Genuine question - what does anyone like about Brexit?

[Pipsquiggle]

I have always been a committed remainer - I work in an industry that depends on seamless logisitics, particularly entering / leaving the UK. Brexit is a shit show for my sector.

Just had to pay £96.80 to UPS to release a package that I'd paid express delivery for, that should've arrived 2 days ago - I'm pissed off. The German firm has already agreed to reimburse me but it's all such a ball ache.

So I have a very bleak outlook when it comes to Brexit.

Genuinely, I would like to hear of good news stories around Brexit.
How has it made your life better?
If your pay has increased - how much by and which industry are you in?
If there has been a legal upside for you - which law and how has it helped?

I am genuinely hoping to 'reframe' my thoughts / feelings on Brexit and was hoping this board could help me

So far I haven’t seen any great benefit that would justify us leaving the EU.
Many of the problems we have as a country have been exacerbated as a result of us leaving the EU

@Greytea

You see I have experienced a very different situation. There is a severe lack of staff - whether they are British, EU or the rest world in hospitals. I see staff who are exhausted

We will never truly know how good or bad Brexit could have been because the pandemic, war and energy crisis etc have eclipsed it and tangled everything up so it's impossible to figure it out.

All things can be good or bad in the right/wrong hands. Imagine what a compulsory DNA database could be used for with the right/wrong leadership.

@PoseyFlump

I don't buy the pandemic, war and energy crises as they affected the rest of the world as well and they have affected the UK worse than everyone else.

Also there is never a perfect time, there will always be something awful going on and governments' process and procedure need to be robust enough to endure the stormy times

@Pipsquiggle do you remember what was happening before all that though? The austerity cuts. The rumours even in 2018 that it looked like we were heading for another recession?

I’m EU born and been living in UK for years. Once I heard about referendum I applied for British citizenship. It costed me £1500. I registered my son in my birth country, just in case. He has dual citizenship now.

WE TOOK BACK CONTROL.
I'm not sure what we took back control of but never mind that..

I am genuinely hoping to 'reframe' my thoughts / feelings on Brexit and was hoping this board could help me

No you don't, you just want to have another whinge about the fact you lost.

Just get over yourself and let it drop. 🙄

U.K. is worst performing economy of all G7 only one not in growth. Hardly indicative entirely global problems. It’s Brexit. Even BBC acknowledged that now.

@SharpLily Apart from dark blue passport manufacturers, obviously

I believe the passports are printed in France.

EU doesn't force any country to have a burgundy passport. Croatian passports are blue.

No, we don’t need to reframe the question. That’s a different question. Stop shifting the goalposts just because you can’t give an answer that isn’t full of random speculation and bullshit. Brexiteers clearly thought it would be amazing - £350m a week for the NHS, sunlit uplands, peach lightbulbs, suckier vacuum cleaners, we hold all the cards…all that bullshit we were fed - all fake, all lies, all utter nonsense.

@Needlesandsafetypins if the best thing a brexiteer can come with is "remain lost" it's not saying very much is it?

Exactly

If we lost, what did you win..... ?

More and more industrialists and economists are saying we should rejoin the Single Market.. everything that is wrong in the world has been made worse by Brexit... inc having 7.1m people on nhs waiting lists... France, Germany or Italy don't have these numbers... why the UK ?

Why are we putting up with 13th best all the time?

Or as one manufacturer said yesterday "UK specific regulations only help when we sell in the UK... but i sell in to both UK & EU (or try too) so i have to comply with EU regs.. we need a common set of reg's..." (like we used to have until the idiots had a say)

Another child of the seventies. Couldn't agree more. There was never going to be an overnight advantage. That's the problem with politics IMO. All politicians want to me the hero now. That's why they're not bothered about climate change.

Very few people are willing to engage because we have seen time and time from remainers how this will go. The first few pages of this thread = echo echo echo.

Remainers have pretty much silenced leavers. A couple of posters have been brave enough to say "I voted remain but....." They get dismissed of course.

Over 11,000 Albanians crossed the channel in small boats from May - Sept 2022
www.gov.uk/government/statistics/factsheet-small-boat-crossings-since-july-2022/factsheet-small-boat-crossings-since-july-2022

This is not asylum. The Albanian people have free movement in Europe and so are coming from safe countries.

11,000 people willing to risk their lives in the channel must surely equal hundreds of thousands of people if they were allowed to hop on the ferry with a ticket. We cannot house our existing population. Housing is in crisis.

Now for the inevitable cries of racism. There are many many countries that do not have free movement with the UK. There is no public campaigning for free movement from Africa, Asia that I am aware of - no cries of racism because their are movement requirements.

If we need movement for skilled labour then we can give visas to people of whatever nationality.

If we want to grant asylum to people at risk
then we can do so but people in France are not in an unsafe country. Our asylum resources that currently should be helping people in mortal danger and dangerous regimes are being exhausted by people coming through safe European countries.

Add to that shortages of labour are forcing a look at wages and terms and conditions in low paid work. No one would care that carers can't afford to live/run a car for calls if they were plentiful. They barely care anyway.

Labour conditions: no one should have to live in unsanitary conditions and work in unsanitary conditions (no handwashing/toilets) to work in farming or anywhere else. Pay should reflect the back breaking nature of the work. If we can't compete on price because of paying a fair wage then we can't. No one suggests people should live in on site caravans to make textiles or phones but somehow it was OK for European people to do this on farms. That is not a standard of employment we should be aiming for. So I would say Brexit has improved labour conditions. As have labour shortages as employers compete for labour.

@Alexandra2001
Quote: like we used to have until the idiots had a say

Prime example.

Only leavers in my experience reduce something so complex, multi faceted and with great historical context to such a base level of name-calling

I.e. remainers = right
Leavers = idiots

Personally I think it shows that they are in fact the hard of thinking. An insult they often throw around at leavers.

Never would I resort to saying remainers are idiots. There are pros and cons and advantages and disadvantages. Whether someone (not hard of thinking) voted remain or Brexit was an "on balance" decision for those not hard of thinking.

Thank you for posting this. I would urge anyone on here who still thinks Brexit was a good idea to watch it. The unvarnished truth from a community of committed Brexiteers who were somehow persuaded to vote to saw their own legs off.

The first part of your post is a load of shit tbh, this theory the bureaucrats in the EU are unelected is another Brexit myth.

They are elected, Ursula Von der Leyden was elected by the representatives of the European Parliament - of which we used to have representatives until we left.

It's a lot more democratic than the UK parliament that's for sure.

It's been 6 years now. Still waiting on a benefit.

Please do share those positives? I’m clearly hard of thinking because I cannot for the life of me find anything but cultural, economic, security and political devastation.

I honestly believe by that stage, England will all alone. There will no longer be a Britain, Brexit signalled the beginning of the end for the Union.

It isn’t nothing, but (much like defining what Brexit people voted for) it’s a very amorphous concept and pure sovereignty is not a lot of concrete use in a post Breton Woods world. Ask North Korea. People write PhDs trying to define “sovereignty”, beyond a nation state recognised internationally with a right to exist (which the UK always is, was and will be, regardless of EU membership). Sovereignty and statehood was a whole semester’s work when I was an university. Shouting “We are sovereign now, hurrah!” Isn’t a material benefit IMHO.

Political and economical agreements are never forever. They change, adjust. There’re already tensions in EU about its future. I don’t believe in 50 years EU will exist. It’ll be abolished or replaced.