Well yes. The government didn't want Brexit, and are now doing their best to sabotage it to punish the peons for voting wrong.
The PM stated (in writing!) that she called that election in order to increase her majority and so be able to force through her version of Brexit; however despite losing so many seats she needed a coalition afterwards, which in a democracy ought to be pause for thought, her post-election government not only still wants Brexit but also refuses to countenance any variation from her implausibly over-ambitious goals.
Worth pointing out that the Labour opposition in that election had also pledged to respect the referendum result. Over 89% of votes went to parties with "leave the Single Market and Customs Union" in their manifesto.
Given her current trajectory and staffing picks, I think it's at least plausible that May's objective was to get enough of a majority that she could pursue a "Brexit In Name Only" strategy without being blocked by the Tories' Brexiteer wing, and that the collapse of her vote was a reaction to this by the UKIP-inclined. I certainly saw conspiracy theories along these lines bandied about in the run-up to the election.
If anything, I suspect you'd have more luck arguing from the latest Tory poll bump that the population had gone off the idea.
This confuses me.
[1] The only claim of yours I am not sure of is the UKIP one: I have not seen evidence to convince me UKIP voters voted tactically to prevent BINO. However, I don’t think it alters your point.
Yup. Treating May as some sort of extreme "hard Brexiteer" is even more hilariously silly.
Labour is the nakedly opportunistic promise-everything-to-everyone-if-it-gets-us-into-power party at the moment. One important point to remember is that the Labour membership and the traditional core Labour vote are very, very different things. The membership, massively skewed by Momentum entryists, is heavily Remain.
> I have not seen evidence to convince me UKIP voters voted tactically to prevent BINO
I'm not convinced of it either, I just find it plausible as a hypothesis. Particularly since May was a (lukewarm) Remainer while Corbyn, despite bowing to pressure during the referendum campaign, is a lifelong Eurosceptic pitching a manifesto which depends heavily on getting out of the EU. State support and renationalization in particular are banned under present rules.
I'd argue that's because of the first-past-the-post voting system in the UK - they trend towards two main parties, which are realistically people's only options ('to stop the other party getting in').
Also, while Labour are officially 'leavers', they've been very ambiguous about where exactly their position is. A lot of remainers will have voted for them just because they're not the Tories.
Wasn't her version "remain"? It's not like she can actually do anything but brexit.
(Apart from the last two, I’m not even listing all the red lines that prevent each of these).
I understand what you're saying but it's not what people voted for. She knows that, Corbyn (EU skeptic) knows that.
There were no discussions about soft vs hard brexit around the referendum, I was there.
Very few parties had your versions of Brexit in their manifesto. All of them lost. It's just not what the people want.
I was also there. I remember many of the Brexit campaigners explicitly naming some of these options:
“Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the Single Market” - Daniel Hannan, Vote Leave founder
“Only a madman would actually leave the Market” - Owen Paterson MP, Vote Leave backer
“Wouldn't it be terrible if we were really like Norway and Switzerland? Really? They're rich. They're happy. They're self-governing” - Nigel Farage, Ukip leader
“The Norwegian option, the EEA option, I think that it might be initally attractive for some business people” - Matthew Elliot, Vote Leave chief executive
“Increasingly, the Norway option looks the best for the UK” - Arron Banks, Leave.EU founder
From my list, the Turkey and Ukraine models were not something I remember prior to the referendum, but “deep and comprehensive free trade area” sounds a lot like the “deep and comprehensive free trade agreement” the government continues to talk about: https://www.ceps.eu/publications/theresa-mays-deep-and-compr...
(Turkey is just there for the sake of completeness).
> Very few parties had your versions of Brexit in their manifesto. All of them lost. It's just not what the people want.
The election happened after May made her red lines. True, Corbyn also wanted a deal that can’t be done, but given polls still show 50-50 (+/- margin of error), I think basically everyone still wants what they voted for during the referendum.
However, my point was more that she had options for various types of Brexit and could’ve made a different choice rather than what the people want from the options they were given.
This is a mess.