Those of you who voted for Brexit when is it going to get better and how?

[N0addedsalt]

I didn’t and didn’t see any benefits. Tried to refocus anger about the lies during the campaign to resignation and acceptance. Was ready to try and embrace/ focus on positives and move forward but still really can’t see any. Now just getting increasingly worried and also fearful.

Hit me with all the benefits and when we’re going to see them impacting our lives.

There probably is an interesting question on how our system works when smaller groups get items on the agenda. Not saying either way but it’s good for a debate.

We did still vote for it though, just. So even if a small proportion got it on the agenda we didn’t have to say yes, but did.

@MarshaBradyo You appear to have completely missed the point.

The issue not about being a “true Remainer” - which is meaningless.

It’s simply about Leavers who now deny having voted Leave.

The politics forum I referred to is not MN.

Remainers had 3x general elections and 1x referendum to stop Brexit and failed at all four.

If your argument is that that is not a good test of public opinion and we need to change the system then fine, it's not something I am interested in debating.

My belief is that within our current democratic system Brexit was more than adequately demonstrated. Anyone who wished to stop it had multiple chances to vote against it and we had a year of parliamentary wrangling over it. The final result was that Johnson (whose election slogan you may have forgotten because it wasn't repeated that often was "Get Brexit Done") won by a landslide.

So, when did we decide Brexit was going to get better?

And how?

Anyone care to summarise?

My argument is that a complex issue like Brexit should never have been put to a simple binary vote in a referendum. And that, contrary to your claim, there was not widespread demand for a referendum before they decided to go ahead with one.

Of course, it was different once the referendum had happened. People had made their choice - informed or otherwise - and quite reasonably wanted that choice to be respected. Or else they were bored of hearing about Brexit and just wanted the issue to go away.

None of that what happened after the referendum changes the fact that it was grossly irresponsible to have held one in the first place.

Apart the small fact that Johnson didn't get a landslide of public opinion, he got 43.6% of the vote, its just we have a screwed up electoral system.

People don't seem to get that majority of seats isn't majority of the public.

However, you are correct in your assertion that the UK did have 3 chances to reverse Brexit, well not quite but certainly have a very differetn version... though i suspect why they didn't was because we were still in the EU, even as late as the last GE in 2019, the public had yet to see the downsides.

Generally more people vote "Not Tory" than "Tory"

#Justsayin

It's an interesting question because part of the argument for AV/electoral reform is that it would give smaller parties more power/representation.

In fact smaller parties do have representation in our current system, it is just indirect.

UKIP effectively pressured the Tories into offering the referendum by stealing their vote share. When the UKIP vote share got large enough, Cameron saw that it was enough of an issue to make political capital out of offering a referendum. Without offering that, it is doubtful he would have got elected in 2015 - in fact even with that promise of a referendum in the 2015 election UKIP got as high a proportion of the vote share as the Lib Dems and the SNP combined.

A similar process is happening/has happened with the Greens.

Indeed, and now that we have actually left the EU, I don't see many people congratulating the Tories on their achievements. Quite the contrary, people have realised that the promised sunlit uplands don't exist, that there is no more money for the NHS and that we still haven't got a handle on managing our borders. And the Tories look likely to get hammered at the next election.

I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Exactly I was thinking of the Greens too when writing that

I didn’t really notice the process for the Brexit vote at the time but I can see the impact the Greens are having atm

Without offering that, it is doubtful he would have got elected in 2015

What's the evidence for this?

Most of the analysis that I have seen suggests that the Tories won for a range of other reasons. Perceptions about economic competence, for example. Perceptions about David Cameron as a leader in preference to Ed Miliband. The collapse of the Labour Party in Scotland in favour of the SNP. A highly successful Tory election campaign etc. The promise of a referendum doesn't seem to feature much at all.

Greens having impact?

err in what exactly? UK 's environmental actions are a million miles away from the rhetoric, we will almost certainly miss everyone of our carbon & pollution targets, inc the ban on the sale of new fossil fuel cars in just 7 years time.

It was the risk of the Tory party splitting over the issue of EU membership that led to the referendum, not Ukip but unlike Major who said back me or sack me, Cameron was a weak fool, who gave into the internal pressures, blaming Ukip, just lets him off the hook for what he did.

Obviously, what's done is done, and we can't go back in time. We had the referendum an a small majority of people voted to leave the EU. Some of them may regret it now, others won't. Either way, it happened.

I am still angry that the electorate was ever put in the position of voting on this issue without really understanding the consequences, and I do not accept attempts to rewrite history now to suggest that the referendum was somehow inevitable or unavoidable. It wasn't.

But we are where we are now. The country has voted for a monumental act of self harm, and we now need to pick up the pieces. The real question is what we are actually going to do about it now, and I don't see politicians in any of the parties with a huge amount of vision about how they're going to steer us out of this mess.

If Brexit was "fine" I think we'd all have moved on.

If Brexit was good people would be queuing up to take the credit for it.

But it isn't is it? So here we are.

We've come a long way since the promised sunlit uplands with no downsides Brexit fans used to talk about.

Is someone going to argue that we needed a referendum on whether to have a referendum?

It was a question that needed to be asked, since there had been concerns for years about ever increasing political union. It did require public consent and there was plenty of opportunity for successive governments to gain than consent. Instead they chose to dismiss any concern as racism.

It was a poorly worded question, carried out as a hissy fit knee jerk attempt to shut down opposition within DC own party. Ironic that Brexit voters are vilified for answering the question asked and dismissed as thick for doing so, when that question was worded and thrown out by the 'best', most expensively educated people in the country. The people we are being told upthread that we should have trusted to act in our best interest, since they were members of the parliamentary process and knew better than us. Because they didn't have any vested interests at all in remaining in the EU and had proven themselves to be completely trustworthy and never lied or behaved dishonestly?
This came about because instead of taking public opinion with them, our elected representatives had the hubris to assume we would do as we were told and trust them to tell us the truth when they had proven themselves no better than ordinary people in that regard. And if a liar does tell you the truth, how could you possibly tell? And iirc the leader of the opposition wouldn't say publicly which way he was voting.

The way to improve the situation can only come about now with a rise in the calibre of our MPs, both in terms of character and intellect. But the Tory membership continues to be dire and there is no credible opposition. I'm not convinced remaining in the EU would have been better long term - we can't rely on the EU to act in our best interests when they have their own countries to manage and their own elections to be concerned with.

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-much-uks-energy-renewable

The stats for electricity generation.

The change in energy generation from coal to wind has been revolutionary. In the space of 10 years we've gone from generating 43% of our electricity from coal to less than 1.5%.

Have we met all our targets ? No. Some way to go yet. Have we made huge improvements ? Yes.

Unfortunately most people just want bad or good to suit their agenda. They don't want the reality which is nearly always "somewhere in between".

• Zero-carbon power in Britain’s electricity mix has grown from less than 20% in 2010 to over 50% in February, May, October, November and December of 2022.
• Power provided from coal was responsible for only 1.5% of electricity generation in 2022, compared to 2012 when coal represented 43% of electricity produced.
• The record for the maximum amount of wind power generation was broken three times in 2022, reaching 20.918GW on 30 December 2022.
• In February 2022, the UK achieved its lowest ever carbon intensity month since records began, at 126 grams of CO2 per kWh average. The lowest carbon intensity record of 29 gCO2/kWh (achieved on 5 April 2021) was also matched on 26 December 2022.
• In 2020 renewables accounted for more than 43.1% of the UK's total of 312 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity generated. This outstripped fossil fuels over the course of a year, for the first time in the nation’s history.
• 2020 also saw UK have its longest run of coal-free power, with a total of 68 days between 10 April and 16 June. This is the longest coal-free period since the industrial revolution, which began in the mid-1700s!
• Zero-carbon sources continue to outperform traditional fossil fuel generation by providing 48.5% of the electricity used in 2022, compared to 40% from gas and coal power stations.

There are no benefits from brexit.
Sadly the morons can blame the pandemic and the war instead

Re Greens I was thinking of SNP and the influence on policy around gender ID. It’s not to do with the environment but more the power to a small group.

As a function of our system I’m just considering it, rather than saying it’s ok or otherwise. But you can see how it happens

Where's that US trade deal they promised during the Brexit campaign 7 years ago?

None of that is because people are choosing to vote for the Green party, which is the bit you claimed.

Far better than wasting time having hissy fits on the interweb is forming a political party and busting a gut for 20 years like UKIP did to build momentum for change.

Rejoin have got a much easier starting point, apparently they've got the smartest people and have won all the arguments because there isn't a single benefit ever to Brexit, the question shouldn't have been asked and no one actually wanted it.

They should be a shoe in at the next election. All they need is decent leadership.

The Greens are likely to getting a drubbing at the next General Election.

Not because support for them has waned, but because people like me will be voting tactically for whoever I think can beat the Tory MP we currently have.

Which were the three elections in which a Remainer like me could have voted to stop Brexit?

Not for long.

If covid and Ukraine aren't holding other countries back as much as they are Britain then the obvious question is why?

And the answer is The Tories and Brexit.

I'm not sure it's in the best interest of any non-man to vote for the Greens.

@GasPanic Isn’t hissy fit on the Internet what you’re doing? You’ve posted waffle about lies and democracy, some of which is demonstrably false, none of which is new - but you’ve never answered the question as to the general benefits of Brexit or indeed how Brexit has benefited you personally.