Branching histories of the 2016 UK referendum and ‘the frogs before the storm’

While unfortunately I don't have time to finish reading it at the moment, this is a very interesting post, even for someone with no interest in brexit. It feels more like a discussion of effectiveness/efficiency, organizational structure, motivations and their effects, with the leave org being an example of how these can benefit/harm your efforts. I found the occasional paragraph on advertising/media strategy especially interesting.

That said, 20k words is lengthy to the point that I suspect this will fall off the front page before any reasonable discussion can happen.

Whatever you feel the Brexit result should have been, read this article to understand deeply how politics plays out.

Dominic spends much of the article showing how it was the errors of IN that gave the opportunity for Leave to have a chance.

In the US, the progressive movement is learning from the Tea Party how to fight Trump. Pro-EU Brits should learn from the euroskeptics.

As Dominic says, the easiest person to lie to is yourself.

Oh wow, I never say this, but this post definitely needs a TL;DR

Ooh, I'm going to like this article. I had to stop to post this comment when I came across this statement:

Much political analysis revolves around competing simple stories based on one big factor such that, in retrospect, ‘it was always clear that immigration would trump economic interest / Cameron’s negotiation was never going to be enough / there is an unstoppable populist tide’, and so on. Alternatives are quickly thought to have been impossible (even if X argued the exact opposite repeatedly). The big event must have had an equally big single cause. Confirmation bias kicks in and evidence seeming to suggest that what actually happened would happen looms larger. People who are quite wrong quickly persuade themselves they were ‘mostly right’ and ‘had a strong feeling’ unlike, of course, the blind fools around them. Soon our actual history seems like the only way things could have played out. Brexit had to happen. Trump had to win.

It really reminds me of this[0] wonderful blog post "Tuesday shouldn't change the narrative" which predicted very well how the narrative changed after the election of Trump.

This Brexit blog post also has this wonderful epistemic statement:

> Also, it is clear that almost nobody agrees with me about some of my general ideas. It is more likely that I am wrong than 99% of people who work in this field professionally. Still, cognitive diversity is inherently good for political analysis so I’ll say what I think and others will judge if there’s anything to learn.

Both of these quotes really resonate with me. I fear that many people will downvote this because the author is a Leaver, but I think that would be a mistake. The author clearly isn't dumb and is telling a firsthand story of their involvement in this important event. People should read and watch primary sources more often, I think.

[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/07/tuesday-shouldnt-change...