- People didn’t know what they were voting for.
Well they should have paid more attention then.
David Cameron – for the idiots who also don’t know the name of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time of the referendum – said Brexit meant leaving the single market.
If people didn’t know that, they were either not listening, not caring, or stupid.
Well he should have said it louder and more times. And in your face.
Well he did. How many more times should he have said it? Should he have knocked on everyone’s door and spent five minutes making sure everyone understood? “Repeat after me Mrs Brown, the leave campaign want to leave the EU and leave the single market.” – Yep, I couldn’t have used a name from one of the many minority groups as the person who totally missed what the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom said about Brexit for that joke, because they would have certainly noticed that I was using a stereotypical name from a minority group to make fun of a completely different person, and this would have led to a completely unnecessary apoplectic fit of outrage.
Should the government have set up economics lectures around the country with exams so that everyone would be confident that enough people understood exactly what was going to happen?
There is of course another point, and this is highly controversial. You could have done something about it yourself. You could have got up off your lazy butt and done some research yourself. I know. I’ve just suggested some personal responsibility. The most heinous of all crimes. Take a moment to recover.
Now you didn’t have to. It isn’t illegal or morally reprehensible to just vote without knowing what it means. You’re well within your rights to not know anything about a subject and flip a coin in the voting booth.
But how difficult is it to pull yourself away from a couple of episodes of Coronation Street and sit down by the computer and type a few questions into google.
Now obviously there were some things that we couldn’t have known without weeks of research, or being a particular type of lawyer, or having access to a some sort of time machine that could inform you of what would be happening in the future. But this type of thing is not an uncommon life experience and you do what you do in all such situations. The best you can.
Also, it’s doubtful that much of this apparently difficult-to-access information was important to the question asked in the referendum.
I didn’t know it would take years to leave. I thought we could leave in a day. But that lack of knowledge does not change the fact that I think we should have Sovereignty over ourselves and not be under the control of unelected European bureaucrats.
And as for not knowing how dreadful the economic situation would be, well that was well covered before the referendum. The Remainers spent the entire pre referendum campaign predicting all sorts of dire financial consequences should the UK vote to leave the EU. And yet, 17.4 million people still voted for Brexit.
One more thing.
Some people say they did not know what Brexit meant.
That may be true. But there was one thing it certainly did not mean. And everybody knew it. It did not mean Remain. And presumably ‘Remain’ meant remain. Totally. Not partially remaining in the EU, because that would be ridiculous. Well if ‘Remain’ meant remain totally, surely it stands to reason that it’s opposite … Brexit meant … well Brexit.
Totally.
Anything else would just be ridiculous.
- Let’s have a Second Referendum
Not a good idea.
This is based on the idea that people did not know what they were voting for. Which they should have. And if they didn’t, that’s their fault.
Of course this is an utterly despicable move on the part of the sore losers who only believe in democracy when it delivers the results they want.
Personally I’m ok with a second referendum. Why not. It will give us something to look forward to. It will engage people and increase their participation in politics. Although this is only as long as we can have a third referendum if the second referndum doesn’t go the way I want.
General and local elections should also work the same way. Vote until you get the result the minority want and call it democracy and the will of the people.
Has anybody actually thought through the consequences of a second referendum.
I bet not.
Let’s imagine we have a second referendum. If Brexit wins by a large majority, we’ll still only get the non-Brexit that’s presently being forced on us. If Brexit wins by a small majority, again we’ll still only get that non-Brexit, but we’ll also have the same bickering about it only being a tiny majority and therefore not a real mandate for a proper (otherwise known by the liars as ‘hard’) Brexit, that we’ve had since the referendum produced the wrong result.
And if the Remain vote wins, the country will be forever split, between those who saw democracy die in Great Britain and those who caused it.
As for those who suggest that a second referendum would not be a question of Remain or Leave but a vote on the deal being offered, what a disgusting manoeuvre. I mean the question is not going to be between the useless deal our spineless leaders begged the EU to give them versus a no deal, is it? No, you mean a vote between a deal that will be terrible for the UK and Remain, don’t you. Now that’s sneaky.
Also, have you lost your minds! If you think that the people of this country did not understand what Brexit meant in the first place, how the hell do you think they’re going to understand the intricacies of the suggested deal?
Oh that’s right. You’re just desperate for another vote, so that after two years of feet dragging, complaining and showing people how terrible this whole Brexit business is, you hope that people will have become fed up of hearing about it and will have given up on the idea of getting a proper Brexit and will therefore vote the way you want, just so that they can move on with their lives.
- We need unity
Stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
We actually need Brexit.
It was the democratic will of the people.
Why do we need unity?
Are we not allowed to live in a country where some people think being in Europe is lovely while others think it will be the end of civilization as we know it?
Of course we are.
So in what way do we need to be brought together. Is it to change the way we think to make sure we all think something in the middle, like Europe is lovely and will also be the end of civilization as we know it?
Is it to bring about the impossible. Have a referendum where the choice is to go left or go right and then try and do both? Or worse, go in a direction that did not appear as one of the original options? How stupid. Yes, I know it sounds nice and lovely to take everybody into consideration, but it’s not possible to do so in these binary situations. I know. Since the referendum I’ve tried numerous times to leave my house and stay at home at the same time, but no matter what I try, I don’t seem to be able to achieve this. The best I have managed is one foot in and one foot out. Which has meant I’ve not been able to get to work or use the toilet. Going shopping as a third alternative doesn’t help much either.
Wait a minute, is that why some people are saying that no one knew what Brexit meant. So that they could create a third option to the referendum post the vote by inventing multiple possible meanings to Brexit – namely ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, so that once they have created the confusion around what Brexit meant they can then use the call for unity as a reasonable sounding solution to the problem of a three way split between hard Brexit, soft Brexit and remain and ensure only the softest of Brexits. In other words an underhand way of preventing as much of Brexit as possible.
Perhaps this call for unity is to allow us to live together in peace and harmony even though the country is split one hundred and eighty degrees on this.
Fortunately, we already do.
I know I haven’t smacked a Remainer in the face yet.
Absolute garbage.
The truth is that Remainers and Brexiteers are united.
They are united in the fact that they are ok with disagreeing strongly with others and others disagreeing strongly with them.
And most importantly, they are united in the fact that in a democratic country, the will of the people must be carried out, even if at times, that is something they personally do not want.
- Since the vote was so close there should be a compromise
Yes the vote was close. But it was for one side. Not for something in the middle. No one voted for partial Brexit. If you don’t want to do what 52% of the people wanted because the other 48% are against that, why on earth are they doing what 0% wanted? What! Everyone has to be miserable. Can’t have 52% of the country getting their way, when 48% won’t. So no one can have the toy … I mean their way.
This is not only disingenuous, it is also unbelievably stupid. To be contrasted with “stupidest thing I’ve ever heard” of number 3 and to form a pattern regarding what I think of some of the common things people say about Brexit.
It’s unbelievably stupid because it means we won’t do Brexit properly. We’ll still be tied in some way to the EU and not in a way that benefits us. We’ll have the worst of both worlds. We won’t have the advantages of being separate from the EU nor the advantages of being part of the EU.
Our situation will be much worse.
Perhaps it’s true that we didn’t know what we were voting for.
No one knew that if we voted for Brexit our politicians would betray us and do their best to reverse that decision, and land us in the worst situation possible. Not Leaving, not Remaining, but something far worse.
I mean it could be their sheer incompetence. It’s not as if that’s off the table. They’re incompetent in general so why should that be any different here. But it could be they’re treacherous. They tell you to vote for them because they’ll do one thing and then they go right ahead and do the opposite.
Is it their incompetence or their treachery that got us into this fine mess?
Well, presumably some politicians are being incompetent and some are being treacherous. There is such a thing as diversity after all.
Though as a disclaimer, please don’t think I’m in any way suggesting that those politicians who are handling Brexit incompetently are not also being treacherous, or that those betraying Brexit are not also being incompetent at the same time. Politicians do have the ability to mult-task. At least with these two tasks. I’m simply saying that the politicians are divided between those who are being more incompetent than treacherous over Brexit and those who are being more treacherous than incompetent.
One could argue that we should have known this was going to happen and voted Remain just so that the Politicians don’t make everything ten times worse.
If all this talk of incompetence and treachery makes you despair of getting the Brexit you want, I say to you, no, do not give up. This very problem itself gives rise to our one and only hope. After all if our politicians are incompetent and treacherous that means they could well fail to betray us and we may accidentally find ourselves with the Brexit we want.
The suggestion of a compromise is also being disingenuous.
The argument runs as follows: The vote was close. So we mustn’t have a hard Brexit, but a soft Brexit. A soft Brexit takes the losing Remain side into account.
Let’s imagine that the results were the reverse of what actually occurred.
52% voted Remain. 48% voted Leave.
Stop salivating this is only a hypothetical.
Would the Remain camp have turned around and agreed that as they only won by a tiny majority, they would take the Brexiteers into account and compromise with a soft Brexit?
Of course not.
Like all pseudo democrats and other disgusting people, compromise is for when you’re on the losing side. When you’re winning or in control, screw the minority, however big it is. That’s democracy baby.
And if you really do believe in taking the minority into account and compromising, why did we bother with a referendum in the first place. What a waste of time. Everyone knew that a lot of people wanted to leave and a lot of people wanted to remain. So there should have been an immediate compromise, and in order to take everyone into account – both the Remainers and the Leavers, the government should have carried out a soft Brexit without even having the referendum. Why spend £137 million on a referendum that only ends in the exact same compromise you should have made without it. You could have given at least that money to the NHS.
It’s almost as if the idea of compromising only came about after the referendum. And only after the results went a certain way.
Peculiar! Or to be more accurate, disingenuous.
- Brexit is so important. Why can’t the politicians work together?
Because they’re politicians. And that’s what they do. Squabble all the time and call for everyone to work together, by which they mean everyone should agree to work together in the way they demand to achieve what they want.
I love easy answers.
Though there may be more to it.
How can they work together? They have totally conflicting goals. In such a case, people won’t work together to implement a goal that is contrary to the one they want, and they can’t work together to achieve both conflicting goals. It’s as simple as that. The different parties have totally conflicting ideas of how they can make a pigs ear of Brexit.
“They should compromise on their goals”
Nope. They should just deliver Brexit as promised.
“They should all work together for the good of the people”
Yep. And that means delivering Brexit as promised.
But politicians are the last people to understand democracy. They think they’ve been elected to decide what‘s best for the people and to do what they think is right.
You see, more important than all that fluff about working together, is that little thing we like to call, carrying out the will of the people.
Yeah, that’s what the politicians should be doing.