The Brexit delusion

Redwurzel said:
Many people love misery in this country, when we were in the EU all we heard was complaints about the EU.

Now we are out all we hear is how bad it is out.
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See that’s part of the problem. Until UKIP and Farage started spouting rubbish the EU hardly registered with most people. It wasn’t a problem that people didn’t know much as the country benefited from membership.

44 years of neoliberalism has created many problems for Britain. Membership of the EU was not one.
 
The TYPE of Brexit delivered is the root of the problem. It is all too easy to ridicule and criticise voters I’m sure, soft targets are usually the ones people go for. I never see criticism of anyone that never voted for instance.

The real problem was not caused by the voters. It was caused in full by ALL the MP’s elected all around the country, especially their leaders. Cameron, a proven coward ran away once he opened pandoras box took his money and lives a life of comfort.

May, she was more concerned about massaging the ego’s of her own party than she was about the constituents across the UK. There were so many avenues open as to the type of Brexit. I will give her a glimpse of rope as she did try to avoid the brexit delivered, albeit minimally (imho). A second referendum could and should have been put to the public on any agreement in any event, it wasn’t sadly. This was the biggest political mistake after the one by Cameron to offera referendum in the first place. After all, the majority was tiny and not a majority at all when taking in to account non voters/abstainers etc

Johnson…….. nuff said

Corbyn, it amazes me people on here still laud him. He refused to deny he was a brexiteer, he sat on every fence possible leading to red wall seats being lost to the tories in 2019. He was as indecisive as any leader of the opposition as I have ever seen, particularly on Brexit.

The Brexit we have, has been handled badly and not been good for Britain, nor indeed the EU, the blame lies entirely with the MP’s supporting this and those opposing it for being so weak, it is they we should all vent any anger at. The whole political system needs scrapping and a PR system put in place to ensure the UK can never be held to ransom by the liars, cheats and self serving clowns we have lauding their power over the people they purport to represent.
 
sherlock1969 said:
Nonsense.

The vast majority of the public want to reverse Brexit. There’s nothing remotely democratic about the fact that a one off vote must be stuck to forever.
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The problem now is that if we rejoined the EU , we would be subservient to the Germany/France domination and have to implement such measures as abolishing the £ and taking up the €.
Leaving Brussels was virtually an all time decision and surely we are not already admitting that the might UK cannoT handle its own affairs.

If you are looking tor a plus to being out of the EU ‘
then think of all those unrecognised British MEPs who flitted between the 2 European sites virtually on permanent holiday. This is one gravy train that has gone.
 
sherlock1969 said:
That’s just not true.

Until Farage and the Tories (and their press) turned it into an election issue, EU membership wasn’t even in the top 10 of things the public cared about.
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Exactly this. An issue was created that wasn't there and people were lied to and led to believe it was the root of their problems when it was anything but.

The fact that the day after the vote the 2nd most googled term in the UK was "what is the EU?" suggests it wasn't a topic that the British public were too concerned with

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltec...es-for-what-is-the-eu-spike-after-brexit-vote
 
sherlock1969 said:
Until Farage and the Tories (and their press) turned it into an election issue, EU membership wasn’t even in the top 10 of things the public cared about
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It was turned into an election issue when Tony Blair refused to hold a referedum on the Lisbon treaty despite it just being a rewrite of the previously rejected EU constitution on which he had promised a vote. Cameron then went back on his pledge when he got into power in 2010.


coluka said:
The whole political system needs scrapping and a PR system put in place to ensure the UK can never be held to ransom by the liars, cheats and self serving clowns
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Why do you think PR will put a stop to this?

PR can give disproportionate power to minority views. Didn't happen under PR but just look at the hold the DUP had over Teresa May's government.
 
Should never have been put to a referendum. The vast majority of the public had nowhere near the understanding required to make an informed decision on the matter.

Evidently a lot of MPs didn't either.

It was like carrying out a poll down the pub to decide on the best approach to build a rocket and everyone deciding the best prototype was the red one because everyone hates blue.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion. The mistake made was the pretence that all opinions carried equal weight.
 
BoroBosco said:
PR can give disproportionate power to minority views. Didn't happen under PR but just look at the hold the DUP had over Teresa May's government.
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The DUP is (imo) not a good defence, they are effectively a NI conservative party (unionists), the tories, needed and usually enjoy their support, their votes up to 2019 were crucial, after 2019 though, they counted for little as Boris no longer needed their full agreement given his majority. A single party could ignore them and others, one party has led us down a tragic route since 2015

I personally think PR ia fairer system, as minorities are more likely to have a voice heard and you are unlikely to have one party controlling its people again despite only having a minority of votes cast as a whole.

It would give greater representation to all corners of our eclectic country and ensure that the parties would have to appeal to their core supporters, rather than a small number of swing voters in marginal seats.

Fewer votes and voters are ignored as more people’s preferences are clearly more likely taken into account.

It will likely offer greater and more-representative choice for voters and encourage greater turn out as people realise their voice isn’t just always background noise. The fact that PR is unlikely to produce an absolute majority for one party I would argue offers greater consensus of policy building and that PR ensures greater continuity of government and national stability.
 
coluka said:
The TYPE of Brexit delivered is the root of the problem. It is all too easy to ridicule and criticise voters I’m sure, soft targets are usually the ones people go for. I never see criticism of anyone that never voted for instance.
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That was kind of key to the whole vote. Having a vote where one thing was defined (remain in EU) vs an undefined state (any imagined version of brexit) allowed a false image of what brexit was to develop. This idea that we wouldn't leave the the SM but would, that we wouldn't leave the CU but would, that we wouldn't pay any money to them, but would, that we wouldn't have any trade barriers but would, that we wouldn't have hard boarders but would, that we wouldn't have uncontrolled crossings but would. It allowed manipulation of the truth to a comical level. It's a fact that brexit voters didn't know what they were voting for, because it simply wasn't well defined, it's a fact that it the supposed benefits were were not acheivable because many of them were mutually exclusive from each other.

Remember that night of indicative votes for brexit in parliament.....that was brexit in a nutshell, despite having a majority, the tories couldn't agree between themselves what brexit meant after they had won the vote.

Where we are today was inevitable. We should never have a referendum with such a loosely defined alternative ever again because it's plainly so easily manipulated, not in the publics interests and undemocratic in its nature.
 
Redwurzel said:
Many people love misery in this country, when we were in the EU all we heard was complaints about the EU.

Now we are out all we hear is how bad it is out.
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People don't like misery, but people like to say what they think, which is great. But, the problem is on social media (which exploded since the mid 2000's) three comments from random people can carry equal weight. You can have one is based on fact/ knowledge, one based on fiction (lack of knowledge), and one is a manufactured lie (usually based on knowledge, but directed to divert from the person's real motive/ issue).

I think a lot of people who were crap at their jobs or who overvalued their own skills were blaming the EU, whether that was politicians or all the way down to a guy picking fruit. Most of their problems were caused by our own inept politicians, our own policies and our own people.

Then there were also people who could make gains betting against the market or profiting from the failure of others, they also blamed the EU, to get us out of the EU, to create a personal gain. This only works for <0.1%, yet probably 20-30% think it applied to them.

The fact that some of these people used to blame EU rules, which we effectively wrote ourselves (within the EU, which the EU adopted) is what I find most funny. It's like they thought that us having the ability to write even more rules, solely for us, was going to make things better for us. The reality is, for the majority of the people in the UK, we would have been far better off if the EU had control over all of our rules, more than our own Tory government who are in place 2/3rds of the time. Having Labour in power 1/3rd of the time wasn't enough to dilute the Tory problem (not EU problem).

Some of our industries were failing (Coal, Steel, MAnufacturing etc), which got blamed on the EU, but it wasn't the EU's fault that other places around the world could just do this cheaper. The could basically carry out manufacturing and material production a lot cheaper, as they were developing, and could effectively pay less wages (a massive contributor to cost). Our Coal, Steel and manufacturing was always going to die off, due to wage demands, and we couldn't stop the less developed world from growing.

Anyone remotely independent wasn't blaming the EU when we were in, as there was no overall reason to blame them, being in massively helped us grow, and be competitive on a European and World market. Pretty much every single economist said we were better in the EU, the Tories did, Labour did, and every single Tory calculation on the brexit impact (post-voting out) showed leaving was going to be bad. The less ties we had, the worse it was going to be.

Some people have flipped sides but it's not many, maybe 10%, but the people who used to blame the EU have just gone quiet, and those who knew it worked have just kept saying the same thing which applied from before we left, as it's true.
 
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BoroMart said:
That was kind of key to the whole vote. Having a vote where one thing was defined (remain in EU) vs an undefined state (any imagined version of brexit) allowed a false image of what brexit was to develop. This idea that we wouldn't leave the the SM but would, that we wouldn't leave the CU but would, that we wouldn't pay any money to them, but would, that we wouldn't have any trade barriers but would, that we wouldn't have hard boarders but would, that we wouldn't have uncontrolled crossings but would. It allowed manipulation of the truth to a comical level. It's a fact that brexit voters didn't know what they were voting for, because it simply wasn't well defined, it's a fact that it the supposed benefits were were not acheivable because many of them were mutually exclusive from each other.

Remember that night of indicative votes for brexit in parliament.....that was brexit in a nutshell, despite having a majority, the tories couldn't agree between themselves what brexit meant after they had won the vote.

Where we are today was inevitable. We should never have a referendum with such a loosely defined alternative ever again because it's plainly so easily manipulated, not in the publics interests and undemocratic in its nature.
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Yup, it was 100% why the vote wasn't fair, not without having a vote on which deal we were going to get first (which would have been realistically pre-approved by the EU).

There were about 5 contradictory versions of leave which could all cumulatively sum up votes, it didn't seem to matter that if one of those won (the worst one), and the other 4 lost. In 2016 all remainers lost, and about 70% of leavers didn't "win" with their version. Would the leavers have moved to a different version, sure, some would, but taking any of those other 4 options away, prior to the vote, and leave would have lost comfortably.

If we had a vote on leaving the CU and SM v Remain then the vote would have probably been 70% in favour of remain, had people actually some knowledge on how CU and SM massively helped us, or stopped us being left behind.
 
Lottowyn said:
The problem now is that if we rejoined the EU , we would be subservient to the Germany/France domination and have to implement such measures as abolishing the £ and taking up the €.
Leaving Brussels was virtually an all time decision and surely we are not already admitting that the might UK cannoT handle its own affairs.

If you are looking tor a plus to being out of the EU ‘
then think of all those unrecognised British MEPs who flitted between the 2 European sites virtually on permanent holiday. This is one gravy train that has gone.
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That's the best you can do?
 
jam69 said:
That's the best you can do?
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It's an unbelievably poor 'benefit' for the trillions of pounds its cost.

The irony of course is that it was the Farages of this world that didn't turn up yet got paid, and didn't get involved in properly trying to drive our future relationship for benefit. Yet they are the ones who've spend a decade telling you what grifters MEPs are! Couldn't make it up, it's bizarre that anyone still clings onto this idea of a MEP gravy train rather than actually look at the facts of what those MEPs did (well the ones that weren't aligned with Farage).
 
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Lottowyn said:
The problem now is that if we rejoined the EU , we would be subservient to the Germany/France domination and have to implement such measures as abolishing the £ and taking up the €.
Leaving Brussels was virtually an all time decision and surely we are not already admitting that the might UK cannoT handle its own affairs.

If you are looking tor a plus to being out of the EU ‘
then think of all those unrecognised British MEPs who flitted between the 2 European sites virtually on permanent holiday. This is one gravy train that has gone.
Click to expand...
Nonsense
 
Lottowyn said:
The problem now is that if we rejoined the EU , we would be subservient to the Germany/France domination and have to implement such measures as abolishing the £ and taking up the €.
Leaving Brussels was virtually an all time decision and surely we are not already admitting that the might UK cannoT handle its own affairs.

If you are looking tor a plus to being out of the EU ‘
then think of all those unrecognised British MEPs who flitted between the 2 European sites virtually on permanent holiday. This is one gravy train that has gone.
Click to expand...
We wouldn't we would have almost the same position we had prior, effectively due to our economic size, the only reduction being our economy is smaller against both of those, by comparison, than it was in 2016. Their economic predictions for the long term are better too, we don't deserve the seat we once had, but we would get the one we're worth/ deserve.

If we re-joined they might let us keep the pound, but to be honest there's no real reason to. The pound is significantly weaker than the Euro, compared to 2016, we were at ~1.4 in 2016, we're now at 1.16, and have not been over ~1.2 since 2016. The Euro is trading at about the same rate v the dollar, and has been 10% stronger (despite a strong dollar) and the euro would be stronger if we joined it (which would help the UK against the US and world). It will probably get stronger as the other lesser EU nations develop and grow too.
Separately, the EU and UK will likely both lose out to the dollar, but together could almost trade at parity and maybe even beat it, but it also depends on what the US do.

Your plus isn't really a plus, and it's not a silver lining or any kind of equivalence, it's like taking away 100 and giving back 1, it's not even worth mentioning. MEP's were important when we were a member, but we would need to stop electing far-right clowns into it, like Farage.
 
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