“Everybody thought the EU was about people coming into the country … no-one told of us the benefits”.

Actually, I read the pp´s comment as sarcastic, I may be wrong though.

Hmm the small boats are instead of the people hiding in lorried which used to happen long before Brexit

As for the crappy towns. Wonder when they became in that state. After all we joined the EU in 1993. So if they've hand finding since then until 2019 that should've been enough money to help get them on their feet. Or are people meant to subside places that make no effort to help themselves indefinitely

No. Plenty of people were trying to do that but any warnings of the negative consequences of Brexit were written off as Project Fear. The only people who benefited were the likes of Farage snd Reece-Mogg. The poor have suffered the most - turkeys voting for Christmas.

So those areas should be getting more funding now then, no? The amount they were getting before plus a share of the £6bn we ‘saved’ by leaving?

I expect that no one who voted to leave does either funnily enough.

Multimillionaire grifters have always been exceptionally good at creating a false narrative around a faux enemy that divides the rest of us. I'm always reminded of the cartoon of Rupert Murdoch hogging a plateful of cookies, while pointing to the immigrant and telling a working class man "he stole your cookie". It's timeless, yet the electorate fall for it time and again. You're right op.

We were told - I particularly mentioned EU funding a lot, though very obviously without the reach of a Boris bullshit announcement. We were apparently going to have more U.K. funding due to us being able to be immensely rich and unfettered by the EU restrictions- and have access to the world for the brightest, best people and the cheapest best goods - I mean at the most basic did your parents never tell you there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Did no one wonder why previous parties didn’t advocate for this Utopia.
There’s a Guardian article going around on here about a strong Trump supporting area of the US that is really struggling due to his policies but they still are pleased enough he’s deporting immigrants (which doesn’t affect them) - maybe someone will be along to link it. It’s a sad article but shows it’s more about feeling than actuality - same as Brexit.
Looks like plenty will fall for it again and the rich will get richer and the rest of us maintain that for them. Now we are in that soundbite, feelings, fast pretend solutions I’m not sure how we get out of it. I also think there’s something of the entitlement of this country that plays in - for some reason other countries should be gratified we deal with them and give us our free lunch - not helpful to any progression or outcomes.

“Brexit has removed a key source of funding, which the area desperately needs. County Durham received £154m of EU funding between 2014 and 2020, about £22m a year.“

The £154m didn’t come for free, it came from a shared pot that we paid into, and the UK paid £6 billion more in than we got back out. BBC link below.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48256318?app-referrer=deep-link#:~:text=Germany%2C%20with%20a%20net%20contribution,goods%20enter%20the%20customs%20union.

Funny how many people used to never shut up talking about EU membership and how much it was to blame for everything, but now think six years ago is old news, and leaving the EU has nothing to do with any of our problems. Let alone claiming that leaving has improved things as it was claimed it would.

The fact remains that the UK government does not match the EU funding we lost after Brexit. Yes it is hard to unpick the Brexit effect within the general bin fire that is our economy now, but that does not mean it is not real. Seriously, the impact of Brexit was and is enormous. Dismissing it as "a bit old" doesn't not change that fact. A colossal act of self harm.

Yes and the politicians betrayed the people by allowing more immigration than ever, and I'm not talking about the difficult to tackle boats but the completely in our control rubber stamping visas. So now a lot of people are still looking for someone to control our borders.

Yes we haven't seen the benefits of Brexit because the politicians made sure of that by ignoring the will of the people.

It's not old, it's an ongoing situation.

I have no doubt the UK would be better off now if brexit hadn't happened.

Brexit is the reason that they have lost a good chunk of funding which the poorest regions could ill afford to lose.

It’s not getting old - it totally fucked us!
We are still allowed to be annoyed with the idiots who voted for it.

It’s blatantly obvious to anyone with a brain that Reform are full of shit too.

So yeah it’s relevant. Learn from your previous mistakes. Stop voting because you don’t like people you perceive as being different from you and think about who is really benefiting!

Are you being facetious? It's hard to tell.

The other thing is, leaving the EU out of it for a moment, is areas like Stoke-on-Trent are hugely subsidised by Westminster anyway. Now there are reasons for that, and regional policy should be better, to spread the wealth, and the U in United Kingdom is there for a reason but good luck discussing that with anyone from the area. I know from personal experience many think "London" is ripping them off, while in fact "London" is actually paying the bills of most of the country.

Maybe some of this comes down to not understanding "net". Net migration, net gain, net trade etc.

Farage is nearly as dangerous as Trump in his own way.

Actually they were told.

But they were told it’s “project fear”

but but but £350m for NHS.

Reform will not improve things and decimate the NHS further.

But they get people to listen by repeating “immigration “ which is what people voted for.

Until people realise immigration isn’t the reason for the mess we are in the have a platform. Therein lies the danger.

People were urged to vote emotionally on Brexit. They were asked to consider how important concepts and ideals like 'sovereignty' were to them. Many Brexit voters I spoke to said they were willing to have a bad economic period in exchange for sovereignty. Michael Gove said people had had enough of experts. People were discouraged from looking at the facts and told to focus on their feelings (ironically many of the same crowd who now declare that facts don't care about your feelings)

The facts were there if anyone chose to look for them. I wasn’t deceived, it didn’t take much research to see that everything Farage said was a lie.

What next "everyone told us the measles vaccine was about 5g and control. Nobody told us about how dangerous measles is"

Admin

more civil servants that everyone hates because they get pensions - to replace the seamless trade we had and replace all the administrative offices we need to have independently because we didn’t want to share, like pharmaceutical quality and control, like you know the really important stuff

I agree that those who vote for Farage and his cronies will deserve their fate.

The rest of us don't deserve it though, but will get it.

It's infuriating. Allowing such an important decision to be made by thick racists.

They should have torn up the vote of anyone unable to explain what a third country is and what we'd lose by becoming one.

One of my outstanding memories leading up to the vote was a BBC Breakfast clip of a load of British 'expats' who lived in Benidorm talking about how they were planning to vote leave 'because there's too much immigration these days'. You couldn't make it up and it's the same people now complaining that they can't continue to live in Spain full time, or they have to jump through a load of hoops to do so.

I am however amused that, because it's a lot harder for Polish, Portuguese and other European healthcare and hospitality workers to come to the UK, they've now been commonly replaced by people from places like Ghana. I bet the leave voters didn't see that coming.

It's just an instance where you can't really trust the great British public to make the best decision. I happen to think it was the right decision (and still, despite everything, would vote Brexit again), but not for reasons of immigration. It was such a complex decision that even the best researched journalists couldn't lay out the full argument in writing, and certainly politicians' five minute speeches or even shorter soundbites couldn't begin to do it justice. A mumsnet forum certainly couldn't scrape the surface. It just became a horribly toxic debate, certainly online.
I worked closely with the EU Commission for a decade and still have a less close professional relationship with my counterparts in various EU member states. I know I was not in a position to weigh all the relevant pieces, but I was certainly better placed than many, well informed enough to know it was a huge risk to put to the people.