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Comment by blibble | Hacker News Reader

remember: the FT have managed to mis-predict every single major UK political event relating to brexit:

  - they'll vote remain
  - they'll ignore the referendum result
  - they won't invoke article 50
  - the article 50 court case will prevent it being triggered
  - we won't exit
  - we'll stay in the single market

they simply have no understanding of how the electorate think

(though I suppose it's possible they may eventually get one right)

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Magical thinking generally is alive and well in certain strata of British life. UK politics generally seems to be a game of make believe, with a broad failure to grasp that decline is now baked in.

"perception is reality" is not a trait that is particularly limited to the UK.

To be fair, they're a business paper and from an economic perspective Brexit made absolutely no sense, so it's not that surprising.

maybe it's unrealistic that political journalists should have some insight of the subject matter beyond that of a politics student

(similarly: their recently retired stock-picking columnist revealed he'd never traded a stock)

Did you expect any of those things? Like I followed the process religiously and I kept being surprised by the sheer insanity of all the UK government decisions.

yes, I successfully predicted all of the above

from June 24th 2016: a hard exit with a fudge on the NI border was the only path that kept the tory party in one piece

and the tory party has always prioritised that over everything else

remember: it's the only reason they called a referendum in the first place

the only way it would have gone differently would have been if Labour had a leader other than Corbyn

having him as the opposition guaranteed it would happen

(because Middle England hated the idea of Corbyn in power more than they hated brexit)

I mean no disrespect, but that seems very unlikely.

Like, the Tory party didn't remain in one piece, they expelled a bunch of people and are almost unrecognisable from the people in power in 2016.

Any chance you have comments here or elsewhere supporting your predictions?

They didn’t split. By that metric, they’re still in one piece and that’s the only metric those in the party care about right now.

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