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.

[WrongTrouser]

I agree with your last post Bolshy

[optionalrationale]

WrongTrouser
You are absolutely right. Many of us, including my father (another lifelong Labour voter) will be voting Conservative for the first time with heavy heart.
We can't vote Labour because it prolongs the agony of the JC leadership disaster.
We can't vote LibDem because TF is saying "Brexit kinda sorta means remain". Although you voted to leave, we should really remain.
We're voting Conservative to give TM the mandate to negotiate with the EU from a position of strength

[squishysquirmy]

What would a left wing Brexit look like, optional?
And how likely are the Tories to implement it?

[Peregrina]

I feel sad about lifelong Labour voters voting Tory just because they don't like Corbyn. I hope they enjoy robust help or have ample savings, because they will need it when the Tories have a mandate to destroy the NHS. Don't kid yourself that they won't - they will couch it in vague statements in their Manifesto.

[Peregrina]

Health not help, although they will almost certainly have to pay privately for help with social care.

[WrongTrouser]

I suspect many people will feel as you describe optional. In my view the alienation caused by the name calling, slurs and denigration of leave voters by many on the "left" has perhaps also made some people feel that they have little in common with the Lib Dems and at least some of the Labour Party. It's hard to believe you will be represented by a party many of the members of which despise you.

[squishysquirmy]

WrongTrouser, the slurs and denigration have gone both ways.

[WrongTrouser]

I don't deny that there has been some name-calling and unpleasantness from some of the leave side, and obvs the DM have printed some nasty stuff. But in my view it is not comparable to the onslaught of people calling ordinary leave voters racists, stupid, uneducated and all the rest. I've read it in the Guardian, in the Guardian comments, on here, on Facebook. Even the New Statesman felt the need to tell me that I don't care about my children. The whole narrative that people didn't know what they were voting for is still being churned out now. Parties can't on the one hand tell people they are too stupid to make a political decision and on the other hand ask for their vote.

[squishysquirmy]

See, I notice more vile generalisations directed against remainers, and I do completely condemn the nastiness directed towards leave voters. I wonder if both our perceptions are shaped by a certain amount of confirmation bias?

[fakenamefornow]

But in my view it is not comparable to the onslaught of people calling ordinary leave voters racists, stupid, uneducated and all the rest.

I actually worry a bit about this. Not for now particularly, but in the years/decades to come, I think there could be real hate towards Leave voters as the damage of Brexit unfolds down the years.

[optionalrationale]

Yesterday 22:33 Peregrina
"I feel sad about lifelong Labour voters voting Tory just because they don't like Corbyn"

For me it's not about "not liking" Corbyn. It's about Corbyn, McDonnell, McCluskey and some others ensuring that the Labour party will be in the wilderness for at least a generation. By voting Conservative, I reduce that time frame.

[optionalrationale]

What would a left wing Brexit look like?

The EU and its predecessors (the EEC etc) are and were flawed by design. Having an executive (which is not elected by the citizens) deciding on laws, (with no mechanism for ordinary citizens to get rid of them) and then an assembly which is actually just a rubber stamping body rather than a legislative body goes against my principles of social democracy.

As Tony Benn said joining the then Common Market was “the most formal surrender of British sovereignty and parliamentary democracy that has ever occurred in our history”

[optionalrationale]

Left wing Brexit? This man is my hero. Watch this link

[Mistigri]

I actually worry a bit about this. Not for now particularly, but in the years/decades to come, I think there could be real hate towards Leave voters as the damage of Brexit unfolds down the years.

I think there already is, from those who are directly affected by it.

[Bolshybookworm]

You're not going to get a left wing Brexit if you vote Tory though, are you? And by the time labour are back in power (if ever) that ship will have long since sailed.

This is what I don't understand, this "Brexit at all costs" mentality, even if it results in the loss of many of the things that those on the left hold dear. By voting Tory you're not voting for what you actually want, you're just shoring up the views of the anti-immigration, little Englander leave contingent. I don't believe that this is the view of all leave voters, far from it, but it is the demographic that the conservatives are currently trying to appeal to.

By the time the Labour Party finally get their act together it will be too late, this country will be irreversibly set on its low tax, low welfare, US-lite course. If you are genuinely left wing then how can you even countenance contributing to that?

[Bolshybookworm]

Incidentally, the Labour Party haven't slagged off leave voters as far as I can tell- you can't blame them for what a click-bait columnist in the guardian says.

[HPFA]

This is what I don't understand, this "Brexit at all costs" mentality, even if it results in the loss of many of the things that those on the left hold dear.

Hole in one. This is where the bitterness will come from in later years. It's not the fact that we voted Leave or Remain that matters. Very few of us voted from a position of complete understanding of the issues - how could we? Probably most Remain voters reasoned like I did - that if Nigel Farage , Daily Mail, Boris, John Redwood were telling us to do something it probably wasn't a good idea. Hardly an example of an independent. rational decision!

BUT where I'm getting frustrated is the constant repetition I hear from Leave voters that we MUST have Brexit whatever the cost, even if the reasons they voted for it prove not to happen. So we must ignore economic news, silence opposition, decry experts, just so we can "have Brexit". If before the final decision is made it becomes obvious that we would be better off staying in then what is so terrible about us changing our minds?

Since June 23rd we have stopped being people who simply voted "Remain" or "Leave" and become Leavers or Remainers (I won't use the more offensive terms). Hard to see how we will ever come back together.

[Bolshybookworm]

And yeah, I already hold leave voters at least partly responsible for this whole shower of shit. I'm tired of the continual buck passing and denial. What will you say in 10 years time when your pie in the sky left wing Brexit dream hasn't happened? Will you still be trying to pretend that none of this was your fault even though you kept voting in hard right policies? Still blaming those that tried to stop it? Still whining about how mean people are and how DARE they suggest that racism was involved as you sit in your increasingly racist, inward looking country? Ugh. Just look at the Daily Mail headlines- that's what you're voting for. Yes, the guardian can be sneery but at least it doesn't have blaring fascistic headlines.

I actually have a lot of time for leavers who have a reasoned and sensible approach to leaving the EU and who are fully aware of the consequences and how we need to mitigate for them. Just wish there was more of them and that they could get their voices heard. They appear to be a rare (or quiet) breed.

[Peregrina]

Once again - I have to entirely agree with HPFA (at 06:55). What indeed would be so terrible about changing our minds? Theresa May is more than happy to do so, when its expedient for her.

Notice too how the arch Leavers are beginning to jump ship - namely Gisela Stuart, Carswell, and Farage isn't even trying to board the ship. Credit due to Kate Hoey, for choosing to stand again - her constituents now have the chance to give her a kicking, if they feel they want to.

The other thing I am getting fed up with is 'the Lib Dems want another Referendum to overturn democracy/thwart the will of the people'. If a Parliament is elected which has a preponderance of MPs who stood on a Remain ticket, then that is the will of the people. Governments may choose to carry on with the policies of the preceding Government, but there is no obligation for them to do so.

I feel real sadness at the lingering death of the NHS. We do need a debate as to what sort of health care we can afford. We are not having that, it's being killed off by starvation and neglect and the prosperous bits sold off to wealthy chums of the Government.

One other thing I will 100% guarantee - as with those people who voted for Thatcher in 79 - a significant number will regret it. 'This isn't what we voted for'. Oh yes, it will be. When your GPs surgery shuts, because a couple of the Doctors have retired and newer GPs can't be recruited because they have emigrated, it won't be Labour or the Lib Dems who were responsible (or the EU!), it will come right back to them voting in the Tories.

[Peregrina]

Why incidentally does Theresa May need a 5 year mandate to implement Brexit? It's all going to be done and dusted in two years surely? Except she's just managed to waste the better part of the one year since the Referendum, so I am not confident that she and her chums can do anything in another two.

I actually have a lot of time for leavers who have a reasoned and sensible approach to leaving the EU and who are fully aware of the consequences and how we need to mitigate for them.

There aren't many of those about. Richard North seems to be one of the few, and he is calling for an EEA type arrangement.

[Bolshybookworm]

NHS, social care, education- these things make me incredibly sad. My friends and family work in all three and they are in a parlous state. The tories have achieved this in 2 short years (started under the coalition). The NHS is already back to the terrible state it was in the mid 90s and that was after 15 years of Tory rule! In 2 years they have destroyed all the good work that labour did by simply pulling the plug on funding (that whole "changing funding won't affect frontline services" was a blatant lie from Cameron). Two years! Where will the NHS be in another 5?!

Kings fund is a great source of info on this:

www.kingsfund.org.uk/topics/productivity-and-finance/nhs-myth-busters

[Mistigri]

I actually have a lot of time for leavers who have a reasoned and sensible approach to leaving the EU and who are fully aware of the consequences

Same here. The problem is that there are vanishingly few of them. The other >99% either have their heads in the sand, or are unwilling or unable to understand the detail.

Based on discussions with work colleagues, I think the grimness of it is only just dawning on most remainers (I am told by my boss that senior management is now officially in "panic mode"). So it's not entirely surprisingly that most leavers are so clueless, because many remainers are too.

[kittybiscuits]

Bolshy sad to say that your brief factual summary about public services will be without mention in the phenomenon previously known as news. I can't understand how your position makes any sense to you at all OP. It makes no sense to me.

[WrongTrouser]

squishy I don't deny that it is easier to recognise insults when they are aimed at oneself than at others. I have felt physically shaken on more than one occasion by insults aimed at me as a leave voter whereas I might not react in the same way to insults aimed at remain voters. So yes, whilst I wouldn't say it is confirmation bias, I agree we may recognise insults to our own group more.

But even given that, I really find it hard to believe that ordinary remain voters have been subjected to a similar type and amount of insults as ordinary leave voters.

Please can you tell me what insults have been aimed at you as a remain voter which are as insulting as the following which have been aimed at me as a leave voter:

stupid

racist, xenophobic

fascist

"old" (inverted comments as I am not sure when it became a bad thing to be old) and "therefore" not worthy of having a vote

small-minded, inward looking, little Englander

duped, conned, shouldn't have been given the responsibility of a vote

an ally of the murderer of Jo Cox

that I don't care about my children's future aka that I don't care about my children

(sources: Guardian, New Statesman, MN, Facebook (which I left on 24th June thank heavens), Guardian comments, etc)

[OneFlewOverTheDodosNest]

I'm a LD voter and supporter who voted leave. I strongly believe that mass immigration has been used by companies to break employees abilities to push for higher wages and better working conditions - unionisation cannot work if you've got thousands of people to ship in to break any strike. This isn't an anti immigrant thing btw, all luck to anyone who moves to a new country to support their family, I think the blame for this lies solely with the companies and government who will always prioritise profits over people.

I would never vote Tory and I certainly wouldn't vote for this lot who keep finding tax breaks for the wealthiest and multinational companies whilst forcing people into ever greater poverty because supposedly there's not enough money left. Luckily I live in a very safe Labour seat anyway so I'll be voting LD in the hopes they may achieve over 5% this time and can afford to keep standing candidates in my area.