That is what people voted for...
At this point, an average person can’t have much of an affect on how government is acting. Very few people can take a day off to protest, and even if they do, protests tend to be meaningless too.
I’m not saying that average person is blameless but most of the fault lies with the ruling classes.
People being easy to manipulate is feature of humanity, not evidence that democracy does not work.
People are in charge for allowing that to happens, allowing to continue etc. If things go shit under heavy influencing and manipulation it's the failure of the people. "ruling classes" in democracy works is the fault of the non ruling majority.
Maybe it's both. Much like communism assumes altrustic spherical humans in a vacuum, so does democracy assume that each voter will both bother to vote, and that they are rational enough to vote close to what they actually want without being swayed.
This could be evidence that democracy, much like communism, does not work very well.
Democracy is always changing, always on move and dangerous. That's why I like democracy. Functioning democracy can even end democracy and choose tyranny.
The older I get, the more I believe the only real voting someone can do is with their wallet.
There are plenty of examples of billions being thrown at campaigns and barely even moving the needle (e.g. Bloomberg's $1B fight for the Presidential race where he didn't even get 1% of the vote).
What I'm saying is that what people see as manipulation of voters (nobody could ever believe that!) is actually just another valid opinion that you so happen to disagree with.
Nobody was deceived. Nobody was manipulated. The voters just don't agree with you on this issue.
I don't know (or care, given I left the UK as a direct result of the vote) if there was any significant regret in this case.
(I caveat "significant" because 5-10% of the population will agree with almost any proposition in any opinion poll, no matter how nonsensical the question).
How did the "£350m for the NHS" bus work out?
> actually just another valid opinion
Some opinions - sky is green, earth is flat - aren't valid.
You just proved my point. You can’t possibly wrap your head around why someone would vote to leave the EU so clearly someone manipulated them.
This is the kind of thing people said when women wanted to the right to vote - "Oh those silly women, manipulated to think that's what they want."
It's dangerous thinking. I prefer to have faith that people are generally educated about issues and make the decision they feel is right.
> [The results] indicate that Britons’ beliefs about some aspects of the EU may be systematically wrong.
People who believed the UK gave the EU £350 million per week, which is the example the other poster gave, were unambiguously deceived.
Well yes, but this is the UK so the founding fathers would be one of William the Conqueror, James VI and I (that's one person), or George III and his regent, depending on which argument you want to have.
Is it, though? Establishment interests spend huge sums of money and often lose. The Republican party was an elite country club party, but when evangelicals emerged as a political force, the party had to jump on that wave, no matter how distasteful the old party elites found it. Then Trump came along, giving blatantly shallow lip service to religion, and now the party is beholden to him. That wasn't in anybody's plan except Trump's, and his personal wealth was paltry next to the Republican Party's resources.
But maybe the elites who do the manipulation are happy to pander on a few issues if they get what they want on the issues that are really important to them. Let's think about that. If there was one core tenet of the GHWB-era Republican Party that its elites would have wanted to protect above all else, what would it be? If there was one core tenet that united all American economic elites, one thing above all others that they would want to instill in voters' heads, wouldn't it be economical liberalism? More specifically, free trade? Well, they've failed at that. NAFTA was a banner achievement for the Republicans. Now Trump calls NAFTA a Clinton disaster and promotes trade war with China, and he runs the Republican Party, because it does matter what the voters want, and you can't outright buy their belief in anything.
We blame voters for being bought and manipulated when someone speaks to them in a way they find compelling but "shouldn't" according to our worldview. We assume that the superiority of our worldview gives us a natural advantage, and we look for special reasons why our views don't prevail. "What's the matter with Kansas?" in other words. What's the matter is that Trump's voters really do care more about Trump licking their wounded egos more than they care about anything else.
The UK also has much stronger spending (and content) limits on electoral campaigns compared to the US.
The press.
For a time, Johnson himself was both a minister and a "journalist" for the Times. He was paid more for writing one article a week than for being a minister. Eventually he was forced to give this up. But Brexit is to a great extent a media project, backed by sensational but misleading claims, and supported by the media/politics revolving door.
The Sarah Vine/Michael Gove couple had quite an effect too.
This is not what the majority voted for.
More people voted against the conservatives than voted for them, but due to the first past the post system they got a massive majority in Parliament and can do whatever they want.
In my opinion that was the defining moment that cemented the UK's decline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternativ...