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Comment by geff82 | Hacker News Reader

He'll go down in history as one of the worst leaders the UK ever had. Which he already was before yesterday. By the way, if he let the people decide on such a super topic as leave/remain in the EU, why does he not let his people vote on whether they want total surveillance or not? If they want a police state? Why can't they decide on stuff that affects their daily lives in a potential negative way? Or will they ignore the voice of the voters, Boaty McBoatface-style?

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This government is for austerity and cutting public services and expenditure. He is no less a reflection of his party.

Next PM's in line: Theresa May: Pro snoopers (spying) charter. I don't like the term police state but her actions are worryingly in line.

Boris Johnson? A very charismatic idiot. His selling point being the golden coloured hairy creature that has permanently occupied his scalp.

Yes. We have a great line up of next potential PM's for Britain.

Theresa May is one of the scariest contenders as far as I've seen. Very pro-surveillance and anti-open internet. She would be a (nother) disaster for UK tech. If there's anybody left who hasn't moved to Dublin/Berlin by October.

The problem we currently have in politics it demography. People get older and older, the baby boomers forgot to "produce" children. Elder people tend to be deeply conservative and anti-technology. And as they are the majority now, they vote for stuff that they think is right ("let's 100% control that freaking thing called internet") and totally strangle the younger generation with their bad taste and shortsightedness.

I find it at a little odd to read this characterisation on HN of all places. I mean, it's pretty much run by "old" technologists, right?

You are absolutely right, while I am, too. Of course there are progressive, far thinking elderly people and I enjoy being around them. I recently talked to a 71 year old who is into fractal programming and wants to get into Linux, soon (all while being politically liberal). But the elections and polls show always the same picture: the older people get, the more conservative/right wing they vote, which is often not what the younger need. I don't think it helps the younger UK generation, that has been used to think globally/European, that they now are politically separated from EVERY neighbor they have.

Well, it'd help if the younger generation actually bothered for things instead of complaining about them on social media. Less online petitions, more going down to the ballot box. If they were represented in the vote, more politicians would listen to them.

But they currently don't because the older generations actually show up on voting day.

This is disingenuous. Blaming millennials for not showing up at the poll is a strawman argument, as the vast majority of younger folk did show up (80% turnout ages 18-24)[1]. Sure, it's less than the 95+% of people 60 and older, but there's a hell of a lot more baby boomers than there are millennials. The problem isn't as simple as "young people don't vote".

[1] http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb

Then I guess its another downside of an aging population and the obsession with money/status/career success over having a family. Gives you more old folk than young ones.

> Blaming millennials for not showing up at the poll is a strawman argument, as the vast majority of younger folk did show up (80% turnout ages 18-24)[1] > [1] http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb

I guess nobody followed up on your citation, because the link you supplied clearly states:

> Sources: YouGov online poll of 1694 likely voters conducted June 15–17; (demographics); YouGov online poll of 2001 likely voters conducted June 9–10 (economy and immigration); margin of error for both: +/- 3 percentage points

Absolutely nothing about the actual vote, just polling predictions.

the older generations can show up on voting day because they don't have to work

If you can't get paid time off to vote, no questions asked - you have an entirely different and more serious problem. That, and isn't youth unemployment a very real problem in the UK too?

> If you can't get paid time off to vote, no questions asked - you have an entirely different and more serious problem

Welcome to the United States?

The demographic problem. Highly recommend reading "The Accidental Superpower" as it explains how this, as well as a few other geopolitical considerations, will shape the next few decades. (Hint: it's not pretty.)

Blaming people (older people, immigrants, whatever) for our problems isn't productive. Let's figure out what's broken about the systems we're living in instead of alienating the people we should be working with to fix them.

In both the US general election and this referendum, the primary forces at play are emotive campaigning backed by false or at the very least misleading information (in our case: portrayal of immigrants, the '£350m a week' figure that has already had some very serious backpeddling, etc. etc.). We have an electorate that is woefully misinformed for a whole host of reasons. How you address this is beyond me.

Honestly I think our best bet is to focus on education and childcare, then try to hold on for a generation. Many parents don't have time to raise their children as well as they'd like. Teachers are underpaid, under-respected and have in many cases had their agency taken away by standardized tests. It's no wonder so many people find it difficult to stay informed when they're starting from so far behind.

Agreed, for the Brexit vote, anyone with a degree was much more likely to vote remain (and there was a strong correlation between more education and likelihood to vote remain). This current government has made higher education much less attainable, and much less attractive for many people by raising the fees that students must pay (or loan) up front.

This was also the reason for the voctory of current anti-european and proto-nationalist government in Poland last year.

Misinformation, fear campaign, memes, troll farms. It seems in social media age that's how you do politics. Viral marketing means you never have to say you were wrong.

I agree the new government in Poland is an embarrassment.

But you are mistaken in blaming the electorate. The "misinformation, fear campaign, memes..." have always been around. The primary reason people voted out the previous bunch is corruption and tunneling of the wealth created to a narrow group of people (a problem not limited to Poland only)

Simply describing the arguments you disagree with as false and people who listen as idiots is why Remain has lost the referendum.

Are you going to learn from that and change your ways?

There was lots of flatly false and misleading crap coming from the Remain camp as well. Just look at how Cameron see-sawed on the consequences of an exit. Before his negotiation it was "things will be OK even if we leave, the economy is fundamentally strong". Then it was chaos, doom, "economic self harm", permanently worse off etc. Now the vote went against him it's back to "everything will be fine".

When the leader of the campaign can't even stay consistent on such a basic thing, that campaign cannot claim a monopoly on truth.

I'm not saying Remain didn't peddle crap (or even implied that only Leave was doing so). The two issues I've highlighted are demonstrably false. The whole campaign descended into the worst kind of politics on both sides.

> The problem we currently have in politics it demography.

I misread that as "demagoguery", and was going to vigorously agree.

I think a better way to come at this is to assume that on average, most people have given this decision a reasonable amount of thought, young people as well as old people. The debates have been going on for months, and pros and cons have been discussed at great length.

Further, I don't think it's fair to underestimate the experience and historic perspective old people have, that young people don't. After all, many of the older people who voted yesterday where around before the EU came about, and are able to factor in that extra information, plus their historic perspective in their decision, which, by definition, makes for a more informed decision.

You are right that older people tend to be more conservative, but you yourself may end up being more conservative when you are 90, vs. how conservative you are today, and you may only realize the reasons for it once it happens, and perhaps you will think those are actually quite good reasons, who knows.

The bottom line is that if you just attribute the older population's decision to "bad taste" and "shortsightedness", you may not realize the true reason behind their decision, which diminishes your ability to understand and influence others.

> After all, many of the older people who voted yesterday where around before the EU came about, and are able to factor in that extra information, plus their historic perspective in their decision, which, by definition, makes for a more informed decision.

Not necessarily. You'll still end up with people making decisions based on looking at the past with rose-coloured glasses, which isn't necessarily a fact-based decision. I think it's also equally likely that people will draw conclusions from economic conditions that had zilch to do with whether the EU existed or not. Thinking that experience necessarily leads to a informed decision ignores the way that humans works.

No, the problem is that the younger generation is that they don't vote. They whine on Twitter . The only way to take control of the system from within.

Today was a very harsh lesson for young Brits. They'll have to live with the outcome of this decision for three rest of their lives.

The one positive is that those young people might now be encouraged to actually participate.

    Truth never triumphs — its opponents just die out.
     - Max Planck

Unfortunately, political progress tends to be the same. For some issues, the only way to move forward is to simply wait for enough old people to die off.

And that's how Remain lost.

I'm just back from Sweden - Gothenburg or Stockholm are starting to look pretty attractive if things go horribly wrong in the UK.

People of Ireland speaking here:

-Want to stay in the EU?

-Want to trade in the Eurozone?

-Enjoy low corporate tax rate of 12.5%? Pro-business government?

-Enjoy friendly, well educated, English speaking, Pro-American people, good beer, decent music, nice quality of life, low crime and safe green natural environment? (Look how much fun even our soccer fans are http://www.irishexaminer.com/euro2016/euro2016-banter/10-rea...)

Invest in Ireland -> http://www.idaireland.com This has been a public service announcement from the country next door. #irelandlovesyou :)

What are your thoughts on this thread? Some really negative anecdotes about Dublin living: https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/comments/4p9r9l/dublins_sk...

My god there is some serious whingey nonsense on that thread. Most of the arguments boil down to accommodation being expensive for students in the centre of a relatively wealthy European capital. Well no shit, as if it's not any worse in most other cities. As a software professional you'd be well able to afford it. I do agree there is a shortage of accommodation at the moment, but that's almost certainly a temporary issue. After the property crash in Ireland a few years ago builders and property developers were cast as the root of all evil. As a result (and because banks were broke and so weren't lending for mortgages), housebuilding ground to a halt even though Ireland has the highest birth rate in the EU and most commentators were warning this would lead to problems down the line. And so it has come to pass that now there is a shortage of cheap accommodation, and in particular social housing. However I expect this to resolve itself over the next few years, and the government has already promised to pump money into public housing.

Exactly!

Compare it to say Berlin though, where living is extremely cheap. It seems to help with tech startups quite a bit, and not because of generous tax breaks.

It's not just tax, Ireland also has a good infrastructure for government startup grants etc.

https://www.enterprise-ireland.com

Reddit/r/Ireland is extremely negative about everything. Some of the negativity doesn't make sense. The piece about not living in the city centre and instead the suburb commuter towns is madness. Totally the opposite. The commuter towns to Dublin are boring as hell, housing estates with very little services. Inner City Dublin is rejuvenating very fast, and parts of it feel like a smaller, more intimate version of Shoreditch or Williamsberg (except with better pubs and bars!). You can basically walk across most of the city within 45 mins.

Transport is poor compared to European standards and the cost of living is quite high. But if you live close to the city in Dublin it's not bad and it's a great place to socialise and be within 45 minutes of nature. It's probably one of the few capital cities in world where it's not unusual to strike up a conversation with a random person beside you on a bus.

Also it's a pretty easy place to do business. Our nature is humourously sarcastic and not liking authority which means we are pretty good problems solvers and management tends to be quite flat. The software is also small, so your only ever really a phonecall away from having a pint with whoever you need to speak to in the whole sector - from a graduate you met at a conference to a government Minister.

People also work to live not live to work (like the US) which makes a big difference. Also a big part of worklife is around interactions with colleagues - it's basically an assumption that most offices are full of at least a few characters who like to have the "craic" and banter. When working abroad I found I really missed those tiny interactions you have on a daily basis in Ireland - e.g someone telling you a story and making you laugh. Even in London you don't get that. It's not something you can pickup by getting an MBA but it makes such a big difference to the quality of life - compared to a stale work environment.

If your thinking about moving, drop me a mail!

The inability to talk to people on the bus was one of the first differences I noticed when I moved from India to the US.

On the downside it's hard to find decent place to live in Dublin for sensible price. On the upside Irish are one of the best people in the world.

As an Irish person, I would like our country to take the opportunity to welcome British business but say "thanks, but no thanks" to finance and banking.

I want our brightest and best to do more useful stuff, engineering and literature and medicine or whatever. We should consider our education system to have failed every time a bright student goes into finance.

It's the only long term sustainable plan. Convert debt to equity and keep the deposit base low.

Also, as it might be relevant to some people on here, a link about how to claim an Irish passport:

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/travel_and_recreation/t...

Theresa May would be a scary successor indeed, and may even top Cameron as the worst UK leader.

UK needs to vote conservatives out, and it needs to reconsider switching the voting system (this time to a proportional representation one).

They probably will at the next election, the trouble is the alternative is looking pretty pathetic.

A referendum was held on proportional representation (one method, at least) and was rejected.

Alternate Voting is not a method of proportional representation. It is another voting scheme. The Liberal Democrats wanted a vote for Proportional Representation and the Conservatives agreed to a referendum, but on the rubbish AV scheme instead. Many many people voted against AV because it wasn't as good as PR and didn't want to change multiple times.

PR is superior to AV and FPTP and should be implemented. It shouldn't even have a referendum. It should just be done.

Many people voted against AV because the Liberal Democrats proposed it.

> Alternate Voting is not a method of proportional representation

Alternative Voting (AV) is a single member district voting system that produces results where the representations of policy views in the elected parliament are more proportional to the views in the electorate than first past the post, and thus is a method of enhancing the proportionality of the election system for a parliament when the status quo is FPTP.

It do so less than Single Transferrable Vote (STV) in multimember districts (AV -- known more often to US audiences as Instant Runoff Voting [IRV] -- is just the single-member-district case of STV, which supports any district size).

Its relationship to other PR schemes where not all candidates are directly elected by-name by general election voters (the most frequent being Party-List Proportional and Mixed-Member Proportional) is complicated -- those schemes optimize for proportionality of partisan composition of the legislature, but provide weaker accountability of individual politicians to the general electorate.

But PR itself isn't a system, its a (continuous valued, not even binary) feature of an electoral system. You can't "implement PR", you can adopt a system that increases (or decreases) the degree to which you have PR.

And how do all these people get voted in?

Still trying to understand how austerity can still mean increasing spending. Looking at their expenditures they peaked in 2009 at 51.5% and dropped to lower forties but much of that has been because the economy finally started recovering faster than the government could spend money mostly because of pressure on politicians not to.

However the key here is, they never spent less than the year before, simply reduced the amount they increased spending. Increasing spending is not austerity

Simply put, there never was austerity in most of Europe. That's a propaganda line to simultaneously cover the lack of economic growth for nearly a decade, and to use as an excuse to acquire a larger State through even greater spending.

You can go line by line down the list of European countries and their government expenditures. Only a few of them reduced spending, most have increased spending. In actual fact, only two or three nations experienced any real austerity, but they all pretend to have.

What they're really experiencing, is the total suffocation of economic growth by extreme debt. The exact same thing Japan has been enjoying for a quarter century.

Boris Johnson is anything but an idiot - that image of a harmless buffoon is a front.

BoJo was a King's scholar at Eton - meaning he is probably the smartest guy in the room, especially if that room is a Tory party conference room.

Which implies him grabbing the leadership and dismantling the UK is not buffoonery, but deliberate. Scary.

Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. Imagine the bicycle lanes... Which is not to say that I disagree with you. As mayor of London he knew what was important and it was not what most people would think is important.

I know next to nothing to Britain and London's politics but I can't trust/don't want to have leaders that have to put up buffoon front to get elected or get traction. Because next time you risk getting a real buffoon. Or worse, it won't matter wether politicians are buffoons or not.

> Boris Johnson? A very charismatic idiot.

His persona is that of a charismatic bumbling idiot, but idiot he is not. Underneath this persona lies a highly intelligent, disingenuous, manipulative and calculating operator.

I genuinely think that he didn't believe in Brexit; rather he saw a potential route into number 10 and took a gamble on it.

Even his choice of idiot persona is an act of genius in terms of how well it has served him.

George Bush springs to mind. Though maybe he actually was a patsy.

Let's be fair here. Liberal bias requires people to either believe anyone with conservative leanings MUST be stupid or the received wisdom that liberal philosophies are naturally correct must be incomplete. There's no real choice here, every single person on earth will assume everyone else is stupid before assuming they may be wrong.

That's the exact opposite of liberal, "open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values."

There are plenty of intelligent people in all parties, disagreeing with them doesn't make them idiots. Greenspan comes to mind, I think his basic market beliefs are wrong, but don't think he's an idiot, I have read his book. GW is a lot closer to idiot level because of his demeanor AND his actions, but let's be serious few actual idiots make it that far, just not all of them are way above average intelligence.

But I don't actually think GW was an idiot by the sheer fact that he surrounded himself with some of the most brilliant conservatives of the time. Cheney is evil incarnate, but few would call him an idiot. The same can be said about his secretary of defense, donald rumsfield. Rumsfield is the shining example of "doing it right" and being a hard charger.That being said, the two of them colluded and it caused badness.

Knowing you're outclassed isn't the mark of an idiot, but of a brilliant mind. Trump thinking he has an excellent memory and is the best in everything is the mark of a true idiot.

Maybe wasn't clear, GW isn't an idiot, but closer than most leaders, I'd say. Did GW choose all those people, or were they all pretty much from the conservative cabal that got GW elected? I think things like Iraq lack of evidence due diligence and Katrina appointing super inept guy are the things that make me think GW's personal selection skills weren't great, he did have brilliant advisers as you listed.

I don't think Trump is an idiot, more of a huckster with extreme emotions, but certainly loves to pander to the idiot mentality.

Dan Quayle is really the only true idiot I can call to mind who had a major position in a US party I can recall.

There are two essential traits I look for in a leader. They should have goals that align with my own, and they should advocate for policies that could reasonably be expected further their goals. At least in American politics, I usually see the term "idiot" applied to politicians who pass the first test but fail the second.

I suspect George Bush's bumbling persona was put-on as well (or possibly honed over years) on the basis of this youtube[1] video comparing his oratory style between 1994 and 2004

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvknGT8W5jA

"he saw a potential route into number 10 and took a gamble on it."

The funny thing is that basically Cameron used a similar gamble to be elected.

Push Brexit referendum, and hope for a Remain outcome.

I mean, it would be funny if the well-being of millions of people would not be impacted by all this gambling.

The main thing is that regardless of who pushed for or against the UK exiting the EU the voters voted to leave.

Neither Boris nor David made a unilateral decision. The people took action and voted against the EU. Lots of people are in shock but should not be.

Well, lots of people also voted for the EU – it was far from unanimous after all.

So when the votes align with the elites, do you see similar hand wringing? Oh, but so many people voted against our position... Not very likely.

And it seems many of the leave voters are regretting their choice now.

They both rode (in turn) petty nationalism sentiments to further their own ambitions.

I really don't think people's best interests have been served.

So is it better for a people to have their voice heard, and in that harm many of themselves, or to have their voice ignored "for the greater good?"

There's essentially no such thing as pure democracy at a national level. Even in cases of public referenda and ballot initiatives there's still a small group of (usually) professional bureaucrats of one variety or another that controls what questions are asked, how they are asked, and to whom.

Asking "the people to have their voice heard" on international organizations and trade agreements is particularly ill advised because those are "how" questions instead of "what" questions, and to a first approximation nobody actually cares about how. People care about whether their job is secure, or their groceries are affordable, or their culture is preserved.

Leaving the EU may or may not be a good idea for Britan, but crucially very few people really know whether it would or not. The level of specialized training necessary to reasonably predict the effects of leaving on any of the core interests that people do actually care about is prohibitively high. Directly asking whether to leave the EU is a bad idea because it doesn't capture what "the people" really want and it forces a specific course of action even when there may be safer and more effective methods for achieving the same ends.

I agree. I don't quite understand the dynamics of elections and voting but if a candidate looks like a bumbling idiot mixed with charisma and charm, it somehow resonates, at least in the UK and US.

Boris was this before being elected as mayor of London, somehow the image is perpetuated even now. In the run up to his mayoral elections his strong points were hardly discussed and his persona highlighted more than his abilities and skills. People perceiving him as a joke.

This is what eludes most and reinforces the notion that some of the electorate will purely vote on superficial terms.

He is absolutely manipulative and disingenuous who's riding on his buffoonish idiocy image.

Or, it's possible it just so happens his views on a key issue coincided with the views of a majority of the people who voted (and the turnout was large, and it's not as if when things go your way in elections you vacillate by thinking of the opposition who didn't vote).

It feels like this borders on elitism. That the people don't know what they want. I don't often see a similar sentiment when people vote along with the views of the elite (questioning sanity and motives).

>His persona is that of a charismatic bumbling idiot, but idiot he is not. Underneath this persona lies a highly intelligent, disingenuous, manipulative and calculating operator.

People used to say that about George Bush too. The fact he played off his ridiculous gaffes and wasn't always illucid doesn't mean he wasn't an idiot.

Bojo is conniving and he's managed to acquire a good number of strategic allies but he's still not particularly smart.

I've always said you don't become the president by being an idiot. Being rich (or your father being rich) only gets you so far.

> Being rich (or your father being rich) only gets you so far.

Your family being rich and extremely well connected politically, both domestically and internationally, gets you much further than your family merely being rich, and you being useful figurehead for people who are quite smart -- and smart enough to realize that you are more useful than them as the public face of leadership -- piled on top of that, gets you even farther.

I'm no fan of hers, but home secretaries seem to get house trained by the security service (MI5) soon after taking office. The home secretaries of the previous Blair/Brown Labour administration were also dreadful. Someone once said that every home secretary since Roy Jenkins has been worse than the previous one.

And Boris Johnson is no idiot. It's part of his act.

Cameron called for the referendum in the hope of shutting up the eurosceptics in his own party forever. At the time it was not a bad idea, given that literally nobody believed that the leave vote could win.

I wouldn't call someone who needs a nationwide referendum to silence opposition within his own party a very good leader.

It wasn't just to silence opposition within his own party. It was also to stop the haemorrhaging of support from all mainstream parties towards UKIP.

It was a reasonable gamble that failed.

Yes, people forget that he'd already had two MPs jump ship to UKIP. If he hadn't promised a referendum the party would've split down the middle.

What I don't get, and didn't get with the Scots referendum either, is why on earth they didn't require a super-majority? Surely with something as critical as this, you'd want a bit more convincing than a 2% margin?

It doesn't have to be a 3/4ths or even 2/3rds, but a 60.1/39.9 split would've been nicely convincing that one side is definitely in a minority. Instead we've just proven once again that the UK is fractured politically North/South/Scotland/NI/etc.

> If he hadn't promised a referendum the party would've split down the middle.

And now you have a country split down the middle.

Yep, not Britain's finest hour at the moment. Scotland have already begun the process for a 2nd independence referendum and will probably win it this time. Northern Ireland are likely to follow.

In 5 years time we'll just be talking about England alone. With maybe Cornwall and the North splitting from London and the South East.

Might be time to dig up my Scottish ancestry and get a dual passport...

Don't forget Spain claiming Gibraltar.

The odd thing is that after all the years of being staunchly British, Gibraltar might well accept. They were 95% in favour of the EU. Having that border heavily restricted will be a nightmare for them.

Yes, I think this will happen and likely it will happen on a much shorter time-scale than a Scottish vote for independence and entry into the EU.

I would wait a bit to see how things go for UK because Spain current situation isn't that good either.

Spain will try to block Scotland entering the EU, to fend off Catalonian separatism.

If the Scottish independence referendum had resulted in Scotland gaining independence from the UK (like Spain, then a EU country) and then applied to join, there might be a reason for Spain to worry, as that roughly mirrors the situation with Catalonia.

If there's another Scottish independence referendum, Scotland would gain independence from a NON-EU country (UK) and then apply to join. This is similar to the situation with Slovenia, which gained independence from Yugoslavia and then joined the EU. Spain didn't veto that.

It's also possible that Scotland's independence happens before or simultaneously with the UK's exit, in which case Scotland could remain a EU member by continuity. This would also be a good lifeline for the rest of the UK once they recover from their spell of madness - form a union with Scotland to sneak back in.

Another possibility is that we might have to hold an early general election now that Cameron has resigned. If the Conservatives lose, it's possible that the referendum loses it's legitimacy.

Very slim chance though, seeing as it was mostly the Labour heartland that voted for Leave.

There is already talk about a second referendum and a ton of support is behind it.

> Yes, people forget that he'd already had two MPs jump ship to UKIP. If he hadn't promised a referendum the party would've split down the middle.

Arguably, allowing a partisan realignment wherein people would vote for representatives balancing views on the EU with other policy concerns would have been healthier for the nation (if more disruptive to the elites of the existing major parties) than trying to preserve the existing party structure by splitting out the EU issue to a referendum.

And, it probably would have been more likely to succeed at keeping the UK in the EU.

That's like saying betting the house on one of Germany, Italy, or Spain winning the Euro cup is a reasonable gamble.

Do you forget what a shambles Tony Blair was? Led us into a pointless war that cost 100,000s of lives. As bad as David Cameron was, he kept us out of war.

Blair is probably the reason many Labour heartlands voted for out, he opened the doors to mass migration without thinking about the implications for those who might be displaced by it (or rather feel they were displaced by it)

> opened the doors to mass migration without thinking about the implications for those who might be displaced by it (or rather feel they were displaced by it)

just... wow

Please elaborate, as in the Northeast this is exactly what happened. Do you agree or disagree, or are you just saying "wow" as youngtaff has opened your eyes to how many members of the tradition labour vote outside London view Europe?

Who, exactly, has been displaced by mass migration in the Northeast?

Historically labour voting workers have been displaced from their jobs by low skilled immigrants. Don't just take my words for it:

https://medium.com/mosquito-ridge/brexit-wins-an-illusion-di...

"Britain has voted to leave the EU. The reason? A large section of the working class, concentrated in towns and cities that have been quietly devastated by free-market economics, decided they’d had enough.

[...]

Neither the political centre or the pro-remain left was able to explain how to offset the negative economic impact of low-skilled migration in conditions of (a) guaranteed free movement (b) permanent stagnation in Europe and (c) austerity in Britain. "

Were you think physically displaced, rather than "taking over the role of" displaced?

Not really. The UK is bombing Syria at his behest. The joke is that a year or two before that, he tried, and failed, to get the UK to drop bombs on the other side of the war.

s/the other/another/

There aren't two sides in that war.

> As bad as David Cameron was, he kept us out of war.

'Military interventions' during Cameron: Libya (2011) , Syria and Iraq are the first to come to mind. The first being politically motivated rather than on humanitarian grounds.

David Cameron wanted to bomb Syria, but didn't because of massive public opposition and the commons vote.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23892783

I agree that Blair was a war-monger.

Semantically speaking, in the case of that war Blair was just following America, not leading anybody (his country happened to be attached to him so it followed America too), so because he wasn't actually a leader at all he couldn't have been the best/worst one.

> As bad as David Cameron was, he kept us out of war

If this is all we're holding politicians to then it's a really sorry state.

The man has doomed a generation and removed the easiest way for that generation to leave the country and prosper elsewhere.

>He'll go down in history as one of the worst leaders the UK ever had

Talk about lack of perspective. In the long term it's absolutely insignificant. It's like people calling GWB or Obama the worst US president. Can't believe such a poorly thought out comment is at the top.

I don't think he will necessary go down as the worst leader, but his name is going to be tarred with being the prime minister who started the dissolution of the United Kingdom.

Normally I would agree with you and say that "worst leader ever" statements are hyperbolic when the leader is still in office, but this time I think it's appropriate. The United Kingdom is probably going to ultimately dissolve as a result of this vote, and Cameron is going to be remembered as the moron who let it happen, all because of a catastrophically failed gambit to pander to the Ukip-leaning Tories. "Worst leader ever" seems apt when you directly caused a nation's end.

That's rather ... Chicken Littlish.

The people voted. Let's see what the people can do now.

What I don't understand is that isn't this what the people wanted? Across the pond it sounds like he tried to call someone's (pro-Brexit) bluff and lost. At the end of the day it sounds like this is what the people wanted though. I'm not seeing a lot of news about how the pro-Brexit people feel about the dissolution of the UK. Surely they knew this was an outcome.

> I'm not seeing a lot of news about how the pro-Brexit people feel about the dissolution of the UK. Surely they knew this was an outcome.

Want to know something darkly amusing? It's possible that they didn't. This is still anecdotal at this point, and of course the Remain side could be playing it up, but there are reports that at least some Leave voters intended it as a protest vote thinking it wouldn't actually happen: https://twitter.com/AdamWSweeney/status/746261907233988609

How wonderful would that be, if the biggest blunder in Britain's history happened unintentionally because some people wanted to stick it to their council. I need to go drink some more.

People used the pro-Brexit vote as a proxy vote for other issues: Anti-establishment, anti-politician, anti-immigrant, anti-corporation, etc.

The same exact undertones that drive Trump's support in the US (and to a lesser extent Sanders) were what drove the Brexit movement. Many of these people don't even understand the EU, they just want to give the finger to everyone who happened to be on the Remain side.

The vast majority of people who voted for it were older, so won't have to live with the consequences, or working class who outright rejected the arguments of experts/academics/etc. This was a "my heartfelt ignorance is just as valid as your knowledge" situation.

So, yes, 500K more people voted for Brexit than voted to Remain. But what is it that they actually were voting for? If you listen to them talk or look at surveys, it had little to do with the EU beyond immigration.

A bare majority of the people, with some outright whoppers of lies told by the side that won. This is a "change the constitution" level of change, and it's been done with a pretty slim majority. Usually a country will require a 2/3rds majority or similar to make such a significant legal change.

The time to judge Brexit is not after 10 hours. In 10 years we'll know how to evaluate the decision.

> The United Kingdom is probably going to ultimately dissolve as a result of this vote

Well, the union between Scotland and the rest of the UK might dissolve, but going from four to three countries in the UK isn't really dissolving the UK (NI had a pro-EU majority, but it doesn't sound like it really changes the basic dynamics keeping NI in the UK.)

> "Worst leader ever" seems apt when you directly caused a nation's end.

Peacefully breaking with Europe in a way that might also result in a peaceful break with Scotland vs., for just the first competition that jumps to mind, the Munich Conference? Yeah, I think outside of the passions of the moment, Cameron's likely to be seen as something far less notable than "worst PM ever".

He absolutely deserves the title in this case. What will happen in the UK/Britain over the next decade will likely rival the significance of the Magna Carta, except in a mostly-negative way. And it is his fault.

His fault and 52% of the voting public.

He justified policy actions by what happens on prime-time cop soaps.

"if he let the people decide on such a super topic as leave/remain in the EU"

That was a popular demand by the public as the UK hadn't had a referendum on EU membership in 40 years. He made a promise to hold the referendum because of this and fulfilled his promise. If a politician keeping a promise is a problem, then we're all doomed

Making that promise was an error in the first place

> If a politician keeping a promise is a problem, then we're all doomed

Yes. We are.

And his laughably bad (if it weren't so serious) handling of the 'renegotiation' with Europe months before the referendum. He certainly comes across as a blustering public-schoolboy, which was never going to go down well with his European counterparts.

> if he let the people decide on such a super topic as leave/remain in the EU

It was a deal he striken during last election. To buy UKIP votes (their main goal was to leave EU) he said he will make a referendum. His calculation was that there are not enough UKIP voters (~20% maybe) to pass referendum, but it will allow him to get elected (his voters + UKIP voters).

Yeah he's a nasty weasly only likely marginally better than Bliar. I still think this is going to be a bad move. Yes Europe is very very broken but I think better to try to fix it than go it alone

A vote that causes an instant 5-8% downgrade in the market's evaluation of pretty much an entire country is something that affects people's daily lives, unfortunately. (I guess it's similar in scope to electing George W. Bush, but it was not clear how bad a decision this was for a couple of years.)

Before the vote, the consensus estimate by economists was that this would be a 2% hit to GDP. Again, that affects people's daily lives -- it's essentially a self-inflicted recession.

"Peace in our time."

-- Neville Chamberlain

you kind of lose some steam at the end of your comment there

> if he let the people decide on such a super topic as leave/remain in the EU

To reiterate what al_chemist has already said, the price for UKIP supporting the Tories to form government was holding this referendum. It wasn't a lark on the part of the Tories. Not even Farage thought UKIP would win - the BBC had quoted him stating they weren't going to win on the morning of the vote.

Hard to beat Blair, really. Cameron may be dumber, but certainly not worse.

Every prime minister has their "Suez":

David Cameron: losing the EU referendum

Gordon Brown: The financial crisis

Tony Blair: Iraq

John Major: Black Wednesday; Tory party "sleaze"

Margaret Thatcher: The poll tax

James Callaghan: The Winter of Discontent

… etc.

All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.

Enoch Powell

In defense of the Boaty McBoatface incident, that was not democracy by a long shot. That was an internet poll, not any kind of official vote. It was a poll of people who actually knew about it, and bothered to get online and vote about it. That's nothing at all like a proper election where there are proper ballots (though a lot of government elections these days lack those too, but that's another discussion...), voters are notified, there's independent monitors, etc.

I don't think you can call the BMbB name "the will of the voters" in any intellectually honest way. If it had been made a ballot proposition during a regular election, then sure. But not with some silly internet poll.

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