Things I have learned in the last few months:
(1) Never try to decide complex economic and constitutional issues by referendum
(2) If you do, at least make sure that you decide a threshold for it in advance, and that it is more than a narrow majority of voters and 50% of constituent states. Make it more like what's required for a constitutional amendment in other countries
(3) Whatever may have been the case 40 years ago, nowadays most countries that depend at all on trade are in some sort of trade bloc. Not doing so, is likely to put a country at a huge disadvantage.
(4) We have been horribly uninformed about the EU in this country. At best, even those of us, who manage mostly to avoid the tabloids and their screeching demonization of the EU, have been given very little information about its positive contribution.
(5) No, EU membership is not just a mildly useful if over-bureaucratic bulwark against excessive economic and therefore political dependence on the American Right and on frankly undemocratic countries, though it certainly does serve this purpose among others.. It does not make sense to say that it's not a priority compared with the economy and the NHS and public services, because all those things are strongly influenced by our EU membership, and are likely to go down the drain if we lose it. (I am arguing here against *my own* ignorantly lukewarm Remain views of as little as three years ago.)
(6) Never be so naïve as to think that the government might have an actual PLAN for something important.
(7) Yes, you CAN get a majority to vote for economic sanctions against their own country if you call it 'sovereignty'.
(8) Yes, turkeys WILL vote for Christmas if you persuade them that Father Christmas will give them 350 million pounds a week, and whip up their xenophobia against the three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree.
(9) Britain, or more specifically England, has more Teabagger types of its own than one might like to think, and they are currently all congregating on sites with names like Get Britain Out.
(10) YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
= new reply since forum marked as read
