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As in, they were right calling people bigots if they wanted to get out of the eu? That definitely didn't improve uk, I've even heard about people feeling "betrayed" by the now valid tariffs that damaged their UK business
I believe the argument being made is that calling spades spades is bad when spade is an insult and you need to convince the spades to vote for you.

Which is also why Republicans calling Democrats childish names such as "Dummy-crat" or saying "socialist" (or "commie") for all things to the left of their Overton Window doesn't convince any to their left to change their minds rightward.

I think that might be the culprit, but then you have no escape. Some post brexit interviews have been - at least for an European - quite hilarious. I feel sorry for them tho, but it's sort of a leopards ate my face situation
Indeed, and similar.

I used to live in Cambridge; I knew only one person who was a long-time UKIP voter in EU elections, who was "delighted" by the result of the referendum.

Even though I'd already been openly discussing moving to Germany ahead of the referendum, and went on an InterRail trip immediately before it to find a place to move to in the event of Leave winning, he did not comprehend that my reaction to the result included cutting him out of my life entirely.

He wanted the Cambridge to shrink, I left. That's his face leopard.

(As for intelligence: he also sometimes boasted of being in the international maths olympiad, this was Cambridge after all).

Working class people who, especially, wanted to control immigration were called bigots, uneducated, stupid, racist, etc and were ignored. Result is that they voted for Brexit. No, that didn't change anything because this was ignored by the establishment (both Labour and Conservatives) and that is still festering with the resulting rise of the Reform UK party (of Nigel Farage who's celebrating with Trump in Mar-a-Lago right now).
Here's a better analysis of the Brexit thing which was posted here yesterday. It was mostly decided by the fact that the pro-Brexit people had better marketing campaign.

https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/q-and-a

Your "analysis" is from someone involved in the Brexit campaign. Of course Cummings is going to say he was amazing at marketing.

Another argument would be that Vote Leave broke campaign spending rules. In countries with legally binding referenda, that would justify rerunning the referendum. But in the UK it was "only advisory".

"Better marketing" campaign is another word for saying that they understood people's concerns better and were thus able to use that to their advantage instead of insulting the people they were supposed to convince (as the Remain campaign did). This is what Cummings did to win.
> instead of insulting the people they were supposed to convince (as the Remain campaign did)

Can you point to any examples of this? I don't think the official Remain campaign did anything of the sort. Insulting the people you are trying to convert is a poor strategy, which is why I don't believe they did it.

When you say "were called bigots, uneducated, stupid, racist, etc", what I think happened was that the Leave campaign alleged that that was what the Remainers thinking/saying and it gained traction.

Use that to their advantage by telling the truth or by lying?