Nige Quits Ukip

[Jackdaw33]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46448299

[Old_Geezer]

Farage applied sufficient pressure such that Cameron and Co. felt the way forward was to hold and win a referendum. I'd count that both as a win for Farage and the UK, and a mistake for Cameron and others who wanted the EU to continue dictating.

[ToraToraTora]

ich, they forced Cameron by weight of voters, Cameron was terrified of losing seats, not to UKIP but because of UKIP.

[jim360]

I'm not sure if I ever read their manifesto, but it was certainly filled with more than just a referendum promise. The death of the party since then maybe owes a lot to the leadership changes, or perhaps it is because a lot of UKIP voters were really protesting against the major parties -- and, in that sense, the Leave victory is the ultimate "protest vote". There is more to it than that, but I do wonder if maybe some Leave voters were anti the entire "establishment", rather than merely the EU as a whole.

[jim360]

Just as an aside, people who can be bothered to look back far enough on AB will see that I supported the concept of holding a referendum beforehand. This is, I guess, probably a result of the same arrogance that led to such a poor job being done of the official Remain campaign.

[Old_Geezer]

If folk have issues with our national establishment, they need to be dealt with once the European establishment is out of our hair.

[ToraToraTora]

jim, the clue is in the name UKIP wanted UK independence by any means. Sure they'd have like a referendum but that wasn't their only hope it was Cameron that placated them with it. The manifesto is largely irrelevant because basically they were a 1 issue party.

[naomi24]

Jim at 19:09, dream on. Leave voters voted 'Leave' because they wanted to leave - and without Farage the referendum wouldn't have happened.

[ichkeria]

It’s all your fault Jim!

[naomi24]

It isn't Jim's fault - but it's his fault that at 19:09 Wed he allowed his overly fertile imagination to get the better of him.

[ichkeria]

Er - I was joking???

[naomi24]

I know.

[jim360]

I think you're missing my point, Naomi. I wasn't saying that (most) Leave voters weren't actually wanting to Leave the EU, but I do wonder if there were additional motivations behind it. I think it's fair to say that there's a frustration at politicians generally, and that this may have influenced the Leave vote to an extent.

How large or small an extent is difficult to say without asking everyone who voted in 2016 -- and possibly not even then -- but it's rather presumptuous to insist that they definitely all agreed with your own exact reasons.

[jim360]

Just to hammer home the point, the key word in my sentence is "some". I'm not saying all, or even most, Leave voters were so cynical as to treat the 2016 referendum as a "two-fingers to Westminster" vote, but is it really so outrageous to suggest that maybe a tiny percentage of the turnout was less anti-EU and more anti-politics?

Results I can find in polls tend to suggest that the proportion of Leave voters who voted purely for anti-EU reasons is in the region of 90-95%, eg this one:

http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Carl_Reasons_Voting.pdf

You may also find these results quite interesting because they reveal that Remain voters as a whole seem not to "get" the motivations behind Leave voters very well, eg Remain voters tend to overestimate how important immigration was, and underestimate how important sovereignty was.

[jim360]

Actually, there's one more thing about that poll I want to say, which is that it seems to suggest that "Project Fear" worked rather well, to an extent at least. The dominant reason Remain voters voted the way they did is cited as being "concerned that leaving the EU would damage the British economy", with "undermine workers' rights" second most popular.

It kind of saddens me to see so few wanting to stay in the EU for more positive-sounding reasons.

[ToraToraTora]

from the article: "When asked to rank the reasons why their counterparts voted the way they did, Leave voters characterise
Remain voters more accurately than Remain voters characterise Leave voters. In particular, Remain voters underestimate the importance that Leave voters attach to the EU having no role in UK law-making. " - that is very evident from the discussions on here.

[naomi24]

Jim, //they reveal that Remain voters as a whole seem not to "get" the motivations behind Leave voters very well//

I think that’s absolutely right. Remainers don’t understand Leavers because they can’t get their heads around the simple fact that leavers want to leave and so they come up with all sorts of possible explanations – just as you have.

[jim360]

You're still deliberately grouping all Leave voters under that banner, whereas the data I posted shows that only *most* of them fit under there.

I will concede the rest of your point, though. When I went hunting for that data I was expecting, perhaps evening hoping for, a larger proportion of "two-fingers" voters. The inconvenient truth I have to face up to is that there weren't nearly as many of them as I might have hoped, but the inconvenient truth you ought to concede is that nevertheless there were some.

In a separate thread you posted that you couldn't see that many people have changed their minds since 2016. This is also true, although on such a close margin as 52/48 you don't need that big a swing, or change in turnout, for things to go the other way. Sadly, the country remains as divided now as it was then.

[naomi24]

Jim, //You're still deliberately grouping all Leave voters under that banner, whereas the data I posted shows that only *most* of them fit under there….. In a separate thread you posted that you couldn't see that many people have changed their minds since 2016. This is also true,//

You appear to be meeting yourself coming back - one of the perils of arguing for argument's sake.