Hey, we gave you your whole own thread!
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This referendum has really shown up how lightweight the men are compared to Nicola Sturgeon, and Ruth Davidson is doing a better job of being the face of modern conservatism than Cameron ever did. But Sayeeda Warsi came in for terrible abuse when she announced that she had ceased to support an exit because of the sheer awfulness of the Leave campaign. And much of it wasn’t from male Muslims. @pixleshifter may disagree, but I am convinced that sheer old fashioned racism was a core tenet of the Leave campaign.
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Like that Yorkshire pub where the women complained that they were expected to sit outside while the men were inside. So the landlord added a garden shed for the women.
(It is conceivable that this story is apocryphal, to which I reply, Geoff Boycott.)
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Well, I was mostly talking about here, not the Brexit! 
But yes, I agree that racism drove much of the campaign, or was used to get a particular vote out of an angry part of the population that feels ignored and put upon in a number of ways. I dont’ want to say that racism was just a red herring, because I don’t think it was, rather that some used racism as a red herring (Boris Johnson, maybe, who in one of these many Brexit threads who all look alike to me, who now seems a bit put out, and was possibly working out a power struggle within the conservative party via a public referendum). The question remains (HA!) who materially benefits the most and who supported the leave campaign (another thread) and what are the possible unintended consequences for the people of Britain.
I fully believe that this could be totally true.
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And no one will say anything about you using it, just like the last time, this came up (but thanks for the act of solidarity).
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Are you sure this is the right place for this conversation? It sounds an awful lot like “chat”.
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I don’t think Johnson is a racist. I think he’s an opportunist. I think he expected Remain to narrowly win, which would be enough to trigger Cameron’s resignation without utterly buggering the country, and then, as the figurehead for the Leave campaign, strongly backed by Tory party members, he’d get to be PM. Gove and Farage are true believers, Johnson is not. Just an ambitious unprincipled hack.
Plan B was for Cameron to have to stick around and do all the difficult negotiation crap after Leave won, and take all the blame, letting Johnson waltz in after. The referendum is entirely Cameron’s fault but I don’t blame him for telling them all to eff off and quitting immediately. Let Johnson deal with his own shitty mess.
Personally, I feel that my UK citizenship is worth pretty much fuck all to me now. I might look at getting rid of it after I sort out my US one.
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Fine. No more from me on this… sorry I derailed everyone.
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Honestly I think you’ll see a lot of the EU weighing its options so something like that happening wouldn’t surprise me. I just find it somewhat unlikely that Scotland sticks around. Their last vote was very close, and support for remain was large there, and a new vote seems likely. If a vote happens it seems like the EU issue is divisive enough to make up the gap in the Independence vote. That’s going to drive something on the NI side, and I think the UK will have to allow a vote simply to avoid something much uglier. I couldn’t be sure how that would turn out though.
NI and Scotland remaining EU and England Wales leaving would be a compromise position, a half measure. The UK attempting to avoid its own breakup. And it could work. But its still a reduction in UK control and involvement of its two member nations. And I don’t know how well that flies. I think the answer lies in whether Ireland tacks toward the UK or the EU in trying to keep itself stable, and whether both Ireland and the EU will back NI and Scotland remaining in the EU despite whatever the UK does. Last time Scotland was threatened with going to the back of the line with membership, but the EU has an interest in finding a way around that now. And since NI path out of the UK is directly codified as re-unification at this point they side step the issue. Depending on how far the UK goes, and how much the EU wants to prevent other countries from following this path a deliberate Republic of Ireland supported effort to break up the UK might be in the offing.
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That’s precisely what I was trying to suggest. He got in bed long enough with the real racists to get the job done and now seems unhappy about the outcome. I think it points us in the direction of how dangerous these sorts of political machinations can be, especially when you start employing racism to get something done. Again, not to godwin this thread (although I’ve apparently already derailed it), but the conservative parties that aligned with you know who also thought they could control him as well.
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Are you sure this is the right place for this conversation? It sounds an awful lot like “chat”. 
isn’t any comment “chat” in some sense?
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At the behest of the Westminster Government, which at the time was seen to be part of keeping the EU stable.
At the moment, I imagine that many European politicians feel the way about Johnson, Gove, Cameron and co. the way that Disraeli felt about Gladstone:
“If Mr. Gladstone fell into a pond that would be a catastrophe. But if someone were to pull him out, that would be a disaster.”
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When you try to delegitimize somebody’s vote, you don’t change his mind, only his willingness to talk about it.
The polling favored Remain because any other position was being characterized as ignorant and racist. But in the privacy of that polling booth, with a curtain between you and everyone else and anonymity ensured, they could say what they really wanted. Which they did.
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Given the attitude to women of many of the Leavers, I thought it was rather relevant.
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This explanation appears to have some truth in it. Before the vote, phone polls were leaning more towards remain than ones conducted on-line.. This suggests that a number of people were more comfortable ticking the “leave” box when they didn’t have to say it out loud to a researcher on the phone/.
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I think you’re deliberately ignoring what the proponents of Brexit actually said and did so you can paint aggressors as victims. Sure, some voters were merely stupid, rather than bigoted idiots. But those stupid people weren’t blind to a campaign demonizing certain immigrants as it’s central and fundamental plank. You should acknowledge the bigotry in the campaign and from the supporters before pointing out that the supporters don’t like people pointing it out. Sure people motivated by bigotry feel shame about it. That makes polling harder. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be ashamed - what they supported was absolutely shameful.
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Prosperous areas like Solihull and North Dorset voted Leave, as did the area in which Nissan is based. Leave tried to make people fearful of immigrants and non-white people and they were very successful at it. The economic evidence is that immigration has only the most marginal effects on wages, but Johnson was caught (by Salmond) lying about it. And nobody explained to the unemployed and the elderly that immigrants paying taxes actually raised the social fund, because it was assumed that any positive comments about immigration would increase the Leave vote.
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I just want to note that I didn’t say most of those things and will let someone reply who did.
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No such place. There are the United States, which out of respect we capitalize. You know, basic respect.
Not unlike how you capitalize ‘Squad Leader’.
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