Leavers - how do you stomach Farage and co. / association with racism, fascism, xenophobia?

[SevenTimesSix]

Please no name-calling and abuse either way. I'm genuinely curious and normally don't post in the Brexit area - I'm not a super tough person and hate getting caught in the crossfire.

People may well have all kinds of reasons for wanting the UK to leave the EU. Some I can understand if not agree with. Others are baffling to me given information which is widely publicly available. I appreciate that we see the world differently and that many on both sides live in their own bubbles. There's plenty of other threads to take these things apart.

If I accept that not all, or even most, Leavers are racists or xenophobes, there's still no getting away from the fact that key figures in the Leave movement are outright racists or xenophobes (and some are proven liars on a grand destructive scale, although that's another story). They are not minority figures on the fringes. They are leaders and figureheads.

How can reasonable, civilised Leave supporters bear to be associated with these people? As well as personal behaviour and values, we as human beings do tend to judge others by the company they keep.

There seems to be such a big jump from worrying about the protection of UK borders or feeling that preservation of national sovereignty is under threat, to being prepared to stand up and be counted alongside a bunch of fascists.

I cannot imagine a single political issue which would make me prepared to do this.

If you're a regular person who just happens to want Brexit, how are you getting your head around this?

Labour voters - how so you stomach the Corbyn and co association with Hamas terrorists, rampant anti - Semitism and misogyny

Tory voter - how go you stomach rampant Islamaphobia and eugenics?

Green voters - how do you stomach paedophile apologists who cover up child abuse and torture of a child

Shall I go on .....

Lots of politically homeless people at the moment due to an inability to stomach any of that.

{The EU shot itself in the foot and should’ve embraced change and sorted itself out. It should not be run by unelectable bureaucrats and can’t get its accounts sorted out.}

Number 1, We (the UK) are members of the EU so OUR MEPs (and by extension the Westminster government) should have been embracing change and encouraging it to happen.
In fact the UK MEPs DO a lot of hard work in the EU with thenotable exception of a certain N Farage who finds the bars in Brussels more exciting.
Number 2, If the EU is full of unelected bureaucrats what the heck was the UK voting for yesterday?

We were voting for the European Parliament. Juncker etc are part of the unelected European Commission.

The European Parliament vote for the Commission. Don’t you remember Cameron trying to get people to vote against Juncker?

The European Commission are the equivalent of the UK civil service, we don't (as individual citizens) vote for them directly. MEPs vote for EC candidates, you know, democratically. They do not set the European agenda directly, they discuss what MIGHT be useful legislation which is then discussed by MEPs who VOTE for it (Except Farage because the pub is more interesting).

The European Commission candidates are chosen by the European council, then we have the MEPs voting on them.

Personally I like the idea that the president of the EU should face a direct public vote. Because I think the less directly accountable to the general public the leaders are the more out of touch they are. But each to their own opinion.

The European Commission candidates are mostly figureheads representing the wishes of 28 countries and 500 Million people when the EU discusses matters with China, the USA etc.
Westminster manage to do a shit job of representing only 4 nations.

Fucket.. why don't you suggest that to the Con party who are going to foist another PM on us all without any form of public accountability.

Why the do people bang on about the EU as anti democratic but then utterly ignore the deficit in our own systems?

I totally agree, I hate fptp and our system of “democracy” it’s crap. I would prefer PR and get more of the smaller parties into the House of Commons to actually reflect how majority of people would like to vote, rather than oh I have to vote red or blue because I don’t want either red or blue. Sometimes if you are lucky you might feel safe enough to vote yellow...

One of the reasons we have this complete cock-up right now tbh, and why I think the far-right are gaining more and more support, disaffected voters feeling that they have no control over the people in charge.

Hopefully in the meantime the protest vote of the very near future is the Green vote, and they'll be the ones who main parties will have to pander to.