But it wasn't obvious before the vote. At least not to
the average voter.
If you think our institutions are basically sound, and you hear dire warnings about brexit from government economists, national and foreign politicians, journalists, think tanks, business leaders, academics and industry bodies you'll naturally think "these well-credentialed experts all agree, only an idiot would ignore all these warnings"
If you think our institutions are unsound, and you hear dire warnings from the bodies that failed to predict or prevent the 2008 financial crisis and that told us Iraq had WMDs they could launch within 45 minutes, you'll naturally think "these bodies are just mouthpieces for the PM, only an idiot would believe all these warnings"
In other words, it _was_ obvious to _remain_ voters that we should remain - it just wasn't obvious to _leave_ voters because they approach the question with different world views.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2016/06/25/brexit-is-only-the-lates...
>The is actually a very good point. People are acting like it was all incredibly obvious that voting Leave was a terrible thing to do. But it wasn't obvious before the vote. At least not to the average voter.
I cannot disagree with you hard enough. All of the things that are "coming out" now were refuted during the lead up to the referendum, not only by the Remain campaigners, but by the experts the Leave campaign was so clever to disqualify. The was a handful of people/companies/economists that sided with Leave, while the lion's share was solidly with Remain - and they all said it was a terrible thing to do.
Which succinctly sums up why simple democracy is a bad way to make large scale decisions. It's good it was non binding.
The reason you can't see it isn't that the drop isn't significant. It's because it's only been a week, and on a 10 year scale, it's just that last pixel on the graph. Meanwhile, it has shifted the entire graph upwards.
The is actually a very good point. People are acting like it was all incredibly obvious that voting Leave was a terrible thing to do. But it wasn't obvious before the vote. At least not to the average voter.
A lot of the blame for that has to go to the media who printed anything the Leave campaign said even if it wasn't true (the £350m thing especially).
I don't think it's fair to totally blame the Leave voters for their bad decision. Besides it isn't totally clear now that it is that bad of a decision. The pound only dropped 6% (compared to 30% in 2008). And that's due to uncertainty more than anything else. It could easily go up again. In fact you can barely see the change on this graph:
http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=10Y
> they don't get why vast swathes of ordinary people away from London would want to leave Europe.
To me it seems like most Leavers voted Leave because of some dissatisfaction with their life (too poor), and the Leave campaign successfully convinced them that it was because of Europe and immigrants. Or they just voted the way the government didn't want them to as a protest.