“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?

It’s not getting old - it totally fucked us!
We are still allowed to be annoyed with the idiots who voted for it.

It’s blatantly obvious to anyone with a brain that Reform are full of shit too.

So yeah it’s relevant. Learn from your previous mistakes. Stop voting because you don’t like people you perceive as being different from you and think about who is really benefiting!

Brexit is the reason that they have lost a good chunk of funding which the poorest regions could ill afford to lose.

It's not old, it's an ongoing situation.

I have no doubt the UK would be better off now if brexit hadn't happened.

Yes and the politicians betrayed the people by allowing more immigration than ever, and I'm not talking about the difficult to tackle boats but the completely in our control rubber stamping visas. So now a lot of people are still looking for someone to control our borders.

Yes we haven't seen the benefits of Brexit because the politicians made sure of that by ignoring the will of the people.

The fact remains that the UK government does not match the EU funding we lost after Brexit. Yes it is hard to unpick the Brexit effect within the general bin fire that is our economy now, but that does not mean it is not real. Seriously, the impact of Brexit was and is enormous. Dismissing it as "a bit old" doesn't not change that fact. A colossal act of self harm.

Funny how many people used to never shut up talking about EU membership and how much it was to blame for everything, but now think six years ago is old news, and leaving the EU has nothing to do with any of our problems. Let alone claiming that leaving has improved things as it was claimed it would.

“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.“

The £154m didn’t come for free, it came from a shared pot that we paid into, and the UK paid £6 billion more in than we got back out. BBC link below.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48256318?app-referrer=deep-link#:~:text=Germany%2C%20with%20a%20net%20contribution,goods%20enter%20the%20customs%20union.

We were told - I particularly mentioned EU funding a lot, though very obviously without the reach of a Boris bullshit announcement. We were apparently going to have more U.K. funding due to us being able to be immensely rich and unfettered by the EU restrictions- and have access to the world for the brightest, best people and the cheapest best goods - I mean at the most basic did your parents never tell you there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Did no one wonder why previous parties didn’t advocate for this Utopia.
There’s a Guardian article going around on here about a strong Trump supporting area of the US that is really struggling due to his policies but they still are pleased enough he’s deporting immigrants (which doesn’t affect them) - maybe someone will be along to link it. It’s a sad article but shows it’s more about feeling than actuality - same as Brexit.
Looks like plenty will fall for it again and the rich will get richer and the rest of us maintain that for them. Now we are in that soundbite, feelings, fast pretend solutions I’m not sure how we get out of it. I also think there’s something of the entitlement of this country that plays in - for some reason other countries should be gratified we deal with them and give us our free lunch - not helpful to any progression or outcomes.

Multimillionaire grifters have always been exceptionally good at creating a false narrative around a faux enemy that divides the rest of us. I'm always reminded of the cartoon of Rupert Murdoch hogging a plateful of cookies, while pointing to the immigrant and telling a working class man "he stole your cookie". It's timeless, yet the electorate fall for it time and again. You're right op.

I expect that no one who voted to leave does either funnily enough.

So those areas should be getting more funding now then, no? The amount they were getting before plus a share of the £6bn we ‘saved’ by leaving?

No. Plenty of people were trying to do that but any warnings of the negative consequences of Brexit were written off as Project Fear. The only people who benefited were the likes of Farage snd Reece-Mogg. The poor have suffered the most - turkeys voting for Christmas.

Hmm the small boats are instead of the people hiding in lorried which used to happen long before Brexit

As for the crappy towns. Wonder when they became in that state. After all we joined the EU in 1993. So if they've hand finding since then until 2019 that should've been enough money to help get them on their feet. Or are people meant to subside places that make no effort to help themselves indefinitely

Actually, I read the pp´s comment as sarcastic, I may be wrong though.

Well, we’re quite a small island and not everyone can live in the south-east, there’s not enough water. With good transport infrastructure and good tax breaks it should be possible to bring large employers north. But for some reason it seems to be beyond us.

We all knew the benefits of the EU

it still makes me angry now

Why should they keep being funded though?

They directly lost funding from a third party. Was it not obvious the UK wouldn't replace it? Presumably if we could have afforded or wanted to spend those sums on those areas, we would have! Instead we essentially used German taxpayers' funds on it.

I don’t completely agree. The leavers deceived people - Farage deceived people. But the Remainers didn’t. Lots of remainers tried hard to make people listen, but just got shouted down. People preferred to listen to easy to understand lies rather than complicated truths.

Quote
"But some pale stale males..."

As ever on mumsnet racist language is fine as long as it is directed at White people.

Oh thank God someone said it. The magic EU fairy didn’t benevolently give away free money to prop up British shit holes. We paid for it. You need to be asking your MP where that money has been redirected to. I would bet it’ll have been sucked up into the national debt.

It used to be done quite frequently. Tax to Bootle, BBC to Salford. The area the article is about is quite remote though. It does say they got a station built in 2020 and that there are possibilities in renewables.

I live in a former mining area which benefited from large chunks of EU funding yet still a large number of people voted for Brexit and now Reform. Apparently bewitched by the 'charisma' of grafters like Farage. Are we better off now we have some Reform councillors? Absolutely not, just more divided.

i was recently in the Canaries and some of their buses are EU funded - and it’s literally painted on the bus.

Oh, the irony ...

The way the world is right now "ever closer union" looks very attractive. We are a minnow. The US giving NATO the boot makes our position even more vulnerable. The negatives of Brexit keep on multiplying.