Mp Admits He Will Defy His Own Leave Constituency

[fender62]

he wont honour the referendum results of his constituents, what a mess our politics are.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1071206/Brexit-News-Remainer-MP-Article-50-Theresa-May-Leave

[Khandro]

The sourness of the grapes on here is quite astringent.

[jim360]

No kidding. But you'd be sour too, I suspect, if you'd lost the referendum because the people organising your campaign were arrogant, incompetent and short-sighted.

[ichkeria]

NJ I’m praising your man! Go with it!
Although I’m very much on the Remain side I’d give the other lot top marks for much of their campaigning. And a lot less for the complacent effort of our lot.

On the subject of sour grapes we owe it to Aesop to clear up what that expression actually means. If Remain supporters were indulging in “sour grapes”, which is the usual charge here, it would be a case of them saying “well we never wanted to stay in the EU anyway” - THAT would be “sour grapes”

[New Judge]

"...it hardly refutes the general point to claim that the Remain campaign should have tried the same."

The general point seems to be that the Leave campaign was more successful at getting people, who may otherwise not have voted, out of their beds than the Remain campaign was:

“It was win because the official campaign managed to winkle out and motivate the sort of people who would respond to a particular message and who would, crucially, not otherwise have voted.”

So I don’t really know how to respond to that except to say that the Remain campaign should have done better. If the strategy of “winkling out and motivating” potential Leave voters was so successful why wasn’t the Remain campaign equally successful? This is especially pertinent since (we are led to believe) there were more of them to work on – hence the suggestions of complacency - and the campaign did have the full weight of the government of the day behind it.

It could simply be, of course, that regardless of any campaigns the idea of leaving the EU appealed to more people than the idea of remaining in it did. But I’m just guessing.

[ichkeria]

Of course it does NJ: this was always the huge advantage the leave campaigners had. All the “sexy” arguments (I believe Cummings invented “Take back control”) were on the Leave side and all the dull ones (such as “we’re doing pretty well as we are and we are taking a huge risk mucking it up”) on the other side.
But they still had to fish out people for whom the idea that “change has to be better than what we have” would be most appealing.
Nigel Farage could rant and rave all he liked but he was only ever going to confirm the opinions of the true believers. And Cameron was too confident that the economic argument would swing it.

[Kromovaracun]

// I don’t really know how to respond to that except to say that the Remain campaign should have done better.//

We're agreeing with you!

[Old_Geezer]

"what you think the penalty for treason should be"
Like many things it depends. How severe was the treachery ? In what form was it ? I doubt there should be a single penalty for all.

[vetuste_ennemi]

As I recall the whole apparatus of state, the main media, the consensus of "expert" bodies and all the sexy celebrity endorsements (Barack Obama, Eddy Izzard, Russell Brand etc) were arguing the case for[i staying in the EU and the folly, nay, disastrous consequences of leaving it.

None of [i]that] blatant propaganda influenced the weak-minded
undecided middle, then? Is that what I'm being asked to accept?

[jim360]

// None of that blatant propaganda influenced the weak-minded
undecided middle, then? Is that what I'm being asked to accept? //

Firstly, can you by any chance not try to use italics on AB? They're clearly broken and have been for a while and it keeps breaking up your post :P

But secondly -- no, I'm not sure anyone is saying it didn't have an effect, but we saw how easily the Leave campaign was able to absorb it into their narrative: that is, that of the (liberal) elite just trying to deny the people a voice, or some such. Anything that allowed the debate to be framed as "us (the people) v. them (our self-proclaimed Lords and Masters)" is quite easy to exploit and use to feed the Leave campaign even further. What was it Govey said: "I think the people have had enough of experts telling us what to do..."? Maybe he was at least partly right -- which clearly I find sad, if so.

In any case, it's almost empirically obvious that the Leave campaign was more effective: after all, which side ended up winning? Since the polls beforehand had Remain (slightly) ahead, that result was an upset, and a surprise, and must owe at least something to the more effective campaign strategies of at least some of the Leave camp.

[vetuste_ennemi]

//..it's almost empirically obvious that the Leave campaign was more effective//

No, it is a matter of evidence that Leave won.

The rest of cynical speculation by people who expected to win with their full house and then found themselves losing to four aces. Obviously at least one ace had been hidden up the sleeve or in some hidden corner of Benedict Cumberbatch.

refeerendum was won by :

[ichkeria]

//..it's almost empirically obvious that the Leave campaign was more effective//

No, it is a matter of evidence that Leave won.

Er ... :-)

[vetuste_ennemi]

(There's the printer's devilry of AB italicisation. And there's VE's using the lap top without the wirelss keyboard and mouse which died a month ago of Bacardi poisoning)

[naomi24]

Picking the bones in an effort to wheedle out excuses for Remain’s failure is pathetic. A government booklet promoting its cause was sent to every home in the country so it had a good head start. Nevertheless it lost.

[jim360]

I suppose your claim would then be that Leave would have won if there were no campaigning at all (by either side, presumably, in order to make it a relatively fair test). If so, this seems rather a lot more absurd than the claim that the Leave campaign was the more effective, driving wavering or undecided voters towards their camp.

[vetuste_ennemi]

I would expect educated people to understand the difference between facts and analysis.

[jim360]

What excuses? The side that campaigned more effectively won. This is praise for the Leave campaign, and criticism of the equivalent Remain camp.

I'm genuinely struggling to understand why there's any argument about this point.

[naomi24]

Jim, //I'm genuinely struggling to understand why there's any argument about this point. //

Me too. The Remain campaign had all the big guns behind it - the government included. The result speaks for itself.

[jim360]

Also, I should add, this isn't even an excuse invented after the fact either. Even during the campaign, it wasn't difficult to spot the pattern. The Remain argument, at least at the very top, seemed to be mostly focused on the economic impact, and on very little else. Leave could offer a far more positive case, be it in reclaiming sovereignty, or in cancelling annual payments to the EU, or in just exploiting an anti-elite feeling. The pattern was there at the time. You lot noticed it too: you called it "Project Fear", and most of you were unimpressed. Not difficult to find that AB's loudest and proudest Remainers were equally horrified by the negative campaign, and nervous that something stronger would be needed.

So it's not an excuse, it's just a recycling of the same observations we had all made before. The Leave campaign was more effective than the Remain one, and that told in the final result.

[Khandro]

jim; //The side that campaigned more effectively won. //
Leave won yes, but to say it was due to their campaign (rather than their cause) is illogical and baseless.

[jim360]

Bear in mind, too, that the Leave camp did have a few big guns too: having BoJo, Farage, and to a lesser extend Michael Gove on your side aren't to be sniffed at, to name but a few. At the time, at least, all three strongly believed in it (it's debatable if Govey still does, and I guess that depends rather on what version of "Leave" you support).

On the other hand, having lots of "reluctant Remainers" , such as Cameron, Corbyn, and so on, at the head of a campaign really didn't help much. Particularly Cameron, who deserves the title of "worst PM in history" far more than May does.