Vote, Now we are a few years down the line, do you think brexit should have happened ?

[Rainbowdeer]

Personally I say no, even though I voted to leave, at least I can look back and say this was a mistake
if the vote was to happen now I would vote remain

my reasons for voting at the time was because, I wanted this country to be the captain of its own country and not to have to follow whatever another country told us too
basically Independence

also we were also lied to that, this would really improve the NHS which was clearly aload of shit looking back

I can at least own my mistake saying voted leave but, I now I think it was the wrong choice

I also think the media are a lot to blame, by making out no way will people vote to leave
And that only racists will vote leave

the whole country was in shock the next morning when the results came out

I know a few people who lost their businesses due to a combination of covid and brexit, all three were people that voted leave. One exported fish, but soon discovered export delays meant they could no longer get their stocks to mainland Europe within 48 hours, so they lost their buyers, UK buyers weren’t interested. The other two also exported food items, again checks meant delays, and delays are before you consider higher prices for exporters due to increased over heads.

I had a colleague who was most upset I was still at work, they were upset that their promised reduction in immigration didn’t happen, as a typical racist and BNP lover they genuinely couldn’t understand why people who were non-white or not born in the UK weren’t being deported, as in their small mind thats what reduction in immigration meant.

The thing with brexit was we knew it wouldn’t go well, we had a very weak government, we all knew they wouldn’t be able to secure good trade deals, sadly some people oddly believe the UK is still some powerful empire, rather than a small island in longterm decline.

The only small saving grace was Donald Trump being in power meant there was one country with an even more incompetent leader in power to occasionally take the heat of the UKs embarrassing situation.

Our child and my husband have citizenship in and EU country and I eventually will, which I am incredibly thankful for.

Sorry about the racism you have been subjected to Simonjt

I know a Brexiteer who lost his business due to Brexit, within a year. He was very loud and vocal about the benefits of leaving ahead of the vote. I have never spoken about it with him since and so don’t know what he thinks now.

I remember seeing a thing on the news, an eel farmer who exported 90% of his stock to France. Voted leave and was whining that his business was going to go under and he hadn’t realised leaving would make exporting more expensive. I said at the time he deserved to go under and DP said that was a terrible thing to say. I stand by it 100% - how stupid can you be?

The remainer MPs made everything worse.

Of course. Of course the massive shitshow is the fault of the people who warned against, voted against and fought against having the massive shitshow in the first place. Of course.

Ahhh, Brexiteers. How you even tie your own shoelaces every morning is absolutely beyond me.

I live in Europe and was vaxxed before my UK sisters

Don’t you remember Theresa Mays more reasonable policies being voted down???
Then we end up with ‘get Brexit done’ Boris and a bad deal - this was due to angry remainers. Sorry but that’s the facts.

Thankyou for pointing that out. Just by the way I voted remain and still would.

How many times do I have to say I voted Remain!! Not responding to you anymore because you just want to insult don't want a proper debate.

Also they didn’t fight against anything - DCsmeron just let it run - no remainers MPs out in the streets fighting for it.

No statement from HMQ like in the Scottish Referendum.

I actually think freedom of movement within the EU is racist. It's basically saying 'we'll let in all the white people who are relatively close to us, despite many of them fighting against us in the wars, and having far more empowered far right factions than us...... meanwhile to make room for all these white people we will continue to suppress immigration even more from brown and black countries- many with proud histories of supporting us, with legacies of us harming them and building our wealth on their backs, and with alliances like the commonwealth.

That is not surprising to me as the UK did things in a very logical way where the most vulnerable in society were vaccinated first. People without underlying conditions & not key workers were vaccinated by age order.

So people who were very, very low risk because of their age and not classified as a key worker were not vaccinated quickly in the UK and could well have been vaccinated later than someone of a similar age in Europe.

The people were out in the streets protesting (and were roundly ignored). The MPs were using parliamentary process.

So, the voice of the people and the sovereignty of parliament. Thought that's what you lot were all about?

It is beyond pathetic to blame the awfulness of Brexit on the people who didn't want it in the first place. Almost 10 years on and bloody Brexiteers still can't own their shit. Brexit has ruined this country and I personally will never ever forgive Leave voters for their selfish idiocy.

That's an interesting way to think about it, and I see what you mean. I think far too many leavers (not all of them, but enough to sway the vote) thought about it in far cruder terms though - I'm thinking Farage's "breaking point" poster, designed to suggest hoards of definitely not white men streaming in to the country. The actual details didn't necessarily matter, just a sense of "us and them", which different people justified in different ways.

“fivechairs · Yesterday 21:58

I actually get more annoyed with the leave voters who come out with "...but we were lied to!...", no you weren't, you just chose not to read both sides and believed daft publicity slogans. I'm not massively political but it really was very easy to just read things from various sources and realise that a majority of the leave propaganda was nonsense. You chose to believe it, you were lied to no more than the remain voters were.”

This. The arrogance and lies of the leave campaign were very obvious.

As many PPs have said, it was a massive act of national self-harm and it was always obvious that it would be. I was particularly shocked when it became clear that the leave campaign hadn’t even properly researched its own economic case but that shouldn’t have been a surprise given there was no economic case for leave.

My greatest anger was reserved for leave voters (and I’ve encountered a fair number) who have access to EU passports for themselves and their families and who still have the personal benefits of membership which my family and I have lost through their vote.

Of course Brexit shouldn't have happened. I'm yet to find one good thing that's resulted from it, and all the shit things that I thought would happen if leave won have indeed happened /are happening. I consider it just a huge act of national self sabotage.

Wasn’t the original idea of the EU to be an economic and military rival to the US? After the 2nd world war it was felt having only 1 superpower was dangerous. The US have freedom of movement for its citizens so I suppose it makes sense from that point of view.

The thing with brexit was we knew it wouldn’t go well, we had a very weak government, we all knew they wouldn’t be able to secure good trade deals, sadly some people oddly believe the UK is still some powerful empire, rather than a small island in longterm decline.

^This. The worst of leavers wanted to go back to the good old days of the British empire lording it over those pesky brown people. Anyone with an ounce of common sense just knew this was all not going to work, pathetic trade deals that account for about 5% of what we had before with our nearest trading neighbours.

What amuses me (actually it's not very funny) are the number of people I know in real life who have rewritten history and are now saying they didn't vote leave. Just fuck off. Yes you did, you were crowing about it at the time and full of yourselves when Leave won. Don't pretend now that you didn't vote for this

I remember Jacob Rees Mogg setting up a poll asking readers of the Mirror to vote for the top ten benefits of Brexit.

Do you know what won? More powerful vacuum cleaners. Yep. For all of this shit show, I could get a more powerful vacuum cleaner. I am so reassured 🙄

Northern Ireland is essentially still in the EU. Still wondering if it is a benefit.

Surprise! We did the same in Europe. Started a couple of weeks later than you guys, targeted the most vulnerable people first (a pregnant friend was vaxxed a few weeks before me) but still managed to get to normal folks ahead of the UK.

Brexit should never have happened and was quite an uncomfortable period for half Brit/EU families like ours. My EU dh had been a top 1% UK tax payer for 20 years at the time. The dc got comments at school because they have a foreign surname.

Anyway we have sold up here and just bought a house in the EU and will become fully tax resident there next year. I realise we are very fortunate to have this option.

The damage from COVID has made the damage from Brexit more opaque therefore easier to ignore/blame on COVID.
Obviously COVID did do it's own damage, but it also masked a lot of Brexit damage which helped those who engineered/supported it to shrug it off.

And the pp saying we were all lied to but those who chose to vote leave should accept they also chose not to question what was put in front of them was right.

So what? It’s not important when the non vulnerable got vaccinated as they were never at much risk anyway. What seemed very important ( especially at the time) was when the vulnerable got vaccinated.

So the UK did have a small advantage in that their most vulnerable members of society got vaccinated very early on. The difference between when we started administering vaccines and most of Europe was more than just a couple of weeks.

I’m against Brexit and always was. This is a small issue compared to the many disadvantages from Brexit.

The wealth gap is bigger than ever. Billionaires are twice as rich as they were and money drains from everyone else’s pockets, mine included.

Farage, Cummings et al would chalk this up as a Brexit success. It was never ever about ordinary people.