How distraught Remainers threw away the possibility of a second EU Referendum
Why resist verification?
No Second Chances: The Inside Story of the Campaign for a Second Referendum by Morgan Jones
Morgan Jones starts by describing the favourite headgear of indignant pro-European protesters: blue berets with yellow EU stars stuck onto them by passionate Remainers in Bath.
These first-time campaigners were distraught at losing the EU Referendum, held ten years ago this June, and believed they could yet overturn the result. Jones notes
“the strange, anarchic and stubborn spirit of older, previously not hugely political, people doing activism, often viewing getting under the right people’s skin as a victory in and of itself.”
Nothing would induce these bereaved Remainers to moderate their tone, and they could not see their efforts were off-putting to considerable numbers of people whose support they needed if they were ever to get a second referendum, and then overturn the result of the first. As Jones says,
“the base and the culture they created was, well, kind of mad, out of touch with the country and made them often deeply alienating to advocates for their own cause.”
The campaigners believed with passionate intensity that Leave had only won by lying to uneducated voters in backward parts of the country. As the political scientist Rob Ford puts it, the view taken by zealous Remainers of Leave voters was:
“They were lied to, stupid. They are reactionary. They are wrong. The vote was not legitimate. The vote was not fair. They were misled by the media.”
Bereft Remainers could not accept there were honest, honourable, intelligent arguments for leaving the EU.
Nor, usually, were academics able to see this. Anand Menon, Director of the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, told Jones:
“What was absolutely staggering was the degree to which the academic literature’s starting point was, ‘We’re in the European Union. It’s a good thing. Let’s look at how it works.’ “
In Menon’s view, “We failed as a profession, I think, pretty badly.”
During the 2015 general election I went for ConHome to Bolton West to gauge opinion there, and wrote a piece entitled “Bolton West wants to talk about immigration”, in which I quoted a voter who said:
“We get treated like second-class citizens.”
Voters who felt treated like second-class citizens took the chance in the EU Referendum to confound the Establishment by voting Leave.
Immediately after the Referendum, it was not feasible simply to tell these voters they had got it wrong, but that changed after the general election called by Theresa May in 2017, at which the voters took the chance to render her parliamentary position precarious.
It now seemed worthwhile to a coalition of anti-Brexit organisations to set up People’s Vote, launched in April 2018 at the Electric Ballroom in Camden to campaign for a second …
Why resist verification?
No Second Chances: The Inside Story of the Campaign for a Second Referendum by Morgan Jones
Morgan Jones starts by describing the favourite headgear of indignant pro-European protesters: blue berets with yellow EU stars stuck onto them by passionate Remainers in Bath.
These first-time campaigners were distraught at losing the EU Referendum, held ten years ago this June, and believed they could yet overturn the result. Jones notes
“the strange, anarchic and stubborn spirit of older, previously not hugely political, people doing activism, often viewing getting under the right people’s skin as a victory in and of itself.”
Nothing would induce these bereaved Remainers to moderate their tone, and they could not see their efforts were off-putting to considerable numbers of people whose support they needed if they were ever to get a second referendum, and then overturn the result of the first. As Jones says,
“the base and the culture they created was, well, kind of mad, out of touch with the country and made them often deeply alienating to advocates for their own cause.”
The campaigners believed with passionate intensity that Leave had only won by lying to uneducated voters in backward parts of the country. As the political scientist Rob Ford puts it, the view taken by zealous Remainers of Leave voters was:
“They were lied to, stupid. They are reactionary. They are wrong. The vote was not legitimate. The vote was not fair. They were misled by the media.”
Bereft Remainers could not accept there were honest, honourable, intelligent arguments for leaving the EU.
Nor, usually, were academics able to see this. Anand Menon, Director of the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, told Jones:
“What was absolutely staggering was the degree to which the academic literature’s starting point was, ‘We’re in the European Union. It’s a good thing. Let’s look at how it works.’ “
In Menon’s view, “We failed as a profession, I think, pretty badly.”
During the 2015 general election I went for ConHome to Bolton West to gauge opinion there, and wrote a piece entitled “Bolton West wants to talk about immigration”, in which I quoted a voter who said:
“We get treated like second-class citizens.”
Voters who felt treated like second-class citizens took the chance in the EU Referendum to confound the Establishment by voting Leave.
Immediately after the Referendum, it was not feasible simply to tell these voters they had got it wrong, but that changed after the general election called by Theresa May in 2017, at which the voters took the chance to render her parliamentary position precarious.
It now seemed worthwhile to a coalition of anti-Brexit organisations to set up People’s Vote, launched in April 2018 at the Electric Ballroom in Camden to campaign for a second …
How distraught Remainers threw away the possibility of a second EU Referendum
Why resist verification?
No Second Chances: The Inside Story of the Campaign for a Second Referendum by Morgan Jones
Morgan Jones starts by describing the favourite headgear of indignant pro-European protesters: blue berets with yellow EU stars stuck onto them by passionate Remainers in Bath.
These first-time campaigners were distraught at losing the EU Referendum, held ten years ago this June, and believed they could yet overturn the result. Jones notes
“the strange, anarchic and stubborn spirit of older, previously not hugely political, people doing activism, often viewing getting under the right people’s skin as a victory in and of itself.”
Nothing would induce these bereaved Remainers to moderate their tone, and they could not see their efforts were off-putting to considerable numbers of people whose support they needed if they were ever to get a second referendum, and then overturn the result of the first. As Jones says,
“the base and the culture they created was, well, kind of mad, out of touch with the country and made them often deeply alienating to advocates for their own cause.”
The campaigners believed with passionate intensity that Leave had only won by lying to uneducated voters in backward parts of the country. As the political scientist Rob Ford puts it, the view taken by zealous Remainers of Leave voters was:
“They were lied to, stupid. They are reactionary. They are wrong. The vote was not legitimate. The vote was not fair. They were misled by the media.”
Bereft Remainers could not accept there were honest, honourable, intelligent arguments for leaving the EU.
Nor, usually, were academics able to see this. Anand Menon, Director of the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, told Jones:
“What was absolutely staggering was the degree to which the academic literature’s starting point was, ‘We’re in the European Union. It’s a good thing. Let’s look at how it works.’ “
In Menon’s view, “We failed as a profession, I think, pretty badly.”
During the 2015 general election I went for ConHome to Bolton West to gauge opinion there, and wrote a piece entitled “Bolton West wants to talk about immigration”, in which I quoted a voter who said:
“We get treated like second-class citizens.”
Voters who felt treated like second-class citizens took the chance in the EU Referendum to confound the Establishment by voting Leave.
Immediately after the Referendum, it was not feasible simply to tell these voters they had got it wrong, but that changed after the general election called by Theresa May in 2017, at which the voters took the chance to render her parliamentary position precarious.
It now seemed worthwhile to a coalition of anti-Brexit organisations to set up People’s Vote, launched in April 2018 at the Electric Ballroom in Camden to campaign for a second …
0 Comments
0 Shares
35 Views
0 Reviews
