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...

The Americans are doing a good job of pushing us back to EU, only now we don't have any say in the rules they set at all. Finally most of the general public have recognised the EU is more reliable than US and any country further afield that the US might not like at any given time for any minor reason and start wars with. The EU are relatively stable and varied with regulations that protect our health. They also all seem to be on the same page wrt the mad man in White House. UK can't do much other than realign our trade as we can't make US get rid of the ridiculous mango and we can't afford to officially rejoin EU.

Yes a tiny minority. Seems like far more on mumsnet as people don't always want to admit they voted Leave and got us into this mess.

I was a remainer ( personally think some people are now afraid to declare they were leave voters so are saying they voted remain when they didn’t).

We should rejoin as it was ludicrous and it’s left us vulnerable.

I would very much question the assumption that the EU is “unlikely to vanish any time soon”. It’s a very loose organisation compared to any developed western state, and it’s never been stress-tested in the way it’s likely to be over the next decade or two.

It’s not at all difficult to imagine circumstances where e.g. Germany decides it’s not in its interests to subordinate itself to the EU anymore, and then that would be that.

What am I doing? Not voting Reform for a kick off .

A quarter of Leave voters changing their minds seems completely fanciful to me, because whatever you might think of them they do represent a long and important strain of British history. Ultimately, being semi-detached from continental Europe has and always will be part of our national character and interests.

This is a really interesting perspective that has made me stop and think about it in a new way.

Just one observation: Isn't it maybe relevant that this "semi-detached" national character developed firstly when Britain had an empire, and was then sustained by our "special relationship" with a relatively sane, liberal, and unquestionably world-hegemonic USA? So how wise is it to retain our attachment to that self image as we navigate a multi-polar future with an ascendent China; Russia nipping at Europe's eastern heels; and an American president talking about leaving NATO while seemingly doing everything he can to lower his country's standing in the world and turn it into a fascist basket case?

It doesn't seem like a good place for a small, isolated, import-dependent island to me. Which is basically what we are outside of the EU, delusions of post-imperial grandness notwithstanding.

I’d disagree with that starting-point. It was probably always there, simply because we are an island, but it’s definitely there in Henry VIII breaking from the Catholic Church.

As I said, I was a remainer and I basically agree with you on what would be the optimum position for us to be in. But also sometimes it is better for us to be independent and nimble, and while we’re hardly making a good fist of that right now, I’ve made my peace with Brexit.

"Nimble" was what the Brexiteers were all saying before the referendum. It was a lie then, and it's still a lie. Compare our deal with Australia with the one the EU got...

Trouble is we aren't 'nimble' we are struggling to put in trade regulations and having to tackle imports with suspicious loads frequently, which costs a lot. Dodgy meat on the market is a particularly concerning development that we keep having to address and goodness knows what diseases that can cause. The cost of another CJD/Foot and Mouth would be the death knoll to farmers.

@MaybeNotBob

Compare our deal with Australia with the one the EU got..

Is answered by:

Compare the deal the UK got with the US, whose economy is 15 times larger than that of Australia, to the one the EU got.

US tariffs applied to UK = 10%

US tariffs applied to EU = 15%

@MaybeNotBob

The cost of rejoining will be covered in the first year by the economic boost.

If that’s correct, why has the government not triggered Article 49?

If you have evidence that proves that statement is correct, why have you not presented it to Parliament?

Not necessarily, but I find being in with either of those is better than being out altogether

@Woj

UK has never been in Schengen nor has ever used the Euro. So, how can it be known that being in the EU with either of those is better than being out?

Schengen is a form of border control. This would violate the GFA. So, Schengen is not possible for the UK.

Not all EU member use the Euro. So, why should UK be required to use the Euro?

Most importantly of all is the EU policy of free movement. Look at mess the EU is in because of free movement.

Whether the UK would have to adopt the Euro is a matter for debate as part of any Ascension talks with the EU. It is, as you indicate, not a given. Personally I concern myself with what I can buy with the money I have, not what the Currency is called...

The statement "Look at the mess the EU is in because of free movement." is an opinion rather than an established fact. Whether it's "true" depends on what you mean by "the mess" and whether they can show that free movement is the main cause.

A more evidence-based assessment would be:

• Free movement has created challenges. The EU's free movement of people has increased migration within the bloc, which has put pressure on housing, public services, and labour markets in some places. It has also become a politically contentious issue in several member states.
• Free movement has also brought significant benefits. It allows EU citizens to live, work, and study across member states, helps fill labour shortages, increases economic integration, and gives businesses access to a larger workforce. Many economists find that these benefits are substantial, though unevenly distributed.
• The EU's current difficulties have many causes besides free movement. These include slow economic growth in some countries, the eurozone debt crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, energy price shocks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, demographic ageing, housing shortages, and migration from outside the EU. It would be difficult to attribute these issues primarily to free movement within the EU.

The interaction would be complicated, but UK membership of the Schengen Area would generally make the Good Friday Agreement easier to operate, not harder.

Here's why:

The current situation
The Good Friday Agreement relies, in practice, on there being no visible border infrastructure between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Although the Agreement itself doesn't require Schengen membership, an open border has been politically and economically important.

Today:

• The Republic of Ireland is not in Schengen.
• The UK is not in Schengen.
• Instead, they operate the Common Travel Area (CTA), which allows British and Irish citizens to move freely between the UK and Ireland.
• Since Brexit, customs and regulatory checks have become the main border issue—not passport checks.

If the UK joined Schengen
There are two main possibilities:
If Ireland stayed outside Schengen (the more likely scenario):

• The UK would have to implement Schengen's external border rules.
• Ireland would still be outside Schengen because it has historically prioritised the Common Travel Area over joining Schengen.
• This would create tension between the CTA and Schengen. Some form of border or immigration controls would likely be needed somewhere between the UK and Ireland unless special arrangements were negotiated.
• That could complicate the current arrangements supporting the open Irish land border.

If both the UK and Ireland joined Schengen:

• Passport-free travel across the island of Ireland would fit naturally within Schengen.
• Immigration checks at the Irish land border would not be needed.
• Customs and regulatory issues would still depend on whether the UK was also in the EU customs union and single market. Schengen only covers border controls for people, not customs for goods.

The biggest point
The biggest post-Brexit issue affecting the Good Friday Agreement has not been passport-free travel. It has been customs and regulatory divergence between the UK and the EU, leading to arrangements such as the Windsor Framework for goods moving into Northern Ireland.
Joining Schengen alone would not remove those customs issues. It would affect the movement of people, not goods.

Overall

• UK joins Schengen, Ireland does not: likely to create new legal and practical complications for the Common Travel Area and could make maintaining today's arrangements around the Irish border more difficult.
• UK and Ireland both join Schengen: would support free movement of people across the Irish border, but customs issues related to the Good Friday Agreement would remain unless there were broader UK-EU economic integration as well.

So Schengen membership by itself is not a solution to the Irish border question. The key issues under the Good Friday Agreement today are primarily about trade and regulation rather than passport controls.

It was a bad decision however democracy won - get over it

The EU would be forced to offer a deal to the UK that was worse than the previous deal. Reason is simple.

If the UK was offered a better deal than previous, it would encourage other existing members to leave and rejoin so they too would get a better deal. Hence the UK will never apply to rejoin.

The UK will rejoin, because even the standard EU deal will be better for the country then trying to go it alone as a lonely little island, simples!

I have a theory:
When the UK voted to join the EU (EEC back then) it was because the UK economy was a basket case compared to other countries
However as the UK economy improved and other poorer countries joined, then the comparative benefit disappeared to produce the (untrue) feeling of "they need us more than we need them " or we contribute more than we get back.

By leaving the EU and also trashing the economy when the UK does request to rejoin the EU it will be when our economy is relatively worse than other member so "hopefully" the UK will return to a scenario of "getting more out than we put in".

Genius really!

@Woj

The UK will rejoin, because even the standard EU deal will be better for the country then trying to go it alone as a lonely little island, simples!

Mixed messages from the EU regards a UK rejoin.

Jean Claude Juncker has stated the UK will never rejoin in his lifetime. Reasons he gave we’re:

EU is wounded that the UK left.

UK closeness to the US.

US is not popular in the EU.

Michelle Barnier indicated that UK could rejoin and retain the previous opt outs. Poland says the opposite.

Iceland, Norway and Switzerland are not full members of the EU and they are doing well even though they are much smaller than the UK.

@1dayatatime

By leaving the EU and also trashing the economy

Since 2019, the gap between the UK and German GDP has narrowed. Likewise, the gap between UK and France GDP has widened.

How does that represent the UK economy being trashed?

I voted Remain and would love it if we could rewind time and cancel Brexit.

We can’t unfortunately, and now that we’ve left, as pp said we would only be able to rejoin on far less favourable terms (if at all).

In particular, we’d have to join the Euro. You saying that “money is money no matter what it’s called” is frankly spectacularly ignorant of the real effects of joining a single currency.

Using ChatGPT for your answers on Schengen also doesn’t indicate a lot of prior research.

Wow, 5 million people have died since Brexit! 😯

It's not the fucking okey-cokey

I'm not doing anything about it, we should not have left, and it has been hugely damaging.
But re-joining is pie in the sky. See all the reasons from PP.

@Woj the problem with the campaigns of both sides was twofold.

Firstly, in any decision there are upsides and downsides. Thus, I would have expected the remain campaign to have made statements along the lines that the benefits of remaining are this, the benefits of leaving are that, the downsides of remaining are this, the downside of leaving are that, and on balance remaining will be more beneficial because of whatever reasons. Similar for leave. None of that happened, and both side just said "it will be shit if we do the other" in the main.

Secondly, the stupidity of the electorate in not doing their own research on a complicated issue. There was one version of remain, and that was to keep what we had. There were a million permutations of leave. Take immigration as one factor. The UK had one of the lowest rates of acceptance in the EU, and there was more that could have been done to lower that further even under EU rules. Our government elected not to exercise any of that. So to vote to leave based on immigration is like saying "you aren't doing a good enough job, so I am going to free you up to do a worse job", and this is exactly what happened. The Conservatives opened the door to more migrants, and lost the support of the other EU countries, the most important of which was France for obvious reasons.

Only last night I had a conversation with a friend who voted leave whose comment was "this isn't the Brexit I voted for" and got most upset when I pointed out that it absolutely was. The voting was in or out. We are out. He got what he voted for. There was no sub box that said "I vote out in order to get X, Y, or Z". There must be tons of disenfranchised leavers for this reason.

I voted remain, I also agree with PP that we are unlikely to ever have the same terms should we try to rejoin, and I agree that our efforts would be better deployed elsewhere.

I also think that the standard of politicians in this country has dropped through the floor, so I don't currently see anyone capable of negotiating rejoining. Most of the can't run a bath, let alone a country.

Then there was Covid, Ukraine, Gaza, Iran and it all compounds. Our economy has lost billions. I worked in financial services and most of the investment houses moved thousands of people abroad to minimise the risk after the referendum result. Because that's what they do. They manage risk. They didn't know what the deal would be.

What am I doing about it? Fortunately, I have the ability to apply for citizenship in an EU country, so I am doing that in order to be able to travel, and potentially work in an EU country as that is where my job moved to. I may even move to one if it gets worse here. Despite the higher rates of tax.

Actually tax is another thing that makes it worse here and more difficult to recover from leaving. The UK electorate seem to want a champagne service for lemonade money. We have one of the lowest rates of tax, but want fabulous public service. It is beyond stupid. Until that all changes, we are pretty fucked here.

@HappiestSleeping

Remain campaign focussed on theoretical negatives of leaving as opposed to benefits of being in the EU. Might have been a different result on 23 June 2016 had they focussed on the positives.

Many of the catastrophes forecast by remain never happened.

UK would be at the back of the queue for a deal with the US as per Obama April 2016. The opposite occurred.

500,000 to 800,000 job losses just by a vote to leave as per UK treasury report April 2016. Unemployment fell from 2015 to Q3 2024 until Labour made it more expensive to employ people.

Emergency budget that would ruin everyone as per George Osborne 8 June 2016. Never happened.

Little wonder that people are not convinced that experts are reliable.