To feel really positive about leaving the EU

[kitty1976]

I know there has been lots of fear stories but in a few weeks since the vote we have managed to get a new PM who seems more than capable and we are now in control of our destiny without being ruled by an unelected and unaccountable EU. The EU has for a long time been a basket case and has condemned much of the youth of Southern Europe to decades of unemployment, it's a relief to be out. Do remember we are now free to negotiate our own trade deals with the rest of the world and most countries are not in the EU and seem to do well. There have been so many fear stories which have been peddled by self interest. I wonder in 5 years time how many remainers will be asking to rejoin the EU!!

"Nothing they say will change anything."

Ah see we live in a democracy, what we say can change this, 48% of us voting the other way means that our views must be listened to as well.

Oh and you complain about remain voters?

Well lets see.

52% of you were banded together to vote against the EU by some very potent forces, each little group of that 52% voted for completely different things. Some wrongheadedly voted because they felt our democracy was threatened ( the irony), some because they thought the the EU payments were too high and could be spent on something else ( lol), others because they felt that regulations were too invasive and cost too much money ( well guess what kind of regulations they are? Oh yes the ones that cover how to treat your staff). A lot voted out because they dislike immigration, some because they think it puts too much pressure on the NHS ( doesn't), some because they think school places are taken up by too many immigrants (again, false), or that they push down wages (only for the very bottom, for everyone else they go up). That or pure xenophobia or fear, which would explain why places like Hartlepool which has something like 1% of the population from EU countries other than Ireland voted out with immigration cited as a top reason.

There are then the protest votes... So please tell me to stop complaining (oh but didn't you vote out because "democracy matters") because I can't change anything, we have to be listened to.

Especially, as I identified above, most of the reasons given for voting out are completely incorrect and based upon views that are shaped by propaganda or confirmation bias and not analysis that is impartial ( but you don't like experts naturally).

Yet you want us al to pretend that things are going to be ok? Like we can make it ok with the power of positive thought? Most of the indicators ( consumer confidence, business optimism, independent economic predictions, state of the pound, construction and service industries contracting) show that we are headed to recession that was entirely avoidable. The issue is going to be that because of the uncertainty that we are in about the connection with our biggest trading partner, which is of vital importance to our largest exports, that this recession will be harder to recover from. You want us to be optmisitc about that?

Most independent analysis thinks that it may take a decade to get the economy back on track, "short term pain for long term gain" you lot keep saying but most predictions ( and as we are going to try for a CETA style deal this is easy to model) say that we will be less well off than we would have been remaining, but its going to take a decade to get to that position.

A decade, the kids who sat GCSE this year will be 26, those coming out of uni 31, those who are maybe thinking of starting families having bought homes will be in their 40s! So yeah, just get them to have a far harder decade than they would have done because you make poor decisions based on erroneous information, or on some dewy eyed it was all better back in the day nationalistic belief that the UK is better than other countries.

Every single piece of independent analysis or study disparaged or accused of vested interests, but when one piece comes up in your favour you all make the most gargantuan appeals to authority. Sing the hosannas of the wise one who backed your opinion, no matter their own flaws. The leave sides arguments are full of hyperbole, appeals to history, appeals to emotion, and a lot of the time that very base emotion, fear. Scare people about the NHS, scare people about Turkey, about refugees.

So yes I will complain, and yes I will criticise, its a democracy that's my right, and I will do so because I'm tired of trying to discuss this with people who say things like "suck it up buttercup" or say "why can't we all just pull together".

This isn't that moment, we are here because the leave vote won because of ignorance, fear, xenophobia and nationalism, and based on this you tell me that there will be a bright future?

Did all those who voted remain do it for identical reasons then?

I've missed you posting Surferjet too try to avoid posting now but the nastiness the OP faced on this thread was so unpleasant I wanted to offer a little support. The referendum has provoked a cliche in mn I'm not seeing in rl to appalling mouth frothing venom

Smallfox provided a shortlist. I guess that 99% can be covered there, irrespective of whether it is either known or acknowledged by the individual, unfortunately.

larrygrylls

The answer to your question to smallfox is 'yes'.

Why? Because we were voting to 'remain', we very much knew what we were voting for: a continuation of the known.

Unlike the leap of faith off the cliffs of Dover that the Leave camp has done.

Well said, smallfox. I do admire your stamina.
each little group of that 52% voted for completely different things... this is what I keep returning to and what I find so incomprehensible. There is no common vision.

Thanks for the drink Sooverthis

And smallfox... I stand with you!

I am sure the remain voters had a myriad of reasons for wanting to remain in the EU. Some may have been afraid of the consequences of leaving that Osbourne and Cameron campaigned on, not surprisingly because that strategy delivered them a surprise election victory. Too late they realised that the tabloid press had unleashed an entirely different sort of fear in the parts of the country they never knew or understood.

I voted because living overseas and being an "expert" on other cultures and economies it seemed blatently clear that in the future if Britain is going to compete in a world where the regional alliances of Asia are increasingly powerful economically and politically, China is already the world's second largest economy, fly over any big Asian port and the scale of economic activity is staggering. We need to forget that we once had an empire and punched well above our weight in the world, that is actually a disadvantage in the modern world where for so many of those economies the GB brand will forever be associated with arrogant and entitled imperialism. We need to be part of a geopolitical block where we have so much in common in terms of our culture and values to be able to play effectively on the world stage both economically and politically. Boris's Winstonian rhetoric was and is totally without substance.

I also voted because I realise how European I am, in terms of culture and values, and as it happens some parts of my blood too, as I wouldn't be here if a major national disaster had not bought a flood of Irish migrants to our shores. I used to have to listen to my Grandfather telling my other Irish Grandmother that the Irish were scum who had taken jobs and resources from true Britons so I knew from an early age the fallacy of xenophobia.

I also voted because my daughter is a research scientist, a brilliant one with strings of firsts and A*s whose projects in the field of molecular biology are so full of exciting potential and will directly benefit those with macular degeneration and bowel problems, but with many wider implications. Brexit now means that watching teams being aborted from EU projects because of the uncertainty and everyone worried about whether future funding will enable them to continue in the UK she is already talking to US universities and assuming her future will be overseas

I am sure remain voters had many motivations but I have yet to hear one that makes me feel ashamed of my country, as the whole "we are full" "migrant swarms" "we will put the great in Great Britain again" "we have got our country back" rhetoric. I was overseas before Brexit and everywhere I went people were bewildered as to why we were having the vote in the first place, now they think we are idiots, arrogant and entitled idiots. Even a South Korean taxi driver in New Zealand with no English told my friend "Brexit" "Crazy"

we live in a democracy, what we say can change this, 48% of us voting the other way means that our views must be listened to as well

No not really. In was an 'in or out' vote.
The 'out' vote won. You can set up petition after petition and go on lots of anti democracy marches, but the end result will be the same.
The U.K. Is leaving the European Union. On exactly what terms we don't know yet, but we are leaving.

And that was before we made Boris, who has a particularly insulting Chinese nickname, after insulting practically every Chinese person he has had contact with, our Foriegn secretary, that was when I truly felt I had woken up in some farcical bad dream.

Surfer jet You don't get the degrees of out? That there are a heap of negotiating chips on the table, border controls, access to markets, the City passport (because as a result of Maggie, not the EU, financial services are the only part of our economy in surplus), tariff barriers and access to markets, the status of EU and British nationals, Scientific funding, universities, the legal and regulatory framework, the ECHR etc. etc. etc. Do you really think that after throwing all that in the air the EU is going to say cherry pick what you want and don't want. There are so many potential versions of out and powerful lobbying forces will already be in place trying to get the version of out that is best for them. So yes the 48% do need to speak up to ensure that it is a properly fudged version of out that minimises the damage to our childre's futures

Ah but how we leave, and the degree of out that we have can be negotiated and therefore the will of the 48% of the people who thought that we were better off in needs to be listened to there, to determine the degree of out.

:)

Sorry it doesn't quite work how you think.

surferjet - this isn't some kind of extreme sports competition.

It's highly likely, IMO, that Brexit won't mean what a lot of 'out' voters hoped it would mean! There are going to be massive compromises, which they're very unlikely to approve of. We can just tell them to 'move on' and 'suck it up' when that happens though.

As you're not actually involved in the Brexit talks smallfox2002 you don't know how it works either.

Anyway. Have a good weekend.

Hate to burst your bubble surfer, but I have a high degree of expertise in economics.

I can also refer to precedent and look at past deals done with the EU and Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, South Korea etc etc.

I can give you a pretty good idea of how the trade deals will work, and how compromises are made.

I have spoken to a large number of people (friends and colleagues) from across the globe since 23rd June. Not a single foreign friend thinks this is a good thing for Britain. The Friday morning after 23rd, I was speaking to an Austrian who was particularly pessimistic. And not about the economy (although I am with the Leavers on their arguments above). What he said was pretty much the same as my 85 year old uncle who taught history.... Remember why the European community (through its various iterations) was set up...to avoid another World War. So we had WWI (the war to end all wars), and then 21 years later WWII. And then the ECSC which has evolved since the mid 1940s. In the 71 years since the end of WWII, we have not fought our European neighbours, or as I would put it, our European friends. I think Europe, the EU as it now is, takes a lot of credit for that.

I feel profoundly pessimistic.

radiator - Italian and French colleagues/friends have expressed deep sadness to me. Whether it works out in the end or not we have hurt our European neighbours and we shouldn't ignore or disregard that.

Larry with Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, we certainly punch above our weight in Europe. They are still ranked in the top 10 globally (well, last I looked).

I work for one of the above mentioned Universities and have a lot of dealings with the other. We all think its a disaster, from the VC downwards.

We get a substantial proportion of research funding from the EU which is now at risk and our scientists are being asked to leave research consortia.
Our business partners are considering freezing future funding of our research - as this is always one of the first things to go.
We will never have a problem recruiting undergrad students, but we rely on free movement for many of or postgrads, postdocs and academics to be able to transfer between here and EU universities.

Our business partners are considering freezing future funding of our research - as this is always one of the first things to go.

Our place in the global top 10 universities is won on current performance not owning a lot of historic buildings. We are competing with US universities with massive endowments and increasingly, economies like Singapore and elsewhere in the Far East where governments are prepared to throw money at developing their HE sector. Brexit poses a significant risk to our ability to keep up.

After reading all the slights to academics on this thread from Leave voters, i despair. Do you actually believe retaining STEM/social scientists take money? Do you know how awful working conditions academics face for the kind of work they do? It takes more than a desire to have a career and a life to make an academic. To make and keep proper scientists, you have to at least respect them as they are some of the very few people who are working for this country truly selflessly.
Yet, they are the "experts"? I despair. And I sometimes wonder if I could feel slightly happy in the fact that majority of these voters have dug a hole for themselves. I could sod off to any part of the world after some hard work. You stay strong on this island around which you have just voted to build a wall, a wall that will most likely end at Scotland and Ireland anyway.

I mean, if you look at the map of voting pattern across UK, you can actually pick Cambridge/Oxford/Warwick on it! is it all a coincidence? Are all of them mad?

I remember a line from Harry Potter today. In one of the books Dumbledore says something along these lines: it's far harder for people to forgive you for being wrong than for being right. Something like this. I think this is the phase majority Leavers are going through on Mumsnet. They just regurgitate rhetoric and if you ask for figures and facts, you end up being the demon who is an academic of course and must never be listened to.

Sorry, it's "for being right than for being wrong"
Need a Cuppa

The U.K. Is leaving the European Union.

Genuine question for leavers. What is the most important thing you hope / think will happen when the UK had "Brexited"?