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

Having a job is not a good thing when it does not buy you anything except the opportunity to work hard, be chewed up, and spat out. What benefit is there for working hard for those of us with no bank of mum and dad?

Show them that work works by bringing back the chance to build their own lives from work.

They have nothing.

Theres a thread on this board by a mother grudging the fact that her teenage sons cook because she can’t afford the fuel costs ffs.

And look up the concept of failure demand.

We can't wait for people on benefits to work out that having a job is a good thing, we need people in the jobs when they're open. If we're importing immigrants to do the health and social jobs it's because those jobs aren't being filled by natives.

And they're not "more mouths to feed", they're paying taxes and contributing. They're the ones feeding the mouths.

Actually I have some sympathy for that view. What jobs there are, we should be training up our own people for and making it worth them working. Showing them that there are rewards for working. Not just continuing to import more mouths to feed.

The argument that more immigrants magically improve the economy is demonstrably false. How many millions have we imported now? Where’s the benefit for these towns, watching the immigrants imported specially to take the health and social jobs their parents and greatparents could have done? Purely there as cheap labour in the failure demand economy of the poverty industry?

How are the residents still so stupid? Voting for Brexit, losing EU funding, and now voting for Reform, and now racist attacks against the Nigerian community.

But once more, politics isn't helping. In the past three years, a group of Nigerian families has moved into the area. Most are employed as engineers or health and social care workers, and many have sent their children to Cotsford Primary - of its 182 pupils, as many as 30 are now Nigerian. But they've become embroiled in the country's immigration debate.

Over the summer months, England flags started appearing on lampposts in the villages, and a group of Nigerian families playing in a local park was attacked with eggs. Some parents, says deputy head Vicky Page, feared for their safety.
"You're talking about people who have legally arrived in the country, who are here to work. And then you talk about a political agenda that's different, looking at people who are coming illegally. They are not in the same ballpark at all, but yet they're being treated as if they are."

It would not have been possible for the UK to enter the EU without having been in the EEC and EC first. And the freedom to leave would have been available at each of those elections.

But but Brexiteers all did their own research didn’t they?

As far as Brexit is concerned they were warned. They dismissed expert knowledge in favour of lies on the side of a bus. I’m only sorry that their actions will continue to govern the fates of those a damned sight more intelligent.

As far as the deprivation is concerned, this is the ongoing problem of Britains broken economy which we have been talking about for years and where are the answers? Where are the answers when there are no jobs any more in a system governed by hostile elites who threw people off the land into this system 400 years ago and simply do not care whether the serfs live or die? At least train up your own people rather than than import more cheaply, especially in a country so overpopulated and so visibly overpopulated at that, a finite island… but they’ve been going back to that Enclosure mindset for the last twenty years, forcing the new Enclosure that is buy-to-let instead.

How are people supposed to live with no resources, no jobs and no hope?

This is coming for all of us.

All of which we before the EU . And it wasn't really an issue. None of the parties spkoe about it.

And who could've voted for ukip years before it existsd

Add in 1979, 1983, 1987 ....

It's not the disagreeing that is the issue.

It's the faulty reasoning (on the rare occasions it's provided) that is the problem.

By all means live your life as if the sun orbits the earth. Just don't expect me to respect any decisions you make predicated on that "fact".

Yes - people were clearly told this. They just chose not to listen. How come over 40 per cent of those who voted in Liverpool voted for Brexit? What the bloody hell? How on earth did they think the city would be better off under a TORY government outside the EU than within the EU with the clear evidence of EU funding displayed on buildings/sites in the city? You could not miss the EU symbol in the city in the twenty years before Brexit.

I think I am at the point where I have little sympathy with people who voted to deprive their county/city of EU funding. Turkeys voting for Christmas comes to mind.

I am so pleased that the current government is working to get British students back into the Erasmus scheme. It might only directly affect a small number but it is important nevertheless. Hopefully more initiatives will follow to mitigate the disaster that is Brexit.

DH and I have had to be very restrained around our parents when we think what opportunities our DSs have potentially lost. I remember reading a post years ago from a woman who was very angry that her parents had voted Leave apparently without any consideration at all for their DGC who were at uni in the EU/planning to study/work abroad. That resonated with me.

The ECC was founded in 1957. The UK refused to join, then when it did want to join, De Gaulle vetoed that in 63 and 67, for reasons not entirely connected with the economy: he thought the UK would a Trojan horse for US influence. He wasn’t entirely wrong as the UK’s influence with the US massively decreased after Brexit.

The Scottish independence vote went the wrong way from what was expected - even the Queen was called in to get the right vote, so little was done re Brexit. Should have learned from that.
And the almighty battle after the Brexit referendum-to rerun, etc meant the terms to move forward took forever and that was the pro Brexit lot. In desperation Bojo was voted in that was another 3 wasted years.

I'm talking about BEFORE we joined the EU in 1993. So how could anyone have voted ukip before then?

What ANTI EU parties were there to vote for?

I’m sorry, but most average citizens could not realistically be expected to fully understand the implications of such a massive and complex overhaul as Brexit

Agree it was far too complex to come down to leave or remain vote

The Irish have trialed a form of consultation called citizen assembles, I think this would have been a very good and transparent model to use to debate the issue and make recommendations to the government on leaving or remaining in the EU as opposed to a "leave" or "remain" referendum. It may also have been enough to satisfy the tory backbenchers

https://citizensassembly.ie/about/

Nope, all the tech was in and working by the earlier 2000s.... as was the UK border control in France & the high penalties.

By 2010, less than 9000 people tried to get into the UK via Lorry or Train.

Yet you think it took them 10 years to figure out there is a narrow bit of water to cross?
I posted on MN in 2016 that we will see a huge increase in x ch trafficking should we leave, it was blindingly obvious... poo hoo'ed by the Brexitiers, we lost all influence on the French.

Boats started the moment we left the EU.

But they had referendum to stay in EEC.

And to leave the EU. Neither of those referendums were a requirement and, as far as I am aware but will stand corrected, neither were binding as in the government didn't have to act on the result. Holding the referendums were decisions taken by the government of the day. In other systems referendums have to be called and are binding, it is not on the whim of a particular government.

the employer suddenly changed the whole ball game without notifying you would you be happy?
I would not be happy living in a constitutional monarchy no

What are you on about? the EU was formed in 1993, Thatcher hadn't been PM for 3 years....

We had a GE in 1992, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015 all won by pro EU parties

UKIP founded in 1993.

Yes, those of us pointing out the obvious downsides at the time were accused of being part of "project fear". Take Cornwall. Over One Billion euros invested by the EU in Cornwall since 2000, and another 350 million was planned but will now not happen.
The whole thing was turkeys voting for Christmas. It's very tempting now to just say "Sod 'em - they voted for this, they can have it" but that's not going to help the next generation growing up in these areas, who need jobs and hope.
gets votes the same way Hitler did: blame someone "other" and promise that if you punish the "other" it will all be lovely again for "us". If people are desperate enough they'll buy it, which is why the other parties need to help struggling communities and be seen to do so.

This isn't true though and it's dishonest.

The benefits of the EU were widely discussed before the referendum.

It was just that certain people found the promise of less immigration and amazing trade deals more alluring.

It was quite clear from conversations I had that people didn’t want to hear and didn’t want to investigate - they found a guy they believed and that was it

trying to talk about issues and I would be rebuffed “I don’t know about that “ in a shut up and move on tone or a you are lying tone

not “ I haven’t heard about that can you tell me? “ or “ where can I find out about this “ or “I don’t think that’s a big issue “

arrogance and blind faith

But they had referendum to stay in EEC. So either do have them or not. Can't have it both ways.

If you got a job and a certain amount of duties then. the employer suddenly changed the whole ball game without notifying you would you be happy?

You compare the threat of being sent back to France with being sent to Rwanda?

Rwanda hadn't even started when the Irish were complaining that it was sending our migrants into Ireland.

The Calais barrier, more and more sophisticated detection equipment, bigger and bigger penalties, the realisation by the traffickers that sending them on boats was far lower risk for the operators, all sorts of things were happening at the same time.

And by the by, now boat crossings are getting more difficult, numbers found in lorries has increased by 25% from 2023 to 2025. At least with the boats we know exactly what numbers are coming in on them. . With the lorries we don't have a clue.

Labour have done a number of good things that could and should have been done before. Precipitately cancelling the Rwanda plan before judging its actual impact was not one of them.

I totally agree that leaving the EU made it harder to police.

Which general elections. Thatcher was in for the majority of the time. It's only after she went

Ukip didn't even exist until later so how anyone could vote for them is beyond me

One reason I was pro Brexit (though didn’t assume we’d leave because I had heard no dissent - the public who dissented were never heard) was the attitude in Gov that as long as we pour money into London the rest can go hang -DC obvioyusly never felt the need to leave the capital -had he or his minions done that they would have known the unhappiness there was with the status quo —i will take the look of shock on the faces of the bbc presenters when the result was announced to my grave and chuckle - they had no clue in their London bubble.