To think Brexit has robbed us of so much?

[elzober]

A friend of mine from America recently obtained citizenship of an EU country due to family links. She's now ready to look for a job and open to anything as she doesn't have a degree but worked in the family agricultural business back home. She's fluent in English.

A few years ago I would have been able to invite her to stay with me here in the UK, help her get established and set her up to apply for one of the many jobs over here. But now I can't do any of that.

The ridiculous part is I know local businesses that are really struggling to recruit, can't find people locally and have struggled with the lack of EU workers since Brexit. Particularly in hospitality, agriculture and travel.

Why did we close the door to people who filled these vacancies and contributed to society and paid taxes?

She would have been a decent tax payer, nice member of the community but she's not allowed in.

She's probably going to Ireland now as apparently there's lots more opportunities there since we became an isolated island.

I will never forgive the Conservatives for this shambles. Don't get me started on the fact that a British passport is now worthless and we've lost our right to live in 27 countries. Madness.

It has had an enormous effect on me and my family. My DS has special needs. If and when me and DH are not here any more his sisters (already adults) will have to ensure he is looked after. They both live in EU countries. He only has a British passport. So they would either be living far away from him or have to give up their jobs and lives to look after him as he would not be able to move.

So we have moved to Ireland. Just 2 and a half years to go before we can apply to get our EU citizenship back.

Actually did us a favour though in the long run. We love Ireland and services for DS and his qualuty of life are better here. And I have been able to buy property, which I had never done in my life. But Brexit is shit for the UK.

What amazes me is that so few Brexiteers realise they've been played like a fiddle.

Even "Brexit Mick" (Lynch) and the RMT campaigned for Brexit, and it's now the catalyst for the UK being the highest inflation, lowest growth developed economy, directly impacting workers' pay and the cost of living which they're now striking over.

And for what?

In reality Brexit is a scheme by the rich and powerful to prevent the EU from intervening in their plans to strip money and rights from the rest of us. It really is that simple.

There's no benefit to Brexit for 99.99% of the UK but those who wanted it, and benefit from it, couldn't get it through on their own so mugged millions into doing their bidding for them.

What should they do to take responsibility? Sackcloth and Ashes?

No, but acknowledging that voting for Brexit has not exactly delivered the much vaunted and promised sunlit uplands and that as a country we are much worse off both domestically and internationally rather then offer some glib response along the lines of "we won' get over it" as if that is an actual argument.

Exactly. I went on the bus, very little money. It WAS available to everyone. Now it's not.

What amazes me is that so few Brexiteers realise they've been played like a fiddle.

You know how scam emails are deliberately badly spelled, to lure in the more vulnerable ? Brexit was the same. Most of them will never realise they've been had.

Of course I've left the UK, just as so many net contributing migrants have. Why on earth would we stay? It was fine to have no access to benefits or free NHS, that's totally fair for immigrants. We kept paying our health insurance in our home country because the EU agreements meant that our health insurer paid full-fee to the NHS. After Brexit we would have paid out of pocket for healthcare on top of paying into the NHS via the tax system. I saw the bills for the time we needed emergency care for our son, they were eye-watering.

If being frustrated and baffled by the vote after reading the forecasts written by economists like @EdBallsDay is sneering then fine, call it whatever you want. People like you make it easy to stop caring and start voting for MEPs who will block any UK application to rejoin.

I just can’t navel gaze on this anymore. It’s like looking back at a relationship you fucked up. Their never coming back, you must find a way to move on.

*theyre

plus Keir Starmer has already said they won’t be pursuing rejoining the EU either. It’s a fine deal now. It’s over.

*done

'You can only run a country for the benefit of the wealthiest and most educated for so long'
So why did some left behind red wall voters turn tory then 😂

Totally, so many highly skilled EU NHS staff, left after 2016/didn't come here and that accelerated after 2020, the BDA says 1000s of EU dentists have left the UK.

Its a mystery to me why anyone would come here, pay in via the tax system but then have to have the equivalent of private healthcare, costing 1000s for them and their families.

You need to have certain economy to do so so.... Yeah.... The way things are going. Not sure if EU would like a country with 70% in fuel poverty....

I'm from a traditionally working class area and I know no one who used EU free movement for summer jobs. I've known a few people get the Australian and NZ working holiday visa.

Well now that is middle class and up in mine. The cost of tickets would be like what extra you need for erasmus for a semester😳

I voted to STAY, I didn't want net contributing migrants to leave. The UK doesn't have sufficient to prop itself up and keep itself up to date and at the forefront of scientific developments. I disagree with you that it was fine not to have access to benefits or free NHS, you absolutely should have.

I don't see EdBallsDay's posts as sneering and I also apologise to you. My hackles got raised, I'm sorry.

Like so many who didn't want this, it's a source of never ending mess and there doesn't seem to be a way out of it.

Even "Brexit Mick" (Lynch) and the RMT campaigned for Brexit, and it's now the catalyst for the UK being the highest inflation, lowest growth developed economy, directly impacting workers' pay and the cost of living which they're now striking over.

To be fair, if the unions thought that the UK was going to stay in the SM - and all indications pre-Referendum were that they would - and given that their belief was (rightly or wrongly) that the EU workers were driving down T&C, it's not beyond belief that some (all? most?) unions were Leavers.

Same goes for the large fishing fleet owners, compared to the single boat or small fleet owners, shellfish etc. Same for small farms vs great big agricultural corporations. The Welsh hill farmers seemed, IIRC from what i read at the time, to be in favour of the EU, as were scientists and academics who had experience of EU funding.

My beef isn't with those who genuinely believed that leaving the EU would be good for the working and middle classes, that it might give their children a chance of better pay & conditions and so on. My beef is with those who didn't push and push to make sure the leave campaign were clear about what a future outside the EU would be. What we would actually be signing up to.

Lots of people voted leave because "before FOM we could go on holiday to Spain" in complete ignorance of what FOM actually means. It's not about holidays - holiday visas are fine (even if you have to pay a couple of quid for it). Stipulations around return tickets, accommodation and so on are fine - annoying probably, but fine.

But if you had a small business that did a lot of trade with Europe that had been built up over the last 10 years on the understanding that the UK was a member - and suddenly your biggest, or even a large part, of your market is gone then you are fucked. Frictionless trade is something we took for granted and it is a reason so many small and medium businesses sold in the EU and UK rather than outside the EU (some not all). Those who did trade outside the UK were better set up to adapt their systems because they already had the infrastructure and know-how. Those that didn't? If they voted leave expecting to be part of the customs union/single market - well, good luck. The likes of Rees-Mogg etc just don't care.

So what we have been robbed of is this kind of business. The Erasmus scheme. Cross border scientific research and development etc etc etc.
And apparently, on top of that, we have lost lovely clean beaches.

@notimagain I know it wasn't you who wrote it!

My beef isn't with those who genuinely believed that leaving the EU would be good for the working and middle classes, that it might give their children a chance of better pay & conditions and so on.

Until they come out denouncing the Brexit they were given and stating they were fooled as loudly as they fucking campaigned for it, then I will forever have a beef with them. (Although using the word "beef" in that context is adding insult to injury given the damage being done to UK farming).

We are drifting imperceptibly into a future where if you arrived in the UK from afar, you'd think "Brexit" was something that happened out of the blue, and the plucky UK is battling it's effects like a tsunami or hurricane. Just look at the Labour position. It would be helpful not to lose sight of the fact it could easily be fixed. And will be.

I don’t agree with this. Wages should compensate for more things that just experience- if there are risks or less pleasant working conditions that can only be mitigated against to a certain degree then the wages offered should account for that, regardless of how much training or skill the job requires.

Hello Liz Truss!

This is true. When OLD people living in houseshares (over age 30) is off putting. I did date someone briefly living in one but it was awkward as anything when I went to his because you can't relax and feels like they're living in their parents house or something, tiptoeing around and not making too much noise.

But now we can get bendy bananas 🙄

Ok, fair enough. That's gracious of you to say, thank you.

I didn't mean to imply that EdBalls was sneering. Quite the opposite, all of that information was clear, sensible, and very much available during the campaign. That's why I was confused and saddened at such a self-destructive outcome.

The wage upping for this will also then force wages of jobs which required qualifications up. Which isn't bad in itself, but wages are not in vacuum.

That is just a misunderstanding of what wages actually are though. Wages are the price an employer pays to get someone to do a job (not only wages, but that's a catch-all for terms & conditions plus salary/wages).

In a free market, which wages should be in theory under the Tories, any worker is free to set their own price for their labour. And an employer is free to offer their wages for their work. And at some point the two things converge. So in theory, right now, nurses salaries should be increasing to attract nurses to the market and their conditions should be improving as part of that. Except that the NHS doesn't operate under a free market. Which is why it is important to have some mechanism for collective bargaining. We know what the Tories think of that, but just lately people are starting to understand what function unions perform.

And this is the same across all sectors of employment. In theory it should balance itself out, in practice some workers are shafted while hedge funds cream off a lot of money that should go into the economy.

Not much of which has anything to do with brexit as such, except that the EU largely tries to protect workers from exploitation.

Leaving the EU was absolute madness. We are paying now.