Damn those pesky kids - if they hadn't been scurrilously encouraged to

[Burney]

Lot's there to reply to Ash.

Not sure I accept your differentiating between every vote counting in a Referendum and not in a GE. Ask any MP in a marginal constituency and they will say that every vote counts. If the Brexit vote had been 65-35 either way then the same principle applies. The losing voter's vote is largely meaningless. You'll forgive me if I ignore your football match analogy.

You have very kindly outlined what your understanding of what voting 'leave' meant. I have no doubt that many agree with that point of view. But I also have no doubt that there are people who voted leave who thought differently. I may have phrased it poorly when I said no one really understood what leave meant. It would have been better to say it meant different things to different people.

I completely accept that it is irrelevant why people may have voted the way they did and whatever the reason does not make their vote less valid. I was saying that some referenda, and indeed elections are decided by what might be described as protest votes.

If Remain had won surely none of this debate would be happening. If it had been a narrow victory it would have been hailed by Europe as a resounding victory for the 'European Project' but people like Farage (if not the man himself) would be arguing that you cannot ignore the votes of 48% or so that voted to leave and that these voters are being disenfranchised if their views are not at least taken on board such that the EU would require some serious introspection as to whether it needed reform etc. [I suspect incidentally that UKIP would have won more than 1.8% of the vote in the recent GE too.]

My point regarding the DUP was that it was them who will cause Brexit to be as 'soft' as it now appears may be the case. This is just an accident of the numbers not because the DUP or the Tories have any particular political affinity. [I accept that official name of the Tories may contain the word Unionist in some shape but if they even had any even tenuous link with any party in the North it was with the UUP who have now been obliterated. I may remind you that it was the Rev Ian Paisley who established the DUP in NI only in the 1960s and they have probably never really seen eye to eye with the Tories politically].

Fun Fact: Rev Ian Paisley is an anagram for "VILE IRA PANSY"

I'm always mystified by this assertion that people who voted Leave didn't know what Leave meant. It's always said as if to suggest Remain voters knew exactly what Remain meant - when they knew no such thing.
Most Remain voters feared change and on the whole preferred the status quo. In fact, they'd have got a reinvigorated EU glorying in their endorsement and treating it as a mandate to drive through ever closer Union and the gradual drift of more and more powers to Brussels. That is not what most Remain voters wanted, but that's what they'd have got.
They also would have seen the question of a referendum on membership kicked into the long grass for another generation, with the matter being seen as settled. We had one chance to stop that happening and thankfully, we took it.

[Lar d'Arse]

I'm always mystified by this assertion that people who voted Leave didn't know what Leave meant. It's always said as if to suggest Remain voters knew exactly what Remain meant - when they knew no such thing.
Most Remain voters feared change and on the whole preferred the status quo. In fact, they'd have got a reinvigorated EU glorying in their endorsement and treating it as a mandate to drive through ever closer Union and the gradual drift of more and more powers to Brussels. That is not what most Remain voters wanted, but that's what they'd have got.
They also would have seen the question of a referendum on membership kicked into the long grass for another generation, with the matter being seen as settled. We had one chance to stop that happening and thankfully, we took it.

Do you even know what 'leave' means today? I clarified that what I should have said was that 'leave' meant different things to different people. I still believe that. If it was clear before the vote why is there even any debate about what it should mean now?

I accept what you say would have happened had remain won and said as much.

[World's End Stella]

I'm always mystified by this assertion that people who voted Leave didn't know what Leave meant. It's always said as if to suggest Remain voters knew exactly what Remain meant - when they knew no such thing.
Most Remain voters feared change and on the whole preferred the status quo. In fact, they'd have got a reinvigorated EU glorying in their endorsement and treating it as a mandate to drive through ever closer Union and the gradual drift of more and more powers to Brussels. That is not what most Remain voters wanted, but that's what they'd have got.
They also would have seen the question of a referendum on membership kicked into the long grass for another generation, with the matter being seen as settled. We had one chance to stop that happening and thankfully, we took it.

It's disingenuous to suggest that there were as many unknowns with Remain as there were and are with Leave.

There are far more unknowns with Leave, hence the panic amongst Leave voters about what a soft Brexit might really be.

[World's End Stella]

And this is nonsense, Burney. You have no idea at all whether anything like this would have happened.

'In fact, they'd have got a reinvigorated EU glorying in their endorsement and treating it as a mandate to drive through ever closer Union and the gradual drift of more and more powers to Brussels. That is not what most Remain voters wanted, but that's what they'd have got. '

[redgunamo]

And this is nonsense, Burney. You have no idea at all whether anything like this would have happened.

'In fact, they'd have got a reinvigorated EU glorying in their endorsement and treating it as a mandate to drive through ever closer Union and the gradual drift of more and more powers to Brussels. That is not what most Remain voters wanted, but that's what they'd have got. '

No, he's quite right, imo. We know their sort, and we know what they're like. With the eurotrash it's always the same; they don't like us and we don't trust them.