Quote Originally Posted by Eric Cartman View Post
Do you think leave would have won without anti immigrant rhetoric? No doubt that lots of people had other motivations to vote Brexit but without some of the more scummy farage anti immigrant campaigning I dont think they break 50%.

Low wages + benefits system disincentivising people to have more than 2 children = reliance on migration to pay for growing retired demographic. People are slowly realising that now.
It's an interesting question. I don't think the anri-immigrant rhetoric was that significant. I know to many remain voters it was - many wanted to characterise leave voters as being obsessed with it, but all the evidence points to it being about control, of laws, the economy, immigration, everything. I think that's fair enough.

We also know "the economy" was the biggest issue for Remain voters, so we can also speculate on whether they would have got to 48% without the injection of fear into peoples minds, with the stock market collapse, house price collapse, huge recession etc.

In practice, I think the biggest issue was that 2009-2016 was a difficult time. Austerity, global recession, high immigration and the like, and people were fed up and wanted to lash out. "Take back control" is a very powerful concept. It is the same theme that Drakeford plays on with Westminster and is obviously the core plank of the SNPs policies too.

I think The Remain campaign made a few mistakes. There was a lot of what I would call snobbery online and I think most felt they went too far with project fear. More than anything, people just wanted change. Will it make much difference? I don't think so, although I do agree in principle that laws should be made here. I also think that people want change in the UK now and we will have a new government soon, but again, I doubt it will make much difference to people's lives.