EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

I realise this is part of the wider issue, but I'm finding it super difficult to put myself in their shoes and come to the same conclusion. Economy wise we're cutting ourselves out of a huge group with the hopes of negotiating better trade deals with the countries we had deals with. Somehow thinking that the UK alone was in a better position than the EU. NHS was going to get all that EU money is assuming the EU is doing absolutely nothing of value for the UK, unbelievably naive/blinkered. 3 and 4 seem relatively unconvinced so I'm unsure why they'd chose the 'leap into the unknown' over keeping the status quo.

I don't want to be thinking that everyone who voted to leave was basically anti-immigration and has since been hiding behind paper thin alternative arguments (and to be honest, I'm fairly confident that this is not actually the case). But in the last 5 years, I've not seen any solid alternatives. Well, other than people will just lap up whatever headlines are thrown at them and blindly believe it.

I just find it incredibly frustrating that even stepping back and thinking about any of these arguments for a minute, they immediately fall apart. Hence finding it so difficult to accept the cries of "We were lied to!" to try to get some sympathy.

Probably should've read this before effectively posting the same thing in my reply!

Yep, I guess to echo what @JWestland replied with, once people get split into their teams, they'll go along with whatever their team says to an extent.

I tried to tell yourman the economy is doing well IN THE EU and that there were no guarantees England would help us, cos they don't even help "their own".

I am not really super sympathetic, but sympathetic enough or empathic enough, or whatever that I think the liars were pretty good at this, and they screwed everyone over.

Several people online admitted they bought the NHS bullcrap, I mean, that's a super low scumbag marketing idea of C****ngs.

Now we are all in the crap, but that means the leavers too and if listening to their hurt means we can come up with some solutions a bit better, maybe that's the way to go.

I still have to avoid online comments though, FFS, you'd think 4 years on the simplistic bullshit over immigrants and the EU would be more informed, but nah. And deffo there are bigoted arseholes out there, people with no brain and no heart.

Only reason I could move on is because I think they are incapable and may as well get angry with a slug. Expect I am not Boris and C****ngs and don't step on the slugs ;)

Immigration wasn't a big issue in NI,

A spokeman for the National Irony Institute reported that their website
'would be down for the foreseeable future'.
All the Institute's meters require re-calibrating.

I don't want to be thinking that everyone who voted to leave was basically anti-immigration and has since been hiding behind paper thin alternative arguments

To me this is the tragedy of the whole thing. With my cynical hat on I think that Brexit could have been headed off in 2015 early in Cameron’s second term with some token concessions on freedom of movement. Only the looney ERG actually care about the sovereignty stuff as well, right?

Economy wise we're cutting ourselves out of a huge group with the hopes of negotiating better trade deals with the countries we had deals with. Somehow thinking that the UK alone was in a better position than the EU.

True, but for a lot of people their personal experience is shit and why not try something different. It's no coincidence that most of the disadvantaged places voted for Brexit.

He could have introduced registration for newly arrived EU furrin's and then start to enforce all EU rules (criminality checks, find work in 3 months etc...) not even any need for EU concessions.

And then advertise how much of a hard man he is...even so, would that have seen off Murdoch?

Not so in poor nationalist areas in NI and I believe black Brits (who often also are disadvantaged in the UK) were also mostly remain voters.

There is a link though, for sure, but only if you already believed the UK would have your back / all the fault of the EU.

Hence poor unionists still voting leave.

But to try something different, you'd have to have some idea that the new option can actually be beneficial. Is your thinking that this is just people being swayed by the headlines and not actually looking/thinking beyond that? I did mention that later in the quoted comment there, but am happy to hear other views.

NI is a back door into the UK. This was clear from the first mention of Brexit and obviously the hard border issue raised its head then. The DUP fought under ‘keep us British’ not realising that the government would renege on its promises once the government didn’t require the DUPs votes. Now we are left in a place, betwixt and between, and the back door remains open.
Interestingly, it looks like the Irish Sea border will be on the mainland for immigration issues at the moment as people can’t travel from NI to the mainland without hindrance.
The fright difficulties may drive freight into the South from the mainland and onwards to the EU - time will tell if that is a workable solution.

For sure there's a middle-ground between portraying leave voters as victims of being lied to, and pointing and laughing while shouting "You won, get over it". While I'd love to believe that these people are more likely to be a bit more reasonable now that they've been screwed over for those they voted for. But I think it's more likely that they'll just dig in their heels even more. Honestly I have no ideas on how to sort out that issue!

Cameron preferred not to take the economic pain of doing that and then gambled on a Remain win. Immigration has always been the emotive issue that the Sun/Mail used to drum up Leave support... some token ‘tough guy’ actions (rather than breached numerical targets) would have neutered that?

It'll be interesting to monitor that's for sure. I do recall seeing stories around NI companies picking up business from UK mainland companies due to NI having a foot in both sides at the moment. (Think this may have been linked upthread already: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-55942076).

The DUPs thought process is a bit baffling to me. The increased 'risk' of unification can't have been worth their pay-packet from the tories. Unless they genuinely did trust the tories to have their backs along the way, which once again seems incredibly naive.

Naive is the right term! Shortsighted, unthinking too - I still fail to understand how they didn’t expect this current fiasco to happen. I’m not intelligent but I saw it from day one.
Maybe they are better worrying about abortion! It’s just depressing from every direction.

Unless they genuinely did trust the tories to have their backs along the way, which once again seems incredibly naive.

I remember seeing one of them (DUPs) late on general election night when May lost her majority. He was interviewed about forming a coalition (or supply and demand, or whatever it was). He seemed fairly unpleasant, hard headed, and very unwilling to commit if his (DUP) demands weren't to be met by May.

Now, from where I'm sitting at least, they just look as foolish as the Lib Dems before them.

Unless they genuinely did trust the tories to have their backs along the way, which once again seems incredibly naive.

Conservative and Unionist Party, innit.

There's a lot of places that have been in decline for the past 40 years or so. More realistically it's probably to do with increasing global supply for products, automation, etc but for those areas it's easy to look at how things have declined under EU membership and think fuck it, we may as well try something else, we're already at the bottom, how can it be worse.

Blair was pretty good at playing the Murdoch press, it might have worked if combined with good marketing. Though putting a number on immigration, not too smart...

You cannot limit FoM more than what EU allows, going to the EU asking "can we stop all the Polish now" even though they got jobs fair and square, yeah, forget about it.

Now that "immigrants are under control" the whole topic just trailed off, perhaps a smart enough marketing might have sorted it, as in reality non EU immigration was already "controlled" and higher than EU immigration...

No guarantees of course, as you say, it's an emotive issue and would need smarts and wanting to get a win w/o throwing immigrants under the bus.

(crickets)

Ah yeah :)

Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if this was the reasoning behind just buying into the anti-EU sentiment to have some sort of scapegoat.

we're already at the bottom, how can it be worse

I'm sure they'll find out quite soon. I'd be absolutely shocked if austerity isn't taken to new levels and I'd be surprised if they're not the first on the chopping block.

The whole thing's just a giant catastro-fuck. Even just engaging in some civil discussion about it here gives some pretty depressing thoughts about the state of humanity!

Neither do I.

They feel like losers and hard done by, and that's true, so less of "your fault" and more of "yeah not as promised eh? now we all cannot get stuff from GB easily" might be a better approach.

From a safe distance in small doses ;)

The back door to the mainland - fly to Dublin. By road to the North. Boat or fly to the mainland. If the journey is done in 24 hours - no isolation. When Covid eases there will be even less checks.
Easy!

You cannot limit FoM more than what EU allows, going to the EU asking "can we stop all the Polish now" even though they got jobs fair and square, yeah, forget about it.

Now that "immigrants are under control" the whole topic just trailed off, perhaps a smart enough marketing might have sorted it

Yeah I suppose that’s my point - maybe we could have got public opinion to this point on immigration (ie fine / not a top 5 issue) without Brexit?

“four freedoms are indivisible” was/is not helpful dogma

But we're the only ones who that's an issue for, so why would it be reasonable for the other 27 member states to either make an exception for us or change how they work to enable our bigots to froth about something else for a change?

I tend to think that this "why wouldn't they be more flexible" thing is just British exceptionalism.

My opinion is that the Brexit vote was a protest vote (much like Trump). People are fed up with the perceived/actual extent of immigration and those people voted for Brexit. The parties campaigning either used immigration to their advantage or subtly hid the notion of it behind their policies. People may agree with Farage to a point but wouldn’t vote for him, so they picked the next best option - Conservative. If you review pre-Brexit Conservative policy/ manifesto, they undertook to sort out immigration. They didn’t and he is where we have ended up.
No one knows what the affect of Brexit will be in the long term, so far, it doesn’t look great. Voters have been manipulated by numerous things and Boris plods on. Cameron got out to leave everyone to it - a good strategy but I don’t blame him that much, the populace voted and the unexpected result was this mess.
If the conservatives had kept their promises, I don’t believe that Brexit would have been an issue never mind something for a referendum.
Just to be clear - I’m anti-Brexit but I can see how it happened.