Of course I'm stuck on Brexit. It's democracy in action. We are experiencing a real, live, genuine debate over the future of the UK - government, society, sovereignty, relationship with the world. As a former policy wonk I find it fascinating and fabulous. It's quite different from a typical election where the party changes or gets reelected but the structure of the society or government doesn't change.

What just pisses me off is when people question the wisdom or intelligence of the voters in a country with a long and proud history of democracy. I find the majority of voters to consistently be pretty well informed based on the context of their situation, they have access to far more information than previous generations ever did and they are in a position where it's much easier to make one's own opinions and views rather than just parroting the official party position. This is why it's become much more difficult for either party to have control over their own voters.

The rambunctious nature of politics, frankly, is much closer to the historic norms than a placid politics where everyone knew their place and didn't challenge the orthodoxy. 18th and 19th century British politics could be brutal. And let's not even get into American politics. But that's the consequence of a situation where millions of *well informed* people have their own minds and views and expect an open and free debate.

My particular problem with the EU situation prior to the referendum was that the EU had become an orthodoxy that no major party dared challenge despite glaringly obvious deep seated resentment and unhappiness with aspects of EU policies among the voters. No one consulted the voters on immigration for example. No one even allowed the voters an actual vote on the EU (the treaties were promised a referendum beforehand, but signed without having one). Tony Blair didn't make it a campaign issue that he was going to allow the immigration of vast numbers of people into the UK - they even tried to keep quiet about it. They didn't trust the voters. They thought they knew best. And therein lies much of the problems with modern day British politics. Up till the referendum that is. So it's not surprising we had a situation emerge when so many voters were saying it didn't matter who you voted for, nothing would change. The real danger was the disengagement from politics among the voters. Maybe I attribute too much to Brexit, but my instinct is that Brexit has changed all that. It was a revolution in its own quiet way. It's made people stand up and take notice.

As for Trump, I don't fear Donald Trump. He's an idiot. But America has a very strong system of checks and balances that restricts what the president can do. Even including the nuclear weapons. If he gets elected, he will have a whole Republican congress deeply suspicious of him as well.

I don't think one referendum has changed diddlysquat for the better in terms of how politics will be going forward. Sure it has challenged the people in power and forced some changes to personnel, but end of the day politicians will always do and say exactly what they need to in order to stay in power.

I vehemently disagree that most people are well informed. They have access to a lot of information for sure, but most people just go along with what their friends post on facebook without actually spending too much time considering the facts. It's a scary prospect that Social Media Democracy is how countries may be governed going forward...

As for EU it is and has been for quite some time a complete shambles. The problem is that dismantling it is almost unrealistic due to the pain which will be incurred. Some of which UK will no doubt feel firsthand, but like I said previously I don't think brexit is the worst thing that could have happened. BoJo as PM and that racist dickhead from UKIP with some actual power would have been far worse..

Anyway it could be worse. At least the pound crashing has meant most of the polish have buggered off back home from what I could tell visiting last week..

Edit:
Wanted to add this interesting article on democracy and social media.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/...al-media-feed/

Then this will piss you off even more: Leave won due to an electorally-significant rump of shit-thick voters who believed all the anti-EU myths that have been peddled to them over the last few decades.

And Leave deliberately leveraged that, of course. Why else did they make such enormous lies as the "£350m a week for the NHS" such central planks of their campaign? Well, obviously, if they'd said "Let's give £350m a week to multinational companies as corporate welfare" that wouldn't have been such a vote-winner.

So why were so many of them parroting provable myths, distortions and flat-out lies about the EU as their reasons for choosing to vote Leave?

It's absolutely true that we live in the post-factual society. If being "well-informed" means "understanding the objective factual truth", then a significant number of Leave voters were NOT well-informed. And if you dislike the fact that Remainers aren't letting up in reminding everybody just how many lies Leave told, then suck it up, Buttercup. The nature of democracy is NOT that the losing side shuts up and goes away, no matter how much you'd like them to.

Of course, nobody here is stupid enough to believe that had Remain won on such a small majority, all the Leavers would have drawn a line under 40 years of non-stop whining and said "Fair enough, that's democracy, we're all going to shut up about it now". Obviously, they'd have done everything that Remainers are doing. And do you really think that any Remainer is ever going to forget Farage's comment back in May about only a two-thirds majority being definitive and that a 52-48 vote for Remain would be "unfinished business by a long way"?

If anyone needs to accept anything, it's the Leavers who need to accept that given the sheer scale of the (provable) lies that their side told in order to win, it's inevitable that Remainers are going to take every opportunity to drive home how badly the voters were misled.

Maybe you're right and we live in an era of selective "facts" and "experts." Let's not forget all the parading of politicians and economists predicting WWIII and worldwide depression should Leave win, eh?

Campaigning is always brutal. It doesn't necessarily justify extreme statements on either side. And sure, there's the silly partisans who believe what their sides are saying (cough cough). That's the nature of a messy democracy. But at the end of the day I firmly believe that most voters sifted through the evidence and bullshit available to them (maybe 350m may be an exaggeration but everyone knows Britain is still a major net contributor to the EU budget), considered the big picture, both long and short term, and made the decision they felt was best. Remember that people had to make a decision from two options that were presented to them. And that the vast majority of voters, both leave and remain, had very valid reasons for selecting the choice they did.

You may disagree, but I'm always sorry for those who hold British voters in such contempt. It speaks more about you than it does for the British electorate, methinks.

I've seen the same claims and same arguments made over and over again. Frankly, people make way too much out of it and its potential influence over people. Past politics had its scaremongering headlines and newspapers and journals (we too easily forget how many newspapers and magazines and journals and pamphlets that existed in the 19th century, for example, and how literate the voting population was and responded to the mass media of the day). People were complaining about the *telegraph* because it brought instantaneous shocking news and "wise men" were criticising the provocative nature of newspaper headlines over political debates and the same argument made in that article you linked were being made 100 years ago, under slightly different guises as it is.

As it is, that the article goes on to say "...happened in the UK was not only a political disaster..." immediately tells you this a very subjective opinion written by someone with an agenda of their own. Hardly unbiased. Quoting Rousseau doesn't lend it any credence.

It's not been great has it?

Everything you state here about the leave campaign could pretty much be levied at the Remain campaign too, however, as that's who you support then you don't see it.

For instance I quote;"Leave won due to an electorally-significant rump of shit-thick voters who believed all the anti-EU myths that have been peddled to them over the last few decades" So are you telling me that all the Remain voters are massively intelligent politics experts who have independently studied all aspects of the EU and debunked each and every claim??

For me, both sides were just as bad as each other and both sets of supporters have a certain percentage of idiots that will believe the bunkum thrown at them. Unfortunately in this age of social media and the availability of spurious information at our fingertips this is how modern politics are run. Both sides were equally guilty of spouting bollocks.

Remain - we're all doomed if we leave, all the leavers are solely concerned about immigration so are all racist bigots who don't know jack sh!t! We are so much more intellectually and mentally superior to those retards and the EU is the way forward.

Leave - we're all doomed if we stay, all the remainers are pussies who don't know jack sh!t! We have the balls to stand up to the EU and take back control. We have the strengths to go it alone.

Finally. Some acceptance that it's true.

I think you're forgetting that UK hasn't actually left the EU yet so obviously we haven't seen the full spectrum of potential negative effects. It is therefore a bit early to say 'I told you so'!

There are plenty of articles written well before the referendum saying more or less the same thing. Social media has given those who shout loudest a public platform to do so. Unfortunately those who shout loudest (and those who listen) are more likely to be holders of extremist views. This applies to all sides of a political issue.

Being 'pissed off' with people who hold a different view than you is at best immature. Democracy doesn't work if only those with the 'right' opinion are given a voice! In the case of brexit 42% of the electorate feel wronged by the outcome of the referendum.

As I stated earlier I have moved on. Now that brexit is a fact let's just get on with it. I'm certain the UK will be a strong global player in the future regardless of whether EU is involved or not.

Agreed.

The 42% of the electorate was given their voice. They voted. We had a robust campaigning on both sides. If the majority had voted remain, that would have been accepted. It just happened that the majority voted the other way. We had a perfect example of democracy, and as is always the case with democracy, there are winners and losers.

Just wondering, if you think democracy is broken, what are the alternative systems you would prefer? A benevolent despotism? Who watches the despot? Who gets to be the despot?

In what sense? If I'd have voted, it would have been leave and I'm not even close to being a racist bigot!

Either way, after having a glance in TIO and the Immigration and Brexit thread I've zero intention of getting caught up in one of those sh!t storms. Even if you do your research and have a first class degree in politics and economics the retards on there (from both sides) would still continue to sling mud.

I'm talking about now after the fact. Are remainers supposed to just keep schtum as they lost in the election? That doesn't make sense. I'm not talking about whining and saying the referendum was unfair or anything like that, more that their arguments have not ceased to be valid just because of the result.

I'm not sure a better system exists at this point in time, but the only way democracy will continue to be the system of choice is if it adapts to new realities and the way we have implemented democracy has yet to do so.

How many on the Remain side specifically predicted WW3 and worldwide depression? Virtually none compared to those who talked in more general terms about serious negative impacts, especially for those Leave voters least able to afford to weather the coming economic storm (which is huge numbers of them).

And of course, it's worth remembering that the widespread assumption was that should Leave win, Cameron would invoke Article 50 the next day. If that had happened, all hell would have broken loose. Can you even imagine how the markets would have reacted?

As it turned out, although he was the one who pointed the gun at the British economy's head, he wasn't going to be the one to actually pull the trigger. So here we are in the stand-off phase, the phoney war, where we're on the precipice and we're just starting to see the bad economic news around the corner (much worse than the collapse in the pound, but hey! The British economy's doing so well, loads of Britons can no longer afford to go abroad on holiday!)

Right up until the day of the vote, I had far too many people - people I'd previously considered quite rational and intelligent - quoting the standard, easily-disproved anti-EU myths and lies to me. And when I did explain why they were wrong, they didn't want to know. Objective fact was irrelevant to them, all that mattered was that they felt that the EU did this or that, and they didn't like it.

That level of bigoted irrationality deserves nothing more than utter contempt.

You can't possibly type that and keep a straight face

Nobody here is stupid enough to believe that the Leavers would have drawn a line under 40 years of non-stop whining if Remain had won by such a tiny majority as Leave did. Have you forgotten that Farage himself publicly stated that a 52-48 vote for Remain wouldn't have been definitive and in fact would have been "unfinished business by a long way"?

You're right in implying there's a certain finality about the referendum outcome. Unlike a general election there's (most likely) no chance for a future reversal, can't vote in and out the EU like we can the political parties.

But there is nothing to prevent the emergence of a new pro-EU party or latching onto the LibDems with a platform of taking Britain back into the EU. So the democratic channels for returning to the EU is still there - if you can muster the support for it, that is.

I won't deny that some of the Leave figureheads can have been harsh in dismissing the concerns and fears and frustrations of the losing Remain side. But perhaps it's understandable in the context. Eurosceptics spent decades being dismissed as minor cranks, lectured that the EU was the way of the future and there was no going back, promised referendums before signing of major treaties, but those treaties were signed without referendums as Blair/Brown knew they would have lost. And there was the whole element of "sorry, there's nothing we can do about X or Y or Z issue because it's EU law" - such as the FOM crisis. So perhaps that's why they're not so sympathetic to the Remain side whinging about being told to shut up and put up with the verdict.

But as mentioned, we are still very much a flourishing democracy. All the democratic channels remain for a pro-EU camp to resurrect themselves into a new party to call for returning to the EU. As you can probably infer - there's already such talks among the talking heads.

Addressing your earlier frustration, the EU debate was presented as two neatly defined opposing parameters: either in the EU totally, or out of the EU totally. Most British people would have liked some kind of compromise, but the EU wasn't willing to compromise on their sensitive principles - FOM, while the majority of UK voters weren't willing to compromise on unlimited FOM from the EU. Cameron's failed negotiations made that clear, so the inflexibility of the EU is certainly to be partially blamed for reducing the debate down to a Yes/No situation and when you have such a situation, you have to end up with a losing side.

As Winston Churchill once said, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all other forms of government

Mate, what makes you think you're not just as guilty of the below, switching the tables, of course?

Start a party. Go for it. Push for a referendum for 20 years and maybe you'll get what you want We are a democracy after all and as I pointed out to Norsk above, all the democratic channels remain.