Comments by "Cinderball" (@cinderball1135) on "Will Brexit lead to a political revolution?" video.

  1. The political crisis we face is not to do with Brexit, or sovereignty, the EU or our international partners - it's domestic. For generations two parties have dominated British politics, while having policies which are almost exact deadringers for one another. These two parties have been free to get sloppy, to get detached, to stop caring what the people who voted for them actually wanted. They didn't need to worry whether their voters would hold them to account - because who were they going to vote for? The other lot? Even if they did lose an election, they were practically guaranteed to win the one after that, so they could just keep taking it in turns to bleed the country dry. And while Labour has been gobbling up the middle ground (leaving its old working class voters scrambling for somebody, ANYBODY to represent their interests) the Conservatives have been running to the hard right, for fear of getting outflanked by UKIP. Meanwhile, the office of the Prime Minister has grown in seniority and has been vested with far more power than its historical counterparts. Now, we essentially have a President - but not one who is elected by the people, or even by Parliament, but instead is simply appointed by the largest party, according to the internal, usually rather opaque and baroque rules of that party, whichever it happens to be. The Prime Minster has absorbed responsibilities for making Britain's foreign policy, for setting the tone for the national debate, and deciding what Parliament will vote on and when. Frankly, when you see it laid out in front of you, it's more of a surprise that things didn't blow up spectacularly before now. Brexit isn't actually a relevant issue AT ALL. The issue for generations has been that our "democratic" system is nothing of the kind. It's a hand-me-down from the 1800s, from a time when the mere idea that all people should have a vote and a say in the future of their country was highly controversial. We can't blame the EU for the screwiness of our system. That's on us. It's high time we fixed it. An end to the hegemony of the Labour and Conservative Parties, and the beginning of a new Democratic Britain, with proportional representation, ensuring that the governments of our future will actually speak with the mandate of the majority of voters - and will serve the interests of us *all*, not just their constituencies and their donors.
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  2. The EU certainly has some major inefficiencies - I don't think anybody's arguing that it doesn't. But I think it's not irretrievably broken, to quite the same extent as our Brexit process is. :)  @glyntutt1586 
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  3. No matter how hard they try, they can't perform the impossible. There is no deal to be had, and a crashout Brexit would be disaster for us all.
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  4.  @joeybarnes01  I am flipping ticked off friend. Of course what's happened is a travesty, and the people have had their choice snatched away from them - but I blame the MPs who had NO IDEA how to deliver on Brexit for promising it in the first place. It's not even clear that they wanted to win the referendum at all. We can debate endlessly whether Brexit was a good idea, but I think we can agree, surely, that Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage et al. had no idea how to actually make it happen when they promised it would be honey and milk.
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  5.  @joeybarnes01  You do understand that a referendum isn't the same thing as a general election? And I think you'd find that most Brexiters even don't agree with you on how it should've been implemented. Therein lies the problem. We can argue 'til the cows come home, because your idea of what Brexit means WILL NOT correlate with what somebody else's is. There is no consensus to be built.
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  6. Your post is chock-full of far-right buzzwords there,  @joeybarnes01  - here's a few points. Not everybody who disagrees with you about the best future for this country is a "traitor" - some people just genuinely disagree. Shocking. I know. Referendums - they are votes, but they're not especially democratic. Every vote up to the 50% mark is counted, and all the others might as well be thrown in a bin. This doesn't really compare to a proper democratic vote where, ideally, every single viewpoint should get represented according to its vote share. By implementing Brexit, the 49% of us who voted against it get our votes completely disrespected and trampled over. Funny how that one cuts both ways, isn't it? And nobody is suggesting that the vote should be ignored or dismissed - but if there is no feasible way to implement Brexit, what the heck do you expect your politicians to do? Everybody might as well have voted to give free unicorns to schoolchildren. There's just no way to do it. The anti-democratic thing to do was to put something unfeasible into the ballot sheet.
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  7. No, we never had a referendum on proportional representation.  @joeybarnes01  That's the option we all wanted - but it wasn't included. We had the Alternative Voting system on the ballot instead, which is nowhere near as good. Your facts aren't straight. I'm not dismissing you because I have a conception (of any kind) about your motivations. I'm dismissing you because you patently don't know your politics. See, unlike Brexiters, I believe everybody deserves a seat at the table - but I also believe that people should get informed before they mouth off on the internet.
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  8.  @joeybarnes01  If we can't agree that Proportional Representation and the Alternative Voting system are wildly different prospects, then we clearly can't agree on basic facts and should not be attempting to have a conversation. And again, stop using the word "traitors". Not everybody who disagrees with you is a "traitor", and it's an emotive word likely to move people to violence, at some point down the road.
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  9.  @joeybarnes01  "Betrayal" is a very loaded term. I don't think you can fault them for trying to enact Brexit - but they clearly can't form a consensus on how best to do it, and we're now staring down the barrel of the gun. You may think your vision for Brexit would work, and that people should "just" fall in line with it and agree. Yeah, sorry, that's not how democracy works. Building a consensus means you have to participate in a discussion, and be prepared to make compromises - instead of expecting to simply dictate terms from on high. (Mrs May's mistake, right there) You may not see the harm in a crashout Brexit, but they do - it's their job to be informed on these things. If you're angry with your politicians, by all means, vote them out, but absolutely do not call them traitors, betrayers, and all of that jazz, and then expect me to treat you with anything other than contempt. If you want respect, show some yourself.
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  10. My opinions get ignored all the time,  @joeybarnes01 , that's how it goes in politics sometimes. For many people who've never been involved in politics before the Brexit debate, I imagine it must come as something of a shock. Still, you try being an ardent advocate for Proportional Representation and environmentalist government, and see how much attention you get! :D PS. By the way, I was asking you not to call the politicians traitors - not just me and other random internet commenters you disagree with. Berate them all you want, but there are some comments which are over the line.
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