to still be angry about Brexit?

[mrsmootoo]

I've mentioned this before and got shot down - 'move on', 'we won, you lost', 'red wall was justified', 'democracy' (although as Brexiter David Davis said, democracies can change their minds) etc etc. Anyway, if anything I am even more angry now than in 2016! Seeing queues at Dover/airports etc (I know not only down to Brexit, but it makes it worse) just reinforced it. I'm not going to rehash all the reasons here, but am just interested in whether other people are still as furious as I am. (And I do know it's not doing my stress levels any good!)

Sorry, auto correct, although Costa was a good swap.

But the creeping reality is who gives a shit what leave voters think ? This is the painful lesson of the recent elections. Brexit - as something which has lost the ability to corral disparate groups into some sort of cohesive whole. Which is why Labour are frustratingly but logically not trying. Best leave that nonsense to the Tories. And good luck with it too.

'But the creeping reality is who gives a shit what leave voters think ? '

The trouble is that if leave voters represent 52% of those who can be bothered to turn out and vote, then all parties have to care. Even if leave voters now number 50% or 45%, that is still a significant number and any party wishing to be elected has to find some way to appeal to them, within their policies or risk losing, or a hung parliament.

Except - as predicted - it isn't 52% of those that could be bothered to vote. That was 2016. 7 years ago.

Even if you assume there is a cohesive "Brexiteer" vote (there isn't) then the disastrous unfolding of Brexit will have burned any support from the less committed leave voters.

As the Tories discovered to their cost in 2023.

Brexit was a political sucker punch. You only get to throw it once.

And no matter how many trade "deals" the government announces and re-announces as a one-day headline, the persistent undertow of daily whines (as this very forum shows) will serve to forever prompt people to ask what the fuck was worth so much ?

If you like imagery and metaphor, then Brexit is a very tall tree that gets progressively weaker the higher you climb. The bear that is the Tory party decided they were going to race up this tree to avoid tackling the field mouse that was Farage. Now, as they inch higher and higher, the whole thing looks more and more shaky. To the extent it may yet deliver them back to that field mouse (that roared !) they were trying to outrun in the first place.

The fact that Suella Braveman is in the firing line now speaks volumes as to the loss of agency the Brexiteer flank of the Tory party is suffering.

@SerendipityJane I hope you are right

@MintJulia - but this was the vote in 2016.

As Leave voters die (as they were in the main, older) and younger people are eligible to vote (mainly remain) the 52/48 split is no longer the case.

In fact there was a date in March 2019 where we went from a Pro leave stance to a Remain stance just by population churn.

I absolutely detest the 'Leave' Tories for bringing an internal squabble on EU membership to a referendum to an uneducated electorate. On top of that, ran a campaign of lies and self interest. The Leave campaign and its architects should just rot in hell.

@Pipsquiggle I'm not sure calling the electorate uneducated is a good idea. As Gordon Brown discovered.

I absolutely detest the 'Leave' Tories for bringing an internal squabble on EU membership to a referendum to an uneducated electorate. On top of that, ran a campaign of lies and self interest. The Leave campaign and its architects should just rot in hell.

The slow disintegration of the Tory party is an acceptable second best though.

Another factor that is creeping in is that Tory remainers - who reluctantly stayed loyal; to the Tories as a the best way of making Brexit work - now have no reason to continue to vote Tory. And certainly my experience over the years has been hat a lot of people who do vote Tory are much more naturally Liberal, but vote Tory as the Liberals (now LibDems) don't stand a chance where they live.

A rising LibDem party will pull some of them. And they are the voters who will be repelled, not attracted by the new "NatC" look to the Tories.

@MintJulia

You're right. I meant uneducated in terms of Brexit / leaving the EU. An 'undereducated electorate on Brexit' is probably more accurate - I include myself in this.

I have very little time, sympathy or kind words for people who choose to be under/uneducated. And there are plenty of examples on MN where it can be seen.

The thing about leave voters is that they weren't (aren't?) the people who can normally be bothered to turn out.

This really. My anger is a sort of resigned anger. It's like when the Tories got in in 2010 and we knew they were going to wreck the country and make life harder for the less well off. And here we are.

@SerendipityJane

You may not have sympathy but that was the reality with the Brexit referendum. Millions of people did not know enough about the EU and the ramifications. 100s of thousands of people voted to leave just because of a bloody slogan on a bus!

I work in Grocery so am pissed off every single day by how much harder it is to get stock over the channel and how much more it costs. I have also been lucky enough to work and live in Europe. I was / am a fully paid up member to the remain campaign

I think the very opposite is true. Brexit was voted for heavily by pensioners and there is nothing that will keep a pensioner from the polling booth.

Absolutely. A very large number of people who voted Leave are now dead.

'Absolutely. A very large number of people who voted Leave are now dead.'

That sounds like wishful thinking. Even if 10% of leave voters have died since 2016, (a reasonable estimate), that still leaves 15.5 million people who voted Leave.

Don't assume they have gone away, because they haven't. Labour policy needs to carry at least some of them, if Labour are to win.

Well soon there probably won't be anyone left who will openly admit to having voted Leave...

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/brexit-poll-suggests-just-9-of-britons-think-decision-to-leave-european-union-more-of-a-success-than-failure-12887197

Quite glad they plastered it all over Facebook at the time so I can remind them then.

Remember that is now "bullying".

Still as angry as I ever was, and I don't think that will change. I owned my own property for the first time in Spain, and had to sell up because of Brexit. I will never be able to afford property here in Brexitistan. Thanks, Brexit voters.

I’m still livid. Can’t stand the little englander mentality.

I'm angry. Not for me, I've travelled and lived and worked abroad. Now my kids are through uni, the door has been shut on their faces by a load of close minded idiots who have shot the next generation in the foot.

I utterly hate them and their little England mentality.

Friend of mine, lived in France for many years as youngster, got 2 kids now, he voted to make sure they can never do what he did.... still thinks by the time they leave school (approx 5 years) it'll be back to how it was... because apparently "We are the UK..."

I also worked in Europe, huge reason why i voted remain.

But Braverman who studied in Paris under Erasmus, is a keen Brexitier....and parents of economic immigrants ....... what a hypocrite.

Me too.

Eventually we'll end up more or less back in, but like Switzerland with a million agreements. The EU didn't want that, but that will be the way it goes.

Actually so think I’m even more angry than I was . Such a waste of time and money