Annachie wrote:Bluesqueak.
Strangely, it was the leave side that was making outlandish promises about how much more money there'd be once Britain left.
Promises that even the pro Brexit politicians now admit were crap.
Strangely, the Remain side has a remarkably short memory about the outlandish promises they were making. Which we know were crap, because the only thing that actually came true was the pound tanking. Ironically, the tanking pound has led to the longest lasting manufacturing boom for years. As I said above, there was a lot of quoting the outliers in the various reports of the effects.
Yeah, the bus was one of those political tricks. Basically they put the gross figure on the side, and suggested that one place that money could have been spent was on the NHS. Then they watched the politicians on the other side fall into the trap by accusing them of lying and insisting that the net figure was 'only' £250 million per week.
For Mr and Ms Average Voter, £250 million a week is an awful lot of money. Tell them that the EU sends a lot of it back in grants, and they quite reasonably enquire why we shouldn't just cut out the middleman.
It was certainly playing dirty - but then, by that time the Remain side were playing pretty dirty as well. Did it 'fool' anyone? I'm sure you can find some people out there who still believe political slogans.
But when asked why they voted, people are pretty consistent. The Remainers, in general, voted on economic grounds - and that's the big mistake that was made throughout the campaign, and even afterwards. That's the big mistake I pointed out above, the 'voters vote with their pocketbooks myth'.
Because the Remain campaign were voting on economic grounds, they made the classic mistake of thinking that would influence the Leave side. But the Leavers, when asked, go for 'sovereignty' and 'control of immigration'. Generally, they were quite aware that leaving would be tough economically in the short term - but that was low down on their list of priorities.
Basically, Remain ran a bloody awful campaign, targeted at the things that would appeal to 'people like us'. They largely avoided positive reasons that the UK should stay in the EU. They never touched on the problems that a lot of people were genuinely concerned about - and they lost.
Dunno if you've read it, but Tim Shipman's All Out War is probably the definitive account of the Brexit campaign.
My own view?
I'm an expat brat. I've lived in the US, Spain, Romania, Germany ... I would call myself a proud European.
But I know a lot about how the European Union works, I have a fair idea of what they want (a united, federal Europe) and I don't think they're going to make it work. They went with currency union too early, they're too suspicious of mass democracy and too fond of bureaucratic government - and they either have to reform or die.
I would have preferred reform. I wanted to be able to vote Remain. But after Greece, I became convinced that that simply wasn't going to happen, that the EU has insulated itself too well from mass democracy and is suffering from 'true believer' syndrome about the wonderful federal future. They're going too fast, and they're losing people. The UK, with its different political system, different legal system, and different economic system, was simply the first place where the cracks got too big and the pressures too great.
So I ended up standing in a voting booth, my final decision being made on 'was I prepared to win?' Was I prepared to vote to Leave - and find I wasn't making a protest, I'd actually voted for the UK to leave the EU.
And I decided that, yes, I was.
The bus didn't influence me in the slightest.