[EndShell]

> Plus it was never about immigration,

It was partly about immigration. According to these surveys 43% of people that voted leave think immigration should be reduced.

https://public.tableau.com/views/Publicopinion2023/FIGURE9?:...

> it was always - I think - a classic case of misinformation and greed from many places. Sadly many people fell for it.

Why do many people assume that if someone thinks differently about a particular political issue they must have fooled somehow? Considering there is data that partially contradicts your belief that it wasn't about immigration, maybe your assessment about their level of understanding of the issues involved is also incorrect.

[dijksterhuis]

> Why do many people assume that if someone thinks differently about a particular political issue they must have fooled somehow?

politicians sometimes lie…?

the £350 million a day bus springs to mind as one example. the amazing trade deals which will unleash our new economy were another.

like, those things sound great. people wanted those promises to become real and believed the people who were saying those things could implement them.

turns out implementation is sometimes a lot harder than waving your hands and making a bunch of promises.

edit —

especially when the advertised numbers are factually wrong, and people know they are wrong — i.e. they lied.

> A study by King's College London and Ipsos MORI, published in October 2018 found that 42 percent of people who had heard of the £350 million claim still believed it was true, whereas 36 percent thought it was false and 22 per cent were unsure.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_Leave_bus

[robertlagrant]

> politicians sometimes lie…?

That isn't a big enough reason to assume everyone's been fooled. Or at least, the people who disagree with you have been fooled. That's possible, but it's also possible you've been fooled. So bringing it up one-sided is a bit grating.

[EndShell]

> politicians sometimes lie…?

Most people are quite aware that politicians lie. It is a common trope in movies, tv and media generally. Politicians are quite disliked in the UK generally. So this idea that people blindly believe politicians is nonsense.

> A study by King's College London and Ipsos MORI, published in October 2018 found that 42 percent of people who had heard of the £350 million claim still believed it was true, whereas 36 percent thought it was false and 22 per cent were unsure.

So? People frequently cherry pick information to justify their decisions after they have already made them. I actually looked up the actual report (not the wikipedia summary). While much more people generally believe the 350 million figure voted Leave, there was a decent percentage of people that believed the figure and voted Remain.

People seem to forget that a good portion of the Media and Parliament (including the Prime Minister at the time who won with a majority) were in favour of Remain. What is often ignored is that if you look at UKIP voter percentage before the referendum. It had risen from 3.1% to 12.6%. That was rising well before the bus campaign was a thing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results

The Leave Referendum was about many things. It was partly about immigration, it was partly about sticking it to an entitled political class, part of it was about sovereignty. Making it about a figure on the side of the bus is asinine. I also don't believe Dominic Cummings on how effective it was btw.

But in any event this will probably be my last comment on anything political on here because you get downvoted for simply defending half the people in my country that voted a particular way.

[youngtaff]

> It was partly about immigration

My view is it’s actually about people being racist

[EndShell]

Well there is no evidence to back that up. In fact there is plenty that indicates the opposite.

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk...

There is in the section entitled "Preferences for different types of migrant: origin, similarity, skill level". (There doesn't seem to be a way to directly reference it in a document).

> Country of origin is not the only factor that people take into account when considering preferences on immigration. In the European Social Survey 2014, British respondents reported how many immigrants should be allowed based on a question that specified both the country of origin (Poland or India) and the skill level (professional or unskilled labourer). The results revealed that when migrants are professionals, opposition is low, and when migrants are unskilled, opposition is high (Figure 5). Research has shown that people’s general preference for high-skilled over low-skilled migrants is mainly driven by perceptions of their higher economic contribution

> The preference among the British public for highly skilled migrants aligns with previous research indicating that, when questioned about the criteria for incoming migrants, skills are considered more important than other factors such as race/ethnicity and religion.

Direct link to the stats:

https://public.tableau.com/views/Publicopinion2023/FIGURE5?:...

[the_third_wave]

My view is there needs to be a version of Godwin's law related to client of supposed 'racism', i.e. the one who claims ${issue} is caused by/related to 'racism' thereby loses the argument unless he comes with solid proof.

I see no proof, spurious claims of 'racism' do not count as such so it actually was about immigration.