To ask if anyone still thinks Brexit was a good idea?

[KimberleyClark]

Genuinely curious. I can't see how it has improved things at all.

YANBU - Brexit was a terrible idea
YABU - it was a great idea

@SerendipityJane well they don't make laws, they approve them or send them back to the commons. But there is a very good argument for doing away with the lords, but on balance I don't think it hurts to have a house subject bills to further scrutiny. But the existence of the lords doesn't suddenly make a federal and unaccountable Europe acceptable to me.

@Everanewbie of course I don’t think a “world government” is a good idea, but we as a country are signed up to a multitude of agreements which keep our actions to some extent in check. It’s part of the “least worst” way to run the world as it is at the moment.

And again, no, I accept it when a government I don’t approve of is in power (although some of the specific actions of the current one leave much to be desired). But they, and past Labour AND Tory governments, signed up to those floors for rights etc and I was grateful to have that check in place.

Also @Everanewbie sorry but the EU is about as accountable as our government. Elected politicians - MEPs. Elected heads of state - the Council. Extensive, published debate on every single piece of law they make. Before we left, a right for one state to veto any bit of legislation.

@Everanewbie you speak as if we didn't have representatives in it or the power of veto - we also had a great deal of influence in it till theTorys got in in 2010 and toned it down to please the headbangers in their party.

The fact is we have lost influence in the world generally and certainly commercially for many businesses. I wouldn't invest here unless I had a totally UK centric business. All we have essentially done is handed much of our best business to EU competitors on a plate. Do you have a business operating mainly within UK and EU as that's where the market is and always will be for your product? (we do sell to rest of world too but that isn't where the market is) I do, and it is now full of beauracratic red tape, huge costs , tax and VAT issues . I find that people that don't factor all this in usually have very UK centric business and don't give a shit about others businesses.

To be frank I quite like the fact there were checks and balances within the EU that would stop the Tory's making outrageously awful and very poorly thought out policies.

An example today is Rwanda and cleverly saying this is 'what the British public want' - I clearly missed that referendum. It's the whole manner of 'we will do whatever we want and push through changing the law to suit our ideology' - that is not democratic- the top law court disagreed- so off they go tinkering around with the law and burning £295 million in the process.

You don’t have to have a referendum on everything though. The U.K. through letters and email to the media, to MP’s through surveys and research will say that “people” want less illegal immigration and probably less legal migration into the U.K. as well.

Which is fine except refugees of all types are coming through safe EU countries to be here. Despite the Tories and how terrible the whole place is. So Rwanda is both the deterrent and somewhere safer than where they’ve originally come from.

European (EU) countries seem to be able to jail their corrupt politicians, not so here in the UK.
Italy jailed their former leader, as did the French....

So either we aren't corrupt enough (Iraq war and PPE/Covid scandals/Grenfell etc etc would suggest otherwise) OR don't hold our politicians to account?

atm we aren't responsible neighbours, far from it, we cannot even bring ourselves to be part of Europol, essential in order to fight organise crime inc trafficking gangs.

No idea why you think there is going to be a European wide government, the eU struggles to agree on much at all, even their much vaunted "regulations" are pretty lame,
The UK is the King of red tape, most of it utterly pointless, as a CEO friend of mine said a few years ago "Its easier to export to Lisbon than it is to send stuff to Luton"