Thread by @nicktolhurst

1/ a short thread on “my family are nice & voted Brexit”.

“.....Or what we remainers failed to understand by the Leave vote...”

2/ remainers talk about the racist or gammon leave voter. But a minority of voters are racist & while you do see angry middle aged men on @bbcquestiontime they’re a small subset.

So my leave voting family - they are nice - why did they vote brexit?

The answer may surprise you..

3/ talking with family in depth on #brexit these last few weeks they didn’t mention any new law making powers, nor that much on the supposed £350m a week we’ll get back - they never thought they’d see much of it. Even immigration wasn’t really as important topic as some assume...

4/ in fact 1 comment came up a lot: “we voted #brexit as we didn’t think it would change that much”.
They thought it was worth a shot, but even if the politicians didn’t deliver a great brexit (& most brits distrust politicians) they didn’t think the consequences wld be serious..

5/ so perhaps we’ve got brexit all wrong on twitter.

Most people in real life didn’t hear much of “project fear”, saw politicians of stature on all parties back both sides, saw BBC “balance”..& thought simply “why not give it a shot - what’s the worse that can happen?”

& so....

6/ As we try & convince voters to switch to remain or a #peoplesvote perhaps we should lay off racist or gammon tropes & concentrate on reaching the people who’s only political experience is seeing Boris or Dan Hannan on TV & thinking “he seems to know what he’s saying”....

7/ in other words the real #brexit debate starts now. The one that happened before referendum was one that barely touched on the complexity & consequences of leaving the EU for 70% of the electorate.

You know - the ones not on twittter that we argue/agree with everyday.

/Ends