Is Brexit the biggest act of self harm to the IK?

[Ownedbykitties]

I heard it described as such on the radio last week and I have been mulling it over. Perhaps it is? Though I cannot quite get past the fact the our politicians and the government, who are paid to make these decisions in the best interests of the people and the country, asked the general public whether we should remain or leave. How could the vast majority of us hope to know the intricate details of either staying in or leaving, and if it would be a deliberate act of self harm to leave? Then to cap it all off, David Cameron walked away. Yet, for something that affects individuals personally, the politicians are asked to decide on the Assisted Dying Bill. I'm confused.

Agreed. The public should never have been able to make such an important decision. Many people are ignorant. Many made their decision based purely on emotion and misinformation.

It was a bad referendum, and its execution was appalling. We should at least have stayed in the EEA and customs union.

However, Remain failed badly to make their arguments and Brussels didn't do anything to help Cameron mitigate the previous Government's idiocy in not limiting freedom of movement from the Accession countries, which definitely depressed wages growth here.

Interesting to see whether the French government falls this week over the failure to agree a budget which has the international bond markets pricing French debt at the same levels as Greek during the worst days of Greece's debt crisis.

I see this a lot from Brexit voters. Where does it come from?

Here’s a source (commons library, so used by people on all sides) that says the opposite- https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9040/CBP-9040.pdf

Brexit was always going to economically harm everyone, so you’d expect EU countries to suffer from having a large economy like the UK put up trade barriers. The side that suffers least isn’t a “winner”.

The side that suffers least isn’t a “winner”.

I think you will find that it is! If the stock market falls, the funds that decline least are the top performers.

Pasted and copied from the Telegraph's running news ....

Paris’s stock market fell at the start of trading as a budget standoff leaves France’s government at risk of collapse.
The Cac 40 index dropped as much as 1.2pc to 7,146.02 points, with the euro stuck around 14-month lows.
French prime minister Michel Barnier - who was only appointed by President Emmanuel Macron in September - is set to present a social security financing plan today that has faced widespread opposition from across the political spectrum.
Marine Le Pen, the parliamentary leader of the hard-Right National Rally (RN), opposes several aspects of the government’s 2025 budget plan, including the social security financing project.
These include planned cuts in employer social contributions, a partial end to inflation-indexing of pensions and a less generous prescription drug reimbursement policy.
Lacking a majority, Mr Barnier could use executive powers to force through the legislation without a vote.
Such a move would expose him to a vote of no confidence within days, with the left wing and Le Pen’s RN willing to back a motion to bring down the government.
The Cac 40 was also weighed down by a 7pc fall in shares of car giant Stellantis after chief executive Carlos Tavares abruptly resigned.

Requirements weren’t put in because it was an advisory non-binding ref.
Only after the fact was it not treated like one.

IMO remain couldn’t be clear about implications as so many of our ils had been incorrectly blamed on the EU.

Eg The Tories would have had to admit that they could have done something about migrants claiming child benefit etc.

It should never have been called.

Where on earth do you get your information from? Bond markets have already priced in another GE or Coalition.

Are you seriously suggesting French bond yields are going to hit 10% plus?? i

French 10y bond yields are dropping, now 2.88%, ours are 4.3% but falling, so the UK is paying almost twice as much for debt than the French are, Truss increased debt interest repayments from 1.4% to 5%.

The UK has some of the highest Gilt yields in the EU, over 1% higher than even Italy, long considered a economic basket case!

Staying in the EEA and/or SM/CU was never ever an option, its so annoying when people still believe these fantasies.

The choices were: stay in the EU or Brexit, May chose to Brexit.

A lot of EU GDP growth (particularly Spain) reflects the huge injection of funds that those countries received as part of the EU COVID-19 stimulus.

I voted Remain, and am also an EU dual citizen. But increasingly I am more phlegmatic about leaving. I think the EU faces a real fight for survival over the next decade and I'm not 100% sure it will make it. Germany is about to face a huge reckoning over deindustrialisation that could destabilise the entire continent.

And I think looking to Europe is not necessarily the right place to look. The real question is why have both the US and China seen such a wholesale increase in growth and quality of life, when the EU has stagnated? If nothing else, Brexit means that the UK has to be extremely honest with itself. There's nowhere to hide when you're on your own.

Requirements weren’t put in because it was an advisory non-binding ref.
Only after the fact was it not treated like one.
IMO remain couldn’t be clear about implications as so many of our ils had been incorrectly blamed on the EU.
Eg The Tories would have had to admit that they could have done something about migrants claiming child benefit etc.

This. The referendum was treated like it was binding, even when the ratio was 50:50. Blatant misrepresentation. The misinformation and cheating (overspending) should never have been allowed and has never been punished. This would never have happened in a country that uses referenda more frequently and responsibily, like Ireland.

Also, Cameron was boxed in. For decades, the uk governments have used the EU as a scapegoat and never given it any recognition for positive benefits (claimed them for themselves). And when this referendum was called the effects of austerity had kicked in. Again Cameron couldn't turn around and admit that the reason things were shit was because of his austerity project. The leave campaign were happy to jump in and blame imigrants.

A total perfect shit storm.

I have also wondered who wanted brexit? At the top, not the uk population, the majority of which really didn't care a few years previously.

Farage is just an opportunist. Also it could be argued that brexit cut off his livilihood. Being an MEP was probably less work and more money for him.

This would only have happened if someone was going to make some serious money. Or was it purely a political misjudgement by Cameron that was exploited by different factions, wanting more money from being outside the EU (Murdoch, various finianciers?)?

Yes. It has destroyed many businesses that exported to the EU. I sell books as a side hustle and since Brexit I haven’t been able to sell any to people in the EU as they don’t want to pay significant customs charges for a book that only costs 15 euros.

I largely blame the mainstream media for Brexit. Yes Cameron was the source of the idiocy but it would not have survived without the almost total support of the idiot press. Before the vote I was in the supermarket and every newspaper but one was banging the drum for a leave vote, on the grounds of unrealistic and vague promises like ‘taking back control’ of our borders and ‘cutting red tape’.

The one newspaper on sale that was not in favour of Brexit was The Guardian but it was effectively useless because it didn’t publish much informed argument against it until—wait for it—the day AFTER the vote. Then it chose to publish a good article making some of the points that people on here are making. Too late.

I saw a docu about the Murdoch-isation of our press and it explained that his ethos was that two things sell newspapers—fear and hatred. The pro Brexit message fitted into that well as it exploited people’s strong feelings about immigration.

Well in the Times today "The [French] government has warned that France risks a Greek-style debt crisis if the budget does not go through, with tax rises and drastic spending cuts to rein in the runaway deficit, now at more than 5 per cent of GDP. " It was one thing rescuing Greece; it would be a whole different thing if France or Germany got into a bad economic state. I think tying economies together through a single currency without full political union is folly and will one day be found out, maybe not now, but at some point. I'm delighted that we're not attached to that. Sure we will be impacted, but not to anything like the same level as if we were required to pay out.

London is a washing machine for money laundering and with UK out of EU this can continue - it was of great benefit to there people. EU was changing the rules about banking, so to get UK out of EU was important and they threw money at the leave campaign. NF is often depicted of being up Putins bum hole and that is the reason

Thus is about the relative health of the French economy. The issue is whether the UK and the Eurozone would be better off without Brexit. The vast majority of business organisation, economists and people agree that we’d be better off without Brexit.

Yes and ‘we’ knew it would be!

Interesting that part of the rhetoric was ‘foreigners are taking our jobs’…Brexit meant, the mainly Eastern European workers left.
I can remember saying at the time, ‘come on UK workers, plenty of vacancies, get off your a*ses and do the jobs that are vacant’.
My school caretaker, who was Polish, a hard working, respectful man, left. We've not had a school caretaker since.

Locally, we have 48 care home assistants moved here from India. My council has employed 30 social workers and some educational psychologists from African nations, because we can't fill the vacancies.
Plenty of vacancies now, do ‘we’ not want them?

There's an interesting article (by Bruno Waterfield) in today's Times, about the five-yearly changes at the European Commission. It's behind the paywall, or I would link it.

Yes. I think it's a kind of post colonialist spasm where we somehow persuaded enough people that being part of a trading block was why we'd lost global power, rather than, you know, losing an empire that kept us rich through extraction of wealth.

You can't vote to be more powerful. It's down to facts and influence. We've chucked ours. It's like an embarrassing midlife crisis.

I think this is also my view.
I'd put Trump being elected in a similar vein. Losing your empire is hard and England managed it badly in the end.

@samedifferent you could see it in the Brexit campaigns, so much nostalgia for 60s and 70s (when we were in a mess really but empire was within recent memory and we still had lots of global influence).

I think a lot of older people just voted to make things how they were in their youth, nothing more than that. Including rewinding mass immigration.

Another crap bit of the Remain campaign were that lots of Remain campaigners wouldn't sure a platform with certain others.

I live in Sweden and it's incredibly upsetting to see the number of Brits still facing losing their homes, businesses and families because of brexit.

Added to that, it's so frustrating not being able to buy stuff from the UK any more. Loads of businesses have stopped exporting to the EU because of brexit. I miss my Cadbury's christmas order.

Tonnes of Leave voters were not adults/sentient beings/alive in the 60s and 70s. It's a perceived nostalgia if you like.

I'm living in the EU and it ain't perfect either!

I'd be interested to know the top 5 (or 10) things that have been severely impacted by Brexit. The reason I'm asking is that my perception is that life is going on as normal in UK and most people aren't adversely affected day to day.

Apart from Free Movement, and the cost and bureaucracy of imports, how does it affect you personally?

I think the most harm is that it turned people on each other.

At the time, it was like ‘nothing is working, try this, vote to leave’ and so many people were unhappy they went with it. it was a new option and a promise.

So I don’t think it was self harm, but the finger pointing, criticism, and looking backwards now is.

Nothing is going to undo it. Forgiveness and unity are the way forward.

Tell me you voted for Brexit without telling me you voted for Brexit 😂😂