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Eight Reasons Brexit Won - My Take
This list of 8 was originally published on the BBC site. Click through if you want to see what they have to say. Read on if you want to read what I have to say.
Brexit economic warnings backfire
Of course they did - the arguments were being made by people that the ‘man in the street’ simply do not trust.
- because the ‘experts’ tend to talk amongst themselves and in terms that people on the street have a hard time comprehending.
- because the ‘experts’ usually ignore the ‘man in the street’ and only talk to them when they are ‘needed’.
- because the ‘experts’ are all part of the decisions that have been made to date - which hasn’t worked out too well for ‘the man in the street’ - so a vote against them might make things better.
£350m NHS claim gets traction
Yes it did. And it was debunked. By many people. Many times. Continually. But nobody stopped Boris trundling round the country in his big red bus and declaring it to be true.
bigredbus
The comparison to ‘The Donald’ is clear, which roughly translates as the establishment ( I hate the word ‘elites’ - they are not - they are just people who benefit form maintaining the status quo) know the claim to be wrong and people will just see through it and vote accordingly.
Farage makes immigration the defining issue
From where I sit, Farage was but one of a raft of ‘establishment’ people for Brexit, with many other cases being made. The media picked up on the lowest common denominator and ran with it. And they continue to do so. For example, Buzzfeed did an excellent post on newspaper front pages from around the world. I did a quick tally on who was featured on the front page
- Cameron - 2
- Voters / People / Graphics - 10
- Obama - 1
- Farage - 5
- Boris - 1
BTW - interesting to note that only Boris gets first name recognition - it’s so strong that he might just do a ‘Prince’, ‘Madonna’, ’Bjork’, ‘Beyoncé’ or ‘Cher’ ( I think that covers off all possible generational debate).
It is clear that Nigel Farage was positioned as the driver last Friday.
Public stop listening to PM
Stopped listening? If I might ‘channel Alice’ for a moment … how can you stop if you never started?
Labour fail to connect with voters
… goodness - not even Gordon Brown and Sadiq Khan could get their message across. Are you kidding me ?
Gordon Brown has clearly demonstrated two things;
- He is very clever. Knows his stuff. Is academically brilliant and we need more people like him contributing to running the world .
- And the key word is contributing. He has demonstrated over and over again that he has the personality of a paper clip which is not what you need when attempting to get your message across. (See my piece on Bizcatlyst last week). Sorry - nobody is going to listen to him.
(And where was Tony Bliar (sic)? Oh right. Even less people listen to him these days - thank god.)
And Sadiq Kahn? My god how short the media’s memory is … Sadiq won his election on May 5th of this year - until then, Zac Goldsmith, with overwhelming support of the media, had essentially positioned him as a terrorist - and now on a dime we want the public to spin round and listen to him - and act on his recommendations?
Big beasts - Boris Johnson and Michael Gove
Good strategy (if potentially self serving their personal ambitions) behind the ‘double act’ and good communicators - say what you like about Boris - he engages.
Older voters flock to polls
… pesky old farts … but this was so much about the future - where the HELL were the youth? Those that turned out overwhelmingly voted for remain. There just weren’t enough of them.
Europe always slightly alien
Slightly? Totally .… but not for why you might think. I’m getting there, because this out of all of the 8 reasons is the one that starts to touch on the issue I think is core.
A more complete analysis can be found here.
Meanwhile - think about this.
results
If just 634,751 people (about 1% of the UK’s population) had voted to stay not go - the UK would not be leaving the EU. Now maybe there’s a reason why the youth that didn’t vote should have?