Originally Posted by Andrew1954:
“It has been divided for years. People have only just realised. As long as the status quo held sway, the growing undercurrent of discontent on so many levels was easily ignored.
But the fact that over half of the electorate voted against the status quo, despite the massive barrage of establishment propaganda day after day leading up to the referendum, reminds us just how Eurosceptic this country is. I suspect the the number voting Brexit would have been much higher had many voters not been frightened into voting remain by the chorus of gloom and doom from the remain camp.”
It isn't any sort of 'fact' that
half the electorate voted to leave. It is true that more than
half of those who voted, voted to leave. Subtle difference but if you claim the remain camp indulged in propaganda, then by the very first line of your second paragraph, you're hoist with your own petard.
As for Remain propaganda, all we have to do is point at the Leave claim that the EU was costing Britain £350 million a week, when everybody knew that we were getting a vast amount of that back in rebates, and more besides in subsidies to farming. They then plastered all over their campaign bus that this £350m was the amount that would be pumped back into the NHS, when they knew full well that was a lie.
You can't complain that Remain called Leave voters uneducated morons when they willingly and enthusiastically bought into the £350m a week shtick and clung to it, desperately hoping.... wishing.... PRAYING.... that it might just be true. Dumb is as dumb does.
I said, some posts back, that this issue has divided the country like nothing before it. It's true that there was discontent before the Referendum, but that is so in any democracy. There are always people who are unhappy about something. There is always disillusion when this group or that group don't get their way on any given issue. But those situations are the swings and roundabouts of life. Some things you win and some you lose and if letting gay people get married offends your religious beliefs, or benefit claimants rub you up the wrong way because they fiddle the system while you go out to work and pay your taxes, then that sort of "discontent" is endemic in any democracy anywhere in the world.
Parliamentary democracy isn't perfect, but it's a bloody sight better than a lot of people in the world have got. We lived in a stable, economically sound, fair minded, tolerant and accepting society which I believe is significantly less so today than it was before.