To tell you why I voted to leave

[readingreadingreading]

I'm not brave enough to say this IRL and that is part of the problem.

I refuse to believe that I, or 52% of the British population are either thick or racist. I also think that such a pessimistic view of our population is leading to more divisions.

I have wanted to leave the EU since the Maastricht treaty was signed (I even sent off for a copy of it). I always said I'd campaign to leave as soon as I got the chance. I didn't campaign as it would have meant aligning with groups such as Farage which I do think are racist. But I still chose to vote leave.

I think the EU are getting too big and have always been too bureaucratic. The countries aligned to it are too varied for a common purpose to be right for everyone.

I don't know if we have an immigration problem or not. If we do we need to be able to restrict the number of nationals of other European countries moving here. If we don't we should be a lot more welcoming to people from other parts of the world, people who really need asylum. The current situation has desperate people turned away at borders and highly skilled workers having to jump through hoops for a job where they are wanted and needed.

No of course I didn't believe there would be extra money for the NHS. However I think currently we give money to the EU and we get money back whereas giving the same money directly to British needs would be a better use of it. Not to mention the savings from all the extra MPs.

I'm old enough to remember life before the EU. We managed to travel to Europe, live and work in different countries, eat food and not go to war. I'm reasonably sure we can continue to do so without them.

I don't think the EU can last much longer and I thought (wrongly) that coming out now in an orderly fashion would be better that having it all crash down around us. I'm nervous of new laws being enacted that we have no veto on and drifting into closer integration.

I hate to watch the current mess and no, this isn't what I voted for. But if we can't get out there shouldn't have been a vote and I don't think everything can be blamed on the leavers.

...but one thing you are catastrophically wrong on is believing that anyone other than Leavers are to blame. You „jointly and severally“ are to blame. Yes of course the leaders are mostly at fault but you are too and the havoc you have wrought on your country is yours to

Wrong. David Cameron's government are to blame for putting this to a referendum to appease voters. It should never have happened.

I appreciate the OP posting this, though I'll admit to being a bit scared to open it for a while! I'm a remainer, my position is best summarised the same as @IfNot as It's a flawed system which, on balance, makes more sense in than out.

I keep on being told all leavers aren't racist or stupid, but sadly all the leavers that I know either literally give me racist reasons, or have resentment about changes made decades ago, and voted accordingly to them, not whether or not it's a net benefit to us right now.

I don't agree with all your beliefs but I do respect you for articulating them, so thank you.

I can't articulate this very well but I'll give it a go.

I voted remain, I still want to remain. However the way passionate remain voters conduct themselves is pretty horrifying a lot of the time.

We live in a country where currently if you voted leave or Tory (which in both cases, the majority did) you're some sort of evil person.

There's so much hyperbole and people seem to relish in spreading it on here.

The government are to blame for putting the UK in this position but this fashionable lefty hive mind has a huge part in the division.

The OP is not wrong. We don't know the outcome yet. It really pisses me off that it's so socially acceptable to shout over someone else's opinion with your own.

Wrong. David Cameron's government are to blame for putting this to a referendum to appease voters. It should never have happened.

I agree it should never have happened. I know a great many people (mainly young people with the most to gain/lose!) who chose not to vote because they didn't feel they knew enough to be able to decide

The other thing Cameron got wrong was quitting immediately after the referendum. He should have recognised that the 52/48 split was incredibly close, and started some sort of cross party working group to examine realistic options - from a second referendum with more questions on, through EFTA membership, all the way to hard Brexit. Then said "how do we move forward with deciding between these options?" Then maybe said "that's for my successor" and called a leadership election.

(As a Labour voter, it would also have been helpful had the Labour party not decided that this was the perfect time for a vicious civil war between the far left and centre left factions of the party, but had actually focussed on what the country needed).

My take on it is the remain types are the doers in this world and the leavers the people who just complain about things and expect everyone else to sort things out how they want...except after more than 2 years of faffing about it’s all a bloody mess.

Cameron leaving right after the vote was no surprise, very much like my dog who produces deathly farts then leaves the room.

The other thing Cameron got wrong was quitting immediately after the referendum. He should have recognised that the 52/48 split was incredibly close, and started some sort of cross party working group to examine realistic options - from a second referendum with more questions on, through EFTA membership, all the way to hard Brexit. Then said "how do we move forward with deciding between these options?" Then maybe said "that's for my successor" and called a leadership election

Absolutely. Push the referendum through then run away..nice work

very much like my dog who produces deathly farts then leaves the room.

Snort

Well i do blame leavers and tory voters. People know deep down what they are voting for...of course they do.

IfNot is right about the flaws in the EU, and in the idea that all immigration is good and local British complaints should be ignored. There are issues and they should have been listened to - by the British government. I agree that not all countries are the same and there needs to be more acceptance of different circumstances - we are vastly more densely populated than France for instance.

Has anyone perhaps considered that the reason why the British are so quick to perceive the EU as a great evil empire is because that is the way we are used to being governed? In reality it's an evolving experiment, and it is not something alien across the channel (currently). Britain is not insignificant within it and has had an effect on its evolving policies. If you don't like those, blame the British government and system. It can be changed.

The common fault in my eyes is the British government and political system, which leavers are proposing to abandon us to.

I am opposed to the EU and thought very seriously about a 'leave' vote. This was mainly because I could see that the power in the EU was coalescing in a few Western states and I did not like the way these were using this power especially in respect to Greece and suchlike. At the time, there was also talk of a 'Frexit' and suchlike. I did wonder if a decision to leave would the best one to dissolve the EU. However, I did not vote leave in the end because the dominant framing of the issues carried a greater weight and I did not want to be seen to be adding my voice to the 'leave' campaign when it did not speak for me.

Also, I fundamentally disagreed with voting 'remain' or 'leave' as blank choices without context for what either of them might mean in practice.

I didn't vote for people to die waiting for medicine to be imported or people who have been living here for years to be asked to leave and Ireland to be plunged back into war. Nor did I vote for blue passports.

But if you had applied a bit of thought/attention/research to any or all of these areas, you would have seen that we were warned about all of these things and more.

Cummings and his lot skilfully manipulated the hard of thinking, the disadvantaged and the chronically resentful into voting for leave.

I do believe, OP, that you are none of the above. You obviously have the capacity and (somewhat) the will to read, research, ask questions, and make informed decisions.

Which makes you MORE, not less, culpable.

It is people like you who voted to leave for whom I reserve the most contempt. Because you had no excuse.

I still don’t get why people think there will be a war in Ireland! Do people really care that much these days to carry out actions like in the 80s? Who are these people that will start a war?

There won’t be a war in IRELAND

There most likely will be a war in NORTHERN IRELAND AGAIN.

Northern Ireland is part of the UK therefore there will be a war in YOUR country AGAIN.
And , as it is a war in YOUR country, YOU the British people will have to pay for the cost of it AGAIN. Rebuilding buildings that have been bombed, security operations, injuries , deaths and compensations, legal processes to bring justices. In fact You are still paying for it now from the 30 years of troubles in 60s thru to 90s ( not just the 80s)

I really wish people would educate themselves on Northern Ireland and its very detailed and troubled past which has only simmered away in relative peace for 20 years.

A build up of a lot of small things can easily kick it off again. Nationalists are allowed to describe themselves as Irish under the terms of the peace agreement even though they were born and live in a part of the Uk.

Now on the news yesterday NI people are told that if they want to drive in the Republic of Ireland ( which is a common place occurrence for daily lives) they will have to display a GB stick on the back of their car ( effectively declaring their Britishness and branding them as British against their will)
This is despite the fact that Northern Ireland is not even part of Great Britain ( which is only England wales and Scotland) . It is part of the UK of GB and NI as per the front cover of your passport...but not GB.

www.irishnews.com/news/brexit/2019/09/03/news/british-government-says-cars-from-northern-ireland-will-need-gb-sticker-in-republic-1701707/

any fool can see how lots of little things like this along with the BIG ISSUE that they might have to stop at checkpoints driving between one part of their Ireland to another can very easily start to make them feel like the peace agreement has been breached.

Please read Northern Ireland’s history on internet.

I suspect it's rather like trying to build the Berlin Wall back up again.

Please don't blame me/leavers for everything that has happened, or may happen. It may be a result of the vote, but it certainly wasn't the intended outcome.

Sorry (not sorry). You get the blame because you voted for something that wasn't clearly articulated. A better referendum would have had campaigning along 3 lines: Remain (with the hope of reform from within, IMO); Leave with no deal (and explicit information about what that and WTO entails); leave with some kind of WA (which in a perfect world would have been negotiated and published before the referendum).

The paramaters for the result should have been set at something like 60/40 or it's null and void (remember Farage saying that if it went 52/48 against him he'd take it to court?) to avoid a lot of what came after.

But I'll continue to blame Leavers for throwing my life up in the air and causing a lot of sleepless nights and a certain amount of (unnecessary) expense and faffing around. (but not as much expense as EU nationals in the UK and for that I'm glad). Despite many of my leave-voting friends saying (pre-referendum) "it's just a protest vote I don't want to leave" - most of them are now saying things along the lines of "getting our country back" as though it had ever been anywhere.

Some of my relatives live in staunch leave areas that directly benefitted for years from EU funds. They are now incandescent with rage that, as announced directly after the result, these will not be replaced one for one. I feed desperately sad for people who are about to go into economic turmoil but i also feel a certain amount of "experts told you so".

for PP mentioning that you'll still be able to retire to an EU country. Yes, you probably will be able to, as you could pre-EU and pre-Maastricht treaty. However. Your UK state pension will be frozen at the amount it was on the day you leave (I believe that's been the case for retirees to non-EU countries, not sure how private or company pensions work). You will have to have some kind of health insurance. You will have to abide by rules of foreign property ownership (i think some countries don't allow i?) etc etc. It will be doable but within the EU it is much much easier.

There is still violence in Northern Ireland. A young female reporter was killed recently. Very sad.

So anything that rocks the very very fragile peace agreement might result in more deaths.

IfNot, I totally agree with you on the somewhat queasy view of other EU workers perpetuated by some Brits.

On similar lines, a Leave voter I knew was at great pains to stress that he didn't vote leave because of immigration, because he 'knows a lot of really hard-working Polish and Romanian people.'

It's the right-kind-of-immigrant rhetoric. It's fucking patronising. Like your average Polish person in the UK gives a shit how hard some self-righteous 'I'm not racist' Brit thinks they work

I did not like the way these were using this power especially in respect to Greece and suchlike.

I deeply resented that Ireland paid the non-secured bondholders, but that was down to our government. Similarly, Greece's problems were caused by the Greek government's lying when joining the EU. In both cases, our own fault.

I do think that both conservative and labour should have tackled concerns on immigration before the vote. I do think many people felt they were branded racist and ignored. Immigration was the most obvious sign of EU changes and there were a lot of Polish and other immigrants who came in huge numbers very quickly.

I felt dismayed that we couldn’t talk about the implications of this at the time within left leaning circles. And I mean just talk, sensibly. I that this was very poorly managed. We should have made sure health and safety standards were kept up etc but part of that was the demise of the unions.

We should have had money available to give to the police, NHS and schools for the quick influx of people, as although paying into taxes there was a sudden escalation of costs that the government then ignored and local agencies had to beg for more. Not good. We could have managed the benefits system etc.

By not saying that there was a negative as well as positive impact of EU immigration we gave that gaping hole of a debate to racists like ukip and careerists in the Tory party.

However I do still think as people we are individually responsible for realizing that voting Leave was not a good way of dealing with any negative aspects of immigration. And also blinded to the positives of it, which there are many.

I voted remain and I didn’t vote Tory. So I am quite angry that I’m left with a lot of the painful implications of Leave.

Similarly, Greece's problems were caused by the Greek government's lying when joining the EU. In both cases, our own fault

That does not actually make sense (Greece's problems being our fault - I assume you mean their fault?), but the issue is a lot more complex than this and I don't think it helpful to reduce this to a one liner.

Leavers are being asked, did you vote for this? are you happy now?
Of course not!
I didn't vote for this, I didn't vote for May or Boris (or even conservative). I didn't vote for people to die waiting for medicine to be imported or people who have been living here for years to be asked to leave and Ireland to be plunged back into war. Nor did I vote for blue passports.
Will all/any of this happen? I sincerely hope not.
Please don't blame me/leavers for everything that has happened, or may happen. It may be a result of the vote, but it certainly wasn't the intended outcome.

This is what I don't get OP.

You did vote for all those things, but you were deceived into doing so. You should be angrier than any Remainer about what is happening.

Why aren't you raging?

Boris hasn't betrayed me because I didn't put my trust in him. He has betrayed you. He lied to you about what Brexit would be and when you had voted for it, he lied and lied and lied again and is now forcing you to double down by suggesting that in order to get what you voted for, we may have to go for No Deal which will have even more extreme consequences.

I think that a lot of people who voted leave have a lot more in common with cautions remainers than they do with the extreme Brexiteers.

Can I applaud? Longlongsummer. Why did the UK establishment go through this phase of ignoring practical & pragmatic considerations at the bottom? And when too will this particular phase pass??

@maximus good point. Why aren’t you OP raging and calling for action that your vote and intentions were based on falsehoods? Why don’t you write to your MP?

That’s such a good idea. If all leave voters who now see how horrifying and damaging it is wrote to their MPs? Saying they don’t want medicines to run out?

I don’t agree with your rationale however, respect your viewpoint.