Posted on 01/04/2018 10:50:22 AM PST by Olog-hai
What they are calling for is for a referendum on the terms of the final exit deal.
While that’s not all together unreasonable on it’s surface, it’s a bad idea and would simply be used to try and kill brexit. Direct democracy has it’s place but doesn’t need to get into the minutia, the people’s choice was clear.
In the snap election Labour recovered a lot of the Labour leave voters that they had lost to UKIP in 2015, and if they hadn’t then Corbyn wouldn’t have gained seats. Alienating those voters would be foolish of him.
???On the contrary, the British print media were dominated by pro-Brexit propaganda - all the Murdoch papers (Times/Sun), Telegraph, Mail and Express. The only pro-Remain national dailies were the Guardian and Mirror (the latter only lukewarm).
Honestly I saw approximately NONE of that. I don’t live in the UK, but coverage of the Brexit proposition I saw was universally against; the exit movement seemed (to me) like Nigel Farage and about 3 others. I watched I would say 40 interviews with Nigel and he was called every name in the book, with every single talking point thrown at him.
Frankly, I think “stay” might well have passed had not 0bama gone over there and scolded Winston Churchill, his most hated statesman ever.
Many reasons for this, probably the most telling being that the Remain campaign thought a win was a dead cert so didn't need to try very hard. The leavers caught the attention of the media because they were passionate, even when some of their claims (such as the notorious "£350 million a day extra for the NHS") were, to put it politely, fanciful. The remainers concentrated on rather less passionate analysis, statistical and economic arguments etc, which are always a media turn-off.
It doesn’t surprise me that the internal coverage/sentiment was as diametrically opposite the external as possible.
True, none of the stay advocates was as charismatic as Nigel Farage, whom I love, but not all do. OK, so that’s one guy, and he’s a superman as far as I am concerned, having fought against the EU for 25 years. But the “stay” proposition was paraded (here) as an economic disaster for each and every stratum of society, from the farmer, to the entrepreneur, to the financial elite, to the clerical worker.
Truly, the lesson is how incredibly distorted media-driven perceptions can be, and are. I don’t think too many Americans thought the exit would be approved. I don’t think too many Americans thought DJT would be elected, whether they voted for him or not.
I think you would be surprised how low Farage's profile was in the UK during the referendum campaign (it was much higher elsewhere, especially in the US). The are several reasons why, I suspect, the campaign managers wanted him kept out of the limelight. Firstly, if 'leave' was to win it would be necessary to win over many middle-of-the-road 'don't know' voters, who tend to see Farage as an extremist and for whom he would be a turn-off if he were too prominent. Secondly, the British media - even the media most hostile to the EU, such as the Mail - have always tended to see Farage as a slightly comical figure, not a serious politician. They have tended to take more seriously traditional Europhobe Tories such as Redwood and Duncan Smith. Finally, there is Farage's identification with UKIP, which consistently failed at elections because of incoherent policies (except on its single defining issue), poor candidates and internal feuds.
For all the reasons it was probably felt that Farage would do the campaign more harm than good with the unconvinced electorate.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.