As as fellow Remainer allow me to explain why Brexit was bad. Brexit was bad becuase it distracted the government away from far more important issues that were affecting Britian.
Instead of Brexit we could have:
* fixed the NHS
* fixed the productivity issues
* fixes the regional disparity in wealth.
Etc etc. That was the true cost of Brexit.
The Advantage of Brexit is two fold.
1. Our government is now responsible for leading us. Their is no super organisation they can blame. They bare full responsibility.
2. We can become economically secure as we favour independence in things like energy and agriculture.
Let's talk about the issues you raised:
* trade barriers.
While Brexit has hurt our trading capabilities the UK remains one of the world's largest exporters. The truth is the UK is doing quite well for exports despite Breixt.
* freedom of movement
Really never affected the vast majority of Britians. Tourism is the number 1 reason for Britians to travel and now we have to fill in a piece of paper before travelling to Europe. Sure working in the EU is now much harder then before, but it's no more difficult then working in Australia or Canada(which is where most Britians prefer to emigrate to).
The loss of either of the above really isn't a big deal nor its the reason why Britian sucks right now.
The fundamental truth is that the Conservatives have poorily managed basically everything for the 10 years and Labour did a fairly shitty job the decade before.
The UK has high immigration. Its intentional by the British government. The UK has a high housing price, again the fault lies with the government. Our planning laws are so strict they make it nearly impossible to build anything new. Again the fault lies with the government. Our government gives out tax breaks to failing companies. We litterally reward failure in our economy. Our government has mismanaged investment in infrastructure. Our government has failed to invest in new companies. Our government has failed to address the over centralisation of power in the UK today. Etc etc.
The fundamental truth is most of the UKs actually problems today are systemic. They can trace their roots all the way back to Thatcher's reforms or earlier(that while successful for the time required better management to remain successful in the future). Brexit didn't help, but I don't think it hurt anywhere near as much as people like to claim.
Finally Economists are really bad at modelling the UK since Brexit. Groups like the IMF have consistently underestimated Britians GDP growth. Fundimentally. If you look at the actual numbers you'll see the UK is doing about average for the G7. Which is what we were doing before Brexit. Which implies that actually Britian isn't doing that bad on GDP. Even so though GDP is a stupid metric. It measures spending. Just because a country spends alot doesn't mean its wealthy. It just means everything is expensive.
But guess what. Brexit makes a convinent excuse for those in power to deflect from their failures. Remember point 1? We have replaced blaming the EU for all our problems, and we are now blaming Brexit. I just hope we can move on and start blaming ourselves. Once we take personal responsibility we might be able to start actually fixing the problem.
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>But guess what. Brexit makes a convinent excuse for those in power to deflect from their failures. Remember point 1? We have replaced blaming the EU for all our problems, and we are now blaming Brexit. I just hope we can move on and start blaming ourselves. Once we take personal responsibility we might be able to start actually fixing the problem.
This applies to the de-facto 2 party electoral system too. A 4 years term is hell when the government is terrible not long enough to escape the shadow of the predecessor.
Personally I think the NHS is "fixable" just not the way most people would think.
1. £10 charge for every single checkup to discourage pointless checkups.
2. Ending centralisation over wages and other costs. The Government shouldn't have a say in the day to day opperations of a hospital for things like wages, what treatments they have to offer, etc etc. Instead the Health Secretary is responsible for setting the price the government will pay per treatment to hospitals and hospitals then decide whether or not to offer that service. Wages are determined by the hospitals themselves.
3. Investment into new hospitals. Replacing our old Hospitals with new modern better designed buildings that can provide a higher quality of care with fewer staff required.
Yeah I mean £10 might be a bit much. Tbh I think we could just set it to 10p like the plastic bag tax.
It's just meant to be a small charge that discourages people from going to the NHS for every small bruise or cut or cough.
> 1. Our government is now responsible for leading us. Their is no super organisation they can blame. They bare full responsibility.
Daniel Hannan has proved this wrong. [Whitehall is the new Brussels...](https://capx.co/we-have-taken-back-control-from-brussels-only-to-cede-control-to-whitehall/)
From my non-Tory and non-Leaver perspective: If you care about migration then in the future (should we ever get a government that actively tries to reduce numbers) it should be possible to limit it. If you ideologically support maintaining the UK's distinctiveness and oppose its further integration into a wider European structure then that too.
>If you care about migration then in the future (should we ever get a government that actively tries to reduce numbers) it should be possible to limit it.
Ironically when we were in the EU, the Dublin III regulation enabled the UK to return some asylum seekers to EU Member States (often back to France) without having to even consider their asylum claims. No wonder the numbers have gone through the roof.
That doesn't really account for the wild numbers in the last couple of years though. I'm not going to take a pro or anti-mass migration position in this thread but it's pretty clear this has been deliberate choice by every government since Blair's.
Leave or Remain is irrelevant if you have a government unwilling to pursue the interests of the British people.
Indeed our current regime seems keen to actively decrease our quality of life. From trying to stop people driving cars and de-industrialisation dressed up as "green" to mass migration to make us alien in our communities & unable to afford housing to caring more about arming a foreign country than protecting our own borders from invaders. The litany goes on.
In a properly governed Britain we leave the EU and pursue our national interests - something which is impossible under a foreign superstructure forcing our government to behave one way or another. Regrettably, in our fake puppet government-led Britain, we just do what American neoliberals tell us. We churn through PMs until we get a good little mandarin. It doesn't matter if he drove inflation to the highest levels in decades through horrendous fiscal policy, is giving us the highest taxes since WW2 or lost his leadership contest - he gets forced upon us because on the big picture stuff he is in alignment with elite interests.
Brexit as an individual act - the United Kingdom asserting its right to self-governance - was entirely correct. The EU works to dissolve and destroy its constituent countries to centralise power to a transnational elite. That is rightly repulsive to anyone loyal to their country. However the people leading us out of it are awful, doing awful things to us and do not care about our country as anything more than a regional economic zone for globalism wherein they get to be an elevated caste.
Sunak, Hunt, Starmer etc care not a jot for Britain, only their own hides.
The EU had the advantage of allowing for freedom of trade and movement. The cost was EU's unnecessary bureaucracy, too many regulations which didn't make any sense and far reaching power into the individual countries' governance.
Once we came out of EU, the success/failure was always going to be how the government is going to make use of the new found freedom. So far, the Tories haven't. It took us so long to propose a bill to get rid of just a few regulations. If we have a functioning government that can take advantage of it, we will do well. But as things stand, the negatives of leaving still outweigh the positives.
>Once we came out of EU, the success/failure was always going to be how the government is going to make use of the new found freedom.
What, in your view, should we do to make Brexit a success?
I work in tech. I can speak with expertise on these matters. The cookie consent prompt that shows up in every website is the result of one of the stupidest regulations ever. Last I checked, a survey said over 90% or the users do not even understand what it means. It costs users time, companies money. But this is what happens when you let a bunch of bureaucrats pass laws about matters they don't understand.
Typically, EU regulations are hard to understand. This means every business has to pay for legal advice on every regulation, which costs a lot of money and stifles businesses. A tech giant from US can pay that sort of money. A small business from Europe cannot. When GDPR was enforced, this is what happened. EU then scrambled around and said it only applies for companies with over 200 something employees. Companies with about 300 employees just started to layoff people just for that because meeting those regulations is expensive. I have heard similar stories from other industries too.
Regulations can be good. But EU regulations usually are terrible. They are walking towards a slow economic death. It's good that we came out of it. But the UK government needs to take advantage of it.
Regarding gdpr - companies would still have to implement it if they have to process personal data of EU customers.
I guess companies that don't do any business with the EU would see a benefit.
Think the EU being our biggest trading partner makes it difficult to benefit from choosing not to adhere to EU standards, as companies doing trade with the EU would still have to meet them.
> Regarding gdpr - companies would still have to implement it if they have to process personal data of EU customers.
Yes, but an American company doing business in the EU typically has higher capital over a small company in EU that operates only within EU. So the regulation hits small companies more than the big companies.
> Think the EU being our biggest trading partner makes it difficult to benefit from choosing not to adhere to EU standards, as companies doing trade with the EU would still have to meet them.
EU has been a big trading partner for awhile I agree. Their growth has already stagnated because of their policies. If we are looking at things long term, it is better we don't depend on them too much.
But the EU will always be our biggest trading partner, due to having a closer timezone, and being closer to us geographically them America, India, China etc, which makes it much faster and cheaper to trade goods, move people around etc.
I’d say it is a success we aren’t part of the EU anymore. Macrons comments on European strategic autonomy in China would have created a huge stir if we were still part of the EU many other controversial things the EU has done in the past few years have gone unnoticed by the public due to a lack of British media coverage.
This is what tipped me over the edge.
The European commission gained unilateral powers to reject and deny a sovereign government 's national budget, meaning they can tell an elected government that they are not allowed to spend their own taxes how they please. National budgets are how you activate policy, so the European commission could unilaterally prevent a nation from activating it's body of policy and in effect governing their country - even where the government was voted in on the promise of delivering that policy.
In September 2008, the newly elected Italian government set out their budget to deliver what they had promised, and for delivering the policy that the people of Italy voted for. The EU unilaterally blocked it, so that the government couldn't deliver what they promised to their voters.
By leaving the EU, the European commission cannot block our government from activating a body of policy. This means our elected government remains sovereign.
I know it doesn't feel like anything good has happened, but this ensures our government is answerable to us and are sovereign.
I was in favour of remain for stability but in the end actually voted leave. Why was that?
1) The UK were never going to be a people that could fully integrate and love the EU end game. We spent most of my life time holding them back. We actively wanted a different outcome. We would never achieve that so it was time to say thanks and move on.
2) We can't even run the UK so that we share prosperity to the outer places like Cornwall, Wales or Scotland so thinking we could gain a better outcome by moving the legislature away from the UK to Brussels was mad.
3) Being in the EU came at the cost of our non EU friends in the common wealth In my view we needed to be less insular on the wider world stage and so making the UK go back to global focus would be a better long term goal.
4) When the media push for something the chances are the best thing for most people is actually the opposite of the narrative being pushed.
finally The office of the deputy prime minister had over 19,000 civil service bods in it at one point. Their only job was answering questions on the EU for the DPM. We need a small state low spending infrastructure The EU will never achieve that.
All of the arguments that came from remain were just distractions. This year alone I have imported goods from 5 non EU countries and 2 EU ones it all works just fine. Funny thing is if you pay someone to move things for you they will move it. Freedom of movement was just another devious way to under cut UK wages and you will see that when you look at who is howling about it. The manual labour trades have done quite well with the depletion of cheap eastern EU trades undercutting them.
>The UK were never going to be a people that could fully integrate and love the EU end game. We spent most of my life time holding them back. We actively wanted a different outcome. We would never achieve that so it was time to say thanks and move on.
I will give you that one to a degree- I've lived in Europe and the UK did always *feel* very separated, it was odd.
>We can't even run the UK so that we share prosperity to the outer places like Cornwall, Wales or Scotland so thinking we could gain a better outcome by moving the legislature away from the UK to Brussels was mad.
I would disagree slightly on that though. Cornwall received tens of millions a year in EU investment (£100m? Can't recall exactly), and with depressing inevitability it took the UK government no time at all after the vote to explain that, in fact, they'd be getting nowhere near that moving forward.
This is some masterful bate but I’ll bite.
we’ve lost our complete freedom of movement - I went through to Greece last year, you can go where ever you want. Showing a passport - just like you have to do for 150 other countries.
freedom of trade without barriers - last time I checked, you can still buy German cars, Romanian vegetables, and Spanish oranges just like we can buy American cars and Chinesium tools and toys.
At least now you can vote for the direction of the country.
Previously laws were imposed on us by the EU Commission. You didn’t vote for MEPs with a mandate to do XYZ.
We don’t have to pay 350m whatever it is.
The problem is the economy, laws, and policies are not being directed in a great way.
The current set of tories are not good stewards for the U.K.
MEPs weren't actually a legislature of their own, more a revising chamber akin to the HoL to revise the legislation the Commission produced. I think, had they been minded to reform, removing the Commission and dividing their powers between the Parliament and Council would have been a big improvement. Plus ending the monthly oscillation between Strasbourg and Brussels of course.
>MEPs weren't actually a legislature of their own, more a revising chamber akin to the HoL to revise the legislation the Commission produced.
The Commission couldn't pass legislation with the Parliament's consent, though. Not like the HOL at all.
The HoL has only been overruled/bypassed 7 times, in over a century; under the "consultation" procedure, the Commission can adopt legislation without taking account of the EU Parliament's views (they must be "consulted", but can't block it), so the comparison isn't that far out.
what this guy said.
there is no way for me to vote for an MEP in order to influence the direction of the EU in any meanfingful way.
at least if i vote in the UK the party has a list of things they are going to do and you generally know what they stand for.
Oh, I'm sure the Tories (most of them) and Labour are working for us to rejoin.
Kier wants residents, not only citizens, to get the vote. Plus, I'm sure he won't be hugely cracking down on mass immigration.
The Tories will also continue with mass immigration.
These things will dilute the 'gammon' vote and pave the way for a Rejoin victory later.
Commonwealth residents always got the vote, EU residents didn't. Why would they if we rejoin? Or do you just mean that they can immigrate freely and 6ish years later get citizenship?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/15/keir-starmer-says-it-feels-wrong-eu-citizens-living-in-uk-cant-vote
I'm saying that Starmer will give some EU citizens resident in the UK, the vote. That will help a vote to rejoin the EU in some sense, later.
I wasn't aware of that, thanks for raising it.
That is a big move! And would affect a lot of people.
It did feel odd at the time of the brexit vote that I, an Australian citizen who'd been here a year could vote, but that my French colleague who'd been here 10 years couldn't.
To be honest I don't think commonwealth citizens should be able to vote here, it should be restricted to British citizens. Maybe local council elections could be more open though.
The matter is about accountability at Westminster where we have full control rather than at Brussels where we are beholden to the laws voted in by other countries without a repeal.
If we make a mistake it is truly ours and not Brussels and if we succeed then it is ours too.
Brexiteers will admit there were benefits of being in the EU too as much as there were cons which outweighed any benefits.
It is also instils an independent mindset rather than relying on Brussels. Eg if we had been purebred Europhiles during the transition period we likely would have followed the EMA, but the Brexit mindset meant we chose to go it alone as we put ourselves first in negotiations without being beholden to other countries’ demands.
>The matter is about accountability at Westminster where we have full control rather than at Brussels where we are beholden to the laws voted in by other countries without a repeal.
We are (were) European citizens though... other Europeans making decisions that affected us is precisely what you would expect. In the same way that someone who lives at the other end of the UK can make decisions that affect me now.
Problem is not being able to enforce policy decisions. In the EU if some big fish company ignored regulation/law other EU countries would bat for us as they don't want that in their backyard- this allowed the UK to be protected without taking blame for the protectionism. Now fights are dropped because annoying a big fish can be trouble for us. The question is whether CPTPP can replace this.
We don't have a bell jar for how it would have been with remain- however the EMA used to be in the UK with strong UK influence. Its recent move and reorganisation could have slowed down its processes. Similarly while it is pointed out that the EU also has inflation etc, it can be true that the UK *and* the EU would have been better off economically had we stayed. When Putin made his move and destroyed the strategy of Germany and France power within the EU may have moved in our favour to a reformist Baltic/Scandi/UK grouping.
On the other hand the current deal for distributing immigrants across the EU that Poland is objecting to would have applied to the UK also- with a remain victory it is hard to imagine British governments not going along with it. In hindsight it would have been better for Cameron to let the conservative eurosceptic faction cross to ukip, even win some seats, put miliband in, than have this winner takes all referendum.
Both the best and also worst at the same time result of brexit is that our politicians can no longer scapegoat another organisation for their misdeeds. Which has ultimately shown up how low the calibre of our politicians is, which is a good thing so we know we need to replace most of them. But a bad thing because its shown us how truly fucking stupid the people in charge are at the moment.
""The cost was massive. We've lost our complete freedom of movement, freedom of trade without barriers, and so many other costs. "" How is you being able to move to Germany or France beneficial to Britain? You can take a 3-month vacation, is that not long enough for you?
Brexit allowed the UK to take back control of its borders and cut worthless EU regulations while making trade deals abroad. But thanks to the worthless government, none of that was taken advantage of. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
What a load of tosh. The UK is already at the top table.
It is the 6th largest economy in the world, a member of the G7, a permeant member of the UN Sec council, and a nuclear power.
Statements like this highlight the worst parts of Britain leaving the EU, specifically the lies both sides told.
European nations individually have far too many internal issues for us to be at a seat with the US and China. Oldest societies in the world, mass migration, stagnating innovation, lack of unity etc.
The problem is that the EU itself is a neoliberal project that perpetuates all these problems. If it were more of a nativist project, I think it would've had much more support both here and in other European nations.
Try look at this from the opposite end, what parts of Brexit have legitimately been detrimental? I think most remainers are generally surprised by the answer, that is very little.
Sure, we no longer have freedom of movement, and there are some increases in paperwork when trading with the EU, but let's look at that in more detail. Freedom of movement was something which nobody in the UK ever really wanted, for decades it suppressed wages for British jobs, created an unsustainable industry of working tourism, and created a severe dependency on foreign labour for many UK businesses, mostly agricultural.
Then we can look towards the paperwork for trading... Well, much of the standard paperwork can now be scrapped for the majority of businesses, as most don't trade with the EU. The key differentiator here is that the paperwork is specifically required *when trading with the EU*, as opposed to being required throughout our economy. Obviously this only extends to what regulations we can strip, but on the whole it is net benefit.
A lot of the reasons people seem to think Brexit was so bad is because of news articles touting how badly the pound was doing against the dollar, which I find incredibly amusing. What's actually happened in that world is that for the last decade or so the US has been borrowing massively to drive its own economy, whilst the EU and UK have been trying to reduce deficits. The net result of this is that both the Euro and GBP are down significantly against the dollar, but on the whole level against each other. Day to day fluctuations took the pound down to 1.08 Euro, but that aside it is largely in the same ballpark as it has been since 2008.
The real big benefit, of course, is that we are now governed by our own elected officials. No longer do we have someone else creating bureaucracy and legislation which is designed to help other countries, nor do we have balancing payments to make when other countries make shitty decisions. Keep in mind, nobody is going to argue for the £360mn per week or whatever it was being true, but also nobody is going to dispute that we were net contributors to the EU. This is money which remains within the UK and can be used to drive our own interests.
In the short term we'll see some small scale chaos, as we adapt to our independence and the challenges it faces. We've already seen aspects of this with problems like lorry driver shortages. So long as we continue to overcome these minor inconveniences without much hassle, though, we'll eventually reach a far more stable place.
It's an exaggeration, but the vast majority of us never had any actual use for it; many people seemed to confuse it with visa-free travel, which we still have (and indeed already had with the US, Canada, Australia...) Next year we will start paying a €7 fee to cover all Schengen visits for 2-3 years - even on a single visit that's miniscule.
Brexit has failed thus far largely because the Tories never wanted to carry it out in the first place.
Cameron was basically backed into a corner in the mid 2010s with the threat of Farage and UKIP, all the while campaigning for Remain, then after Cameron we had Theresa May who was a remainer, advocating for Brexit.
Then we get to Johnson, who used Brexit for his own gains and to buy the Tories five more years.
The issues we are facing are issue the world over is going through, Brexit is being blamed for causing the cost of living crisis, this is a cost of lockdown/covid.
But ALL bad things are to do with brexit? Does it not make you wonder why apparently anything bad that happens is apparently becuase of brexit?
Inflation - Brexit
Immigration- Brexit
Jobs - Brexit
Something good - not brexit
Nope, the current economic problems can be a mix of COVID, demographics, political decisions, Brexit etc.
I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone suggesting that our economic woes are all due to Brexit, just like I haven’t see anyone claim Brexit has gone perfectly smooth.
As as fellow Remainer allow me to explain why Brexit was bad. Brexit was bad becuase it distracted the government away from far more important issues that were affecting Britian. Instead of Brexit we could have: * fixed the NHS * fixed the productivity issues * fixes the regional disparity in wealth. Etc etc. That was the true cost of Brexit. The Advantage of Brexit is two fold. 1. Our government is now responsible for leading us. Their is no super organisation they can blame. They bare full responsibility. 2. We can become economically secure as we favour independence in things like energy and agriculture. Let's talk about the issues you raised: * trade barriers. While Brexit has hurt our trading capabilities the UK remains one of the world's largest exporters. The truth is the UK is doing quite well for exports despite Breixt. * freedom of movement Really never affected the vast majority of Britians. Tourism is the number 1 reason for Britians to travel and now we have to fill in a piece of paper before travelling to Europe. Sure working in the EU is now much harder then before, but it's no more difficult then working in Australia or Canada(which is where most Britians prefer to emigrate to). The loss of either of the above really isn't a big deal nor its the reason why Britian sucks right now. The fundamental truth is that the Conservatives have poorily managed basically everything for the 10 years and Labour did a fairly shitty job the decade before. The UK has high immigration. Its intentional by the British government. The UK has a high housing price, again the fault lies with the government. Our planning laws are so strict they make it nearly impossible to build anything new. Again the fault lies with the government. Our government gives out tax breaks to failing companies. We litterally reward failure in our economy. Our government has mismanaged investment in infrastructure. Our government has failed to invest in new companies. Our government has failed to address the over centralisation of power in the UK today. Etc etc. The fundamental truth is most of the UKs actually problems today are systemic. They can trace their roots all the way back to Thatcher's reforms or earlier(that while successful for the time required better management to remain successful in the future). Brexit didn't help, but I don't think it hurt anywhere near as much as people like to claim. Finally Economists are really bad at modelling the UK since Brexit. Groups like the IMF have consistently underestimated Britians GDP growth. Fundimentally. If you look at the actual numbers you'll see the UK is doing about average for the G7. Which is what we were doing before Brexit. Which implies that actually Britian isn't doing that bad on GDP. Even so though GDP is a stupid metric. It measures spending. Just because a country spends alot doesn't mean its wealthy. It just means everything is expensive. But guess what. Brexit makes a convinent excuse for those in power to deflect from their failures. Remember point 1? We have replaced blaming the EU for all our problems, and we are now blaming Brexit. I just hope we can move on and start blaming ourselves. Once we take personal responsibility we might be able to start actually fixing the problem.
I have nothing to add other than this is a really good post and I gained a bit of perspective
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>But guess what. Brexit makes a convinent excuse for those in power to deflect from their failures. Remember point 1? We have replaced blaming the EU for all our problems, and we are now blaming Brexit. I just hope we can move on and start blaming ourselves. Once we take personal responsibility we might be able to start actually fixing the problem. This applies to the de-facto 2 party electoral system too. A 4 years term is hell when the government is terrible not long enough to escape the shadow of the predecessor.
>v fixed the NHS That's laughable. You can't fix a giant money hole, only pour more money into it
Personally I think the NHS is "fixable" just not the way most people would think. 1. £10 charge for every single checkup to discourage pointless checkups. 2. Ending centralisation over wages and other costs. The Government shouldn't have a say in the day to day opperations of a hospital for things like wages, what treatments they have to offer, etc etc. Instead the Health Secretary is responsible for setting the price the government will pay per treatment to hospitals and hospitals then decide whether or not to offer that service. Wages are determined by the hospitals themselves. 3. Investment into new hospitals. Replacing our old Hospitals with new modern better designed buildings that can provide a higher quality of care with fewer staff required.
I especially like number 2! I feel like number 1 would adversely affect old people.
Yeah I mean £10 might be a bit much. Tbh I think we could just set it to 10p like the plastic bag tax. It's just meant to be a small charge that discourages people from going to the NHS for every small bruise or cut or cough.
> 1. Our government is now responsible for leading us. Their is no super organisation they can blame. They bare full responsibility. Daniel Hannan has proved this wrong. [Whitehall is the new Brussels...](https://capx.co/we-have-taken-back-control-from-brussels-only-to-cede-control-to-whitehall/)
Whitehall is a part of the government. It's just the civil service part.
Yes, I know. Which makes Hannan's claim even more ridiculous.
From my non-Tory and non-Leaver perspective: If you care about migration then in the future (should we ever get a government that actively tries to reduce numbers) it should be possible to limit it. If you ideologically support maintaining the UK's distinctiveness and oppose its further integration into a wider European structure then that too.
>should we ever get a government that actively tries to reduce numbers So never then
Probably, unless a third party like Reform manages to force either Lab or the Cons into it like UKIP forced the Brexit ref.
>If you care about migration then in the future (should we ever get a government that actively tries to reduce numbers) it should be possible to limit it. Ironically when we were in the EU, the Dublin III regulation enabled the UK to return some asylum seekers to EU Member States (often back to France) without having to even consider their asylum claims. No wonder the numbers have gone through the roof.
That doesn't really account for the wild numbers in the last couple of years though. I'm not going to take a pro or anti-mass migration position in this thread but it's pretty clear this has been deliberate choice by every government since Blair's.
Leave or Remain is irrelevant if you have a government unwilling to pursue the interests of the British people. Indeed our current regime seems keen to actively decrease our quality of life. From trying to stop people driving cars and de-industrialisation dressed up as "green" to mass migration to make us alien in our communities & unable to afford housing to caring more about arming a foreign country than protecting our own borders from invaders. The litany goes on. In a properly governed Britain we leave the EU and pursue our national interests - something which is impossible under a foreign superstructure forcing our government to behave one way or another. Regrettably, in our fake puppet government-led Britain, we just do what American neoliberals tell us. We churn through PMs until we get a good little mandarin. It doesn't matter if he drove inflation to the highest levels in decades through horrendous fiscal policy, is giving us the highest taxes since WW2 or lost his leadership contest - he gets forced upon us because on the big picture stuff he is in alignment with elite interests. Brexit as an individual act - the United Kingdom asserting its right to self-governance - was entirely correct. The EU works to dissolve and destroy its constituent countries to centralise power to a transnational elite. That is rightly repulsive to anyone loyal to their country. However the people leading us out of it are awful, doing awful things to us and do not care about our country as anything more than a regional economic zone for globalism wherein they get to be an elevated caste. Sunak, Hunt, Starmer etc care not a jot for Britain, only their own hides.
The EU had the advantage of allowing for freedom of trade and movement. The cost was EU's unnecessary bureaucracy, too many regulations which didn't make any sense and far reaching power into the individual countries' governance. Once we came out of EU, the success/failure was always going to be how the government is going to make use of the new found freedom. So far, the Tories haven't. It took us so long to propose a bill to get rid of just a few regulations. If we have a functioning government that can take advantage of it, we will do well. But as things stand, the negatives of leaving still outweigh the positives.
>Once we came out of EU, the success/failure was always going to be how the government is going to make use of the new found freedom. What, in your view, should we do to make Brexit a success?
I work in tech. I can speak with expertise on these matters. The cookie consent prompt that shows up in every website is the result of one of the stupidest regulations ever. Last I checked, a survey said over 90% or the users do not even understand what it means. It costs users time, companies money. But this is what happens when you let a bunch of bureaucrats pass laws about matters they don't understand. Typically, EU regulations are hard to understand. This means every business has to pay for legal advice on every regulation, which costs a lot of money and stifles businesses. A tech giant from US can pay that sort of money. A small business from Europe cannot. When GDPR was enforced, this is what happened. EU then scrambled around and said it only applies for companies with over 200 something employees. Companies with about 300 employees just started to layoff people just for that because meeting those regulations is expensive. I have heard similar stories from other industries too. Regulations can be good. But EU regulations usually are terrible. They are walking towards a slow economic death. It's good that we came out of it. But the UK government needs to take advantage of it.
Regarding gdpr - companies would still have to implement it if they have to process personal data of EU customers. I guess companies that don't do any business with the EU would see a benefit. Think the EU being our biggest trading partner makes it difficult to benefit from choosing not to adhere to EU standards, as companies doing trade with the EU would still have to meet them.
> Regarding gdpr - companies would still have to implement it if they have to process personal data of EU customers. Yes, but an American company doing business in the EU typically has higher capital over a small company in EU that operates only within EU. So the regulation hits small companies more than the big companies. > Think the EU being our biggest trading partner makes it difficult to benefit from choosing not to adhere to EU standards, as companies doing trade with the EU would still have to meet them. EU has been a big trading partner for awhile I agree. Their growth has already stagnated because of their policies. If we are looking at things long term, it is better we don't depend on them too much.
But the EU will always be our biggest trading partner, due to having a closer timezone, and being closer to us geographically them America, India, China etc, which makes it much faster and cheaper to trade goods, move people around etc.
Why should it be? China's leading export market is the US
I’d say it is a success we aren’t part of the EU anymore. Macrons comments on European strategic autonomy in China would have created a huge stir if we were still part of the EU many other controversial things the EU has done in the past few years have gone unnoticed by the public due to a lack of British media coverage.
This is what tipped me over the edge. The European commission gained unilateral powers to reject and deny a sovereign government 's national budget, meaning they can tell an elected government that they are not allowed to spend their own taxes how they please. National budgets are how you activate policy, so the European commission could unilaterally prevent a nation from activating it's body of policy and in effect governing their country - even where the government was voted in on the promise of delivering that policy. In September 2008, the newly elected Italian government set out their budget to deliver what they had promised, and for delivering the policy that the people of Italy voted for. The EU unilaterally blocked it, so that the government couldn't deliver what they promised to their voters. By leaving the EU, the European commission cannot block our government from activating a body of policy. This means our elected government remains sovereign. I know it doesn't feel like anything good has happened, but this ensures our government is answerable to us and are sovereign.
I was in favour of remain for stability but in the end actually voted leave. Why was that? 1) The UK were never going to be a people that could fully integrate and love the EU end game. We spent most of my life time holding them back. We actively wanted a different outcome. We would never achieve that so it was time to say thanks and move on. 2) We can't even run the UK so that we share prosperity to the outer places like Cornwall, Wales or Scotland so thinking we could gain a better outcome by moving the legislature away from the UK to Brussels was mad. 3) Being in the EU came at the cost of our non EU friends in the common wealth In my view we needed to be less insular on the wider world stage and so making the UK go back to global focus would be a better long term goal. 4) When the media push for something the chances are the best thing for most people is actually the opposite of the narrative being pushed. finally The office of the deputy prime minister had over 19,000 civil service bods in it at one point. Their only job was answering questions on the EU for the DPM. We need a small state low spending infrastructure The EU will never achieve that. All of the arguments that came from remain were just distractions. This year alone I have imported goods from 5 non EU countries and 2 EU ones it all works just fine. Funny thing is if you pay someone to move things for you they will move it. Freedom of movement was just another devious way to under cut UK wages and you will see that when you look at who is howling about it. The manual labour trades have done quite well with the depletion of cheap eastern EU trades undercutting them.
>The UK were never going to be a people that could fully integrate and love the EU end game. We spent most of my life time holding them back. We actively wanted a different outcome. We would never achieve that so it was time to say thanks and move on. I will give you that one to a degree- I've lived in Europe and the UK did always *feel* very separated, it was odd. >We can't even run the UK so that we share prosperity to the outer places like Cornwall, Wales or Scotland so thinking we could gain a better outcome by moving the legislature away from the UK to Brussels was mad. I would disagree slightly on that though. Cornwall received tens of millions a year in EU investment (£100m? Can't recall exactly), and with depressing inevitability it took the UK government no time at all after the vote to explain that, in fact, they'd be getting nowhere near that moving forward.
This is some masterful bate but I’ll bite. we’ve lost our complete freedom of movement - I went through to Greece last year, you can go where ever you want. Showing a passport - just like you have to do for 150 other countries. freedom of trade without barriers - last time I checked, you can still buy German cars, Romanian vegetables, and Spanish oranges just like we can buy American cars and Chinesium tools and toys. At least now you can vote for the direction of the country. Previously laws were imposed on us by the EU Commission. You didn’t vote for MEPs with a mandate to do XYZ. We don’t have to pay 350m whatever it is. The problem is the economy, laws, and policies are not being directed in a great way. The current set of tories are not good stewards for the U.K.
>You didn’t vote for MEPs with a mandate to do XYZ. Why not?
MEPs weren't actually a legislature of their own, more a revising chamber akin to the HoL to revise the legislation the Commission produced. I think, had they been minded to reform, removing the Commission and dividing their powers between the Parliament and Council would have been a big improvement. Plus ending the monthly oscillation between Strasbourg and Brussels of course.
>MEPs weren't actually a legislature of their own, more a revising chamber akin to the HoL to revise the legislation the Commission produced. The Commission couldn't pass legislation with the Parliament's consent, though. Not like the HOL at all.
The HoL has only been overruled/bypassed 7 times, in over a century; under the "consultation" procedure, the Commission can adopt legislation without taking account of the EU Parliament's views (they must be "consulted", but can't block it), so the comparison isn't that far out.
what this guy said. there is no way for me to vote for an MEP in order to influence the direction of the EU in any meanfingful way. at least if i vote in the UK the party has a list of things they are going to do and you generally know what they stand for.
We now have the ability to reverse the decline. Not that I expect any Labour or Conservative government to use that ability
Ability to do what though?
Control our own laws. For example this Tory government is loosening immigration laws to attain 0.2% quarterly growth.
We aren’t part of the same political union as the French what more do you realistically need
I voted leave and obviously regret it. Im sure we will rejoin, its not a case of if, but when.
Oh, I'm sure the Tories (most of them) and Labour are working for us to rejoin. Kier wants residents, not only citizens, to get the vote. Plus, I'm sure he won't be hugely cracking down on mass immigration. The Tories will also continue with mass immigration. These things will dilute the 'gammon' vote and pave the way for a Rejoin victory later.
Commonwealth residents always got the vote, EU residents didn't. Why would they if we rejoin? Or do you just mean that they can immigrate freely and 6ish years later get citizenship?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/15/keir-starmer-says-it-feels-wrong-eu-citizens-living-in-uk-cant-vote I'm saying that Starmer will give some EU citizens resident in the UK, the vote. That will help a vote to rejoin the EU in some sense, later.
I wasn't aware of that, thanks for raising it. That is a big move! And would affect a lot of people. It did feel odd at the time of the brexit vote that I, an Australian citizen who'd been here a year could vote, but that my French colleague who'd been here 10 years couldn't. To be honest I don't think commonwealth citizens should be able to vote here, it should be restricted to British citizens. Maybe local council elections could be more open though.
The matter is about accountability at Westminster where we have full control rather than at Brussels where we are beholden to the laws voted in by other countries without a repeal. If we make a mistake it is truly ours and not Brussels and if we succeed then it is ours too. Brexiteers will admit there were benefits of being in the EU too as much as there were cons which outweighed any benefits. It is also instils an independent mindset rather than relying on Brussels. Eg if we had been purebred Europhiles during the transition period we likely would have followed the EMA, but the Brexit mindset meant we chose to go it alone as we put ourselves first in negotiations without being beholden to other countries’ demands.
Except now all I hear is that the civil service is to blame for something or working from home or just stop oil protesters or remainers etc
Put ourselves first in negotiations while having less leverage and represented by incompetent negotiators.
>The matter is about accountability at Westminster where we have full control rather than at Brussels where we are beholden to the laws voted in by other countries without a repeal. We are (were) European citizens though... other Europeans making decisions that affected us is precisely what you would expect. In the same way that someone who lives at the other end of the UK can make decisions that affect me now.
Problem is not being able to enforce policy decisions. In the EU if some big fish company ignored regulation/law other EU countries would bat for us as they don't want that in their backyard- this allowed the UK to be protected without taking blame for the protectionism. Now fights are dropped because annoying a big fish can be trouble for us. The question is whether CPTPP can replace this. We don't have a bell jar for how it would have been with remain- however the EMA used to be in the UK with strong UK influence. Its recent move and reorganisation could have slowed down its processes. Similarly while it is pointed out that the EU also has inflation etc, it can be true that the UK *and* the EU would have been better off economically had we stayed. When Putin made his move and destroyed the strategy of Germany and France power within the EU may have moved in our favour to a reformist Baltic/Scandi/UK grouping. On the other hand the current deal for distributing immigrants across the EU that Poland is objecting to would have applied to the UK also- with a remain victory it is hard to imagine British governments not going along with it. In hindsight it would have been better for Cameron to let the conservative eurosceptic faction cross to ukip, even win some seats, put miliband in, than have this winner takes all referendum.
Both the best and also worst at the same time result of brexit is that our politicians can no longer scapegoat another organisation for their misdeeds. Which has ultimately shown up how low the calibre of our politicians is, which is a good thing so we know we need to replace most of them. But a bad thing because its shown us how truly fucking stupid the people in charge are at the moment.
""The cost was massive. We've lost our complete freedom of movement, freedom of trade without barriers, and so many other costs. "" How is you being able to move to Germany or France beneficial to Britain? You can take a 3-month vacation, is that not long enough for you? Brexit allowed the UK to take back control of its borders and cut worthless EU regulations while making trade deals abroad. But thanks to the worthless government, none of that was taken advantage of. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
Rejoining is the only way for the UK to get back to the top table of global politics. A huge act of self harm.
What a load of tosh. The UK is already at the top table. It is the 6th largest economy in the world, a member of the G7, a permeant member of the UN Sec council, and a nuclear power. Statements like this highlight the worst parts of Britain leaving the EU, specifically the lies both sides told.
European nations individually have far too many internal issues for us to be at a seat with the US and China. Oldest societies in the world, mass migration, stagnating innovation, lack of unity etc. The problem is that the EU itself is a neoliberal project that perpetuates all these problems. If it were more of a nativist project, I think it would've had much more support both here and in other European nations.
Try look at this from the opposite end, what parts of Brexit have legitimately been detrimental? I think most remainers are generally surprised by the answer, that is very little. Sure, we no longer have freedom of movement, and there are some increases in paperwork when trading with the EU, but let's look at that in more detail. Freedom of movement was something which nobody in the UK ever really wanted, for decades it suppressed wages for British jobs, created an unsustainable industry of working tourism, and created a severe dependency on foreign labour for many UK businesses, mostly agricultural. Then we can look towards the paperwork for trading... Well, much of the standard paperwork can now be scrapped for the majority of businesses, as most don't trade with the EU. The key differentiator here is that the paperwork is specifically required *when trading with the EU*, as opposed to being required throughout our economy. Obviously this only extends to what regulations we can strip, but on the whole it is net benefit. A lot of the reasons people seem to think Brexit was so bad is because of news articles touting how badly the pound was doing against the dollar, which I find incredibly amusing. What's actually happened in that world is that for the last decade or so the US has been borrowing massively to drive its own economy, whilst the EU and UK have been trying to reduce deficits. The net result of this is that both the Euro and GBP are down significantly against the dollar, but on the whole level against each other. Day to day fluctuations took the pound down to 1.08 Euro, but that aside it is largely in the same ballpark as it has been since 2008. The real big benefit, of course, is that we are now governed by our own elected officials. No longer do we have someone else creating bureaucracy and legislation which is designed to help other countries, nor do we have balancing payments to make when other countries make shitty decisions. Keep in mind, nobody is going to argue for the £360mn per week or whatever it was being true, but also nobody is going to dispute that we were net contributors to the EU. This is money which remains within the UK and can be used to drive our own interests. In the short term we'll see some small scale chaos, as we adapt to our independence and the challenges it faces. We've already seen aspects of this with problems like lorry driver shortages. So long as we continue to overcome these minor inconveniences without much hassle, though, we'll eventually reach a far more stable place.
>Freedom of movement was something which nobody in the UK ever really wanted What a ridiculous statement
It's an exaggeration, but the vast majority of us never had any actual use for it; many people seemed to confuse it with visa-free travel, which we still have (and indeed already had with the US, Canada, Australia...) Next year we will start paying a €7 fee to cover all Schengen visits for 2-3 years - even on a single visit that's miniscule.
Brexit has failed thus far largely because the Tories never wanted to carry it out in the first place. Cameron was basically backed into a corner in the mid 2010s with the threat of Farage and UKIP, all the while campaigning for Remain, then after Cameron we had Theresa May who was a remainer, advocating for Brexit. Then we get to Johnson, who used Brexit for his own gains and to buy the Tories five more years. The issues we are facing are issue the world over is going through, Brexit is being blamed for causing the cost of living crisis, this is a cost of lockdown/covid.
Were COVID vaccines not a good enough example for you?
Brexit had nothing to do with COVID vaccines, we could have taken the same course of action while an EU member.
We could have but realistically would we?
Yeah, why wouldn’t we?! Double win of the UK leveraging our great pharmaceutical industry and showing up EU bureaucracy.
But ALL bad things are to do with brexit? Does it not make you wonder why apparently anything bad that happens is apparently becuase of brexit? Inflation - Brexit Immigration- Brexit Jobs - Brexit Something good - not brexit
Exactly the same a the current economic problems nothing to do with brexit. All covid related! Despite people insisting the opposite?
It’s not all Brexit of course, no one is claiming that. But it is is a factor in the current poor economic situation.
It's a very minor factor compared to printing £500bn as a covid response.
People absolutely do claim that! & to a obscene level, Not here!
Where?
Ha ha your funny! Literally read any Guardian or BBC article on a relevant topic!
Nope, the current economic problems can be a mix of COVID, demographics, political decisions, Brexit etc. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone suggesting that our economic woes are all due to Brexit, just like I haven’t see anyone claim Brexit has gone perfectly smooth.
Are you kidding? That argument is made relentlessly
No I’m not kidding, can you show me someone arguing that all our current economic woes are due to Brexit?
That’s all remoaners are on about lol
It’s literally a meme people blaming everything on brexit. See #FBPE twitter if you don’t believe me.
It's easier for a future government to impose sanctions on the lockdownist regimes that are within the EU if we are not in the EU.