To want Brexit be reversed

[BeKookySheep]

I don’t normally post about politics, but this has been playing on my mind for a while. I wasn’t super political before the referendum — just a mum trying to do her best for her family. But now, years later, I really feel like Brexit hasn’t delivered what we were promised. And I think we should seriously start talking about reversing it.

My eldest is 16, really bright, and had dreams of studying languages and maybe doing a year abroad. We looked into Erasmus a while ago, but that’s gone now. And the cost and hassle of studying or working in Europe is so much higher now. She asked me, “Why is it so much harder for us than it was for you, Mum?” And honestly, I didn’t know what to say. It hit me hard.

Everything’s more expensive — our food shop has gone up loads, and don’t even get me started on getting certain things for school packed lunches! Little things, but they add up. My brother runs a small business and he's drowning in paperwork just to send stuff to Ireland. And a friend of mine left the NHS because she felt so overstretched — they can’t recruit enough staff anymore, especially from Europe.

Brexit hasn’t made anything better. It’s just made life harder in so many small but important ways. And if something clearly isn’t working — and is limiting our children’s futures — why shouldn’t we talk about changing it?

We tell our kids it’s okay to admit when something’s not right and make it better. Maybe it’s time we took our own advice.

Would love to hear if others are feeling the same. Has Brexit made life harder for your family too?

I would too but I voted remain so was never in favour - though mainly voted as status quo seemed better than obvious pitfalls of leaving.

But there is a poltcial reluctance to re-join as they fear as subset of voters don't want to still and they are in strategic seats.

Plus not sure how EU feel really - what terms would we get - would taking Euro be an issue this time.

The European Union is no longer fit for purpose in the twenty-first century.

Decades of over-regulation within the protectionist Eurocentric Single Market has caused the economies of the EU27 to stagnate, become globally uncompetitive and completely miss the boat on the digital economy.

Not since classical antiquity has an enduring civilisation emerged that used the continental European model as a template for its government and legal system. We know that embracing the free markets, using common law under a parliamentary democracy is the better system, because it has worked, time and again. This is why the Anglosphere has been so successful and why there is no equivalent positive international footprint left by the EU27.

Putting continental Europeans in charge of supranational decision making was a mistake. Paying them £10 billion per year to cause the entire continent to underperform its western peers was off-the-scale stupidity.

Leaving the EU was not some kind of fiendishly cunning 5D manoeuvre. It was just common sense. The time had come to jump.

It will take decades for the UK to remember what it is and what it does so well; we need to de-Europeanise our institutions, economy, regulations and mindset and re-posture ourselves as a proper Anglosphere nation. The EU should do the same if they wish to curb their decline.

Good, strong leaders unite people, however hard things are for individuals, good leaders manage to bring people together and make people believe we can achieve something positive together. If you're lucky you'll have experienced this kind of leadership in some area of your life. As a country we have not had that kind of leader for a very long time. Keir had an opportunity to bring people together but he is as divisive as Farage, just in a different way. Large groups of the population don't feel listened to. People have no hope. Until we have a quality leader who can inspire, give hope, listen, unite, the rest of it is irrelevant.

I voted remain, but have witnessed from European friends a kind of glee that we are up shit's creek. Call it schadenfreude, if you like. I'm not sure they'd have us back.

I do think those responsible for the Brexit bus and misinformation should be in prison. But there seems to be no accountability in politics.

Or to put it another way:

Just suppose your close friend has this great idea whereby you pay her £20 every week to be her friend. In return, she buys you a glass of wine every week, but she decides which pub you go to, and which type of wine you are going to have.

Then with the remainder of the £20 she asks 3 others in the pub if they would like a free glass of wine, and as a result becomes very popular. She then tells them they can all go to your house and help themselves to any wine they can find there.

Any money remaining she gives to a beggar on the street on the condition that they do nothing whatsoever.

This was our relationship with the EU.

What do Brexiteer's excuses matter? We are not better off for it. They believed lies. They sacrificed our wellbeing for some ethereal notion of "sovereignty".

Their vote damaged this country for all of us and our children. Particularly poorer sections of society and poorer children.

If you really think rejoining is going to make things better you are incredibly naive. A lot has happened since Brexit. And I can assume you we certainly would not be able to rejoin on previous terms, will be penalised as far as they n to make sure no one else leaves, have to have the euro etc etc

There is so much out there that just the EU

I think it would be in the interests of both the UK and the EU if we rejoined but I am ot not sure whether the political willingness is there on both sides

@atotalshambles do you think there should be a referendum to decide whether we rejoin or not (provided the EU would have us back)?

You forgot the Welsh fuckwits who were also more inclined to vote Leave.

@BeKookySheep Never gonna happen. If there was another Brexit referendum tomorrow, LEAVE would win again. Surely you can tell that, with the fierce amount of support for REFORM?!

We've left the EU, quite a long time ago now. Time to move on I'm afraid, and accept that we are not going back into it.

Not true at all. There were massive subsidies from the EU for deprived areas. Farmers were supported by EU subsidies. The fishing industry has been decimated by Brexit.

All the lies were exposed at the time. Anyone who voted to leave when all the evidence made it quite clear that this would be the outcome who now regret it are so lacking in basic intelligence I have no interest in what they now think

it was very obvious to this of us who voted to remain.

play stupid games. Win stupid prizes. This is why democracy is flawed. Some people are too stupid to be allowed to vote

Brexit happened due to a mixture of hubris, exceptionalism, racism and ignorance.

Reverse all those and it would be a great UK.

Won't happen though, because of continuing hubris, exceptionalism, racism and ignorance.

I'm still waiting to see this for the £350 million a week we were sending to the EU.😂😂😂

No country has complete political autonomy any more. Every country is subject to global economic trends, and global events, such as wars.

Do you really think that the UK could operate independently in the Ukraine after the way we have run down our military defence to the absolute bone?

Also how you can call the EU corrupt and not mention Boris’s government, which was one of the most corrupt we have ever had, I simply do not know!

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/11/uk-fails-to-improve-on-record-low-ranking-in-global-table-of-corruption

And of course when it comes to trade, where there is a will, there is a way, but the point is, at what cost to the ordinary consumer and to the economy as a whole?

And of course people like Lord Wolfson, who incidentally earns around £5 million a year, voted for Brexit because companies like Next can afford their own EU hub.

But what about the thousands of small British companies which have ceased trading with counterparts in the EU and vice versa because the cost of tax and customs is too great now we are outside of the single market?

https://www.export.org.uk/insights/trade-news/as-many-as-20-000-small-businesses-have-stopped-exporting-to-eu-since-2019-says-new-report/

The overall economic climate doesn’t look too great for the UK either tbh:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrynjz1glpo.amp

I think this kind of belief was part of the problem. Working class people absolutely did benefit from being in the EU but they didn't necessarily see the EU as being the source of those benefits.

I'm involved with a number of charities that have had to cut services for deprived communities as a result of losing their EU funding. The funding from central government that was supposed to replace the EU subsidies has been woefully inadequate. The charities in question get a lot of complaints about the fact that those services are no longer running, but few people will connect the reduction in services with Brexit.

The people I knew who voted for it had 3 things in common:

• don't like foreign travel so don't go (not a financial issue)
• don't know how anything works but still have opinions (for example think academic research or industrial research don't need international cooperation to succeed; don't know anything about working abroad so can't fathom that year abroad thing for students, that's just 2 examples)
• casually borderline racist about things like people not speaking English, don't understand the difference between asylum seekers and economic migrants

And a fourth, I suppose: didn't really show any interest in learning about the things they don't know about, because they judged that as people talking down to them.

I honestly feel like all the power in this country is feeding towards the people who, it can't be stressed enough, are not necessarily terrible people but they don't know how shit gets done. When there are millions of people who DO know but they have been sent into this category called 'woke' or 'ivory tower' or 'typical leftie' - yet they actually are experts in things like JIT imports or vegetable freight systems aaarghghghghg it's so fucking frustrating and ultimately doomed to total failure.

I'd like us to rejoin, but it's not ready to happen yet. Tories and Labour are falling over themselves pandering to the racist idiot vote, twisting themselves into all sorts of contortions to avoid admitting that they were simply wrong about Brexit, and are wrong about immigration. Some fresh political movement - maybe arising out of a combination of youth consciousness, new media, trade unions when they finally give up on Labour, and the Green Party - needs time to emerge and develop the numbers first.

God knows how much damage will be done by then.

…did you vote for Brexit? A lot of people who voted against Brexit foresaw many of the issues you have mentioned….hence they didn’t vote for Brexit.

Brexit happened due to a mixture of hubris, exceptionalism, racism and ignorance.

And for some bizarre reason Brexit has fuelled even more of this.

Oh yeah, the EU would 'have us back,' in the blink of an eye, along with our tasty £350 MILLION a week we contributed. We were the second biggest contributer in 2017 out of 28 counties, and (along with Germany, and a few others,) we were keeping around 20 countries afloat who were taking more out than they were contributing.

No wonder people voted to leave. There was never any advantage to being in the EU, for any ordinary citizen in the UK, and it cost the country £350 million a week. Glad we left.

Agree with @LongDistanceClara44 and @PollsCantBeTrusted. The EU is broken by over-regulation and unaccountability. We are broken by weak leaders.

Who is left to vote for then?

Everyone I know who voted for brexit was for UK to be able to have their own elected officials making decision instead of European commission. That has been achieved so I'd imagine they think Brexit was a success. Nobody I know fell for any of the "lies".

While I don't support brexit (family life is a lot more difficult, having visa struggles and likely won't be able to live with my partner), I'm not sure everything can be pinned on brextit. Other eu countries are having a lot of similar problems. I also think the problem was that during the referendum the politicians didn't expect this to happen so they didn't really have a plan and all politicians are making this up as they go. And the the covid happened. While I don't agree with Brexit I think this can be made to work like with other non-eu countries but there just isn't a proper plan in place.

Also I think UK had messed up a few things while they were in EU. A lot of eu countries had limits in their freedom of movement that UK never had.

OK love. But if a significant proportion of the electorate share your level of economic illiteracy, then we are sadly fucked as a nation.

And with Reform on the rise, I think we all need to be ready for things to get much, much worse.