The confession came after a piece discussing the evidence for and against the terrible economic catastrophe that was predicted after Brexit. Overall conclusion: small earthquake in largely unpopulated area, some trees damaged.
Then he finished with a succinct summary of his reasons for voting leave:
When I voted for Brexit on 23 June, I did so for three reasons: because the European Union is a failed project; because Europe is moving in an increasingly free-market direction; and because I wanted to shake up the status quo. It would take an extremely deep and prolonged recession to make me regret my choice. That prospect seems even more remote than it did eight weeks ago.
Elsewhere it was business as usual though This from William Keegan:
It has been well established that the leading Brexiters, especially Box-Office Boris, lied their way right through the campaign and thoroughly misled people, contributing to an outbreak of buyer’s remorse.
But it is also obvious that there are many older people who manifest not an iota of remorse about the chaos they have helped to create, not least for their grandchildren....
Popular anger at the accumulated economic and social damage from the financial crisis and the counterproductive austerity policy was among the factors behind the Brexit vote. The more one reflects on the referendum, the more obvious it becomes that this is one of the most insane episodes in British public life since 1945.
He means it is well-established in the media, after huge ideological effort, to convince themselves mostly, that Leave propaganda was just straightforward lying, while nothing but truth and sincerity came from the other side, as indeed it does from all other politicians except Boris Johnson. I assume the main lie was the old claim that £350m went to Brussels every week, but that was the gross figure (the net figure was more like £110 million, a trifle), and the public was too dim to note the difference between gross and net (even though, as Farage said, every PAYE taxpayer sees that every time they open their pay packets).The other lie is that that sum would be spent on the NHS, although the actual claim was that it could be spent on the NHS,which seems perfectly valid if wildly over-optimistic.
How Keegan knows about these selfish older people is not clear, or indeed about the resentful opponents of austerity or the remorseful buyers. Perhaps he just MUST believe in them because someone has to be blamed. After all, rejecting the advice of people like him is clearly irrational.
Finally, what did he mean about insanity sinec 1945? The first Labour Government? Or was that just to equate Brexit with the insanity of World War 2? Can a comparison with Nazism be far away?
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