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People's Vote Campaign: What Went Wrong?

Opposition fail to unite shock. Agreed pointless thread. Future depends on success of Brexit - proving a negative was always a huge problem. Blind optimisim v "negativity" which will not be thanked for being realistic. Handing Johnson an election on his terms was not only a disaster for PV.
 
Our elected representatives made a complete and utter horlicks of it, unable to stop or even minimise the damage leaving will do.

As Bob says, anything now is a waste of good fresh air, resources and time. Best we put our efforts into ensuring the s**t storm that comes does as little hurt to us or our loved ones.
 
It was a stupid idea to try to overturn the result of a democratic vote, perhaps?
Ignore the YouGov poll, in 2016 we had the referendum. Leave won.
In 2017, we had a General Election. Labour and Conservative stood with the promise of actioning the result of the referendum, i.e. leaving the EU
In May 2019, we had the EU election, at which the Brexit Party became the single biggest party in the EU Parliament.
In December 2019, Boris Johnson won the General Election by a landslide by, among other things, promising to get Brexit done.

That is no less than four polls which count overwhelmingly in favour of leaving the corrupt, undemocratic, wasteful EU. The majority of the UK quite sensibly don't want it.

The second referendum idea was daft and redolent of EU thinking - "If the proletariat don't vote the way we want, let's keep having votes until they vote what we consider is the 'right' way, because after all we think they are stupid".
 
droodzilla said:
What's happening with People's Vote now anyway? Has it simply given up?
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We lost, the popularist far-right won. They will inevitably fail, as ethnic nationalism, isolationism and protectionism always does, so all those of us who stood up to these ugly forces can hope to do now is to be ready to rebuild the country afterwards. That means Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru etc all working to put an intelligent and highly coherent argument across. Logically this argument must also spell the death of FPTP as Labour are highly unlikely to ever win a parliamentary majority now Scotland is lost to them. The future therefore is a progressive left coalition. We have four or five years to get some somewhat disparate ducks in order.
 
Lack of political leadership and always hamstrung by the original referendum result. As the polling continues to show, it's roughly a 50/50 split, so it could have gone either way. Doris (Dom + Boris) were simply better organised and more effective.
 
Labour need to reflect on their many errors, and make some big changes.

Labour’s Remain critics on the other hand played an absolute blinder and have nothing to learn whatsoever. Their strategy of focusing relentlessly on the one force capable of stopping or softening Brexit, rather than those who planned and executed it, has been utterly vindicated. Everyone involved deserves to keep their job and we should continue listening to their wise pronouncements on what everyone is getting wrong and how unexpectedly racist and vindictive the Conservatives are turning out to be.
 
Other problems:

1. Stupid name. Every vote involves people, unless we have started to give dogs the vote.
2. Lack of clarity on what the question would be.
 
Seanm said:
Labour need to reflect on their many errors, and make some big changes.

Labour’s Remain critics on the other hand played an absolute blinder and have nothing to learn whatsoever. Their strategy of focusing relentlessly on the one force capable of stopping or softening Brexit, rather than those who planned and executed it, has been utterly vindicated. Everyone involved deserves to keep their job and we should continue listening to their wise pronouncements on what everyone is getting wrong and how unexpectedly racist and vindictive the Conservatives are turning out to be.
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Labour's Remain critics - otherwise known as the majority of their support, pointed out that not having a position even their own 'deal' would be perceived as a lack of leadership. Please explain how that went well?
 
SteveS1 said:
Labour's Remain critics - otherwise known as the majority of their support, pointed out that not having a position even their own 'deal' would be perceived as a lack of leadership. Please explain how that went well?
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The stopped clock speaks.
 
Seanm said:
The stopped clock speaks.
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Well being right about Labour strategy has been in short supply. So it didn't go well then. Neither did going for the election without even consulting the shadow cabinet, but hey.
 
Tories outmanoeuvred UKIP and made it simple - want Brexit? Vote Tory. It cut across party lines.

Other side of the debate was divided and confusing, and collided head first with party lines, causing disarray. PV rallies didn’t know if they were just for a PV, anti-Tory, pro-Labour or what (if that sounds daft, trust me, I was there). Labour as a movement (ie not just the leadership/official policy, but the various elements of the broad church, including the centrists) was unsure what to do, so despite big figures working with PV (McDonnell, Starmer and Abbott IIRC spoke at the 2nd major march), they couldn’t properly join up. And the Lib Dems eventually came to the view that it was worth letting Brexit through (whilst loudly disagreeing with it) and having a Tory govt in order to ensure Corbyn didn’t win.

Simple vs messy. Simple wins every time.
 
droodzilla said:
People's Vote Campaign: What Went Wrong?
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Despite having the numbers the various parties failed to cooperate effectively as an opposition. They placed far more emphasis on internal party considerations than they did in opposing the hard right. LibDem and SNP agreeing to an election was mentioned above. Labour insisting on Corbyn as temporary leader when support was required by significant numbers of Conservative MPs is another. This failure of MPs do the job they have been paid to do and support the best interests of their constituents (I am pretty sure only a handful of MPs genuinely believe their constituents will be better off outside the EU) is the heart of the problem. MPs give too much weight to their parties, political careers, external interests,... and too little to the best interests of those they are paid to represent.

The contrast with the brexit hard right is striking: the brexit party was fully prepared to cooperate effectively and not stand against conservative MPs. The progressive parties were not prepared to cooperate to this level and so as a group they failed despite having the numbers to win if they had wanted.
 
Rcook said:
It was a stupid idea to try to overturn the result of a democratic vote, perhaps?
Ignore the YouGov poll, in 2016 we had the referendum. Leave won.
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Yes. 52% versus 48%.

Rcook said:
In 2017, we had a General Election. Labour and Conservative stood with the promise of actioning the result of the referendum, i.e. leaving the EU
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Yes. Absolutely resounding victory for leave parties at this point, making it very hard for Labour to backtrack. Possibly, in retrospect, they were a bit too enthusiastic at this point.

Rcook said:
In May 2019, we had the EU election, at which the Brexit Party became the single biggest party in the EU Parliament.
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Yes. Irony. However, Brexit + Tory vote was under 40%.

Rcook said:
In December 2019, Boris Johnson won the General Election by a landslide by, among other things, promising to get Brexit done.
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A landslide of seats, which is how we do it, of course. But in percentage terms, Brexit + Tory party vote was still under 50%.

Rcook said:
That is no less than four polls which count overwhelmingly in favour of leaving the corrupt, undemocratic, wasteful EU. The majority of the UK quite sensibly don't want it.
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No. Except for the 2017 result, the rest show either a very narrow victory for leave or something even less conclusive. I don't think we can sensibly put post-2017 Labour in the Leave or Remain camps, as their position was far too indistinct.

Rcook said:
The second referendum idea was daft and redolent of EU thinking - "If the proletariat don't vote the way we want, let's keep having votes until they vote what we consider is the 'right' way, because after all we think they are stupid".
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I would agree that the EU have that nasty habit. In the UK, we have other nasty habits.

Kind regards

- Garry
 
Partially due to having a very weak and inadequate opposition party and the way Labour are going with a new leader it doesn't like like things will change much. We are stuck with a Conservative government and leader that are too similar to Trump and his cronies. As far as Brexit goes, we are out and just wait for the penny to drop when next January we have concluded with a no deal trade deal. It's not all bad as long as the politicians can be trusted to do what's best for the country and not their own financial personal gain..
 
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