The problem with Brexit is we didn't Brexit hard enough

[Middlelanehogger]

The EU itself was just the start.

But there are still more institutions which still influence our laws and make it impossible to actually achieve "taking back control".

If anything, we've left the trading bloc (which had economic benefits) but stayed in many of the legal institutions (which retain control over us).

So which body do we leave next - the ECHR? The ECJ? Keenly awaiting responses 😘

That’s how the idiots who vote directing see it , obviously not the issue at all . The more isolated and less influential Britain is the queen it’s with will be

Eh?

Didn't we used to be known as the dirty man of Europe? Polluting their forests with our acid rain?

That’s how the idiots who vote directing see it , obviously not the issue at all . The more isolated and less influential Britain is the queen it’s with will be

Darling, I think your Google translate let you down there 😂

There was a book with that title published in 1991 - so during our membership of the EEC (at the time).

We have been pretty bad neighbours (and bad stewards of our own environment) for ages, both in and out of the EEC/EU. It's not a new thing.

The Vote Leave Campaign has said on record that it was a deliberate strategy to be vague and to appeal to as many people as possible by making lots of suggestions about what brexit could be rather than giving a fixed goal about brexit would mean in practice.

Indeed. I recall Martin Lewis being asked about specific economic effects and saying he couldn't answer because with a simple binary in/out vote one couldn't predict the future direction. I think he was right at the time. it's completely reasonable and understandable that remain voters are now able to point to things and say "I told you this would happen" but not all predictions have come true - some things haven't happened and some have been much worse than envisaged even by some reaminers - which is really what Martin Lewis was trying to say I think. As a PP observed, it's an evolving picture.

😂😂😂😂

Yes! I second the idea of relocating the whole island far away from the EU.
That will sort our problems 😂

I posted something about a week before the ref which has aged well. Nick Clegg posted something similar a few days later.

The gist was about NI being the major issue, voting for leave handing decision making to ultra rich Tories who decided what brexit would look like and that would create a power vacuum in which there would be a battle for control, corruption being a feature of all forms of government but in having power outside our shores it actually helped us reduce it here. How it would mean immigration issues would move from France to the UK and we'd end up moving the Sangatte camp problem here to within our own shores.

As well as some other bits and pieces.

I'll try and find it in a bit.

So I would argue that a fair amount of what happened was fairly predictable. For anyone who really understand the dynamics of the vote and how the crucial lack of shape to what Brexit was was the most fundamental feature of the vote not the vote itself.

So I will ask.

If you remove the ECHR, what fills it's place?

Until you know that, you are insane to just say 'we should leave it'.

From my experience the large majority of leave voters voted for Brexit because of immigration.

Of course not everyone out of these voters hated the same type of immigrants. Some weren't fond of EU immigrants in genet , some didn't like Muslim immigrants, some didn't like certain type of EU immigrants (like Albanians)....

But immigration was a big factor.

I myself am an EU immigrant. After Brexit I was asked by a few people "What are you doing here?" with the question followed "Are you planning to go back at some point?"

They asked in a polite British way, but it was obvious to me where that question came from.

This is my recollection and also watching the excellent Benedict C Leave programme backs up my view that the Leave campaign was absolutely driven to win using whatever messaging worked best.

The top lines were broad and emotive and worked. But they weren’t specific nor related to detail of CU or SM

Voters just thought about Brexit which was still quite abstract

I’m sure some people were asking decent questions but they were buried under the campaigning

By the same token and logic, any leave voter who tells you they knew what they were voting for us either naive or an out and out liar because they couldn't know what they were voting FOR.

They could only possibly know what they were voting AGAINST.

@ichundich?

I don't have a brand new blue pass port and I certainly don't care for passport colour.

My family have lived and worked in Europe and world wide no matter what the colour of of their passport. My relatives in Germany and Italy say its not all roses there.

Well not really red, no.
I certainly don't remember life before we fully became incorporated into the eu but many or the older generation did and yes one can't lump all older people together, many did vote to come out for a myriad of complicated and serious reasons including... They remembered life before.

In any political campaign you will find all sorts going on at the margins whilst either side tries to win over the undecided people

"crucial lack of Shape"...

Of a new found land forging it's way in the world... No.

One of the world's oldest and most successful democracies!

A lack of shape indeed!bizzare.

They remembered history.

You can't go back in time.

As I say they were either staggeringly naive or lying.

If they were voting to return to a point in time that had long since past. That's staggeringly naive.

There was no way you could return to that era because the world had changed in terms of integration - notably completely ignoring the effect of schengen on a significant part of the EU and the effect of the roll out of the Euro.

And this is how the adults don’t speak.

how disgusting of you to refer to more than half the population as morons.

when you decide to be an adult - maybe we will stop rolling our eyes at you.

I don't think it was that complicated. They're imply remembered that we had been independent.

The eu also started as a trading block and morphed into so many other things areas of life.

Mission creep.

Red it's extremely important however to remember history.

History will tell us that every single alliance in the past in Europe failed. History will also show us how the baddies took over in many guises.

Many people, historians among them simply didn't want another layer of government on top of our own. A government in the shadows no less who we don't really know.

Benn? Who are they, can we take their power away?

A government taking billions form eu countries and losing it downloaded the black hole of corruption.

Interesting that corbyn and his cronies we're on the same side as the tories.

@CuriouslyDifferent

Don't be cross with that poster.

People have been really afraid and don't know their names history. They may havr no context or perspective and they are really frightened.

Not everyone did a proper investigation and research into both sides pros and cons, casting the net wide to really make an informed descion

You can only move forward taking into account change and history.

You can't separate the two.

In 1991 we didn't have the tunnel. Joining the EU and the opening of the tunnel changed our travel and transportation methods and our supply chains forever.

It meant we could import and export much more easily and became dependent on that relationship which relied on minimal border checks.

In forgetting all this in a nostalgic rose tinted view of the world, we were exposed to problems.

That's why it's staggeringly naive.

We couldn't return to 1991.

In voting against the EU without acknowledging these issues never mind addressing them before the referendum we doomed ourselves to a right mess.

That's before you even think about the implications of the Good Friday Agreement.

I stand by my point and triple down on it. And then times it by infinity.

No one knew what they were voting FOR when they voted leave. They could only possibly know what they were voting against.

Oh yes the tunnel.... Linked us to the eu.

Red in the nicest way that's the absolute weakest argument I've ever come across!

How so?

Please explain to me how changes in our supply chains which meant we increased the amount of trade we did with the EU and made us more reliant on it and how trade barriers and borders within the EU being removed made it harder for us to compete with the internal market. And how the EU regulations that we adhered to, as part of the EU which we still have to comply with if we want to trade suddenly disappeared. Or how the cost of shipping shit from the other side of the world compared to driving it from our neighbours suddenly was going to make everything cheaper with the decline in reserves of fossil fuels.

Seriously. You haven't a scooby do if you thought we could return the world in 1991 on leaving. You really are deluded and naive.

You can try and argue the case until you are blue in the face, but we simply would not have had all the upheaval and political instability if it were that easy.

If you think my argument is 'the weakest' I really think you need to go read seven years worth of Hansard records.