To wonder how the divisions in the country will ever be healed?

[amandacarnet]

Brexit has divided this country. I wonder how this is ever going to heal. And the repercussions of this deep divide in our country.

We actually had an office at my work that fell out over Brexit which was an awkward situation for management. I voted differently than my colleagues but I wasn't that happy with how I voted so I don't see the other side as the enemy if that makes sense.

I just think most of us are pragmatic enough to park their opinions and concerns to maintain civility with friends, family and the wider community.

I agree, but on the other hand I wouldn’t now go and live in a place where most people had voted differently to me.

A friend and I realised we had voted different ways in the referendum, and have tacitly agreed never to talk about it. But politics is part of life, so if you are not talking about it, you are already cutting off a lot of potential communication.

So I think the referendum has rendered us much more separate from each other. Vast swathes of the country that mistrust and don’t understand each other.

On the other hand I think it is all bread and circuses, and we are puppets in a game not of our own making, so fuck’em, we are the last people they care about or even take into consideration. And that’s all of us, leave and remain voters. We aren’t that, we are people who are being used in my opinion.

Yes I agree it seems very strange to me how leavers somehow think Britain can be self sufficient. It’s like they have no idea about global economic infrastructure.

I think the real divide is yet to show it's colours.
I agree, there is a divide now, but it's an "old" one only made visible by the leave vote.
The real divide will show up when the current & next generation of children will become adults. They need, jobs, homes, food, healthcare, education and security for their own children. I am just not sure a post Brexit No Deal Britain will deliver all that with the same ease as it did for most of us.
think about all the anti baby bomer threads

Sometimes people I know mention Brexit but only in passing, saying things like "when Brexit is done" etc. Literally no-one I know says how they voted and I've never asked.

The only person to every try and have an argument with me is a good friend who is a full-on huge Corbynista. She admins the local Momentum online group (or something). A few years ago I casually mentioned that I didn't like him and I normally vote Lib-dem anyway. She went stark raving mad at me, shouting and accusing me of being thick and 'fed' by the right wing media. She wouldn't talk to me for weeks. I was upset too. It made me back off from her a lot.

In the end, I bought her a JC mug for her birthday and said that we should just agree never to mention politics again.

I am just not sure a post Brexit No Deal Britain will deliver all that with the same ease as it did for most of us.

Trouble is the today's younger workers don't have the same "milk and honey" as the baby boomers - and that deterioration happened whilst we were still very much part of the EU. It's not Brexit that has pushed up state pension age, increased house prices, dumbed down education, reduced wages, etc - that all happened over the last 20 years!

Personally I think the only way that something of this magnitude could ever be done is gradually.

Sounds good in theory, but impossible in practice and the voters wouldn't trust Parliament either.

After all, the public never voted to join the EU. We voted to join a trading union, the EEC, which was (and still is) perfectly sensible, to make cross border trade quicker, easier and cheaper. If we could go back to that, I'd expect the vast majority of the public would accept it.

But, over the decades, our politicians signed us into other closer integrations, such as freedom of movement, closer integration of tax, european courts, etc., all of which are now inherently embedded into the trade agreement. Eg, we have harmonised VAT rules, etc which mean you can't go back to free trade without also agreeing to keep the cross-border VAT rules, so that brings common tax policy back into play, and so it goes on.

It's like a divorce. Of course, in a perfect world, when you divorce it would be all fair and amicable and I'm sure most people hope and work towards that. But during the process, cracks appear, and before you know it, you're at each other's throats. That's why a "soft" longer term brexit would never work.

Personally, I wouldn't trust the politicians to carry it through either - if we just withdraw slightly to appease the brexiteers, I believe the politicians would stealthily continue with ever closer integration. As has been proved, we couldn't trust them to "brexit", so I'd never trust them in some kind of longer run "one foot in, one foot out" approach.

Why is it impossible in practice? Leaving the political structures but remaining in the single market and customs union is very simple (and is a return to the trading structures you say people were originally happy with as part of the EEC). Yes, some people will be annoyed but people are going to be angry whatever course is taken. I think the level of anger would be less with a gradual change than either of the more polarised versions.

It also leaves the opportunity for further change in either direction once people have seen how it pans out.

Your post shows how much the rhetoric has changed since the referendum when EEA was posited by many in the leave campaign.

Yes I agree there is no division amongst my friends and colleagues but we live and work in London so why would there be. Most places voted one clear way or the other

The problem is no solution works really - I would like to now leave with a decent deal. The problem with that (IMO) is that a lot of what has caused the dissatisfaction with the EU comes not from then but the incompetence/selfishness etc of our own politicians the ones we are stuck with no matter what.

And I agree with a previous poster. Exactly what is Brexit. DD asked me today would we still be part of Europe - of course we will that is a geographical certainty. We are all Europeans. We just wont be in the EU. And that is an issue.

My suspicion is that BJ knows exactly what he is doing neither he nor the EU want a No deal but this is all smoke and mirrors because it is the backstop that will be sold down the river and ROI and NI with it. It needs to be done this way for both sides to be able to say they had no choice. The EU will sell out ROI and the UK NI.

02Kazzyhoward - Education is not an EU issue, plenty of EU countries have better quality state education than the UK.
State pension age, thanks to better living standards and advances in medicine, people live a longer active life. There is no provision for 20+ of pension income for everyone. House prices and reduced wages is an economic strategy by the big blue chip companies (that have a firm grip on the UK.) Plenty of EU countries have affordable housing and decent wages for qualified staff - some have even higher living stands than the UK.

should read ... "20+ years"...

The leave voters I know generally fall into 2 categories. 1) Not well off people who genuinely thought Brexit would be good for Britain and have now mostly changed their minds. 2) Rich people who have not changed their minds and know that it is going to hit the poor badly but don't care as their wealth protects them. I can't forgive the latter as it's pure selfishness.

It's such an emotive topic. (For those who care, voted etc, anyway).

Am not sure it's such a clear divide between the "haves" and "have-nots". My ex-es friends definitely fall into the (very well-educated) "haves" but they all voted to remain. My biggest worry is where we are going to be in 20, 30 years time when climate change really starts to hit us. As a PP kind of said, GB can't feed itself, we are a service-industry economy. A satsuma will end up costing potentially £10 each (with a no trade deal and floods/drought becoming more and more widespread). Obvs I am making numbers up. But I am a geographer, so kind of know about this stuff a little. I just hope I'm wrong. (And I'm glad I have dual citizenship so can escape here if needed!).

leap I’m neither.

@Ylvamoon. I was giving examples of other divisions not caused by Brexit. I never said they were caused by the EU.