God… if ever I needed that ‘Picard with head in his hands’ GIF meme. Bloody hell.
He was 80 and starting to lose it a little…
It wasn’t just the old and slightly bewildered though. One co-worker asked me the day before the vote if we were in the EU and the vote was on leaving or not in and the vote was on joining. Another voted leave because, although she had no issue with migration within the EU as it stood, she was vehemently against Turkey joining. A third voted leave because ‘I thought everyone else was, I feel really silly now’. This last was said in my hearing to our -Polish- shift lead. She had no idea why he got angry about it.
It may be that my workmates were an unusually confused bunch, I won’t argue with that too much, but it didn’t fill me with any faith that leave voters in general were really thinking about the impact.
One hell of a lot of voters want to vote for the winning side. They don’t know or care which side the merits, but they’ll try to find out who’s ahead in the polls or early returns then vote for that side.
So they can feel good that they are part of the winning team. Even if they voted to screw themselves.
All of which shows that there’s an important second step for unpicking Brexit.
Step 1: This was a bad idea.
Step 2: The people who voted for this bad idea are in no way to blame.
For quite a while after the referendum, it seemed like the new political divide was Remain/Leave - it was pretty damn tribal, and the atmosphere was not conducive to disinterested assessments of outcomes. Taking the temperature down on that, and making it so that criticism of Brexit -as-it-turned-out does not read as criticism of Leave voters is pretty vital to getting the political space to make changes.
Hope this isn’t out of line, but thanks for the interesting discussion here.
Can I ask where else you follow politics online?
I’ve recently quit reddit, and am trying to find places I can keep in touch.
This is the best place !
I think many people were confused. There wasn’t a clear argument for staying or going. My parents - who will vote on their death beds because that’s what Good Citizens Do - agreed to each vote for and against to cancel each other out, because they didn’t know what was right or wrong. This is why referendums on a single earth-shattering topic are a stupid idea.
For me mainly Bluesky, where I follow a range of UK politics journalists (quite FT heavy as they’ve adopted the platform more or less wholesale), commentators and random interesting people.
In UK politics news, Green leader Zach Polanski has announced that he will roll the dice and stand for election. (He’s currently a London Assembly member).
This raises the stakes for both Green and Labour: Polanski would be embarrased not to at least come close, and will therefore campaign hard. Because the Greens will be campaigning hard, this will be a test of whether Labour can successfully meet the challenge on their left.