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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

You may need some references for that idea. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

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Listening to people that voted for Brexit has shown me that they voted for it for many reasons. This is one of the reasons that people have given me. Furthermore this is a reason that many remainers were not able to push the case for remain strongly enough.

I was looking more for large surveys. I've seen lots of them pointing out control of the laws as a reason, but none that singled out corruption as a reason.

> This is one of the reasons that people have given me.

Which by definition means it wasn't the only reason, which proves kozikow's comment to be untrue.

It doesn't unless kozikow deleted some reference to it being "the only reason."

It's a commonly cited gripe. I suspect it often comes from people entirely unfamiliar with EU processes, but who don't like EU membership or the idea of EU membership for other reasons and since it's a commonly cited gripe (and also doesn't mention immigrants, and has a pro-democratic connotation) they use it themselves.

It would be strange that no one in this thread has ever heard a Brexiteer cite bureaucracy and corruption, but I fear it's an urge to insist that the only reason that anybody voted for Brexit was racism to delegitimatize leaver votes or even the possibility of debate between two good people on the subject. I fear that attitude will not convert many previous leavers to new remainers in any future people's vote.

I suggest not bothering with arguments against racism, which racists will have heard before and dismissed, looking at left-wing arguments against EU membership from the 70s, and responding to those.

Nonsense. This type of criticism is unwarranted and I suspect disingenuous.

There are lots of contexts in which we can say we would like to see more data. However, when someone is making a point which is a fairly standard one in the Brexit debates we don't need "references". Nor would referring to an article that said the same thing as OP somehow validate the point. There is a place for asking for references, but on a basic comment like this there is not.

Based on the other comments, it seems people are more upset about the perspective behind this idea rather than its truthfulness. I don't agree with the perspective that leaving the EU is a good thing but it is uncontrovertible that a significant portion of the population in the UK agrees with OP's statement.

I don't think it's nonsense at all. The vote was a binary yes/no. Whenever someone ascribes shades of grey to a "yes" or a "no", I'm also curious about where they derived this from. Because what he's telling us wasn't on the ballot at all.

So I'm not sure I'd agree the point is "a fairly standard one". Some will say it was about representation, some will say it was about sovereignty, some will say it was about immigration. Some will even say it was simply a protest against the status quo.

Anyone who states "this is what we voted for" has decided that their reason for voting yes was the primary reason for 17m to vote yes, with no evidence at all.

Leading up to the Brexit vote, there was famously a bus driving around expressing the idea that voting to leave would result in a savings of 350 million pounds per week, which could be reinvested in the NHS.

I don't think there was a bus about bureaucracy.

The UKIP bus pictured here one week before the Brexit vote says "British farmers freed from bureaucracy - Stuart Agnew MEP": https://twitter.com/ukip/status/743369504844091393

(It also says "Free business from EU red tape - Margot Parker MEP".)

I wouldn't say that bus was about bureaucracy. If anything, it bolsters the point that the Brexit vote wasn't about any one issue.

That claim was a misuse of statistics. It was more like 250M.

https://fullfact.org/europe/350-million-week-boris-johnson-s...

250M is also wrong, as mentioned in your link. It doesn't account for the benefits of EU membership.

One of the big reasons that pulled people to voting "no" was the perceived "invasion" of immigrants. There was a perception that EU were forcing the UK's hand, and aiding the "invasion".

One of the basic EU freedoms is free movement of people. Member states have no legal way of blocking people from other member states from coming (except for initial grace period, after new members were accepted into EU), so "forcing UK's hand" is a pretty accurate description.

There's also the filter bubble. People think everything is down the drains because that is all they hear about.

> However, when someone is making a point which is a fairly standard one in the Brexit debates we don't need "references".

If it's fairly standard I should be able to find at least one survey mentioning it online, right? I tried before sending that comment and couldn't find a single one pointing out corruption and bureaucracy as main reasons. (Or even at all) Ironically I find only articles about corruption in Vote Leave campaign. If it's that standard opinion, please post any source which ranks it against other reasons.

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