France blocks plans to scrap 90-day rule visa rule - Page 6

It was me that started this off despite saying I did not want to set off another pointless Brexit debate. I should have added some context, my point was that those in the lower social groups appear to have swallowed the spin and lies of the leave campaign whereas those in the higher groups appear to have seen through the deceit (I am generalising a bit here). I recall one of the leave campaign leaders proudly boasting that their propaganda campaign was worthy of Goebbels. Of course you can’t restrict voters in any way in a democracy but I do think there should be some rules preventing campaigners from either side telling lies.

Neither "side" of the Brexit debate should look back with pride in terms of their campaigns and their truthfulness.

On the remain side you had things like George Osborne's assertion that there would be a need for a revised budget - jumped on by the Eurosceptic areas of the press - and dubbed the "punishment budget" because of the economic shock of a vote to leave (income tax rises at basic and higher rates were stated as required).

HM Treasury published a paper suggesting that a vote to leave (not actually leaving but the vote itself) would result in a GDP "shock" of between -3% to -6%.

Clearly, the first didn't happen because George Osborne chose to quit and ride off into the sunset to some wonderfully high paid jobs in the private sector rather than been forced to more realistically assess what was now required having been an integral part of the remain campaign.

The HMT report can also shown to be false as GDP rose over the course of the next 2 years and unemployment continued to fall. 

On the leave side, they had this idiotic bus - the one thing I wonder about this bus is because of the numbers involved, to what extent is saying £350m as opposed to say £125m  (or whatever the net contribution was) meaningful - at what number do people eyes gloss over because the number is so materially different to any figure they have to grasp in their own household finances.

On immigration, they claimed Turkey is joining the EU - it hasn't and if anything is moving further away from actually meeting the criteria given the positions taken by Erdogan since then. More widely on immigration, the dramatic surge in "small boats" numbers has shown that leaving the EU hasn't enabled what Leave claimed would be control of the UK borders which should have been self evident to anyone as I wouldn't have thought a refugee/asylum seeker would be considering the EU membership status of their destination.

Indeed, legal net migration which now has nothing to do with the EU seems to be running at c600-700k. If they wanted to control that they could - but choose not to presumably because it is economically expedient not to do so. Assuming that is the case, then either the Tories over the last few years should have or Labour when they likely win the next election need to work on changing the narrative around legal migration to emphasise that rather than living in fear of the Daily Mail and the like.

I'm sure there are hundreds of others lies/untruths on all sides - as there will be in the election manifestos (or they'll be too vague and woolly to be meaningful). 

Joy of joys - glad I don't vote in the UK anymore otherwise I'd be harking back to my student days and voting for RON.

By "nature of the beast", politicians do tend to tell "fibs", but we know that, don't we? The UK voters often cite "democracy" as an answer. Since 2016 & the ongoing referendum until now (2024), Brexit is still being "tweaked" to the point of correcting democratic changes. We are often told, Brexit is done. My question is, "when?". Hence in the media & the politicians will continue to fib. V

  Ron,

     thanks but I have to say that you may be in a minority with that opinion, at least on here!

Rgds,

Aitch.

There is probably more chance of reversing the UK leaving the EU than getting election campaigns to be honest. Note, policitans never lie, they just don't always tell the truth.

Aitch.

I understand i / we would be in the minority on CBF but i will not let that stop me from trying to educate the masses.

George55, it seems we do agree on something, politicians on both sides lied.