**Alternate Sources**
Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story:
* [Just 24% of Britons now think the UK should be outside the EU — NatCen survey also reveals 71% say the economy is worse off because of Brexit](https://huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/just-one-quarter-of-british-people-now-think-the-uk-should-be-outside-the-european-union_uk_66684d82e4b04a7f054b62b9), suggested by marketrent - huffingtonpost.co.uk
We left the EU so we could have the “sovereignty” to make our own decisions.
The irony being that we elected to join the EU and we already had the best deal with access to the single market and being allowed to retain our own currency.
I’m convinced that if we left the EU but the terms of our relationship with the EU remained the exactly the same that would be enough to satisfy brexiteers because the majority have no idea what it means or a plan for an alternative.
>We left the EU so we could have the “sovereignty” to make our own decisions.
That always annoyed me. The idea we weren't a sovereign nation and couldn't make our own decisions whilst we were part of a bloc that shares policy on packaging laws and employment rights etc.
It's the same basic principle of joining a trade union - yes, you have to pay your union fees - but you also get the power of collective bargaining which amplifies your voice. Try telling your boss as one individual you want a pay rise... Now when all the workers act together they might actually have to listen.
The same is true in international trade deals. A market of *half a billion people* can get better deals than one of 65 million. Especially when negotiating with China and the US.
Most of our exporters still sell to the EU anyway so must still obey EU regulations - only now we no say or input on what those rules and regulations actually are.
Leaving the EU was leaving your union JOB, to then try to negotiate a better paid job in the same industry. It looks like we got a role based on performance, where getting the sales in is so hard it doesn't happen.
It's a good analogy. But a substantial number of British people view themselves as *the boss*, not a small player on the world stage that needs to be in a trade bloc. They can't bare the reality that they are no longer permitted to run the British Empire. So the analogy doesn't work for them and they say they don't need the union.
What's more annoying is they weren't taken to court for the bs lies in the voting campaigns, now we are fucked if we wanna go back because they'll force the euro in the deal. Somehow the pound stays strong and i'd like to keep it.
We were sovereign but we did five up some sovereignty for the benefits of the eu. Some descions we could not make like signing trade deals and making certain pieces of legislation.
But you aren’t losing any actual abilities by being in a trade union save maybe not striking. Whereas the eu we did. Now you can argue the benefits outweighed that but we did still lose some abilities.
Again the issue came down to migration - look at Poland for example. The EU is heavily pressuring them to accept refugees - the same refugees that caused a spike in Sweden gun crime stats and germanys terrorist attacks.
There was also nothing stopping refugees joining an eu country then just moving here.
Same as this election lol it largely came down to migration
>Again the issue came down to migration
Freedom of movement yes - but we weren't part of Schengen and the EU never had any power to force us to accept refugees or immigration from outside the EU - that was always within our control (we took a tiny fraction of the refugees that other countries did during the Syrian crisis for example) - it was just used by Farage as a scaremongering tactic that blurred all forms of immigration together as a big bad.
However you look at it that has backfired as well - we've replaced EU immigration with immigration from countries outside the EU - who are much more likely to settle, have children here, and contribute less to the economy overall.
Again, this was all pointed out at the time. People refused to listen.
Also ,
Please note that as part of the EU rules , the UK was able to remove any EU citizen when they became an economic net drain on the country after a certain amount of time. All EU countries are able to do this - the government never bothered to implement this mechanism because of course ... Lack of public services investment. Fun!
Yup 100% this. It was honestly a bit shocking working in Spain quite regularly between 2021-2023. Big EU research group there so folks from across multiple Schengen nations all moaning all the time about what a total pain in the arse Spain, another Schengen nation, makes it for people like them to live, work, and use services in the country. I always said I fucking wish that kind of voice had been raised during the Brexit debate, it would've totally blown the whole narrative around EU immigration out of the water here. The problem was always with Westminster not Brussels.
And we still have massive levels of migration, it's now just from people who have a greater cultural divergence from the UK than the French and the Poles.
Nothing is stopping refugees coming here by the EU anyway. If Ireland wanted it could grant refugees Irish citizenship and they would then have the right to live and work in the UK.
Also nothing really stopped us from ignoring the EU while in it. Look at how much trouble they are having with much smaller members being stubborn. The EU doesn't have an effective mechanism to manage its members.
>it's now just from people who have a greater cultural divergence from the UK than the French and the Poles
and have no real need or motivation to part of the wider community, while simultaneously holding whatever is left of western values in sheer contempt
birds of a feather
this creates division and essentially ghetto neighbourhoods and even large areas of towns and cities, strains existing community ties, as the original inhabitants become insular/retreat/move away, a total loss of social cohesion, unless you are in the dominant/rising group
I'm saying this from lived experience
I'm pro-immigration but I'm also pro-assimilation. The UK has done a poor job of even integrating immigrants let alone assimilating them. And don't get me wrong, assimilation doesn't mean all aspects of their culture being destroyed. It means they become British and we keep some good bits. It's harder to consider with more abstract bits of culture, but cuisine is a great concrete example of where something can be assimilated. I would say that curry is a very British dish these days, and I would say curries are a very popular dish in the UK.
> Look at how much trouble they are having with much smaller members being stubborn. The EU doesn't have an effective mechanism to manage its members.
I think this will evolve as the need arises. Maybe one day the EU really will tell its members what to do, but it doesn't at the current time.
>Again the issue came down to migration - look at Poland for example. The EU is heavily pressuring them to accept refugees
Oh wow, a bloc is looking to distribute the burden among all member states. The horror.
>the same refugees that caused a spike in Sweden gun crime stats and germanys terrorist attacks.
Lmao just shows your ignorance. Similar to France, Sweden has a big issue with 2nd and so on gen migrants because they are basically forced into parallel societies that are breeding grounds for gangs etc.
I kind of get that Brexit was about immigration but I think as time's gone on, it's proven to not have been an EU issue. People arriving on the English coast is a good few steps remove from the beginning of the issue. Countries aren't looking beyond their own borders and the EU isn't looking beyond its members' borders. The phrase "migration crisis" gets bandied about a lot but there are two meanings which get confused: the idea of an *incoming* migration crisis for a country and the wider movement of people elsewhere in the world because of war, famine, political and economic instability and all of the rest, which leads to them heading to our borders. It's worth adding that the beneficiaries of the dissolution of law and order in these developing/third-world countries are welcomed to financial centres like London with open arms.
Regardless of whether the UK (or any other country is in the EU), the collective European continent, be that as the EU or not, needs to look beyond its borders (i.e. pull its head out of its arse) to figure out if it can prevent or, rather, help give people a reason to not up sticks and head for Europe as there are a lot of bad actors taking advantage of an unstable world.
I'm sure someone will say "not our problem, it's happening elsewhere" but sovereignty isn't just the ability to make your own decisions within your borders, it's also the ability to make your voice heard around the world. If it's not that, you're just a country which is being patronisingly allowed to carry on in your own bubble by bigger nations with no real power and you're just carried along on the vague tides of a world which you have no say in but are heavily affected by.
>There was also nothing stopping refugees joining an eu country then just moving here.
Yes there is. this is a misconception.
We could always kick out people from the EU if we did not want them, we just never bothered. I'm not talking about the 3 month rules, im talking about the fact the UK is a sovereign nation and can kick whoever the hell it wants out.
It might break a treaty, there might be repercussions, but if that Norwegian terrorist came out of prison and tried to move to the UK, we could've stop him in a legitimate way.
Its free movement of labour, not all people at all times.
> There was also nothing stopping refugees joining an eu country then just moving here.
This isn't quite right. Asylum seekers don't have any right to freedom of movement in the EU. Nor do successful refugees after their claims have been awarded. To gain access to freedom of movement, they have to go through the whole process of becoming a citizen of the EU country in which they claimed asylum. There can be barriers at that point too, It varies by country, but the citizenship application process would never be automatic, could be blocked by criminal records or lack of qualification etc.
Not really. You’re looking at very rich people some of whose wealth is of questionable origin thinking to avoid EU anti-corruption laws. Didn’t really work that way much but.
It’s overlooked because since we’ve left immigration has increased. Hardly matter if the EU aren’t pressuring us when the outcome is the same or even worse.
It may be a decent argument in defence of Brexit if it had actually led to a reduction in immigration.
> Same as this election lol it largely came down to migration
I think you are right. It was the main point made by basically all the Leave voters I spoke to. They were happy to have Polish people and other Europeans come here, but wanted to stop people from Africa and Asia coming here by boat or truck and claiming asylum.
I'd tell them that the asylum system was a United Nations treaty, not an EU one, and I would point them at good stuff to read up on it but they never would.
None of them like to talk about it now.
The irony is the European Parliament that made the decisions that affected “our sovereignty” was filled with British MEP’s elected by us to make the decisions in the European Parliament.
I’ll take your irony and raise you an irony being that Farage, an MEP for 21 years, had the lowest voting record in the European Parliament whilst campaigning to leave it on account of a lack of sovereignty.
Farage specifically raising UK fisheries having a lack of any representation in the EU as a reason to leave - While he himself *was the UK representative at the EU fisheries committee and only ever bothered to turn up to the very first meeting*.
I still struggle to grasp how just totally fucking insane some of those mid-2010 talking points were. People were so fucking deluded to buy into any of this crap.
Indeed, thankfully for adults in the room (un elected commission and a parliament we were consistently outvoted on regardless of NF's turn out) can keep asking for a revote until the democratic choice is taken.
I'm pretty sure it was voted for because a lot of people really wanted to stop immigrants & refugees tbh, similarly with the torys being in power and without going quite so far as to vote for Farage and his lot in case they got called racist or bigoted.
Some bits of nonsense about making our own decisions about funding areas thrown in to back it up & lies to make it seem like nothing would change or go wrong.
Unfortunately all they got was more immigrants, just not ones from the EU and more from less developed countries instead. Which is the people they mainly wanted to stop. By 2050 the muslim population in the UK will be more than the whole of Scotland & Wales' populations combined, which is what a lot of people in here really dont want as suddenly a religious group has a bigger say and will affect the dynamic of the whole of the UK more than two connected country's populations will. And mass migration of regugees was giving them the fear of the EU forcing us to accept more. It's why Farage got any real traction at all imo. And just caused issues for people immigrating from the EU instead. Cost of imports, living costs and travel all increased more when people are already having a tough time of it and alongside oil and energy increases due to Russia/Ukraine also. An inability to move to mainland Europe ourselves and annoyingly huge queues at the airports for holidays to boot.
I wasn't ever pro Scottish independence but the idea we might get back into the EU if we voted for this genuinely started to sway me. Although I'm still not convinced we'd manage solo without making the cost of living here even worse.
How did we elect to join the EU?!
We voted to join a common market in the 1970s.
The Maastricht treaty in 1992 changed that to a European Community and then a European Union, all without our consent or say so.
The people of the UK had no say in that. There wasn't a referendum and it wasn't in the Tory manifesto to join. The 1992 Tory government just decided if on our behalf.
Had we joined due to the will of the people then Brexit would never have happened.
This is why the UK's application was rejected twice. British people for the most part just don't understand the EU. It was never intended to be just a trading bloc, it was from its inception a political project born from the devastation of world war 2 and an existential need for European Integration.
Nobody wants just an economic union.
And yet there were basically no dis benefits to being in the Union that emerged from the common market.
Unless one was to believe becoming the 5th largest economy in the world )after being the sick man of Europe) and having the freedom to live, work, study and retire across the continent, is somehow a bad thing.
Except that was never going to happen because you have to make commitments to.benefit from being a.member of the club, in order to get club membership privileges.....
It's not a hard concept to grasp
We got some concessions but we did still some sovereignty from being in it. Now you can argue that the benefits of being in it outweigh that but we did still lose it
>The irony being that we elected to join the EU and we already had the best deal with access to the single market and being allowed to retain our own currency.
No. The 1975 referendum was to see if the country wanted to remain in the 3 European organisations that the UK had joined 2 years earlier.
One of the major talking points of brexiteers is that the transition from these communities to the contemporary EU was very undemocratic..... Which it was.
Also all of the concessions the EU gave us were temporary. This was made clear to us several times and has also been pointed out to other members who have special deals.
That's pretty much exactly what the Brexit crowd wanted lol. And now in hindsight they are calling anything less a "botched brexit" .. not "brexit is a failure" just it didnt go correctly because they didnt get all the benefits with none of the downsides.
So let me see if I understand this right-
When we were out of the EC we wanted to be in it. We joined the EC which became the EU which we wanted to be out of. So we left the EU & now we want back in again?
Is the grass always greener?
By my calculations if we rejoin then shake it all about we'll be close to a full hokey cokey.
>When we were out of the EC we wanted to be in it. We joined the EC which became the EU which we wanted to be out of.
We're the cats of Europe. Can't decide if we want to be indoors or outside.
It's much simpler. Voter base is gullible.
Promise more fish, less immigrants, some vaguely defined brexit dividend and plaster some lies about NHS getting more cash on a bus...and that all gets accepted at face value.
...then later when the inevitable collision between promises and reality comes you get stats like the one in this heading.
Right? It seems to be the biggest issue right now. We've set our national course for the last 15 years basically on a load of old bullshit and lies, and now we seem like we just have to stick out the course rather than have a more frank discussion about whether or not a load of truism we now seem to hold as national assumptions might not actually be true, and were in fact just Tory slogans devised to suit a specific media/political campaign.
This is actually a really good question. One would hope that u/merryman1 would say that yes, the voter base is *always* gullible.
However… The Brexit vote does seem to be a particularly tragic example of manipulative powers exploiting such gullibility. A single-issue plebiscite will always have the potential to highlight that more starkly than a GE, but this one set new standards.
As in reform UK? Even more so then - [explained why here (slightly tongue in cheek).](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1dctwyt/harder_to_have_own_home_under_tories_sunak_tells/l80rg6g/)
And its not even that I object to something more small c conservative overall...its just that the entire lot on that end of the spectrum seem like incompetent shysters.
> We joined the EC which became the EU which we wanted to be out of. So we left the EU & now we want back in again?
No, a portion of the population wanted out, because the lay-person isn't particularly well informed on things like global economics, international treaties, and geopolitics (which is why we elect MPs to vote on those decisions for us, in th esame way we go to doctors for surgery, or lawyers for legal help) and people in power blamed the EU for every bad policy/decision/consequence for years.
Then followed that up with "But the immigrants" when a referendum (which was only called as a gamble to shut up descenting voices inside the Tory party and never expected to pass) rolled around.
Now that we are out and people are learning first hand, the hard way, what the benefits of the EU are, people are realising that we were better off as a member.
Plus a bunch of old racist voters have died.
Low key I'm kind of waiting for us to attempt to rejoin and be slapped with the EU demanding we follow the same rules as any other ascending nation like joining up to Schengen and adopting the Euro. It would be some pretty sweet irony if all of those Euroskeptic nightmares all wind up coming true as a direct result of Brexit...
I could totally see the EU trying that, and then the government loses the referendum because of it. I certainly wouldn't vote to re-join on those terms.
People who originally voted leave and may be having regrets will be easily swayed against it on such terms so it all needs to be carefully handled.
Yes. People like simple sounding solutions to their problems.Go back to how it was before is an especially popular one.
I'm all for rejoining the EU but there's a lot of rise tinted glasses stuff going on here.
Well who would have thought that? Even if the British government decided to try to return to the EU, the road back would be very long, as many Europeans are now sceptical about the trustworthiness of the British.
I think the EU would only be too happy to have the UK back. We're a huge market, were always a high net contributor, and also an enormous contributor to European security. I don't think issues of trustworthiness would be much of a factor if the election resulted in the Brexiteer wing of Parliament being vanquished and a new crop of politicians took over. In any case, such sentiments don't matter nearly as much as the cold reality of international relations.
What is true, however, is that we would more than likely be offered the same terms of entry as anyone else, regardless of whatever importance we used to have.
I'd imagine we'd have to take the Euro, and at this point... sure? I have no problem switching to the Euro. It was one thing when we were positioned so strongly over them but now it's worth it to switch for the conversion fees.
With the greatest of respect, fees paid by consumers when converting currencies are not an adequate justification for the UK to adopt the Euro. The pound's relative strength is also not *massively* important to this discussion.
Despite weakening after the referendum and only recovering sluggishly through covid, I would still rate the pound as a 'top 3' global currency. If you disagree, ask yourself what other currency you would put there alongside the Euro and USD in terms of value, stability, and global reach. The UK retains sovereignty over all that through the Bank of England. I think we would lose a lot by surrendering monetary policy to the ECB.
The EU requires new members to 'commit in principle' to joining the Euro, but there are plenty of examples showing that that's pretty easy to skirt around.
I don’t think so. Even it were to happen - and I don’t think it will - a lot of European partners will talk about reparations. The UK Brexit descision placed a bomb under the EU and cost dozens of billions in damages. The negotiations and the implementation of divergence was very very costly. My company alone (800 workers) spend a little under 9 million Euros in Brexit preparations. And thats just one company.
This hurts the UKs negotiating power immensely. Not only are their questions about it’s trustworthiness, country’s and company’s want their damages compensated. You can’t just say ‘Bye!’, stick the EU with up to 50 billion euros in damages, and then go ‘Hi! We are back again’
I have no issue switching to the euro, but I absolutely will not tolerate switching the decimal point for a comma, I’m 100% remain but I draw the fucking line there
Biggest rebate in the EU. Other members states thought it was very unfair. They're not going to let us have it again. Which is why throwing it away whilst damaging our economy was such a foolish thing to do.
A strange claim considering that for most of the EUs history only a handful of nations were even net contributors. Of course those getting UK money might have wanted more of it.
It's not even a claim it's just a fact.
Something that you guys never understood was it's a good thing for the whole EU to improve it's infrastructure - Western economies like Germany and France subsiding road construction in former Warsaw Pact countries like Poland benefits everyone's economy.
You never really understood the possibility that countries could help each other and collectively benefit because ultimately this was just about nationalism and national pride.
Despite making the country an international laughing stock...
I explained why it is not as you claimed.
As to your idea about taxpayers in rich countries paying for poorer nations to improve, the evidence just isn't there. It's an assumption and one that defies trade figures.
Only main optouts are Schengen and the Euro. While in theory you’d have to commit to joining the Euro - it’s never happening. 20 years on from entering the EU and Poland, Hungary and Czechia are no closer to joining the euro. The UK has also never met the criteria all at once and so - even with Brexit and the optout the UK would still be using the pound. Plus there is no mechanism to force Euro membership because you can’t be forced to join ERM2 (Exhibit A - Sweden)
It's up to the governments of the EU rather than the citizens surely? Plus how many EU citizens **really** care?
Citizens deal in whatever shit is going on in their heads, governments (good ones at least) deal in Realpolitik.
The UK and Brexit was a major PITA. However, what's better a UK that has seen its senses back in the EU or outside the EU going down the Trumpist route and potentially being another source of instability (along side Russia, Belarus and perhaps Turkey)?
I've always had suspicions about the "we don't want you back" comments actually coming from anti-EU types (in the UK and EU) or Russian bot farms who think that saying that will rile Brits so much they won't want to rejoin. The European Coal and Steel Community (the predecessor to the EU) was formed in 1952 with W. Germany as a member, only 7 years after the end of WW2 and the associated genocide.
I feel like UK would be welcome back to the EU with open arms but the deal we get would be a lot worse.
UK is a power house for EU and the amount of money we put in was huge we'd be putting even more in if we went back in but honestly the freedom of movement and schengen visa stuff is worth it.
It would, at the moment, be electoral suicide for Labour to say anything on the matter. Even with not a single policy or mention of EU in sight, they get accused constantly of being on the verge of taking us back into the EU. The Tory and Reform campaigning would write itself.
Labour’s Election 2 tent poll policy should be rejoining. Election 2 will be 2029 likely, that’ll have been 13 years of Brexit fucking things up left, right and centre to no benefit and the boomers will be on their way out. It’ll be a slam dunk.
Right now only 24% percent of Britains think we should be out, give it another 5 years and it’ll be beyond overwhelming, the Tories can then choose to continue to back a wildly unpopular and damaging policy whose whose supporters are ageing out, or admit they were just wrong.
To change the status quo the vote should be 60% majority or more as it should have been with brexit. It would be extremely hypocritical to rejoin on a 51% vote after many said it was undemocratic in the first place
Rules for this were set when they were set babe. Once back it’ll settle, EU membership is very popular with every generation below boomers, and people won’t object to their being food on supermarket shelves, and not having gridlock at every port and airport. We just need get stuff working again. The intense dysfunction since Brexit has been awful.
I must have missed the part where there is no food on supermarket shelves… nor where there is gridlock at airports. To be honest for the ordinary person nothing has changed - you queue maybe 3-4 mins longer at an airport - we don’t need a visa as remain claimed.
I don’t know what reality you are loving in but unless you’re a truck driver delivering food from Europe you won’t have experienced these things your talking about.
Any links to articles about mass food shortages or gridlock at airports would be appreciated
Reg your point about eu membership being popular - did you read the article? 54% of people are eurosceptic
100% there is less variety of food on the shelves now and a lot of it is worse quality, especially fruit and veg.
Getting in and out of the UK for deliveries is a total nightmare, there are frequent EU related delays at ports and airports at busy times.
Eurosceptic is not the same as anti EU.
Nah, 51% is the absolute will of the people and a mandate to do whatever re-join deal we want.
Anyone who argues against that is a traitor to British democracy.
>Ok then how much personally have you lost as a result of brexit?
How would I as the average dickhead on the street be able to see such a large, complex picture and not speak anecdotally?
>How do you define it’s a brexit related loss as oppose to anything else?
See above.
My point exactly - you as an average joe has no idea how much damage or benefit has been caused to you so a majority do not care about it. If you say you care but you have no idea what the figures actually are then you are just being pretentious
We're not ready to formally accept it this election cycle. It would get absolutely slated by the press if Labour mentioned it at this stage.
I expect it to be part of the next election, when it has unambiguous popular support.
Labour cannot sustain their policies of renationalising trains or taxing private school fees within the EU as they fall foul of Railway Package 4 and VAT policies respectively, so any commitment to rejoin the European Union would result in a contradiction
It is part of [their manifesto](https://www.libdems.org.uk/manifesto), section 22:
> Fix the UK’s broken relationship with Europe by following our four-stage roadmap:
>
> * Taking initial unilateral steps to rebuild the relationship, starting by declaring a fundamental change in the UK’s approach and improving channels for foreign policy cooperation.
> * Rebuilding confidence through seeking to agree partnerships or associations with EU agencies and programmes such as the European Aviation Safety Agency, Erasmus Plus, scientific programmes, climate and environment initiatives, and cooperation on defence, security and crime.
> * Deepening the trading relationship with critical steps for the British economy, including negotiating comprehensive veterinary and plant health agreements and mutual recognition agreements.
> * Finally, once ties of trust and friendship have been renewed, and the damage the Conservatives have caused to trade between the UK and EU has begun to be repaired, we would aim to place the UK-EU relationship on a more formal and stable footing by seeking to join the Single Market.
>
> All these measures will help to restore the British economy and the prosperity and opportunities of its citizens, and are also essential steps on the road to EU membership, which remains our longer-term objective.
I think part of the whole Brexit mess was that at the point of the vote nobody knew what leaving was ultimately going to look like - for example, one option that had been promoted was the idea that we could leave the EU but remain part of the single market and customs union, and we were also offered the opportunity to continue being members of the Erasmus programme post-Brexit. We ended up with a particularly hard version of Brexit that I don't think as many people would have voted for had they known what it was going to entail (further cemented by more recent polls showing the bigger shift in opinion).
Similarly, I don't know at this point what rejoining the EU would look like - the UK was given several major concessions in its previous membership and I would not have expected those to be offered so readily this time around.
Even though it looks like a sizeable majority now think Brexit was a bad idea, it's also not an issue that ranks as a particularly important one at the moment (e.g. as per [this survey](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49594-general-election-2024-what-are-the-most-important-issues-for-voters)) which is probably why the Lib Dems are not focussing on it as a major part of their campaigning, and attempts to rejoin the EU are listed as a long term goal.
None of us should want Labour spending any time on the EU. The gains from the SM are extremely marginal and take many years to compound up to a small figure, whereas things like house building produce far more GDP. Westminster should not be allowed to carry on with distractions instead of sorting out domestic issues - we are choosing to hinder growth.
[How Brexit broke Britain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLF_ZkIpVrQ)
Watched this on YT yesterday and found it quite interesting. Biggest takeaway for me is that the ones who voted to leave and regret their decision are often those campaigning hardest to get back in.
I also really liked how the Leave interviewee and Remain interviewer both bonded over hating Remain voters who regurgitate the following to Leave voters "You got what you voted for, no use complaining now."
This statement is possibly subject to survivorship bias. Many middle class strivers voted leave because they weren't experiencing the same level of wealth accumulation as they were seeing in other countries. Leave won, nothing changed, and they simply emigrated to Australia/Asia/USA. At the moment, 40% of medical graduates have emigrated within 12 months at the uni where I work.
I wouldn't want to comment on the why lower/working class voters voted the way they did, we could do that until the sun implodes, but where's that going to get us? :)
> Leave won, nothing changed
Yes, that's the point of the video.
That was the result of the referendum.
This 24% is shockingly low, but the BSA survey doesn't tell us (or at least if it does, I couldn't find it) what the numbers were for "should be inside the EU" and "don't know".
For example, if the results were hypothetically:
* Should be outside EU: 24%
* Should be inside EU: 32%
* Don't know: 44%
Then the results are not as revelatory as they seem on the surface. On the other hand if the "don't knows" are low and the "inside EU" high, then it's very meaningful.
This is the British Social Attitudes survey run by the National Centre for Social Research, so it's probably fine. It's not sponsored by any external organisation like a poll from YouGov or Ipsos might be.
That said it's always better if you can see the source data tables and the questions asked.
They have revealed who was asked incidentally, you can see that [here](https://natcen.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-06/BSA%2041%20Technical%20Details.pdf).
Their [report ](https://natcen.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-06/BSA%2041%20Five%20years%20of%20unprecedented%20challenges.pdf)does give us this:
>Britain remains heavily split on the form that the country’s relationship with the institution should take – with 57% expressing Eurosceptic and 39% stating Europhile views.
With Eurosceptic being defined as thinking the UK should *"Be outside the European Union"* or *"Be part of the EU but try to reduce the EU’s powers".*
52% of those who voted. Around a third of the electorate didn’t vote, while millions of 16-17 year olds who arguably should have had a voice were disenfranchised. We’ve now had 8 years’ worth of (largely pro-EU) young people turning 18.
Brexit only ever had majority support for a period of a few months, which happened to coincide with a massive disinformation campaign with dubious origins.
I don't see how they can be claimed to be pro EU when millions of those who did actually vote Remain were never that - it was support for the status quo and an anti-risk vote.
Giving the vote to the British public wasn't a good idea considering half the British public (myself included) had no idea what we were actually voting for...and the other half voted for the wrong reasons
I don’t think the referendum was a bad idea. Taking the result as legally binding and pulling the trigger without first collectively coming to a decision of what is actually wanted first was the issue.
the problem is they thought they knew what they were voting for
people didn't just go in and do a coinflip in the polling booth they were actively misinformed.
A Leave voting friends of mine believed that the option to leave must be viable because why else would Cameron have given it as an option. The referendum legitimised Brexit as a valid idea on par with remaining.
8 years of pointless, worthless nonsense just to satisfy a bunch of redfaced pricks who don’t understand it in any depth, and who are the puppets of the only people it REALLY benefits. Before you downvote or “well akshully”’me, I don’t care if you think I’m classist, unfair or elitist or whatever. If we’d not done it, the people it’s hurting most would be better off than they are. I’m bored to the back teeth of indulging idiocy and people who can’t be arsed to look into things properly.
This isn't very far down on the proportion of the populace that actually voted for brexit. Sure the vote was almost 50/50 but in the context of the whole population it was something like 27%.
We've basically run the experiment 'would we be better off outside the EU?' and regardless how people voted initially, they can now see the answer is 'no'.
It's no surprise that the one 2019 tory election promise that they actually achieved was 'get brexit done' ... and yet they are *terrified* to mention it because its been such a disaster. It should be their flagship 'look what we did' moment but even rishi sunnochio can't tell a lie that big.
It was only 52% of people who voted anyway! Since then covids killed a load of old people and a lot of the youth have come of voting age. It should never have passed with such a slim majority
Well yer... it was a pretty dumb decision really.
And in the 8 years since the Brexit referendum a whole new generation has become adults, looked around and thought "wtf have you done to me?"
If that's accurate, that a huge swing in favour of rejoining. However I think Starmer is right to not even mentioned Brexit until after the election and things of settled down in a couple of years. Anything before that time will be a circus show. What I do hope is he will quietly lay the groundwork for the UK to rejoin.
I believe it will actually be the Tories (providing they stay moderate and an actual party) that will eventually start talking about rejoining first. That will be a green light for Labour to do it, I'm certain the Lib Dems will start talking about it at some point after the election - which will be interesting as they will probably be the opposition party at this rate.
However, the EU won't even listen to ideas of us rejoining until all major political parties in the UK agree we need to rejoin. I'm not bothered about the Farage party as they will most likely implode, just like all far-right parties do.
Well we could have had a say on if we really wanted to leave the EU if we'd voted Labour in 2019.
Sadly all too many self described centrists and moderates couldn't hold their noses and vote for Corbyn as he didn't' pass their ridiculous purity test. Well we got Johnson/Truss/Sunak instead and it's been a right mess.
Labour and the Tories aren’t gonna go back into the EU. Anyway the UK won’t get the same deal, will have the Schengen and will have to eventually accept the euro. Does England want that because thats what they’re going to have to persuade them to vote for.
Honstely the amount of times iv been asked how flexible are IT systems are with side eyes makes me feel we might be rejoining in a hurry if labour get a super majority
I personally doubt this but im defo seeing odd behaviour by senior people who would be in the know lol
I can only hope that the election results in Germany with AfD gaining power and the likes of Brexit can be linked to Russian interferance and in effect the entire mess being labeled as Russian Influence (we know already) meaning the UK can rejoin with as little change from pre-brexit as possible.
Unfortunately economic stagnation, inflation, unemployment issues often lead to increased domestic support for the far-right. We know this from history. I'm sure Russia is doing some funding in the background but the support for the far-right is also a homegrown European issue.
>I've got no sympathy for these people who now realise they made a mistake. You've buried the country. Enjoy.
This is why we'll struggle for a long time to move forward from this.
Unless I’m missing something the report has not stated the age or location of those who participated. I could easily find completely the opposite if I surveyed a particular group of people in a certain area. Bait article designed to get impressions on their advertising.
I wonder if the noticeable shift to the right in Europe will have any kind of dampening effect on this sentiment among the left in UK. Will they still want to join an EU headed by Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni and Alice Weidel, just because it's the "leftist" position here at home? Strange bedfellows, indeed.
Think about this.
Higher GDP if we had stayed in the EU but that ‘wealth’ NEVER reaches the low wage underclass of this country. I took one hard look at what the EU had done for me and my standard of living since the 70s and decided ‘fuck all’. Roll that into the unreformable gravy train I see over there and I voted with the chip on my shoulder. Stay or leave we low paid are fucked.
first huff post , now reuters , repeat a lie enough and the npcs of reddit will believe it xd.
same head lines different papers on the same day sure...xd
**Alternate Sources** Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story: * [Just 24% of Britons now think the UK should be outside the EU — NatCen survey also reveals 71% say the economy is worse off because of Brexit](https://huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/just-one-quarter-of-british-people-now-think-the-uk-should-be-outside-the-european-union_uk_66684d82e4b04a7f054b62b9), suggested by marketrent - huffingtonpost.co.uk
We left the EU so we could have the “sovereignty” to make our own decisions. The irony being that we elected to join the EU and we already had the best deal with access to the single market and being allowed to retain our own currency. I’m convinced that if we left the EU but the terms of our relationship with the EU remained the exactly the same that would be enough to satisfy brexiteers because the majority have no idea what it means or a plan for an alternative.
>We left the EU so we could have the “sovereignty” to make our own decisions. That always annoyed me. The idea we weren't a sovereign nation and couldn't make our own decisions whilst we were part of a bloc that shares policy on packaging laws and employment rights etc. It's the same basic principle of joining a trade union - yes, you have to pay your union fees - but you also get the power of collective bargaining which amplifies your voice. Try telling your boss as one individual you want a pay rise... Now when all the workers act together they might actually have to listen. The same is true in international trade deals. A market of *half a billion people* can get better deals than one of 65 million. Especially when negotiating with China and the US. Most of our exporters still sell to the EU anyway so must still obey EU regulations - only now we no say or input on what those rules and regulations actually are.
That's a good analogy. Leaving the EU was like leaving your union to negotiate a better deal with your employer.
Leaving the EU was leaving your union JOB, to then try to negotiate a better paid job in the same industry. It looks like we got a role based on performance, where getting the sales in is so hard it doesn't happen.
It's a good analogy. But a substantial number of British people view themselves as *the boss*, not a small player on the world stage that needs to be in a trade bloc. They can't bare the reality that they are no longer permitted to run the British Empire. So the analogy doesn't work for them and they say they don't need the union.
I recall some guy from the red wall in an interview saying once Britain leaves the EU it can get its empire back.
What's more annoying is they weren't taken to court for the bs lies in the voting campaigns, now we are fucked if we wanna go back because they'll force the euro in the deal. Somehow the pound stays strong and i'd like to keep it.
We were sovereign but we did five up some sovereignty for the benefits of the eu. Some descions we could not make like signing trade deals and making certain pieces of legislation. But you aren’t losing any actual abilities by being in a trade union save maybe not striking. Whereas the eu we did. Now you can argue the benefits outweighed that but we did still lose some abilities.
EU law does supersede national laws in pretty much all cases. Beyond that..
Again the issue came down to migration - look at Poland for example. The EU is heavily pressuring them to accept refugees - the same refugees that caused a spike in Sweden gun crime stats and germanys terrorist attacks. There was also nothing stopping refugees joining an eu country then just moving here. Same as this election lol it largely came down to migration
And yet net migration has only ballooned since Brexit...
All the Tories did was make legal migration harder.
For Europeans. Which are just being replaced with people from Africa and Asia.
They made illegal migration easier without punishment.
>Again the issue came down to migration Freedom of movement yes - but we weren't part of Schengen and the EU never had any power to force us to accept refugees or immigration from outside the EU - that was always within our control (we took a tiny fraction of the refugees that other countries did during the Syrian crisis for example) - it was just used by Farage as a scaremongering tactic that blurred all forms of immigration together as a big bad. However you look at it that has backfired as well - we've replaced EU immigration with immigration from countries outside the EU - who are much more likely to settle, have children here, and contribute less to the economy overall. Again, this was all pointed out at the time. People refused to listen.
Also , Please note that as part of the EU rules , the UK was able to remove any EU citizen when they became an economic net drain on the country after a certain amount of time. All EU countries are able to do this - the government never bothered to implement this mechanism because of course ... Lack of public services investment. Fun!
Yup 100% this. It was honestly a bit shocking working in Spain quite regularly between 2021-2023. Big EU research group there so folks from across multiple Schengen nations all moaning all the time about what a total pain in the arse Spain, another Schengen nation, makes it for people like them to live, work, and use services in the country. I always said I fucking wish that kind of voice had been raised during the Brexit debate, it would've totally blown the whole narrative around EU immigration out of the water here. The problem was always with Westminster not Brussels.
What group of same of refugees is that?
Muslim refugees
Can you narrow that down a bit?
And we still have massive levels of migration, it's now just from people who have a greater cultural divergence from the UK than the French and the Poles. Nothing is stopping refugees coming here by the EU anyway. If Ireland wanted it could grant refugees Irish citizenship and they would then have the right to live and work in the UK. Also nothing really stopped us from ignoring the EU while in it. Look at how much trouble they are having with much smaller members being stubborn. The EU doesn't have an effective mechanism to manage its members.
>it's now just from people who have a greater cultural divergence from the UK than the French and the Poles and have no real need or motivation to part of the wider community, while simultaneously holding whatever is left of western values in sheer contempt birds of a feather this creates division and essentially ghetto neighbourhoods and even large areas of towns and cities, strains existing community ties, as the original inhabitants become insular/retreat/move away, a total loss of social cohesion, unless you are in the dominant/rising group I'm saying this from lived experience
I'm pro-immigration but I'm also pro-assimilation. The UK has done a poor job of even integrating immigrants let alone assimilating them. And don't get me wrong, assimilation doesn't mean all aspects of their culture being destroyed. It means they become British and we keep some good bits. It's harder to consider with more abstract bits of culture, but cuisine is a great concrete example of where something can be assimilated. I would say that curry is a very British dish these days, and I would say curries are a very popular dish in the UK.
> Look at how much trouble they are having with much smaller members being stubborn. The EU doesn't have an effective mechanism to manage its members. I think this will evolve as the need arises. Maybe one day the EU really will tell its members what to do, but it doesn't at the current time.
>Again the issue came down to migration - look at Poland for example. The EU is heavily pressuring them to accept refugees Oh wow, a bloc is looking to distribute the burden among all member states. The horror. >the same refugees that caused a spike in Sweden gun crime stats and germanys terrorist attacks. Lmao just shows your ignorance. Similar to France, Sweden has a big issue with 2nd and so on gen migrants because they are basically forced into parallel societies that are breeding grounds for gangs etc.
I kind of get that Brexit was about immigration but I think as time's gone on, it's proven to not have been an EU issue. People arriving on the English coast is a good few steps remove from the beginning of the issue. Countries aren't looking beyond their own borders and the EU isn't looking beyond its members' borders. The phrase "migration crisis" gets bandied about a lot but there are two meanings which get confused: the idea of an *incoming* migration crisis for a country and the wider movement of people elsewhere in the world because of war, famine, political and economic instability and all of the rest, which leads to them heading to our borders. It's worth adding that the beneficiaries of the dissolution of law and order in these developing/third-world countries are welcomed to financial centres like London with open arms. Regardless of whether the UK (or any other country is in the EU), the collective European continent, be that as the EU or not, needs to look beyond its borders (i.e. pull its head out of its arse) to figure out if it can prevent or, rather, help give people a reason to not up sticks and head for Europe as there are a lot of bad actors taking advantage of an unstable world. I'm sure someone will say "not our problem, it's happening elsewhere" but sovereignty isn't just the ability to make your own decisions within your borders, it's also the ability to make your voice heard around the world. If it's not that, you're just a country which is being patronisingly allowed to carry on in your own bubble by bigger nations with no real power and you're just carried along on the vague tides of a world which you have no say in but are heavily affected by.
>There was also nothing stopping refugees joining an eu country then just moving here. Yes there is. this is a misconception. We could always kick out people from the EU if we did not want them, we just never bothered. I'm not talking about the 3 month rules, im talking about the fact the UK is a sovereign nation and can kick whoever the hell it wants out. It might break a treaty, there might be repercussions, but if that Norwegian terrorist came out of prison and tried to move to the UK, we could've stop him in a legitimate way. Its free movement of labour, not all people at all times.
> There was also nothing stopping refugees joining an eu country then just moving here. This isn't quite right. Asylum seekers don't have any right to freedom of movement in the EU. Nor do successful refugees after their claims have been awarded. To gain access to freedom of movement, they have to go through the whole process of becoming a citizen of the EU country in which they claimed asylum. There can be barriers at that point too, It varies by country, but the citizenship application process would never be automatic, could be blocked by criminal records or lack of qualification etc.
Not really. You’re looking at very rich people some of whose wealth is of questionable origin thinking to avoid EU anti-corruption laws. Didn’t really work that way much but.
[удалено]
It’s overlooked because since we’ve left immigration has increased. Hardly matter if the EU aren’t pressuring us when the outcome is the same or even worse. It may be a decent argument in defence of Brexit if it had actually led to a reduction in immigration.
> Same as this election lol it largely came down to migration I think you are right. It was the main point made by basically all the Leave voters I spoke to. They were happy to have Polish people and other Europeans come here, but wanted to stop people from Africa and Asia coming here by boat or truck and claiming asylum. I'd tell them that the asylum system was a United Nations treaty, not an EU one, and I would point them at good stuff to read up on it but they never would. None of them like to talk about it now.
The irony is the European Parliament that made the decisions that affected “our sovereignty” was filled with British MEP’s elected by us to make the decisions in the European Parliament.
I’ll take your irony and raise you an irony being that Farage, an MEP for 21 years, had the lowest voting record in the European Parliament whilst campaigning to leave it on account of a lack of sovereignty.
Farage specifically raising UK fisheries having a lack of any representation in the EU as a reason to leave - While he himself *was the UK representative at the EU fisheries committee and only ever bothered to turn up to the very first meeting*. I still struggle to grasp how just totally fucking insane some of those mid-2010 talking points were. People were so fucking deluded to buy into any of this crap.
Let's hope that when we do eventually rejoin, we learn from our mistakes and stop voting in terrorist politicians into MEP spots.
Indeed, thankfully for adults in the room (un elected commission and a parliament we were consistently outvoted on regardless of NF's turn out) can keep asking for a revote until the democratic choice is taken.
hardly "filled" as the UK had something 9% of the seats.
I'm pretty sure it was voted for because a lot of people really wanted to stop immigrants & refugees tbh, similarly with the torys being in power and without going quite so far as to vote for Farage and his lot in case they got called racist or bigoted. Some bits of nonsense about making our own decisions about funding areas thrown in to back it up & lies to make it seem like nothing would change or go wrong. Unfortunately all they got was more immigrants, just not ones from the EU and more from less developed countries instead. Which is the people they mainly wanted to stop. By 2050 the muslim population in the UK will be more than the whole of Scotland & Wales' populations combined, which is what a lot of people in here really dont want as suddenly a religious group has a bigger say and will affect the dynamic of the whole of the UK more than two connected country's populations will. And mass migration of regugees was giving them the fear of the EU forcing us to accept more. It's why Farage got any real traction at all imo. And just caused issues for people immigrating from the EU instead. Cost of imports, living costs and travel all increased more when people are already having a tough time of it and alongside oil and energy increases due to Russia/Ukraine also. An inability to move to mainland Europe ourselves and annoyingly huge queues at the airports for holidays to boot. I wasn't ever pro Scottish independence but the idea we might get back into the EU if we voted for this genuinely started to sway me. Although I'm still not convinced we'd manage solo without making the cost of living here even worse.
How did we elect to join the EU?! We voted to join a common market in the 1970s. The Maastricht treaty in 1992 changed that to a European Community and then a European Union, all without our consent or say so. The people of the UK had no say in that. There wasn't a referendum and it wasn't in the Tory manifesto to join. The 1992 Tory government just decided if on our behalf. Had we joined due to the will of the people then Brexit would never have happened.
This is why the UK's application was rejected twice. British people for the most part just don't understand the EU. It was never intended to be just a trading bloc, it was from its inception a political project born from the devastation of world war 2 and an existential need for European Integration. Nobody wants just an economic union.
And yet there were basically no dis benefits to being in the Union that emerged from the common market. Unless one was to believe becoming the 5th largest economy in the world )after being the sick man of Europe) and having the freedom to live, work, study and retire across the continent, is somehow a bad thing.
Except that was never going to happen because you have to make commitments to.benefit from being a.member of the club, in order to get club membership privileges..... It's not a hard concept to grasp
You say elected to join the EU like it was a public vote, The public wasn't given a say on the Lisbon treaty - Wouldn't have passed if it did
Wouldn't have\* At least learn to write in English.
Thanks:)
We got some concessions but we did still some sovereignty from being in it. Now you can argue that the benefits of being in it outweigh that but we did still lose it
>The irony being that we elected to join the EU and we already had the best deal with access to the single market and being allowed to retain our own currency. No. The 1975 referendum was to see if the country wanted to remain in the 3 European organisations that the UK had joined 2 years earlier. One of the major talking points of brexiteers is that the transition from these communities to the contemporary EU was very undemocratic..... Which it was. Also all of the concessions the EU gave us were temporary. This was made clear to us several times and has also been pointed out to other members who have special deals.
My friends brought some lovely food to our picnic and offered to share. I told them I wanted my independence so ate my sandwich behind the bushes
What a shit analogy.
That's pretty much exactly what the Brexit crowd wanted lol. And now in hindsight they are calling anything less a "botched brexit" .. not "brexit is a failure" just it didnt go correctly because they didnt get all the benefits with none of the downsides.
So let me see if I understand this right- When we were out of the EC we wanted to be in it. We joined the EC which became the EU which we wanted to be out of. So we left the EU & now we want back in again? Is the grass always greener? By my calculations if we rejoin then shake it all about we'll be close to a full hokey cokey.
>When we were out of the EC we wanted to be in it. We joined the EC which became the EU which we wanted to be out of. We're the cats of Europe. Can't decide if we want to be indoors or outside.
Like cats we want the door open and the ability to come and go as we please.
Should have given the peons a Schrödinger's Brexit
It's much simpler. Voter base is gullible. Promise more fish, less immigrants, some vaguely defined brexit dividend and plaster some lies about NHS getting more cash on a bus...and that all gets accepted at face value. ...then later when the inevitable collision between promises and reality comes you get stats like the one in this heading.
Right? It seems to be the biggest issue right now. We've set our national course for the last 15 years basically on a load of old bullshit and lies, and now we seem like we just have to stick out the course rather than have a more frank discussion about whether or not a load of truism we now seem to hold as national assumptions might not actually be true, and were in fact just Tory slogans devised to suit a specific media/political campaign.
> Promise more fish Not just more fish, but - according to Rees-Mogg - *happier* fish.
The most patriotic of fish!
> It's much simpler. Voter base is gullible. Would you still say this if reformers won this election?
This is actually a really good question. One would hope that u/merryman1 would say that yes, the voter base is *always* gullible. However… The Brexit vote does seem to be a particularly tragic example of manipulative powers exploiting such gullibility. A single-issue plebiscite will always have the potential to highlight that more starkly than a GE, but this one set new standards.
As in reform UK? Even more so then - [explained why here (slightly tongue in cheek).](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1dctwyt/harder_to_have_own_home_under_tories_sunak_tells/l80rg6g/) And its not even that I object to something more small c conservative overall...its just that the entire lot on that end of the spectrum seem like incompetent shysters.
> We joined the EC which became the EU which we wanted to be out of. So we left the EU & now we want back in again? No, a portion of the population wanted out, because the lay-person isn't particularly well informed on things like global economics, international treaties, and geopolitics (which is why we elect MPs to vote on those decisions for us, in th esame way we go to doctors for surgery, or lawyers for legal help) and people in power blamed the EU for every bad policy/decision/consequence for years. Then followed that up with "But the immigrants" when a referendum (which was only called as a gamble to shut up descenting voices inside the Tory party and never expected to pass) rolled around. Now that we are out and people are learning first hand, the hard way, what the benefits of the EU are, people are realising that we were better off as a member. Plus a bunch of old racist voters have died.
Low key I'm kind of waiting for us to attempt to rejoin and be slapped with the EU demanding we follow the same rules as any other ascending nation like joining up to Schengen and adopting the Euro. It would be some pretty sweet irony if all of those Euroskeptic nightmares all wind up coming true as a direct result of Brexit...
I could totally see the EU trying that, and then the government loses the referendum because of it. I certainly wouldn't vote to re-join on those terms. People who originally voted leave and may be having regrets will be easily swayed against it on such terms so it all needs to be carefully handled.
Yes. People like simple sounding solutions to their problems.Go back to how it was before is an especially popular one. I'm all for rejoining the EU but there's a lot of rise tinted glasses stuff going on here.
I didn't wanna leave in the fucking first place
It just doesn’t make sense for us to be outside one of the world’s largest trade blocs which sits right on our doorstep
Well who would have thought that? Even if the British government decided to try to return to the EU, the road back would be very long, as many Europeans are now sceptical about the trustworthiness of the British.
I think the EU would only be too happy to have the UK back. We're a huge market, were always a high net contributor, and also an enormous contributor to European security. I don't think issues of trustworthiness would be much of a factor if the election resulted in the Brexiteer wing of Parliament being vanquished and a new crop of politicians took over. In any case, such sentiments don't matter nearly as much as the cold reality of international relations. What is true, however, is that we would more than likely be offered the same terms of entry as anyone else, regardless of whatever importance we used to have.
I'd imagine we'd have to take the Euro, and at this point... sure? I have no problem switching to the Euro. It was one thing when we were positioned so strongly over them but now it's worth it to switch for the conversion fees.
With the greatest of respect, fees paid by consumers when converting currencies are not an adequate justification for the UK to adopt the Euro. The pound's relative strength is also not *massively* important to this discussion. Despite weakening after the referendum and only recovering sluggishly through covid, I would still rate the pound as a 'top 3' global currency. If you disagree, ask yourself what other currency you would put there alongside the Euro and USD in terms of value, stability, and global reach. The UK retains sovereignty over all that through the Bank of England. I think we would lose a lot by surrendering monetary policy to the ECB. The EU requires new members to 'commit in principle' to joining the Euro, but there are plenty of examples showing that that's pretty easy to skirt around.
Agreed - but those countries generally have to use some of their negotiating power for this, so they're losing out on other possibilities.
Possibly, but I daresay we have a lot more negotiating power than, say, Hungary.
I don’t think so. Even it were to happen - and I don’t think it will - a lot of European partners will talk about reparations. The UK Brexit descision placed a bomb under the EU and cost dozens of billions in damages. The negotiations and the implementation of divergence was very very costly. My company alone (800 workers) spend a little under 9 million Euros in Brexit preparations. And thats just one company. This hurts the UKs negotiating power immensely. Not only are their questions about it’s trustworthiness, country’s and company’s want their damages compensated. You can’t just say ‘Bye!’, stick the EU with up to 50 billion euros in damages, and then go ‘Hi! We are back again’
I can hear the right wingers screeching and complaining that the Euro is a big conspiracy to take over our country already
Well, they opened the door to the possibility. Wouldn't be a concern if we still had the old sweetheart deal.
I have no issue switching to the euro, but I absolutely will not tolerate switching the decimal point for a comma, I’m 100% remain but I draw the fucking line there
The decimal point for comma isn't an EU thing. Its a country by country basis: https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Decimal_separator
I’m just jokesing for humours sake but cool info cheers for the link
I could see the EU welcoming the UK back with open arms. It's a good advert to throw at any other country that considered leaving.
Other countries aren't considering leaving. The UK has already put them off
It would also be a different road as the UK would never get the massive opt-outs again.
Biggest rebate in the EU. Other members states thought it was very unfair. They're not going to let us have it again. Which is why throwing it away whilst damaging our economy was such a foolish thing to do.
A strange claim considering that for most of the EUs history only a handful of nations were even net contributors. Of course those getting UK money might have wanted more of it.
It's not even a claim it's just a fact. Something that you guys never understood was it's a good thing for the whole EU to improve it's infrastructure - Western economies like Germany and France subsiding road construction in former Warsaw Pact countries like Poland benefits everyone's economy. You never really understood the possibility that countries could help each other and collectively benefit because ultimately this was just about nationalism and national pride. Despite making the country an international laughing stock...
I explained why it is not as you claimed. As to your idea about taxpayers in rich countries paying for poorer nations to improve, the evidence just isn't there. It's an assumption and one that defies trade figures.
Only main optouts are Schengen and the Euro. While in theory you’d have to commit to joining the Euro - it’s never happening. 20 years on from entering the EU and Poland, Hungary and Czechia are no closer to joining the euro. The UK has also never met the criteria all at once and so - even with Brexit and the optout the UK would still be using the pound. Plus there is no mechanism to force Euro membership because you can’t be forced to join ERM2 (Exhibit A - Sweden)
It's up to the governments of the EU rather than the citizens surely? Plus how many EU citizens **really** care? Citizens deal in whatever shit is going on in their heads, governments (good ones at least) deal in Realpolitik. The UK and Brexit was a major PITA. However, what's better a UK that has seen its senses back in the EU or outside the EU going down the Trumpist route and potentially being another source of instability (along side Russia, Belarus and perhaps Turkey)? I've always had suspicions about the "we don't want you back" comments actually coming from anti-EU types (in the UK and EU) or Russian bot farms who think that saying that will rile Brits so much they won't want to rejoin. The European Coal and Steel Community (the predecessor to the EU) was formed in 1952 with W. Germany as a member, only 7 years after the end of WW2 and the associated genocide.
I feel like UK would be welcome back to the EU with open arms but the deal we get would be a lot worse. UK is a power house for EU and the amount of money we put in was huge we'd be putting even more in if we went back in but honestly the freedom of movement and schengen visa stuff is worth it.
Yet the silence continues from the big 2 parties. That is not going to be susitanable for Labour once (hopefully) in power.
It would, at the moment, be electoral suicide for Labour to say anything on the matter. Even with not a single policy or mention of EU in sight, they get accused constantly of being on the verge of taking us back into the EU. The Tory and Reform campaigning would write itself.
Labour’s Election 2 tent poll policy should be rejoining. Election 2 will be 2029 likely, that’ll have been 13 years of Brexit fucking things up left, right and centre to no benefit and the boomers will be on their way out. It’ll be a slam dunk. Right now only 24% percent of Britains think we should be out, give it another 5 years and it’ll be beyond overwhelming, the Tories can then choose to continue to back a wildly unpopular and damaging policy whose whose supporters are ageing out, or admit they were just wrong.
To change the status quo the vote should be 60% majority or more as it should have been with brexit. It would be extremely hypocritical to rejoin on a 51% vote after many said it was undemocratic in the first place
Rules for this were set when they were set babe. Once back it’ll settle, EU membership is very popular with every generation below boomers, and people won’t object to their being food on supermarket shelves, and not having gridlock at every port and airport. We just need get stuff working again. The intense dysfunction since Brexit has been awful.
I must have missed the part where there is no food on supermarket shelves… nor where there is gridlock at airports. To be honest for the ordinary person nothing has changed - you queue maybe 3-4 mins longer at an airport - we don’t need a visa as remain claimed. I don’t know what reality you are loving in but unless you’re a truck driver delivering food from Europe you won’t have experienced these things your talking about. Any links to articles about mass food shortages or gridlock at airports would be appreciated Reg your point about eu membership being popular - did you read the article? 54% of people are eurosceptic
100% there is less variety of food on the shelves now and a lot of it is worse quality, especially fruit and veg. Getting in and out of the UK for deliveries is a total nightmare, there are frequent EU related delays at ports and airports at busy times. Eurosceptic is not the same as anti EU.
Nah, 51% is the absolute will of the people and a mandate to do whatever re-join deal we want. Anyone who argues against that is a traitor to British democracy.
62% of Labour constituencies voted Leave, that's why they can't talk about rejoining
True - but as I say, not sustainable after the election.
Labour isn't going to touch Brexit with a barge pole.
They will when popular opinion forces them to.
So potentially at the next election?
Ordinary people don’t care anymore it’s just Reddit. What does 40 billion net losss actually mean to the average person…
Sure they do, those ordinary people just aren't around you so you're not exposed to them.
Ok then how much personally have you lost as a result of brexit? How do you define it’s a brexit related loss as oppose to anything else?
>Ok then how much personally have you lost as a result of brexit? How would I as the average dickhead on the street be able to see such a large, complex picture and not speak anecdotally? >How do you define it’s a brexit related loss as oppose to anything else? See above.
My point exactly - you as an average joe has no idea how much damage or benefit has been caused to you so a majority do not care about it. If you say you care but you have no idea what the figures actually are then you are just being pretentious
Okie dokie. Nice being spoken at.
The "loss" is a notional claim based off models, and those rarely stand up to scrutiny.
We're not ready to formally accept it this election cycle. It would get absolutely slated by the press if Labour mentioned it at this stage. I expect it to be part of the next election, when it has unambiguous popular support.
Labour cannot sustain their policies of renationalising trains or taxing private school fees within the EU as they fall foul of Railway Package 4 and VAT policies respectively, so any commitment to rejoin the European Union would result in a contradiction
Why don’t Lib Dems add rejoin to their campaign? Surely that would get them a huge number of voters ?
It is part of [their manifesto](https://www.libdems.org.uk/manifesto), section 22: > Fix the UK’s broken relationship with Europe by following our four-stage roadmap: > > * Taking initial unilateral steps to rebuild the relationship, starting by declaring a fundamental change in the UK’s approach and improving channels for foreign policy cooperation. > * Rebuilding confidence through seeking to agree partnerships or associations with EU agencies and programmes such as the European Aviation Safety Agency, Erasmus Plus, scientific programmes, climate and environment initiatives, and cooperation on defence, security and crime. > * Deepening the trading relationship with critical steps for the British economy, including negotiating comprehensive veterinary and plant health agreements and mutual recognition agreements. > * Finally, once ties of trust and friendship have been renewed, and the damage the Conservatives have caused to trade between the UK and EU has begun to be repaired, we would aim to place the UK-EU relationship on a more formal and stable footing by seeking to join the Single Market. > > All these measures will help to restore the British economy and the prosperity and opportunities of its citizens, and are also essential steps on the road to EU membership, which remains our longer-term objective.
Is this the same as rejoining as before ?
I think part of the whole Brexit mess was that at the point of the vote nobody knew what leaving was ultimately going to look like - for example, one option that had been promoted was the idea that we could leave the EU but remain part of the single market and customs union, and we were also offered the opportunity to continue being members of the Erasmus programme post-Brexit. We ended up with a particularly hard version of Brexit that I don't think as many people would have voted for had they known what it was going to entail (further cemented by more recent polls showing the bigger shift in opinion). Similarly, I don't know at this point what rejoining the EU would look like - the UK was given several major concessions in its previous membership and I would not have expected those to be offered so readily this time around. Even though it looks like a sizeable majority now think Brexit was a bad idea, it's also not an issue that ranks as a particularly important one at the moment (e.g. as per [this survey](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49594-general-election-2024-what-are-the-most-important-issues-for-voters)) which is probably why the Lib Dems are not focussing on it as a major part of their campaigning, and attempts to rejoin the EU are listed as a long term goal.
None of us should want Labour spending any time on the EU. The gains from the SM are extremely marginal and take many years to compound up to a small figure, whereas things like house building produce far more GDP. Westminster should not be allowed to carry on with distractions instead of sorting out domestic issues - we are choosing to hinder growth.
[How Brexit broke Britain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLF_ZkIpVrQ) Watched this on YT yesterday and found it quite interesting. Biggest takeaway for me is that the ones who voted to leave and regret their decision are often those campaigning hardest to get back in. I also really liked how the Leave interviewee and Remain interviewer both bonded over hating Remain voters who regurgitate the following to Leave voters "You got what you voted for, no use complaining now."
This statement is possibly subject to survivorship bias. Many middle class strivers voted leave because they weren't experiencing the same level of wealth accumulation as they were seeing in other countries. Leave won, nothing changed, and they simply emigrated to Australia/Asia/USA. At the moment, 40% of medical graduates have emigrated within 12 months at the uni where I work.
I wouldn't want to comment on the why lower/working class voters voted the way they did, we could do that until the sun implodes, but where's that going to get us? :) > Leave won, nothing changed Yes, that's the point of the video.
Jeepers, it's been 8 years already, 52% it was iirc.
That was the result of the referendum. This 24% is shockingly low, but the BSA survey doesn't tell us (or at least if it does, I couldn't find it) what the numbers were for "should be inside the EU" and "don't know". For example, if the results were hypothetically: * Should be outside EU: 24% * Should be inside EU: 32% * Don't know: 44% Then the results are not as revelatory as they seem on the surface. On the other hand if the "don't knows" are low and the "inside EU" high, then it's very meaningful.
Also, who sponsored the report, how the questions were asked, who was asked and so on.
This is the British Social Attitudes survey run by the National Centre for Social Research, so it's probably fine. It's not sponsored by any external organisation like a poll from YouGov or Ipsos might be. That said it's always better if you can see the source data tables and the questions asked. They have revealed who was asked incidentally, you can see that [here](https://natcen.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-06/BSA%2041%20Technical%20Details.pdf).
Yep, agreed
Also where did they do the survey?
I think it's [BSA 41 Dividing lines](https://natcen.ac.uk/publications/bsa-41-one-dimensional-or-two-dimensional)
Their [report ](https://natcen.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-06/BSA%2041%20Five%20years%20of%20unprecedented%20challenges.pdf)does give us this: >Britain remains heavily split on the form that the country’s relationship with the institution should take – with 57% expressing Eurosceptic and 39% stating Europhile views. With Eurosceptic being defined as thinking the UK should *"Be outside the European Union"* or *"Be part of the EU but try to reduce the EU’s powers".*
Millions of Leave voters have died, and you have a whole generation at university who didn't even get a vote. This was expected.
52% of those who voted. Around a third of the electorate didn’t vote, while millions of 16-17 year olds who arguably should have had a voice were disenfranchised. We’ve now had 8 years’ worth of (largely pro-EU) young people turning 18. Brexit only ever had majority support for a period of a few months, which happened to coincide with a massive disinformation campaign with dubious origins.
I don't see how they can be claimed to be pro EU when millions of those who did actually vote Remain were never that - it was support for the status quo and an anti-risk vote.
Because an online survey is the same as a referendum....
Giving the vote to the British public wasn't a good idea considering half the British public (myself included) had no idea what we were actually voting for...and the other half voted for the wrong reasons
I don’t think the referendum was a bad idea. Taking the result as legally binding and pulling the trigger without first collectively coming to a decision of what is actually wanted first was the issue.
But Brexit meant Brexit!!!
Xrzmkspurdle means xrzmkspurdle!
If you had no idea what you were voting for how about you know? Not vote? Or at least do your own research first before hand.
I think if people don’t know what they are voting for they should either read up or not vote at all
the problem is they thought they knew what they were voting for people didn't just go in and do a coinflip in the polling booth they were actively misinformed.
A Leave voting friends of mine believed that the option to leave must be viable because why else would Cameron have given it as an option. The referendum legitimised Brexit as a valid idea on par with remaining.
8 years of pointless, worthless nonsense just to satisfy a bunch of redfaced pricks who don’t understand it in any depth, and who are the puppets of the only people it REALLY benefits. Before you downvote or “well akshully”’me, I don’t care if you think I’m classist, unfair or elitist or whatever. If we’d not done it, the people it’s hurting most would be better off than they are. I’m bored to the back teeth of indulging idiocy and people who can’t be arsed to look into things properly.
This isn't very far down on the proportion of the populace that actually voted for brexit. Sure the vote was almost 50/50 but in the context of the whole population it was something like 27%.
Only 24% of Britons think country should be outside EU, well, coincidentally, 17 million voted for brexit which is about 25% of the population.....
We've basically run the experiment 'would we be better off outside the EU?' and regardless how people voted initially, they can now see the answer is 'no'. It's no surprise that the one 2019 tory election promise that they actually achieved was 'get brexit done' ... and yet they are *terrified* to mention it because its been such a disaster. It should be their flagship 'look what we did' moment but even rishi sunnochio can't tell a lie that big.
Social media magnifies extraordinarily stupid ideas...
Yeah, but it's the will of the people!* *eight years ago
Vote winner then - so why no mention of it in campaigning
Especially from the Lib Dem’s?
It was only 52% of people who voted anyway! Since then covids killed a load of old people and a lot of the youth have come of voting age. It should never have passed with such a slim majority
Well yer... it was a pretty dumb decision really. And in the 8 years since the Brexit referendum a whole new generation has become adults, looked around and thought "wtf have you done to me?"
If that's accurate, that a huge swing in favour of rejoining. However I think Starmer is right to not even mentioned Brexit until after the election and things of settled down in a couple of years. Anything before that time will be a circus show. What I do hope is he will quietly lay the groundwork for the UK to rejoin. I believe it will actually be the Tories (providing they stay moderate and an actual party) that will eventually start talking about rejoining first. That will be a green light for Labour to do it, I'm certain the Lib Dems will start talking about it at some point after the election - which will be interesting as they will probably be the opposition party at this rate. However, the EU won't even listen to ideas of us rejoining until all major political parties in the UK agree we need to rejoin. I'm not bothered about the Farage party as they will most likely implode, just like all far-right parties do.
We keep voting until everyone gets the result they want
And how many of those asked we're eligible to vote in the referendum - Higher or lower than 24%?
Wonder what the question asked was and how many other categories there were
Tbh I’m happy about being outside a block rapidly moving to the far right due to the same reason we left.
Either leave the completely so European judges don’t have a say in our country. Or rejoin the biggest trade block if they would have us.
I'm glad most Brexit supporters I know were so vocal about it they can't pretend they were against it.
Well we could have had a say on if we really wanted to leave the EU if we'd voted Labour in 2019. Sadly all too many self described centrists and moderates couldn't hold their noses and vote for Corbyn as he didn't' pass their ridiculous purity test. Well we got Johnson/Truss/Sunak instead and it's been a right mess.
I'd, of course, wonder about such a high number from this poll, but I think that a majority now think of Brexit as a failure.
Labour and the Tories aren’t gonna go back into the EU. Anyway the UK won’t get the same deal, will have the Schengen and will have to eventually accept the euro. Does England want that because thats what they’re going to have to persuade them to vote for.
Honstely the amount of times iv been asked how flexible are IT systems are with side eyes makes me feel we might be rejoining in a hurry if labour get a super majority I personally doubt this but im defo seeing odd behaviour by senior people who would be in the know lol
Is that because the other percentage died due to covid and old age?
Surprised it’s that high. Who would still support having fewer rights and diminished economic prospects due to being outside the single market?
I can only hope that the election results in Germany with AfD gaining power and the likes of Brexit can be linked to Russian interferance and in effect the entire mess being labeled as Russian Influence (we know already) meaning the UK can rejoin with as little change from pre-brexit as possible.
Unfortunately economic stagnation, inflation, unemployment issues often lead to increased domestic support for the far-right. We know this from history. I'm sure Russia is doing some funding in the background but the support for the far-right is also a homegrown European issue.
[удалено]
>I've got no sympathy for these people who now realise they made a mistake. You've buried the country. Enjoy. This is why we'll struggle for a long time to move forward from this.
Britain is now a free country just like the people always wanted. No point crying wolf now as the EU have moved on.
Unless I’m missing something the report has not stated the age or location of those who participated. I could easily find completely the opposite if I surveyed a particular group of people in a certain area. Bait article designed to get impressions on their advertising.
I wonder if the noticeable shift to the right in Europe will have any kind of dampening effect on this sentiment among the left in UK. Will they still want to join an EU headed by Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni and Alice Weidel, just because it's the "leftist" position here at home? Strange bedfellows, indeed.
Think about this. Higher GDP if we had stayed in the EU but that ‘wealth’ NEVER reaches the low wage underclass of this country. I took one hard look at what the EU had done for me and my standard of living since the 70s and decided ‘fuck all’. Roll that into the unreformable gravy train I see over there and I voted with the chip on my shoulder. Stay or leave we low paid are fucked.
Some people just can't get over it . We're out , majority voted , they knew what they voted for. That's it . End of . Get productive .
first huff post , now reuters , repeat a lie enough and the npcs of reddit will believe it xd. same head lines different papers on the same day sure...xd
Standing outside of a university and asking 10 people. Sure.
Ironically I voted Brexit because of its leftist socialist agenda… but now it’s moving to the right I could tolerate the wankers.