A system that has a proven record of disenfranchising working class and poorer people, which is exactly why he wants it.
There's a horrible tendency on here for many people to always assume the worst about others. Like they are just looking for righteous excuses to vent hatred.
And I think it's something that really puts a lot of people off "politics" in general.
In my early days on u75 there were various concepts I met. Like say "class war". I was dismissive of it as a concept largely because it seemed to be associated with an assumption that two people in different class positions had to hate each other personally, or at least that's how it so often came across. Over time though, I've come to accept it as a valid notion. I accept that there's a sense that structurally, different classes are "at war"; that there's an inevitable conflict of interests. I've come to that point of view thanks to the discussions take part in or read on here, in which there is always some level of hatred going around, often directed at me. The kind of accusation you make towards A380; that he wants to disenfranchise the working class - that's what he
really wants, the monster. It couldn't be a misguided attempt to get people (of all classes) to enter into a referendum with a level of base information that might help them make a better decision, maybe even a decision that was most in their interests. Nope, it must be that there's a sinister motive behind this idea somewhere. Anyway, I stick around on u75 and have changed my views quite a bit on quite a lot of things, because I'm relatively unbothered by people on the internet accusing me of all sorts of motivations. I sort of feel that doesn't apply to most people though, and they are put off by it, and they are possibly put off the kind of ideas that you might like more people to share with you.
This is a separate but not totally unrelated point to the one saskiajayne was making earlier, about obstruse theoretical discussions being irrelevant to many people, in terms of their daily lives. I'm not saying those discussions shouldn't be had by the way. But when the question is asked of someone who's dismissive of all seemingly pragmatic routes to make change - who maybe even spoils their ballot paper to satisfy themselves of their own intellectual integrity - when the question is asked, "what's your solution/suggestion" and they come back with some generalised commitment to grassroots activism, or to refining their analysis of power relations, or whatever, then it all feels a bit hopeless to me.
These points are not unrelated, in the sense that they both have some relevance to the failure of "the left" (and I don't really like using that term because it's so vague and so widely applied) to gain traction with voters. And a total failure to gain the amount of traction that would allow some kind of revolutionary change outside of our parliamentary setup.
I've rambled somewhat off topic.
Anyway, it's a popular narrative here, to say that the Brexit vote was a mark of people's desperation with the establishment, the middle classes, the metropolitan elites. Alternatively it's a failure of those who want to reduce the disproportionate power of those particular groups to provide people with a way of using their franchise to do so. You've done your political theory to death, now you have to actually persuade people what you're saying makes sense. You persuade me, more than you probably think, that it makes sense. Check out teuchter's handy tips above for ways to persuade people without being so offputting that they walk away before you've even had the chance to do so.
