Bregrets, I’ve found a few

It takes courage to admit you were wrong. As Leave’s lies unravel, more and more Brexit voters – 310 and counting – are showing it

Statue facepalm

Statue facepalmOn 23rd June 2016, 17,410,742 people voted for the UK to end its 43-year membership of the European Union. They did so after a Leave campaign chock full of lies, distortions and scare tactics, many of which have been exposed as such in the days since the referendum.

Many stand by their vote. It’s hard to admit you made a mistake. But as it becomes clearer that both the alleged sins of the EU and the advantages of membership were grievously misrepresented, that no one fully explained the extent to which Britain’s economy is integrated with and dependent on the 27 other EU nations, and as more meat is added to the bones of stories about illegal cooperation between the Leave campaignssuspicious donations to pro-Brexit groups and interference in the vote by malevolent foreign actors, more and more Brexiters are seeing the error of their ways. I’ll be keeping track of them here.

Regret tweet

Bit harsh on yourself there, Leila – you’re far from alone. Many others have struggled with the idea that so many tabloid newspaper journalists and politicians could lie so brazenly, and so clearly contrary to the interests of the country, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that this is what’s been happening.

Tweet

Welcome aboard the good ship Remain, Peter’s friend.

Twitter bio: voted Leave, now anti-Brexit

Like a reformed smoker, Michael’s now quite the virulent anti-Brexit campaigner.

tweet

Good on you, Hugh.

Tim Bregret

Tim only went and wrote a bloody blog post about it.

tweety

The Brexit headbangers would have us believe that support for Remain is waning. That really doesn’t seem to be the picture these tweets are painting.

tweetie

There’s no need to be afraid of mockery from Remain voters if you’re thinking of admitting your Leave vote might have been a mistake. We all voted on the basis of very poor-quality information.

Moar tweet

Don’t kick yourself too hard, Tre. There are plenty of billionaire disaster capitalists queueing up to do that for you.

Not exactly a full-throated recantation from Gordon, but it’s another vote in the bag. (Tweet has since vanished – I think Gordon runs one of those apps that automatically deletes all tweets more than a month old. The reply below, however, survives. Because of eventualities like this, I’m going through this post replacing all embedded tweets with screenshots.)

reply

Annuver tweet

Aaand two more recruits, courtesy of Kristian.

Mooooore

It was almost certainly in your top three, Beth, but I won’t press the point.

Letter to paper

This one came courtesy of @StuartBudd1 on Twitter.

Another Bregretter wedded to the old ways is MG:

Letter Bregretter

This Leave voter is pretty upfront about her reasons for flip-flopping. And I imagine a fair few of these 4 million fellows might well vote differently in a second referendum – or at the very least abstain.

According to this study, the number of people who regretted voting Leave was already greater than the margin of victory for Leave – and that was in October 2016. As the scale of the task facing the UK government and its rank unfitness to undertake it become ever clearer, that number can only have risen.

There are doubtless hundreds, possibly thousands more Bregretters – it only took me an hour to collect the examples above. Feel free to send me any more admissions of error you may find (after thanking them for their courage and honesty, natch). The case for a second referendum – or, preferably, a simple retraction of article 50 – grows stronger by the day.

Bregretters found since 20/9/17

I may have made a rod for my own back here. Mind you, I’ll take a rod up the tradesman’s if it stops Brexit.

Extra tweet

Regrets again

Additional tweet

Graeme regrets

Ex regrets

Mandy regrets

Stuart regrets

Ryan regrets

Regret20

Vote on terms

Regret22

Regret 24

Bregret25

Another Bregretter

And another

Bregretter 92

Anudder

Anudder

Moar regretBregret33

Bregret34

Bregret 35

Bregret 36

Bregret 37

Bregret 39

Bregret 43New Helen Bregret

Latest Bregretter

Annuvva regretta

Bregretting

Da latest

Contrition

Four in one Bregretters

Latest recruit

New remorse

Bregret 56

Mindchanger

Bregret overload

Bregret59

Kim switch

The latest recruit

Bregret 174

Oh look another one

Boring Bregretter

Julian Bregret

Rhubarb's regrets

Mucho Bregret

/pol/ Bregret

Bregret 73

Bregret 75

All new Bregret

Bregret 77

Bregret 80

Bregret 79

Bregret 80

Bregret 82

Bregret 94

Bregret 84

Bitter Bregret

Bregret 87

Bregret 88

Bregret 90

Bregret 91

Bregret 92

Bregret 93

Bregret 95

Gary's Bregret

Pigret

Pony regret

Bregret 99

Ton up

Bregret 101

Bregret 102

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Bregret 107

Bregret 110

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Bregret 111

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Bregret 124Bregret 126Bregret 127

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Bregret 136

Bregret 137

Bregret 138

Bregret 139

Bregret 140

Bregret 141

Bregret 142

(A revealing little exchange, that one. Despite the wailing of Liam Fox and various shady corporate-sponsored thinktanks, there has been much speculation that the BBC has given far too much prominence to advocates of Brexit – and especially of hard Brexit.)

Bregret 143

Bregret 144

Bregret 145

Bregret 146

Extra Bregret

Bregret 150

Bregret 151

Bregret 152

Bregret 153

Regret Jan

(That last post was retweeted by the @BrexityRegrets account, which had, as of 18/12/2017, winkled out 95 more people who have had second thoughts since 23/6/16.)

Inspired by a broadside of hatred and scorn from hardened leavers (and doubtless a few Mercer trolls) on 18 December, I decided to broaden my search and started finding more Bregretters in unexpected places like Mumsnet:

Mumsnet Bregret

And here’s one from the Student Room:

Student Bregret

Ooh, just found a Facebook group that should turn up a few more. Here’s one:

Facebook Bregret

And another Facebook post:

FB Bregret

Six more were interviewed here for the Huffington Post. Another wrote of her change of heart for the Telegraph. This caller to James O’Brien’s LBC radio show admitted he’d “made a mistake” and voted against the interest of his French partner of 15 years. This one made a similar admission, and O’Brien namechecks another (and implies many more) in this video. Another delicious radio moment came when caller David informed Nigel Farage that he would now vote Remain. Three more people seem to be admitting to a change of heart in this Channel 4 News clip. There are four more backtrackers in this separate Huffington Post article. This series of videos features 22 more. There’s one more reformed Remainer (not already covered elsewhere), Le Boy El Pablo, in this Time article. MSN spoke to another Bregretter here. For those who missed it, here’s a representative of an entire family who voted Leave and thought better of it the very next day – “when the facts started coming in”. Bill Walton facepalms about his vote in this article in the Sunderland Echo. Dorian Lynskey’s excellent piece on Leavers’ remorse provides us with a further six (one’s already included above). This Twitter thread found another eight flip-floppers not already covered above. And Lynda Smith uploaded this rather fitting video to YouTube to demonstrate how she now felt about her vote.

I’m reserving a special mention for this guy, who I found only because of the dedication of frothing Brexadi @JohnWebbWindsor on Twitter. Thanks, John!

This is proving to be quite an inexact science – there are possibilities of duplications, of course, and there’s no telling whether all the people concerned are telling the truth (although it’s hard to see why someone would make something like this up). Take this tweet thread, for example:

Tweet threadIn the interests of fairness, I’ll only count this as one more Remainer. (PS: thanks for your bravery and honesty,  Simon!) In any case, this is only supposed to give a general picture of the momentum building against a hasty and calamitous exit from the EU.

Bregret 148

310 down. Only 598,690 to go.

Footnote, 12/02/18

Having hit the 300 mark, which I think is enough to make my point, and having realised that this page now takes a solid hour to scroll through, I’m going to be a little less rigorous with the updates, although I will continue to post links below every now and then.

Why I’ve changed my mind on Brexit

Support grows for second vote in Britain

Another Bregretter on Twitter

And another

And one more

And another

And another

And another

Another

And another …

Author: Andy Bodle

Perennially grumpy middle-aged git with broadly negative views on just about everything. Was intermittently funny once.