[JohnJamesRambo]

Did they punch themselves in the face or was it Cambridge Analytica type meddling from groups with a vested interest in Brexit happening stomping them in the face with a boot?

From my brief reading about the matter it seems that the same villains showed up over there for that manipulation campaign.

[jfengel]

Mostly column A, a little column B.

There's also a big chunk of column C: the leading opposition party did a terrible job of opposing it. There was a chunk of the Labour party, including its leader, who also favor Brexit, albeit a very different kind of Brexit from the Tories. For them, it's more about anti-globalism and anti-corporate-control.

That leader eventually resigned, but by that point the damage was done.

I can't predict what would have happened if the Labour party had chosen to unify on a pro-Europe platform, but they were soundly defeated. The Tory party won resoundingly, and they had run on a pro-Brexit platform.

There is always skullduggery, but it's really just something the UK did to itself.

[DonaldFisk]

This is not true. There were a small number Labour MPs who wanted to leave, including Gisela Stuart, Kate Hoey, and Graham Stringer, but by the time of the referendum, Jeremy Corbyn had long changed his mind, accepted we should remain in the EU, and campaigned for that: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/22/corbyn-fina...

[jfengel]

The problem wasn't just the referendum itself, but again in 2019. Corbyn said he had "a neutral stance on Brexit".

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50530163

The actual referendum was very close, and there was a lot of room for Labour to argue that it wasn't intended to be binding, or at least a Brexit In Name Only. The result was that Labour was creamed and the Tories got a real majority, whereas previously they'd been saddled with UKIP.

Corbyn also failed at the referendum, arriving at a belated and wishy-washy stance, and without compelling Labour to follow it. Had he resigned then, things might have been very different. Instead, he continued to lead Labour in a way that left people confused about where they stood on Brexit when put in the form of a Parliamentary election. Nobody could read the results as anything but "The nation voted strongly for Brexit."

I don't believe that really reflects what voters wanted, but elections are poor tools for sending messages. What they do is put people in office, and the people in office were people strongly for Brexit.

[DonaldFisk]

Labour offered another referendum on membership, which none of other parties offered or were in a position to deliver, so the decision to leave could have been overturned if enough people wanted it to. A Labour victory would have given them the chance, regardless of Corbyn's stance.

[jfengel]

The Liberal Democrats took an even stronger position, basically ignoring the referendum. But the LibDems are still out in the wilderness, and got very few votes. All they did was to highlight that Labour was not the anti-Brexit party.

The impression I get was that by 2019, Remainers were tired of fighting about it, weren't enamored of Corbyn's version of Labour (Brexit was only part of it), and weren't going to rush over the LibDems.

And that overall, Brexiteers were enthused. Probably for very bad reasons, but they genuinely believed them. As for the original question, they might have been nudged along by some foreign propaganda and targeting, but it wasn't anything that their own leadership wasn't encouraging them to believe.

[gghhzzgghhzz]

Biggest ever investigation by the Information Commission. No CA were not involved.

If you understood the political situation at the time, then it was all but obvious there would be a massive anti-establishment vote, facebook ads or not.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/07/cambridge-an...