I think you misunderstood. Brexit was never about reality.

Hence the leaders of the Brexit campaign stacking up mountains of emotional bullshit instead of a coherent alternative.

Because ultimately Brexit was a self-serving idea for a section of the elite to reshape society to a low tax, low regulation regime for their benefit and to the detriment of the majority of the British population.

But just like the Republican party in the USA, they would never be able to win a majority in any election or referendum if they told the truth about their plans.

You can't fight a fair election without confronting that fact, but unfortunately it upsets quite a lot of people to point out that they were tricked by plum voiced con artists, so you can't make that argument either.
Some of that may have been true in relation to the referendum itself, but Brexit unfortunately did actually become a reality, and so the inability of the Labour Party to organise itself, put the effort in and produce a coherent policy on the issue after the 2017 election was in my view a major failure. If we’re looking reasons why Johnson won a landslide, that has to be a key reason in my book.

I take the point regarding the difficulty in presenting that message and essentially telling people that they were hoodwinked - that usually doesn’t go down well with the public. And I personally believe that support for a Hard Brexit is even now still higher than is generally appreciated (I’m not one of them by the way). But Labour failed to have a view when it mattered most and that lack of a credible opposition obviously hasn’t benefited the country over the past few years.
 
Labour’s Brexit position in 2017 was utter tosh - the only way to have the benefits of the single market and a customs Union is to stay in the single market and the customs Union. But they didn’t commit to that as they explicitly wanted to leave the Single market.

Cakeism doesn’t even get close to their 2017 position. If you leave the single market, you will ultimately have a hard Brexit, unless you want to cede to the EU any meaningful influence or control in relation to future technical standards, customs policies & procedures, immigration and indeed commit to automatically replicating the EU’s own trade deals with third countries. That’s a fact, and so the 2017 manifesto Brexit position of the Labour Party - although extremely disingenuous in terms of how it was presented - would ultimately have resulted in a Hard Brexit.

Labour could have committed to staying in the single market in 2017 and then 2019 if they thought that would provide an electoral advantage, but they chose not to. Committing to staying in the single market would have been the easiest way to communicate a clear preference for a soft Brexit - and create a clear differentiation to the Conservatives - but again they chose not to.

Instead, both the conservatives and Labour explicitly advocated leaving the single market in 2017 and they gained a historically large combined share of the vote. Again, if the electorate was/still is as wedded to the idea of a soft Brexit as you suggest, I doubt that would have happened.

And in relation to 2019, 46% is less than 50% as you correctly point out, but the key question is why did Johnson win a landslide victory if support for a Hard Brexit - the central, overriding element of his campaign - was such a minority view in the UK?

Also genuinely interested as to why you think a second EU referendum would have produced a different result, or indeed be seen to have any real legitimacy/ not simply resulted in the need for a third vote as a decider?

I can't be arsed with all this again.

If you don't yet know how in the UK you can get a landslide majority with a minority vote, it's going to be too much hard work to explain.
 
Utter tosh.

Labour manifesto 2017:

"We will scrap the Conservatives’
Brexit White Paper and replace it
with fresh negotiating priorities that
have a strong emphasis on retaining
the benefits of the Single Market
and the Customs Union – which
are essential for maintaining
industries, jobs and businesses in
Britain. Labour will always put jobs
and the economy first."

Maths:

"The tories then gained 43.6% of the vote in 2019, higher than even Blair managed in 97. The DUP and Brexit party a further c2.8% combined".

Well that's 46.4%, so most people voted for parties either explicitly for remaining in the EU, or at least offering a way out of Brexit by a second referendun, and we all know why the Brexiters were desperate to avoid another referendum.

Yeah and there are those like Truss who were Remainers who abandoned all principles to go Leave - when asked if they can change their mind why couldn't other they tie themselves in knots explaining ( badly ) why
 
I can't be arsed with all this again.

If you don't yet know how in the UK you can get a landslide majority with a minority vote, it's going to be too much hard work to explain.
I’m very well aware of the electoral idiosyncrasies of the UK, my questions don’t relate to that, as you well know.
 

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