They won by lying and using a controlled press to feed fears of immigration, the whole campaign was one of dishonesty, lies and feeding on people fears and anyone involved should be fucking ashamed.
Instead of inflammatory generic comments, please post neutral specific ones. Good HN comments either engage the specifics of an article or go on an interesting—i.e. not pre-worn—tangent. Partisan battle is the opposite of what we want.
This guy, Dominic Cummings, is the equivalent of one of Trump's most rabid advisors. In his previous role (advisor to Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Education) he demoralised the entire teaching profession. I know that sounds hyperbolic but it's absolutely true - check out the TES or any other specialist press.
He has now, absolutely mendaciously (again, check out the expert commentary on the £350m bus claim), swung us out of an economic union on which lots of HN readers' livelihoods depend - including my own. Already, every time we go abroad, the ATM reminds us that we are getting less for our earnings than we did a year ago. Already multinationals are closing warehouses and cancelling the contracts that keep us able to pay the mortgage at the end of the month. People reading this post are losing their jobs because of this guy's sixth-form philosophy.
It hasnt happened in the US yet. Come back to this post in a year's time and tell me everything's ok under President Trump. I honestly hope it will be. But please have some tolerance for those of us who are losing out from 2016's wave of populism.
This isn't a bad restriction to impose, because ranty provocative comments are nearly always less substantive, and we want substantive comments here anyhow.
As is covered in great depth, touching on some interesting HN relevant topics like complexity theory, this was a huge campaign with many moving parts, motivations, draws and repellents.
Telling yourself it is simple as "those who don't hold my opinion were only persuaded by lies as they are stupid" is a virus that holds you back from understanding and amplifies and reinforces your prejudices.
Massive amount of very interesting info in this article that covers a wide range of strategy and persuasion topics.
edit: re-reading your post made me realise you have almost definitely have not read the article if you believe the press were on their side
Well, the Sun seems to believe they were critical to the Brexit vote and they are the largest circulation newspaper in the UK:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1338543/our-paper-led-the-figh...
The Economist, Financial Times, The Guardian, New Statesman, The Observer, The Independent, The Scotsman, The Times, Daily Mirror, London Evening Standard, British Medical Journal, Daily Mirror, Daily Record, The National, Sunday Mail, Sunday Mirror.
Someone would have to have an extremely convincing argument to persuade the majority that the media were not almost totally for Remain (including the BBC).
Lets say for argument it was 50/50. I could definitely understand why people might have the (in this example, incorrect) perception that the majority of newspapers were for remain. As papers are seen as part of the establishment, and the non-newspaper establishment was so heavily remain, it could easily bias your perception of coverage.
"So facts don't matter only what the presented image of what the "majority" thinks?"
Facts do matter, I just believe that the majority have this view of Brexit news coverage for a variety of understandable reasons.
Papers like the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail pretty much epitomize the UK "establishment" and they've been hostile to the EU/EEC for decades.
Massive amount of very interesting info
I will go into the problems of the EU another time. I will just make one important point here.
I thought very strongly that 1) a return to 1930s protectionism would be disastrous, 2) the fastest route to this is continuing with no democratic control over immigration or human rights policies for terrorists and other serious criminals, therefore 3) the best practical policy is to reduce (for a while) unskilled immigration and increase high skills immigration particularly those with very hard skills in maths, physics and computer science, 4) this requires getting out of the EU, 5) hopefully it will prod the rest of Europe to limit immigration and therefore limit the extremist forces that otherwise will try to rip down free trade.
I guess I'll have to read (or more likely, skip through) that "another time" post, because to me that just sounds incoherent. Maybe it makes more sense for people familiar with the current (conservative) British narrative.
What people actually voted against is losing their livelihoods -- jobs, communities, families -- to a steady march of progress. That loss is real, but make no mistake, no politician can stop it by signing any sort of trade treaties, limiting immigration to any extent, or outlawing EU Directive 89/686/EEC.
So the sad reality of Brexit is that the people who voted leave will see no change. Immigration may be restricted as a result of the vote, but it won't save them from anything because the moving force potentially causing what you call "a greater anti-immigration backlash" has immigration as just one of its many symptoms, and not a root cause.
I used to believe the same, that globalisation in its current form is an absolute inevitability. That any efforts to react and adapt to it would always be counter-productive and fail to this invisible force. We have had this drilled into us ad nauseam.
I am starting to doubt that this is the case. I see no reason why the future has already been determined at this point and that we must accept it, resigning ourselves to believe change is an absolute impossibility. Are interventions for the better 100% likely to fail? Why? Is largely due to the nature of macro-economics and free trade? Are there no mechanisms possible present or future that can address these effectively and to the majorities' satisfaction?
I do not intend this to come across as a hostile response, I am genuinely interested in everyones thoughts on this.
"...symptoms, and not a root cause"
What do you believe is the root cause?
That may be true, that no politician can stop it, but at the moment (at least here in Australia, which seems to have the same trend as UK and America) no politician will acknowledge it. We've had three recessions in 10 years that have been "hidden" by immigration. The economy has grown but everyone's relative share has shrunk.
It still sounds incoherent to me. Leaving one of the biggest single market places is not a free trade move. Post-Brexit Britain is not a place where anti-immigration forces have less political power. If it made British Trump less likely (and I don't think it did) then not because of appeasement of British nationalists but because it served as a wake-up call for the rest.
The government says they want it, but that doesn't mean that there is any reasonable basis tomexpext that it will happen.
Edit: I think you're right about reaching out, btw.
"Those pesky proles wouldn't actually vote Leave, and even if a few do there's no way it will be a majority, so we can stay the course with the EU because that's all we are offering and they are gonna have to take it either way." - my mental image of center-left politicians.
Exact same attitude annointed Clinton with the nomination.
Liberals already tried that this election, it's still impossible to go a day without a MSM outlet saying Trump is literally Hitler and that America is now a fascist state. It's probably not wise to eschew diplomacy when the GOP is as powerful at all levels of government from local to national as they have been in 80 years.
I think your definition of mainstream media is overly broad.
Yes, as a matter of fact, they did. Trump flipped a lot of counties that went for Obama twice. I recommend you follow his example. Find some people on the other side who should be persuadable, and get to persuadin'.
Sure, if I love guns and I'm being told daily through talk radio that Obama wants to take all of them, I'm going to be upset and vulnerable to making an emotional decision.
And I fully accept my downvotes which will rain down from the well educated.
I'm not a fan of Brexit but the status quo has profound problems and this is what you get when you keep looking the other way.
If the Republicans overreach there will be a backlash.
And if the Presidential election was based on the popular vote, that would mean something. It doesn't work that way, and everyone knew beforehand it didn't work that way, and everyone involved, most definitely including the Clinton campaign, was happy to praise the Electoral College to the skies when they thought it would tilt the results in their favor. So, as the kids say, let it go. This line does not help you.
>That large opposition force that surpasses all Trump supporters will not go away.
That's nice, but as long as it's concentrated in a tiny strip along the coasts it will continue to be ineffective. I recommend that instead of attacking the other side you start working on converting them to your side. That's one of the reasons Trump won: he flipped a lot of counties that voted for Obama twice. You can do that right back to him, if you're willing to swallow your pride and talk to people instead of sneering at them.
>This is not over my Trump supporter.
I voted for Evan McMullin, dude.
>If the Republicans overreach there will be a backlash.
If only certain people had realized that Democratic overreach could cause backlashes, too, then your party might not be a smoking hole in the ground right now.
The person I am most ashamed of is Jacques Delors. What an ignorant fool. At least he was cognizant of his failures in later life, once the damage was done.