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Actually all evidence of the campaign suggest that Corbyn and advisors were pretty strongly in favour of Brexit but couldn't be open about it - they pretty much had the 1970s view of the EEC/EU as a "capitalist plot".

See: "All Out War" by Tim Shipman:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01I9AEIPU/ref=dp-kindle-redirec...

[Edit: Absolutely fantastic book - it doesn't take sides at all and is pretty damming about everyone involved with the possible exception of Dominic Cummings (who had a blog article here on HN a few days ago)]

I've heard lots of good things about this book. Thanks!

I've just about finished the Audible version - which is excellent as the narrator manages a subtle impersonation of the various voices.

Worth noting that it is laugh out loud funny at some points as well, which I wasn't expecting.

Edit: To think that for a single text about a tweet we'd probably have a different PM....

Corbyn was a leading part of Tony Benn's Labour Leadership campaign team.

One of Benn's campaign promises was "out of the EU on day one".

I think that's why he was quiet on the subject during the Brexit campaign and took a lot of flak from the Remain camp for "not doing enough", i.e. he's Brexit ideologically but knows it is political suicide from his liberal backers.

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-... : "Nearly two thirds of Labour and SNP voters (63% and 64%), seven in ten Liberal Democrats and three quarters of Greens, voted to remain."

There are a lot of people who paid their £3 to vote for Corbyn without realising that he was a Leaver (and spectacularly incoherent on policy in general).

A lot of people in this thread seem to think the PM has benefited from this decision, which seems strange given that she was on the other side of the litigation!

It's potentially explosive for the Conservative party as well. Many MPs were for Remain, and most importantly a large part of the traditional business/corporate backers depend on single market access, financial passporting, etc.

(I note in passing that if a Labour government had dropped the pound by 20% and threatened to expel much of the finance industry from the City, the Tory press would be screaming at them and demanding heads.)

No, the problem is that nobody really knows what happens after the button is pressed, only that it might be extremely bad. So nobody wants to press it. Look at Gove and Johnson turning down the opportunity to be PM! Look at how many senior Leave people have simply .. lost interest in the process. Farage has gone off to be a radio host: https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/politics/1147470/n...

Let's be honest, Labour stopped being a proper opposition a good while ago.

It genuinely saddens me that a strategic decision like brexit was triggered and decided on based on local politics and grievances.

I posted to HN about Brexit's effects on tech before the vote and most people here said they'd rather not read about politics, then promptly flagged the article. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952724

All politics is local. All Theresa May's actions since getting the leadership have been on the basis that she will always choose being Prime Minister of a smoking crater over not being Prime Minister of not a smoking crater.

This is chilling and explains a lot of problems in politics. Does game theory have any ideas about this?

There isn't much theory to it: you have to design systems that align people's personal interests with the interests of the people/entities they're representing. That's usually easier in the business world where structures are malleable. But more often than not, well-intentioned policies are often subverted until they only create a superficial appearance of fairness (i.e. bankers' bonuses, too-big=to-fail).

In politics, there is nothing you can do but hope for the decency and analytic ability of the population, and the press to provide the context for accurately judging daily politics.

Correct. This is a win/win for May IMHO. Any MP who votes down the deal will be committing political suicide if they are in a leave constituency (which they most likely are outside of London). Brexit will happen no matter.

It wasn't just London that voted remain [0]. I hope MP's will vote based on the indication that their constitutes voiced.

[0] https://vis4.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/brexit-map-...

> white working class

also known as working class given that just under 90% of the country is white. Do non-white working class vote differently?

I'm not sure sure it'll be an overwhelming majority - this is a great opportunity for constituents to write to their MPs to appeal for them to vote in favour of staying in the union.

There was a lot of remorse, particularly when the NHS promises turned out to be lies.

TBF there's been zero polling evidence for this. This is just wishful thinking.

> There was a lot of remorse, particularly when the NHS promises turned out to be lies.

Poll after poll has shown people who voted leave are happy. People who voted remain are unhappy.

Tell that to The Economist http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/10/daily-c...

Why have you linked me to an article which states ~90% of leave voters do not regret their vote?

Could that possibly be because people are happy when their side 'wins'? And conversely are unhappy when they 'lose'.

>... write to their MPs

By all means try, but writing to your MP to ask them to put their career on the line by angering Brexit voters & party leadership is a tough sell. My MP (Stephen Hammond) has made it very clear that he'd rather toe the party line despite opposing Brexit.

I don't mean to disparage, I just think letters are a lost cause. Perhaps there are alternative approaches?

This is true for almost every MP in the UK. The whip system heavily discourages voting against the party, regardless of what the constituents would prefer. The best you'll see are MPs 'abstaining' (i.e. not showing up).

The NHS promise is a funny one to latch onto. We've not left the EU yet so how can the promise be broken?

Now you might think it's likely to be broken in a couple of years (and you're probably right) but still.

Not that anyone making the "promise" had any authority to do so.

> We've not left the EU yet so how can the promise be broken?

Because all of the people making the claim backtracked the day after the result.

I think what they said was "we can't actually commit to this because we're not the government". Given the sum isn't actually massive and NHS spending is likely to increase anyhow it may very well turn out to have happened anyway a year or two after Brexit.

NHS spending has decreased, and it's likely to keep decreasing. That's what sustainability and transformation plans are - cuts to provision of service.

In recent years we've seen a reduction of 1 in 16 acute beds, and 1 in 5 MH beds. This would be ok if we'd seen an increase in funding for community services or for care services, but they've been cut too.

Sorry but that's just not true.

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-...

The specific cuts you mention may have happened, but money going in in real terms has increased.

How much is the "right" amount to spend on health care is probably for a different thread.

Your are spreading a lie. The money in "real terms" might have increased, (by, as your link say, "equivalent to an average annual increase of just 0.9 per cent") but you've failed to account for increased use -- larger population, older population, iller population.

Here's an update, now even the government have accepted that they're cutting funding in real terms.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-cuts-spend...

> Because all of the people making the claim backtracked the day after the result.

Much as remain advocates backtracked on their claims that a vote to leave would trigger the end of the world, economic catastrophe, would require an emergency 'Brexit budget', etc.

Both of the official campaigns were criticized in the run-up to the referendum for presenting claims they knew to be false.

The NHS money was a simple direct claim printed on the side of a bus and used as a backdrop in photocalls.

It was a blatant lie; very manipulative, and people who knew it was a lie but who said nothing before the vote should be ashamed.

I personally assume logically incoherent promises are broken at the point it is made.

If I promised to "stop sending PJDK $1 million pounds a week and to spend it on the NHS instead" when in fact I wasn't doing that in the first place, how do I keep that promise? How do I break it?

AFAIK the 300M figure or whatever was deliberately misleading, being gross and not net, but not literally false.

Spending that money on the NHS instead would require cutting spending on some of the things that the money we got back from the EU was previously going to. But it wouldn't be logically incoherent, at least not for the reason you suggest.

I've never understood this "gross not net" defence.

"You'd save £100 pounds if you didn't buy those shoes, we could spend it on apples instead".

"Actually they reduced the price, they're only £50".

"Yes, but that's just net, I was talking about the gross figure"

That's a logically incoherent excuse for another logically incoherent statement. If anything it makes it worse to admit you knew the figure was wrong and just used an accounting fiction instead because it was a higher number. There is no way to "instead" spend money on something else if part of that money was never spent in the first place.

And as you yourself mention, a chunk of that money gets spent on stuff in Britain, (the equivalent of getting cashback on the shoe purchase that I could spend on shirts) so even if they were right about this gross stuff, they'd still be misleading even with their weasel-worded "send to" phrase.

https://fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-membership-fee-55-million...

Ah, I was not aware of the rebate (I probably had been at one point and had forgotten about it). I was under the impression that £350M was gross in the sense that it was the amount we actually send them, and the net figure was that minus what they send back.

Let's face it Corbyn is probably the worst Labour leader since Michael Foot

I really wish the "far left" parties were more popular. Unfortunately labour seems to want less focus on class issues and more on silly tax issues and identity politics.

Really wish Corbyn could pull labour through to a proper leftist party.

In what way is "class" not identity politics? Is it just identity politics that you identify with?

But doesn't the opposite equally apply to Conservative MPs that represent well-heeled urban constituencies that voted Remain?

I would have thought this represented a golden opportunity for a London-based "euro party" to form on the basis of challenging at the next election all MPs in that general region that vote for the enabling legislation.

It's very easy to say "I don't agree but we must abide by the results of the referendum", it's much harder to say "Sod the referendum, I'm voting for what I think is right for the country".

The house of commons represents many more people than those who have voting rights in the referendum.

Residents are also the constituents for MP's.

Nobody envies Corbyn like he does himself. I thought the guy was a closeted pro-brexiter anyway.