To still be really sad and angry about Brexit

[OptimismvsRealism]

It really reduced the opportunities in my future and has achieved absolutely nothing of benefit for anyone else (besides disaster capitalists who made a mint off the financial manipulation effect). We haven't even avoided those stupid fecking tethers on the bottle lids!

When the extra immigration checks come in in October it's going to make every holiday a tiny bit upsetting.

And the new government won't even try to fix it.

Don't get me wrong I'm not one of those idealists singing ode to joy before breakfast but on a personal level it bloody sucks and seems likely it always will.

I think these threads tend to be vent threads so you get a lot of talk about how shit the UK is and how stupid leave voters are rather than actual debate. Plus the usual catch phrases - blue passports, sunny uplands, project fear etc.

I think many people who voted remain are quite rightly, and justifiably, very angry about how our country was plunged into a state of hatred and fear by a few very rich racists. And no, I don't think everyone who voted for Brexit is racist, but I'm damn sure that all racists voted for Brexit. And the quality of the 'discussion' often betrayed that fact, so it goes both ways. I am actually genuinely sorry for those who were hoodwinked and sold a lie, expecting their lives would be better once we rid ourselves of the EU, rather than realising it was Tory/ Lib Dem austerity. But I don't remember them affording much in the way of constructive discussion at the time. It was largely about 'sovereignty' and anyone who tried to engage them was called a snowflake, or part of the London 'elite'.

OK, I'll bite.

How is the UK today materially and tangibly better as a result of leaving the EU? What is great about the UK in 2024 that did not exist prior to 2016?

Absolutely nothing even by the measure of the immigration thing if that bothers someone

Spare a thought for 250 millions Americans who will never know what it's like to be in the EU. Doomed to a life of poverty and oppression without their guiding hand. Not just now but for all time.

There's just no way forward for them.

2 weeks annual leave a year, no employment protections, bankruptcy risk if they have a heart attack... We are very lucky to enjoy the remnants of EU protections. Sad that fantasists will eventually replace them with "how I'd like it to be if I were a millionaire rather than an IT project lead with 2 kids to support".

I'm old enough to remember life before the EU existed.

We lived on crusts of bread in the gutter and treated each other brutally as we didn't know any better.

Anything 'they' have told you about the long history of the UK is false. We were savages until the EU graciously took over and will be savages again now.

It's already affected the OP who is wishing people dead.

I feel the same OP. I can’t get over it.

So are my parents who were gutted about Brexit. Not because they were making ridiculous claims like your oh so hilarious parody but because they saw the huge benefits of free movement and the financial benefits to the country as a whole.

Nobody's claiming we couldn't function as a country before the EU or that we can't function now. But it's a functioning with far fewer additional benefits.

Which is shit.

My mum's 76 now and was furious with most of her generation for voting leave and mortified that people would assume she was one of them purely due to her age.

There was that little matter of Hitler murdering millions of Jews and others and attempting to conquer the world by slaughtering all those in his path, but perhaps that's trivial?

It was poor then and life was worse. Not sure why you'd prefer regression.

DappledThings, "Nobody's claiming we couldn't function as a country before the EU or that we can't function now"

Have you listened to the serious Remainers? They know there is no way forward and don't want to try. They see failure even as our economy grows relative to other EU countries because they need it to fail. It's gone from political position to an emotional obsession.

It is emotional. It's embarrassing. And sad. Doesn't mean we aren't getting on as best we can but we can also still mourn what's lost.

Yes. It's been a disaster and I don't think we've even seen the real impact yet. My teen son seems to acknowledge that his generation's task will be to rejoin.

I agree it has become an emotional obsession with some people. I wonder how they manage with other situations which don’t go their way?

Meanwhile us working class types saw our wages been reduced from in the £30k's to low £20k's because EU immigrants

you saw your wages reduced because UK employers refuse to pay fair wages. And of course if EU immigrants came here, you could have gone overseas to work and seek higher wages as they did

My husband has a Dutch mother and English father. He was born and bred here in England. His mother had the good sense to get him a Dutch passport "incase things go belly up", he would have an out.

So he is a European Union citizen and we have a daughter and we are applying for a Dutch passport for her too.

My son, from another relationship is getting married this year, to a European woman and the hoops they have to jump through, is insane. If he was a EU citizen, he'd be able to just move to Europe and work and live a life with his girlfriend. But no. He has to marry young, apply for citizenship with the country he will be living in.

I wish him every happiness and success. We have all lost so much.

I cried bitter tears when the results came in

Huh? I have literally no idea how you have missed the point I was making in this and my subsequent post. It didn't start with the slaughter of millions. It started several years earlier, in a democratic (at that time) political system. I am drawing parallels between the political and social period that allowed the rise of the Nazis, with the inherent danger of the policies of Reform UK in the modern era.

Michael Rosen articulates it far better than I can:

I sometimes fear that
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
worn by grotesques and monsters
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.

Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will restore your honour,
make you feel proud,
protect your house,
give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood,
remind you of how great you once were,
clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you...

It doesn't walk in saying,
"Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution."

Why should I get over something that I still have to live with the consequences of, daily? I choose to fight to get back in the EU.

I'd be happy with the Euro as a currancy too. It'd still have the King's head on it or whatever. But it would make travel spending so much easier.

Go in and all in, I say.

We're talking about removal of people's rights and protections and making the UK poorer in every conceivable way, not a game of Thumb War. "We won, get over it" doesn't quite cut it in these circumstances.

Sick man of Europe if I fondly recall 🤨

I haven’t ever said ‘we won’ because I voted remain, despite some misgivings. There has been a quite extraordinary response to Brexit and I believe it’s in no way fuelled by middle-class people caring about the poorest people in the UK, despite your claims. If they did actually care you would hear them talking about it more. Which they don’t.

It was addressed, at length and in great detail, but many leavers weren't interested in listening to anything that didn't conform to their narrative.

For example many of the 'ridiculous' EU directives (bendy banana anyone?) the leave campaign liked to claim were examples of the EU stomping all over sensible British people were developed, reviewed and fully supported by the UK government, and that's before we get started on the various opt-outs we had secured.

If people were genuinely concerned about national sovereignty then their focus should've been directed towards our first past the post electoral system that's underpinned by a hereditary monarch. Although the fact that many leavers now support people who would reduce democracy if they ever got to power suggests that wasn't really a major concern.

The best thing about first past the post is it’s kept the cranks, including the LibDebs out of power. Unfortunately there was that one time in 2010 when they sold us all up the fucking river.

You don't hear them talk about it because if they do they're told to 'get over it' and made to feel like a petulant child. Plenty of people still care, as evidenced on this thread. But the reality is that it's done now, and even if we rejoined it would be on much worse terms. So what's the point? Still entitled to feel very angry about such monumental change based on the slimmest of margins against a backdrop of lies and misinformation.

"Poorer in every conceivable way" is what the country has become. I'm not just referring to material wealth but social fabric.