please can you tell me any benefits of brexit

[battenburg100]

Hi everyone
I am desperate to find any advantages to brexit as I can't find any.
I am willing to hear of any success stories.

Travel abroad has become much harder - the issue with any extra months on a 10 year passport and the right number of months left on the passport - think 3 or 6 months.

Hiring a car abroad is harder - so much more extra paper work.

Much harder to live abroad due to the demand of certain amount in a bank account.

My sister who lives in Spain has had alot of barriers due to Brexit, in relation to coming back to living in the Uk and even her driving licence, in Spain now is not transferable - which wasnt the case before brexit.

I also find that travel abroad is even harder than ever - especially with this upcoming October when we have the implementation of the new ETIAS and the visa issue for whatever country we want to visit.

Has anything good from Brexit? Am I missing something?

It wasn't even that many, only 52 pc of those who voted.

If more remainers had voted, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Allegedly Farage applied for German citizenship and a German passport shortly after the Brexit referendum.
The hypocrisy is fucking insulting.

I'm no brexit expert but I've been aboard since to France, Spain, Netherlands and Germany, without issue?
My dh does all the hire car stuff and there has been no complaint?

But what I will say op is that your post is very shallow in terms of day to day issues like travelling aboard.
Brexit was about all sorts of things but I'm sure it went much deeper re the actual political union?like Having to align ourselves with a political block reliant on only 3 or 4 at most countries who actually make money?.
All the issues that come with trying to get parity and agreement with a lot of people in one room without the power to just do what we want?
So many other issues were paramount like crime without borders, trafficking, slaves, gun running, drugs let alone the mass scale corruption.

The black hole of eu corruption where our money was just "disappearing" means more to some that perceived travel technicalities to the continent? That only some people seem to experience?

I think you are very, very, naive if you think outside of the EU countries can just 'do what they want'.

Yes, indeed. Absolute nonsense.

And...what have our government done with the unbridled power to "do what we want"?

Well, they've basically tanked the country. The NHS is screwed, the roads are falling apart, councils are going bankrupt all over the country, the cost of living has gone through the roof, businesses going bust because of the cost of being outside the EU when most of their business was inside the EU, net migration being higher than it's ever been...all while they've spent most of the last 7 years fighting amongst themselves.

Do you suppose it might've been useful to have membership of an external political body that stopped them from doing daft, self-interested shit that'll wreck the country?

But hey, at least we might be able to send a few hundred people to Rwanda. Couldn't have done that while we were in the EU.

@ntmdino and how much has Rwanda cost to date?

@ntmdino I'm not a conservative and responses to posts like these are irritating because it feels like I'm defending them.
I'm not but at the moment many countries globally are suffering and especially those hit in the eu by the Ukraine war.
Germany has a lot of unrest, teetering on the recession and lots of problems on all fronts, same with Spain, France and Italy.

The NHS is a dying whale unfortunately and it needs to radical specialist help.

Do I want a another layer of government far away over the seas that I didn't elect that I don't know, that I can't follow easily in the news, that I can't get rid of, purely to Marshall a government I can vote in or out?
No.

Do I want a another layer of government far away over the seas that I didn't elect that I don't know,.......

Do you really think that one country we share a land border with, and one which is only separated by 20 miles of sea fits the bill.

Are you happy then being a part of the Trans Pacific Partnership, which is literally half way round the world, when we are not a Pacific nation?

What stopped you voting in the EU elections for MEPs?

Have you always had a UK Government that you wanted, or have you ever been represented by one which you wouldn't have voted for in a million years, and not stopped to wonder just how you could get that wretched Government out, since your vote didn't appear to count.

Well, for a start, you can vote for the EU representatives. That's the whole point.

But...sure, you can vote a government out every five years or so, if you happen to live in a contestable constituency...but look at the amount of damage that a poor government can do with a single 5-year term.

Yes, many countries are suffering, but not to the extent that we are. The economic damage inflicted on us by this government even if you just look at the last five years will take decades to recover from. From the day of the election to the day of the next, your vote means absolutely nothing...and charlatans like the current administration will take full advantage of that. This is why it's useful to have an external body that prevents their ineptitude from doing too much damage.

The fact is that the EU didn't really impose anything on us that we didn't already have a strong hand in creating in the first place - that's the part that so many folk want to avoid considering. Almost all EU legislation was implemented with our participation, and an awful lot of it was done at the UK's behest. The effect of the EU's presence was largely to prevent subsequent inept governments from changing their minds about things that previous actually competent UK governments had already decided on. You know, things like food standards - which the current crop would gladly neuter in order to do a trade deal with the US, to replace the trade deal they pulled us out of with the EU.

Yes but come on its hard enough to keep track our own government and mps and see what's going on in the news?

I do have a life like most people and I cannot imagine anyone, or many people who have the time to properly follow and hold to account eu mps and eu government.
Unfortunately some people have an idea in their heads that the eu parliament is somehow divested of basic human nature, that they are pure souls fighting for a higher, better cause, free of corruption, power highs and so on.

We would have still had this gov inspite of brexit so I'm not sure what point you are making there.

"the eu didn't impose anything on us that we didn't have a strong hand creating".
So which is it? We are totally incompetent generally and need the higher God's of the eu to marshal us or we actually helped to create the laws anyway?

Food standards?

British farming has been held to far higher standards for decades than most eu farms!

Check out Polish pig farms.

Unfortunately, whilst there has been talk of food standards there has been little teeth to actually promote the standards and Marshall farms and suppliers.
. Again look at us here, we try to have higher standards but every now and then we have an expose on free range chickens etc ( we also banned battery farms not sure if that's even happened in the eu yet).

Unfortunately corruption reaches everywhere, even our red tractor logos are often misleading.

As I said all this is hard enough to keep a tight lid on in the UK without opening that upto numerous other countries.

Yet you're happy to trade with countries on the other side of the globe with third world standards in farming, employee and womens' rights, amongst other things? That all makes sense then.

So which is it? We are totally incompetent generally and need the higher God's of the eu to marshal us or we actually helped to create the laws anyway?

It's neither. We used to co-operate and played a leading role in creating laws within the EU. The EU has agreed standards which are designed by and large to keep its citizens safe. We've now left the EU and are at the mercy of a group of bloody charlatans - the sewage in our waterways is one instance of this. It would be breaching EU law and now our government doesn't have to worry about this. And Boris Johnson sailed to victory in 2019 because he made the GE all about Brexit, so it's nonsense to claim that we'd have this government even without Brexit.

@EatenEasterChocsAlready - ""the eu didn't impose anything on us that we didn't have a strong hand creating".
So which is it? We are totally incompetent generally and need the higher God's of the eu to marshal us or we actually helped to create the laws anyway?"

No, that's a fundamental lack of understanding right there. It's not the political will of the EU that did the job - it's all that terrible bureaucracy that Boris and Nigel said was so awful. It's the EU's equivalent of the civil service that stopped most of the shenanigans in terms of standards and enforcing the agreements with other EU states.

And no, you don't elect them. You don't elect our civil service either, though, so it's not like there's anything to be lost there.

Right up to the point where the UK voted to leave, we were a political powerhouse in the EU. Almost every single vote on every piece of legislation we ever decided to care about went our way...when we had vaguely competent governments.

We stopped having a vaguely competent government around 2014, and that's when it all went to shit - especially when we had Farage et al as MEPs, who barely ever showed up to actually do their job. That's when we started losing out, and votes were no longer going our way.

Farage and co set this up deliberately. First they neuter our voice in the EU, then they tell everybody who can't be bothered to look any deeper that we don't have a voice in the EU and it's soooooo unfair.

This is the point. We used to have layers of safeguards. We had our government, we had the EU Parliament, and we had our very influential voice in that Parliament, with all the benefits that came with it. Now we have none of those things.

Hell, the only remaining protection we have against our government is the Supreme Court, and that's only for the most egregious breaches of the law (rather than defence against abhorrent and damaging policies). And what's happened? The government has spent the last year at war with the Supreme Court, because it doesn't like the fact that - after getting rid of the EU - there's still somebody left to challenge their power.

This is not a good state of affairs, and - as far as the UK population goes - it's entirely self-inflicted.

Yes but come on its hard enough to keep track our own government and mps and see what's going on in the news?

I do have a life like most people and I cannot imagine anyone, or many people who have the time to properly follow and hold to account eu mps and eu government.

Do you mean people didn't understand what they were voting for?
How easy those people would have been for Farage and Co to manipulate.

Not having to contribute to the salaries of Nigel Farage and other idiotic and embarrassing UKIP/ Brexit MEPs, who hated the EU but loved its gravy train.

That's about all I can think of.

Scotland has approximately 25% of Europe's offshore energy potential and is a leading player in the renewables sector.

But you're right, we need to do a Norway and ensure the revenue generated from those resources is used to benefit 5.5m people instead of 68m and the only way to do that is to leave the union.

If we stay we'll see no benefit from this resource, just like we got/get no benefit from our oil and gas. Remember is completely self-sufficient in energy (and would be an net-exporter if independent) yet we have the highest bills in the UK (and Europe) AND, despite most of the energy resources of the UK coming from Scotland, get charged more to send energy to the grid.

Don't forget water. Scotland is likely to become the UK water fountain.

I think that's fair, sadly.

Yes, it’s appalling. I am very ashamed of this.

Well said. It is hard to fathom how people can think like this!
Also, let’s not forget when we thought it was perfectly fine to go back on the deal when it suited us. 😡

For medicines, pre-Brexit, the UK wrote a lot of the EU legislation and assessed a high proportion of the licence applications submitted to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), with their decisions being respected and followed worldwide. The UK medicines agency (MHRA) was also located close to the EMA in London and so they worked closely together.

Post-Brexit, the EMA has moved to the Netherlands, and the MHRA now plans to recognise medicines licences granted by the EU and from countries outside of the EU rather than fully assess applications themselves - so will basically just accept the decisions that other countries make, the complete opposite of the UK “taking back control”.

At least Northern Ireland is to all intents and purposes still in the EU unfortunately no longer fully part of the UK.

Despite the best efforts of the DUP.

Jeez, you’re right, it’s absolutely not all to do with travel. For lots of us, losing our businesses solely due to Brexit is even more important. Oh, and losing a huge number of highly qualified workers and potential workers in key sectors. Oops, I forgot about the loss of funding and collaboration for medical research. Or maybe we could think of the kids who now can’t afford to study abroad because the scheme that replaced Erasmus is atrocious. But it’s ok because you travelled to the Netherlands just fine