Why do people say that both sides of the referendum campaign told lies?

[Apileofballyhoo]

What are the lies?

Bright and others opposed to an EU Army , are you actually considering joining the armed forces ?

The European Intervention initiative is what I was alluding to in my possibly a teensy bit goady post

@OP. Take a look at the official literature issued by the government in 2016. Most of it holds up well as a reasonably accurate description of effects of a leave vote (mainly due to measured language).

Leave campaign appears to be guilty of knowingly misleading the electorate in a number of instances (e.g. £350m, easiest deal in history, turkey joining EU, etc ...).

Remain campaign appears to be guilty of hyperbole/exaggeration of the certainty and timing of impacts of a leave vote. The official government leaflet doesn't make this mistake.

"Another example is the UK’s failed opposition to Juncker’s appointment."

The UK was the only opponent of this.

How can you claim democratic deficit when he was nominated by the Council of Ministers and elected by MEPs?

What you mean is that the UK didn't get its own way.

The Greek bailout was in Greece's interests. Default was not, Voufakis upset because his theoretical ( and correct) analysis of fiat currencies and just printing more money, didn't allow Greece to cancel its debts and keep spending the way it was.

There was a nugget of hysteria doing the rounds during the referendum campaigning, mainly on SM, that an EU Army would mean conscription of UK citizens.

I had a look at that, indistinct, couldn't find any misleading statements. I did think it didn't spell out things out enough in many ways.

BrightStarrySky

Having the UK army work with other armies, but not controlled by them (the current position) is different to ceding control to an army led by a mix of nationalities who have different national interests

What do you think happens in NATO, and the UN? What happened in Korea and WW2?

In a war situation it is ludicrous to 'work with' another army. There is a chain of command.

In WW2 Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe. He was in command as the name suggests.

Mentioned upthread...
news.sky.com/story/brexit-tweets-mps-cant-delete-shown-on-billboards-11609810

I particularly like Dominic Raab's tweet. Why would anyone who has an eye on trying for leadership flag up his ignorance like that?

It seems ignorance no longer matters.

Apileofballyhoo yes maybe it didn't warn clearly enough but others in the Remain campaign were exaggerating their certainty around the likely negative outcomes (e.g. George Osborne) and it was all dismissed (successfully) by Leave as hyperbole and unnecessary concern (i.e. project fear). The same is happening now with no-deal Brexit - unbelievably it seems to be working again.

Ah yes, blaming the people who told you it would be shit for not telling you properly.

My point about the army was no necessarily that it was a bad thing, but a PP said that the idea of an EU army was a lie. It wasn’t a lie, it IS the aim of at least some in Europe. It might happen.

The same as job losses after Brexit, hasn’t happened yet, might well happen.

The problem with the EU army is that any military cooperation between EU countries is marked by leave campaigners as evidence of it.

What the idea that most people understand from an EU army is an army, commanded from Brussles, drawn from countries all over Europe.

That isn't going to happen.

Ironically the UK is remaining in defence coopereation with other EU countries after leaving, so technically part of what others will call an EU army anyway.

hahahahahahahahahaha

well there was a lot of poorly worded stuffflyingaround about Brits no longer being able to live in/work in an EU country or spending the money current allocated to EU contributions of the NHS.

@borisbogtrotter there is no eu army. It’s merely an ambition of the ‘ever closer’ idea. Of course it may one day come to fruition which would make sense in the context of ever closeness.

So any idea that any elected politician in Europe suggests may happen needs to discussed as if it is going to happen because if we don't it's a lie?

There is no official plan for an EU army. That's not a lie.

Some politicians think there may be a point when some form of EU army may be a good idea, no details have been decided on and the U.K. has a veto.
So please discuss the hypothetical details of a hypothetical plan.

I think Project Fear was designed to scare the home owning middle classes shitless but they for got that the voting public wasn’t just made up of home owning middle class people.
To a lot of people
House Prices will plummet= Great I might be finally afford to buy one

Holiday costs will go up= Doesn’t affect me I can’t afford to go on holiday.

Etc etc
Personally I couldn’t believe how stupid the Remain campaign was.
There again I couldn’t believe David Cameron giving a referendum given the feeling in the country.
Anyone else get that awful sinking feeling when they heard the announcement that a referendum would be called.

It's important to distinguish between actual lies i.e. misstatements of fact, and inaccurate predictions.

London is the capital of France - lie
2 + 2 = 5 - lie
It's going to be 12C in London tomorrow - inaccurate prediction (probably!)
Andy Murray will win Wimbledon - inaccurate prediction (though one can hopel of course)

Leave camp lies are actual lies i.e. misstatements of fact.

• £350 million/week for the NHS. (No: not true on 2 counts: figure isn't £350 million, and nobody making the claim had the power to choose what, if anything, the putative saving was spent on.)
• Turkey is joining the EU soon (No: as others have pointed out, it had been trying for thirty years and had got maybe 1/5th of the way through the accession process, if that)
• EU army (no: every single EU state has a veto, and it only takes one state to turn the idea down to stop it)

Whereas the "lies" that people complain about when it comes to Remain all relate to trying to map out what the future would look like post-Brexit, i.e. they're inaccurate predictions.

• Pound will drop (it did, overnight)
• Huge job losses (they may yet happen, especially in a no deal situation, but not as quickly as predicted because Article 50 wasn't activated immediately)

And so on. It is an important distinction, because the lies should never have happened in the first case.

A fact remains true, regardless of who states it. The scoreline of yesterday's football match is beyond dispute, regardless of whether you supported the winning or the losing team, because it's a matter of record.

Similarly, the £350 million/week, Turkey, EU army etc. were all things that were on record as being UNTRUE. That means the people who originally disseminated them (not those who repeated them at twice, three times etc. remove, but the people who first started spreading the lies) deliberately intended to mislead voters.

That is an order of magnitude worse than getting some predictions wrong, because only the former implies deliberate, malicious intent.

Go back to the Government leaflet that was put through every door in Britain.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/515068/why-the-government-believes-that-voting-to-remain-in-the-european-union-is-the-best-decision-for-the-uk.pdf

It contains a surprising number of truths considering how many people have slated its inaccuracy.

For example:

• "we will not join the euro" - true, the UK has a legally binding opt-out

• "we will keep our own border controls" - true, the UK has a legally binding opt-out of the Schengen Zone

• "the UK will not be part of further European political integration" - true, the UK has a legally binding opt-out

• "leaving creates uncertainty and risk" - true, we see that played out every single day in the chaos of Brexit news

• "The Single Market makes it easier and cheaper for UK companies to sell their products outside the UK" - true, it's the best possible trading arrangement (there's literally nothing freer than what we have with the EU)

• "Being inside the EU also makes it more attractive for companies to invest in the UK" - true, this point has been made repeatedly for over 30 years, going back to Margaret Thatcher. Many companies and countries choose the UK explicitly because it's a "gateway to the EU" (Brexit shuts that gateway)

• "If the UK voted to leave the EU, the resulting economic shock would put pressure on the value of the pound" - true, happened within 24 hours of the referendum result, and pound has never recovered

• "Losing our full access to the EU’s Single Market would make exporting to Europe harder and increase costs." - true, HMRC predicts firms will face £6.5 billion/year of additional red tape because there will be a huge number more steps involved in importing and exporting goods.

• "The Government judges it could result in 10 years or more of uncertainty as the UK unpicks our relationship with the EU and renegotiates new arrangements with the EU and over 50 other countries around the world." - true, we're 2.5 years into the process and we haven't even agreed how to leave yet, let alone what our new relationship should look like after we do.

• "A more limited trade deal with the EU would give the UK less access to the Single Market than we have now – including for services, which make up almost 80% of the UK economy." - true, even Brexiters accept this (they see other compensations from leaving).

"House Prices will plummet= Great I might be finally afford to buy one"

Shows an utter misunderstanding of what actually happens if house prices crash.

I really wish people would stop refering to the remain campaign as Project fear, this was not the reason it failed.

The reason it failed was that Cameron and Osborne led it, they couldn't admit to people that things like stagnating wages, poorer NHS services, schools struggling for places etc was due to their austerity policies not immigrants.

But many older people who voted leave did so because they had seen first hand how a trading bloc morphed into something else. They had the benefit of a lifetimes being in the eu and many of them didn't like what they saw.

Being in the eu was the known quantity.

And it was rejected.
They also had the benefit of the euro debate. Again much scaremongering was done and yet most UK citizens are extremely thankful we didn't join the euro!

It's just not black and white really esp for the older generations who have lived through this a few times. The other problem is, the eu hasn't really been a great success yet.
Maybe in a few 100 years it will be but at the time of the referendum, it was struggling to manage its borders, struggling to keep it's eu citizens safe and struggling to accommodate genuine war refuges and keep them safe too!
Also Greece was on its knees at that point, Spain unemployment awful, Italy seems to be grumbling agaisnt eu, and they are all tied together in the euro, which seems to have rocked the banks themselves

If the eu was more together, quicker to handle big issues, processes already in place to deal with issues, slicker on the euro issues I think we would have had less... Project fear and definalty more positives... Why the he'll do you want to leave this massive success story.

There simply isn't much success! That was and still is a the problem.

I remember life before. As did my late mother. Both voted Remain.

No success?
Yes it’s not perfect and lots could be done to improve it.
BUT what would this country be like if we had not joined the EU.
What would this country be like if we had not had all the money from the EU to regenerate?
What would this country be like if we had not welcomed all the people who chose to live in this country and work and contribute to this country - we have benefitted massively from the E.U.

Boris but those issues were simply never huge issues prior to 2000s.

Net migration was about 48 thousand in about 1997 I think. Yes we had NHS issues, yes we had housing issues but rumbling on issues... To be expected. The huge wave of immigration that occurred when Tony Blair didn't keep working restriction in place like Germany did... Suddenly... Housing, schools and NHS became urgent issues, frantic crazy issues.

Because these services had thousands more service users very quickly and there was catch up or even preparation for them.

With the credit crunch hitting at the same time, then tory austerity etc it's little wonder we have food banks today.

But these issues were simply far more down priority scale back in the 90s. Because immigration was never the hot burning topic it is today. Labour themselves seem to have owned this now and apologised for it...
Yes tory austerity hasn't helped but neither did the choices made by previous government

Those things were not issues to do with immigration.

Wages are not suppressed to any great extent by immigration, there are many more factors suppressing wages to a greater extent.

House prices aren't greatly effected either. Using th

Immigrants tend not to use health care as much as the local populace. Look up the healthy migrant effect

In fact none of these were issues really prior to 2010.

However over this period of time the right wing press blamed immigration for it.

Go look at the government study released last Thursday, utterly disproves these points.

"Because these services had thousands more service users very quickly and there was catch up or even preparation for them."

This point is rubbish. Sorry.

It's a double edged sword random.

Unfortunately thousands of trades people whose jobs were under cut by cheap labour wouldn't feel the same way you do about eu labour.

However many people have benefited from cheap labour, nannies etc.

Pre 1997 there never seemed to be any issue filling any job roles in the UK. Sometimes I wonder if posters realise prior to 2002 we did have immigration into the UK.

It's almost spun sometimes like there was massive skills shortage so to combat this... Blair and brown decided to lift working restrictions to ensure hundreds of thousands, millions of workers from the the eu to come and help us. And then we have to be thankful because we were on our knees prior to this.
This wasn't the case at all.

The Blair government made a mistake, they never ever expected so many people to come here, at all! It was never expected, never planned and never needed.

Yes we need immigration, yes of course we need it but the question is.. At what rate of entry, what volume?

The other problem is having no checks and balances is that with normal, respectable families, young people, innovative and hard working.... You cannot stop the criminals. Sadly crime gangs, sex traffickers etc have also been able to access the UK. People with criminal records, murder in their home countries, who have then committed murder here too.

Most rational people would never blame the immigrant for others transgressions.. But without checks and balances they all get lumped together. This is what the bigots latch onto and its been made easy for them to do it.

For the sake of everyone and keeping everyone safe... Including normal immigrants I just feel immigration needs controlling and back down to smaller figures.

The way everything has been conducted has been a fascists dream really.

Arguing in black and white has been far left and far rights dream. The truth as always is somewhere in the middle.