To think most Brexiteers must now regret their vote?

[hoovermanouvre]

If you voted Brexit, do you feel like you have been able to "Take Back Control?" If so, where? Can anyone state one positive change since Brexit - I would genuinely like to hear at least something. Anything?

YANBU - I voted Brexit but now regret it
YABU - I voted Brexit and can see a benefit

No. HTH.

Really fed up with people sneering at those who voted differently to them. To think it's still going on over six years later!

The remain campaign was a shambles. You had Eddie Izzard in a pink beret; little Angela using it as a way to have a swipe at the Tories, despite it not being a party issue; Amber Rudd having digs at Boris Johnson, which is fair enough; and people hypothecating that we'd have a return to rationing if we left.

You also had the absolute lunacy of people claiming that they felt "European first, British second", despite the fact they had spent all their lives in Essex, and the association of anything connected to the EU as some paragon of virtue, and the EU lauded as a benevolent force, despite all its problems.

How did they think any sane, undecided person on the street would be won over by the hyperbole?

The Leave campaign generally played on people's legitimate concerns - schools and hospitals filling up.

I wish we hadn't left. I think the phrase "sunlit uplands" should be banished. I think we were fed a pack of lies.

But don't blame the voters, blame the charlatans who played people and the mess of the campaign.

What are the benefits of the free market?

The inequality gap has increased dramatically in the last 12 years, is that a benefit of the free market?

I'm simply saying that people would not knowingly vote to plunge disabled people, carers, low income families with children etc into dire poverty unless they were very selfish amd/or had some other burning agenda that meant they just didn't care.

What other explanation is there? It isn't as if nobody foresaw what was going to happen to the poor under Tory rule, so if it wasn't the case that Tory voters didn't know or understand the likely implications of their vote, why else do you think they would have chosen to do so much damage?

I suppose the rational conclusion of arguing that people were well informed and knew exactly what they were voting for is that people were actually choosing to make themselves poorer. Which must be quite convenient for the right wing, as if the poor have knowingly voted for policies that have made them poorer, well, there is no obligation on anyone to do anything about it then, is there?

😴

Lots of people voted Conservative because of the sheer shambles the Labour Party was in you don't have to agree with that ,but throwing insults at people because you don't agree with how they voted is hardly going to endear them ,is it .

Promises were made about "levelling up". Those promises have not been kept.

It was abundantly clear to many of us that there was never any real intention to "level up". It wasn't an accident that it didn't happen, it wasn't ever the plan in the first place.

And yet many people put their faith in the promises that were made because they believed the Tory lies. Do you really think that they would have voted for the Tories if they had known what was actually going to happen?

Why “must” they regret it

I'm not trying to "endear" myself to anyone. I am not standing for election and I'm not a member of any particular party.

I completely agree that Labour was in a shambles. I didn't consider that a reason for voting Tory at the time, and I still don't.

In any case, I am not throwing insults. I think it would be deeply insulting to suggest that everyone who voted Tory in the last election knew exactly what they voted for. I'm saying the opposite - that many of them didn't realise how bad the Tories would be, and that they do not therefore share the same level of guilt for the situation that we're now in as those who did know what they were voting for and voted for it anyway.

@hoovermanouvre

I would like to hear something positive as a result of Brexit and what the point of it was?

I voted for brexit and was both amazed and delighted that Leave won. I was also amazed and delighted that the efforts to quash what the people voted for did not succeed.

I voted for brexit because I believe in democracy and the EU is a major anti-democratic force in today's world.

1. The people of the UK never voted to become part of an EU, which had powers over us and made laws affecting us. It was foisted on us. That is simply unacceptable, a form of Imperialism by stealth. We were happy enough being in the EEC, a trading block, but then this was turned into a political and currency union. No thanks!

2. There is no direct link between voters and the people who run the EU. Voters vote in MEPs - but these are largely powerless. The real power lies with the un-elected European Commission, which appoints people based on cronyism etc. Prior to the Brexit vote, the European Commission was completely faceless to the typical British person (like me) with personalities only becoming known when they started coming out the woodwork to condemn us.

3. The EU flagrantly ignores the wishes of people in Europe. There have been multiple referendums in various countries which were considered inconvenient to the EU and so which were either brazenly ignored or re-run until the "correct" result was achieved. Its happened twice in Ireland, once in the Netherlands and once in France - I think there are more examples. That is not democracy, its a pantomime. The people just accept this because they are ignorant patsies, too comfortable in their over-privileged lives to care. But, when the British people vote, what we vote for counts.

4. We no longer send obscene amounts of money to Brussels, which is better spent in the UK where the money was raised. That can only be a good thing.

5. While all politicians are greedy, the EUs MEPs really take the biscuit. My figures are a few years old now, but recently a standard MEP earned 109,000 Euros per annum salary and also got 4,500 Euros of unreceipted expenses every month. (They consider it "an invasion of privacy" to have to say what they use expenses for). Its very similar to the British Prime Minister, for example - a whole parliament of Prime Ministers! Not bad for sitting in Brussels, doing nothing, completely without scrutiny. Greedy pigs! Incase you wondered where all the money we sent would go, there is your answer.

6. Britain can flourish outside the EU which largely operates in the interests of France and Germany alone. Look at Britain's stand-out support for Ukraine currently, for example, while the EU equivocates and directly funds Putin's war machine with their addiction to Russian gas.

7. Britain can act as a sovereign nation outside the EU, while Brussels meddles in every aspect of the nations in its Union. Countries like Ireland, for example need to get the EU Commision to approve their annual budget before they can implement it. And so countries like Ireland in the EU have less autonomy than, for example, the devolved Scottish or Welsh Parliaments which have full control over their own budgets.

There is 7 exceptionally good reasons and improvements which Brexit has delivered. I could go on and on.

It is troubling that people buy into this false "Brexit has been a disaster" narrative. It has not. Its conditioning people, long term, to seek a return to the EU.

Yes, sometimes the petty French engineer queues at the ports etc, but they have always done that - a petulant nation trying to feel powerful and relevant. They did it when we were in the EU, and they did it before the EEC turned into the EU. So what? We, as adults, can put up with their infantilism.

Many people weigh up Brexit based on the fact it might take them 10 minutes longer to get through passport control. Spare me!

I would certainly agree that we, as yet, have not made full use of the opportunities Brexit has created. With the war in Ukraine and the cost of living etc, the Government has been very busy. Let us hope that the new Truss Government may change that.

Are you similarly disgusted that we now have new Heads of State and Government in the UK that none of us have voted for?

Sorry but I believe you're vote should be selfish. You should be voting for you and your family. How it effects your life. What you believe in.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves

We absolutely need to stop showing contempt towards those who are not intelligent and/or informed enough to understand what they are voting for, and we need to do a much better job of explaining things in a way that actually makes sense to people. Dismissing them as stupid doesn't help anyone.

As for showing less contempt towards those who are selfish, blinkered or ideologically driven? Nah, some points of view are not worthy of respect, and contempt is entirely appropriate.

Problem is there's a pretty big overlap in that Venn diagram.

No you wouldn't.

@jgw1

Are you similarly disgusted that we now have new Heads of State and Government in the UK that none of us have voted for?

All of the British MPs, including Liz Truss, are elected directly by the people.

I am not a big monarchist, but believe a (small) monarchy is better than an elected head of state, because it is politically neutral and so represents everyone. And the monarchy has no power over us, whereas the European Commission did.

What do you think of the reasons I gave why Im glad we are out of the EU? Do you prefer your vote to count, or not?

You raise a good point. I get the sense from some that other people owe them their vote according to their priorities. It’s a bit arrogant imo.

I don’t expect to influence how other people vote, why is it so common on the left that they do

In a democracy we all get to choose equally. That’s more important to me than telling people they are stupid etc - it implies their vote counts for less.

A party needs to win votes by offering something we each (mostly) connect with. There’s no other influence

MEPs are also elected directly by people, in fact more directly because they are not elected by a FPTP system, but you seem to have something against them.

So if the President of the EU was a hereditary position you would prefer that. Its not an argument I have heard before, but I am always open to new ideas.

That doesn't make sense.

On one hand, you're saying that people should vote selfishly, for themselves and their families and how things will affect their lives.

On the other hand, you're saying that people should vote for what they believe in.

What if those two things aren't compatible?

I'm a relatively high earner. My family is typically better off under the Tories. However, I believe in creating a humane society which cares for its most vulnerable members, so I can't vote Tory.

I don't agree with big government, and the EU is the very definition of big government. Government should be as small and as local as possible.

Everyone votes for selfish reasons. Even those rich people that vote Labour, do so because it makes them feel better about themselves.

Do you also not like the way central government has for the past 12 years gathered more and more powers for itself at the expense of local government?

I do not like it. If it was up to me the UK would be a loose grouping of countries, in the way that the EU was supposed to be, and each region of the UK would be independent and be able to govern itself, set it's own taxes, have different laws and rules and regulations, to suit the people of that region. It's madness to have people in London governing people in Cornwall, or the Highlands of Scotland, just like it is madness to have people in Belgium governing people in Sardinia or Cyprus or Romania. It only leads to discontentment and resentment.

Yes, you can reduce it to that if you like.

Personally, I think there's a massive gulf between people who vote for what suits their own pockets without regard for the likely impact on anyone else, and those who vote for what they believe is "right" because it enables them to maintain their identity as a decent, caring human being. The outcomes of those two types of "selfishness" are likely to be quite different.

I worked with a woman who used to say shit like this, she always said 'people who give to charity are just as selfish as people who don't, because they only do it to make themselves feel better'.

She was a proper twat.