Yes, but not just arguments, stories and emotions because, as Dr Hannah Fry recently pointed out on a podcast and Daniel Kahneman, in 2016, people don’t make decisions based on fact but emotions. The Leave campaign understood that.

Yes, what we need are stories and positive messages, easy explainers of the benefits of EU membership and the comparative disadvantages of being outside the EU. Those of us who follow the debate are reasonably aware of all this but not the wider public.

It’s as @batariangal.eurosky.social says. That’s how all our elections work. If we wanted a system that elected people whom we trust to make decisions on our behalf, we’d have a different system. Alas, those who could change the system are those who benefit from the current system.

Trickle Up Economics
(AKA “Capitalism”?)

Screenshot of a tweet: God Save Great Britain & @GSGB01 WOW: The NHS has ordered staff not to use the phrase 'It's raining cats & dogs' in fear of upsetting people from other cultures and religion. Britain has gone absolutely

Screenshot of a tweet: @Jenny_1884 The NHS has ordered staff not to use the term "It's raining cats & dogs" as it may offend foreigners. Tough If you don't like it jog on is what I think The NHS needs to get back to concentrating on making people better & not being more concerned about offending

For the love of God, could the "common sense" brigade PLEASE develop some actual COMMON SENSE?!

No, the NHS has not ordered staff not to use the term "it's raining cats and dogs" for fear of either upsetting or offending anyone...

Please engage your brains for a minute🙏
🧵1/15

And that’s the beginning of a conversation that invites further questions.

Perhaps the first step is to engage with people and ask them what their concerns are and listen.

Tempted to ask, “And then what?”

Hmm. There can be no pluralism without pluralism. I’m unconvinced that filtering our decisions through a party political sponge is an adequate replication of democracy.

To whose benefit?

On reflection, you just know that if the US had an electoral system like the papacy. someone like Trump would never be elected.

So, she ceases to be responsible for the decisions she took while in office?

The Iranian national team will play in North America in the World Cup this summer. 🤷🏽

Armageddon is terrible, but our only other option was diversity trainings at work.

He’ll hate the people who invented democracy then. (The Mitylenean debate’s worth reading: you’ve even got the side that lost second time round telling the voters not to trust experts. Funny how that great democrat, Putin, said the same thing about not having a second vote 🤷🏽.)

A putti as a centrepiece. Bit odd?

Maybe political parties where people are constrained to toe the party line are part of the problem. Here’s a skimmable 24 pages on why the current system doesn’t work and a utopian alternative: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/edvlv...

What politicians say they are going to do, their promises, without having looked at all the problems they have to address and agreeing what to prioritise, is the problem. Sortition might be better than what we have but choosing representatives on our trusting them might be better.

One that prioritises choosing people on the basis of how much we trust them to make decisions on our behalf rather than on the colour of their rosette and their party leader’s ability to sound convincing. Here’s a 24-page attempt at a utopia: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/edvlv...

Perhaps the electoral system that we use to replicate democracy incentivises the making of unrealistic promises and thereby undermines trust in politicians? 🤷🏽

“BREXITERS DEMAND RIGHT NOT TO SAY WHAT’S IN BRITISH MARMALADE SHOCK”
“Well, it’s what we voted for, isn’t it?” said Colin Biscuit, 56, “It’s one of the benefits of Brexit, not knowing what’s in your marmalade. If the wartime generation could do it, so can we!”

Brexiters will dismiss such comments as personal pleading. What they ignore is that if you multiply such inconvenience across the every aspect of life, this friction significantly harms the UK economy for precisely no gain whatsoever.

Both types of “establishment” exist if only because we have a social hierarchy in the UK. The genius of Leave was to exploit that like so much else whilst, at the same time, themselves being and relying on the support of part of “the establishment”. 2/2

Whilst that’s all true, Leave also managed to paint a convincing picture of an “establishment” that was well off and privileged and supremely relaxed with an EU membership in which it had prospered, unlike most of the country. 1/

I put “the establishment” in quotes because it was a chimera. There were many reasons people used to justify voting for Brexit but, as Kahneman pointed out at the time, it mostly came down to emotional choices on simple questions that replaced the complex question of EU membership.

Did people actually vote for Brexit or just to stick two fingers up at “the establishment” or just David Cameron?

This week, Brexit finally killed our family business. We cleared out our warehouse, handed back the keys, paid the final bills and said goodbye to our last employee.
What was once a thriving firm died a slow, sad death, all thanks to Farage, Johnson and the gullible idiots they conned. 1/18

Almost (otherwise, there would be a revolution)(PS, there should be a tiny bit of wine in the bottom row of glasses in the final image.)

Protocol