Really? The "side" points I made are all statistically factual, sourced, and directly related to the Brexit debate. How am I being unfair here?

I'm not allowed to discuss the attitudes of Brexit supporters and the tone of the Brexit debate on a thread dedicated to the topic of Brexit?

In my last post here, I concluded on the note that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was planning to put his unpopular Brexit deal up for a second parliamentary vote after it was defeated the first time in mid-October in an approach similar to the failed strategy of his predecessor. Here's an update:

The parliament refused to even vote on Johnson's Brexit deal a second time. In the meanwhile, the EU granted the UK a three-month extension of the Brexit deadline that would postpone the country's departure from the EU until January 31st. However, Johnson had been legally forced to request the extension, as his infamous three letters made very clear, and didn't actually want one, so it was widely believed that he wouldn't accept the extension offered by the EU, and instead that he would have the UK crash out of the EU catastrophically on Halloween, as he had always pledged to, even without a deal.

Following these developments, Johnson called for a new election to be held on December 12th. The curious thing about that was that, in the UK, calling an election suspends the parliament, and you'll notice that December 12th is obviously a much later date than October 31st. Therefore, the practical effect of calling an election under the aforementioned circumstances would have been to suspend the parliament a second time for the duration of the Brexit debate and process and then some. (As noted in my last post, Johnson had already tried to do exactly that before at the end of the summer, but the UK's Supreme Court ruled his previous move in that regard illegal and recalled the parliament.) Parliament called the essence of Johnson's cynical move and overwhelmingly voted against holding a new election. Finally, boxed into a corner, Johnson reluctantly agreed to the EU's three-month extension of the Brexit deadline before trying to call a new election again. Under these new circumstances, the parliament overwhelmingly agreed to hold a new election scheduled for December 12th, as said new parliament will now certainly be constituted well before the Brexit deadline rather than well after.

So that's where we are. THIS should be interesting! This new election will, for all intents and purposes, mainly function as a second vote on Brexit. Polling over the last month indicates that, as of this date anyway, the principal beneficiary of this election will be Jo Swinson's Liberal Democrats, who are expected to improve significantly on their 7% share of the vote in the 2017 election. Specifically, all polls conducted over the last month show the Liberal Democrats enjoying the support of between 15 and 21% of likely voters; a change in their fortunes that's likely owed to their taking up a hardline pro-remain stance under the new leadership of Jo Swinson. Their new votes are expected to come mainly at the expense of the current main opposition Labour Party, which has waffled a lot on the subject of Brexit under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who clearly favors a soft Brexit personally. Current polling suggests that Labour and the Liberal Democrats would emerge almost tied in the popular vote if the election were held today, so this could be kind of a disaster for Labour and a clear signal of the left's broad rejection of Brexit and of Jeremy Corbyn's non-leadership on this most defining issue of the day.

On a related note, I'd like to highlight something else in connection to the Brexit debate: since the Brexit vote in 2016, the United Kingdom's MPs have received an unprecedented volume of threatening messages in various forms (mainly online). I'd also like to highlight that these threats have been disproportionately directed at the nation's female MPs specifically, with the result that many of them have come to find the political climate too frightening and dangerous and have opted to step down from their posts of late in response. As you can see at the link, the five MPs receiving the largest volume of threatening and abusive messages since the 2017 election are all specifically women who oppose Brexit. The vitriol, in other words, is coming disproportionately from one side of the Brexit debate (supporters of Brexit) and it's being applied with a clear sex bias against women. It's worth remembering that these threats can be very, very real. Labour MP Jo Cox (also female), for example, was murdered in the lead-up to the 2016 Brexit vote for believing that the UK should remain in the EU, and there was a terrorist bombing outside the parliament building the following year.

Personally, I take particular exception to the volume of threats and intimidation that have been directed at Scottish National Party MP Joan Cherry, who is kind of a heroine of mine. According to a chart in the linked article, she has received the second-highest volume of threatening and abusive messages since the 2017 election. Joan Cherry has been perhaps best known for two developments this year: in the first half of the year, she invited Meghan Murphy to speak to the Scottish parliament about proposed reforms to the UK's Gender Recognition Act that a number of women's groups in the country oppose in a rare parliamentary defense of radical feminists. Scotland subsequently opted to stop consulting only transgender movement activists on the proposed reforms and added women's groups to their consultation process as well, and also put gender identity curricula in the Scottish school system on hold pending review. These were, and remain, unprecedented legal victories for gender critical women's groups on the issue. The other move Cherry has become (probably even more) famous for this year was her successful legal action against Boris Johnson's summer suspension of parliament.

It's also worth noting, I think, that the MP receiving the absolute largest volume of threatening and abusive messages from the start of the Brexit debate until now has been, by a wide margin, Diane Abbott, who was the UK's first black female lawmaker.

Just wanted to enter those points into this discussion.

They had the vote in the first place because the tories promised a vote on it as part of their election campaign. They promised a vote on it (assuming people would vote to stay so it wouldn't matter anyway) to try and ensure they got elected in the first place. It was then one of the rare examples of politicians actually following through with one of their campaign promises.

And not being in the EU wouldn't really be that much of a problem if A. the economy, laws and political structure of the country (especially relevant in Ireland) hadn't come to rely on the EU and B. they actually had a decent plan for leaving. Unsurprisingly when you remove something that your country has been depending on for a variety of different reasons and don't have anything at all to replace it, it is going to cause a whole lot of problems. Now if they had done the smart thing and sorted out a deal before setting a date to leave it would have easily worked out much better. They also could have not wasted so much time squabbling with themselves instead of actually trying to sort something out. I mean, they got the extension in March but talk about leaving and getting a deal didn't really start up again until September. WTF?

Maybe some Vgchartz Brits can help me b/c I'm completely baffled and confused here.. Two main things I'm confused about as a naive stupid American:

- why tf do you have a vote for Brexit in the first place if the establishment clearly doesn't want out of the EU and is seemingly doing just about everything in their power to keep Britain in the EU despite the majority voting to leave it? I mean it's been like 3 years now has it not? Shit or get off the pot. Why even take the vote? You just cause civil unrest IMO.

- Why is the EU seen as this sort of godlike power structure that you need to support your nation or else you apparently fall into anarchy or something? What have they done specifically to prove their merit in terms of economic benefits, etc? Furthermore why is free trade good for Britain? I know as an American Midwesterner it has decimated our local economies.

I mean, Britain obviously surivived 100s of years without the EU did it not? Why is it suddenly crucial that Britain remain tethered to this globalist coalition?

Trying to pressure people into agreeing a deal due to a ticking clock is a dumb tactic at the best of times, but when it comes to something as important as this? ugh...

Although it's not just now. Theresa May took an awful long time before she started trying to get a deal too. She triggered article 50 to leave and then was just like "eh, we can deal with the details of it later".

Maybe some Vgchartz Brits can help me b/c I'm completely baffled and confused here.. Two main things I'm confused about as a naive stupid American:

- why tf do you have a vote for Brexit in the first place if the establishment clearly doesn't want out of the EU and is seemingly doing just about everything in their power to keep Britain in the EU despite the majority voting to leave it? I mean it's been like 3 years now has it not? Shit or get off the pot. Why even take the vote? You just cause civil unrest IMO.

- Why is the EU seen as this sort of godlike power structure that you need to support your nation or else you apparently fall into anarchy or something? What have they done specifically to prove their merit in terms of economic benefits, etc? Furthermore why is free trade good for Britain? I know as an American Midwesterner it has decimated our local economies.

I mean, Britain obviously surivived 100s of years without the EU did it not? Why is it suddenly crucial that Britain remain tethered to this globalist coalition?

I'm from the U.S., but I think I can help you with a couple things:

I find that the term "establishment" anymore is used very generously to describe anyone of an opposing political viewpoint, especially when that viewpoint may be more popular than one's own persuasion (perhaps for damn good reason). That's what it really means anymore, in my observation: that one knows their own viewpoint to be unpopular.

The opponents of Brexit mobilize around a campaign called People's Vote. The goal of People's Vote is for Brexit to be held to a second direct vote of the public. There is a reason why Brexit opponents are up for another vote on the subject: because they know their position would likely emerge victorious. Conversely, there is a reason why Brexit supporters insist that no, the original verdict wherein Brexit carried the day by a whole two point margin, must be acted upon: because they know that, three and a half years on, people have now had PLENTY of time to think about and discover the full implications of Brexit and might just vote a different way at this point if presented with the opportunity. Three and a half years is a long time. Public opinion changes.

No one disputes that Britain will "survive" Brexit, the question is in what condition. The simple fact of the matter is that leaving the EU will cause significant economic harm to the UK and result in the country enjoying significantly less bargaining power when it comes to negotiating future economic agreements with other countries. In fact, even just the mere prospect of leaving the EU has already put the economy of the United Kingdom into recession. Just the mere prospect of it has already scared away enough investment to produce that result. Imagine if say a no-deal Brexit were actually implemented! Then there are the implications of re-establishing a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland (which I would argue is tantamount to re-colonizing the latter and that that's precisely part of the aim of Brexiteers) to consider. Implications like, realistically the resumption of armed conflict.

There's a reason why this scam has been supported not only by an opportunistic U.S. government that would seek a more parasitic relationship to our allies across the pond, but also by Russian intelligence for shit sakes, and it's got nothing to do with advancing the better interests of the United Kingdom.