Monday, May 03, 2021

Alex Andreou on the need to give Leavers the space to change their minds

There's a really good contribution to the latest Oh God, What Now? podcast by Alex Andreou,

I liked it so much that I transcribed it, but if you click on player above you can listen to him making it:

We are never going to get the Damascene conversion en masse that we crave – “we” as in Remainers. There’s never going to be that moment where Nigel Farage is marched naked down the street with Naomi [Smith] following him ringing a big bell going “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

It’s just not going to happen. We’re not going to get that satisfaction outside our fantasy world.

And when actually it does happen, the vast majority of Remainers’ reaction is to go: “Why did you vote for it then you wanker?” You know, to punish the people who publicly change their mind.

So here’s what need to happen. What we need to do is to create create the space – the intellectual space – for people to change their mind in the privacy of the polling booth.

They don’t have to publicly admit it. They don’t have to make some grand apology: “You were right. We were wrong. Badly done on us.” We just have to give them enough reasons and enough space to U-turn in the privacy of the polling booth, just between them a piece of paper and a pencil.

Oh God, What Now? is the new name for the old Remainiacs podcast.

2 comments:

nigel hunter said...

A wise thing to do.Advertise it more. Put it into the minds of people that those who duped them are not fit to rule.and continue to mention it.

Anonymous said...

Yes yes, I get it. I agree that it's the best approach, politically, socially and as an act of Christian forgiveness. But I just can't do it! They have done -and are still doing - so much damage, and pretending that it's not their fault.
Brexit's going to be like Suez. It was an obvious catastrophe, but it continued to be supported long after the event because people were incapable of admitting responsibility for such a monumental political failure. What's happened is that now, 65 years after the Suez fiasco, everyone agrees that it was a disaster, but pleads their own innocence and denies that they were - or would have been - responsible for it. Instead, they blame their own political forebears for making the mistake, whilst absolving themselves of guilt, shame or penance.