Well in Britain there is an idea that some people had that people who voted in the Brexit referendum to leave were selfish. They didn’t care about the impact on the economy or travel to different countries. They said This is an opportunity to get out so let’s get out and the EU referendum debate was very bad tempered and people who voted to leave in the Brexit referendum were selfish as they were old but it would be young people who would have to live with the legacy of that decision. Do you think it was bad of them to decide to leave in that way? What do you to think of this?
Regardless of what you think of them, they were in the majority of voters. Do you think that if the majority of the voters agree on something they can be selfish? You may disagree with them, but enlightened self-interest != selfish.
Of course. Suppose a majority of voters (say those with last names beginning A-T) vote that their tax rates should be lowered and other’s tax rates raised. Don’t you think that is selfish?
It’s shockingly selfish for people to vote in accordance with their interests, especially when they differ from your own.
Some were selfish, most were just racist xenophobes.
No they were not, and DrDeth you are exactly the reason that you lost the vote, instead of addressing the issues you simply paint those with a rational and different view with a simplistic and ignorant outlook.
You are at least as much responsible for the divide as any person who voted to leave. I have a right to vote, I do not have to explain myself - though I can do so in clear and logical terms.
I am not prepared to rake over the debate again, however, I have been around a wee while, I know what has taken place since before we joined, I also am aware of a number of EU migrant worker grants that are offered to UK companies to employ EU citizens to the cost of local workforces with the money that we paid into the EU as part of our EU levy.(the EU migrant worker support grant offers grants of up to £12500 per migrant worker - I have seen the invitations directly - I live in area of huge unemployment and this is not acceptable at all)
There are other issues to do with offending behaviour, where I see on a daily basis some of the most serious and violent offenders in prison who have decided to try their luck over here, we are not allowed to stop them coming in, we cannot vet them before they enter our borders and we have immense difficulty in deporting them, or denying entry.
It turns out all too often that evidence given during the court case sentencing procedures they have absolutely shocking criminal records in their own countries - I personally have to deal with them every day. I have seen sex offenders, manslaughter, murder, drug dealers all with previous convictions in their own EU states come into my workshop - and we let them in through the EU freedom of movement rules - it is utterly stupid.
Given that this is a US centric message board - I wonder how US posters would feel about our inability to stop EU offenders coming into the UK without at least a criminal record check based upon the EU freedom of movement rules, maybe someone would comment upon that.
Yes we can eventually remove them, but the process is so convoluted that it is effectively impossible except in theory only.
It is not racist to decide that your own government should be the final arbiter of what makes it into legislation - yet 80% of UK law comes in the form of EU directives which leaves our parliament non-sovereign in our own country - a right that our masses strove to achieve for well over a thousand years - and this is not something that should ever be given over lightly on the basis that we can maybe get some other nations to vote with us in a foreign executive.
If I dislike incoming legislation from the EU I cannot hold it to account in my vote directly and instead can only hope the EU electoral college might go my way - this makes the EU unaccountable to the very voters over which it holds dominion.
By leaving the EU it means that our politicians can be held directly to account by UK voters, it means that political campaigning in the UK actually has meaning, it means that I am a responsible person with my right to campaign intact.
The EU is none of those things, it is currently left leaning which means it tends to enact EU directives more in tune with my outlook - however, this will not always be the case and when a right leaning EU starts pushing out directives which the UK must enact into law then I will not be able to effectively campaign against it because the seat of power is now removed to a level where I can only hope to influence a third party, which in turn could easily be out of step with EU legislators.
This is not racism, this is about who governs the UK - your attitude is simplistic and childish.
Enlightened self-interest? Selfish? Racist?
I thought the Brexit election was decided by the Gullible.
I am a American, so I didnt vote over there.
Certainly there were some that felt that way, but how far down do we go? Should Wale have the Right to Self Govern? How about Wessex? Or London? or Fordwich? Regionalism isnt good for the World, and it’s bad for the economy.
However, altho I am sure a few felt that way, **the vote was powered by racist xenophobe bigots, not thinking Britons. ** The same thinking that put trump in the White house, mind you.
Vote Leave relied on racism. Brexit: The Uncivil War disguised that ugly truth
*The EU’s supranational institutions, demonised by Brexiters, are “too complicated, too remote” to be the focus of the campaign. It needs a “simple message repeated over and over and over”, if it is to appeal to the “three million extra voters that the other side have no idea exist” who Cummings’ new friend Zack Massingham, of the shadowy AggregateIQ, promises can tip Vote Leave over the line…What the film doesn’t tell us is how low he went to push this. It shouldn’t be a secret, since Vote Leave repeated the same election broadcast (now pulled from YouTube) on all terrestrial TV channels throughout the last 30 days of the campaign. Following lurid graphics representing the threat of 76 million Turks joining the EU and coming to the UK, it climaxed with a split screen showing (staying in the EU) a surly foreign man elbowing a tearful elderly white woman out of the queue in A&E, while (leaving the EU) the woman is contentedly treated without having to wait. It was a homage to Enoch Powell, whose 1968 speech highlighted a fearful old white woman living in a street taken over by “negroes”.
Cummings’ 1bn Facebook ads picked up the broadcast’s themes and graphics, but were “micro-targeted”. Less racist voters got pictures of Boris Johnson (“I’m pro-immigration, but above all I’m pro-controlled immigration”), while the “3 million” got ads shouting “5.23 MILLION MORE IMMIGRANTS ARE MOVING TO THE UK! GOOD NEWS???” and when they clicked “No” were bombarded with scores of variations on the theme. It was the same story with leaflets, whistleblower Shahmir Sanni says: “The campaign was always talking about immigration. The most proud moment for many of Vote Leave’s staff was how well the Turkey leaflet did.”*
Given the EU is as democratic if not moreso than the UK itself, this argument is nonsense. You mention that “80% of UK law comes in the form of EU directives” while somehow failing to mention that well over 90% of those EU directives were either already aligned with UK law or drafted by the UK. The UK elected MEPs just like every other EU nation, and the UK’s elected officials appointed other representatives to the various EU bodies just like every other EU country. We are no more oppressed by the yoke of the EU than we are by Parliament itself. And if your argument is merely that this is one level of democracy more than you like, then you’re basically reverting to the devolutionary rhetoric that the Scottish have been using for years.
There is no one reason that the Brexit vote succeeded, but apart from the very real undercurrent of xenophobia casdave is simultaneously frantically handwaving away and subtly demonstrating, a major factor was simply this: the Leave campaign lied. A lot.
We were told the EU were oppressing our sovereignty, forcing us to ban prawn cocktail crisps and straight bananas and all sorts of other things the UK didn’t want to submit to. This wasn’t true.
We were told that the NHS would get an additional £350m a week and that all the economically deprived areas of the country that were receiving EU subsidies would have that funding covered. That wasn’t true either.
We were told that we would able to negotiate better trade deals with the EU and with the rest of the world somehow, despite having greatly reduced negotiating power and having to compete with the rump EU. We were told we had a strong negotiating team and position. We were told we had a clear plan. These have already been demonstrated to be ludicrously delusional if not outright lies.
We were told that the EU needed the UK more than the UK needed the EU, and that the UK would be free to source its imports from anywhere in the world while the EU would be desperate to keep importing its goods from the UK. Which, again, was shown to be either delusional or dishonest.
We were told we’d have more control of our borders, while the fact that refugees were piling up at Calais rather than sneaking into the UK due to an EU agreement with France was blithely ignored.
We were told that the projections of economic detriment from the Remain campaign were nonsense, even though they were supported in every economic model including the ERM’s. We were told that companies would want to stay in the UK under the new regime, companies that have now moved thousands of jobs to other EU countries.
We were told that the entire population of Turkey would be coming to use the NHS and that foreign rape gangs would be roaming the streets of our neighbourhoods (okay, that was just Nigel, who is a lunatic - but a lunatic with a big following amongst the Leave camp).
And that’s not even getting into Theresa May trying to do an end-run around Parliament (how’s that “sovereignty” and “democracy” thing working out?) and Boris promising not to pursue a no-deal Brexit or prorogue Parliament, both of which he promptly did.
So many lies. So many things that turned out to be utterly wrong, with Leavers all the while complaining that the reasons reality wasn’t comporting with what they had been promised was that Remoaners were sabotaging everything. And the Remain campaign? Was led tepidly by David Cameron, who never bothered to counter the torrent of bullshit from the Leave campaign. Who put him in charge of that?
So - simplistic and childish? Yes, the Leave campaign was. And remains so.
Yup, that’s the way, quote left wing sources and opinion pieces and completely ignore any of the issues I have raised - that’s how to argue your point.
You have read some very biased articles and decided - yup that’s racist all over, I suggest that racism is a far more significant issue in the US and it seems to be the pony you are riding.
You haven’t addressed the concern over borders that are completely free for any miscreant in the EU to cross - yet the US ensures that all those crossing its frontiers are checked and excluded if they do not meet the US specifications - therefore the US must be doing it because it is racist and not for any other reason whatsoever - that is, by your logic.
Why should we be governed from the EU? Why shouldn’t I want UK to be its own sovereign nation? You have not addressed my point that nations can only be sovereign if they enact laws within their borders - whereas 80% of those in the UK are actually determined in the EU, its obvious you know absolutely nothing whatsoever about the EU or the UK legislative process but somehow you feel qualified to blithely ignore any concerns about our loss of our own legislature - offensive? - you bet, how would US citizens feel about me, British, condemning the US federal and state legislative system without actually having any knowledge whatever of the checks and balances? That is your ignorant take on what you are doing in relation to ours.
Only three nations make a net contribution to the EU budget and we are one of those, so if we campaign for a reduction we get out voted every time by the 24 other nations who take money out. You might be surprise that the Scandis actually proposed a .79% EU reduction in the EU budget because of the loss of UK money and it was thrown out by the EU takers - it means that there will only be two contributors having to stump up the entire EU budget, can’t see their taxpayers being too happy about that - can you?
You are obviously economically illiterate
Anyway, being a US citizen does not give you the right to make accusations of EU voters on issues about which you clearly have absolutely zero understanding - you might be surprised at this, but I have the right to vote in whichever way I choose for whatever reason I choose, as did every other voter in the UK and we did - we voted out and it is none of your business so I suggest you keep your interfering little economic colonialist nose out of our affairs.
How dare you cast aspersions upon an entire nation simply because you have issues of your own - your stereotypes are exactly the type of thinking that informs the closed mindset of the racist - you actually have the very same thought processes of those you accuse of racism - you are a small narrow minded closed thinking biased person sitting on the outside claiming some sort of special knowledge on a subject about which you actually know zero - so your only recourse is to dig up a few dodgy quotes to pretend you have an insight to disguise your ignorance.
Well be assured, we are all ignorant about something, so you are in a large majority, its just that when faced with those who are better informed and involved we are not all stupid enough to persist in our delusions and maintain our our artificially induced position - you know jack about the subject, get out of it.
More than selfish, generally they were the very worst of what they accused Remainers of being: Brexiters are among the most arrogant people I’ve ever seen.
Nearly anyone remotely professionally involved in trade, science, medicine, education, finance, industry, diplomacy, administration, defence: leaving the EU is fraught with major risks with very, very little positives, and those positives get progressively smaller the harder the form of Brexit you take, with hard Brexit having no positives and loads more negatives.
Brexiters: says you! My hunch is as good as your knowledge! Here’s a single person who disagrees with you, and despite my not bothering to look at his credentials, he trumps everything you say!
Remainers: what the fuck? How are we going to do this? Haven’t you considered this? What about Y? Would you at least consider Z as recognition of the narrow victory you had?
Brexiters: fuck off! You lost! Despite our empty pleas to unite the nation, we’re going to treat the 48% as a conquered people with no rights to resist us! And anyone in the state who tries to uphold the constitution, rule of law, or the rights of minorities is a traitor who should be shot, or sacked, or shot then sacked!
Remainers: But your claims are based on complete lies and are internal contradictory! How can you ‘open up to the world’ while simultaneously ‘take back control’? How can you claim the EU is forcing no deal on you while simultaneously insisting no deal is no problem and in fact what the 51% voted for? What about the fact that no deal was dismissed as lunacy?
Brexiters: fuck you! You’re so arrogant for speaking up against us! How dare you! Now let me go drink cups of your tears! I’m never arrogant!
Gyrate
There were plenty of lies on the Remain campaign, plus the benefit of an incredibly biased broadcast medium, and despite all the weight of our claimed betters and opinion formers, we still voted out.
Actually a simple message is a viable way to campaign, distilling issues and gtting your point across in politics is essential.
Like it or not, control over our borders matters, without control we are not a nation - example - the EU decided to allot member states with a share of refugees crossing into the EU, yet it was not debated in our parliament it was imposed - the very definition of loss of border control.
Yes we should have the right to carry out border checks on EU citizens for criminal history and deny them entry - are you suggesting that we should forego that right? Well as long as we are in the EU we do not have that right - and as I previously mentions - and which you too blithely ignore - I have personal experience of what that means in terms of UK offending and the criminal justice system, do you have such experience? no you do not it is no xenophobic nor is it racist not to want EU criminals set up here in the UK but Remainers are too ignorant of what is going in in prisons or do not wish to look.
Remainers by and large have latched on to transparently false claims by the more idiotic elements of the Leave campaign and blame the Remain failure entirely on the gullibility of Leavers and you assume we were all persuaded by these claims. This enable you to claim the perceived higher moral ground without ever actually analysing properly the real reasons why the majority wanted out - it is more comforting for Remainers to believe their own myth of their righteousness instead of actually looking at uncomfortable truths about why we collectively voted to Leave.
Remainers are largely like children who cannot have their own way so they just shout everyone down instead to listening, you continue with your delusions of truth and righteousness and you’ll continue to be like the Labour party - convinced of the truth of their arguments and that its the voters who got it wrong - keep up that attitude and you will Remain out of power and influence - Remainers simply do not get it.
Projection.
Projection again.
False.
Just like our border inside the EU was. You know the one border which was unchecked? The Irish border under the GFA.
No, because you’re starting with a false claim. A false claim clung to from racist motivations.
We weren’t.
In the EU, we were fully sovereign.
Literally no country on earth does this, because modern international trade and standards requires we sign up to international bodies that make laws transcending borders.
FALSE.
[quote[its obvious you know absolutely nothing whatsoever about the EU or the UK legislative process but somehow you feel qualified to blithely ignore any concerns about our loss of our own legislature[/quote]
Projection again. Brexiters cannot lecture on the undermining of our Parliament when they decried judges doing their jobs as enemies of the people and openly called for the government to muzzle Parliament in an entirely illegal manner to get their way.
About the same as I feel about you commenting on the EU without actually having any knowledge of how it works, I imagine.
And yet the UK led a very successful revision of EU finances making what it does spend be spent much more in the fashion that we desired. Pity that gets ignored by Brexiters.
So which is it - are we governed by the EU, or is it in fact a group of nations of which the UK is one?
I find it hilarious that Brexiters bitch about how the UK is somehow made a fool of within the EU but somehow insist it’ll be different outside, where Russia, China and the US exist, alongside the EU.
Ahhhhahhh 
Oh mate, you’re going to be so disappointed when it turns out Brexit means a choice between being America’s bitch or the EU’s.
Less than half a nation actually.
Not remotely true. Don’t even try to equivocate. Brexit is entirely devoid of any factual basis whatsoever. Nothing at all.
Oh PLEASE. Brexit had a horrifyingly biased printed press. The broadcasters are obligated to at least try to be impartial.
They failed because they gave equal credence to pro-Brexit forces. If they had been impartial, anything beyond EEA membership would have been rightly dismissed as flat-earth nonsense.
So effective, that even now no Brexiter has the faintest fucking clue what Brexit means.
FALSE.
FALSE. We already had this right.
Those ‘most idiotic elements of the leave campaign’ are now in charge of the government, the print media, and the official Leave campaign.
Seriously, what of the ‘reasonable’ Leave campaign has survived to be delivered?
Oh bless! What did I say? Brexiters are by far the most arrogant.
I’m heading out now, but I just want to affirm the point for casdave.
I see loads of ink spilled to implore Remainers to listen to poor dear sweet Brexiters who so badly want their Brexit, or they’ll be so terribly upset, and won’t Remainers listen to why they want it so much?
But I have never, ever had anyone ask Brexiters to do the same. They are never asked to stop a moment and listen to why Remainers are terrified. All counterarguments are dismissed with a blend of conspiracy theory, dismissive sore-loserdom, or being brainwashed by cosmopolitan liberals, or being paid EU shills.
They’re never asked to consider, just for a second, that Remainers may have a good reason to be scared, and maybe it’s the duty of the winning side, if they’re truly serious about bringing the nation back together, to bring Remainers on board by showing how Brexit will succeed and how they’ll work with Remainers to make the best of things.
If anything, they’re indulged, indeed encouraged, to grind Remainers into the dirt and jump on their limp bodies as enemies of the country.
So please, casdave, go right ahead and keep repeating your broken record about poor hard-done-by Brexiters being frustrated. But you’re being frustrated by the true majority.
And the fact that even you, in four years, has not been able to articulate what Brexit is beyond vague, meaningless horseshit about ‘borders’ and ‘sovereignty’, and made no efforts to discuss practical things like trade, competition, and acknowledging what tradeoffs will take place, is extremely telling.
Brexiters like you have refused to plan and refused to be specific, because in planning and being specific, Brexit always collapses.
Brexit has already failed because of this. You cannot square the circle. ‘Open Britain’ is not reconcilable with the ‘control the borders’ autarky that many Brexiters, particularly among the working class, demand.
It’s not arrogant to point this out. It’s truth to power. The actions of Brexiters speak volumes about what they know, deep down, about the insecurities of their church.
I think that “deluded” was the better descriptor than “selfish”. The people of the UK were told that they could have all of the benefits but none of the responsibilities of EU membership. If this were possible, then they’d be fools not to take it. But of course, as everyone found out, it isn’t possible. Some still claim that it only failed because Germany was being a vindictive meany-pants, but Germany was just behaving in the perfectly sensible way that any perfectly sensible person would expect them to behave.
Once it became clear to everyone that the Brexit the people voted for was a unicorn, Parliament should have simply ignored the non-binding referendum in favor of the requirements that really were binding on them, and rescinded Brexit. But they were apparently all afraid to do so.
Racism is a significant issue in the USA. One party lets itself be run by it’s racist members.
Yes, we do check borders- we only have two, one for Canada (only checked on major roads, you can walk across in many places) and of course Mexico. But we dont have any border rules between California (which is about the size of your island0 and Washington or Arizona, for instance. Do you have a closed border between Wales and England? :dubious:
Why should Wales be governed from Whitehall? Why should Wessex? Why should Fordwich? (That’s the smallest town I could find in England)
Note that the EU is about the size of the USA, and the British Isle about the size of our 3rd largest state. The whole EU doesnt even have close to twice the population of the USA.
“…how would US citizens feel about me, British, condemning the US federal and state legislative system…” Please.:rolleyes: our UK members have no qualms at all about attacking President trump.
But yeah, you post does prove it’s Xenophobia.
My cites- one of which was British mind you- does also prove the votes were due to racism.
Both of you, knock it off. I know that both sides in the Brexit “discussion” tend to get emotional, but keep your personal attacks out of this forum.
[ /Moderating ]
To the posters who snuck in while I was battling slow connections, you may also knock it off.
EVERYONE, back away from the personal attacks!
[ /Moderating ]
Could you give us an example of a selfish vote in a country that had universal suffrage that we could compare/contrast the Brexit vote against? My definition of a selfish voter is one who believes his voting choice will benefit him personally, but will be bad for the nation overall. I can think of mathematical based models where that could happen, but I’m not aware of any real world circumstance where that’s occurred. If a majority of people are voting in their own self-interest, then it’s hard to objectively demonstrate that their voting against the national interest.
Specific to Brexit, whether or not you agree with the decision of the Brexit voters, my belief is that they voted for what they thought was best for the UK. I can accept that some voters might think that reduced immigration would benefit their employment prospects, but those same voters would also believe that increased domestic employment was good for the UK. Likewise, some Brexit voters might have been “Little Britain” voters who were hoping for a return to some nostalgic idyllic version of the country, but they’d believe that version was what best for the country, not just for themselves.
Which aspect of the Brexit vote do you believe contains an element where a large segment of the UK population is better off under Brexit, but the population as a whole is worse off? Maybe valuing UK independence from the EU over the risk of Northern Ireland leaving the UK could be considered “selfish” for the above criteria, but even then I think people who felt that way still believed their opinion was the best one for the national interest.