10 years since Brexit-would you vote the same?

[NoEffingWay]

I was listening to a podcast today about this, and it was really interesting. They had a group of people who voted Leave at the time, and although most of them were unhappy about how it has panned out, only one would have changed his vote if they could have voted tomorrow.
I voted remain at the time, and would do so again. The loss of freedom to travel across the EU, and work without visas is a loss, most likely not to me, but to DS who would have loved to have travelled across Europe and work his way with ease.
What would you do, and why?

I don’t see it as a benefit but I guess (on mumsnet, anyway) there will be an overlap of those who do and who voted remain.

Brave answer. I think this actually gets towards the root of much of the leave/remain campaign problem. Many policies of the EU (and incidentally Starmer's policies) have been on maintaining standards, progression on rights etc and these things are difficult to quantify as a lay person. It's only when they've gone that you realise the structures and institutions that maintained them, while bureaucatic and slow, are in fact crucial to preserving the things we take for granted.

The Leave campaign presented a fantasy of things that could happen, while all the Remain camp could do was really talk about things not getting worse, and hopefully incremental improvement. Leave didn't have to provide any evidence in 2016. Now it's 2026 they still can't provide any evidence, so they try to blame their failure on other factors (like immigration).

Let’s do points then -

• I do not dispute that supranational cooperation can bring economic or security benefits. My point has never been against cooperation.

• My concern is where ultimate political authority lies. To me legitimacy lies with institutions that the British people can elect or remove.

• You regard pooled sovereignty as strengthening democracy because of the institutional safeguards, fair enough.

• I value shared cooperation over legislative sovereignty.

• I further regard pooled sovereignty as reducing democratic accountability because authority is shared with institutions beyond direct national electoral control.

We disagree at a constitutional level,
a disagreement that I believe can’t be resolved simply by listing economic or legal benefits.

Thank you for your informed responses. I am now off to while away the rest of my day in the garden.

I voted remain and would vote the same.

lol, thank you for proving my point 😊

People talk about the EU as if it's some sun lit economic utopia. In reality, most of its big members are dealing with stagnant growth, bad public finances, and the same mass asylum and illegal immigration pressures as everyone else, often worse.

France, Italy, Germany have debt problems, budget problems, social unrest and weak productivity. Spain has a huge housing crisis and has caused upset by granting residency to over 500k undocumented illegal immigrants.

The Dublin Agreement does not work.

This idea that the UK is miles behind is just comforting mythology.

How would the average Briton's life be improved by hooking us back up to the political bloc with the billions demanded by Brussels, uncapped immigration and Eurozone instability if we were forced to adopt the Euro?

EU figureheads have said publicly several times now that the UK would get favourable terms if we rejoined - what we had before if not better, and they wouldn't force the euro on us.

Other EU countries are struggling, true, but it's undeniable the UK is behind all of them. Brexit has been an absolute disaster for the economy.

I only the other hand have seen and read loads but I am open minded and was on the fence about the vote. What I have seen is appalling behavior by remainers towards brexit voters massive attempts to overturn it and endless disingenuous threads like this pretending to ask for a reason, for answers but who just really want someone to abuse. As I'm sure you are about to prove

My points directly proved where the EU strengthens constitutional democracy 😅

Without a doubt . I voted remain then and I would vote to return to the EU in a heartbeat

Then and now I think it was a choice between pragmatism and a certain kind of idealism. No-one thinks the EU is perfect. It has an obvious problem with democratic accountability, because so much power resides with unelected officials, especially the commissioners. It's corrupt and inefficient. It ignores its own rules when it finds it convenient to do so. The Common Agricultural Policy was awful.

So one of the two choices was to remain in the EU despite its flaws, perhaps with the hope of reforming it, but mainly because it was the easiest and least disruptive option. The other was to leave in order to re-establish sovereignty and return to a system where decisions that affect us all are made by people who are accountable to us all. That was always going to be a rocky road. In the event, the people who were charged with implementing it cocked it up massively and we landed in an ungodly mess. So I think the pragmatic option was probably the better one, but I still find it hard to feel much enthusiasm for it.

@BadPennyReturns

People talk about the EU as if it's some sun lit economic utopia. In reality, most of its big members are dealing with stagnant growth, bad public finances, and the same mass asylum and illegal immigration pressures as everyone else, often worse.

True. Although Brexit caused more non-EU immigration which, let's face it, Leavers didn't want.

France, Italy, Germany have debt problems, budget problems, social unrest and weak productivity. Spain has a huge housing crisis and has caused upset by granting residency to over 500k undocumented illegal immigrants.

Also true.

The Dublin Agreement does not work. This was to alleviate pressure on frontline countries (Greece, Italy) but can't enforce it when people enter via people smuggling etc.

This idea that the UK is miles behind is just comforting mythology. The idea was that Brexit would improve things - more money for the NHS, less immigration, more sovereignty over policy decisions. Well, immigration is up post Brexit, where is the money for the NHS?!, import & export fees and process cost more than the ease of access to our nearest and most important trading partner. So no, we're not miles behind, but we're worse off than pre-Brexit.

How would the average Briton's life be improved by hooking us back up to the political bloc with the billions demanded by Brussels, uncapped immigration and Eurozone instability if we were forced to adopt the Euro?

It would improve business through border-free access to trade, for import/export. This would be better for the economy. Ask the fishermen, farmers and SMEs! (with the caveat that fishing policies are unfair and environmentally destructive on both sides). Non-EU immigration would be down, and EU freedom of movement would exist in the UK again, yay! Adopting the Euro would be something to consider, maybe we could have a Swiss/Norwegian style agreement. Labour laws, living standards, all of these are protected under the EU.

The main thing is collaborative economic protection against big potentially rogue markets and defence and general security. Have you seen the state of the world outside the EU recently? We need to stick with the most stable, reasonable partners we can - our neighbours.

You do realise we don't elect our Prime Minister, or our King, don't you?

Your family were (apparently) almost ruined by Brexit, but you weren't made so badly off that you couldn't afford to relocate somewhere that isn't the UK, unlike many, many remain-voting families who have had to stay put and weather the storm. But what's worse (according to you) is that those of us who were impoverished by Brexit but could never afford to leave have only "oblivion", a Reform government, and (reading between your lines) nuclear annihilation by Russia to look forward to!

What was the point of your post, please, if not to rub our (frightened) faces in your smugness?

David Cameron didn’t unilaterally decide to hold the referendum though…
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/divisions/pw-2015-09-07-61-commons/mp/24847

Yes. I would vote the same.
We have left UK. Brexit has done nothing good for UK.

In other words, "Let them eat cake".

How fucking ironic 🙄

For those that are interested, here is the link to the podcast. It’s from The Times newspaper https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ejNVrcaJFhlEqrAsMnpCf?si=9oClw8lSTHqWP94WU_5Lig

I voted leave and would vote leave again. I don't miss the freedom of movement though since I have an Irish passport.

I voted remain and would still vote remain. I’m still pretty fed up about it now.

Not one singgle person I know who voted leave would vote any differwntly now, including myself.

Ireland has been quite negatively affected by brexit.
Presumably you got your passport through a grandparent/parent rather than actually caring about Ireland itself.

Not a fact, in fact it's nonsense.

I can honestly say I haven’t noticed a single difference in my day to day life since we left the EU.
But I would still vote the same way.

I got my Irish passport because i'm an Irish citizen. Are you suggesting that despite being part of the marvelous EU, that Ireland is strugging?