I'm an immigrant living in the UK, and have been for over 20 years. I'm practically British now, without the accent. I don't disagree with much of your post, but some of it feels emotionally biased.
>the chancellor threatens the country with a punishment budget
Biased. And whatever cause and effect ended up being, our taxes have risen, immediately after the result came in GBP dropped, we had inflation, and to counter it all interest rates were dropped from already extreme low levels even further. There are no widely respected economists (though they're hard to take seriously anyway) who think leaving the EU has not harmed the UK.
So, I consider it the duty of the chancellor to have informed us of this, because the other side of the argument (the brexiters) had not one bit of moral integrity to present reality. Remember, we're dealing with a group of people who lied for 40 years to achieve their aims. No other country in the EU required an EU hosted web page dedicated to countering all the anti-EU lies.
The brexit side effectively ran at least two campaigns, with plausible deniability by the "official" campaign because Farage wasn't on their team. Farage was the face of the less savoury side of the campaign, and his group ran using things like this:
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1920x1080/p078zmng.jpg
While on the "official" campaign we have gems like this (I still genuinely laugh when I read this blog post):
I watched all of this unfold, as an immigrant living in the UK, and we (immigrants) were very acutely aware of the sentiment that drove the brexit vote.
So, what is my main take-away from all of this? That this referendum was about two valid political choices, remain inside a pooled sovereignty union, or leave that pooled sovereignty union. Both valid choices. But the travesty was how poorly the referendum was constructed and run. And that is because we just don't have a history of running referendums very well (see the alternative voting referendum), and this would never have passed the sniff test in for example Switzerland.
I don't think that bit's biased, myself, George Osborne literally threatened a punishment budget before the referendum. He may not have used those words, but everyone else did and he did come out telling everyone that he would be having an emergency budget after the vote which others in his party described at the time as "economic vandalism". IMHO there's a difference between telling people that they're making an economic mistake and detailing what will go wrong (which he did too), and saying "I'm going to raise income tax, raise inheritance tax and slash the NHS budget within a few weeks if you vote leave".
> So, I consider it the duty of the chancellor to have informed us of this
Absolutely agree, but that's not what I'm referring to.
I agree with the rest though, it was a clusterfuck in so many ways. I'm not going to try to claim I'm entirely unbiased - in the lead up to the referendum I was definitely in the 'leave' camp, part of the group of people who just wanted to see British politics given a righteous kick up the arse, regardless of what form that came in. I sorta came-round in the last few days and voted remain, mostly because I knew if Brexit happened a lot of people I care about would be upset, and some would have their lives upended. And then I got to watch it happen anyway.
Having seen the news from Runcorn today, I feel it's a shame the British people haven't got tired of the Farage clown show yet. But then my own father would probably vote for him (probably does), because he's got suckered into the Old-people's-outrage channel, GBNews, which can't be good for his blood pressure let alone British democracy. Currently I'm hoping (I think realistically) that my adopted home of Australia does better in the general election tomorrow. I'm not yet a citizen so just spectating on this one.
>the chancellor threatens the country with a punishment budget
Biased. And whatever cause and effect ended up being, our taxes have risen, immediately after the result came in GBP dropped, we had inflation, and to counter it all interest rates were dropped from already extreme low levels even further. There are no widely respected economists (though they're hard to take seriously anyway) who think leaving the EU has not harmed the UK.
So, I consider it the duty of the chancellor to have informed us of this, because the other side of the argument (the brexiters) had not one bit of moral integrity to present reality. Remember, we're dealing with a group of people who lied for 40 years to achieve their aims. No other country in the EU required an EU hosted web page dedicated to countering all the anti-EU lies.
The brexit side effectively ran at least two campaigns, with plausible deniability by the "official" campaign because Farage wasn't on their team. Farage was the face of the less savoury side of the campaign, and his group ran using things like this: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1920x1080/p078zmng.jpg
While on the "official" campaign we have gems like this (I still genuinely laugh when I read this blog post):
https://www.reaction.life/p/britain-looks-like-brexit
I watched all of this unfold, as an immigrant living in the UK, and we (immigrants) were very acutely aware of the sentiment that drove the brexit vote.
So, what is my main take-away from all of this? That this referendum was about two valid political choices, remain inside a pooled sovereignty union, or leave that pooled sovereignty union. Both valid choices. But the travesty was how poorly the referendum was constructed and run. And that is because we just don't have a history of running referendums very well (see the alternative voting referendum), and this would never have passed the sniff test in for example Switzerland.