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You may have done a lot of campaigning to Remain, Moehat.
Trouble is the electorate didn’t really notice you (or me come to that). Even Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary wasn’t seen much and at the time wasn’t well known enough to influence anyway. Largely left to Alan Johnson (one of Labour’s best) to scrub up Labour support… But again, less well known to the British public.Whereas Corbyn and the vast majority of the Labour Party at that time were at best invisible. Corbyn even saying he was “not on the same side as Cameron”.For sure many Labour voters campaigned and voted Remain and some voted Leave knowing what they were voting for. But a significant minority – probably enough to make the difference – could have been swayed by the then Labour leadership.
Value Is EverythingI understand that it’s a minor issue to the English, but after N Ireland (and Scotland) voting to remain and being ignored, one Brexit benefit was that we now have a Sinn Fein First Minister in N Ireland, and Sinn Fein are the biggest party in our Assembly. Thanks Brexit….
Wales voted to leave despite the dire warnings from the Cardiff Bay lot. Many had seen how the so called EU funding for deprived areas was being squandered on rubbish like new paving replacing perfectly good old paving, useless street furniture installations simultaneous with closing public toilets. Many I knew expected the economy to take a hit short term.
I was happy enough with the decision as it was a rare jolt for London and the home counties who were yielding far too much influence on policy decisions.Clamour for a People’s Vote from Starmer won’t be forgotten. Gavin Esler recently of the impartial BBC at the time to. That it hasn’t been a success was partly due to too many trying to derail it. The judiciary behaving like they were the omnipotent. That COVID stopped everything in its tracks is too conveniently overlooked as well .
As for Labour local to me, Michael Foot was anti EU. So was Kinnock until his Damascene conversion. One way traffic since then and they’ve all been a dead loss
It’s a fair point about apathy Cork. ‘Did not vote’ would consistently be one of the biggest ‘parties’ and probably the biggest now things are so fractured. I think more people didn’t vote than voted for either candidate in the USA last year too, it was certainly close. Obviously there’s no candidate that could get every single ‘did not vote’ to back them but it’s a significant group of people.
My feelings on FPTP are well known and as you note, a referendum doesn’t work like that but all the same it probably contributed to a feeling of people’s votes not mattering. For those who aren’t engaged, would they even have realised that it’s any different? Who knows but I’d not really considered that angle before.
Big Brave Cameron who immediately ran away does indeed have a lot to answer for. It was supposed to get rid of UKIP but here we are a decade later and the continuity version is still here and still lying.
Richard do you think they are the only party that lies? look at starmers record in his short term in office, surely he is up there with the best of them (liars that is)
“For those who aren’t engaged, would they even have realised that it’s any different?”
I think they certainly did on the Leave side. In the days after the vote, quite a lot of people who said they had not voted in recent General Elections said they had voted in the referendum.
Maybe lying is more a case sometimes of not having policies cast in stone when the world around you changes overnight ( eg Trump being re elected).Not the same as Farage saying he can stop illegal immigration instantly.Imo the biggest lie of all in recent years has been the vote leave red bus.As for Ireland, well, we kept saying that Ireland was going to be a huge problem if we left the EU but no one seemed to listen. Too busy banging on about fishing ( feel as if I’m in Groundhog Day currently…).
“That COVID stopped everything in its tracks is too conveniently overlooked as well.”
Yes, those complaining about our economic woes seem to be conveniently ignoring how we took a wrecking ball to our economy five years ago and cheered it on.
Some of us did try to warn against it but were shouted down by the usual crowd who think they are right all the time.
Even “The Guardian” is now slowly realising it was a huge mistake:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/covid-policies-lockdown-masks-liberals-book
I still think we were right to lock down. People were dying and the NHS was overwhelmed. Have people forgotten that? It’s ok with hindsight to realise that the virus wouldn’t mutate and kill more people but we didn’t know at the time. Still, it doesn’t matter because it only seemed to target old people who ( as someone told me when my friend died) were going to die anyway. And no one knows where we would be now if the vaccines weren’t already being formulated.
“The NHS was overwhelmed”.
It wasn’t. My mother was taken into hospital during the first week of lockdown on a non Covid matter. The hospital was almost empty. She was in a large ward with only one other patient. Most people had been kicked out into care homes, where the virus spread like wildfire.
“We didn’t know at the time”.
We knew a lot more than is popularly believed. It was already know the peak of the virus had passed before the first lockdown. It was also soon known the virus posed minimal risk to anyone who was under 70 and healthy and quarantining them was not necessary.
A charitable view could say that the first lockdown was initially OK but went on too long. But there was zero justification for the second and third lockdowns, especially the length of the third.
You can’t just focus on the alleged benefits of lockdown (which have been hugely overstated) and ignore the utterly disastrous consequences.
A pity it took Starmer six days to apologise. But as I said at the time, imagine if Johnson had said it:
I have parents aged 84 and 89 respectively, moehat.
Have you given a thought to all the people who had their cancer diagnoses missed and died as a result? Or had businesses that were ruined? Or the young people who had their education wrecked? Or all the old people who died frightened and alone because their relatives were not allowed to visit them, as a result of the cruel policy YOU supported?
And to borrow a comment made yesterday: “don’t make comments like that to me again”. I did NOT say what you are disgracefully trying to imply and to suggest so is emotionally manipulative and dishonest.
Education wrecked? The teachers were coming down with Covid. Children had online schooling. Key workers children were still being school educated.A cancer diagnosis probably meant going into hospital and catching Covid there. Have you forgotten how many doctors and nurses were dying during the pandemic! I made a point, being old, of shutting myself away for the duration of the pandemic so as not to put pressure on the NHS. Next time I’ll just make a point if trying to catch it and die asap,
Come off it, moehat. Even lots of people on your side of the argument now conclude that school closures were disastrous. Online schooling was a poor substitute and no substitute at all for anyone who was not online (more people than you might think). And we will pay a heavy price for it in the long run. School absenteeism has increased greatly since 2020.
“I made a point, being old, of shutting myself away for the duration of the pandemic so as not to put pressure on the NHS.”
That was a good move. The focus should have been on protecting the vulnerable, not quarantining the healthy. That had never been done in any previous pandemic. Lockdowns were not part of any existing plan.
It doesn’t sound like you have read the article I linked to (which is in “The Guardian” remember) or any others of that nature. It sounds like you are accepting the official account without thinking about it.
The measures you seem to think did a lot of good did nothing at all. It was for show, to make it look like the government was doing something. And when weighed in the balance, they had an overwhelmingly negative effect. This was said at the time, it is not being wise after the event.
I believe the political class (all parties were equally to blame) know it was a disaster now but there is an agreement amongst them not to mention it. None of them want to lose face.
If anyone is still wondering why Reform is polling so well, this comment I read elsewhere in response to the Conservative Party’s disastrous opinion poll rating under Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch might help to explain why:
“The Conservative Party…?
You mean, the party that hates every single conservative idea: family, the nation state, freedom of speech?
You mean the party that enthusiastically embraced every single left wing idea during its 14 years in government, from open borders to drag queens in schools?
Well, perhaps their voters have finally realised: they were duped. They hitched a ride on a coach thinking it was going to a wedding and it turned out to be the sewage truck.
Ah, but they have a new leader! You mean the DEI recruit who was their minister for women and equalities? The one that keeps asking Sir Kier softball questions in parliament? Not popular with the public? Not a vote winner? Oh dear, I wonder why.”
Kind of sums it up.
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