What do people outside the UK feel about the UK

[notanoctopus]

Just asking as I think we are fast losing credibility with things like the handling of Brexit, coronavirus etc.

My family back home (including the British inlaws) are watching the shenanigans over here in a state of bemused, slightly disbelieving bafflement.

Family in Australia and extended family in NZ are horrified and worried for us re Covid.

My mum was a long term admirer of the UK. When I tell her about Boris, hospitals, education, response to Covid she's always appalled! Not the image she built in her head of the UK!

Oh I can answer this one (Kiwi)!

That it's full of terrorism* and if you come over here you will surely die. 😂 The eyebrows that were raised and the wholehearted concern we had when we moved over! Madness it was. I'm delighted to report that we remain alive and well.

*now COVID

And I sent my dad who is a linguist this picture just to shock him

Not what is expected of the BBC 😁

I am very worried about the North of Ireland and the stability of the island if Johnson pushes this new legislation through and overrides part of the withdrawal agreement. I'm old enough to remember The Troubles.
I don't want to tarnish everyone in the UK with the same brush. I have a low opinion of the government at the moment with regard to international relations.
We have enough worries over Covid-19 here at the moment, to keep up with what is happening elsewhere!

That it’s a slow moving train wreck.

Most of the rest of the world has serious economic issues as a consequence of the cessation of global economic activity for six months. Petro states are dealing with oil price volatility, tourism is at an all time low intra Europe and beyond. Everywhere has much more important local concerns than what is happening in the UK. The world beyond Euro Disney didn't have anything like the bail out package that has kept UK business afloat.

Fintan O'Toole in today's Irish Times pretty much encompasses it:

This idea that Britain could sign the withdrawal agreement with its fingers crossed behind its back and then just ignore it later on is, in a way, perfectly consistent with the larger mentality of Brexit. At the heart of its theology is the fantasy that there is such a thing as absolute national sovereignty, a complete unilateral freedom of action that had been taken away by EU membership. Once Britain is “unchained” from the EU, Britain can do whatever it damn well pleases. The withdrawal treaty is not a set of permanent obligations, merely a route towards the obligation-free future that starts on January 1st, 2021.

The Brexiteers don’t much mind that this trick requires Britain to expose itself openly as a rogue state that treats international agreements as disposable handkerchiefs. In their solipsism, they presumably haven’t bothered to look up, for example, the membership of the House ways and means committee that would control any trade deal Britain might make with the US. (To save them the bother, it’s chaired by Richard Neal, and includes his fellow Irish-American Democrats Brendan Boyle and Brian Higgins, all highly engaged with Northern Ireland.)

The catch is that all of this doesn’t stop at smart-arse duplicity towards other countries. It involves the flagrant deception of English voters....

Whole article here: www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/fintan-o-toole-johnson-s-breaking-of-brexit-pledge-is-smart-arse-duplicity-1.4351880

I’ve been trying to move back from where we are but I can’t see how it will be possible in the next 2-3 years. We’d be going from the pan into the fire!

It isn't the UK I left a decade ago.
I alternate between

@mbosnz

My family back home (including the British inlaws) are watching the shenanigans over here in a state of bemused, slightly disbelieving bafflement.

So am I!

I'm in the US. Most people don't really know much about UK news/events unless they are very well informed because of work or an interest in international politics. I've encountered a lot of people who have never heard of Brexit, or they've heard of it but they don't understand what it's about. Some would recognise Boris Johnson.

However, people know tonnes about the Royal family and their various scandals/fallings out. On the front covers of the gossip magazines at the grocery store checkouts, there are usually 2-3 Royal-focussed news stories. The National Enquirer practically trades off of British Royal conspiracy theories.

I’m a Brit living abroad so get ‘spoken to’ by locals. Most here think Britain has been horribly reckless with respect to Covid (to the point that I was getting abuse in the supermarket for being British). It made life very uncomfortable for a few weeks. Brexit makes the locals think we’ve lost the plot (why would you want that?). The unilateral change to the withdrawal agreement has not made as many waves as you’d expect, because the U.K. is now viewed as being a bit shit and untrustworthy and it’s ‘well that’s what you’d expect from the British government’ we’ve really lost our international standing in the last four years, we’re not seen as a trustworthy reliable country but as a flaky ex colonial power with an idiot in charge and a racist xenophobic population.

Honestly at the moment I’m too concerned with our own situation here in Australia. At least you aren’t the United States.

I was chatting to a professor at a local university, very renown for history. He made a good argument of the UK being in the last throws of an empire like Greeks or Romans. Basically still under the illusion of the idea of their power, rulers (aka government) making increasingly bad and illogical choices, and a population not prepared for their new 'lesser' position in the world. I don't do him justice but there was a lot of truth in it.

I live in a country going through bat shit crazy politics, and even so I watch the UK news in horror. I genuinely believe that in the future, people will look back on these last five years and wonder what the fuck was going through peoples minds...

Oh and this...

At least you aren’t the United States.

(Smokey) west coast USA reporting in.

Johnson is seen as a buffoon and just a less offensive version of Trump (the similarity in hair is also a common comment), and there is a constant amazement about Brexit.

No-one seems to have much of a view about Covid in the UK. Whatever side of the political divide you are on here - everyone is pre-occupied about how badly the US is handling it, so I doubt anyone would dare comment on anywhere else right now....

I think though Lweji sums it up pretty well from my own perspective.

@FrenchFancie sadly I know where they're coming from and so do most people I know.