To think blaming Brexit for all our current issues is outdated

[Bethatlass]

When Brexit was being voted on in 2016 Obama was president in the US, George Osborne was chancellor, David Cameron was prime minister, most people had never even heard of Wuhan in China. Since then we’ve had a trump presidency, a way in Ukraine, a global pandemic, massive political change etc. To put it into context my own DD was still in primary school when it happened and is now ready to go off to university in a matter of months. I’m not denying that Brexit has caused and contributed to some of the current issues. However, none of us could have possibly known about Ukraine or the pandemic when we were voting on it and none of us could have possibly known the change in politics we would have of those delivering it. FWIW I didn’t vote leave, although I was torn at the time, while I still think I was right to vote remain I don’t blame those who felt differently almost a decade ago. Therefore, Aibu to think that blaming those who voted for Brexit/Brexit itself for all our current issues is outdated.

@Crikeyalmighty they have openly said they are pro Brexit, Starmer said so himself. Don't start telling me about some imaginary plan they have to reverse Brexit without proof.

Not quite. They acknowledge we’re stuck with it and need to make it as palatable as possible which isn’t the same thing at all.

There's only two things I dislike about the Tories: Their face.😆

Ouch!

@Blossomtoes but we are not stuck with it, the voters have the power to reverse the decision, we don't have to make the most of it at all.

Tell me how voters have the power to reverse it. Of course we’re stuck with it. Do you seriously think the EU would have us back again on the terms we had when we left?

You don't actually have any evidence for the claim that the majority of the electorate wanted a hard Brexit. It wasn't on the ballot.

And given that nearly half of the electorate voted to remain, you would need pretty much every single leave voter wanting a hard Brexit to make it a majority. And I don't believe that was the case.

Either way, you can't substantiate your claim because the Tories worded the question on the ballot paper so poorly. And that's part of the reason why they are to blame. We will never really know what the public were voting for because a complex issue was reduced to a simplistic binary choice.

@Blossomtoes well, we could ask to rejoin the single market to begin with but neither Labour nor Conservatives are even suggesting it. Or you could just give up, I suppose?

It's only on MN I see people hysterical about Brexit all the time. In my day to day life no one really mentions it at work and in my social circle.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves you can hardly say this mess is just down to the choice on the ballot paper? The Tories originally wanted the question do you want to stay in the EU and it is the electoral commission who required them to to change to do you want to be a member of EU or leave Europe. The Commission felt the initial Tory question was too pro European!

Not really. The impact of Brexit is still happening. It has probably been delayed a little due to Covid (and the time it took to implement of course). Unfortunately I think it will get worse too.

And I would absolutely support that.

I don't think either of the main parties will be brave enough to suggest that yet, though.

It is wrong to say that the Labour Party is pro-brexit. There are of course Labour Party members who supported Brexit but I don't think that is the stance of the Labour Party as a whole, and definitely not Keir Starmer. They are just lacking the guts to say what they really think and they have therefore adopted the stance of "respecting the will of the people and trying to make it work". I think they know it won't work though, so I agree that their position is far from desirable.

The current lot of Tories seem pretty much bought into Brexit too, so voters who want to rejoin the single market are limited in terms of where they can go, as this currently stand.

Well put.

I'm a non-EU immigrant to an EU country and was seconded to the UK in 2016 when the Brexit vote happened. I was truly dumb-founded... surely no European in their right mind would choose to be non-EU unless they had never actually spoken to a non-EU migrant and simply asked "hey, what's it like?" Bloody difficult, that's how it is.

That poor British lad will come home with an eye-wateringly expensive degree and no job because his countrymen chose to piss his options up the wall.

It's heartbreaking.

IMO, the best Labour can do is try to soften the current Brexit. The UK can't just rejoin - you haven't even implemented Brexit properly yet (NI, inward custom checks to name but a few) and there is absolutely no way the UK is rejoining with the special benefits it had before: freedom of movement, no rebate and likely join the Euro/schengen will be on the table. I don't think the UK population is ready to rejoin on worse conditions than it left on. Joining the single market means accepting the four freedoms, no ifs or buts.

Also, the UK conversations always fail to take into consideration what the EU thinks. I don't think people quite understand just how much hassle the UK has caused. While of course you had the right to leave, the way in which it has been done has been pretty insulting. The reputation of Britain has been destroyed by Brexit and the Tory persual of hard Brexit including the refusal to respect international treaties it has signed. The door may be open to rejoin but I think the UK is a long way from the house.

I live in an EU country and specialist FB groups are full of older Brits trying to write business plans to allow them to move and work in the country and younger Brits trying to find employers prepared to go through the hassle of getting them visas to fill minimum wage jobs for the holidays. Yes, it is possible but it is soooo much more difficult.

You can pick holes in individual indicators of British decline since Brexit but when practically every economic data set points in the same direction of British underperformance, you have to accept Brexit is the problem.

The lack of nuanced options on the ballot paper was part of the problem, absolutely. Not the only cause of the current mess, as I have already highlighted in my other posts, but certainly a contributing factor. The electorate could have been given a range of additional options, e.g. stay in the customs union, stay in the single market etc.

There is simply no evidence to support your argument that the majority wanted a hard Brexit because the question was never asked.

And in the absence of that information, alongside the fact of an extremely close result in the referendum campaign, it seems utterly perverse that Theresa May jumped to the conclusion that the only option was a very hard Brexit. The common sense approach would have been to acknowledge that nearly half of the electorate had wanted to remain in the EU and therefore go for a much softer "leave" option. They chose not to.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves the question was dictated by the electoral commission in the end so you need to redirect your blame on them. Teresa unsuccessfully tried to find a consensus from MPs on both sides, and that consensus was more hard than soft. Ultimately, the voters wanted to leave Europe not to be half in and half out.

@Blossomtoes exactly- I think lucky dip is reading his comments far too literally . Saying you have to work with what we have got is definitely not the same as being pro Brexit. He most certainly wasn't pro Brexit at any point. My son is very into party politics and a labour member , goes to meetings etc and the general consensus appears to be that initially there has to be a concentration on some other urgent economic and social fundamentals rather than a 100% distraction around the EU for a while and I do get that -

No, the question wasn't "dictated" by the electoral commission. The electoral commission doesn't have the power to do that.

They can amend the wording to ensure that the question isn't loaded too heavily in either direction, or to ensure that it is easy for the public to understand etc, but they absolutely don't get to dictate the content of the questions. There is no reason why the Tory government couldn't have offered a more nuanced range of options.

Whether you like it or not, it was their choice to hold a referendum in the first place, and it was their choice to reduce the issue to a simple binary choice. The combined effect of those decisions has been extremely damaging.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves it is quite ridiculous for you to blame the Tories for Brexit. It was the voters who wanted a hard Brexit and that is what they got.

@Crikeyalmighty but why isn't KS prepared to actually say, Brexit has been bad for Britain and we need to do something about it, he hasn't even said that.

Hysterical?
Nobody is here is being hysterical. Unless you're referring to my witty quip upthread.

I think we all know it was a choice that should never have been given.

@Luckydip1 for the reasons I said below- personally I don't agree with this strategy but I do kind of understand what I suspect is the reasoning. I think our voting system is 100% to blame for politicians not actually being prepared not to sit on the fence. The fact is he is unlikely to win without some of those red wall seats back and there more of those seats voted leave- places like my original home town in Mansfield- lots of these places have a lot of voters whose views align quite closely with ukip -

@MissyB1 hindsight is a wonderful thing isn't it

@Crikeyalmighty therein lies the point, politicians need to appeal to the majority to get the vote, so do you blame them or the voters!

Because it would be bloody pointless to say that. He’d be an idiot to make promises he can’t keep.