The EU is faulty at the core, the eurozone was deigned badly without fiscal control for invidiual nations.

The EU can survive if the eurozone is fixed. If and when they fix the eurozone and its fiscal controls which are non existant at the moment and handicap the southern states.

The behaviour of the EU towards Greece was dispicable and it highlights the flaws in the erozone design.

Some people educated or not see that it is a faulty union destined to fail without rapid reform of its currency. Its needs fiscal transfer between the succesful and unsuccesful nations, i.e. the southern countries who now live with a currency that is so overvalued for them are unable to compete, while the northern countries with their undervalued euro are having the time of their lives.

Others see it as the tool that has prevented war in europe and are able to overlook its shortcomings.

And some have been brainwashed by the EU.

I am Welsh and people state that "how can the welsh vote for brexit". When simply the EU bribing South Wales isnt a good reason to stay in.

Brexit voting, degree holding, business owning, left small welsh hometown at 18. Lived in multiculturtal Birmingham and Bristol for the last 20 years before recently moving to Cardiff.. I should be a steroetypical remain voter based on everything i read yet my mind was clear well before the campaigning started.

Where did you get the breakdown of Brexit vote by age/education /profession?

It's an analogy, not a parallel. By suggesting that Greece defaults without their having responsibility for their debts you put me in mind of Sir Philip Green

You are drawing a parallel - a comparison - but no mind.

But you are doing it again when referring to Green. The Greeks aren't the "baddies" here, it's the Troika who are the usurers and imposers of austerity.

Business as usual then! . As a nation we've never been what you might call enthusiasts of the EU project have we?

Wrong.

'A spokesman for the Cameron government told EurActiv UK: “Our position is crystal clear that defence is a national, not an EU responsibility and that there is no prospect of that position changing and no prospect of a European army.”'

https://www.euractiv.com/section/glo...european-army/

You are showing why referenda are a bad idea.

We are already there. You given up something for something we already have.

I didn't. But that isn't the point of my question, which was why did those people who are educated, informed, intelligent, professional - those who don't fit into the stereotypical class of the populous that Remainers like to label those who voted Brexit - vote for leave? Actually mine was a rhetorical question. Simply they were persuaded by the intellectual arguments to leave. My point in asking it was to question the paradigm used to rationalise our times which says that those who voted the "wrong way" were just too stupid, too ignorant, too ill informed, too poor, too old, too racist, too left behind by globalisation and so on. It's a trite explanation which probably makes Remainers feel better, but it doesn't necessarily explain adequately what is really going on.

The only thing we know for certain is the result. There were more votes for leave. Anything else is supposition and guesswork.

Can you quantify what proportion of the Leave vote these people represented?


Who was presenting these "intellectual arguments" to leave? Certainly it wasn't Farage or Gove both of whom ran an anti-intellectual campaign.


So why did the stupid, ignorant and racist overwhelmingly vote to leave?

Green is indeed a parallel for your "not my problem guv" attitude, but the debt was an analogy.

The Greeks are the baddies, they hired Goldman Sachs to lie about their assets in order to join the Euro and have spent many years spending money they didn't have.

A "parallel" with private debt would not be valid in that you can argue that banks should be the overwhelmingly responsible party out of lender and borrower when a private individual is involved, often absolving the private individual of much of their responsibility of paying debt back they should not have been encouraged or allowed to borrow in the first place.

The relationship between a sovereign state and banks is very different. You can argue that the banks price in default but that still doesn't make it morally right to default.

And you still have the practical matter of who will lend you the money the month after default that you need to pay for your public services.

Indeed. There were probably as many reasons people voted either way as there were voters.

But the established explanation for Brexit is gaining traction, irrespective of whether it's true or not, and indeed what the implications are even if there is some truth in it. What we do know is the reason it's being promulgated - it's an attempt to devalue and question the validity of the result.

It is debateable that the more knowledgeable voted for Brexit. While there is a correlation between age and voting leave, with the Brexit vote correlating with areas with high shares of people with no education. (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...ucated-old-an/)

By the way voting for Trump increased the older the voters were as well.


Generally and having spoken to those that did vote to leave (I am 52 and voted to remain). The general feeling was that the EU had become too prescriptive and was taking too much power to itself.

LostFool, to me, you're the one being ignorant! How can you know, for certain, how people voted? There was no breakdown of vote by intelligence level and racial prejudice.

Sounds like desperation to me, attempting to doubt the validity of a ballot which has a known and provable result by doubting the intelligence/racial intolerance of the voters, which can't be proven in any way.

Try speaking to people or looking at the psephological evidence. I can't be ignorant if I know words like "psephological"

Why would someone who is racist or xenophobic vote to remain in the EU?

It is most certainly the cause of Europe's problems and is institutionally corrupt. Its accounts have never been approved or signed off.

So are you suggesting 'good' people voted Remain and anyone voting Brexit are 'bad'? You're on a sticky wicket there.

Xenophobic and racist are just summary terms, they are meaningless.

But there has been. Only 9% of those areas where more than half the population had degrees voted to leave the EU.

For those in social groups DE ( semi-skilled or unskilled labour, those in casual labour and pensioners) 62% voted leave.

6% of areas with high numbers of DE voters voted remain. Leicester, Liverpool and Newham in London were statistical anomalies because they are big cities with a high number of young voters

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...ucated-old-an/

Both of the "official" campaigns were based on a right wing, non-intellectual narrative - the left wing case for leave was hardly ever mentioned.

Your final sentence adds nothing to any sort of reasonable discussion on the subject I'm afraid, as it merely lays bare your personal prejudice.

There's a breakdown here. I note the only source mentioned is a YouGov Exit Poll.

http://www.politico.eu/article/graph...final-results/

Theoretically it shouldn't be that difficult. There are poll figures per constituency and it is possible to get educational, age and gender breakdown for those.

All Canadians are subjects of the Queen...

You are confusing the old Greek establishment for the Greek people - the vast majority of whom, like any country that has austerity imposed on them, suffer for the crimes of their rich elite. Sound familiar?

As for morality in international finance - there isn't any.

Wow. The state education system is worse than I feared, paul!

But they've benefited too from the services the money paid for and paying few taxes, its not like their elite (that they voted for) siphoned all the money off.