The Brexit Thread

[GooseOnTheLoose]

Two further warnings about post-Brexit travel difficulties this week. St Pancras isn't up to scratch for the EES checks and neither is Dover. This is before we've implemented our own system for entry into the UK.

"Eurostar may cap services due to post-Brexit biometric passport checks, says station owner" - https://www.theguardian.com/busines...st-brexit-passport-checks-warns-station-owner

"Tourists heading to Europe could face 14-hour queues at Dover from October" - https://www.theguardian.com/politic...uld-face-14-hour-queues-at-dover-from-october

 

[Tom]

Blaming various calamities on Brexit is as flawed as many of the Brexiteers’ arguments during the referendum campaign. It is the government that is responsible, not the act of Brexit itself.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

Blaming various calamities on Brexit is as flawed as many of the Brexiteers arguments during the referendum campaign. It is the government that is responsible, not the act of Brexit itself.

The particular checks and procedures my post refers to would not have been implemented in the UK without Brexit.

I'm more than happy to have a pop at the current government too though.

 

[Tom]

Are you familiar with the concept of negotiation?

 

[ScottishChris]

Blaming various calamities on Brexit is as flawed as many of the Brexiteers’ arguments during the referendum campaign. It is the government that is responsible, not the act of Brexit itself.

The concept of Brexit was to leave the EU. Leaving the EU broke all sorts of treaties and agreement which we knew about. Many Brexit supporting politicians made unsubstantiated promises and assertions regarding deals we would broker. Indeed Mr. Gove stated the UK would "hold all the cards", and Liam Fox stated a trade deal with the EU would be the "easiest in human history"... but the fact of the matter was that Brexit would be a full hard reset on agreements regarding trade, travel and the likes. We knew this. This was what we should have been walking into with our eyes wide open. Strangely, the mess we find ourselves in at the moment is substantially better than what it could have been.

You say the government is responsible for the mess we are in. Yes, they are inept and should be doing better, but it was the Great British public that voted for this. Nobody knew how it would fully turn out, but you can't blame the government for something the majority of the public voted for.

 

[Tom]

Nobody knew how it would fully turn out, but you can't blame the government for something the majority of the public voted for.

In my view you can. You can implement and/or attempt to negotiate whatever you like from the government offices.

We have a free trade deal with the EU, for example. We could have quite easily not done so. Both would be ‘Brexit’.

 

[rob666]

you can't blame the government for something the majority of the public voted for.

I think you can.
They made a right crap job of it from end to end, every last inch of the way.
I expected a rough ride over the departure, I didn't expect our government to make things much worse.
Don't forget what that actual majority was, very close, nothing like a clear majority, more a neck and neck photo finish.

 

[ScottishChris]

I think you can.
They made a right crap job of it from end to end, every last inch of the way.
I expected a rough ride over the departure, I didn't expect our government to make things much worse.
Don't forget what that actual majority was, very close, nothing like a clear majority, more a neck and neck photo finish.

The thing is, we are actually in a better situation than the worst case scenarios predicted by think tanks and economists. We were all warned that many of the promises made by the Leave campaign were chocolate teapots. Even Ursula von der Leyen came out and stated the assortations made regarding were unobtainable.

Ultimately the information was all there, but the Great British public chose to ignore it. That is not the fault of the government.

 

[rob666]

3.8% majority, that is all.
Are you trying to say that the Government made a good job of Brexit then?
The information wasn't all there at the time of the vote, because many lies were told on each side, nobody knew what they were really voting for, just a nebulous concept of leaving.

 

[Matt N]

I think another problem with the Brexit referendum is that other than those who were particularly au fait with politics, I dare say that EU membership was not something that the vast majority of the public particularly cared about or comprehended the benefits and drawbacks of prior to the referendum.

I’m not saying that “all Brexit voters didn’t know what they were voting for” or anything to that effect. Plenty of Brexit voters had very valid reasons for voting to leave, and the same goes for Remain voters.

However, I do think that there should have been stronger education around what Brexit would mean, or at very least, more transparency around possible hypothetical scenarios that could have arisen as a result of us leaving the EU. Prior to the events of 2016, EU membership was a fringe issue that only certain politicians and some members of the public who were particularly interested in politics had strong views on. I dare say that if you’d walked up to the average Brit prior to the referendum being brainstormed and the Brexit campaign happening and asked them their views on Britain’s EU membership, they would have struggled to give you much of an answer. It wasn’t something that really affected the average voter compared to other political topics like the economy, education or healthcare.

Prior to the referendum, I don’t think many people held overly strong views on EU membership, and I’d wager that many didn’t have a strong knowledge of what being in the EU or outside of it meant. EU membership gave the UK some very intangible things that many voters probably took for granted and didn’t really think about prior to Brexit. It also brought disadvantages that many may not have known about or comprehended.

With this in mind, I do feel that either the vote should not have been put to the public, or that both sides should have been more transparent about what the respective outcomes would have resulted in rather than resorting to fearful rhetoric. I’m not saying that any voters “didn’t know what they were voting for” or didn’t have valid reasons for voting to Remain or Leave, but I think that general public knowledge regarding the UK’s EU membership was quite low. There should have been education on the matter and greater transparency from both sides. I remember the Brexit campaign painting a very positive vision of the future where we’d hold all the cards and still gain access to things like the single market. Things like “No Deal”, which became a very real possibility just a few years later, were dismissed as “Project Fear”. Had there been more transparency, I dare say that many people on both sides of the debate might have voted very differently.

Building on this slightly, I knew of people who voted for Brexit based on things that weren’t necessarily anything to do with EU membership, but were instead a protest against the government. For instance, a friend of my nan’s voted to leave because she didn’t get her pension at 60. Someone my dad knew voted to leave because she couldn’t get an appointment with her GP.

 

[ScottishChris]

Some people voted for Brexit for reasons which legitimately mattered to them. I have no issue with that. Personally, Brexit has been bad for me.

There was a ting on TV, however, where people were asked "Why did you vote to leave the EU?". The two main answers were "To regain sovereignty" and "to control immigration. When asked what regaining sovereignty meant, the majority couldn't actually answer. When asked what about immigration they needed to control, the majority raised points (such as removing people who don't want to work or criminals) which we still technically had control over.

I have no doubt that we will rejoin the EU. Indeed, most people would vote Yes on that right now (https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/45910-britons-would-vote-rejoin-eu). The issue with this is we would have to rejoin in a much poorer position, and with less 'power' than we had in the first place.

 

[Matt.GC]

I've said since the start that the problem with the whole thing was precisely that the majority of people didn't know what they were voting for. I don't know why saying that has become such a taboo when it's clearly true.

I've never liked the EU. I don't like my bank or the system they run by either, but I'll still pay my mortgage every month as that's the way things are. I don't agree with everything every employer I've ever worked for does, but then I do need their money every 4 weeks.

I went across the road to vote remain, not because I like the EU and the way it operates, but because it just made logical sense for the UK to be at the top table moaning rather than on the outside attempting the same without success. The UK is an increasingly pathetic country, in long term economic decline, waving union jacks and pretending that Britannia still rules to waves as if it's still Victorian times.

Very few of the important issues were discussed during the referendum campaign, so why vote for change when there's not a single person in power with a plan to enact it and they don't even know what that change is? There wasn't then, there still isn't now.

At least at a general election you can scrutinise manifestos and hold politicians to account every 5 years. There were sensible people on both sides of the fence talking about sensible things at the time, but they were ignored in favour of talking about foreigners and punishment budgets. The whole referendum was about what team you were on and nothing to do with practicalities.

 

[Benzin]

Are you familiar with the concept of negotiation?

Think my 1 year old is more familiar with it than the government involved was.


Zero chance of rejoining for a generation or so. Election suicide in the near future, any deal we get will be nowhere near what had originally, and the potential continuation of cost of living crisis will probably push the country even further right wing (see Reform UK gain support from the Tories).

All those who were involved should be strung up in Parliament Square by the gonads with rotten fruit left for us to chuck at them. But instead most ran off and got richer.