Read on Twitter
Some reasons why I think it's wrong to compare this to coverage of Trump supporters... (1/n) https://twitter.com/CasMudde/status/1352396083176026115
Before the referendum, it was not clear what the future relationship between the UK and the EU would be like. (2/n)
Discussions of "soft" and "hard" Brexit had EEA membership (or something like it) at the soft end (e.g., the @UKandEU report from 2016 https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/The-Environment-under-Soft-or-Hard-Brexit.pdf) (3/n)
There's therefore an element of contingency here. It's hard to hold Brexit voters accountable for the outcome given the range of possible outcomes (4/n)
There's also the question of specific policies. A lot of what the EU does is boring and technical (hello REACH!). That's good! (5/n)
It does, however, mean that people can be caught out by changes in policy, even where (as in this case) they have strong ££ incentives to be informed (6/n)
Third, there's the element of the campaign. A lot of campaigners for Brexit *were* dishonest. For example: they falsely implied that Turkey would be joining the EU and that the UK wouldn't be able to veto that https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/pm-savages-penny-mordaunt-over-no-turkey-eu-veto-claim-1476022 (7/n)
More recently, the Prime Minister either lied or was negligent in saying that there would be no non-tariff barriers to trade https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55442982 (8/n)
Again, the more consequential that dishonesty / the more impoverished the national debate, the less voters can be held accountable (9/n)
Two of these elements (contingency, policy content) are different from Trump. (10/n)
The case against Trump is that he's a chauvinist, racist egomaniac. That's not something you discover through a briefing paper (11/n)
(I also think criticising the media for picking a narrative is overblown. If you want to find ppl saying they voted the wrong way/Brexit's not turning out how they expected, you're going to get *a lot* of post-hoc rationalisations). (12/12)
