“Everybody thought the EU was about people coming into the country … no-one told of us the benefits”.

[MrsMurphyIWish]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2136jnjx1o

And the response to this very now deprived community is to vote Reform.

“Brexit has removed a key source of funding, which the area desperately needs. County Durham received £154m of EU funding between 2014 and 2020, about £22m a year. Since the UK left the European Union, it receives about half that amount, £12m annually, under the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.”

The story is sad (and typical of deprived areas - I know, I live in one). Towns feeling forgotten and never recovering from closed industry but why can they not see history will repeat itself?

Very true.

Well, quite.

Madness prevails.

There's no helping such stupidity. I have sympathy for the remainers.

Yes there were lies and manipulations but the information was there. Boris said EU funding would be replaced in full. He lied.

I don't think we can go back in to the EU now, definitely not on the same terms. It would be better for our growth but it would cost us dear and we prefer the flexibility. We want a trade relationship and they want ever closer union.

There was a clip on the lead up to the referendum vote with a young man in front of a road, which came from EU funding, leading to a new further education college built by EU funding saying “what has the EU ever done for us round here”

I was the Monty Python Romans sketch come to reality.

People were told, they were also told that we would return to our glory Empire days and counties would be lining up to offer bigger and better trade deals and investment. Completely built on sand. And no one has been thrown in jail for this utterly false propaganda.

There was also a man, middle aged, seemed quite ok, the morning of the results totally regretting his Leave vote “because he didn’t think the UK would vote Leave and he did it as a bit of a protest vote” (facepalm)

Now we are seeing Reform councils saying they have to put up council tax because there isn’t anything to cut back on, now they are faced with Project Reality.

So they tried to lie about Brexit to get rid of brown people and let racism flourish

Reform don’t need to lie that much they are openly now saying it will all be fine once we put women and the disabled back in homes and workhouses. Which lets sexism flourish. Although sexism from brown religions is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Let’s get the Church involved, bring back conversion therapy, to sort out the poofters and let homophobia flourish again.

But some pale stale males at the top will be invited to Davos, yay!

They are so full of fucking shit that they don’t really care what they say as long as it riles up enough people to vote for them. Politics based on hate what a wonderful world some people, more people, are going to vote for.

Independent thought is allowed. If people didn't know about the huge amount of EU funding, that's on them and because they didn't listen or do research. If the same people now wants Farage to save them (again?), sympathy is hard to find.

Seriously? Nigel is the lying reason why they lost eu funding and the tory mps who did nothing to help during the years they were in power will suddenly step up will they? Farage has done nothing for Clacton but everything for his own pocket because surprise surprise, he's more interested in making his own nest more comfortable. To do that, money has to come from somewhere and its not going come from his rich friends is it. Where do you think money will flow from?

Everyone who wasn't covering their eyes/ears and shouting LALALALA knew perfectly well. Especially in the areas that were getting heavy EU funding.
Nobody was stupid enough to believe the Boris Bus but some people (eg boris) thought it was a good distraction and rallying point.
If the same people who want to be led by Boris or Trump want to be led by Farage, how is that surprising?
Honestly I have zero sympathy.
OK, rant over.

Not sure he could find it with two hands, a map and a compass...
Not that far from SOT. DH used to work there. It's a good example of what happens when education fails, industries close and housing stock is neglected.

Rich people exploit and manipulate poorer people for their own benefit, whilst diverting attention and blame onto ‘the others’. It is a tale as old as time unfortunately.

Oh come on! People have been warned time and time again. People were told that the Brexit campaign was based on barefaced lies. Almost a decade later and this has now been proven and yet we're now letting the same despicable human beings hoodwink us into more and more dangerous and extreme politics despite there being no evidence that their claims are either helpful or truthful. The truth has always been there. The fault is with the people too stupid and too ignorant to open their eyes

Yeah. Turkeys voting for Christmas.

What do they think Farage is going to do? He doesn’t give a shit about people like them!

Boris's bus said '' We send £350,000,000 to Europe every week'' .

So where is that money now - where is it going?

We even have higher taxes now.

I think some people are being a bit disingenuous here. EU funded stuff, some of which was quite large, had signs on it ("This highway funded by EU structural funds") with a little EU flag.

Another aspect is that while areas like Stoke, Cornwall etc are poor, they're not as poor as areas of e.g. Poland so that funding was getting harder to access after 2010 or so.

I did notice in 2016, as an Economics teacher, that a lot of people didn't actually know what a free trade area or common market was. My students were surprised to know facts about the trade arrangements that the adults in their lives didn't.

But BREXIT was never about Economics, was it?

It's just an instance where you can't really trust the great British public to make the best decision. I happen to think it was the right decision (and still, despite everything, would vote Brexit again), but not for reasons of immigration. It was such a complex decision that even the best researched journalists couldn't lay out the full argument in writing, and certainly politicians' five minute speeches or even shorter soundbites couldn't begin to do it justice. A mumsnet forum certainly couldn't scrape the surface. It just became a horribly toxic debate, certainly online.
I worked closely with the EU Commission for a decade and still have a less close professional relationship with my counterparts in various EU member states. I know I was not in a position to weigh all the relevant pieces, but I was certainly better placed than many, well informed enough to know it was a huge risk to put to the people.

It's infuriating. Allowing such an important decision to be made by thick racists.

They should have torn up the vote of anyone unable to explain what a third country is and what we'd lose by becoming one.

One of my outstanding memories leading up to the vote was a BBC Breakfast clip of a load of British 'expats' who lived in Benidorm talking about how they were planning to vote leave 'because there's too much immigration these days'. You couldn't make it up and it's the same people now complaining that they can't continue to live in Spain full time, or they have to jump through a load of hoops to do so.

I am however amused that, because it's a lot harder for Polish, Portuguese and other European healthcare and hospitality workers to come to the UK, they've now been commonly replaced by people from places like Ghana. I bet the leave voters didn't see that coming.

I agree that those who vote for Farage and his cronies will deserve their fate.

The rest of us don't deserve it though, but will get it.

Admin

more civil servants that everyone hates because they get pensions - to replace the seamless trade we had and replace all the administrative offices we need to have independently because we didn’t want to share, like pharmaceutical quality and control, like you know the really important stuff

What next "everyone told us the measles vaccine was about 5g and control. Nobody told us about how dangerous measles is"

The facts were there if anyone chose to look for them. I wasn’t deceived, it didn’t take much research to see that everything Farage said was a lie.

People were urged to vote emotionally on Brexit. They were asked to consider how important concepts and ideals like 'sovereignty' were to them. Many Brexit voters I spoke to said they were willing to have a bad economic period in exchange for sovereignty. Michael Gove said people had had enough of experts. People were discouraged from looking at the facts and told to focus on their feelings (ironically many of the same crowd who now declare that facts don't care about your feelings)

Actually they were told.

But they were told it’s “project fear”

but but but £350m for NHS.

Reform will not improve things and decimate the NHS further.

But they get people to listen by repeating “immigration “ which is what people voted for.

Until people realise immigration isn’t the reason for the mess we are in the have a platform. Therein lies the danger.

Farage is nearly as dangerous as Trump in his own way.

The other thing is, leaving the EU out of it for a moment, is areas like Stoke-on-Trent are hugely subsidised by Westminster anyway. Now there are reasons for that, and regional policy should be better, to spread the wealth, and the U in United Kingdom is there for a reason but good luck discussing that with anyone from the area. I know from personal experience many think "London" is ripping them off, while in fact "London" is actually paying the bills of most of the country.

Maybe some of this comes down to not understanding "net". Net migration, net gain, net trade etc.

Are you being facetious? It's hard to tell.