Richard said: “…If it had been clear and we had actually lost an argument that would be one thing, but we don’t feel speaking personally, it’s my personal view, we don’t feel that we lost an argument, we feel that we were outmanoeuvred in a campaign…”
Yeah well, my personal view is rather different.
At the official level, the remain side had EVERYTHING tilted in their favour! There was a long period before the official campaign started where the whole machinery of government was working flat out to support the official government position (i.e. to remain in the EU) The government spent many millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money sending out a pro-EU propaganda pack to every household in the entire country - while the leave side had no right of reply to this.
During the campaign there was a relentless daily bombardment of untruthful scare stories - some of them especially designed to target elderly people by saying they would have their state pensions and other benefits cut if they defied the government and voted to leave.
People were told that leaving would be a grave threat to national security, that it would impede the government in fighting terrorism, would lead to war, genocide, etc - all of it a pack of cynical lies by a government and prime minister that took the voters for fools.
(No doubt there were plenty of exaggerations and half-truths from the other side too - but let’s not have any of this petty sore-loser narrative that people were somehow hoodwinked by the leave side. The remain side had a MORE THAN fair shot in this fight.)