I want people to tell me why they voted #leave

[AliceScarlett]

I'm feeling pretty shocked and scared right now.

Why did you vote for brexit?

time4chocolate

Whilst I think about it:

1. Just over half the country voted leave.

Actually around 37.3% of the electorate voted to Leave. Given that the UK population is now 65.1 million, that's about 26.7% of the country that voted to Leave.

2. Maybe the leavers, when they were voting, were actually thinking of giving back control of our country to the next generation (our children) so that they can make the decisions for their own country and retain the ability to hold politicians to account (and not be dictated to by some Brussels bureaucrat), and they will retain the power to change, via the fair election process that we have in this country.

So why did 75% of the 18 to 25 yr olds that voted, vote to Remain?

Absolutely, Witch, the Remain camp are very sore losers. This thread is speaks volumes about that.

Re the EU accounts. P4 of that doc says clearly that while revenue is ok 'payments for 2014 are materially affected by error. We therefore give an adverse opinion on their legality and regularity'. As an auditor that doesn't exactly signify to me a reliable set of accounts. A large company that had accounts like that would be seeing senior management resign and be in serious trouble...

I'd also like to point out I'm 40+, work in Londom for a financial company! My CIO voted out and he has a doctorate in maths - one of the most rationale intelligent people I know. And rest 😐

I was so shocked that someone well read, well educated, well informed and who reads the guardian etc has chosen to vote leave.

I can't understand this attitude. I'm sorry, but if you so shocked that Guardian-reading people voted leave, perhaps you are not as well well-informed as your mum.

London obviously, it's been a very long day!

We never joined the EU, we joined the EEC which was meant to be something else entirely. What the EU has become is very far removed from the 'common market' that was voted on in the last referendum. The British public have had to watch the EU evolve for 40 years without having any real say in the matter. Now due to David Cameron miscalculating about the 2015 election results we have had a chance to make our voices heard.

We have to be able to steer our own path in the world. If that means we have to fight for what is in our own interests, then we must do so. We were prepared to stand alone in the second world war against overwhelming odds and thank God we did.

metro.co.uk/2016/06/24/man-who-voted-for-leave-says-he-thought-his-vote-wouldnt-count-wins-moron-of-the-year-award-5964450/

I thought this was satire at first.

I read the first few pages before work this morning but haven't read all 30 since I got back. I just want someone to explain to me in a rational, non hysterical way - why they think we are better off leaving the EU.

The immigration arguments are shown to be nonsense.
The non-demoncratic decision making, I sort of get but the flip side of that is the fact that significant improvements to working lives and equality have been made through EU membership. This arguably wouldn't have happened without the EU.
The money issue, we all knew beforehand that of course this extra money wasn't going to go to the NHS or other public services.

So why?

Ekka 4.4% of payments were affected by material error. If you read the report it explains the types of error detected in the audit (infringements of procurement rules, ineligible expenditure etc).

It was more to point out that the accounts are done every year, and have been signed off every year since 2007.

"My school mum friend was just shouted at: 'We'll get you lot out next'."

Most depressing thing I've read today, in a long line of depressing things.

I hope that was a random racist, not indicative of a general mood.

Thank you Ekka - they are corrupt and it will all come out in the wash eventually

Goudy - 1. still 52/48 2. I can't imagine!! - parental pressure perhaps and given the tone on this thread I think that's the front runner for me.

Blink - that is one of my concerns, the far right groups now seem to feel justified in their views so I think we will see an increase in racism because people will feel that it is OK now.

That's an empowered racist - that's what we/they've done

Foggy, sorry if I'm crossposting. I understand that for some people there were concerns about the democracy of the EU where only the non-elected Commission could put forward bills. Even Juncker admitted there were concerns about the bureaucracy and interference in day to day life, and that the EU needed to reconsider its role. Unfortunately the EU didn't do so when Cameron was asking for a re-think before the referendum. Clearly more people voted in the referendum with a simple in/out question. Half of the UK may be discouraged from voting in General Elections because there are 50% safe seats where your vote doesn't count because of the first past the post system.

time4chocolate

Given that the parents of 18 to 25 yr olds were more likely to vote Leave, it can't be parental pressure forcing them to vote Remain can it? From the YouGov poll:

18 - 25 yr olds: 75% voted remain
26 - 49: 56% voted remain
50 - 64: 44% voted remain
65+ : 39% voted remain

The non-demoncratic decision making, I sort of get but the flip side of that is the fact that significant improvements to working lives and equality have been made through EU membership. This arguably wouldn't have happened without the EU.

I think the key word here is 'arguably'. Yes, the EU brought in some improvements to workers' rights. But it has brought a lot else in. And plans to bring a lot more in in the future, including an EU army, an EU version of National Insurance, and Turkey.

Meanwhile we in the UK were having a smaller and smaller voice in the EU. The first alarm bells that ran with me were when Juncker became President of the Commission, despite Cameron and the entire UK political community against him. I kind of made up my mind how to vote after David Cameron came back with his pathetic little 'reforms'. Which the EU made a point of saying were not legally binding. I gave Cameron credit for having tried his hardest, but realised that we have no clout or influence, within the EU. It is impossible to reform it from the inside. We tried and failed. The EU is on steamtrain towards greater political integration, towards eventual sovereignty.

And if we had voted remain, not only would we be symbolically handing over our sovereignty and independence to an unelected entity, but it would have given the EU the green light to press ahead with greater, more ambitious integration. With the attitude towards the UK of 'you had your chance to get out, you chose to stay in so suck it up'.

I didn't vote but my sister voted leave.
We have some shared friends who are Polish and came here to run their own business, which is doing very well.
On hearing my sisters story both our friends and me can see why so many people voted out, especially in the North.

She works for the largest company that supply white goods and are currently holding millions of replacement dryers that were considered unsafe. They have about a million of these going out per week, the company is in Cheshire.
Every week new Polish and Romanian workers come in, usually in groups of about 30. Locally there is a waiting list for interviews and jobs, yet not one British person begins work, despite the town being predominantly white British. Local rags have done reports on this and undercover work looking at the lists.
My dsis says you can count British workers on one hand and as it is manual work the immigrants aren't educated very well and can't speak English at all.
They live in over crowded houses, sometimes 10 men in one terrace.
They steal the free breakfast and milk, bread etc provided by the company and take it to live on to enable them to send their wages home.
This is no way for them to live, wherever they come from.
You can repeat this story throughout the North at many factories and jobs with low pay, unskilled.
This is one reason why so many voted out, and whilst I didn't vote, I can understand why the people who can't get taken on feel like this.

Maybe those who have high powered city jobs can't see this and don't see the harm in letting in more and more immigrants, maybe they feel their jobs are safe as most take unskilled jobs.
Maybe if the boot was on the other foot they might not be so happy with immigration.

My vote to leave actually had nothing to do with immigration rather I think the EU had moved so far beyond its initial remit when it was the EEA that I wasn't happy with the encroachment on the laws of the U.K. we had given away far too much power to the EU beginning at the start with Maastricht and every new treaty we signed up to removed more and more flexibility of our country to act in its own interests. The EU has become too big, it's a constant set of rules designed to either placate Germany or enable new joiners with little synergy to the original states. Having studied EU constitutional law it is an I democratic and cumbersome system that I feel does not give enough flexibility to and recognise the differences, culture,financial and legal between the member states. Yes there is an expected blip in finances the ftse is already recovering. We now have much more flexibility in our dealings with the world. What sealed it for me is Junkers statement that we had got all the compromises we could out of the EU it showed to me the EU has no interest in change. Germany won't rest until they have bulled the member states into a federal states of Europe, although I now expect in 10 years the EU will have broken up into a number of smaller interrelated trade blocs. So please do not think all leave (or the majority) of leave voters are those who get wheeled out by the bbc in an effort to undermine the leave vote it fought to vigorously to prevent in some of the most biased reporting I have seen outside a communist state. So no I'm not an idiot, a racist or someone who ticks a random box. The relationship was not working and as compromise was not on the cards I filed for divorce (and decided it was worth putting up with short term instability.

Goudy - exactly they are noted as being persistently above the materiality threshold. Given that we took all errors above 5% of materiality to the audit differences schedule and companies would correct them it is a very concerning statement. All those big companies with 'fat cat' bosses that people are so keen to criticise would not get a clean audit report with errors/irregulairities of that magnitude. EU accounts are a real bugbear of mine - and their holier than thou approach to the finances of member states when they can't get their own house in order.

Ekka From the EU Commission press release Nov 2014:

In 2013 the Commission recovered or corrected €3.4 billion of incorrectly paid amounts. In total, financial corrections and recoveries for 2009-13 correspond to 2.2% of the average volume of payments in that period.

No, it's not great that the materiality threshold of 2% is exceeded every year, but I was pointing out that it's untrue to say that the EU accounts are not audited.

Goady - it was just a suggestion!

Likewise, immigration did not number among the reasons I voted leave.

Tulip and Iloveowls, thank you for those really measured and well considered posts. They make a lot of sense.

Newlife - so large numbers of immigrant workers are coming over and living in appalling conditions, living hand to mouth so that they have to steal food to survive and no British workers are getting the jobs? Why aren't British workers getting the jobs and why are people having to live in such appalling conditions?

time4 sorry, I didn't mean to be snippy, but with I really feel for the DCs' generation that will have have to cope with whatever happens for the longest period of time but didn't vote for it.