Why are "centrists" so immune to the concept of counter-productive behaviour?

One of the trickiest things to understand about self-declared "centrists" is how they're so insulated from reality that they're incapable of even understanding the damage they keep doing to their own cause.

The primary fixation of the "centrists" at present is demanding another EU referendum that they've patronisingly called a "people's vote" as if the 33.5 million who voted in the 2016 referendum were somehow un-people.

Giving your campaign an absurdly patronising name is bad enough, but anyone with a grain of sense should be able to spot the massive glaring risk with this "another referendum now" strategy, which is that if Remainers conspire to lose it (like they did the last one), then they'll have created a cast-iron irreversible double-mandate for Brexit.

With this risk of creating an irreversible double Brexit mandate in mind, you'd think that "centrists" and other Remainers would be focusing all their efforts on trying to create as much public appeal as possible for the idea of stopping Brexit ... But no! A lot of the bone-headed, shockingly out-of-touch, unbelievably divisive, and downright dishonest behaviour of "centrists" looks like it's actually designed to make the general public hate Remainers.

"Taking the piste"

Andrew Adonis' Tweet about a 2nd referendum on his mates winter skiing options may have some kind of niche appeal amongst the most militant of Remainers, who knows? But if the replies are anything to go by, he's spectacularly misjudged the mood of the nation.

Brexit happened in the first place because Tory austerity dogma and wage repression policies caused an unprecedented collapse in living standards.

"Centrists" compounded the problem through their failure to pin the blame for this collapse in living standards on Tory government policy for fear of implicating themselves too (the Lib-Dems actively enabled Tory austerity dogma, and Labour "centrists" somehow decided that imitating Tory austerity dogma rather than opposing it would win them the 2015 General Election!).

This "centrist" failure left the door wide open for ukippers, hard-right Tories, and assorted extreme-right hate groups to falsely pin the blame for the consequences of Tory austerity and wage repression on immigrants and the EU.

Since the Brexit vote things have got even worse. More people in dire poverty, more people in exploitative low-paid jobs, more people feeling the effects of Tory wage repression, more people struggling to get by, more people relying on food bank handouts just to survive ...

Yet here's one of the most high profile Remainers (an unelected lord) actively fulfilling the caricature of an out-of-touch Remainer elitist living the high life while the ignored millions continue to struggle to survive!

How could anyone ever think that these appalling optics could help the Remainer cause?

Manufacturing the news

Brexiteers won the 2016 referendum with an absolute mass of deceptions, distortions, and outright lies. Even the Vote Leave campaign chief openly admitted that they wouldn't have won without the '£350 million for the NHS' lie.

It seems that rather than oppose this kind of outrageous propaganda, "centrists" have decided to imitate the same tactics to manufacture outrage and distort public opinion to their will, with the Guardian leading the charge.

An outrageously deceptive headline misrepresenting Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit policy in order to trigger a tsunami of rage shares on the Friday, an then following it up with an article on the Sunday openly gloating about the bitter internal Labour conflicts triggered by the mass rage sharing of Friday's deceptive headline and even outright lying about Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit stance!

Anyone who has paid attention over the last three years can't have failed to notice the bitter "anti- Corbyn" agenda of "centrist" hacks at the Guardian. But the terrifying thing is that this anti-Corbyn groupthink mentality is so deeply embedded at Guardian towers that they're wilfully spreading deceptions and outright lies in order to manufacture divisions amongst opponents of Tory Brexit.

Any Guardian hack with a shred of journalistic integrity should be outraged that the organisation they work for is conducting such an obvious propaganda war to use deceptions and lies to attack Corbyn and drive a wedge between the Labour left and the Remain campaign, when any sensible strategy to minimise the Brexit damage should be aimed at unifying all opponents of Tory Brexit, rather than deliberately infuriating the Labour-left with anti-Corbyn propaganda and lies.

Preaching to the converted
 

 I vehemently opposed Brexit in 2016, and I've continually opposed the Tories' shambolic and incompetent handling of Brexit ever since, but JK Rowling's astoundingly patronising, hate-fuelled, faux biblical Twitter rant is so obviously appalling and that ordinary people must be wondering how she ended up so consumed by such bitterness and hatred, despite living a life of wealth, luxury, and almost constant acclaim.

Another puzzle is how thousands of "centrist" types apparently enjoyed this utterly cringeworthy display of preaching to the converted so much that they actively liked it and shared it!

If you wanted to actually reinforce the views of Brexiters, showing them this horrific display of patronising and elitist "centrist" bile would surely work infinitely better than composing some new lie to plaster on the side of a bus.

Counter-productive behaviour

If "centrists" were even remotely capable of learning from their own mistakes they would have clocked that their barrages of smears and abuse aimed at discrediting Jeremy Corbyn during the 2015 Labour leadership election only ended up boosting his popularity.

If they had any sense whatever they'd have got to grips with the concept of counter-productive behaviour, and evolved their campaigning strategies accordingly.

Another lesson "centrists" should obviously have learned is that their lamentable campaign tactics during the 2016 referendum somehow managed to hand a bunch of hard-right pro-austerity Brextremist charlatans an astounding victory, despite the fact they demonstrably didn't even have a plan for what to do next if they did somehow end up winning!

That "centrists" so clearly haven't learned either of these lessons should leave anyone who opposes Tory Brexit sick with worry, because presuming these people get the second referendum they want so much, how is Tory Brextremism ever meant to be defeated with a bunch of out-of-touch, unbelievably divisive, bone-headed, elitist, downright dishonest, and unbelievably counter-productive people like this fronting the campaign against it?

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