Quote:
Originally Posted by Thor
You guys in Canada not see the ADs and propaganda by the leave campaign? Their whole game was lies and fear based on immigration and nationalism.
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Of course that's part of it. But there are reasons besides bigotry to want to leave the EU. There's a dislike of unaccountable bureaucracies. There are reasons to question the merit of funding welfare states in Greece and other poor EU countries when the poor in Britain live in stagnation and despair. There's a simple distrust of centralized government, especially when it's centralized far away.
Then there's the notion of giving a big FU to the political establishment. When people feel they have nothing to lose, they'll cheerfully tear down the foundations of the status quo. A lot of people in the UK feel they have nothing to lose.
The elites in the West need to figure out how to engage the losers and bring them onside to the new economy. Telling them to keep their dumb racist mouths shut is not working.
Again, read the articles by John Harris I linked to up thread. He has actually been traveling around the UK for the last few months, especially the economically depressed regions. The world looks entirely different in those places than it looks in London.