I'm fed up with everyone tiptoeing around Brexit having been rubbish

Indeed. I get that it's political suicide to suggest that the electorate may not know what's good for them and the country.

It is the only trade deal in history designed to make trade harder, and therefore it placed greater burdens on business and our economy. The stupidity is biblical and the effect predicted.

The alleged future benefits are still far away, in the sunlit uplands which we are no closer to a decade on.

People cannot face they were conned. Nobody wants to admit the stupidity, so the benefits are always just around the corner, like when you tell a child that you are nearly home on a long car journey

Because when 30% of the public say they still support Brexit (and I think it’s probably higher due to what pollsters refer to as they “shy Tory”, but equally applies to any group you label negatively), that’s a massive chunk of the electorate to piss off before you’ve even started your campaign.

How does the NBER have skin in the game? They regarded as a highly respected economic research organisation rather than an overtly political or campaigning body

They have skin in the game, as do most organisations who did a pre-analysis of the impact Brexit would have.
Unfortunately, everyone’s pre-Brexit behaviour means we have no legitimate objective analysis options. And even if we did, I’d remain certain that Brexit repercussions would be impossible to disentangle from everything else that has happened since.

I mean, we had the best negotiators and civil service expertise available at the time. The reality is Brexit was always going to be an almost impossible task trying to leave a deeply integrated economic and political system while somehow keeping all the benefits And it’s interesting you say the EU was being “difficult”, because from their perspective they were negotiating in the interests of the countries that stayed. That’s exactly what any bloc or country would do.

Also, people weren’t sold Brexit on the basis that things might be a bit worse but philosophically worth it. We were repeatedly told things would be better by Farage and his ilk, who plenty of people are still putting their trust in now.

What exactly did you think our politicians were going to do to make it a success? It’s not a success because there was no scenario in which it could possibly be - putting up a trade barrier with your richest and closest neighbours was never going be a triumph - and if you believed all the sunlit uplands and amazing trade deals crap then really you’re lucky it’s as good as it is - and it’s shit. The EU has don’t nothing more than treat us as a third country, exactly the same as other countries whom they don’t have a trade deal. We’re no worse off than them - the difference is, those countries need the deal less.

There’s no way it’s not brought up, but it looks like it might come up at next GE. It’s hard to extrapolate as EU countries and growth not high but trade has more friction.

It’s worse to have this rumbling discourse of blame so have it as manifesto and vote to get past the stuck issue.

It is a comprehensive analysis of the impact of Brexit.
Full analysis attached.
Are you better equipped to analyse the data than the NBER?

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34459/w34459.pdf

Not conned. It has not worked out due to incompetence of our politicians to get a grip with any given situation & Europe doing all they can to be difficult. I agree it is not great at the moment ,do we have any real benefits?

Of course many leave voters will blame this on being the wrong flavour of Brexit

This is a critical point. Everyone who voted to leave got exactly what they voted for as the referendum was a binary in / out vote. There was no sub menu of "this is what I want from Brexshit". So for them to moan about it not being the Brexshit they thought they were voting for is a non argument, they voted out and they got out. There were a million permutations of leave, and only one permutation of remain.

So if we rejoin we will all be richer?

I think Covid and a global economic downturn had something to do with this…

Since when was the purpose of Brexit to stop immigration? (Since the tabloids tried to pitch it like that maybe? )It impacts Europe only for a start!

Not my thoughts, but if you speak to people on the brexit side that is often the answer you get rather than buyers remorse. I was attempting to explain why the premise in the OP was wrong that everyone now knows it was a bad idea.

A common argument is that the negotiations and implementation were carried out largely by people who fundamentally disagreed with Brexit, or at the very least saw it as damage limitation rather than an opportunity. So from that perspective, they’d say there was never much appetite within the civil service or political establishment to approach it positively or make the most of it.

A lot of people who still support Brexit would argue that what was promised was never really implemented in the way they expected. They point to things like Theresa May immediately committing to the two year Article 50 deadline, which meant the pressure was always on the UK to reach a deal quickly while the EU could simply wait us out. They argue that weakened the UK negotiating position from the start.

You also hear people say there was a completely disproportionate focus on things like fishing rights because they were politically symbolic, while bigger structural issues around trade and regulation were never dealt with particularly well. Likewise the Irish border became such a political and diplomatic minefield that it dominated everything else and boxed negotiators into compromises many Leave voters never wanted in the first place.

You can disagree with that analysis obviously, but it is genuinely what a lot of Leave voters still think. Many of them do not see Brexit itself as the failure, they see the failure as years of political infighting, weak negotiation strategy, and the government trying to satisfy the remain side rather than committing to the leave mandate they were instructed to.

Well they’ve successfully made themselves poorer, that’s for sure. They must be revelling in all the sovereignty. It’s disengenuous to suggest that it wasn’t largely about immigration- both Farage and Johnson leaned heavily into fearmongering during their campaigns of lies. Four members of my family voted for Brexit and almost immediately after my mother was upset to find she’d been lied to. I did tell her over and over and then just reply that I was scaremongering. All 4 of my family would vote to remain if it was rerun now. Again, not an evidence based study - just my experience with family.

I don't believe most people voted for Brexit to stop immigration or get more money for the NHS. I think they did it based on principles such as Sovereignty. The people I spoke to said they would accept the country becoming worse in many ways because of the principle behind it. Then, you had people who voted for Brexit based on specific EU laws they disagreed with, like fishing quotas or the shape of bananas. Of the people I know who voted Brexit, the ones who voted on principle are still happy with the choice and accept a poorer Britain on the whole, although feel it has been mismanaged. But the people that voted on the basis of specific EU laws regret it, realising that they may have been victim of simplified or poor information. This is not an evidence based study of course, just my experience with friends.

It’s not impossible to assess how Brexit has impacted our economy.

The NBER has completed a comprehensive & independent analysis.

Key economic assessments from NBER include:

• GDP: Reduced GDP per capita by 6% to 8%.
• Business Investment: Dropped significantly by 12% to 18%.
• Employment: Decreased by 3% to 4%.
• Productivity: Reduced by 3% to 4%

It’s frankly impossible to say how much it has impacted where we are now. The waters are completely muddied by a global health crisis (Covid), the Russia/Ukraine war and now the war in Iran.

Our economy grew more than the rest of the G7 in the last quarter.
The immigration we are seeing now has nothing to do with Brexit (which did reduce immigration from within the EU).
We ARE saving a fortune in membership fees - where that money has been otherwise spent is another matter, and nothing to do with the fact of Brexit.

Like it or loathe it, Brexit did offer opportunities that weren’t open to us as members of the EU. Sadly, these haven’t been exploited properly because our governments since have been piss poor and the Brexit deal with the intransigent EU was a bad one.
The EU leaders have now 1) changed and 2) calmed down about Brexit, so it is likely that we can now forge closer ties with the EU without needing to be a member. There are incentives for both sides, especially now in the Trump era of world politics and vulnerability of NATO.

BTW having a higher % required for it to pass means there is built in safeguards for those not informing themselves adequately of the implications.

The biggest mistake was the Cameron government not putting normal processes and procedures in place for such an important decision. The referendum should never have been which option got most votes, it should have been a minimum of 70% in order for leave to be triggered. A business would never make a decision based on a couple of percentage points, too many other factors at play.

The problem is that whilst there have obviously been many negatives some of it is distorted due to Covid etc. The immigration issue is largely down to Boris who let lots in as low paid carers plus the student visa issue.

Genuine question. How is it worked out whether brexit is the cause of where we are now , or whether Covid is? Can they be separated?

To shut up the anti EUers in his party. He took it for granted that a majority of the public would vote to remain, so he didn’t put the case for doing so passionately enough. Corbyn was also a disgrace, I blame him for Brexit as much as Johnson and Farage.

And instead people are voting for Farage in large numbers.