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.

It's not one single law. We are signed up to many international laws such as the Refugee Convention which mean we can't send asylum seekers back to their home countries immediately.

We can't send people back to France because France won't take them back.

Asylum seekers aren't the problem, the 1m immigrants we took in this year are the problem. They were all approved by the government.

Before Brexit we had FOM and did not keep track of who was in the country. We were useless. Brexit happened and now we can see exactly how many legal immigrants we take in and it has shocked people.

But in saying that, talk to anyone on the street and they all say the same thing. If you are paying your way, documented, have a visa (etc) we are happy to have you here. Also, lots of immigrants are students on timed visas - yep, happy to have you study here. My area is boosted by 2 universities, lots of money spent by the students.

The small boats upset the majority. People keep telling them it is piddling, no problem, no issue, but we can all see the hotels in our areas full of undocumented fighting age men who are culturally different to us.

Please explain why anyone who pays to get smuggled into a country, tosses away their papers, is entitled to stay. The laws set in the past must be changed. Europe-wide too.

People talk as if being in the EU would fix the issue. How many did we send back pre-Brexit compared with how many we took in? Plus if we joined the bloc again and they settled in the EU, wouldn't these same people eventually be allowed residency in Britain under FOM anyway?

Britain is having issues and we have weak leaders - that includes the previous government, but look at what is happening in France and Germany at the moment. It is not good. It is very worrying indeed.

@khw666

Asylum seekers can claim asylum in the UK and are not illegal. In fact we welcomed thousands of Ukrainian and Hong Kong refugees in the past few years.

Immigration is quite a complex issue. First, the small boats are only about 3% of immigrants to the UK. The last government deliberately underfunded the HO and created a huge backlog of claims.

That means it can take years to process claims and costs a fortune in housing and benefits. Asylum seekers can't work.

Regarding deportation that's very difficult because France won't take them back and you can't send people to countries where they could be at risk. It's against the law and they'd simply take the government to court.

Blair didn't restrict freedom of movement for many Eastern Europeans and underestimated how many would come. It was about 2m.

Brexit didn't stop immigration because the government simply brought in people from outside the UK. Businesses love immigration because it keeps wages low. Some organisations advertise abroad to bring people over as they don't want to pay the going rate.

We bring a lot of people in to work on the NHS which has a huge number of vacancies. Hospitality is another big sector and also needed skills such as engineering. As you pointed out we also bring in a lot of foreign students.

Nope, the numbers coming into the UK, with visas and jobs have trebled, we had a quite a fair idea of who was coming here, as it was only later during austerity we stopped counting who was arriving/leaving, relying on surveys only...

People are not happy about 600k to 900k people coming here legally every year, at all & many of these are not here to work but are dependents.

How do you send back people with no papers/passports? why would their country of origin accept them, with no proof they actually come from?
How do you send people back to Afghanistan? Syria? Sudan?

Why have the numbers crossing by boat become such a problem since we left the EU.... some coincidence!!! but its not.

The Dublin Agreement may not have actually sent back many BUT it acted as a deterrent, there was always the possibility after paying £1000s to get here, you could be returned, more importantly, we've lost all influence with France and the EU, with calls now in France to stop policing their beaches... i have to say, i predicted this would happen pre brexit.

France and Germany are having "normal" electoral issues, it's not worrying at all, you need to stop reading the 'Mail....
Both countries have Bond yields, ie govt borrowing costs, far below what the UK has, thanks to Truss - 2.1% 2.8% and both falling vs our 4.3%.... so the markets aren't finding what is happening Europe worrying, so why are you?

"People are not happy about 600k to 900k people coming here legally every year"

Yes we took back control then look what we did with it!

I think other factors are at play here too. I don’t think Brexit is to blame fully for the shit show we’re seeing now.

Wars - Russia Ukrainian war was partly to blame for the energy hike and other wars that create mass movement of people looking to get away from their own war torn countries and head to Western Europe for safety and a better life.

Covid and the financial implications of that. There were some ‘winners’ but there were a lot of losers too. Businesses taking it in whilst others didn’t have a penny.

Climate change for two reasons, the loss of crops due to either severe flooding or draughts so pushing up food prices and displacement of people from such places.

Decisions to private so much and foreign investors to take over key infrastructures. All great until it’s not! Years later we have little social housing stock which in itself pushes up housing costs due to supply and demand.

I blame bad decision made by those in power, by different parties over various years. Now with other wars and conflicts going on, that doesn’t impact us positively either. The world’s a very volatile place right now and it’s not the best time for many.

There has been even less growth in other similar countries including Germany and France so I don’t think Brexit is reason we’re all feeling the pinch. In hindsight I don’t think helped though and we probably would have been better off staying in financially in some ways like cheaper foods etc…

On the flip side to that, if there was still free movement, there would be even more people to house etc so I don’t think that would help with the housing crisis and we’d be paying higher rents and mortgages because demand would outstrip supply

There has been even less growth in other similar countries including Germany and France so I don’t think Brexit is reason we’re all feeling the pinch. In hindsight I don’t think helped though and we probably would have been better off staying in financially in some ways like cheaper foods etc

Thats not correct, growth in the UK has been below that of the Eurozone since 2008 & measured per capita, ours has fallen off a cliff, estimates range from 5k to 10k worse off per year than the French or Germans.

We also have the most expensive electricity in Europe, when standing charges included.

On the flip side to that, if there was still free movement, there would be even more people to house etc so I don’t think that would help with the housing crisis and we’d be paying higher rents and mortgages because demand would outstrip supply

Not correct either, EU workers, generally speaking, didn't need to bring their families with them, they were just a 2 or 3hour cheap flight away, EU people didn't come here on to escape poverty, like for example a family from the Philippine's, India or Africa would because this is where most of our additional, extra population if coming from.

People from SE Asia Africa, are here for good & unlike European couples, tend have larger families... more people to house...

the whole last 5 or 6 years has been an awful experiment in how to alter a countries population.

I can’t disagree with the first part of your posts as I haven’t looked that deep in to it and I suspect there is truth in what you’re saying, but I’m doubtful it’s as rosey for them as you think.

I do disagree with this though -

Not correct either, EU workers, generally speaking, didn't need to bring their families with them, they were just a 2 or 3hour cheap flight away, EU people didn't come here on to escape poverty, like for example a family from the Philippine's, India or Africa would because this is where most of our additional, extra population if coming from.
People from SE Asia Africa, are here for good & unlike European couples, tend have larger families... more people to house...
the whole last 5 or 6 years has been an awful experiment in how to alter a countries population

The numbers coming here were astronomical when free movement was set up and it absolutely wasn’t equal. When people try to argue Brits were free to move to others countries too… it’s a moot point because moving to Eastern Europe didn’t appeal to Brits in the same way it did for the EE to come here.

That’s a no brainer and economically it made financial sense for them to come here as the wages were far higher in comparison. Eastern European countries were in no way as desirable for Brits to go to in order to make a better life and earn more money. So I disagree they didn’t come here for financial reason (and I’d do the same if I was in the same situation but it didn’t work the same the other way around as discussed)

@Duc I didn't say they never came here for financial reasons but they did not bring in dependents, in numbers now coming here now..... nor did they come here for our awful NHS either, the numbers reached a max of 240k per year, many have now returned as economies such as Poland have improved and wages are higher plus Brexit.

UK people may not have gone to eastern europe but they did go to France Spain Germany Sweden etc, i did & in the 80s and 90s many construction workers went to Germany.

In 2022/23 over 130k care workers came to the UK from SE Asia and Africa, they bought with them over 200k dependents, regardless of time limited visa's etc, the vast majority will never leave, now we can argue thats a good or bad thing but it is as a direct consequence of Brexit, EU workers no longer come here to work.

Surveys on job satisfaction have shown that Care work scores highly BUT UK workers do leave for better paid jobs in other sectors, we could change that....

Brexit is the ugly spawn of bad politics, a useless PM, an uninformed electorate and a huge dose of xenophobia for good measure.

Yes. The economic impact of brexit was acknowledged at the time even by pro leave politicians- but they said it would be worth it. Worth it for what I'm not sure.

Pro leave was a campaign based on lies.

It seems crazy to have spent so much time and money sorting out brexit as well.

@khw666

Please explain why anyone who pays to get smuggled into a country, tosses away their papers, is entitled to stay. The laws set in the past must be changed. Europe-wide too.

If you are fleeing the Taliban, for example, you can't exactly sign up for a passport. People will often flee using forged documents and make an illegal journey and claim asylum at the end: this is why only a small percentage of asylum seekers end up here - most flee to neighbouring counties.

Also, There are very few legal routes to claiming asylum. ( by legal routes I mean official programmes of bringing refugees in like with the Ukrainians) Of course in the midst of people claiming asylum because they face prosecution in their own country are people who are simple fleeing poverty or in search of a better life.

Where would you send back someone with no papers to? How would this work in reality? Would you feel comfortable with the UK bringing people back to be killed in their own country? What about a Palestinian from Gaza for example- how would we get them to Gaza? Or any other country that you can't fly into.

Greece never went bankrupt, the markets believe its the UK that has more chance of debt default than France, Italy, Germany and Greece, in fact, apart from Hungary, Poland, Iceland and Romania, the UK has the highest Govt borrowing costs ie risk than any country in the EU/EEA.

The reality is, our economy is in deep shit and unlike most of the EU, we've got appalling structural problems, such as a terrible health service, no state funded dentistry, crumbling roads and rail, a population in poor health.... it really is dire.

And Starmer has ruled out further tax rises, so expect more and more cuts - Austerity mk 3.

What worries me is our future. Our debt is ever rising, our public services are crumbling, and there’s an aging population. For every pensioner, there’s three working people maybe less than that , not to mention the many unemployed young people.

Every government just kicks the can down the road. Surely the best way out of debt is tax increases? I mean , keeping it simple , if my taxes went up something like £200 per year and it meant we could go back to how things were surely that’s a good thing?

No government wants to raise taxes but the inevitable is cuts, which means we all suffer in the long run doesn’t it ?

Theres a leisure centre I know of that’s been there for over 30 years, it’s now facing closure because of council cuts. It’s the main one in a fairly big town too.

Things will get worse. The only way to help is tax rises..which no government will do.

War is coming in future very soon and new pandemic

War ? The British Army would barely fit into Wembley stadium !
Do you mean another Cold War ?

No. I mean world war 3 . China will start it