Thread by @gameoldgirl

Some random thoughts about democracy.
#EUref was the biggest exercise in democracy in our history. Nearly 35m turned out to vote.
17.4m of them voted to leave the EU.
16.1m voted to stay in.

1/

The 16m all voted for the same thing: to leave things as they are. They will certainly have had different reasons for thinking that way and ideas about the future. But everyone knew exactly what they were voting for and what would happen if they won.

2/

The 17.4m also voted for the same thing: to get out. And, like the Remainers, they will certainly have had different reasons for thinking that way.

3/

They may not have liked that we send £350m a week to the EU (even though we get some of that back in investment in projects here).
They may have wanted to see that money go instead to the NHS.

Or be used to fill in potholes.

4/

They may have wanted to stop so many foreigners coming into our country.
/6

They may have thought a points-based immigration system would be better than the EU’s free movement.
/7

They may have been led to believe that all new jobs created in this country are snapped up by immigrants.
/8

They aren’t, but statistically illiterate newspapers and campaigners can’t grasp why two different sets of numbers can’t be turned into a simple sum.
/9

They may have been worried that millions of people from Turkey might come and live here.
/10

Or that refugees from Africa would have the right to move here. Even though the UK is not part of the Schengen zone.
/11

Or they may have wanted to defend the rights of refugees being sent back to Africa from Greece.
/12

They may have wanted to continue to trade in a single market, but without further political integration.

/13

They may have wanted a relationship like the one that Norway has as a member of the single market. Perhaps with or preferably without the freedom of movement Norway’s arrangement involves.
Or they may have wanted to be like Switzerland.

They may have wanted to rejoin EFTA or the EEA.
Or they may have wanted a bespoke deal unlike any arrangement with any other country
/15

They might have thought we’d be able to do better trading deals with countries that buy most of our goods
/16

(EU countries buy more than £166bn of goods and services from us each year; our biggest single customer is the US at £49bn, followed by Germany, £37bn, France £27bn and The Netherlands £21bn)
/17

They may have wanted to be free of the European Court of Justice.
They may have wanted to restore sovereignty to Parliament so that our laws were no longer made by “unelected faceless bureaucrats in Brussels”.
/18

They may have thought they would be better off
/19

and that the weekly shopping bill would shrink.
/20

They may have thought their jobs would be more secure, that their wages would go up if low-skill European workers did not flood the market, driving pay rates down.
/21

They may have thought their jobs would be more secure, that their wages would go up if low-skill European workers did not flood the market, driving pay rates down.
/22

They may even have thought it would provide an opportunity for the Left to shaft the Conservatives. This is how the (rather prescient) #Lexit campaign put it.

/23

They may have wanted to protect fishing grounds or to be free of the Common Agricultural Policy.
/24

They may have been worried that the British army was about to be disbanded and be concerned about European military ambitions.

/25

All of these things were put on the table by Leave campaigners from all shades of the conventional political spectrum. So many different promises were made; so many visions. They weren’t all lies. But they certainly weren’t all possible or even compatible.

/26

When people now say “I know what I voted for”, they speak the truth. The trouble is, they didn’t all vote for the same thing. And some have since said that they voted for things that even the most cavalier Brexiteers never promised.
/27

Nobody could know what would happen. But Mr Cameron had promised that whatever the country decided on that single in-out question would come to pass.
Having lost, he promptly buggered off (as #lexit predicted), leaving the door to No 10 open for Theresa May.
/28

She helpfully conflated all those conflicting visions into one solution: "Brexit means Brexit". /29

And so we have a new definition of democracy: 16m voting for the same thing are trumped by 17m voting for at least a dozen different things.
/30

And they are in turn trumped by one woman and her interpretation of something she apparently didn’t want in the first place.
/31

Nobody likes it. But it would be “undemocratic” to think – or vote – again.

Have a good evening.
/ends