UKC

The Tories seem to think that people genuinely voted for them in the last general election on the basis of holding a referendum. I reluctantly voted for them simply because I did not want Labour to waste all the economic suffering of austerity that had gone before. I did not want Labour to lead us into economic disaster. Sadly the Conservatives had put the business of referendum in there as well, and now this has lead us to the brink of economic disaster by a different route.

In reply to veteye:

No, the deal / referendum pledge made no difference to me because I never expected it to happen.
I voted for them because Labours borrow our way out of debt ddoesn't sit right with me and nor did far too many years previously of labour using the small businesses of the land as their personal piggy bank / cash cow.

In reply to veteye:

A friend of mine voted tory for the referendum, usually a Labour voter. I've always voted tory anyway

In reply to Dax H:

I did expect it to happen,but I did not think that it was going to be so badly organised from Cameron's angle.
We were in a cleft stick in that election situation.
I just did not want to have more debt for the nation with Labour. Now we will have more debt and misery with the Conservatives.

In reply to barrow_matt:

I would vote for a referendum on some matters across the EU, as in an EU wide referendum.

In reply to veteye:

So are you saying that you did or did not vote for a referendum?

It was quite clearly laid out before the election, as a top 10 item in the manifesto, so unless you communicated your desire that there be no referendum (if that was your desire) how would you expect Cameron to view your vote?

The main problem, surely is that you are completely out of touch with the party you voted for?

This is a common feature of the Referendum Vote, people have for some time now viewed floating votes as a somehow 'responsive' alternative to party loyalty, the result though is that they disengage from the political machine.

In reply to winhill:

Circumstances at the time of the general election acted to hold people who wanted to vote for sensible economics and restraint in spending,(rather than increasing the national debt and being in denial about the effects of that) to referendum ransom, as the only option was to vote for the conservatives, as they did have a rational and sensible track record on economics. At the time I did wonder whether to vote for Labour in order to avoid the referendum issue, but I did not want to be in a country that ended up with uncontrolled debts and subsequent severe inflation and other sequels.
When being "sold 'the manifesto, we were told that the referendum would not be necessarily binding(and indeed it is the case, that legally, we are not obliged to exit the EU); yet it looks as if the Conservative party and others do not see that the close run referendum result should be discussed carefully, but rather are going headlong towards the exit with lousy parameters for trading and will likely still be governed by most of the rules of the EU(such as the free movement of people). We did not expect that the layout of the referendum would be so poorly managed, such that there would be no requirement for a certain level of vote to trigger a change in the UK's situation with respect to the EU. Most sensible countries would expect at least a 10% difference in the two sides,before a change was considered.
The manifesto of the Tories did not suggest that there would be falsehoods put about in the campaigning beforehand. I expected the Conservatives to have the referendum under much tighter rules and scrutiny, but they did not calculate for any of this. They did not have a plan for the situation where the out vote won either.