Reply to post: Re: Dodgy behavior by Vote Leave? @Snowy

Brexit text-it wrecks it: Vote Leave fined £40k for spamming 200k msgs ahead of EU referendum

Ben Tasker Silver badge

Re: Dodgy behavior by Vote Leave? @Snowy

I'm going to skip most of your post, largely because I sense we could probably argue for the next decade on it, as most of the remaining points are either opinion based or tangential.


> It will be interesting if remainers or leavers vanish as time goes on (especially if the EU continues as it is doing).

100% agreed. And for avoidance of doubt, if we do No-Deal, I really want to be proven wrong. I don't think I will be (otherwise I'd obviously agree more with you), but I'd be happy to be.

> They allowed such incompetent remain governments to sell us out too far and caused people to oppose the EU (restrict the blame to this country although the EU is pissing off its members big time right now) or failed to point out any positivity of being in the EU while leave could point to positivity in leaving.

That's not entirely accurate, but partly because it seems to be conflating the campaign with previous governments, so I'm going to split them out.

Campaign: I 100% agree, Cameron and co were so arrogant and sure they were going to win that they completely screwed it up. To the extent that I _almost_ view the referendum as having been theirs to lose rather that the other way round.

As you say, they focused heavily on the bad of leaving rather than the positives of staying. And people have short memories, so that tactic was clearly doomed to fail.

Governments: This is a lot more nuanced. Leaver's need to take some blame here too. It's a bit hard to justly complain of the EU's undemocratic influence over us, when we've not really been participating properly in EU parliament - instead, we've sent fucking UKIP MEPs over, who seem to turn up just long enough to film a short video and then leave.

Farage, for example, loves to talk about Fishermen, but fails to mention he was actually on the Fisheries committee, and just didn't bother attending (IIRC it was 1 in 42 meetings, over 3 years that he actually turned up to). Every Fisherman's problem that he points too he had opportunity to try and correct at source, and didn't even turn up. It's not like he tried and failed, he just didn't turn up to his job.

But, conversely, there's definitely some voter apathy to blame there. If we'd all cared more about EU elections then maybe those UKIP MEPs wouldn't have been MEPs and we'd have had someone actually working to push things in our favour.

As far as the UK Government's role goes, there's been some real cynicism. Things like pushing unpopular measures through the EU and then blaming them. I don't think that's constrained to "remain" governments. In fact, until recently, I'm not sure you can particularly easily categories governments by being leave or remain, because it just wasn't a question at that level. There are some leaders who were more EU friendly, of course.

> who are in multiple crises due to their handling of politics, economics and diplomatic relations

This isn't just an EU issue though, we've got plenty of that going on here in the UK too (as have other countries). Whether we now stay or leave, as a society we need to stop electing muppets. The recent rise in populism suggests that aspect is only going to get worse, at least for a while. That's fucking worrying in itself.

> Inept fuckers

As long as you're talking about the politicians, agreed

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