To not have moved on from the referendum result?

[Niamer]

Hi. I am a remoaner. I have bored myself with talking about it online and with a couple of likeminded friends.
I was have never been political, was pretty disengaged before the referendum but a 100% gut-feeling kind of a remainer and really expected the vote to go our way.

Felt devastated at the result; I am a believer in working closely with our neighbours, have lived in other Eu countries, have friends here from other EU countries who feel unwelcome etc etc. AND all the attachment to Europe stuff aside, it just seemed a far safer economic option to stay put. Why go for a bumpy ride when you don't even like where you're going? Also felt really cheated when people's reasons for leaving became clear.
I am amazed that some Remainers have just gone quiet and got weary of it all. As far as Leave voters, there has been plenty of "suck it up" comments and total quiet from others. It hasn't been long but time is not healing for me. In fact the Tory conference seemed to take the grimness up a notch. Still so upset and wanting to protest (and have done in every way that I can think of)

I am currently in groups with staunch Remainers like myself, so I know how they are feeling. Outside of that, it isn't an easy topic to discuss. Remainers, Leavers, non-voters, please could you tell me where you're at? TIA

TheElementsSong -

So you are not British yet have some sort of existential angst about not feeling British? Now this I really don't understand. You have no need to feel British nor should you have angst about the lack of that feeling. If I moved and settled in Japan, I wouldn't need to "feel" Japanese. I would carry my sense of identity with me. If I felt alienated by being non-Japanese I would accept that this was merely the natural result of my choice to move there. I would fervently hope that I would not lash out at Japanese society for my own isolation.

Presumably you have deep affection and fondness for your own heritage and homeland? If I were to settle in your home country do you think you would demand that I feel the same way about it as you do?

There's an air of arrogance though from the remainders. An impression that we voted Brexit because we were lied to which is basically saying that we couldn't research our own facts on the matter. I wasn't blindly voting Brexit, I could see lies from both sides. Do not assume we all had the wool pulled over our eyes. Your arrogance and assumption that we're all thick astounds me.

You are probably right that there are people who invent a shared heritage with other cultures that they don't really have

I'm actually talking about people who have an overly romantic and partisan sense of their own British heritage.

It's one thing liking a nice crumpet and a cup of tea, quite another to believe that you were born to like crumpets and cups of tea.

An impression that we voted Brexit because we were lied to which is basically saying that we couldn't research our own facts on the matter

Not so much arrogance as lack of evidence that this wasn't the case.

I'm pretty sure believing it is important to be educated and informed about the culture of the country you live in and it's variety of inhabitants does not mean the same thing as being born to like tea and crumpets!

Almond, plenty of people whose ancestors moved over at the end of the last ice age know very little about the culture of the country they live in beyond what is happening in their own lives.

You don't have to have been born in the UK or feel particularly British to learn about Britain.

Nowhere have I suggested that you do have to be born in Britain.

I have made many posts on this thread about how I feel one of the main issues of Brexit is that many people in this country no little about Britain beyond their own localities, and that needs addressing culturally for us to function as a democracy.

Why are you now pointing out my own central point to me?!

I am not over it, and never will be.

"So you are not British yet have some sort of existential angst about not feeling British?"

Elemental said she was an immigrant.

I am an immigrant. I am also British. I wasn't born in Britain.
There are actually rather a lot of us in the same situation.

almond, I am really referring to scatter's posts about some vague sense of a homeland.

However, as far as I am aware British history/art/literature have always been taught in schools. However, it's impossible to cover everything and many people aren't particularly interested.

scatterolight, you have just hit the reality of being an immigrant on the head. We do feel passionately about our home countries. It's a fundamental part of our identity. But we also absorb bits from our hosts. If you do not absorb and assimilate the isolation and disconnect is crushing. Soul destroying does not begin to cover it. Learning to assimilate and gradually feeling that you are part of your host nation (which really does happen) is one of the most rewarding bits of being a foreigner and gives us an insight into both nations that we couldn't have otherwise . Knowing we can't be truly of our host nation is also depressing, but we do our best. I think you can never have experienced this, or else had a very unhappy experience being a foreigner. You posts smack of romanticism entirely ungrounded in reality.

To be told that we are not wanted by a host nation which we are genuinely part of, have respect for and have absorbed into ourselves hurts deeply.

Culture and the way we engage in it extends far beyond a few lessons in schools, and don't have any explicit objective of teaching about cultural contributions from different regions.

There are always a few lessons in schools about racism and some countries in Asial but that doesn't mean the whole issue is done and dusted and there is no wider obligation as a society to engage with those matters.

scatter

So you are not British yet have some sort of existential angst about not feeling British?

How very interesting that you would assume I am not British . Would you care to expand on this? Please.

Thank you for your reassurance that I have no need to feel British because of my incorrect genetics - this seems rather at odds with the common lament against immigrants that "they don't want to integrate".

I would carry my sense of identity with me. If I felt alienated by being non-Japanese I would accept that this was merely the natural result of my choice to move there.

I have my own sense of identity, thanks for your concern. It relates little to the accident of which soil I was born on, but rather is a culmination of my years of life, people I have known, and things I have learned or experienced. Interesting again that you refer to "alienation" when it is your genetic/geographical essentialist view that seeks to "other" me and others who do not share your views.

I would fervently hope that I would not lash out at Japanese society for my own isolation.

I haven't isolated myself, as I wrote but perhaps it mysteriously translated itself into Forrin, I have made my life here. Thus, until certain people decided to make immigrants feel like unwelcome parasites because of "heritage", I did not feel isolated. I would also wonder what you consider "lashing out" - any uncomplimentary sentiment at all?

Presumably you have deep affection and fondness for your own heritage and homeland? If I were to settle in your home country do you think you would demand that I feel the same way about it as you do?

It is normally considered possible to feel these emotions for more than one place, or thing, or person. What's your view on that?

Lekkerkroketje, doesn't that work both ways?

It can be an enriching and wonderful experience to have strong links and experiences to more than one culture, which people who have never lived in other countries don't have.

No say apart from the 1975 referendum, you mean? When 67% of those who voted elected to remain in the EEC.
*
Because they had no idea the Maastricht treaty was coming their way! If they knew that the EU they voted for in 1975 wasn't going to stay the same I think many would have voted to leave.*

Tell you what lets put a wall around London, let us keep our taxes, see how the rest of the country gets on without our net contributions.

How would that work then, do you not want Graduates from Oxford or Cambridge or Durham or Warwick? what about veg from my part of the world or fruit from Kent?
You see we aren't saying build a wall around our island that's what remainers say we are saying. We are just saying we get to choose and PLAN for immigrants. TonynBlair said 13k Polish people all together there's more than that in Boston. If you have mass uncontrolled immigration you don't get integration. The only shops opening in The area now are Eastern European supermarkets.

Lynn, I'm not disputing your point, but I think it's worth remembering that many remainers share your views on immigration and many leavers do not.

The Guardian reported that two thirds of leavers voted leave for reasons other than immigration.

One of the things that amazed me about the remainers' reaction to Brexit was that they thought things were okay before Brexit.

I was worried about CETA, TTIP, war in Europe, European banks and the treatment of Greece before Brexit and I'm still equally worried about them now. Because we're still not talking about the main issues facing the EU and Britain, despite those issues being central to the referendum.

lekker I voted to leave. That doesn't mean I don't respect you or value your contribution or the work you do here. I do feel though that we have the right to choose who is able to reside here just as the Americans, Australians, Japanese in fact most of the world can. I'm not saying no immigrants, we might even have more. What I'm saying is we don't need to import foreign drug addicts we can produce them ourselves. I'm sure you as an intelligent productive member of our country would still have been welcomed here.

I voted Leave because the EU in its current form is already in deep trouble and does not have the structure available to reform itself. This is because it was designed to be impossible to destabilise it from within, by (mostly) French and German people who had observed at first hand the devastation of the second World War, and who had observed the subversion of the democratic German state by the Nazi Party, and who can blame them? However, it is now attempting to govern a far larger and more diverse area, and govern it in a far more 'hands-on' way, and the end result is not really working. Just ask the Greeks...

I've seen some people on this thread repeat the belief that if we'd voted Remain, everything would have stayed the same. But it wouldn't. The explicit aim of the EU is to work for ever closer political, social and economic union.

I found the negative campaigning on both sides very very depressing, ranging from the xenophobic twaddle coming from some of the more ignorant Leavers to the economic scaremongering that Cameron and Osborne fostered. One particularly patronising remark I remember is the warning that a summer holiday in Spain was going to cost at least £300 more if we voted to leave!

I believe our country's parliamentary system can and will step back up to the plate. I have heard some of the remoaners (I hadn't heard this phrase until this thread btw!) worrying about the NHS, education, social rights etc. But the vast majority of our system of social welfare etc was set up well before the EU, and I am quite sure that most if not all the laws that have come in since Maastricht, when John Major signed away a great deal of our autonomy without holding a referendum, would have been set up by our own governments anyway. We also successfully funded research etc. I would imagine that on some aspects of joint policy we will continue to work together, notably in ecological matters. I do think we need to take full control back of our territorial waters though, as the Common Fisheries policies have achieved nothing but devastation for fish stocks.

I believe the divorce process will not be much fun for either us or the rest of Europe, but I also believe that we are all too sensible to ultimately fall out, and a workable solution will be achieved.

I also hope that the European advocates of The Project - the concept of working constantly for ever closer union - will learn some lessons about what can and can't be achieved. An idea that seemed self evident in the immediate aftermath of WW2 is not necessarily the way ahead nearly seventy years later in a fundamentally different world.

I'm worried about those things too I just don't see how remaining in Europe was going to solve those problems.

Goodness loads of xposts while I came up with that essay! (and also made tea and had a long chat with the children)

I agree the EU is a 20th Century way trying to deal with 21st Century problems.

Alpaca, what did you think of DC's deal from the EU that exempted us from any "ever closer union"?. I am not sure where explicitly (or implicity) it says political/economic etc, rather I understood this was an interpretation by those fearful that it might mean political/economic/etc.

Just as an aside, the devaluation of our currency means any money spent on that holiday in Spain will be worth 15% less than pre-ref, and that's before we include the impact on airfares of increase in fuel costs. So £300 isn't too far away, and we haven't even left yet...

Where does it end.

If the referendum is done again and there is another leave vote. Will you all finally shut it?

It ends when a sizeable part of the population is no longer concerned by this particular issue. That is pretty much how democracy works.