Brexit and Poverty In The UK

[DioneTheDiabolist]

I am an unemployed single mother. I live in a very deprived area in an inner city. My family are classed as living in Absolute Poverty.

I voted Remain because I thought it would be better for me, my DC and my wider family. But I have looked at the Leave stats and it seems that many Leavers also come from poorer backgrounds.

What am I missing? Should I have voted Leave? Why would I be better off Leaving the EU?

Generalising massively, Leavers are more likely to be discontented with the government and so vote against what the government want as a protest vote. Either that or they believed all the lies on the sides of buses.

Anything you're missing now, nearly three years after the vote, you're not going to find.

You wouldn't be better off. A lot of people voted leave because they are selfish. They want to keep what they consider to belong to British people just for British people. They don't understand the importance of being part of a large trading block or how it has considerably enhanced our economy and rights and culture. They don't want to pay to remain in the Union. They don't want to have to abide by all those pesky European laws on workers rights and so on even though we never contest them though we have the opportunity to do so. They don't want non British people living and working in Britain.

Anything you're missing now, nearly three years after the vote, you're not going to find.
I wasnt looking before. My last job was funded by the EU so I admit I could have been blinkered by that, but now it's gone. And I am poor. And so are my DC.

How will leaving the EU make us less poor?

How will leaving the EU make us less poor?

I don’t think it will.

I think a lot of people voted leave thinking things couldn’t get any worse. I expect they’d be very quickly proved wrong if we crashed out with no deal. The poor always suffer first and worst in times of hardship :(

I know how much worse than poor we can get. We can be considered The Enemy too, despite being powerless.

Leavers are more likely to be discontented with the government
Has anyone been content with them? When?

Dione,

Rees Mogg, Boris Johnson, Raab, et al are Brexiteers who are not from a poor background.

Raab thinks that people who go to foodbank have "cashflow" problem.

Rees Mogg and Crispin Odey advocate for Brexit and yet have made money from this due to the fall of the value of the pound.

Do these people represent your beliefs? Would Brexit improve the quality of your life? Rees Mogg even stated that it could take decades (i.e. 50 years?) for the economy to recover if we Brexit.

Are you willing for your children to experience economic hardship too?

My concern about Brexit has always been food insecurity and how interconnected the UK trade is with Europe.

I wish you all the best and hope you find the right answer amidst all the noise.

I am very aware of the Brexit elite. I understand what they stand to gain. But I don't understand why the poor of England and Wales voted for it. Surely it was more than just sticking it to the man because they've done that, but posts here decrying Remainers as a metropolitan elite and "haves" insist that Leave is still the way to go.

I don't know Dione, I think it's become an identity problem and if you're stripped of the one thing you'd placed your hopes in you're going to feel that much worse. It's not rational but I think it's quite a powerful factor.

It just makes me really sad that the money wasted on brexit could and should have been invested in projects to help families like yours.

Lots of people from deprived areas voted leave.

According to posters on here because they're in educated and stupid.

But op. If we stay in the EU, you might be able to look forward to some of the money we pay to the EU, coming back to us in grant form to build a lovely ... building near you.

You won't of course be able to afford to enter it...but it will look nice ...it will benefit your area and you will be told by your betters to be grateful for it.

But I don't understand why the poor of England and Wales voted for it.

Because for 40 years they have been drip fed anti EU narrative. That and the delusion that Britain is still an empire and will be "fine" on its own.

• If we stay in the EU, you might be able to look forward to some of the money we pay to the EU, coming back to us in grant form to build a lovely ... building near you.

You won't of course be able to afford to enter it...but it will look nice ...it will benefit your area and you will be told by your betters to be grateful for it.*

I've never called leave voters stupid or ever denigrated their choice. Ever.

But THIS post is pure bollocks
What it says bears no relation to what the EU is for. What a load of tripe!

One of my colleagues is also incredibly poor. She very vocally voted Leave and has explained her logic to me that she has literally nothing to lose. She wasn't at all sure that leaving would make her better off - but she did feel sure that staying wouldn't. So she cast her bet for a chance. She didn't however consider that things could get any worse because she didn't, and still doesn't, believe it possibly can. However - she does have a job, albeit a very low paid one. She does have a roof over her head with water and electric thanks to her family being able to work and not redundant and utilities being affordable. She can afford food. Her country isn't experiencing civil war. I wish people realised that even if the stakes may not rise, they COULD...and that's precisely what we have gambled with here, for a "chance" at something better.

Because we are a net contributor to the EU and if no one you trust explains economics to you it sounds like we'd be better off leaving. The leave campaign, headed up by people who are well protected from economic crash, have done a great job of dismissing real concerns about the economy, loss of key trading relationships, loss of negotiating power, loss of businesses who use us as an EU base and even the very real risk of disrupting the peace in Northern Ireland. None of that is being heard over the 'project fear' 'remain voters all think leave voters are stupid'.

I'm about 90% sure I'll be alright in the event of a no deal. I have savings, plenty of equity in my house and a job which is likely to be needed more rather than less. But big picture, we're better off, for all its faults, in the EU rather than out of it.

I also think if we crash out, the liklihood is we'll beg to rejoin - meaning we have to have the euro and lose our veto.

I don't know about losing our veto as that's what all full members have. However we'd lose our rebate and may have to join Schengen (Not sure though as Ireland isn't in Schengen) and adopt the Euro.

then maybe this video can shed some light

But op. If we stay in the EU, you might be able to look forward to some of the money we pay to the EU, coming back to us in grant form to build a lovely ... building near you.

Absolute bollocks. The EU provides those sorts of grants when various bodies like Local Authority ask for them. Who are your Local Authority? Councillors who you have democratically elected, if you can be arsed to vote that is. So if you don't like what they are applying for get out and vote for someone else.

You may remember the day after the Referendum result Cornwall County Council sought assurance from Westminster that the EU funding they currently received would be replaced. They were told no.

DioneTheDiabolist
The UK HAD plenty of money, or at least sufficient to ensure that you and millions of others do not need to be poor.
what is wrong, and is likely to stay wrong, is the distribution of the UK's wealth.
Some Labour parties in the past might have done a better job, but their policies were not able to really tap into the 'wealth' that is controlled by (typically) Tory employers and politicians. Corbyn at least is way off with the faeries and has no practical solution.
Until the wealth generated and invested by some is spread more evenly, there will always be a significant number of 'UK poor'.

The world has changed radically and 'control' of wealth is getting out of the hands of individual governments, but the mindset of both Labor and Tory is way behind the times although the Tories have an advantage that global capitalism is at least firmly on their radar.

I got my new tax information through and it gave me a handy pie chart to show me how my contributions were spent during the tax year 2017-2018. The smallest part of the pie went toward to the Uk contribution to the EU which was £23. Over an entire year.

“But I don't understand why the poor of England and Wales voted for it.”

Not all did.

I live in Surrey. I’m sure people automatically think of well-off stockbrokers and money makers when they consider my county. I haven’t always lived here and I know what my relatives think!

It’s not true. Of course many fit that description. Those that don’t are very badly off indeed because not only are they poor, they have to pay out far greater prices and have less state help.
The reason being that Surrey has politicians at all levels that regard poorer people with contempt, when they think of them at all.

Many of those people saw exactly how the Goves and the Raabs of power regarded them, how little they were prepared to help or enable opportunities and they guessed that the Leave these politicians wanted would benefit only the well off.

Some were seduced by the promises of a better life, of course they were.
However, some believed that the Leopard would change his spots to magenta stripes before these greedy opportunists would ever share out funds to the poor.

It always surprises me that Fishing rights are brought up as a Leave reason.

Perhaps if that lazy rabble rouser Farage had spent more time doing his job instead of stirring up trouble, British fishing rights in the EU would have been better represented.

PamDooveOrangeJoof
Well said, this highlights the reality of the 'we pay loads to the EU for what' argument.
If you could separate out what the EU has saved you, as a member, it is worked out to represent 6 or 7 times this payment. So you have 'paid' £23 and 'received' in the form of services over £138. This manifests itself as tariff free trading for the fruit and veg you buy or a myriad other minor benefits that you as a citizen will not see.
Knowing that the fruit and veg has not been sprayed with dangerous chemicals being a tiny example.

The UK had plenty of money, or at least sufficient to ensure that you and millions of others do not need to be poor.
what is wrong, and is likely to stay wrong, is the distribution of the UK's wealth.

This 1,000 times over.

The EU is essentially a trading bloc. It has limited powers mostly to do with food standards, environment, health and safety and some workers' rights. This is misunderstood by many people. The EU can't dictate to any country how it distributes wealth between citizens.

So, for example, whilst we were a member of the EU we could join in to say how Italy or Germany should safety check ingredients in food. However we could not join in to say how much child benefit in Germany should be.

In the areas where we did delegate powers the EU did do some good that would benefit a single parent. So for example when I was a single parent (20 years ago) I directly benefitted from the increases in maternity leave and pay. Other help came from minimum standards of holiday pay, unpaid parental leave, working time protection and Equal pay provisions.

I think these protections are valuable and people like Liam Fox have already said they'd like to deregulate workers' rights outside the EU as they are seen to impede commercial profit.

Turning to money although EU membership didn't control how the U.K. distributes its wealth - membership did give unrestricted access to one of the largest trading blocs in the world.

On any of the government scenarios studied in their impact assessments the U.K. as a whole will be financially worse off after Brexit. As TM said the people voted for pain.

However the main thing that will affect the OP is how the domestic government distributes the wealth left. My bet is that Brexit will be used as an excuse for more austerity for decades to come.