> A (slim) majority of people wanting a stupid thing doesn't make it any less stupid.
A sentence attributed to Italian singer-songwriter-intellectual Roberto "Freak" Antoni, or to author Marcello Marchesi, describes this concept in a great way:
"LET'S EAT SHIT! BILLIONS OF FLIES CANNOT BE WRONG!"
When did anyone vote for leaving the single market? I thought that it was baseless FUD from project fear before the referendum, when you had Farage and Johnson on the record saying that it would be stupid.
That could reasonably (arguments about FPTP notwithstanding) be claimed be the most recent general election, when the Tory manifesto was the current mess and the Labour manifesto was to “rip up the deeply flawed deal negotiated by Boris Johnson”, to renegotiate with the aim of “Close alignment with the Single Market”, and then to give the U.K. electorate a confirmatory referendum about whatever deal they end up negotiating.
The fact that the Tories are currently whining about the deal they (1) negotiated, (2) signed, (3) won a general election in order to implement, and (4) explicitly denied further parliamentary time to study and debate the consequences of, certainly implies the politicians are dumb, regard of what it says about the voters.
The government is now basically the Vote Leave team. Your argument would hold water if they had implemented what they promised - they have not done so. Voters were mugged.
Brexit had popular support for a brief period. The rest of the time there's been solid electoral opposition to it.
A confirmatory referendum - defined as "undemocratic", because of course a clarifying vote on a complex issue can't possibly be democratic, according to the Brexiters - would have killed it.
The most fervent supporters don't really want "Brexit" anyway. What they want is to put the clever people - the professionals who keep the lights on and the engines running - in their place.
Which is why there was so much cut-and-paste rhetoric about "metropolitan elites" and "We've all had enough of experts."
It was a very calculated campaign of disinformation and populist framing aimed at low-information authoritarians - the kinds of people who will reliably destroy their own country from the inside while convincing themselves they're "patriots."
> The rest of the time there's been solid electoral opposition to it.
Not really. After an initial wobble, the most hardcore brexiteer fringe swept to power with very large majorities. Yes, it's FPTP so you can say "not really", but in practice they did - the only strongly anti-brexit party, meanwhile, was soundly battered.
The English masses, for a period, really really wanted it. The only first hint of regret has been this month's byelection, a very small test.
Obvious troll is obvious.
But for posterity:
- Wanting something doesn't make it sensible. - A (slim) majority of people wanting a stupid thing doesn't make it any less stupid.