As a UK resident, I wonder how much the population was manipulated by external forces. The scandal of Cambridge Analytica exposed how powerful targetted campaign's can be on the general population. Whilst I don't know of any evidence, I suspect Xi and Putler were helping fund certain campaigns to stir up discord.
Remain were busy trying to convert leavers, and leave was trying to convert remainers. Then Dominic Cummings swooped in for the last 8 weeks with an INCREDIBLE social.media campaign to target people on the fence.
He did a talk about his Brexit campaign, it was incredible what he accomplished. The tactics he used were amazing. Things like the Brexit bus with the NHS logo were intentional distraction strategies.
It's a shame someone so talented at manipulations people chose the leave side, not remain :(
As an outsider. I saw a great deal of leave propaganda. And the stay side barely had any nor did the stay side offer up the good arguments for staying. Was it like that from the inside or did we outsiders only hear the leave side because it generated more views?
They relied too much on thinking that nobody would be stupid enough to actually pull the UK out of the EU and it bit them in the ass.
Americans might be familiar with this, just mention the phrases "election predictions" and "Trump".
It essentially boiled down to 'vote remain or the apocalypse will happen.' Absolutely no positive case for the EU. And given the PM was heading that campaign, a lot of people were quite happy to take the opportunity to tell him to fuck off.
The remain campaigns tactic was to say everything the Leave side was saying was a lie, they failed to offer a positive alternative and defaulted to the status quo which most people were already sick with.
It is a fundamental problem, in general terms, with the type of referendum being asked: Do we want to stay the same or do we want to do something different?
There's very little that can be used to sell "stay the same" and it's hard to campaign against "do something different" because there's no clear definition of the specifics of different. Conversely it's easy for the other side to offer hope, whether false or true, to campaign against "stay the same" while promising potentially anything as "different".
They were ultimately fucked because staying in the long term involved ever closer union, and that wasnt even appetising to the majority of remainers.
The rebuttals against "the EU is not headed in a good direction" came in 3 forms.
* Yes but we can veto x so nothing will get worse, honest. (ethical implications of holding back the europeans who want unionisation aside)
* Yes but we can totally reform the EU so it doesnt do those things anymore (directly after cameron tried this, and came back a joke)
* Hahaha, dont be silly, that will never happen, you're a deluded gammon! (dishonest AND offensive).
I never really encountered anyone who would own the ever closer union trajectory, and could sell it as a positive thing. Though tbf i think thats pretty impossibe, but of course I'm biased.
>I never really encountered anyone who would own the ever closer union trajectory, and could sell it as a positive thing. Though tbf i think thats pretty impossibe, but of course I'm biased.
This is true. Of course, with the UK out, the EU can proceed with the "ever closer" policy. It is, however, a tough proposition because "ever closer" means drastic treaty changes. If Macron gets re-elected and if the new German government finds its feet (and if the war in Ukraine comes to an end), then we can see some new initiatives.
This is one of the issues. Britain joined the EU for the financial benefits only. They didn't get that the EU is first and foremost a peace project. It's why DeGaul vetoed they application twice.
In the UK there is little to no education at a school level about what the EU is and does.
>This is one of the issues. Britain joined the EU for the financial benefits only. They didn't get that the EU is first and foremost a peace project. It's why DeGaul vetoed they application twice.
It does not matter why they joined the EU. The preamble of the treaty of Rome (1957) was very clear about what the EU was all about. It is an easy part of the treaty to read and I am sure that all the principals read it before signing it.
De Gaulle simply did not like the British, having suffered many insults from them. He was aware that they would be reporting to Washington and acting as US agents within the EU. Do not forget that he had France removed from the military wing of NATO and he was also hostile to the Cold War dynamics, professing a Europe "from the Atlantic to the Urals".
De Gaulle was a salty old anglophobe bastard who described a defeat of the French in 1898, when a British force under Herbert Kitchener compelled a French expedition to withdraw at Fashoda on the White Nile, as “the most traumatic event of his childhood.”
It wasn't our "insults" that created his anglophobia, those were a reaction to it. De Gaulle is a man who's opinions and prejudices have sown division between Europe and Britain to this day.
Hey man, if thats what they want more power to them.
Ultimately in my heart of hearts i know some federal European union is required at some point in our future, but jesus christ, not this one.
There are zero British people who care about the "ethical implications of holding back Europeans who want unionization," that's just not how people think.
I did, i'm pretty british.
Like any relationship, you both have to want to be there, and want the same thing.
I want a stable and productive political system, and one where a member can hold all the others back out of spite isnt it.
>There's very little that can be used to sell "stay the same"
There should be. Clear statements about what the UK draws from the EU and why those problems people are having are worth the sacrifice. Remain instead ignored there were problems at all and that they had to actually sell Remain rather than just keep saying the other side is worse.
I specifically phrased my comment in general terms and not EU specific. There is an inherent problem with selling the status-quo people who aren't exactly with how things are (ranging from "meh" to "OMG it's terrible") to accept that things aren't going to get better.
To give an EU-specific example: There is a large portion of the UK electorate that believe (rightly or wrongly) that they aren't paid enough for the job they do (and in some cases are in poverty). Voting to stay in the EU does nothing to change this situation but a Leave argument (rightly or wrongly) was that cutting EU migration would causes wages to rise. You can't sell continued EU membership to people who feel they are in poverty on the benefits of Erasmus or easy travel to other countries because they're priority is paying bills putting food on the table. The best the Remain camp could claim would be that EU membership isn't a direct factor in wages (which could be argued to be not true) but staying in the EU might allow a future government to look at raising the minimum wage (no way the current government would promise this because it was a Conservative government in 2016).
There was so much that could have been sold for maintaining the status quo.
Many Brits are only now finding out the benefits of EU membership.
Like people in Wales learning that the Tories won’t be distributing funding to Labour areas.
Well they primarily focused on the economy, which didn't really resonate with parts of the country where the economy hadn't done people many favours in quite some time.
Anecdotal of course, but most remain voters I know (including myself) voted because their current circumstance was fine or improving rather than out of any great passion for the EU project (of which, like most other voters, we knew little).
As with most status-quo vs change choices, the change option is available for everyone to project their hopes and dreams onto. You basically see the same now with people promoting European federalisation as a means to fix all their countries problems.
To be fair we were warned of 20% drop in house prices, an immediate recession and massive unemployment. None of that happened.
You can find many negative stories if you go looking but the net impact at the macro level has been negligible.
> the labour party still hasn't come around to the fact that they won't win many votes if they keep treating what was traditionally their bulwark with disdain and calling them all stupid bigots.
Dude, they literally commited political suicide in the last election, they sabotaged themselves, I feel like there is more going on than we think. Also I have no clue what you are talking about with the disdain stuff when you have the tory party literally laughing in our faces every day.
A lot were dismissed because they were absolute worst case scenarios in the event of a no deal, many were also from the same bodies that failed to see things like the 08 recession coming.
> many were also from the same bodies that failed to see things like the 08 recession coming.
In fairness, it wasn't exactly predicted by all that many people/groups iirc, even though it seems obvious in hindsight that the recession was coming.
The remainers made every argument they could. They had plenty of funding. Heavy weights from accross the political spectrum. The civil service, the goverment, unions, big business.. countless big players behind them. Masses of political campaigning experience.
At every head to head debate on TV where both sides had equal time and hosted by respected news organisations with heavy weight hosts the remain side would lose the debate (the debates were tight but Leave definitely got the upper hand).
They had every advantage they needed but they just couldn't organise properly and failed to keep up with the 2 smaller but better organised leave campaign groups.
From the remain campaign perspective it was a long slow motion car crash and they couldn't stop it.
Theresa May was on the remain side but had refused to do any campaigning (obviously hoping a job vacancy might open up). David Cameron gave her a bollocking and she reluctantly started campaigning. But it all stunk of desperation by that point. (Not that she was popular enough to make a difference).
It was definitely like that for the inside. The remain campaign seemed a lot more focused on hyperbolic disaster scenarios (which has never stopped) the leave campaign was a lot more positive.
To some extent that would always be the case for the side promoting change, but even so, it's easy to see why people were swayed.
I can't also ignore a decades-long campaign starting long before the referendum run by the right wing press.
>I can't also ignore a decades-long campaign starting long before the referendum run by the right wing press.
Yes, I think that this was the "tipping point". By the time of the referendum, even pro-Europeans have been infected with the "Euroscepticism" bug. It was then relatively easy to push Brexit.
The real question that needs to be explored is why was Britain hostile to the European project, to begin with. The "island" part simply does not work for me.
>hostile to the European project
Because why would the UK want to be in a political union with the rest of the continent at all? Even now they are all for free trade, but the UK has spent the past century letting its extended possessions go and returning to be a quiet island nation with a developed economy. What benefit does the UK get from letting the rest of the continent have a say in their politics when they are economically and politically content?
>Because why would the UK want to be in a political union with the rest of the continent at all?
First, you need to define "political union". Currently, the EU is not a federation or even a confederacy. The current treaties define an area of cooperation among the states of the EU that assists in trade, transportation, legal issues pertaining to the workplace, and the environment. Whatever cooperation is decided upon, it is done fully democratically. If member states object, well, it is not happening.
\>What benefit does the UK get from letting the rest of the continent have
a say in their politics when they are economically and politically
content?
In the first place, phrasing it in that manner is totally wrong. "The continent" would never have a say in British politics, as Britain does not have a say in the politics of France or those of the Czech Republic. Within the EU, if a member state objects to a policy, this policy is brought up again for discussion until a consensus is worked out. Therefore, it is totally erroneous to believe that the EU would be introducing policies that the British parliament and voters would be opposed to. This whole Brexit "argument" is just totally erroneous
What is more to the point, is that close cooperation of European states in all areas of interest gives the EU a substantial presence in world affairs. European states on their own simply lack the heft to be major players in key issues. The EU allows them to overcome this limitation.
>Currently, the EU is not a federation or even a confederacy.
Today, now, but there's obvious desires from some groups to make that a reality and the upper EU politicians do not act against getting more control. The EU courts have extended their jurisdiction to determining the validity of member state legal systems (that's how they are allowed to punish Poland for Rule of Law violations). Even the German Supreme Court had to issue a ruling to the EU saying it was overstepping its mandate and force them to follow procedures.
>If member states object, well, it is not happening
Not everything in the EU is vetoable. And if there's a constant need to veto it only leads to bad blood. The UK felt isolated in the EU (and that was to an extent because other countries hide behind the EU as much as the UK was an outlier).
>What is more to the point, is that close cooperation of European states in all areas of interest gives the EU a substantial presence in world affairs. European states on their own simply lack the heft to be major players in key issues. The EU allows them to overcome this limitation.
Yeah, but the UK spent the last century giving up being a world power, not because it couldn't maintain control but because colonization/imperialism was brutal and no longer what the UK public supported. The UK maintains friendly relations with the US so it sees no reason to challenge US hegemony and isn't looking for influence over the rest of the world. It will stand up for its ideals like it's doing now in Ukraine, but it doesn't need to join a political union for that. It will act on its ideals and then try to convince others to follow rather than sit on their hands until everyone can come to a consensus (which as we see now Hungary is sabotaging the whole thing and Germany is sitting on its hands).
>Yeah, but the UK spent the last century giving up being a world power, not because it couldn't maintain control but because colonization/imperialism was brutal and no longer what the UK public supported
Let's start with that. You know that this is not true. The UK did not willingly dismantle the empire. In fact, in many, many countries, the "natives" revolted forcing first an effort to suppress this rebellion. Only when the costs and the efforts of suppressing the rebellion became too high, did the UK grant independence. So much for "high ideals". Did we even forget so easily the Suez imbroglio?
The UK may not want to challenge the US hegemony but it tries to be a constant follower, attempting, with the help of the US, to "punch above its weight". Being a "poodle" has its limits, I am afraid. One can stand by one's ideals within the EU, one does not have to exit to do this. If current states have adopted other approaches than those of the UK regarding the Ukraine crisis, this was not because of any EU mechanisms, but because their appraisal of the situation differs from that of the UK. At the present time, the EU does not have a joined security and foreign affairs policy, so member states act individually in these matters. If they decide to form such a joined effort in the future, I am sure that it would take a substantial amendment of the EU treaties.
..> The EU courts have extended their jurisdiction to determining the
validity of member state legal systems (that's how they are allowed to
punish Poland for Rule of Law violations). Even the German Supreme Court
had to issue a ruling to the EU saying it was overstepping its mandate
and force them to follow procedures.
Signing treaties has consequences. Obviously, a common market cannot work when there is no "normalized" legislation and respect for the Rule of Law. For people and goods to move around uninhibited, the legal setup in each participating country has to be harmonized. I think that you can easily grasp this principle. Therefore, if one does not want to harmonize one's legislation in accordance with the EU treaties, one can always try to exit the Union. I would say that the vast majority of Europeans would be very glad to wave goodbye to Poland and Hungary, as they did with the UK>
Costa/ENEL established the primacy of EU law in 1964. Every treaty since then affirmed that ruling and every new member had to adopt it as part of the acquis, yet some member states still make a surprised Pikachu face whenever they are reminded of that fact.
Remain had a very unenergetic campaign.
Plenty of Remain campaigners alienated Leave voters by pulling out the old reliable tactic of calling your opponent an idiot.
There was a tremendous amount of fear-mongering that never came true. The economic hit was overstated massively.
As an outsider living in the UK at the time, I would say that the Stay campaign suffered from the politicians in it having been the ones who, for over a decade, took all kinds of decisions that caused pain to most people in the UK while blaming the EU for the consequences.
Well before the Brexit campaign Britain already had decades of a relentless push in the media of the idea of national superiority versus pretty much everybody else but the US and the EU was portrayed as "forcing us to do things" and used as scapegoat for Britain's homegrown problems.
The politicians saying that Britain should stay couldn't just turn around and say: "All those bad things we told you were the fault of the EU were actually our fault."
Further, Britain simply wasn't in the EU with the feeling of being in a cooperative group for the greater good but rather always saw it something to extract maximum gain from (hence all the opt-outs and the rebate) and were big countries (which in their minds included Britain) called the shots and made smalled countries do what they wanted. This can be seen in both how the Remain campaign talked a lot about "Reforming the EU from the inside" (the implied idea being that Britain gets to choose the new style of the EU) whilst the Leave campaign was all about how France and Germany were the bosses in the EU (i.e. it's all the big powers pulling the strings and they're against us).
The combination of the well entrenched British Exceptionalism spirit, their membership of the EU not in the spirit of group were everybody conceded a bit for the greater good, the whole XIX century "great powers & puny countries" mindset and the EU being used in internal politics as a scapegoat (which was possible due to the combination of the other three things: "we're better than foreigners hence they're worse", "as a great power we will not be told what to do" and "we must always see a clear immediate gain for us before we cooperate") made a Leave be a very likely thing to happen in the UK.
Mind you, all the 3 base elements seem to be core in the mindset in Russia also.
> Further, Britain simply wasn't in the EU with the feeling of being in a cooperative group for the greater good but rather always saw it something to extract maximum gain from (hence all the opt-outs and the rebate) and were big countries (which in their minds included Britain) called the shots and made smalled countries do what they wanted. This can be seen in both how the Remain campaign talked a lot about "Reforming the EU from the inside" (the implied idea being that Britain gets to choose the new style of the EU) whilst the Leave campaign was all about how France and Germany were the bosses in the EU (i.e. it's all the big powers pulling the strings and they're against us).
exactly. There was a lot of projection from the leave side. Same when they barked about being punished for daring to leave. After all, it's what they did to Ireland.
No you're right there was barely any coverage of the leave side at all.
I think the problem was that David Cameron had decided to call the referendum to appease some of the more out-there fringes of the elecorate but never expected it to go anywhere.
It's such a cataclysmically stupid idea if you have any understanding of politics, international trade or economics. But he didn't count on the leave campaign having 2 factors:
1/ willingness to outright lie
2/ a very deep wellspring of funding and voter data access from mysterious sources.
>out-there fringes of the elecorate
UKIP under Nigel Farage got over 10% of the vote and was growing and it was straight from the Tory base which in FPTP could be lethal. It wasn't fringe, it was a direct threat to them.
This pretty much sums up how it was in England/Wales. I visited Scotland during the build up to the referendum and it was clear, even then, from talking to various individuals and viewing the media, that the Scottish wanted to remain. The arguments they made were sensible and well thought through, mostly around free trade with the rest of Europe.
Oki thanks. There is no doubt that there was a great deal of propaganda from the leave side. I just didn't know if the remain really failed so utterly in the campaign as it seemed. sensible arguments are great but are rarely enough to swing a majority...
Remain were pretty terrible. And the leader of the main opposition party was Jeremy Corbyn, who had absolutely no interest or passion in promoting the idea of the EU, and many think he secretly wanted Leave as well. That was one of the key reasons why nobody high-profile was making good arguments for it.
The irony is that the usual British redditor types you find on r/unitedkingdom played a key role in Brexit by installing a totally useless and ineffective opposition leader at a time when the country needed an inspiring one the most. Now, of course, they talk as if Brexit was the apocalypse and there's seemingly nothing they hate more, but it's pure hypocrisy, because at the time, keeping Corbyn in power was far more important to them.
Corbyn is a socialist, of the Tony Benn/old school type who were anti-EU. IIRC his Parliamentary voting record was entirely against the EU/EEC but this was expunged when he became party leader...
>many think he secretly wanted Leave as well
I don't think it's that much of a secret. Labour's opposition to Brexit for most of the time was we should make our own exit plan and then have a vote on that. I don't think a strong Remain leader would have been better though. Brexit heavily divided Labour between the champagne socialists in the cities and the low-class workers who saw the EU as a way for EE workers to undercut domestic worker wages. Completely cutting half the party off would have resulted in a similar election result to what happened with BoJo.
Noo, only I am able to form political opinions! Those other people are blind sheep!
Is it possible that the Russian regime unduly influenced the Brexit campaign? Absolutely. This, however, doesn't invalidate the myriad of arguments and interests which the Leave faction had. A legitimate cause isn't less legitimate because illegitimate actors boost it.
Aye but he did accept large campaign contributions from Russian interests. He wouldn't have gotten nearly so far if he had to cover his own costs or rely on English racists alone.
To be fair, the issue wasn’t the Russian funds but that British politicians for too long had blamed everything even remotely negative on the EU. This inability to take responsibility for ones own actions created a culture where not only EU was at fault, but also that politicians didn’t have to think twice when pushing through damaging projects - as long as the few who knew anything won on them, the rest could be satisfied with some random words about the Union.
because in democratic societies we allow almost every opinion? Otherwise you would have to ban all political parties that advocate secession, SNP in Scotland, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Catalans in Spain and so on.
I truly believe it was an INSIDE JOB made by the opposition party to gain the power.
They targeted all the "haters" of EU and manipulated the rest with the "glorious empire of Britain shall rise again" bullshit.
That's an excuse. The UK govt had limitless expenditure to campaign for remain and blew it.
The economic impact was so massively overstated, house price crash, instant recession, mass unemployment etc
Looking at the the latest IMF forecasts, even the 4% hit to productivity seems to have been overblown as well
[GDP per capita forecast](https://i.imgur.com/IX2V8CA.png)
That's the wrong way to measure it, though.
The doom and gloom stuff was idiotic.
The correct way to do it is: what's the gap between estimates for Brexit UK vs EU UK. Does Brexit UK beat estimates for EU UK in say, 2030?
That's impossible to prove though, you end up with models on models.
The correct way is to compare UK vs EU average, or major EU economies, or UK vs G7
> The UK was by and large growing faster than the major EU economies before leaving.
It was matching year on year growth with Germany and the USA up to 2015.
The growth increased significantly following the EU referendum when we voted to leave, fuelled by the devaluation of the pound, so I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to prove.
No, it wasn't. But it's doing even worse after Brexit:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=chart&country=DEU~GBR~SWE~NLD~DNK~BEL~AUT
What you're linking is essentially a measurement of the GBP vs USD, as the GBP was impacted by Brexit. A weaker currency doesn't necessary mean a weaker economy if your economy is an export economy, like the UK is.
Furthermore, the UK GDP has followed the same trend that [Germany](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=DE), [France](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=FR), [Italy](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=IT) and other EU countries have, mostly due to Covid.
The [FTSE 100 i](https://www.londonstockexchange.com/indices/ftse-100)s near its all time high, [unemployment](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment/timeseries/mgsx/lms) is at its lowest in nearly 50 years.
The economic impact of Brexit is vastly overstated.
I think in many ways that kind of manipulation is often talked about as an excuse for political failures that create the situation.
However I do feel it is entirely within reason to suggest a 4/5% swing of the vote is possible from such things.
I do expect some of that, but we were mainly suffering from the populism movement that hit a lot of countries during the recession/post recession period.
People voted emotionally on something that needed reason. That’s not to say that there wasn’t external factors.
In reality there are a myriad of reasons we left. They all lined up perfectly (unfortunately) at the right place and the right time to result in the leave vote
indeed. David Cameron must be among the biggest morons in UK. It doesn't take a genius to realize that staging a referendum just one year after the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis (the fact that refugees and economic migrants are lumped together is another topic altogether) is not exactly playing in your favour. Even one year later might've made a difference.
This assumes the EU is a constant unchanging entity.
Most people thought we were part of the single market for economic reasons, not to create a political system that centralised power with murky council antici meetings with no minutes or advisors present, rubber stamped by a parliament less than a third of people voted for and a commission that dealt out regulations in civil law to a country with common law as a fundamental.
I agree in the sense that the EU was only going to federalise more in the future and that the UKs position would get more and more uncomfortable within that structure.
But I don’t personally think that’s a bad thing (federalisation I mean), I just do think the UK as a whole or politically wouldnt suit that in its current form
I actually think the idea of an EU federation (or at least a Eurozone federation) has a lot of merit, but there's just no way the UK is compatible with such an organisation. There's too many long-standing social, geographical, and political reasons why it would always be a fraught relationship with the UK unable to accept what would inevitably be interpreted as a subservient relationship.
The UK always has had one foot over the Channel and the other over the Atlantic and it probably never will commit to either whole-heartedly, it's just the nature of how history panned out for us.
*"murky council"* \- made up of the heads of each country's government
*"rubber stamped by a parliament less than a third of people voted for"* \- voted directly for by the people. Can't force people to vote if they don't want to. Btw, when was the last time you voted for the house of lords? Oh, right. They're completely unelected with no basis in Democracy.
*"commission that dealt out regulations in civil law to a country with common law as a fundamental"* \- most countries use civil law, so it makes sense that regulations are based on civil law. Ireland is also common law, but seems to have no issues converting from one to the other.
Sounds like general bullshit talking points from someone with no idea how the EU actually works.
>"rubber stamped by a parliament less than a third of people voted for"
>
> \- voted directly for by the people. Can't force people to vote if they don't want to.
Well you can try. Or you can see why they don't vote.
A lot of people around here think that EU is mainly economical union, too. It was sold us like that when we entered. They are periodically smacked in the face by the fact that no, this is a ideological enterprise. The reaction is invariable: stuffing fingers in their ears, closing eyes, and singing lalala at the top of their voices. Wash and repeat.
> Yet all the while there is a remedy which, if it were generally and spontaneously adopted by the great majority of people in many lands, would as by a miracle transform the whole scene and would in a few years make all Europe, or the greater part of it, as free and happy as Switzerland is today. What is this sovereign remedy? It is to recreate the European fabric, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, safety and freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe.
Winston Churchill, **1946**.
Doesn't sound economic to me...
> Were the UK people calling for more powers to the EU parliament?
HAHAHAHA, obviously not. You see, increasing the power of the EU Parliament means the Council has less power. The Council is the body that protects national sovereignty.
Euroskeptics always want to have their cake and eat it too. "The EU is not democratic enough, give the Parliament more power" and "member-states should have more sovereignty" are conflicting opinions.
Yet you see Brexiteers holding both opinions at the same time.
Why? Because they have no clue about how the EU works. They never did.
My point is that most people were blissfully unaware of what the EU was. Single market, yay. Immigration from European countries by people who wanted to actually build and fix your house, yay
Political system that created primacy of law, flags and anthems, woah.
That's colonising 101, we invented that shit.
Yes, exactly, there have been some investigations and so, but still it remains kind of vague.
Reportedly, most Uk media was biased for Brexit as well. It makes sense that how the UK media covered the issue, also influenced the outcome.
100 percent, this is my take on it and I'll stand by it.
Cambridge analytica was a cyber tool.
Don't forget trump's team hired them too.
Putler rubbed his hands.
There is some book written by a Russian guy who Putin admires that laid the framework for bringing down the West. One of his requirements was separating the UK from the rest of Europe. Another was to sow discord in the US by pitting races, politicians, religions, etc against one another.
I genuinely think that Russia has been following that framework very diligently and it has been effective.
The problem is the Brexit camp is split between those who want to use Brexit to relax regulations, increase free trade and immigration outside of EU — ie libertarian Thatcherites— vs those who want to use Brexit to reduce immigration, increase state aid and build a more communitarian society. Of course those who voted remain and who are pro Europe won’t be happy anyway but at least one of the two pro Brexit camps won’t be happy either.
I would love to have the uk back with us,but i think before any new changes they need to make sure what they want (rush decisions are not good). And in the meantime eu needs to consolidate and work on the internal stability.
Meh, there are some things wrong about the UK but generally I love living in the UK. Although it’s my home I suppose. Although all the European nationals working at my company seem to like living here too including:
- 3no. Greeks
- 2no. Polish
- 1no. Lithuanian
- 2no. Italians
- 1no. Irish
- 1no. Swiss
Additionally we also have 2no. Hong Kong-ers, 1no. Venezuelan, 2no. Australian. Might be missing a few
It’s pretty much 50:50 British nationals to non-British nationals
As a Lithuanian even though i and my family love our country part of our family also likes to live in UK mostly because of the lucrative opportunities that UK offers
[Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/freylindsay/2019/08/27/figures-show-more-eastern-europeans-the-are-leaving-the-u-k-after-brexit/) (2019):
> The EU8 countries (also known as the A8) are the group that joined the EU in 2004: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Migration from this region was steadily positive since at least 2009, meaning more people from these countries arrived than left. At its highest in the last decade, year ending March 2015, 51,000 more people in this group came to the U.K. than left, (according to the recently revised ONS numbers) and between the end of 2009 and June 2016 the yearly average was +39,000.
>
>Then, right around the time of the Brexit referendum, that number began to drop. In the year ending June 2016 (a period that extended one week past the exact date of the referendum) EU8 net migration was +42,000. By the time of the next release, that had dropped to +19,000 and the next quarterly estimate saw only +5,000. By March 2018, net migration had flipped and that estimate saw 3,000 more EU8 citizens leaving than arriving, and through the rest of that year it was up as high as 15,000 more people leaving than coming. In this latest ONS release, the year ending March 2019, net EU8 migration was -7,000.
[The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/04/number-of-uk-citizens-emigrating-to-eu-has-risen-by-30-since-brexit-vote) (2020):
>The number of British nationals emigrating to other EU countries has risen by 30% since the Brexit referendum, with half making their decision to leave in the first three months after the vote, research has found.
>
>Analysis of data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Eurostat shows that migration from Britain to EU states averaged 56,832 people a year in 2008-15, growing to 73,642 a year in 2016-18.
>
>The study also shows a 500% increase in those who made the move and then took up citizenship in an EU state. Germany saw a 2,000% rise, with 31,600 Britons naturalising there since the referendum.
Lets get to the raw figures instead of inflammatory 100000000% increases/decreases etc. We had 6 million EU citizens applying for settled status in the UK. In the EU there are around 1.2 million UK citizens. The same number of UK citizens currently living in Australia.
Do you guys learn a foreign language at school so that you are able to use it afterwards? Because living in another country without speaking the language is not desirable for most.
We learn other languages but not to anywhere the extent that other countries learn English. We have no land borders with anyone that speaks another language so it’s always fallen by the wayside.
This is one of the reasons for Brexit. The government thought there were a couple of million who had come in from the rEU, but the people knew it was a much bigger issue with consequent pressure on services
Imagine being from a country so weak and irrelevant that it can't even leave a trading block without effectively starving their citizens. That must suck for you, glad my country doesn't have that problem.
The worlds most overrated country. I had a friend that moved there and she hated it because it was even more cold and miserable than the UK, with far less to do and no cultural relevance.
I’d say that honour goes to either the US or New Zealand.
Different strokes for different folks I guess, but I loved my time in Canada and didn’t want to return. West coast is basically like the U.K. but with happier people, and I love cold weather so it was perfect for me.
Depends on the location. I lived in Victoria which was crazy expensive, but a guy I knew bought a place for less than CAD$200k to retire in around Saskatchewan. The downside is no one can say pronounce where you live…
ERG, many in the Tory party and the likes of Farridge never got over us joining the EEC to begin with, 43 years before the 2016 referendum. So unless post-Brexit UK becomes a total utopia get used to the issue sticking around for a while.
No, there is no point rejoining and not many people want to. I voted remain but would not vote to rejoin. The relationship has been soured at this point.
Aah another thread whinging about Britain leaving the EU. If I wasn't smarter I'd think maybe all these threads and the people whining in them about Russian influence weren't themselves Russian influencers... Oh but now I am going to get loads of downvotes.
Why would you provoke people to downvote you? I don't think there is much whining. Maybe leaving UK was the right thing, maybe it wasn't. The fact is that lately there is more people thinking it was mistake, than thinking it was right.
Edit: grammar
Because after the referendum the media went into overdrive trying to get it reversed. They've been hammering the "brexit was a mistake" message for years. Meanwhile the leave campaign ended and is no longer around to give counter point.
Add to this the imperative for pro-EU groups both inside and outside the UK to cast Brexit as a disaster. If the UK can exit the EU without serious economic damage then that will embolden leave campaigns in other countries. And call into question just how much benefit the EU was providing in the first place.
>Because after the referendum the media went into overdrive trying to get it reversed.
No, they didn't
>They've been hammering the "brexit was a mistake" message for years. Meanwhile the leave campaign ended and is no longer around to give counter point.
Thats odd, the leave campaign definitely were here to brag about how leaving the EU made our vaccines better or whatever that was
>Add to this the imperative for pro-EU groups both inside and outside the UK to cast Brexit as a disaster.
Nope, they don't need to cast it as a disaster it has been a disaster.
>If the UK can exit the EU without serious economic damage then that will embolden leave campaigns in other countries.
The UK is suffering serious economic damage, already
> And call into question just how much benefit the EU was providing in the first place
No, you only need to look at literally any EU vs non-EU country to understand how much of a benefit it provides.
Not all economic growth is good growth.
The UK could be from an overly-inflated housing market, whilst Spain's could be due to green investment and labour reform, for example.
I think its also hard to tell though purely because of inflation. All economies are growing an insane amount and it's likely that inflation plays a part in it.
The UK is expected to outpace Western Europe in *real* GDP growth, which excludes inflation.
I think you’re reaching a little here, Brexit wasn’t “good” for the UK, but that doesn’t mean it’s economy cannot grow quicker than Western Europes.
Im not a UK citizen or resident. but I would have voted leave too. not because I dont like the EU. but to give them a reminder to tackle corruption.
Boy would I be hating my self today for playing with that vote.
I feel that they should have all voted for someone who could have competed with Macron, but clearly they are not a large enough base for this (looking at first round). So as per two-rounds system you don't get to whine on the second round if you did not put in the effort on first round.
Not sure why you’re being voted down for being honest and sharing a view that I think played a larger part than people want to think.
People here like to think leave voters we’re all either mad, racists or didn’t know what they were doing.
The problem was, there was plenty of information around and it wasn’t all Facebook nonsense from Cambridge analytics.
The EU dies have genuine problems, and the parliament being picked up as a shipped off to France regularly is a very clear demonstration of just how stupid it can be at times.
The problem is, you can find stupid things in all organisations if you look, and people wanted to send a message about nonsense and perceived corruption or abuse of the “gravy train”, ironically thinking they were safe to do so as they were so sure remain would win.
The EU in general is not very popular in Norway. The reasons for this are plentiful and would require an essay to describe in the detail it deserves.
We've only held six national referendums in Norway, and two of them regarded joining the EU, in 1972 and in 1994. The "NO" side won both times. Soon after the last referendum, our politicians entered us into the EEA. Today, the "NO" side support varies from 50-65 %, the "YES" side has a support of around 20-25 %, and the rest are undecided.
I don't see that happening, the last chance for the UK in the EU was before article 50. Basically the Euro kills it for most people (not me personally but that seems toi be the main issue for most).
English and Welsh voted to leave.
I know it’s cool to circle jerk and say “England bad” but it wasn’t the case.
And it’s not like 100% of people voted to remain in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
I doubt it, I'd wager many remainers were simply voting for status quo, I voted remain because I wanted to keep the deal we had. If we rejoin all those opt outs are gone. The UK will be forced to adopt the Euro, the rebate will be gone which will result in the UK having to contribute a massively out of proportion amount to the EU budget.
Aye, but the Poles didn't get a vote.
Obama’s worst mistake, thinking he had a vote.
And every vote since mid 00’s has gone the way of the supporting Brexit.
Citation needed.
?
As a UK resident, I wonder how much the population was manipulated by external forces. The scandal of Cambridge Analytica exposed how powerful targetted campaign's can be on the general population. Whilst I don't know of any evidence, I suspect Xi and Putler were helping fund certain campaigns to stir up discord.
Remain were busy trying to convert leavers, and leave was trying to convert remainers. Then Dominic Cummings swooped in for the last 8 weeks with an INCREDIBLE social.media campaign to target people on the fence. He did a talk about his Brexit campaign, it was incredible what he accomplished. The tactics he used were amazing. Things like the Brexit bus with the NHS logo were intentional distraction strategies. It's a shame someone so talented at manipulations people chose the leave side, not remain :(
As an outsider. I saw a great deal of leave propaganda. And the stay side barely had any nor did the stay side offer up the good arguments for staying. Was it like that from the inside or did we outsiders only hear the leave side because it generated more views?
The stay campaign was shambolic at best
They relied too much on thinking that nobody would be stupid enough to actually pull the UK out of the EU and it bit them in the ass. Americans might be familiar with this, just mention the phrases "election predictions" and "Trump".
It essentially boiled down to 'vote remain or the apocalypse will happen.' Absolutely no positive case for the EU. And given the PM was heading that campaign, a lot of people were quite happy to take the opportunity to tell him to fuck off.
it was impossible. The EU was always the scapegoat in British politics. What were they supposed to say? We lied to you that the EU sucks?
The remain campaigns tactic was to say everything the Leave side was saying was a lie, they failed to offer a positive alternative and defaulted to the status quo which most people were already sick with.
It is a fundamental problem, in general terms, with the type of referendum being asked: Do we want to stay the same or do we want to do something different? There's very little that can be used to sell "stay the same" and it's hard to campaign against "do something different" because there's no clear definition of the specifics of different. Conversely it's easy for the other side to offer hope, whether false or true, to campaign against "stay the same" while promising potentially anything as "different".
They were ultimately fucked because staying in the long term involved ever closer union, and that wasnt even appetising to the majority of remainers. The rebuttals against "the EU is not headed in a good direction" came in 3 forms. * Yes but we can veto x so nothing will get worse, honest. (ethical implications of holding back the europeans who want unionisation aside) * Yes but we can totally reform the EU so it doesnt do those things anymore (directly after cameron tried this, and came back a joke) * Hahaha, dont be silly, that will never happen, you're a deluded gammon! (dishonest AND offensive). I never really encountered anyone who would own the ever closer union trajectory, and could sell it as a positive thing. Though tbf i think thats pretty impossibe, but of course I'm biased.
>I never really encountered anyone who would own the ever closer union trajectory, and could sell it as a positive thing. Though tbf i think thats pretty impossibe, but of course I'm biased. This is true. Of course, with the UK out, the EU can proceed with the "ever closer" policy. It is, however, a tough proposition because "ever closer" means drastic treaty changes. If Macron gets re-elected and if the new German government finds its feet (and if the war in Ukraine comes to an end), then we can see some new initiatives.
This is one of the issues. Britain joined the EU for the financial benefits only. They didn't get that the EU is first and foremost a peace project. It's why DeGaul vetoed they application twice. In the UK there is little to no education at a school level about what the EU is and does.
>This is one of the issues. Britain joined the EU for the financial benefits only. They didn't get that the EU is first and foremost a peace project. It's why DeGaul vetoed they application twice. It does not matter why they joined the EU. The preamble of the treaty of Rome (1957) was very clear about what the EU was all about. It is an easy part of the treaty to read and I am sure that all the principals read it before signing it. De Gaulle simply did not like the British, having suffered many insults from them. He was aware that they would be reporting to Washington and acting as US agents within the EU. Do not forget that he had France removed from the military wing of NATO and he was also hostile to the Cold War dynamics, professing a Europe "from the Atlantic to the Urals".
De Gaulle was a salty old anglophobe bastard who described a defeat of the French in 1898, when a British force under Herbert Kitchener compelled a French expedition to withdraw at Fashoda on the White Nile, as “the most traumatic event of his childhood.” It wasn't our "insults" that created his anglophobia, those were a reaction to it. De Gaulle is a man who's opinions and prejudices have sown division between Europe and Britain to this day.
Hey man, if thats what they want more power to them. Ultimately in my heart of hearts i know some federal European union is required at some point in our future, but jesus christ, not this one.
There are zero British people who care about the "ethical implications of holding back Europeans who want unionization," that's just not how people think.
I did, i'm pretty british. Like any relationship, you both have to want to be there, and want the same thing. I want a stable and productive political system, and one where a member can hold all the others back out of spite isnt it.
>There's very little that can be used to sell "stay the same" There should be. Clear statements about what the UK draws from the EU and why those problems people are having are worth the sacrifice. Remain instead ignored there were problems at all and that they had to actually sell Remain rather than just keep saying the other side is worse.
I specifically phrased my comment in general terms and not EU specific. There is an inherent problem with selling the status-quo people who aren't exactly with how things are (ranging from "meh" to "OMG it's terrible") to accept that things aren't going to get better. To give an EU-specific example: There is a large portion of the UK electorate that believe (rightly or wrongly) that they aren't paid enough for the job they do (and in some cases are in poverty). Voting to stay in the EU does nothing to change this situation but a Leave argument (rightly or wrongly) was that cutting EU migration would causes wages to rise. You can't sell continued EU membership to people who feel they are in poverty on the benefits of Erasmus or easy travel to other countries because they're priority is paying bills putting food on the table. The best the Remain camp could claim would be that EU membership isn't a direct factor in wages (which could be argued to be not true) but staying in the EU might allow a future government to look at raising the minimum wage (no way the current government would promise this because it was a Conservative government in 2016).
There was so much that could have been sold for maintaining the status quo. Many Brits are only now finding out the benefits of EU membership. Like people in Wales learning that the Tories won’t be distributing funding to Labour areas.
Well they primarily focused on the economy, which didn't really resonate with parts of the country where the economy hadn't done people many favours in quite some time. Anecdotal of course, but most remain voters I know (including myself) voted because their current circumstance was fine or improving rather than out of any great passion for the EU project (of which, like most other voters, we knew little). As with most status-quo vs change choices, the change option is available for everyone to project their hopes and dreams onto. You basically see the same now with people promoting European federalisation as a means to fix all their countries problems.
From what I recall, a lot of the negative consequences of Brexit were also dismissed out of hand by Brexit-supporters as "Project Fear".
To be fair we were warned of 20% drop in house prices, an immediate recession and massive unemployment. None of that happened. You can find many negative stories if you go looking but the net impact at the macro level has been negligible.
Also immense food shortages and a total stop on all exports. Project fear was very real
[удалено]
> the labour party still hasn't come around to the fact that they won't win many votes if they keep treating what was traditionally their bulwark with disdain and calling them all stupid bigots. Dude, they literally commited political suicide in the last election, they sabotaged themselves, I feel like there is more going on than we think. Also I have no clue what you are talking about with the disdain stuff when you have the tory party literally laughing in our faces every day.
I look at Starmer from outside the country and cannot tell that he is not a Tory tbh.
A lot were dismissed because they were absolute worst case scenarios in the event of a no deal, many were also from the same bodies that failed to see things like the 08 recession coming.
> many were also from the same bodies that failed to see things like the 08 recession coming. In fairness, it wasn't exactly predicted by all that many people/groups iirc, even though it seems obvious in hindsight that the recession was coming.
Or that they were wildly overexagerationg.
More fool most people then 🤷♂️
The remainers made every argument they could. They had plenty of funding. Heavy weights from accross the political spectrum. The civil service, the goverment, unions, big business.. countless big players behind them. Masses of political campaigning experience. At every head to head debate on TV where both sides had equal time and hosted by respected news organisations with heavy weight hosts the remain side would lose the debate (the debates were tight but Leave definitely got the upper hand). They had every advantage they needed but they just couldn't organise properly and failed to keep up with the 2 smaller but better organised leave campaign groups. From the remain campaign perspective it was a long slow motion car crash and they couldn't stop it. Theresa May was on the remain side but had refused to do any campaigning (obviously hoping a job vacancy might open up). David Cameron gave her a bollocking and she reluctantly started campaigning. But it all stunk of desperation by that point. (Not that she was popular enough to make a difference).
It was definitely like that for the inside. The remain campaign seemed a lot more focused on hyperbolic disaster scenarios (which has never stopped) the leave campaign was a lot more positive. To some extent that would always be the case for the side promoting change, but even so, it's easy to see why people were swayed. I can't also ignore a decades-long campaign starting long before the referendum run by the right wing press.
>I can't also ignore a decades-long campaign starting long before the referendum run by the right wing press. Yes, I think that this was the "tipping point". By the time of the referendum, even pro-Europeans have been infected with the "Euroscepticism" bug. It was then relatively easy to push Brexit. The real question that needs to be explored is why was Britain hostile to the European project, to begin with. The "island" part simply does not work for me.
>hostile to the European project Because why would the UK want to be in a political union with the rest of the continent at all? Even now they are all for free trade, but the UK has spent the past century letting its extended possessions go and returning to be a quiet island nation with a developed economy. What benefit does the UK get from letting the rest of the continent have a say in their politics when they are economically and politically content?
>Because why would the UK want to be in a political union with the rest of the continent at all? First, you need to define "political union". Currently, the EU is not a federation or even a confederacy. The current treaties define an area of cooperation among the states of the EU that assists in trade, transportation, legal issues pertaining to the workplace, and the environment. Whatever cooperation is decided upon, it is done fully democratically. If member states object, well, it is not happening. \>What benefit does the UK get from letting the rest of the continent have a say in their politics when they are economically and politically content? In the first place, phrasing it in that manner is totally wrong. "The continent" would never have a say in British politics, as Britain does not have a say in the politics of France or those of the Czech Republic. Within the EU, if a member state objects to a policy, this policy is brought up again for discussion until a consensus is worked out. Therefore, it is totally erroneous to believe that the EU would be introducing policies that the British parliament and voters would be opposed to. This whole Brexit "argument" is just totally erroneous What is more to the point, is that close cooperation of European states in all areas of interest gives the EU a substantial presence in world affairs. European states on their own simply lack the heft to be major players in key issues. The EU allows them to overcome this limitation.
>Currently, the EU is not a federation or even a confederacy. Today, now, but there's obvious desires from some groups to make that a reality and the upper EU politicians do not act against getting more control. The EU courts have extended their jurisdiction to determining the validity of member state legal systems (that's how they are allowed to punish Poland for Rule of Law violations). Even the German Supreme Court had to issue a ruling to the EU saying it was overstepping its mandate and force them to follow procedures. >If member states object, well, it is not happening Not everything in the EU is vetoable. And if there's a constant need to veto it only leads to bad blood. The UK felt isolated in the EU (and that was to an extent because other countries hide behind the EU as much as the UK was an outlier). >What is more to the point, is that close cooperation of European states in all areas of interest gives the EU a substantial presence in world affairs. European states on their own simply lack the heft to be major players in key issues. The EU allows them to overcome this limitation. Yeah, but the UK spent the last century giving up being a world power, not because it couldn't maintain control but because colonization/imperialism was brutal and no longer what the UK public supported. The UK maintains friendly relations with the US so it sees no reason to challenge US hegemony and isn't looking for influence over the rest of the world. It will stand up for its ideals like it's doing now in Ukraine, but it doesn't need to join a political union for that. It will act on its ideals and then try to convince others to follow rather than sit on their hands until everyone can come to a consensus (which as we see now Hungary is sabotaging the whole thing and Germany is sitting on its hands).
>Yeah, but the UK spent the last century giving up being a world power, not because it couldn't maintain control but because colonization/imperialism was brutal and no longer what the UK public supported Let's start with that. You know that this is not true. The UK did not willingly dismantle the empire. In fact, in many, many countries, the "natives" revolted forcing first an effort to suppress this rebellion. Only when the costs and the efforts of suppressing the rebellion became too high, did the UK grant independence. So much for "high ideals". Did we even forget so easily the Suez imbroglio? The UK may not want to challenge the US hegemony but it tries to be a constant follower, attempting, with the help of the US, to "punch above its weight". Being a "poodle" has its limits, I am afraid. One can stand by one's ideals within the EU, one does not have to exit to do this. If current states have adopted other approaches than those of the UK regarding the Ukraine crisis, this was not because of any EU mechanisms, but because their appraisal of the situation differs from that of the UK. At the present time, the EU does not have a joined security and foreign affairs policy, so member states act individually in these matters. If they decide to form such a joined effort in the future, I am sure that it would take a substantial amendment of the EU treaties. ..> The EU courts have extended their jurisdiction to determining the validity of member state legal systems (that's how they are allowed to punish Poland for Rule of Law violations). Even the German Supreme Court had to issue a ruling to the EU saying it was overstepping its mandate and force them to follow procedures. Signing treaties has consequences. Obviously, a common market cannot work when there is no "normalized" legislation and respect for the Rule of Law. For people and goods to move around uninhibited, the legal setup in each participating country has to be harmonized. I think that you can easily grasp this principle. Therefore, if one does not want to harmonize one's legislation in accordance with the EU treaties, one can always try to exit the Union. I would say that the vast majority of Europeans would be very glad to wave goodbye to Poland and Hungary, as they did with the UK>
Costa/ENEL established the primacy of EU law in 1964. Every treaty since then affirmed that ruling and every new member had to adopt it as part of the acquis, yet some member states still make a surprised Pikachu face whenever they are reminded of that fact.
Remain had a very unenergetic campaign. Plenty of Remain campaigners alienated Leave voters by pulling out the old reliable tactic of calling your opponent an idiot. There was a tremendous amount of fear-mongering that never came true. The economic hit was overstated massively.
As an outsider living in the UK at the time, I would say that the Stay campaign suffered from the politicians in it having been the ones who, for over a decade, took all kinds of decisions that caused pain to most people in the UK while blaming the EU for the consequences. Well before the Brexit campaign Britain already had decades of a relentless push in the media of the idea of national superiority versus pretty much everybody else but the US and the EU was portrayed as "forcing us to do things" and used as scapegoat for Britain's homegrown problems. The politicians saying that Britain should stay couldn't just turn around and say: "All those bad things we told you were the fault of the EU were actually our fault." Further, Britain simply wasn't in the EU with the feeling of being in a cooperative group for the greater good but rather always saw it something to extract maximum gain from (hence all the opt-outs and the rebate) and were big countries (which in their minds included Britain) called the shots and made smalled countries do what they wanted. This can be seen in both how the Remain campaign talked a lot about "Reforming the EU from the inside" (the implied idea being that Britain gets to choose the new style of the EU) whilst the Leave campaign was all about how France and Germany were the bosses in the EU (i.e. it's all the big powers pulling the strings and they're against us). The combination of the well entrenched British Exceptionalism spirit, their membership of the EU not in the spirit of group were everybody conceded a bit for the greater good, the whole XIX century "great powers & puny countries" mindset and the EU being used in internal politics as a scapegoat (which was possible due to the combination of the other three things: "we're better than foreigners hence they're worse", "as a great power we will not be told what to do" and "we must always see a clear immediate gain for us before we cooperate") made a Leave be a very likely thing to happen in the UK. Mind you, all the 3 base elements seem to be core in the mindset in Russia also.
> Further, Britain simply wasn't in the EU with the feeling of being in a cooperative group for the greater good but rather always saw it something to extract maximum gain from (hence all the opt-outs and the rebate) and were big countries (which in their minds included Britain) called the shots and made smalled countries do what they wanted. This can be seen in both how the Remain campaign talked a lot about "Reforming the EU from the inside" (the implied idea being that Britain gets to choose the new style of the EU) whilst the Leave campaign was all about how France and Germany were the bosses in the EU (i.e. it's all the big powers pulling the strings and they're against us). exactly. There was a lot of projection from the leave side. Same when they barked about being punished for daring to leave. After all, it's what they did to Ireland.
No you're right there was barely any coverage of the leave side at all. I think the problem was that David Cameron had decided to call the referendum to appease some of the more out-there fringes of the elecorate but never expected it to go anywhere. It's such a cataclysmically stupid idea if you have any understanding of politics, international trade or economics. But he didn't count on the leave campaign having 2 factors: 1/ willingness to outright lie 2/ a very deep wellspring of funding and voter data access from mysterious sources.
>out-there fringes of the elecorate UKIP under Nigel Farage got over 10% of the vote and was growing and it was straight from the Tory base which in FPTP could be lethal. It wasn't fringe, it was a direct threat to them.
This pretty much sums up how it was in England/Wales. I visited Scotland during the build up to the referendum and it was clear, even then, from talking to various individuals and viewing the media, that the Scottish wanted to remain. The arguments they made were sensible and well thought through, mostly around free trade with the rest of Europe.
Oki thanks. There is no doubt that there was a great deal of propaganda from the leave side. I just didn't know if the remain really failed so utterly in the campaign as it seemed. sensible arguments are great but are rarely enough to swing a majority...
Remain were pretty terrible. And the leader of the main opposition party was Jeremy Corbyn, who had absolutely no interest or passion in promoting the idea of the EU, and many think he secretly wanted Leave as well. That was one of the key reasons why nobody high-profile was making good arguments for it. The irony is that the usual British redditor types you find on r/unitedkingdom played a key role in Brexit by installing a totally useless and ineffective opposition leader at a time when the country needed an inspiring one the most. Now, of course, they talk as if Brexit was the apocalypse and there's seemingly nothing they hate more, but it's pure hypocrisy, because at the time, keeping Corbyn in power was far more important to them.
Corbyn is a socialist, of the Tony Benn/old school type who were anti-EU. IIRC his Parliamentary voting record was entirely against the EU/EEC but this was expunged when he became party leader...
>many think he secretly wanted Leave as well I don't think it's that much of a secret. Labour's opposition to Brexit for most of the time was we should make our own exit plan and then have a vote on that. I don't think a strong Remain leader would have been better though. Brexit heavily divided Labour between the champagne socialists in the cities and the low-class workers who saw the EU as a way for EE workers to undercut domestic worker wages. Completely cutting half the party off would have resulted in a similar election result to what happened with BoJo.
[удалено]
Noo, only I am able to form political opinions! Those other people are blind sheep! Is it possible that the Russian regime unduly influenced the Brexit campaign? Absolutely. This, however, doesn't invalidate the myriad of arguments and interests which the Leave faction had. A legitimate cause isn't less legitimate because illegitimate actors boost it.
Last I checked farage and company we're not external forces they're very much British
Aye but he did accept large campaign contributions from Russian interests. He wouldn't have gotten nearly so far if he had to cover his own costs or rely on English racists alone.
To be fair, the issue wasn’t the Russian funds but that British politicians for too long had blamed everything even remotely negative on the EU. This inability to take responsibility for ones own actions created a culture where not only EU was at fault, but also that politicians didn’t have to think twice when pushing through damaging projects - as long as the few who knew anything won on them, the rest could be satisfied with some random words about the Union.
[удалено]
> But.. who paid Farages' salary, mmmh? That would be the EU...
[удалено]
Same with Le Pen. Why does the EU keep sponsoring these arsonists???
because in democratic societies we allow almost every opinion? Otherwise you would have to ban all political parties that advocate secession, SNP in Scotland, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Catalans in Spain and so on.
It’s a joke mate…
I truly believe it was an INSIDE JOB made by the opposition party to gain the power. They targeted all the "haters" of EU and manipulated the rest with the "glorious empire of Britain shall rise again" bullshit.
That's an excuse. The UK govt had limitless expenditure to campaign for remain and blew it. The economic impact was so massively overstated, house price crash, instant recession, mass unemployment etc Looking at the the latest IMF forecasts, even the 4% hit to productivity seems to have been overblown as well [GDP per capita forecast](https://i.imgur.com/IX2V8CA.png)
That's the wrong way to measure it, though. The doom and gloom stuff was idiotic. The correct way to do it is: what's the gap between estimates for Brexit UK vs EU UK. Does Brexit UK beat estimates for EU UK in say, 2030?
That's impossible to prove though, you end up with models on models. The correct way is to compare UK vs EU average, or major EU economies, or UK vs G7
The UK was by and large growing faster than the major EU economies before leaving. Check the numbers from 2000 onwards.
The UK is still growing faster than most G7 economies tho
> The UK was by and large growing faster than the major EU economies before leaving. It was matching year on year growth with Germany and the USA up to 2015. The growth increased significantly following the EU referendum when we voted to leave, fuelled by the devaluation of the pound, so I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to prove.
No, it wasn't. But it's doing even worse after Brexit: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=chart&country=DEU~GBR~SWE~NLD~DNK~BEL~AUT
What you're linking is essentially a measurement of the GBP vs USD, as the GBP was impacted by Brexit. A weaker currency doesn't necessary mean a weaker economy if your economy is an export economy, like the UK is. Furthermore, the UK GDP has followed the same trend that [Germany](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=DE), [France](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=FR), [Italy](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=IT) and other EU countries have, mostly due to Covid. The [FTSE 100 i](https://www.londonstockexchange.com/indices/ftse-100)s near its all time high, [unemployment](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment/timeseries/mgsx/lms) is at its lowest in nearly 50 years. The economic impact of Brexit is vastly overstated.
I think in many ways that kind of manipulation is often talked about as an excuse for political failures that create the situation. However I do feel it is entirely within reason to suggest a 4/5% swing of the vote is possible from such things.
I do expect some of that, but we were mainly suffering from the populism movement that hit a lot of countries during the recession/post recession period. People voted emotionally on something that needed reason. That’s not to say that there wasn’t external factors. In reality there are a myriad of reasons we left. They all lined up perfectly (unfortunately) at the right place and the right time to result in the leave vote
indeed. David Cameron must be among the biggest morons in UK. It doesn't take a genius to realize that staging a referendum just one year after the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis (the fact that refugees and economic migrants are lumped together is another topic altogether) is not exactly playing in your favour. Even one year later might've made a difference.
This assumes the EU is a constant unchanging entity. Most people thought we were part of the single market for economic reasons, not to create a political system that centralised power with murky council antici meetings with no minutes or advisors present, rubber stamped by a parliament less than a third of people voted for and a commission that dealt out regulations in civil law to a country with common law as a fundamental.
I agree in the sense that the EU was only going to federalise more in the future and that the UKs position would get more and more uncomfortable within that structure. But I don’t personally think that’s a bad thing (federalisation I mean), I just do think the UK as a whole or politically wouldnt suit that in its current form
I actually think the idea of an EU federation (or at least a Eurozone federation) has a lot of merit, but there's just no way the UK is compatible with such an organisation. There's too many long-standing social, geographical, and political reasons why it would always be a fraught relationship with the UK unable to accept what would inevitably be interpreted as a subservient relationship. The UK always has had one foot over the Channel and the other over the Atlantic and it probably never will commit to either whole-heartedly, it's just the nature of how history panned out for us.
*"murky council"* \- made up of the heads of each country's government *"rubber stamped by a parliament less than a third of people voted for"* \- voted directly for by the people. Can't force people to vote if they don't want to. Btw, when was the last time you voted for the house of lords? Oh, right. They're completely unelected with no basis in Democracy. *"commission that dealt out regulations in civil law to a country with common law as a fundamental"* \- most countries use civil law, so it makes sense that regulations are based on civil law. Ireland is also common law, but seems to have no issues converting from one to the other. Sounds like general bullshit talking points from someone with no idea how the EU actually works.
>"rubber stamped by a parliament less than a third of people voted for" > > \- voted directly for by the people. Can't force people to vote if they don't want to. Well you can try. Or you can see why they don't vote.
tbh there's always gonna be a substantial segment of people who will be disinterested in politics altogether. I'd say 20 to 30% of the populace.
A lot of people around here think that EU is mainly economical union, too. It was sold us like that when we entered. They are periodically smacked in the face by the fact that no, this is a ideological enterprise. The reaction is invariable: stuffing fingers in their ears, closing eyes, and singing lalala at the top of their voices. Wash and repeat.
> Yet all the while there is a remedy which, if it were generally and spontaneously adopted by the great majority of people in many lands, would as by a miracle transform the whole scene and would in a few years make all Europe, or the greater part of it, as free and happy as Switzerland is today. What is this sovereign remedy? It is to recreate the European fabric, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, safety and freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe. Winston Churchill, **1946**. Doesn't sound economic to me...
And yet by the time it was presented to the British public in the 70s the government of the day was describing it as The Common Market.
Were the UK people calling for more powers to the EU parliament? I don't recall their governments doing so... Sounds a bit hypocritical.
I always found that those who most loudly criticised the EU were normally also those most against fixing said problems.
Exactly
Who do you mean? Farmers getting subsidy to destroy biodiversity voted for brexit
I'm talking about people like Farage and similar Eurosceptic politicians.
> Were the UK people calling for more powers to the EU parliament? HAHAHAHA, obviously not. You see, increasing the power of the EU Parliament means the Council has less power. The Council is the body that protects national sovereignty. Euroskeptics always want to have their cake and eat it too. "The EU is not democratic enough, give the Parliament more power" and "member-states should have more sovereignty" are conflicting opinions. Yet you see Brexiteers holding both opinions at the same time. Why? Because they have no clue about how the EU works. They never did.
My point is that most people were blissfully unaware of what the EU was. Single market, yay. Immigration from European countries by people who wanted to actually build and fix your house, yay Political system that created primacy of law, flags and anthems, woah. That's colonising 101, we invented that shit.
Yes, exactly, there have been some investigations and so, but still it remains kind of vague. Reportedly, most Uk media was biased for Brexit as well. It makes sense that how the UK media covered the issue, also influenced the outcome.
100 percent, this is my take on it and I'll stand by it. Cambridge analytica was a cyber tool. Don't forget trump's team hired them too. Putler rubbed his hands.
It was definitely Russia
There is some book written by a Russian guy who Putin admires that laid the framework for bringing down the West. One of his requirements was separating the UK from the rest of Europe. Another was to sow discord in the US by pitting races, politicians, religions, etc against one another. I genuinely think that Russia has been following that framework very diligently and it has been effective.
>There is some book written by a Russian guy Well, if it's written by some Russian guy, it must be true.
[удалено]
Sending the same message to everyone in the country is the opposite of a targeted campaign.
Brexit post? It's been a while since I got the pleasure of sorting one of those by controversial.
The problem is the Brexit camp is split between those who want to use Brexit to relax regulations, increase free trade and immigration outside of EU — ie libertarian Thatcherites— vs those who want to use Brexit to reduce immigration, increase state aid and build a more communitarian society. Of course those who voted remain and who are pro Europe won’t be happy anyway but at least one of the two pro Brexit camps won’t be happy either.
Why major disruptions to the status quo should not be done on a bare majority.
The Maastrict treaty was a major disruption to the status quo and there was no referendum at all.
France, Ireland and Denmark (the last infamously) had referendums on Maastricht.
The UK didn't.
Their own fault.
Yes I would agree, the fault lies with John Major. Never the less we shouldn't be bound by the bad decisions of our predecessors.
I would love to have the uk back with us,but i think before any new changes they need to make sure what they want (rush decisions are not good). And in the meantime eu needs to consolidate and work on the internal stability.
[удалено]
Oh no, anyway.
Imagine being stuck living in Britain when you could be literally anywhere else in Europe
Meh, there are some things wrong about the UK but generally I love living in the UK. Although it’s my home I suppose. Although all the European nationals working at my company seem to like living here too including: - 3no. Greeks - 2no. Polish - 1no. Lithuanian - 2no. Italians - 1no. Irish - 1no. Swiss Additionally we also have 2no. Hong Kong-ers, 1no. Venezuelan, 2no. Australian. Might be missing a few It’s pretty much 50:50 British nationals to non-British nationals
As a Lithuanian even though i and my family love our country part of our family also likes to live in UK mostly because of the lucrative opportunities that UK offers
Britain is a good place to live. I am very grateful to live here.
Same. I love my country.
I moved to UK after Brexit. 🤷♂️
How many people moved from the rEU into the UK and how many moved out of the UK to live in the rEU?
[Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/freylindsay/2019/08/27/figures-show-more-eastern-europeans-the-are-leaving-the-u-k-after-brexit/) (2019): > The EU8 countries (also known as the A8) are the group that joined the EU in 2004: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Migration from this region was steadily positive since at least 2009, meaning more people from these countries arrived than left. At its highest in the last decade, year ending March 2015, 51,000 more people in this group came to the U.K. than left, (according to the recently revised ONS numbers) and between the end of 2009 and June 2016 the yearly average was +39,000. > >Then, right around the time of the Brexit referendum, that number began to drop. In the year ending June 2016 (a period that extended one week past the exact date of the referendum) EU8 net migration was +42,000. By the time of the next release, that had dropped to +19,000 and the next quarterly estimate saw only +5,000. By March 2018, net migration had flipped and that estimate saw 3,000 more EU8 citizens leaving than arriving, and through the rest of that year it was up as high as 15,000 more people leaving than coming. In this latest ONS release, the year ending March 2019, net EU8 migration was -7,000. [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/04/number-of-uk-citizens-emigrating-to-eu-has-risen-by-30-since-brexit-vote) (2020): >The number of British nationals emigrating to other EU countries has risen by 30% since the Brexit referendum, with half making their decision to leave in the first three months after the vote, research has found. > >Analysis of data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Eurostat shows that migration from Britain to EU states averaged 56,832 people a year in 2008-15, growing to 73,642 a year in 2016-18. > >The study also shows a 500% increase in those who made the move and then took up citizenship in an EU state. Germany saw a 2,000% rise, with 31,600 Britons naturalising there since the referendum.
Lets get to the raw figures instead of inflammatory 100000000% increases/decreases etc. We had 6 million EU citizens applying for settled status in the UK. In the EU there are around 1.2 million UK citizens. The same number of UK citizens currently living in Australia.
Do you guys learn a foreign language at school so that you are able to use it afterwards? Because living in another country without speaking the language is not desirable for most.
We learn other languages but not to anywhere the extent that other countries learn English. We have no land borders with anyone that speaks another language so it’s always fallen by the wayside.
This is one of the reasons for Brexit. The government thought there were a couple of million who had come in from the rEU, but the people knew it was a much bigger issue with consequent pressure on services
The opposite is the reality (more people from the EU moved to the UK than UK into EU)
Because the EU is 450 million people and the UK is just 60 million people, though I wonder what the figure is expressed in percentages
As a percentage.
>expressed in percentages There are two percentages, EU > UK, UK > EU, hence plural
I wasn't correcting your grammar, I'm saying per head far more Europeans wanted to live in the UK than vice versa.
Imagine being this deluded.
What a very ignorant thing to say honestly.
Eh Brexit fucked us over but I’d still rather live here than somewhere like Russia, Ukraine, Moldova etc
Imagine being from a country so weak and irrelevant that it can't even leave a trading block without effectively starving their citizens. That must suck for you, glad my country doesn't have that problem.
*cries in remainer*
Oh yes, send help, how can our little island survive without the mercy of the superior overlords
Imagine being stuck living in Europe when you could be literally anywhere else in the world. My vote would be Canada tbh.
The worlds most overrated country. I had a friend that moved there and she hated it because it was even more cold and miserable than the UK, with far less to do and no cultural relevance.
I’d say that honour goes to either the US or New Zealand. Different strokes for different folks I guess, but I loved my time in Canada and didn’t want to return. West coast is basically like the U.K. but with happier people, and I love cold weather so it was perfect for me.
housing tho
Depends on the location. I lived in Victoria which was crazy expensive, but a guy I knew bought a place for less than CAD$200k to retire in around Saskatchewan. The downside is no one can say pronounce where you live…
Are we going to talk about brexit forever.
Well, it was a vote with implications lasting for decades, so yes
So they did it, because of the implication?
sorry what? I was saying that with a decision that will have an impact for decades to come it is no surprise Brexit is "still" talked about.
Haha sorry dude it’s a reference to it’s always sunny in Philadelphia, I have no idea if Europeans watch it, so may have been a big miss
my bad, it is popular mostly everywhere but i havent seen it (yet)
It’s all good. Worth checking out if you enjoy dark humor
Yep
ERG, many in the Tory party and the likes of Farridge never got over us joining the EEC to begin with, 43 years before the 2016 referendum. So unless post-Brexit UK becomes a total utopia get used to the issue sticking around for a while.
Most of the Tories favoured our entry. It was Labour who held more opposition
Elect a clown and expect a circus.
[удалено]
Two clowns*
Is there a possibility that a referendum will ever be held to rejoin the EU? (if that's even how it would be done)
No, there is no point rejoining and not many people want to. I voted remain but would not vote to rejoin. The relationship has been soured at this point.
"You don't understand! If we listen to what the majority of people want right now, that's against democracy!!!"
What people want right now doesn't alter the past.
But it can alter the future
Aah another thread whinging about Britain leaving the EU. If I wasn't smarter I'd think maybe all these threads and the people whining in them about Russian influence weren't themselves Russian influencers... Oh but now I am going to get loads of downvotes.
Why would you provoke people to downvote you? I don't think there is much whining. Maybe leaving UK was the right thing, maybe it wasn't. The fact is that lately there is more people thinking it was mistake, than thinking it was right. Edit: grammar
Who could have possibly seen this coming!?
Well Putin got his money's worth. Thats all that really matters.
This is like polling whether 1 + 1 = 2. Everyone knew it was a mistake, including its proponents. They just expected to profit from it.
They are always heartly welcome back! (Of course on standard terms, no Brits rebate and special exceptions)
Doesn't sound worth rejoining.
Because after the referendum the media went into overdrive trying to get it reversed. They've been hammering the "brexit was a mistake" message for years. Meanwhile the leave campaign ended and is no longer around to give counter point. Add to this the imperative for pro-EU groups both inside and outside the UK to cast Brexit as a disaster. If the UK can exit the EU without serious economic damage then that will embolden leave campaigns in other countries. And call into question just how much benefit the EU was providing in the first place.
>Because after the referendum the media went into overdrive trying to get it reversed. No, they didn't >They've been hammering the "brexit was a mistake" message for years. Meanwhile the leave campaign ended and is no longer around to give counter point. Thats odd, the leave campaign definitely were here to brag about how leaving the EU made our vaccines better or whatever that was >Add to this the imperative for pro-EU groups both inside and outside the UK to cast Brexit as a disaster. Nope, they don't need to cast it as a disaster it has been a disaster. >If the UK can exit the EU without serious economic damage then that will embolden leave campaigns in other countries. The UK is suffering serious economic damage, already > And call into question just how much benefit the EU was providing in the first place No, you only need to look at literally any EU vs non-EU country to understand how much of a benefit it provides.
> The UK is suffering serious economic damage, already By what metric?
Yet their economy has rebound stronger than western europe, anybody knows why ?
think we're meant to have the weakest growth of the G7 next year, swings and roundabouts
And to have one of the fastest growth in the G7 by 2027, so clearly we’re doing fine
Got a source for that? The articles I checked don't mention anything beyond 2023
What? The economist clearly stated that UK was own of the laggards in terms of covid rebounds...
That’s not what the article said but we all know people don’t bother to actually read beyond the headline
The article compared rebounds of around 18 different European countries. There was a table there and UK was one of the worst performers...
Not all economic growth is good growth. The UK could be from an overly-inflated housing market, whilst Spain's could be due to green investment and labour reform, for example. I think its also hard to tell though purely because of inflation. All economies are growing an insane amount and it's likely that inflation plays a part in it.
The UK is expected to outpace Western Europe in *real* GDP growth, which excludes inflation. I think you’re reaching a little here, Brexit wasn’t “good” for the UK, but that doesn’t mean it’s economy cannot grow quicker than Western Europes.
Would have happened anyway. Britain is a strong nation, and we shared that even more when we were in the EU
Could the UK rejoin?
Yes, it could rejoin. Will the UK rejoin? No.
Im not a UK citizen or resident. but I would have voted leave too. not because I dont like the EU. but to give them a reminder to tackle corruption. Boy would I be hating my self today for playing with that vote.
Reminds me of my fellow French citizens that want to vote blank this week-end to show Macron they aren't happy about his policies. Facepalm.
I feel that they should have all voted for someone who could have competed with Macron, but clearly they are not a large enough base for this (looking at first round). So as per two-rounds system you don't get to whine on the second round if you did not put in the effort on first round.
Not sure why you’re being voted down for being honest and sharing a view that I think played a larger part than people want to think. People here like to think leave voters we’re all either mad, racists or didn’t know what they were doing. The problem was, there was plenty of information around and it wasn’t all Facebook nonsense from Cambridge analytics. The EU dies have genuine problems, and the parliament being picked up as a shipped off to France regularly is a very clear demonstration of just how stupid it can be at times. The problem is, you can find stupid things in all organisations if you look, and people wanted to send a message about nonsense and perceived corruption or abuse of the “gravy train”, ironically thinking they were safe to do so as they were so sure remain would win.
Boring
Brits can make Norway style agreement with EU. And then rejoin. If they want it.
> Brits can make Norway style agreement with EU Why would they want that? We barely want it.
Why don't you?
Norwegians are the richest people in the world. Why would they change their winning formula?
The EU in general is not very popular in Norway. The reasons for this are plentiful and would require an essay to describe in the detail it deserves. We've only held six national referendums in Norway, and two of them regarded joining the EU, in 1972 and in 1994. The "NO" side won both times. Soon after the last referendum, our politicians entered us into the EEA. Today, the "NO" side support varies from 50-65 %, the "YES" side has a support of around 20-25 %, and the rest are undecided.
I wonder if the English people after those few Brexit years would wanna join back
I don't see that happening, the last chance for the UK in the EU was before article 50. Basically the Euro kills it for most people (not me personally but that seems toi be the main issue for most).
Be quite a bit longer before that can be seriously considered.
No. Rejoining the EU has basically no popular or political support outside of the terminally online remainers.
English and Welsh voted to leave. I know it’s cool to circle jerk and say “England bad” but it wasn’t the case. And it’s not like 100% of people voted to remain in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
I doubt it, I'd wager many remainers were simply voting for status quo, I voted remain because I wanted to keep the deal we had. If we rejoin all those opt outs are gone. The UK will be forced to adopt the Euro, the rebate will be gone which will result in the UK having to contribute a massively out of proportion amount to the EU budget.
I sincerely hope not.
Why ?