant appointment for whatever ails you, you will say, "No thanks, he/she is an expert. I'll go to the A level student just applying for medicine", or better still, go to the woman across the road who's never had days illness, so must know something. After all your point 3) could easily apply to the Consultant. So could 5) - especially with regard to non essential cosmetic surgery.

This is entirely your choice, but not all that many people would have sympathy with you, if you came complaining about botched surgery.

Well yes Peregrina, if you equate the design and operation of government with performing surgery I can see your point.

But in that case the EU should be even more forthright and clear in the way it set up. By your analogy,
EU citizens as people with something "wrong" with them,
EU MEPs as the A'level students (because they aren't yet able to initiate legislation)
EU Commission as the consultants

It sums up the democratic inversion of the EU compared with the UK, US, Canada, Australia, India, Ireland (and most other countries with a bicameral legislature). The representatives who are directly elected by the people have the most power (e.g. to initiate legislation) and (with the exception of the US), the head of the Government is also one of these representatives (from a "lower" house) - ie is an "MP", accountable to her /his own constituents.

"Upper Houses" are typically the check/balance stage but most power resides with those directly elected.

The civil service has the "least power" and needs to draw on expertise (in economics, science, etc).

But they are typically accountable to the elected members (select committees etc).

The EU has been designed on the notion that government is something that an elite of some sort does to the people. Our democracy is based on the notion that government is of the people, for the people, by the people

The most important words in the Isaac Asimov quote are
the false notion of what democracy is / isn't.

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government - except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Winston Churchill, MP
House of Commons, 11 November 1947

Wrongtrouser
Re Danny's comments ("What ordinary people think is often far from reality")
"It shows that the poster who said it has an anti egalitarian mind set, not remain voters."

Agreed. However, I don't recall seeing many (any?) examples of the Leave using quite so many claims to superiority in intellect compared with those people supporting an alternative view.

Even a quick glance at the MN EU debate pages shows that they are littered with "Leavers are stupid" (NALALT)."

Which I guess is why I started this thread. How do you reconcile liberalism with the elitism / anti egalitarianism that the EU is built on.

As a PP said, previously the LDs were the only ones advocating a referendum. Now they're saying the June 2016 referendum was purely advisory (nothing more than an opinion poll) and think there should be further referendum(s) until the people get the answer right - which of course is "Brexit kinda sorta means kinda sorta Remain"

So you have to admit that you sometimes do trust experts. Sometimes they get it wrong; currently vaginal mess surgery is being called into question or HRT was once praised to the skies, but no longer is. Despite that, on the whole we still trust doctors, some people more than others.

Leave won, by a mixture of blatant lies (£350 million for the NHS), or slipperiness on Cameron's part (he could hardly say the country was in the shit because of his policies), and fascist (Mail esp.) newspapers.

So, if May (or those pulling her strings) gets her (their) way, we crash out of the EU and how they conduct their business need no longer concern you. So why are you going on and on about what you consider its failings whilst putting up strawmen arguments when challenged?

You had your answer - there were some LD supporters who did vote Leave. There were Tories who voted Remain. May might do well to remember that.

mess= mesh (Freudian slip perhaps?).

"Regulators put locks on stable doors from when the last horse bolted."

...So you think we should relax banking regulations again? Because many in the party you want to vote for want to do that!

Governments should listen to experts more when trying to acheive particular policy. By experts, I mean people with a high level of expertise and experience relevant to the specific situation.
So scientific advisors who have spent their live studying their particular speciality, for eg.
I would like to see more evidence based policy, where possible: (eg, if the evidence in favour of grammar schools is there, then more should be built. If the evidence is against them, then we should not build more eve if it is a vote winner - I guess you'd call that undemocratic!)

Experienced, competent Civil servants should be heavily involved in the wording and detail of legislation. that is the best chance of ending up with well written legislation. I guess you'd call that undemocratic because they're not elected.

I have never, and would never, suggest blind faith in anyone. We should always ask questions, demand evidence etc. That applies to Peregrina's consultant analogy too - you respect the expertise of a doctor, but still inform yourself as much as possible and ask them questions.

A crucial part of democracy is holding those in power under scrutiny, which is why I have no time for the "let Theresa May get on with it" narrative. Yes, the people have spoken for Brexit, so it is going ahead. That doesn't mean we stop paying attention! It is complicated, but that doesn't mean we stop asking questions! Now more than ever we need opposition and discourse in parliament about the direction May wants to take us in. The last thing we need is for May to have an overwhelmingly huge majority, and the freedom to do whatever she likes completely unopposed by anyone other than the hard right.

You want to give her this huge majority.

Dissent is not undemocratic.
Brexit is not limited to one single outcome - there are countless possible directions it could go in depending on the negotiators priorities and capabilities.

I find some of the rhetoric around at the moment all a bit "The people of Britain have spoken. Now could they all just shut up?" No!