The country is a shit show - why is there so little mention of Brexit's role?

[Neonskytonight]

That's it really.

Surely all our woes can't be placed at the door of covid and war - it is a good political narrative, but is it really true?

I'm amazed how little questioning by the media and public there is about the role of Brexit.

France seem to be in an almost semi permanent strike, with no warning.

Having just come back from there recently, I would say that it's not true.

Because brexit is brilliant and if you don't agree you're a traitor.

Because for many people it doesn't immediately matter what is the root cause of their current misery. They are too busy accessing additional support, financial advice, food banks etc.

For others it is blatantly obvious that the current recession is, like covid, a global issue and that the effects of Brexit are now pretty much masked, downgraded, by the global situation.

Because, nasty as this particular pill us to swallow, the number of jobs remaining available does illustrate that there is no appetite in the UK for certain kinds of work, no matter what the pay is like. This will, in time, cause a tightening up of access the various benefits, reversing the salary support given by Brown etc, to businesses during the last credit crunch.

Might even get more restrictions on the gig economy.

Basically we need more people to do more work. Companies need to be able to recruit locally. Round here there is a slow change happening, but it is really slow.

But Brexit is no longer the biggest problem the economy has!

I went to France 2 weeks ago via the tunnel - the queues of lorries were quite shocking to see and I feel so sorry for the poor drivers.

Basically they have closed 1 slide of the motorway cars and local traffic divert up the other side of the motorway and then the closed section is used to park lorries and take them into the port in batches.

the Boris bots can make whatever excuses they like but it's cross channel lorry traffic that parked on the motorway.

Completely agree with you and while i would expect the daily mail to continue to protest its innocence am also surprised its not being referenced more
A blatant act of Self sabotage hidden up to now by the pandemic though There are global pressures at play currently too obviously which are easy to deflect blame to

Reported this evening in the FT:

Airlines have asked the UK to relax post-Brexit immigration rules and give EU aviation workers special visas to help ease the disruption that is plaguing the travel industry as demand for flights soars.

Chief executives of airlines told transport secretary Grant Shapps at a meeting on Wednesday that they could ease some of their staffing shortages by moving crew into the UK from other European bases, according to people with knowledge of the call.

But Shapps warned it was unlikely the government would relax immigration rules to help the industry, which has been convulsed by delays and cancellations during one of the busiest weeks of the year.

Brexit has fucked up the country and noone wants to talk about it cos noone wants to own up for voting for it. I live my life in blinkers at the moment… for two years I gave switched off from everything cos it is all so shit.. Brexit, Covid,Ukraine, looming environmental apocalypse… I just accept that life in the 21st century will get increasingly worse and try to enjoy my life as much as possible cos it id all out of our control. We can’t reverse Brexit so we are stuck with this. It is a disaster that themedia are ignoring.

@Florenz

"There's no excuse for companies to be blaming Brexit for a shortage of staff, the vote was 6 years ago."

++++

The vote may have been 6 years ago but that didn't mean that the UK left the EU 6 years ago.

The UK left the EU on the 31st January 2020 and then there was a one year transition period where nothing changed .

So it's actually more like one year and four months ago.

We can’t reverse Brexit so we are stuck with this.

We certainly can. It will take some time, and be massively expensive and hugely humiliating, but the backpedaling will start once politicians who are too personally associated with it are off the scene

The vote may have been 6 years ago but that didn't mean that the UK left the EU 6 years ago.

With most of that time being wasted with a Government constantly talking about walking out of negotiations and not being prepared to plan for the problems which they could have anticipated.

Brexit continues to be a big fuck off problem because:
It polarised the country.
The Leave campaign lied and manipulated the electorate.
The UK haemorrhaged talented and skilled workers in its aftermath.
Brexit is an ongoing expense for the UK government.

It has made it more difficult and expensive to run small and medium businesses.
BREXIT IS NOT YET DONE.
It has fucked up our international trade arrangements.
Thanks to PM Johnson and his tendency to break the law (in unintentional or specific and limited ways, obvs🙄), we are not seen as a trustworthy country to do business with.

But one of the most damaging things about Brexit today, is that people keep backing Boris Johnson in the hope that he'll deliver what he promised them during his Leave campaign.

Agree that brexit is nowhere near done. We are not even checking incoming goods from the EU until 2024 so then the shit will really hit the fan unless of course they postpone it again....

I don't understand why people will superglue themselves to thre road in the name of the environment. Yet public protest against Boris and his old boys club is nill, we should be protesting outside Westminster and demand his removal.

From outside the UK it doesn’t look like this at all.

It's hilarious how many people spout that shit. So embarrassingly ignorant.

The referendum never, ever should have happened. The population of the UK are nowhere near informed and educated enough to understand the ramifications of any of it, from the Northern Ireland issue to travel to the economy. It was a childish, knee jerk reaction by people who thought they were being clever by 'getting one over' on David Cameron.

It has clearly and directly made everyday life much, much worse for the vast majority of the population, and for what?

Most people had no idea how good we had it here, and just how much of that was down to being an EU member state. It feels like it's starting to sink in now for some, and this is just the beginning.

The quoted post is from earlier in the thread, but the problem with Dublin Airport was that the CEO Dalton Philips, formerly of Morrisons (where I don't think he was a brilliant success either), made experienced and security vetted staff redundant in their droves during Covid. They all left.

He could have opted for the furlough scheme, but no, and Philips didn't anticipate the massive resurgence in air travel the minute lockdowns were over. Ireland is a small island out in the Atlantic and many want to get out of there for holidays and business etc.

So bad management and bad forward planning led to delays in Dublin last weekend. Not enough security staff, those newly recruited have to undergo training and security vetting and it will take a while. Delays are expected all Summer, but it is not as bad now as it has been. So even though Brexit was not a factor I think that issue is replicated elsewhere in places where the furlough scheme was not a feature.

Er, let me think now. Ah. This is all the fault of Jeremy Corbyn and other socialist remoaners who want to talk this great country down. I think that's what we're supposed to think. Oh, and immigrants too. Clearly, it's a massive fuck up and was always going to be for the majority of people. If you thought otherwise and voted for it then I'm sorry for you. If you put your faith in a snake oil salesman then don't be surprised if what he sold you turns out to be a bottle full of dirty pond water instead of the magic elixir he told you it was.

I think that Cameron and May are far more to blame than Boris. By the time he came onto the scene, it was much too late to back out, logic had been abandoned and emotions were running too high to return to sanity.

I totally agree, and to be fair to @PaddleBoardingMomma she is representative of a large cohort who still haven't understood what it is they voted for and what it is they've left.

The day after the referendum the FT published an op-ed piece saying that the only cure for brexit is brexit. I'm afraid that they were right. It's going to be a long, expensive and humiliating lesson, but eventually the UK will have to confront reality.

The referendum never, ever should have happened. The population of the UK are nowhere near informed and educated enough to understand the ramifications of any of it, from the Northern Ireland issue to travel to the economy.

But the thicko’s were ok to be part of a huge federation of 28 countries where unknown decisions were made on their behalf by MEP’s that very few could name?Nice. The peasants always need someone in charge right.

One of the major reasons for leaving was that the population wanted to be informed and educated enough to make decisions for the future. When we joined the EU it was a trading alliance. Somehow it evolved into major political decision making machine,made by goodness knows who, in a vast and hugely expensive bureaucracy. Of course it was easier when no one had to think about too hard about anything, whatever the financial or social costs. Doesn’t mean it was the right thing.

It was fine for the referendum to happen but there should have been legal requirements around honestly representing what was likely to happen.

The Leave side was clearly not honest, and the Remain side was not much better. The fact both sides were obsessed with their own political futures within the Tory party was a disgrace. The country got badly harmed in the fallout of an internal argument.

Still pleased with Brexit and that big business can't just import cheap labour to drive down the wages of the poorest. I see the bitterness on here is still strong though.

You don't understand economics.

Inflation is rising faster than wages, therefore people are getting poorer in real terms. Inflation is worse here than in the Eurozone, due to Brexit.

I'm not bitter, I just prefer prosperity to poverty.

Hi @lightisnotwhite

Somehow it evolved into major political decision making machine,made by goodness knows who, in a vast and hugely expensive bureaucracy.

Your post really is just evidence for the original proposition!

What "vast and hugely expensive bureaucracy"? The Commission employs around 32,000 people to administer the EU on behalf of 450,000 people. That's just about the biggest "bureaucracy" bargain in the world. To put it into perspective the UK Johnson government is aiming to employ 50,000 staff just to inspect goods coming into the country, post-brexit (or was until it realised it couldn't organise any of that without massive harm and kicked the can down to road for another couple of years and decided not to enforce borders). And that's without the UK beginning to take on all the other regulatory functions of the EU.

And what major political decisions are you talking about? After six years since the referendum, and plenty more before it to strategise, here is the list that Jacob Rees-Mogg last week published as the nine "major political decisions" to be reversed. He couldn't come up with a tenth. Even taken at face value (and most of them should not be) they are clearly ludicrous!

1. Encourage fracking, shortcut rules on planning consultation via emergency act.
2. Abolish the EU regulations that restrict vacuum cleaner power to 1400 watts.
3. Remove precautionary principle restrictions (for instance) on early use of experimental treatments for seriously ill patients and GM crops.
4. Abolish rules around the size of vans that need an operator's licence.
5. Abolish EU limits on electrical power levels of electrically assisted pedal cycles.
6. Allow certain medical professionals, such as pharmacists and paramedics, to qualify in three years.
7. Remove requirements for agency workers to have all the attributes of a permanent employee.
8. Simplify the calculation of holiday pay (eg 12.07 percent of pay) to make it easier for businesses to operate.
9. Reduce requirements for businesses to conduct fixed wire testing and portable application testing.

I think what's become clear is that most of the MPs championing it didn't have a clue either. Even Dominic Cummings said this and Aaron Banks (where's he now, Russia?) said the public didn't have a clue what the SM and CU were and that's why they didn't mention them.