Wednesday 6 February 2019

People's Vote - well that died quickly.



The People's Vote thing was always likely to be a flash in the plan, given the awful strategy decisions made about setting it up in the first place. A pure piece of astroturfing (i.e. it is 100% the remain campaign in terms of people, sponsorship and objectives), which unsuccessfully tried to con the media into thinking there was some demand for a second referendum.


3 key mistakes were made:


1 - They never even tried to agree on the new question to put to the public, thus the core of their message was donut shaped - how can you campaign for a referendum but not know what that will even be. This was very stupid and they had 2 years to think of something plausible.


2 - It was always about remaining, it was not about anything else, so as astoturfing goes, it was not very subliminal - not even as good as McDonald's sponsoring the Olympics, at least that has an ironic undertone to amuse us all.


3 - The main game of Leavers has been that the original vote was about striking against the elite. Nigel Farage's People's Army etc etc of 2016/16. The People's Vote campaign jumped the shark the minute it was seen to be (which it was) the vehicle for Tony Blair to espouse his view from the slopes of Davos. Really, from there on it is just more money down the drain.


So now the last of the donations are being spent on a very elitist twitter campaign to try and extend article 50 - with some tacked-on idea of a vote afterwards.


All I can say is I hope none of those involved wanted future careers in public relations or marketing.

9 comments:

Billy Marlene said...

Well, with the poisonous hand of Campbell in the mix, failure was a dead cert.

Anonymous said...

Re point #2, spot on - one of the enthusiastic campaigners for what she is pleased to call a "People's Vote" is Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes, Con) with whom I have corresponded, and her motivation has always been a transparent desire to overturn 2016 and stay in the EU. One gathers there is significant discontent in her constituency, and with luck she will be deselected.
Mind you, I cannot be the only one thinking that our half-arsed pantomime government has made such a gobsmacking horlicks of Brexit that I'm at least half inclined to wish we'd never started the bloody process at all.

Nick Drew said...

What will poor Starmer do when he realises? R2 has been his USP.

Anonymous said...

@ "how can you campaign for [a referendum] but not know what that will even be. This was very stupid and they had 2 years to think of something plausible."

The same point can be posed to Boris/Gove/Fox/Davis re: Brexit itself. Tusk is not without merit when he says they never had even a sketch of how it could be done. Fox's pronouncements on how easy Trade Deals would be, are not worthy of a GCSE pass grade.

E-K said...

People's Vote

Very Orwellian. Radars are up on the name alone. Has Blair's fingers all over it.

Anonymous @ 3.16 If leaving is impossible then why were we given the vote ? (Passed by a large majority of the HoC under advisors.)

david morris said...

Anon

It's as complicated as you wish it to be...

James Higham said...

Future careers in anything requiring adult brains.

Sebastian Weetabix said...

Anonymous’s career in the European Commission must be hanging by a thread. I hope he’s got his Belgian citizenship lined up.

CityUnslicker said...

Anon - I am going to do a thread on this because it is annoying me hearing this all the time!