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Comment by TimPC | Hacker News Reader

It doesn’t help that one of the most popular search queries after Brexit was “What’s Brexit?” suggesting a lot of people didn’t even know what they were voting for.

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Yet you have no evidence to show any significant overlap in the Venn diagram of actual voters and people who searched that term, much less the reason they searched that term.

>Yet you have no evidence to show any significant overlap in the Venn diagram of actual voters and people who searched that term, much less the reason they searched that term.

The weeping and wailing began the night of the referendum. By the next morning we were confidently told by the press, Reddit, and Twitter that millions of Leave voters were already regretting their vote (and, as per TimPC's claim, were only now trying to find out what Brexit is), and that another referendum was thus the only fair/democratic/correct thing to do. (That even if such millions of Regretters actually existed that does not mean that a revote would occur is a minor technicality.) All part and parcel of the relentless effort since the referendum to invalidate its outcome by any means necessary.

Yes, the behaviour of the #FBPE types and of the EU after the referendum transformed me from a Remainer to a Brexit supporter. I voted to remain, but the contemptuous anti-democratic lunacy of my own side turned me against them.

Anger on Leavers' part against delay on Brexit did not become significant until 2019. The Supreme Court agreed that there was reasonable basis for the Miller case, and (more controversially) unexpectedly ruled for her in the second Miller case. But Leavers understandably came to see both lawsuits as part and parcel of the aforementioned unrelenting attempt on Remainers' part to stop Brexit by any and all means, whether legitimate or not. The fact that Miller actively campaigned for revoking Article 50 didn't help the Remain cause, and discredited her claim during the first case that she wanted to protect parliamentary sovereignty.

It's pretty clear in retrospect that what drove the Labour collapse in 2019 (In some Red Wall seats—seats that Labour had held with massive majorities for 50-100 years—the Tories didn't have to gain a single vote to win) is both Labour Leavers unhappy about their party not continuing its 2017 acceptance of Brexit coming, and Remainers who disliked the idea (whether explicit among Lib Dems, or implicit among much of Labour) of ignoring a democratic vote in 2016. That's why another referendum was so unpopular, because no one believed that it would not be rigged against Leave.[1]

Those who in other circumstances might have supported a "People's Vote" didn't, because they saw it as yet another attempt to delay and prevent Brexit via Neverendums. I think Leave would have won another referendum conducted under the circumstances of the first one, but Leavers understandably didn't trust the People's Vote folks to implement another referendum in any way that Leave can again win. Not after 3.5 years and counting of shenanigans such as the Miller case.

[1] Even supporters of same, no matter what they said. That's why they were for it.

That was investigated at the time, it appeared to be mostly children searching for what their parents were talking about.

The idea that only ignorant people could vote against the EU is a popular meme amongst Remainers but actual polls have shown consistently there's little difference in EU knowledge between the two camps and to the extent one side has an advantage, it's those who wanted to leave who knew more.

Maybe, though impossible to know what proportion of folks who searched that actually voted.

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