Comment by that_guy_iain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by that_guy_iain | Hacker News Reader

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Honestly, I thought Brexit was going to ruin the UK before COVID. But the effects of COVID and the expected effects to come when furlough ends I think the UK is going to be in complete ruins for years.

I keep reading that they expect 1/3 of people to lose their jobs when furlough ends. The goverment is now suggesting companies move warehouse (and jobs) to the EU. The increase in the costs of importing into the UK will raise prices with people who are going to have less money. Orders coming from the EU will drop massively even for those with EU warehouses because, how do I know if they have one? I've literally made sure to avoid any UK business because I know I'll have to pay extra taxes when it arrives.

And I know people who voted leave who instantly regretted it and only voted leave as a protest vote. "We wanted to give them a scare" was how it was explained to me. So basically. While some pople are still 100% for a hard brexit, I don't think the majority of the nation even wanted to leave the EU 3 years after the vote. And when it cames to the general elections, no major party went with the anti Brexit campaign which seemed nuts. The politcal elite wanted Brexit and the poor will pay the most.

I don't think the majority of the nation even wanted to leave the EU 3 years after the vote.

The UK has had two general elections since the 2016 vote. If the electorate thought it was the single most important issue and that we should remain, the UK wouldn't have left.

Was gonna say the same. As an outsider looking in, I too was rationalizing it as a fluke vote. But nope, the nation doubled down on the pro-Brexit Tories in subsequent elections, thus confirming the desire to really go through with it all. It's all so sad.

Labour had a Brexiteer as it's leader (Corbyn). I know he said otherwise but it was an obvious lie, he had been campaining against the EU for his whole political life. There really wasn't a good chocie.

Between the leaders of the two largest parties supporting it and a majority of the citizens voting for it, Brexit was definitely going to happen. It's hard to say that it shouldn't have or was a fluke, even though it was a dumb thing to do :(

As I said, there was no major party with an Anti Brexit policy. Labour and Tories were both pro brexit. The SNP were anti Brexit and dominated and will dominate again. The libdems are still suffering the mistrust from dealing with the tories and they weren't even fully anti Brexit and labour managed to shoot themselves in the foot. Literally to win the last election the Tories policy was to not talk, since whenever they talked they suffered and all they talked about was pro-Brexit. This lead to Johnson hiding in a fridge. The UK was that anti-Brexit that for the main pro-Brexit party to win they had to hide in a fridge on live TV to avoid talking about Brexit.

TL;DR, there was no real anti-Brexit party other than the dominating SNP.

Look at the opinion polling on the issue leading up to the 2019 election.

Opinion polling was most people wanted Brexit over with. They were fed up of hearing about it. It just wasn't explained to them the fastest way for that was to remain. Which if one major party took that anti Brexit stance and went hard with how long Brexit would remain a theme for they would done well. That's why the tories stance was get Brexit done. Which considering they're still trying to negotiate after the deadline and a deal was done tells you how much of that was a lie.

Your assertion was that you didn't think a majority of people were pro-Brexit come 2019. A pro-Brexit political campaign won in a landslide, despite multiple alternatives offering anti-Brexit stances (SNP, Greens) or softer stances on the matter (Labour).

> This lead to Johnson hiding in a fridge. The UK was that anti-Brexit that for the main pro-Brexit party to win they had to hide in a fridge on live TV to avoid talking about Brexit.

I just looked that up. It appears he was visiting a milk distribution company of some sort on his campaign when he was approached by a live TV crew who asked for an interview. He was then led into part of the facility by an employee. Truly compelling stuff!

> Your assertion was that you didn't think a majority of people were pro-Brexit come 2019. A pro-Brexit political campaign won in a landslide, despite multiple alternatives offering anti-Brexit stances (SNP, Greens) or softer stances on the matter (Labour).

The SNP basically dominated. Green? They're not a major party. And Labour's policy was ???, I honestly can't remember, but we all knew they were pro-Brexit. If Labour hadn't repeatedly shot themselves in the foot they would have done way better. Nevermind if they went hard on anti-Brexit, they would have done way better. I'm not 100% on this but I believe if you look at the stats, it was basically labour and centeral voters stayed home. And there was no real, and real is important here, altvernative. Many smaller parties splitting the vote wasn't ever going to get anywhere.

> I just looked that up. It appears he was visiting a milk distribution company of some sort on his campaign when he was approached by a live TV crew who asked for an interview. He was then led into part of the facility by an employee. Truly compelling stuff!

He was led into a fridge where he then stayed until the broadcaster moved on. Instead of his handlers telling the employee, hold on a sec, he's on live TV and this is a great chance to address the nation. They let him be lead into a fridge... And as a paid up member of the SNP, I would like to thank the tories for putting Mr Johnson in power. He's doing wonders for the SNP's cause!

Losing the popular vote isn't a landslide.

While I agree with the sentiment, Blair’s first win in 1997 was regarded as a landslide despite not being a majority of the popular vote.

I think it’s just one of those superlative treadmills.

It's not so black and white. People consider all the issues and what parties propose and vote on balance. The way the system works they also vote based on who has got a chance.

The divisions on Brexit also run through both major parties, and Labour had quite a bad offering and spooked many people by being so much on the left (they had they worst defeat in 40 years in the last election, which is telling) and in any case they went for Brexit so people had no actual alternative on that issue as the Lib Dems were not seen has credible and as having any chance.

All in all I think it is difficult to draw clear conclusions based on the last general elections. Personally I think positions did not change much since the referendum (i.e. small majority for Brexit overall).

A set of first-past-the-post choices between effectively only two parties, one of which was pro-Brexit and the other of which was incapable of a coherent stance, is not exactly a great recipe for determining the actual will of the people.

The UK has a robust set of other parties. The Liberal Democrats ran hard against Brexit. They did not fare well.

The Liberal Democrats got 1/4th of the Conservatives' votes but only 1/35th of the Conservatives' seats. Heck, they got 3x as many votes as the SNP but less than a quarter of their seats. EDIT: Also, the LibDems got 50% more votes in 2019 than in each of the previous two general elections, which is a hell of a fact to twist as "did not fare well".

If your intention was to refute my argument that first-past-the-post doesn't accurately capture voters' opinions, you failed.

My point was only that people had an anti-Brexit choice that they didn't pick.

I'm in complete agreement that FPTP is a terrible system, and does a miserable job capturing voters opinions. It does so even when there are many extra parties available. (The LibDems were, after all, part of a governing coalition just five years ago.)

The problem is coming up with a significantly better system. The UK is in this mess because of a direct vote that didn't really measure voters' opinions, either.

The last time the UK government wasn’t Con/Lab, Ireland had not yet become independent. I wouldn’t call that “robust”.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UK_popular_vote.svg

My point was really that there existed genuine anti-Brexit positions, and people failed to vote for them. That shows as much about the weakness of voting systems as it does about Brexit, but in the end the pro-Brexit party won a majority of seats. If people really were that anti-Brexit they did have options.

The entire thing was a clusterf### that should never have happened. All voting systems are bad even in the best of cases, and this was far from the best of cases. Good luck living with it.

The opposing party said nothing about remaining if they were going to be voted in. One of the key issues was never discussed by Corbyn.

The polls on Brexit did suggest a creeping increase in the popularity of Brexit. But that was backed by a slew of propaganda about how great it will be.

I still think it will end in either a disaster or some kind of rejoining of EU, possibly under a different name. But of course we’ll see.

> But that was backed by a slew of propaganda about how great it will be.

So, like any other election?

Hmm, maybe. It felt rather relentless, but I suppose.

The difference here is that both main parties supported Brexit, as opposed to having 2 opposing streams of nonsense.

> While some pople are still 100% for a hard brexit, I don't think the majority of the nation even wanted to leave the EU 3 years after the vote.

There was a referendum in 2016 and a general election in 2019 which the Conservatives won in a landslide. The notion that there was a major swing in opinion in that timeframe is simply absurd. Pro-Brexit political parties don't win landslide victories in such circumstances.

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