I kind of feel like Remain did have a message to let behind Leavers that the EU, while highly imperfect, made things better than they would otherwise be and that leaving would make their problems worse rather than better. It was called "Project Fear".
And that's the issue here. All this stuff is basically gum-flapping and middle class masochism going "oh how we have failed those back row kids". Nah not really. It's very difficult to make a positive case for the EU, in the same way and for the same reason...
... that it's difficult to make an inspiring positive case for a sewage treatment works. The case for it is simply that it was a necessary job and things would be worse if it wasn't there. The remain campaign spectacularly failed to deliver that message...
... but that's largely because they were a bunch of untalented nepots with half an eye on party faction battles. The underlying concerns of Leavers weren't addressed because they couldn't be addressed without no longer being a remain campaign; a dislike of change and ...
... a wish to have less foreigners about are not the sort of things that Remain could or should have compromised with.
Frankly it's like a vaccination campaign. I do agree, in that context, that calling people stupid to their faces for not buying your product shouldn't be your only marketing strategy, but emphasizing the benefits to the patient is the method that works. You don't...
... sell vaccines by meeting the GOOP crowd halfway and saying that vaccines can be spiritual and holistic too. And the remain campaign ought to be a lot easier because the herd immunity level for brexit is 50% + 1 vote.
So I think Rob Ford and his guys identified a real problem, but their proposed solution doesn't look workable. Project fear was the right strategy (it usually works), but the referendum campaign executed it unusually badly.
