Why The Hate For Brexit Voters?

[LuisDantas]

Ah, bless you for thinking the UK was a sophisticated electorate. The most popular rags, sorry, newspapers, are reactionary rightwing propaganda outlets - unashamedly so.

I have learned that since. A brief period as a subscriber to The Expectator helped fix me right.

The Tories have been sufficiently appalling in every way for so long it's even finally filtered through to the working class. I live in the heart of the red wall. It always had 4 Labour MPs but changed to 4 tories at the last election. None of them are standing for re-election now because they know they're going to lose. Good riddance.

Having seen the lengths to which the Tories went to present some semblance of an united front back in 2019, I assume that they would do much the same now in 2024.

I have since concluded that it won't happen. Plenty of Tories have decided that the time has come to emphasize how divergent they are from other Tory MPs.

It probably helps that they don't expect to win their seats this year anyway, so building a reputation as their own persons became a higher priority than keeping a seat at the House of Commons.

Still, it is impressive how diminished the Party has become despite having gone through such extremes in recent years in order to avoid just that fate. Going by recent history I expect that there is a lot of potential for surprising results in the next ellection. It may conceivably be a long time before the Conservative Party regains power for any length of time.

But no doubt it won't be long before the promise of tax cuts and getting tough on crime will have sections of the working class voting once more for the party of the rich for the rich. Stupid is as stupid does.

You may well be right. At this point I am not particularly expecting that, though.

 

[Secret Chief]

I have learned that since. A brief period as a subscriber to The Expectator helped fix me right.



Having seen the lengths to which the Tories went to present some semblance of an united front back in 2019, I assume that they would do much the same now in 2024.

I have since concluded that it won't happen. Plenty of Tories have decided that the time has come to emphasize how divergent they are from other Tory MPs.

It probably helps that they don't expect to win their seats this year anyway, so building a reputation as their own persons became a higher priority than keeping a seat at the House of Commons.

Still, it is impressive how diminished the Party has become despite having gone through such extremes in recent years in order to avoid just that fate. Going by recent history I expect that there is a lot of potential for surprising results in the next ellection. It may conceivably be a long time before the Conservative Party regains power for any length of time.




You may well be right. At this point I am not particularly expecting that, though.

Your grasp of UK politics is impressive. And yes I think you're right about the tory party - it is about to have some post-election rupturing methinks. It seems to be 2 parties previously united in their bid to hold onto power. When the power is gone they'll be free to have a meltdown. Compared to Labour, it has always been the tory party's greatest strength in terms of winning elections - to ALWAYS present a united front.

 

[Rival]

Your grasp of UK politics is impressive. And yes I think you're right about the tory party - it is about to have some post-election rupturing methinks. It seems to be 2 parties previously united in their bid to hold onto power. When the power is gone they'll be free to have a meltdown. Compared to Labour, it has always been the tory party's greatest strength in terms of winning elections - to ALWAYS present a united front.

Thatcher famously trashed half her cabinet to do this.

 

[LuisDantas]

Thatcher famously trashed half her cabinet to do this.

Thatcher was remarkable, one way or the other.

 

[Augustus]

Why is there a suggestion that anyone who voted for Brexit was misled?

Those who voted for Trump are misled?

As if we had sense we'd vote for the 'right' thing.

As if there's a side that votes dumbly and tends to be rural, conservative and traditional and there's a side that votes sensibly and they are urban, liberal and progressive. It's bull****.

@Augustus

Secular theodicy, and the need to cling to the myth that they are on the "right side of history" (as if history actually has sides).

A myth is not a falsehood. Rather, a myth is a sophisticated social representation; a complex relationship between history, reality, culture, imagination and identity...

We are predisposed to see order, pattern and meaning in the world, and we find randomness, chaos and meaningless unsatisfying. Human nature abhors a lack of predictability and the absence of meaning. As a consequence, we tend to ‘see’ order where there is none, and we spot meaningless patterns when only the vagaries of chance are operating...

once a person has (mis)identified a random pattern as a ‘real’ phenomenon, it will not exist as a puzzling, isolated fact about the world. Rather, it is quickly explained and readily integrated into the person’s pre-existing theories and beliefs. R Howells - The myth of the Titanic

Many people who grew up between the 60s and the 90s and were progressive-ish in political orientation were brought up on a myth that as the world became richer and better educated people would basically become rational secular humanists like them. Just a post-Christian form of Divine Providence wrapped in a secular rationalist veneer.

The Brexit debate was one of the most perfect illustrations of Michael Oakshott's observation that rationalists find "it difficult to believe that anyone who can think honestly and clearly will think differently from himself". The number of times I saw people claim that there were literally no reasonable arguments in favour of Brexit was hilarious considering they always saw themselves as "high information" voters basing their decisions on their superior reasoning abilities rather than bias or prejudice.

(One thing that was clear was that EU membership was keeping wages down in at least some sectors. I also enjoyed seeing middle-class, centre-left voters basically complained that they had to pay people a fair wage as this made their fancy cheese expensive )

Believing comforting fictions about devious actors "Oooooh, but the bus, the bus.... Boris had a lying bussssss!!!!" is like Christians who blame the devil for the the fact people don't accept Jesus as their Lord and saviour. It's easier than accepting the truth that your own views are not universally appealing to anyone who values truth.

Remain or Leave voters were (not all, but) mostly basing their views on emotion or an intuitive sense of what was desirable: sovereignty versus liberal internationalism. The EU was just a proxy in a theological debate.

As far as I am aware I've never stated my personal position on Brexit here: I didn't vote. Probably could have as I have an address there but have lived overseas for the best part of a couple of decades and couldn't be bothered.

There are certainly are arguments for and against that had/have merit though. It is also obvious that such a decision can only be judged in the long term, obviously Brexit would cause short-term economic disruption, so saying it failed because it cause short-term economic disruption is inane. Also, things like sovereignty have no exact cash value, and whether you personally care about it or not, it is obviously a legitimate value preference over economic efficiency.

If I had voted, I'd have voted remain as it makes life a lot easier on some of my family members and I'd have cared more about this than an abstract political debate. From a political perspective only, I was undecided and while one of the main benefits for me would have been decentralisation, I never saw the government actually pursuing such a policy. As I didn't vote and wouldn't have voted for political reasons anyway, I never made a decision either way (and, honestly, I don't think it will matter in the long run as I don't think the EU will exist in 100 years, but that's just speculation). TBH, I'm not even sure I agree with irreversible constitutional decisions being made on simple majority status rather than requiring a qualified majority (one side has to win every time, but the other only needs to win once so this should be sufficiently offset) but that's another matter.

I did find the vocal Remain camp absolutely ****ing insufferable though. Leave wasn't much better, but if anything tipped the balance it wasn't Putin or a bus, but Remain acting like a bunch of patronising bellends that must have motivated many people who just wanted to put one over them. Funny that ignoring people's genuine concerns and insisting they don't exist and they are purely stupid racists being fooled by Right Wing Media might motivate them towards pissing on your chips. I still think if Remain had run more on a "we agree there are problems, and we didn't really listen to you before, so let's reform the EU and if not we'll have another vote" type platform they might well have won. Not because people are persuaded much by reason, but you might have got a few more undecideds and you'd have reduced the number of people who were inclined towards Brexit who had enough motivation to go out and vote out of spite.

I didn't have strong feelings on the issue, and didn't view myself as being personally attacked, but listening to Remainers frequently made me cringe with their self-righteousness.

Blaming a bus is easier than self-reflection though and realising if Remain had been slightly more reasonable and a bit less obnoxious, they probably would have won. But anyway, regardless of what tipped the balance, focusing on the balance tends to ignore the fact that it only matters when near half the country supports one side over the other in the first place. Better to look at the underlying causes than focus on the tiny margin that swung the vote one way or the other as the be all and end all. And if the best you can come up with is "they are just all stupid racists" then you probably understand the situation far less than you would like to believe.

 

[Augustus]

Is it possible that many people vote for Brexit not out of the likely consequences, but due to some sort of prior love for the idea in the abstract?

Of course there were, probably most people who voted for it. Then again, the same is true for most of those who voted against it.

I want to doubt that, because the implication is that those voters don't care about facts and are too much in love with a myth of some sort of Britannia Unleashed.

That is a very dangerous stance to have.

I guess I am a globalist with little ability to or interest in understanding the appeal of nationalism.

Had you been eligible to vote, this would be a case in point - a generic commitment to globalism regardless of 'the facts' is no different from a generic commitment to national sovereignty.

Even the idea that "the facts" support one over the other ignores the fact that it is mostly a value judgement.

It is hard to even conceive of a believable yet significant benefit from even a hypothetical Brexit.

It's remarkably easy, even if you think remaining in the EU was a massive net benefit, and was no doubt the kind of thing that school children were being asked to write essays on in their classes.

Anyone who had tried to become reasonably informed on the issue should be able to make both right wing and left wing arguments for leaving the EU, as people have been making them for the past 50 years.

The fact that many intelligent adults find it so difficult says to me that they certainly aren't making their judgements on a rational consideration of 'the facts'.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Voting to leave the EU?

In the words of The Honourable Arthur Wilson Esq (played by John LeMesurier, as Brits of a certain vintage will know); “Are you sure that’s wise, sir?”

 

[LuisDantas]

Of course there were, probably most people who voted for it. Then again, the same is true for most of those who voted against it.



Had you been eligible to vote, this would be a case in point - a generic commitment to globalism regardless of 'the facts' is no different from a generic commitment to national sovereignty.

Even the idea that "the facts" support one over the other ignores the fact that it is mostly a value judgement.



It's remarkably easy, even if you think remaining in the EU was a massive net benefit, and was no doubt the kind of thing that school children were being asked to write essays on in their classes.

Anyone who had tried to become reasonably informed on the issue should be able to make both right wing and left wing arguments for leaving the EU, as people have been making them for the past 50 years.

The fact that many intelligent adults find it so difficult says to me that they certainly aren't making their judgements on a rational consideration of 'the facts'.

Good effort. Considering the goal you apparently had, that is. Otherwise, no. Not really a very good text.

Well, guess what?

Facts not only matter, but they have (to paraphrase Stephen Colbert) "a well-known bias" against Brexit.

Tough, I guess.




The core of my surprise with your post is probably the claim that "facts are a value judgement".

Where does that come from? Plenty of facts are instead very objective indeed. There are limits to the Power of Delusion.

You can't "judge" that it is cheap to pay for housing in London. You can't "judge" that the UK have achieved better trade deals after Brexit. You can't "judge" that the world relevance of the UK is greater now than in 2016. You can't "judge" that the UK does not have a need for workers that used to come from the continent and now have far lesser incentive to apply.

This text (to subscribers only, unfortunately) may be of interest on this specific matter as it applies to current day USA politics.

Exploring the ‘Liberal Bias’ of Reality

A short history of the GOP embracing and promoting lies

medium.com

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I'm confused as to why many people seem to think it's the heart of why folks voted for Brexit when it simply wasn't. They were just offering us something we had already been wanting for years, no matter what they said about NHS money and blah blah. As for me, I don't even support the NHS so it didn't mean much.

I think some of it just comes down to giving others the benefit of the doubt.

Whatever one thinks of the NHS, cutting healthcare funding compromises care and costs lives. A lot of people see more charity in assuming that Brexiters didn't want anyone to die but were just honestly mistaken than in assuming that they knew full well what would happen but just didn't care (or actually wanted people to die).

 

[LuisDantas]

Political decisions are about what is possible.

Political campaigning generally isn't. Sometimes it is very much about what is not at all possible.

Apparently that can make quite the impact.

 

[Rival]

I think some of it just comes down to giving others the benefit of the doubt.

Whatever one thinks of the NHS, cutting healthcare funding compromises care and costs lives. A lot of people see more charity in assuming that Brexiters didn't want anyone to die but were just honestly mistaken than in assuming that they knew full well what would happen but just didn't care (or actually wanted people to die).

Who is cutting healthcare funding?

 

[Secret Chief]

Who is cutting healthcare funding?

Not cutting but underfunding.

"Between 2009/10 and 2021/22, the cumulative underspend – the difference between what funding would have been if historical growth rates had been maintained, and what was actually provided – reached £322 billion in real terms."

Health funding data analysis

 

[Altfish]

That was in late 2019, wasn't it? I vividly remember how astonished I was that the British were willing to give so much rope to Boris Johnson despite obvious, ethically challenged maneuvers from him.

It was a year of great disappointment from me towards the British voters. They were being invited to lend prestige to patently dishonest people who never even bothered to try to appear coherent nor principled, and took it all hook, line, and sinker.

To the extent that I can wrap my head around those results even today, I can only conclude that:


1. The British public was quite sick of so much discussion of how to execute Brexit (which is very understandable).

2. Particularly given how embarrassing the push-and-forth between the House of Commons and the European Commission had been through the better part of the year (also very understandable).

3. The matter of the trade border in relation to North Ireland was also no small worry and quite a tiresome, frustrating subject matter.

4. Despite what to me seemed rather obvious cues from the results of Theresa May's efforts, the Conservative Party just would not listen to reason, apparently out of some form of misguided pride.

5. To my considerable if shameful Schadenfreude, plenty of voters decided to buy Boris Johnson's line despite a lot of clear reasons not to.

6. That is probably because the myths that sustain the appeal of Brexit still held a very strong pull for many, regardless of facts. It was nationalism in a very pure form. This is not only not understandable, but really very damning.

7. I will never again presume that the UK are politically any saner than Brazil without checking the facts first. Up until then I did.

You forgot that the alternative was Jeremy Corbyn's Labour.
I voted Labour but had to hold my nose.
I'll vote for Labour this time with a lot less trepidation, although I'm not impressed with Starmer, he is a safe pair of hands.

 

[Augustus]

Good effort. Considering the goal you apparently had, that is. Otherwise, no. Not really a very good text.

No idea what you think the goal was, but I’m pretty confident if you stated it you’d be very wrong.

Read the previous post before the one you replied to and it might help you to be less wrong.

(In short, if I’d bothered to vote I’d have voted Remain so have no particular dog in this fight other than I found the Remain campaign insufferably smug and self-righteous and think that this likely swung the vote to Leave)

The core of my surprise with your post is probably the claim that "facts are a value judgement".

If that’s how you interpreted it, no wonder your understanding of Brexit has failed to reach the level that would get you a C in a high school politics class.

What I said was whether you favour national sovereignty over short term economic efficiency or not is a value judgement.

It is also a value judgement if you consider freedom of movement to be worth the suppression of working class wages by cheap immigrant labour.

I could keep going, but you get the point (or perhaps not, but that’s on you).

Unless you think there is some “factual” metric on which you think the decision must be judged that trumps all others then you are stuck in the territory of value judgements.

That people are so completely intoxicated by their own self righteous moral superiority that they can’t even understand simple concepts that have no intrinsically correct factual answer is quite telling.

This text (to subscribers only, unfortunately) may be of interest on this specific matter as it applies to current day USA politics.

Exploring the ‘Liberal Bias’ of Reality

A short history of the GOP embracing and promoting lies

medium.com

So completely irrelevant to my post, but excellent confirmation your ideological biases and presumptions that led you to incorrect assumptions that ignore the facts.

Thank you for demonstrating my argument perfectly.

 

[Augustus]

You forgot that the alternative was Jeremy Corbyn's Labour.

I did find it funny watching Corbyn very badly pretending he wasn’t in favour of Brexit.

A good reminder that there have always been anti-EU elements on the left too.

 

[Rival]

I did find it funny watching Corbyn very badly pretending he wasn’t in favour of Brexit.

A good reminder that there have always been anti-EU elements on the left too.

I voted for Corbyn.

May wasn't a viable option at all for me.

 

[HonestJoe]

I expect those things to come in any kind of vote though, so they're just background noise to me.

Well yes, but the thing about background noise is that it can have an significant effect on you even if you're not consciously listening to it. Political campaigns are essentially just marketing and advertising, and a large proportion of that is based on subconscious messaging. I don't think simply ignoring misinformation in elections is sufficient, you need to understand exactly what is untrue or misrepresented, who is promoting it and why.

I don't find that many people vote based on that; I find their minds tend to be made up well in advance of votes...

I'd agree that there was a lot of that with Brexit, but that's because the idea had been pushed for many years before, with much of the same misinformation and lies. A lot of people were voting to stop immigration, regain their sovereignty and buy bent bananas because that's what they'd been told the EU was preventing.

I mean, we all pretty much know the Tories are going to fail hard in the next GE, no matter which side you tend to vote for. Minds were made up years ago.

I'm not sure it's quite as fixed as you're suggesting though. There are plenty of things the Tories have done in recent years that have turned a lot of people completely off, but that doesn't mean they couldn't suddenly do something to win some of them back (or, maybe more likely, Labour and the SNP do something stupid to turn a lot of voters off). Also, individual candidates can still be very significant regardless of party, as we've seen in recent by-elections.

The mean political position of the population always swings like a pendulum, and it's clearly been swinging away from the Conservatives for a while in the UK, but it will swing another way sooner or later.

If I know some things are in a certain manifesto and other things in another and I want bits of each, I'll just vote based on more immediate, local concerns, as I believe most people do.

In elections for local representatives or even (perceived as) for national government, sure. Brexit was entirely different though, being a simple binary question related to the country as a whole.

As for me, I don't even support the NHS so it didn't mean much.

Fair enough, but that (and the thread in general) would suggest you're in a political minority, so your reasoning for your Brexit vote isn't necessarily the same as anyone else's.

 

[HonestJoe]

Something of a tangent, but a significant one;

I voted for Corbyn.

I doubt you did, unless you happen to live in Islington (which would mean you could have voted for May even if you'd wanted).

I find it odd that someone who talks about considering "immediate, local concerns" falls for the all too popular canard that we're directly voting for national parties and/or leaders, which leads to so many people blindly putting their cross against the party symbol without even caring (often knowing) who the actual candidate is.

 

[LuisDantas]

No idea what you think the goal was, but I’m pretty confident if you stated it you’d be very wrong.

Read the previous post before the one you replied to and it might help you to be less wrong.

(In short, if I’d bothered to vote I’d have voted Remain so have no particular dog in this fight other than I found the Remain campaign insufferably smug and self-righteous and think that this likely swung the vote to Leave)



If that’s how you interpreted it, no wonder your understanding of Brexit has failed to reach the level that would get you a C in a high school politics class.

What I said was whether you favour national sovereignty over short term economic efficiency or not is a value judgement.

It is also a value judgement if you consider freedom of movement to be worth the suppression of working class wages by cheap immigrant labour.

I could keep going, but you get the point (or perhaps not, but that’s on you).

Unless you think there is some “factual” metric on which you think the decision must be judged that trumps all others then you are stuck in the territory of value judgements.

That people are so completely intoxicated by their own self righteous moral superiority that they can’t even understand simple concepts that have no intrinsically correct factual answer is quite telling.



So completely irrelevant to my post, but excellent confirmation your ideological biases and presumptions that led you to incorrect assumptions that ignore the facts.

Thank you for demonstrating my argument perfectly.

Guilty as "charged", then.

I aim to be biased towards reality. For what that is worth.

 

[Rival]

Something of a tangent, but a significant one;
I doubt you did, unless you happen to live in Islington (which would mean you could have voted for May even if you'd wanted).

I find it odd that someone who talks about considering "immediate, local concerns" falls for the all too popular canard that we're directly voting for national parties and/or leaders, which leads to so many people blindly putting their cross against the party symbol without even caring (often knowing) who the actual candidate is.

It was a typical shorthand for I voted for Labour.

Come on, you know that.