Calling someone a racist because they had an opinion that may have nothing to do with racism (my leave vote was based on centralising of power into undemocratic institutions and the inherent structural flaw in the EU system that deliberately prevents power flowing back to nations) is scapegoating, simple as that.

I don't think of remainers are starry-eyed dolts because they don't see my point of view, I just dislike the clique of remainers that snipe at leavers as a group. I'm fine with pointing out a clear racist on a youtube clip - they are horrible individuals - but assuming all leavers are like that is naive at best, and deliberately dehumanising to others at worst.

I think extremely highly of remainers that accept the vote, even though it didn't go their way - they are true democrats in spirit - but a hardcore subset of remainers are a bit embarrassing in their rampant hatred of people that didn't agree with them who fairly and rightly exercised their democratic vote.

No, I was criticising the assumption all leavers == racists, so it's okay to hate all leavers.

The equation is correct, and it is indeed OK to hate leavers, as you will unfortunately find out when you people have destroyed the economy and everyone is looking for someone to blame.

^^

Solid example of my point about demonisation.

It isn't all, it is about 80%-90%.

There are valid arguments that can be made against the EU. They weren't made.
It wasn't like you people weren't given a chance-you were given a huge platform and national attention, you couldn't construct anything even vaguely lucid.

The complete absence of an alternative vision, and subsequent rise in hate crime validated the view you are a bunch of sub-literate xenophobes.

Who said all leavers are racist? I don't think for a minute that you are, for instance, and I doubt anyone said it here about all leave voters. But to deny that it was a huge factor (in a close vote) is hugely obtuse. Are you seriously not aware of the racist filth constantly spewed out by the gutter press in the lead up to the vote? Plenty of people get their views from these papers.

As I say, you didn't vote out of racism (instead, you seem to have looked at the way that power works in the EU and concluded that the UK, with the House of Lords etc, is more democratic). Fair enough, we can all suffer the consequences and you can feel better about things.

It depends what you mean by "accept".

If you mean activating article 50, yeah, you have to accept that. There was a democratic mandate for it.

What, however, I don't accept is that in the future we might rejoin. As it were possible to campaign for leave when were in, it will be possible to campaign to rejoin if we leave.

A suitable interval of time has to elapse, but particulary if Britain suffers outside and there is a public mood for it, we might be talking about less than a decade.

No, I thought that was completely valid.

I would argue precisely the reverse. Leavers were mostly thick-as-pig**** xenophobes. Remainers were mostly patronizing middle-class wankers who liked all the cheap labour and low prices and paid lip service to multiculturalism. Almost everyone taking a strong position was utterly loathsome.

and if there is another referendum once we've left, and we rejoin, fine by me. I doubt there will be an EU to rejoin though - or if there is, hopefully it's morphed into something much more significantly democratic and representative of voter's needs and much less about its specific ideals that seems more and more divorced from the requirements of ordinary people.

What exactly is the problem you are talking about? The 23 million Syrians or the circa million people Merkel invited to Europe? If you mean the second group, then that's an exclusively German problem. I would say though that someone who is brutal enough to make a condition of asylum in Germany a willingness to break the laws and fund the underworld of every country on the way from Turkey to Germany will get the type of immigrants it deserves.

We should obviously do all we can for people in trouble rather than prioritise a specific group that travels to our front door.

About solutions proposed here - well obviously there are different politicians with different ideas. Keeping to the Dublin convention is an important part of the solution but Merkel's first action was to rip up the existing EU agreements about this. Others suggest off-shore processing - e.g. in North Africa, so people have no incentive to make the dangerous sea journey, they could go from e.g. Eritrea to the offshore location to submit their application. Again, an asylum system based on willingness to complete physical trials such as the small boat journeys is pretty brutal.

But in terms of the German-invited refugees - it's purely an internal problem for Germany and the attempts to force it onto other countries spreads the view those countries have no say in what happens in the EU.

So essentially you say there has been no change?

Yes, the rise (or re-rise) of Orban can be dated back to the former communists imploding after the Balaton speech, though the left were still the second largest party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%90sz%C3%B6d_speech

What has changed over the last in Hungary is that the second largest party is now the extreme right Jobbik party - whereas Orban was much more moderate (e.g. Fidesz sit with CDU in the European parliament whereas Jobbik would certainly never be allowed)

In the first round of the 2015 presidential election the Law and Justice candidate beat the PO candidate by less than 1% - in the parliamentary election later that year the gap was more than 13%.

Of particular note in 2016 election would be
Slovak Nationalist Party (nationalists) - up from 4.55% to 8.64%
Our Slovakia (fascists) - new party scoring 8.04%
SDKU (EPP member, provided national PMs from 1998-2006 and 2010-2012, only party to oppose building anti-migrant fence) scored 0.27% and left parliament.

SPD up to 7% in the polls for this year's election. Certainly the precedent from Slovakia is that will be a wild underestimate.

Presumably more than 70 years, given the AfD's polling numbers in Germany itself.

Yes, but the fire was going out. We'd finally got the SNS out of parliament altogether in 2012. Merkel has reversed the direction of travel.

I take it that you think the UK is more democratic...plenty don't agree with this, but it's perception that matters when you have a referendum.

I don't know what you mean by strong position - if you mean those that think it's clearly better to remain or leave then it makes no sense (unless you hate everyone, which is fine I guess). If you mean those that label the other 50% very strongly then that may be different.

I dislike this conversation about which votes should count more, but we certainly say older people would be more "informed" about what life was like in the UK prior to 1973, 1992 or 2004.

There's obviously a wide range of voters on both sides, but I'm not sure the stereotypical leavers were simply not considering economics. They might express it in different words but they seem to talk a lot about demand and supply for housing, job skills etc. Now the elite remain voters may have counter-arguments about why the laws of economic gravity were suspended, but that's not to say the stereotypical leavers weren't thinking about economics.

I'd say the big thing the poll reveals is the divide between a preference for theoretical book learning and experience-based real world learning.

nobody annoys me more than people that talk about laws of economic and then completely ignore that immigrants themselves will be both supply and demand, competition and complementarity. you're the worst

No its not a German problem. The situation in Greece was a catastrophy. The EU couldnt find a solution and most people just found it very easy to point at the current rules that the countries where the immigrants entered first have to deal with them. That fully ignores that Greece wasn't and isnt capable of that. Talking about off shore processing is laughable when at the time lots of immigrants and refugees were already in the EU. It might be fine for Eastern Europe and lots of other peoples in the West as well to let them rot in these hell holes after quite few countries helped destabilizing their home countries but for some people its not. For me its not about culture, religion or other stuff. These people mostly have suffered a lot. There are a lot of reasons not just war. But if we think we can deny them a reasonable living forever then we better start building an Atlantic Wall on every coast of the Mediterranean Sea and start sinking the ships.

This is like an economic astrology reading 😀.

Im interested now, are you able to explain your theory more clearly?

Over 30% of the population now goes to University and with the introduction of things such as David Beckham degrees it's laughable to suggest all these people are intelligent.

If the figure reaches 100% would you then say everyone is an intellectual?

No of course not and was something I was going to raise myself. Lots of older people with no degree much smarter than today's degree holding baristas given the lower standards.

The reason I bring degree holders into it is because that seems to = intelligence according to most articles breaking down the voting demographics

There is a very clear correlation between holding a degree and intelligence levels, and it is verifiable (at least in the sense that people do or do not hold a degree). Thus, it is a natural factor to analyse - much as age/gender etc is (ie things people can put in a box on a form).

I do, apart from that laughable chamber The Lords. That needs binning, the sooner the better. If it was this chamber that determined what laws the House of Commons could vote on, then UK democracy would be about the same as EU "democracy" (yeah, they'd not be quite equivalent, but it'd be about the same low level)

The EU having a non-democratic element that actually proposes the laws to be voted on is utterly ridiculous to me.

i dont have a theory. immigrant labour is supply. immigrant consumption is demand. immigrant labour is to some degree competition for other workers and to some degree complementary to other workers.

the previous guy wanted to ignore everything other than the supply/competition part and then claim that others, like those that find immigration doesnt reduce wages, are suspending "the laws of economic gravity". they're not. and it's especially nonsense because ricardo on comparative advantage is the literally first thing they teach you about economics.

I voted remain because I thought leaving would be a silly idea. It still might be.

I feel like the world in Feb 2017 looks somewhat different from the world in June 2016 though, and that the EU somehow looks like it is struggling.

I cannot see why Italy would want to say in the Euro, and that has the biggest potential to shift to the far right.

I also think France might surprise people, depending on how much LePen can exploit the recent attacks.

So I'm left in the odd position now, as a remain voter, sort of wishing the EU to fail. In that circumstance Brexit would be the correct move for all of the wrong reasons. Britain did this before in the 1830s. We had some crucial reforms, the rest of Europe had bloody revolutions. That could be Brexit.

When I see footage from the EU chambers, it does feel like Tusk and co are pretty out of touch. They are carrying on, seemingly, as if the world was still pre-June 2016 or pre-November 2016 even.

All of these things make me slightly more optimistic than I was in the direct aftermath of the result, which is the most angry I've ever been in my life.

Most economists that expressed a view seemed to think that the long term future of the EU is hard to predict, but even if it does break up some way down the line there isn't a benefit from leaving now. It also means having to watch T May suck up to a volatile racist nutjob across the pond.

It's a pretty tricky spot for May, because you know he's so narcisistic that he'd never forgive any perceived slight. And, frankly, we need the deal more than they do.

I have heard from harder Brexiteer types about creating that pseudo-commonwealth zone with Canada, Australia, India, and other former British colonies.

But it does make me wonder what *exactly* is being bought and sold in these deals.

What does Britain really sell apart from financial services and weapons?

I'm sympathetic to refugees but I think the German position was irresponsible. You can't say "come to Germany" and expect them to fly there.

Merkel really should have thought this through. The daily movements of refugees at various random countries appearing on the news fundamentally damaged the cause of free movement and asylum.

Plus: Merkel's motives were cynical. She needed a youth labour force to deal with the coming demographic crisis.