If you voted for brexit did you get what you wanted?

[Poutl]

I’m definitely not a sneery anti-brexiter. I get that 50% of the population had legitimate concerns and did what they thought was best for the country. But my question is: did the thing that was so intolerable as a result of being a part of the EU get resolved for you by way of brexit?

I just don’t see what the point of it all was.

Yes, it is like losing a leg to a car accident and stating that losing the leg was the benefit. Why do people not understand that?

Essentially the tautological benefit of Brexit was Brexit.

I don’t understand why remainers want to see a tangible benefit from Brexit, why can’t there not be any? Brexit itself was the benefit despite all the things we have lost.

I agree the main benefit is being out of the EU. On balance, at the time of the vote, I felt that a future outside of the EU was better than one in it because at least outside of the EU we have potential to do great things. OK we haven't, because we just replace one shit lot of MPs with another lot of shit MPs (a bit like swapping a box full of golden retriever turds for a box full of doberman turds, maybe one is less bad but it's still unpleasant shit). But the point is, in the unlikely event we ever elect a government of capable people, the country has the potential to prosper.

Remember, we weren't voting to remain in the EU as it was in 2016, permanently frozen in time. We were voting to continue a process of ever-closer union.

The choice to me in 2016 wasn't clear cut. I saw the choices as a worse future in the EU, or a worse future out of it. The decision was not which would improve our lives, it was which would be the least terrible in the long term.

At the time my feeling was that if we left the EU, for a decade or so things would be worse than if we remained, but after that they might be better. I now feel two decades is more realistic. I made the mistake of assuming if we voted leave, remainers would get behind the idea eventually and decide that it was better to make the best of the situation rather than hope things went badly so they could say "I told you so." That was a mistake on my part. Another mistake was thinking we'd leave within a year or so of the vote and not drag it out until the end of the decade. Then Covid hit and the whole world took a hammering.

It's important to remember that the pre-vote Cameron period was hardly a golden era. It's also important to note that the rest of the world has suffered from many of the same things Britain has suffered from since leaving the EU. Inflation, energy costs and mass migration are problems many countries have.

Yes things are worse now than they were in 2016. But they'd be worse than they were back then if we had voted to remain. Honestly I don't feel any regret at the way I voted. If anything, it just reinforces my feeling that however we vote in any referendum or election it doesn't really matter. The only reliable truth is "today is bad, but tomorrow will be worse."

Everyone I know that voted for brexit did it to so that they wouldn't have to have country legislation decided by unelected eu commisioners. They're happy cause that did happen.

The claim that the EU is run by unelected bureaucrats shows a deep misunderstanding of how the EU is governed. The extent of the power they have over individual country legislation is minimal. This is one of the lies trumpeted by the leave campaign.

We have to take on a lot of EU legislation anyway due to the global economy we live in now. Not to mention that it just makes a lot of sense. Just as an example the EU recently legislated that bottle tops should be attached to bottles/cartons etc because the individual lids were not being recycled and were causing a lot of environmental damage. The UK did not want to introduce this but due to economies of scale companies are not going to make an EU lid and a UK lid so the UK now gets the EU lid.

Going forward the EU will continue to get stronger, the contries within it will get wealthier and we are massively missing out by isolating ourselves. We had such a sweet deal within the EU and so much power and now we have no say at all but will have to take on much of the rules anyway to stay competitive.

For any that look outside the UK, or even their front door will have seen that Europe in general has many problems and most of them are the same as the UK in 2016. The war in Ukraine and the stranglehold of Russia and the USA on gas and oil supplies to Western Europe has caused a massive shift in world trade, combined with other wars the world is in a LOT more precarious state than the happy days around 2012 or thereabouts before Putin invaded Chechyia and so on. The promises by Leave relied on total world stability and left no room for upheavals. The EU is tasked with climate change countermeasures and self reliance as world trade (shipping stuff relatively cheaply) was trashing the planet and not sustainable. The UK has put itself into isolation and falls out of many agreements it had before Brexit so 'prospering' will be doubly difficult, as therre is not much that people in Asiatic countries really want or need specifically from the UK that they cannot get locally. Thus the 'trading globally' argument for Leave has been trashed.

Exactly. Well said. This is just a minuscule example. Then widen it 1000%.

Meanwhile we are still banging on about a mythical 'special relationship' with the USA.

We had a seat at head of the table with our continental neighbours and serious clout as a member of the EU. I struggle to understand why some still think Brexit was a good idea. When you leave aside the self serving agendas of disaster capitalists, ideological nutjobs, and the bigots who still feast on right wing tabloid media, who does this act of monumental self harm help?

The UK is a madhouse. We adore the Royals whilst blaming poor brown folk on boats for everything that is wrong and broken.

Maybe this new government will inject some much needed common sense to a very very lost nation.

It really doesn't matter though.

We will rise or fall on our own innovation and profitable ideas.

The vote for the Nazis in 1930 has resulted in Germany being a world leading country post WW2.
Voting Trump or Biden has made very little difference to the world

Moan if you want but actually nice people with good ideas are still possible post EU.