If you think leaving the EU was a bad idea, what are you doing about it?

[Woj]

Change doesn't just happen, it's made...

I’d like to be back in asap but until it’s clear that it’s the settled will of the country to do so the EU won’t even begin negotiations with us. The amount of effort and goodwill we’ve squandered in leaving is unquantifiable. And while I agree the majority would prefer not to have left, we are most likely looking at a reform government within a few years so we’ll have all that shit to get through before we can even begin to start rebuilding.

Where do you get the at least one million will be moving to the UK from?

Looking at population size, how many Ukrainians are here already under the Ukraine Refugee Scheme, how many came from countries such as Poland and Romania previously, remembering that thousands of Albanian nationals crossed the Channel by small boat in 2022...

You are guessing then.

Politicians in my region are getting their ducks in a row for when they trigger a referendum to Leave (the UK).

How are you going to argue that it will be fewer than one million, in view of past experience?

Therefore I would argue that if immigration is what concerns people most, then our leaving the EU must also be a part of that conversation.

Maybe if Remain campaigns had been willing to address that before the vote in any meaningful way, sure, but they didn't, part of their failure was thinking 'immigration is good, look at these lovely successful migrants, anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot' was going to do anything other than help the Leave campaign. At this point, that assertion isn't much - sure it can be part of it, but that's too little, too late.

Any discussion of immigration needs to focus on the changes to the systems that have happened over the last few decades around non-EU migration, why those changes happened, and why they weren't solutions for British communities. Non-EU migration has always been significantly larger, that's part of why we were used to test out biometric IDs, digital IDs, and the private partners now being used in age verification and the push towards expanding digitising government services including digital IDs. All of that started in migration processes for non-EU migrants.

There were hundreds of changes to immigration law between 1997 and the referendum, the changes kept happening afterwards, no one seems happy with the outcomes of those changes other than those making money off of it - and that's from the private partners behind the software used to process immigration paperwork & maintaining digital IDs to the gangs that bring people in illegally and make quite a bit off both forcing them into labour to pay off debts and bringing them back in when they're deported. In my work, I've met people who've been through this several times, and all the ones I've met have been from the EU. The gangs pre-date Brexit, the private partners making money off of immigration pre-date Brexit, Remain politicians could have dug into these and many other immigration issues and openly discussed solutions that could be done while in the EU - but quite a few of those politicians were the ones who brought in those private partners, they discussed in Parliament that they were making the immigration services 'for profit', and seemed more than willing to leave discussion on EU gangs with the Leave campaign rather than discuss potential solutions. They would have to admit that their previous solutions were wrong, they would have to admit they were wrong to blame the EU for so many things that were actually in their control was incorrect, and they chose not to do so. That was a failure on their part, an active choice they made, that led to how things are now.

Returning to the EU would be a massive undertaking, and until those in power who are for it are willing to recognise those failures and the part they played in them - rather than just calling people stupid - none are going to be in the position to handle it. They need to get a handle on that and a lot more shit going on here before they move towards rejoining the EU.

Name the 'newspaper' you read it in, come on!!

Immigration into the UK is increasing due to the increase in numbers of people who are crossing the Mediterranean Sea (approx 250K per year) and entering the EU via Eastern European borders (measured in the millions).

There there are no direct routes from Africa or the Eastern European borders to Calais. Therefore, if immigrants did not enter the EU to begin with they could never end up in Calais.

Is the UK responsible for border control in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe?

No they are not.

Funny how all these people who most definitely did vote to remain are so adamant that we don't rejoin...

🤔

If you’ve foolishly walked through a minefield, think twice before trying to walk back again.

Some people voted remain because it seemed a bad idea to spend years haggling over the terms of our leaving, that being in the EU was in no way the cause of all our ills, that it would divide the nation and distract our leaders, and that our energy would be much better spent trying to leverage the benefits of our position.

Those people may well feel it’s now a bad idea to spend years haggling over the terms of our accession, that being in the EU is not the cure of all our ills, that it would divide the nation and distract our leaders, and that our energy would be much better spent trying to leverage the benefits of our position.

Looking at the shitshow Trump has caused, closer ties with Europe/EU is a good move.

According to brexiteeres we haven't brexited properly so it can't be that difficult to do that

And ofcourse people don't always like to admit they voted leave......

Appalling metaphor! We can walk back round the other way. And there were no mines in it anyway!

No mines? You don’t think there was a cost to deeply polarising the public over an issue that had previously largely been a hobby horse of the Tory right, tying up our bureaucracy, giving us unstable governments and deadlocked parliament for years? I think that was a big, unforced error. I think redoing in the other direction risks being the same.

I disagree. We're haemorrhaging money because of Brexit. The cost of rejoining will be covered in the first year by the economic boost.

To argue that we shouldn't make ourselves richer because it might cost a bit at first is, at best, illogical...

And the majority of the public has realised it was all a bunch of lies, so to keep pandering to those lies doesn't seem to be the best way to improve things...

I think the main reasons our economy is struggling are flatlined productivity, extremely expensive inputs (energy and housing), extremely expensive public infrastructure, a ducking of hard political problems like demographics and public finances. I don’t think any of those are things Brussels can fix: we need to solve them and we haven’t for two decades.

Looking forward, I think the big challenges are: how we navigate AI, and how we adjust to a more isolationist US and rise of new major powers. I think the EU is relevant to the second but not central (European defence coordination has never been primarily EU-led), and probably actively harmful to the former by making us less nimble (EU AI Act, for example, which the EU is already trying to unpick as it worries about commercial implications). I think there are benefits to being in the EU as a trade and negotiating bloc versus China and others, but I don’t think that alone is sufficient reason to distract ourselves for the next ?five years at the dawn of potentially the most consequential economic transition in history. I think our weight in the EU also rests ultimately on our economic strength, and the idea that we will rejoin as a co-equal ‘big three’ is unrealistic.

So you say this will be easy, will quickly repay itself, that contrary views are lies, and that this is the true will of the people?

Have heard that before and wasn’t convinced then either.

Brexit has cost the UK hugely, not just GDP but also on time wasted

Defence funding for example was put aside for brexit, same with pandemic preparations.

And what for? Blue passports?

These are all arguments coming from the Regorm bots, and the likes of the people behind Trump.

They sound reasonable, but they don't stand up to a minimum amount of thought...

Why do you think Trump and Vance are attacking the EU? Why were they endorsing Orban?

hint, it is not because the EU is irrelevant

Which ones don’t stand up to a minimum amount of thought?

Selling simple answers to complex problems is always a red flag, whether it’s Farage or NotBob.

I'm not going into in depth arguments on here, because it's the old "playing chess with a pigeon" scenario.

Hopefully there are still enough people in the country who can think, even if they need to be inspired to do so...

"Selling simple answers to complex problems" is exactly what Fartage and co did with Brexit. And they continue to do so.

You said it didn’t need a moments thought but now it’s too complicated to explain?

Here are the issues you said were easy. Humour me. What’s the easy solution and how does the EU relate?

Productivity: has flatlined since 2008, long before Brexit. How does rejoining the EU fix that?

Highest energy costs in the OECD, housing crisis, and chronic underinvestment in infrastructure. Something that can’t be solved in Westminster? Or something we’ve consistently failed to, in or out of the EU?

Demographics and public finances. Is this another one fixed within a year? These are long-running slow-burn issues that afflict EU states as much as ours.

AI: what’s the right approach to this huge and unknown economic and social shift. What about the EU AI Act do you admire and could this not be done domestically? When the EU is already trying to row back on what it has legislated, is this right law to tie us to?

European defence posture. How many divisions does the EU have? Is it a major player in this debate? How much of a hinderance is being outside the EU to defence cooperation?

Rising powers: I think here the EU has a decent claim to be useful as a trade and negotiating bloc.

I said none of that. The fact that you are misrepresenting my comments shows me that you are a bad faith actor. I don't have much else to say to you...