Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
I'm much more a Remainer now, but I could easily have voted Leave back in 2016. The main reason I didn't was that I didn't want to vote on the same side as Nigel Farage or people who say England when they are talking about the UK - I can remember listening to a radio debate a few weeks before the vote from Margate I think it was, where it seemed that all of the leavers who spoke did so solely in terms of England (there were plenty of other times I wondered if we were allowed to vote in Wales when I heard English leavers being interviewed but that one was the worst).
That said, I don't go along with the theory that Wales voted Leave because there are so many English born people here. I've been living in the Rhondda for ten months now and in some ways it's been an eye opener, because although I like it here, there is a lot of deprivation and it's easy to see how, given the chance of a vote between the status quo (which, essentially, remain was) and a new start, people living in less affluent areas after nearly a decade of austerity would opt for the latter.
I happen to think they picked the wrong "villain" though, because the unpopular policies they voted against were, mainly, domestic ones and when you think of it, it takes a special kind of political naivety and arrogance to hold such a vote at such a time if your preference was to remain, but that's what David Cameron did because he's a Conservative and, as has been the case for the last forty years, party comes before country for a Tory when it comes to Europe.
About fifteen years ago, I can remember reading that, after a few decades under the likes of Heath, Thatcher and Major, the Conservative party was becoming as "toff" dominated as it had been at any time since the days of MacMillan and Douglas-Home. Cameron was one sort of toff - lazy, a trimmer and a huge superiority complex, but the likes of those CardiffIrish2 lists are, basically, toffs as well and the idea of them being at the forefront of some working class revolt (as the Referendum result is often described as by Leavers) is hilarious - Nigel, Boris and Jacob taking up the cudgels for the downtrodden? Yeah, right.
If those three (with a few others) were who Donald Tusk had in mind, then I agree with him entirely.