Farmers who voted for Brexit- views now?

[Flyhigher]

Any farmers that voted for Brexit - what do you think now?
Again - genuinely interested.

Friend of mine (farmers wife) was amazed by how many of her farming friends were voting leave...they didn't think it would affect them.

Does anyone admit to being stupid enough to having voted leave anymore?

Yeah, loads do.
Difficult for them to say they didn't after the plastered it all over Facebook and erected massive great 'Vote Leave' signs on their land. Interestingly, I didn't see a single 'Vote Remain' sign in a farmers field. Not one.

I lived on Exmoor during Brexit and would say that most of the farmers I knew voted remain. However, those who supported leave were very vocal about it (billboards on farmland etc) so it created the illusion they were speaking for the majority.

What is remarkable is that although they can hardly deny how they voted when they chose to make it so public, how few people want to actually talk about it now, or talk about how they feel after four years of brexit in action (as proved by this thread!).

The government is incompetent corrupt and clearly dysfunctional. I don’t understand how this can somehow be blamed on Brexit supporters.

Yup loads of Leave signs in fields round here. They were a replacement for "Vote Conservative" during elections.
Think it was 60/40 for.
They didn't want the red tape and inspections.

If they knew their subsidy money would be gone 8 years later I better the result would have been different.

Agree - but it's not the current government that is to blame for the Brexit disaster. I would also place the blame with many sections of the media and wealthy business people who convinced voters of the so called "benefits of Brexit".

The likes of James Dyson who went on and on about how Brexit was best for Britain and then did one when it was evident it was not good...interesting how he is now one of the super rich farmers (although we all know he isn't really a farmer) moaning about the changes in IHT

No one (here) is blaming Leave voters for government incompetence and corruption!

(Although they are responsible for us, you know, leaving the EU.)

Like “Taking control of our borders” (That has aged well)
Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster.

It’s amazing how many farmers people on MN know. I’m calling bullshit

@SweetSixty I would agree with that. I think people don't realise how many farms/farmers there actually are. They see a few of these signs out the car/train window and they think they've seen all the farms in their area 🙈 without realising their area extends beyond the places they drive.

Maybe. Personally I live semi rurally and my job means I often meet with and talk to landowners. So, yes, I do actually know quite a lot of farmers.
Plus living here, some of the people I know are just from normal connections - like our kids were at school together.

I also live semi-rurally and know several farmers. Of those I know, tenant farmers generally voted remain, whilst landowners generally voted leave.

I voted leave and I'd vote leave again tomorrow. If you are stupid enough to have wanted to stay, to have even less of a say over who governs you than you do now, then good for you!

The bigger the organisation in charge of us, the less say you have as individuals.

How poorly it has been implemented is another matter and one of the problems since, along with stupid losers who hated the result and have moaned, griped, grimaced and put everything down since.

Thanks @Gettoachiro , good to hear you're still confident about it. Sorry that it hasn't worked out so well though. Somebody like Nigel Farage in charge would have made it work maybe, instead of Frost, Johnson, Rees-Mogg etc, who's hearts were never really in it?

It was never going to be workable. You cannot walk away from your nearest and biggest market and expect life to remain the same. We didn’t make any decent trade deals elsewhere because we were desperate. I think the farmers despised the one with Australia. We are now a minnow in negotiating terms and we threw away the clout the EU has. Yes, areas needed reform but in terms of trade, leave was a distaster.

Plus in the 70s Labour was against joining. They sat on their hands in the Referendum and are doing what now exactly? Oh yes. Taxing business so there’s fewer jobs and no chance of growth. No chance of anything improving.

I'd think the more relevant question is farmers who voted labour, how do they feel now?

I think it would be fair to say that a high percentage of farmers (and other business owners) are rather pissed off with the labour government.

There are hopeful signs however. Let's see what tomorrow brings!

@Gettoachiro duh. Every country is subject to trade rules. Apart from embargoed countries like Iran, North Korea etc. I'm

We are under WTO trade rules. Now, what influence do you imagine the U.K. has there? The same as every other member. There is no escaping it. It's simply not possible to behave like a rogue trading nation and expect trading success.

As part of the EU, we had a huge influence there.

We've just voted for economic sanctions on ourselves. So so so stupid. And now we are even more vulnerable if Trump imposes tariffs.

And yeah, people complain about the 2016 vote because it was full of lies. And the economic damage is pretty awful to the U.K.

There are about 100,000 farmers in the UK and about half a million farm workers. Farms take up about 70% of the UK's land. Farmers use pubs, shops, other businesses, vets, clubs, choirs etc. Many farmers have second jobs - supplying logs, building, mechanics. My chimney sweep is a farmer and so's the woman who runs our WI.

If you live rurally (17% of the UK population) or in a small town (8 million of us do) you'd be hard pressed not to know farmers.

The posts probably aren't bullshit. Not everyone on MN lives in a a city.

Now I know you’re having a laugh

Why would you think that? Has it come as a surprise to you to learn that farmers are not one homogenous group with a single viewpoint? Of course they aren't. They're people like the rest of the population who have different opinions and life experiences which influence their thinking.

Or perhaps it has come as a surprise to you to learn that people outside farming make friends and have relationships with people who work in farming. I've lived in this village for the best part of 50 years. My FIL was a farmhand on a local farm, DH was brought up in a tied cottage on the farm - and I wasn't even counting them amongst the farmers I referred to in my previous post.

The two tenant farmers I know voted remain. One of them has a son who has had to go through the rigmarole of getting German citizenship to remain living and working in Berlin after Brexit. They are both family friends.

My brother's in-laws are landowners. They farmed the land themselves back in the day, but now lease their farmland to a tenant farmer (not one of the ones I'm friends with - no idea what their opinions on Brexit were/are). They no longer actively farm themselves, save keeping a couple of horses, and now dabble in the antiques book market instead. They were very vociferous leave campaigners.

It's a little ignorant to think I'm "having a laugh". I'm very clearly talking about people I know personally - people who are my friends and my extended family. I think I know rather better than you how those people voted since we discussed it at the time. It would seem rather presumptuous of you to think you know their voting actions better than I do.

Perhaps what you meant to say was "Your experiences are different to mine". It's a shame you didn't.

The farmers I know and socialise with are mainly Welsh hill farmers. I do know one very wealthy farmer in the south Midlands and another who “downsized” from the south Midlands to Wales.

Every single one of them voted leave.

It amazes me that people voted to leave the biggest market for their goods. Utter madness. We took back control of nothing and completely over estimated our place in the world of trade. Trade is not just about selling. As the farmers have found, it’s about imports too.