We fecking told you so. Brexit making us suffer.

[flashbac]

Project Fear you said. Sunlit Uplands you said. Sovereignty you said. Can I buy food and heat my house with Sovereignty? Can I put sovereignty in my car's fuel tank? Can I?

It was common sense that this would happen. Common SENSE.

@lonelyapple

Presumably the country wasn't a utopia for many people before Brexit and that is why they voted for it? Perhaps if successive governments had listened to working class people and made more than empty gestures, people wouldn't have felt desperate enough to vote for Brexit. I also think the Government has purposely made bad decisions so that people can say "look how bad Brexit is, lets rejoin the EU".

I agree with this and the Brexit vote was very much a vote against the 'establishment' and status quo. Not helped by the Tories trashing the country in the 6 years leading up to the vote. Cameron and Osbourne's austerity combined with their lack of understanding of economics in the context of government spending created an opening for the likes of Farage to exploit and narcissists like Boris and Cummings who are happy to lie their way to power.

Problem is it was literally the worst possible thing they should have done and will essentially make the country poorer and worse off for pretty much a generation or at least until we rejoin the customs union/single market which is probably an election or two away.

We are essentially one of the only countries in Europe using a FPTP electoral system which disenfranchises entire swaths of the country and creates the tribal two party politics we have now. Until that changes things won't really get any better in terms of the people elected to represent us but Brexit will compound the issues and just make things worse.

Refused to negotiate in good faith when the UK government was quickly threatening to break the terms of the agreement ? When british ministers publicly insulted EU counterparts in the press during the months beforehand ? You can hardly cast the UK as the victim of EU perfidity one minute and then make out we hold all the cards
Just another example of british exceptionalism a la 'do you know who I am ?'

[quote roarfeckingroarr]@antoniawhite many but not all. The EU had the opportunity to give us better terms and refused to negotiate in good faith. It was a once in a lifetime choice and the majority of voters chose to make our own way.[/quote]
The EU had to point out to Cameron that much of what he was asking for, such as further controls on immigration, was already available to him. It’s just that the UK never bothered its arse registering EU citizens and therefore did not send away those who had no job or could not fund themselves for three months, as Belgium does quite regularly for instance. The referendum was founded on a series of lies and unachievable promises, so I very much hope it was not a once in a lifetime vote, though am not sanguine that the EU would wznt us back.

@Stasiland

Refused to negotiate in good faith when the UK government was quickly threatening to break the terms of the agreement ? When british ministers publicly insulted EU counterparts in the press during the months beforehand ? You can hardly cast the UK as the victim of EU perfidity one minute and then make out we hold all the cards Just another example of british exceptionalism a la 'do you know who I am ?'

Also, this.

@hayley037 the problem is we already held the referendum to reform the electoral system and the public voted for it to remain the same (which suits the Tories and Labour very well) so we are stuck with FPTP and donkeys in charge

@firsttimedad79 you do know that the proponents of brexit years ago (Raab, Patel, Qwarteng et al) think british workers are lazy slackers ? Read the great tome Britannia Unchained that they authored. They want to slash much of the EU derived employment regulations, health and safety legislation etc, that so called 'red tape' that slows up business money making so I hardly anticipate working conditions in any industry improving any time soon.

@hayley037. so right about FPTP. I live in such a tory strong hold I am thinking of just not bothering at the next GE. I, like many, have no voice

[quote Downthespidersweb]@hayley037. so right about FPTP. I live in such a tory strong hold I am thinking of just not bothering at the next GE. I, like many, have no voice[/quote]
I totally sympathise, but please do vote. If everyone voted we really might stand a chance of seeing the back of this lot, please God.

@Downthespidersweb I do too - Tory seat for over 110 years! They could put a pig with a blue rosette on and people round here would vote for it regardless.

There are plenty of disenfranchised voters out there!

Agree that in some constituencies if people had voted tactically, putting to one side tribal loyalties some big name longstanding but inept tory mps might have lost to lib dem or labour candidates. So please vote.

Someone upthread said 'it'll get better'. Our government chose the most extreme form of Brexit and these are the inevitable consequences of that choice. Our government inflicted an extreme, Ill-understood, almost not at all planned for, shock to our economy, overnight. There is a flat refusal to acknowledge that, and there can still be no logical or rational discussion of that because Brexit was to have only positive and no negative consequences.

This is our Brexit, we have to live with this, the inevitable fall-out, and a government that simply does not understand modern trading conditions.

It is naive, stupid, ill-informed and zealotry, all those or a combination of them, to think that somehow this it will all sort of sort itself out. It won't, not if this extreme expression of Brexit continues to be pursued and all consequences are denied or blame for them placed elsewhere.

I would suggest people have a look at Sam Lowe, David Henig, Dimitri Grozoubinski, amongst others, to get some grasp of what a shock to our economy this has and will continue to be.

[quote Stasiland]@firsttimedad79 you do know that the proponents of brexit years ago (Raab, Patel, Qwarteng et al) think british workers are lazy slackers ? Read the great tome Britannia Unchained that they authored. They want to slash much of the EU derived employment regulations, health and safety legislation etc, that so called 'red tape' that slows up business money making so I hardly anticipate working conditions in any industry improving any time soon.[/quote]
Yet now that there is a shortage, said conditions are improving?

@bizboz

Yanbu but watch people pile on here and say it is nothing to do with Brexit. Covid might have exacerbated the situation but it also gives the Brexit supporters a handy scapegoat.

It certain gives Boris Johnson a handy scapegoat. He would never have got away with it otherwise.

[quote RumblyMumbly]@Downthespidersweb I do too - Tory seat for over 110 years! They could put a pig with a blue rosette on and people round here would vote for it regardless.

There are plenty of disenfranchised voters out there![/quote]
funny you say that. .I think that's actually what they did here. ...

Short term improvement that cannot be sustained and will undoubtedly be passed on to you the consumer in the form of higher prices. Do you think NHS staff should receive pay rises too and more money ploughed into the NHS btw ?
Didn't answer whether you think the party of brexit will improve conditions and employment regulations etc for the average worker sadly....the very workers that you care so much for. And if you did care so much why not vote for parties who do value workers rather than one which clearly distrusts them enough to curb union power ?

[quote Stasiland]@firsttimedad79 you do know that the proponents of brexit years ago (Raab, Patel, Qwarteng et al) think british workers are lazy slackers ? Read the great tome Britannia Unchained that they authored. They want to slash much of the EU derived employment regulations, health and safety legislation etc, that so called 'red tape' that slows up business money making so I hardly anticipate working conditions in any industry improving any time soon.[/quote]
But we didn't/don't have to have their type of Brexit.

I despise the man but what sort of Brexit did/does Jeremy Corbyn want?

Moving on to less unpleasant characters. How about Tony Benn and Frank Field?

There are certain groups who welcome a bad Brexit because out of spite they want to (further) harm the poor.

It's not necessarily the ideal but it is what it is. It was the result of a democratic vote that David Cameron decided to give the people. Any fair-minded person would want to work towards the least bad outcome. Instead of 'punishing' those already at the bottom.

Had other people and parties not thrown their toys out of the pram, we might've had a different lot in charge. We ended up with the ones we've got because they're the only ones who respected the vote. Admittedly Corbyn is a Brexiter (he never wanted to belong in the first place) but he's hardly an appealing alternative and be wasn't honest enough to say it out loud (he used to).

A friend just forwarded a Mirror article about cabbage pickers being offered ~£62K/ year (£30/hr). Sounds a bit outlandish, to be fair.

They could put a pig with a blue rosette on and people round here would vote for it regardless

You'd have to get it past David Cameron first

@EatSleepRantRepeat

They could put a pig with a blue rosette on and people round here would vote for it regardless

You'd have to get it past David Cameron first

We’re focusing onboard what’s going on at the moment with lorry drivers- a shortage.
If I remember rightly, even before Brexit there was a shortage of around 50 thousand.
Of course Brexit will have made the shortage worse.
But let’s remember that the EU workers only started coming in about 2004/5?
Before that most lorry drivers were British and Irish.
We didn’t depend on EU workers then to drive lorries then, so what’s changed?
Likewise the people who seem happy to have EU workers exploited whilst working in fields picking strawberries.
Who the fuck picked our strawberries or fruit before the EU migrants came?
I’m not being nasty or causing an argument, I’m genuinely interested to know.

The turkeys that voted for Xmas won't admit it though.

FFS.

People moaning about the Tories.. well they’ve won the last 4 elections! 2 of them with a majority.
So clearly the alternative options aren’t winning people over.
We’ve had the Tories in since 2010...
Labour obviously are not trusted anymore

@Dave20

People moaning about the Tories.. well they’ve won the last 4 elections! 2 of them with a majority. So clearly the alternative options aren’t winning people over. We’ve had the Tories in since 2010... Labour obviously are not trusted anymore

More people DID NOT vote Tory than did vote Tory. Our first passed the post system of "democracy" is shit.