Mike, only last week, you, yourself, suggested that people who voted to leave the E.U. were stupid. Furthermore, there is ample information that is freely available, from which people can draw their own conclusions.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/05/14/ann-widdecombe-has-lost-the-plot-brexit-is-nothing-like-world-war-two/

“The people of the UK need to be aware that any hardship caused by Brexit has nothing to do with the spirit of World War Two.

It has everything to do with the stupidity of people who were told they would be better off – and believed the lie.”

That you disagree with people doesn’t make them, or what they did stupid. You don’t know what information these people used to draw their conclusions. “Better off” means different things to different people, also. Again, my recollection of the events of the Referendum Campaign is that was was offered was not certainty but possibility; nobody can say what the future holds. This is debatable but people drew their own conclusions. I cannot speak for others but I would not suggest that they were stupid. Gullible, perhaps but not stupid.

No, Mike, I don’t agree with you. I don’t believe that people were stupid and wouldn’t call them that, because it is most disrespectful. As I said, “better off” means different things to different people and not necessarily financial. I don’t presume to know why people voted; I know why the people to whom I have spoken voted and most are not what could be described as stupid. What I don’t understand is the need to label people, to presume superiority, that, somehow, we know better. Can we not just accept that people didn’t want to be in the European Union and that’s why they voted to leave it? I may have mentioned a financial journalist who voted to remain purely because of free movement, because his mother lives in the Mediterranean. Were it not for that, he would have voted to leave. He knows a great deal more about it than most people, I would say. In his opinion, most people voted to leave the E.U. because of the way that it treated Greece. You see, there are myriad reasons why people don’t like the E.U. and they didn’t need the likes of Nigel Farage to convince them. Anyway, my point was that on one hand, you had all but called people stupid and on the other, you criticised somebody else, for doing much the same thing yet, you concede that people may have been given bad advice. Which is it?
Our discourse is toxic, as it is; we must be more careful with our language and respect people’s decisions, even if we disagree with them, instead of insulting them. This is what I oppose. I am not saying that the people were gullible but that that is the word that I would have used, rather than stupid. How many of the people who voted to remain did the slightest bit of research? How many of those people knew what they were voting for and how many of them listened to what the Campaigners told them? It cuts both ways and there were lies coming from that quarter, too and at the time of our entry to the E.E.C. We shouldn’t just use the facts to suit our own preference. People think differently and want different things, it’s as simple as that. Three years on and many people have changed their minds, on both sides. How much more information about the E.U. has entered general discourse? Not a great deal and our politicians are a disgrace, in that regard. We must do better and treat each other with respect.