It has no guarantee of winning. I think the risk of UKIP in parliamentary elections is still overblown given that their key issue was leaving Europe, and now we are doing that. There's no consistency within UKIP, let alone between UKIP and the Tories, about how to do that, so I think their ability to fight as a unified force is limited.skalpel wrote:Which has no guarantee of winning and a good chance of motivating a UKIP-Tory coalition.Speedo wrote:
This is based on the assumption that there isn't a large amount of buyers' remorse on the part of voters following the referendum... It's my hope hat the Labour party splits between the Corbynista left and the pro-Europe centre party, which would form an electoral pact with the Lib Dems and stand on a pro-Europe ticket.
I would argue that actually, the overwhelming thing people wanted was your third point, sticking it to the establishment. It's my opinion that this result is more of a rejection of the Westminster elite than it is a rejection of Europe. People wanted to roll the dice and change things, whether it was Europe or something else. That, in turn, is the result of a decade of economic pain and inequitable growth, with those on middle- to lower incomes outside of London feeling the worst of the pain. Immigration fears and a dislike of Europe is only the product of people looking around and seeing a system that is getting better for other people and not themselves.skalpel wrote:To the Brexiters we're talking about - those capable of causing a huge swing to UKIP - the principle of leaving and all the autonomy and sense of people power that comes with that is more important than the details. They wanted three things: 1. Less immigration, 2. No continental suits making decisions for their country that they feel unable to influence, and 3. To finally stick it to the establishment, and stick it to them hard. So, for them, what promises have been broken here so far? They won the vote, and the establishment is shitting its trousers.Speedo wrote:With regards to "Brexiters who voted based on immigration control and general political control end up seeing either of those promises broken"... those promises have already been broken. Boris, Gove, and Farage lied about the control we would gain, and it's already apparent. This is why this is such a f***ed up situation - the entire Brexit campaign was based on lies, and now the Government has a mandate to implement something that is literally impossible to implement - namely, continued economic prosperity, including access to the single market, without any of the concessions about immigration etc.
Fundamentally, I don't think people care about Europe. They care about immigration - because they see that as the reason for their poor deal. But if there were more jobs and prosperity in those areas, would the hostility be such? I don't believe so. Fundamentally, this is a rejection of a status quo that is resolutely unfavourable to a lot of people.
I think the campaigns - including the Remain side - failed to talk enough about the practicality of Brexit. Which might not have had any impact on how people voted, but was an important issue that was totally ignored throughout. I do believe the principles the Leave campaign was based on were shaky at best, but that's beside the point - those principles were sold in a way that was fundamentally untrue. The campaign was built on lies, even if those lies came from some principled position. That principled position disappeared the second Boris Johnson started fronting the campaign.The entire Brexit campaign wasn't based on lies, it involved lies and was based on untold truths and the puffing of the importance of principle over practice. This is a distinction worth making. Anybody who relied solely on the campaign for their information wasn't told it was going to be a huge gamble with the country's economy, and that it would mean a huge upheaval of how the country works without a guarantee that the new way would work out any better. Nor were they told that in the event that they succeeded there would be desperate twists and turns to renege on as many promises as possible because of the risk. But even then, the sort of voter who relied solely on the campaigns for information strikes me as the sort of voter who feels he don't have a dog in the economic race anyway and so doesn't give a s*** about "The Economy"; the sort of person who thinks like Ken Walker from Sunderland, who is quoted in the NYT as having said: "I don't have any money in the stock market, so what's it to me?" Any impact that filters down to him can be easily blamed on something else by UKIP. It won't stop their rise.
This I totally agree with.The problems goes way deeper and further back in time than the Brexit campaign. It almost doesn't even matter what they said. The fact that there was a campaign and the option to vote Brexit provided an outlet for years of bubbling frustration and anti-establishment sentiment.