The gist of most of the criticism was that it is undemocratic to object to something which had been voted on so recently. This was made with a varying degree of politeness. Some people wrote that although they had voted remain, they had accepted the result with good grace and thought other people should do the same. Others were a bit more forceful, with insults ranging from accusing the marchers of being spoilt through to portraying them as undemocratic Nazis along with pictures to illustrate the point. On my timeline antis were about 4 to 1, with almost all the abuse being posted by leavers.
My thoughts were that although the leavers are now the establishment and are the ones that are getting their own way, they aren't yet thinking or acting like it. I suppose it will take a while for people who are used to being on the outside to realise that they are the mainstream. One tweet made this explicit.
"I remember when the young marched and rallied against the establishment. Now they march for it and their own enslavement
#marchforeurope"
Well at least that made it clear that he hasn't moved on from the vote.
This is mildly amusing at the moment and people on Twitter may not be all that representative, but I think it is going to get to be a problem for the government as time goes on. Saying you are going to make a success of Brexit is fine in the abstract. Once real decisions start getting made they are going to have to face the anger of people who have very particular expectations of what Brexit is supposed to deliver. Angering people who think you are on their side is not a pain free experience.
As to the march itself, I don't know how much impact it will have in the short run. Judging by the news footage it looks like it was polite and the crowd were well behaved. I didn't notice any coverage on the BBC at all. The media won't be interested in a rerun of the debate from the campaign so it will probably be forgotten by this time next week. But the people on the march will be heartened to know that there are kindred spirits out there and no doubt some networking for future organising will have taken place. I think that the problem with the remain campaign in the run up to the referendum vote was that it was distinctly establishment. A more grass roots activist approach wasn't possible to defend the status quo. But with the EU now being a minority taste and leaving being official government policy the psychology is very different. The kind of people who go on this kind of march are the kind of people who don't have a track record to defend or a vested interest to defend. So they have a lot more freedom of action. This could make a difference if the situation changes and there is some issue that comes up that might derail the Brexit process.
But for now the march has probably simply revealed that most people don't really care that much. The EU was never that big an issue before the referendum and as it fades from the headlines it will stop being something people will think about that much. But there is clearly a group of people who are going to be actively campaigning to get back in. Just what their tactics will be isn't clear yet. But they'll need to move on from marching if they are going to achieve their objective.
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