Regginator3 wrote:I said "implied" for a reason. His wording wasn't technically saying "it will happen" but the message was to scare people into thinking war was more likely to happen after leaving the EU. I completely deny that war would happen in or out of the EU because NATO is what is protecting us, not the EU. The EU does many good things though but to take credit for peace is pretty funny.
A political union certainly does not help prevent peace - look at what happened regarding Catalonia last year, and look at various civil wars throughout history. It doesn't really mean anything. Even in a strong political union (such as an international one in the EU, or a national one such as in the USA) peace can be broken if there is enough discord.
The nations of Europe have been at each others throats since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. We have lived through a period of peace between the nations that form the EU. I agree that NATO has a lot to do with it, but it is completely wrong to suggest that the EU hasn’t contributed towards that peace.
With an increasingly hard right UK outside of the EU, competing for trade deals and with British politicians blaming the EU for a lack of growth/recession, then I don’t think it is ridiculous to imply that those tensions may one day spill over into violence.
Also re: "the experts" and "the ignorant" - It depends what you were listening out for, and who you're talking about. Specifically, "experts" in the field of economics. Voting in line with experts makes sense if you're just looking for short-term economic growth being stable. Many didn't care about that, but wanted enhanced long-term national growth, local growth, an improved focus on manufacturing and a redistribution plan across the UK - something no expert touched on at all. The vast majority of experts only focused on the short-term - almost none talked about the long-term effects. This is something I'm actually surprised about looking back at the referendum in retrospect - all of the warnings were about the short term, I don't see any major warnings about the long-term repercussions about Brexit. Many actual experts also pointed out that a weaker pound would improve manufacturing output and exports - which again, did happen, and if that's what you wanted, it's not ignorant to vote that way.
The point here is that listening unquestioningly to an expert is not always the way to go, unless you're sure the conclusions that they reach are in line, exactly, with your motivation/interest. Many of the things Johnson and Farage said, that many people who voted Leave wanted, will actually happen, for example a reduction in immigration and increased British sovereignty (whether you agree on those being good things or not) and avoiding a potential "United States of Europe". We can dismiss that as "xenophobic" if you want, as if there is absolutely no benefit to reducing immigration whatsoever beyond pure xenophobia, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not "ignorant" to vote that way if that is what you want as an end goal.
My point was that if you are comparing two camps of ignorance, one side listened to experts, one side didn’t.
It would be two people deciding to invest some money but knowing nothing about investments.
One of them goes to an IFA and invests sensibly in line with the advice they were given.
The other asks a random bloke in the pub who suggests putting all the money on a horse.
Now it might turn out that the IFA chose some poor investment platforms and the bloke in the pub actually picked out a decent horse, but the level of ignorance is different because one person was listening to an expert in the field and the other was just watching a horse in a field.
And very few anti-immigration people voted for any reason other than xenophobia.