Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
Thinking there should be less migration into the country doesn't automatically make you a UKIP voter, as most people are not single issue voters.



And this? This is the most Randblade sentence ever to Randblade.

For the foreigners following along: there were two Leave campaign organisations. 'Vote Leave' and 'Leave.eu', and at the start of the campaign they was a sort of fight between them to see who would be given the status of official campaign organisation for the leave side.

Vote Leave was the semi-respectable one with mainstream Tories, Euroskeptic Labour people and so on. Leave.eu was the racist one and had Nigel Farage in it. Vote Leave ended up being given the status of official campaign.

But all that really meant was that they got some public money (about £7 million) and access to the electoral register for purposes of, e.g. mailshots. Leave.eu continued to operate throughout the campaign much as they would have had they got the nod instead of Vote Leave, i.e they spent about 90% of their time talking about immigration and doing shit like this whilst, with their bare faces hanging out, accusing Remain of scaremongering.

I have no information on which side did more in terms of spending money, billboards, canvassing etc. and as far as I know that information does not exist. But make no mistake: leave.eu had a substantial presence throughout the entire campaign, they were getting media attention right the way through and their people were being interviewed on major outlets. They were not some fringe. They were a major part of the Leave effort.

The 'official' status of the Vote Leave campaign (who avoided racism and mostly limited themselves to lying about the NHS and pretending trade deals with other major economies are quick, inevitable, easy and universally beneficial, though they did talk, in a far more measured way, about controlling immigration as well) is the fig leaf Randblade is trying to use to claim that anti-immigration feeling had nothing, nothing I tell you, to do with Brexit but, rather, it was born of some sort enlightened globalist impulse on the part of the British public.

It is, as I said, bollocks. That last part in particular is utter bollocks, no one in the general electorate gives a shit about free trade and globalism.

What actually happened was that people like Michael Gove and Boris Johnson chatted pie in the sky shit about these wonderful trade deals with places like Brazil that will probable never actually materialise because the real world is actually complicated and lie about the money they were going to give the NHS while affecting to be shocked, shocked I tell you, at leave.eu doing the dirty work of actually winning the referendum.

Because, as we know, the Tories are totally above using anti-immigrant feeling to their advantage. They would never do such a thing.
A good summary.