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Yay. Now we're free. Oh wait, no, it's just that absolutely everything got harder, more expensive, more nationalistic, more pathetic and sad. It's all incredi

• throwaway3699 6y ago
  Labour were decimated in the last election. I don't suspect they'll be in power with a mandate to rejoin the EU. Btw, things aren't as split down party lines as they may seem. Half the Tory party are Europhiles, and I know many of my Labour friends are anti-EU in a libertarian small government sense.
  • albertgoeswoof 6y ago
    Indeed, trade deals and international relationships are bipartisan issues, labour’s last leader was anti EU for decades. The party lines in the UK are drawn along class and aspirational values, not policy decisions- although when a referendum is called 2 sides always step out to divide up the electorate in their favour
    • dmje 6y ago
      Agree. I'd always argue that this was broadly an anti austerity / inequality vote: people just basically pissed off with having a rubbish life voting against some notion of "authority" or "centralisation". The sad fact is that it's exactly these people (in the Midlands, NE, those on lower wages, in rural communities, etc) who (generalising a bit, not much) voted out - these are the communities who will be hit hardest.
      • mjburgess 6y ago
        I think this analysis has been shown to be false. This does not apply to significant majority of leavers. It explains a minor boost on the left, not main leaver sentiment.
  • rvz 6y ago
    Well Labour will just waste another decade campaigning to rejoin the EU which has so far has been nothing but a complete failure given the last 3 consecutive election defeats since the referendum vote. Here's to another decade of Labour being out of government. (Again).
    • ceejayoz 6y ago
      It may be an easier sell once the consequences of Brexit are less theoretical and more practical for a few years.
      • ben_w 6y ago
        Perhaps, perhaps not. IIRC the forecast economic damage is lost opportunity for growth rather than immediate losses, and any actual immediate losses could be easily dismissed (especially by this lot) as “COVID losses, not Brexit”.
      • krona 6y ago
        It's unclear whether the collapse of the European banking system will have the effect of boosting support for rejoining the EU, but it's not impossible.
  • dmje 6y ago
    Agree. I personally think Labour blew it, big time. But: the lies that got us out of the EU were pretty unstoppable. Selling an out message on the back of sensationalist, shock messages was an easy PR hit. We'll see. Personally, I'll always feel and be European. I reckon we'll be back.
    • Veen 6y ago
      It's perfectly consistent to feel European and also feel that EU membership is not a net positive for the UK. Being pro-Brexit does not make one less of a European.
      • dmje 6y ago
        Um. Finding it hard to parse this..?
        • vimy 6y ago
          The European identity is not tied to the European union but to a shared culture and history. Or are Swiss and Norse people also not European?
          • Arnt 6y ago
            The EU vote in Norway almost 30 years ago was very, very different from the British Brexit affair. Luckily for us Norwegians, we didn't suffer from anyone like Mark Francois, for example. Of course you could say that Brexit has nothing to do with British culture.
            • vimy 6y ago
              The point is that European culture is not linked to the European Union.
              • austinjp 6y ago
                I'd say they're linked insofar as the European Union was created by and continues to evolve through European culture.
• mtgx 6y ago
  The FPTP voting system is destroying western democracies.
• FartyMcFarter 6y ago
  > Here's hoping our kids manage to vote us back in New old people are created every day. So I wouldn't necessarily count on it. I hope you're right though.
  • discreteevent 6y ago
    Those new old people will have a bit less nostalgia for the world wars and the empire.
    • mhh__ 6y ago
      I believe Mark Francois is to be used to train an AI to have CaaS - there's hope yet!
  • dmje 6y ago
    I think there's still a fairly dangerous element of colonialism which will get phased out as that whole era drops from memory. Here's hoping, anyway.
  • mhh__ 6y ago
    It's almost entropic really - there was a genuinely depressing YouGov graph from a few years ago which plotted the number of people who actually think the EU is an important issue vs. time: The number is almost nil (even the wonks didn't care) until the year/s directly leading up to the referendum. Europe is a tricky problem, but the way Brexit specifically has happened (Lie, Damned Lies, and fake statistics - at best) means the only real lesson from this is that referenda are truly disastrous for complex policy decisions.
    • FartyMcFarter 6y ago
      > the only real lesson from this is that referenda are truly disastrous for complex policy decisions. Yeah, I think that's definitely the big lesson. I feel it's exacerbated by decades of tabloid propaganda.
      • 6y ago
• 533474 6y ago
  Personal opinion. Tribalism prevails, humans have no fix. Perhaps in another reality or dimension it is conceivable for people to come together and form a truly resourceful world government. Wait till you see how the lack of world coordination keeps this virus thriving in half of the planet. While we plot beautiful statistics to show which tribe has less cases in a non-uniform response. Hail the great UK for awakening the UKIP with their fantastic referendum promise to reduce pest immigrants to hundreds. The UK had it long coming, the country lives in the 19th century, never moved towards becoming a modern republic. And now, people are shocked we voted out of the EU. Bad news is old news. It is the UK's tradition to be a lone fighter in favour of customary nationalistic tribalism and island mentality. Worse of it is that it ended up waking up the dormant retarded far right around the world. Hell yea! great way to start 2021 UK!.
  • kdtsh 6y ago
    This was not tribalism. The vote was on a knife’s edge, and only after many years of anti-European sentiment stirred up by conservative and other Euro-skeptic sections of the media. We can squarely blame Rupert Murdoch for this, even if he did not directly pull the strings. People routinely vote against their best interests because they are convinced to do so by a pervasive, aggressive, psychologically damaging mass media, which is now exacerbated by social media.
  • altarius 6y ago
    Nothing like diversionary foreign policy :/ The EU has really been quite a convenient scapegoat, not just in the UK. I wonder if politicians on all sides will/can continue to blame the EU now that the UK has "full control". I have a feeling that, yes, they will. As much as I consider myself a pan-European, the European institutions, governance and government unfortunately make for a (mostly deservedly) great political target.
  • runarberg 6y ago
    By that logic we would expect the German states to vote them self out of the German federation, Scotland and Wales to vote them self out of the UK, Nigeria to break apart, etc. And not only that we should expect it to happen with hostility towards the old nation, e.g. no trade unions after independence (unlike e.g. Catalonia not only voting them self out of Spain, but also out of the EU). However that seems not be happening, nor does there seem to be any will towards it. It seems people actually quite like each other, and they like to be able to visit each other, and trade with each other, even though they speak different language or have different religion. In fact in the world today, tribalism seems to becoming more and more on fringe. I don’t believe for a second that people voted for Brexit because of tribalism. Some might have, but they were definitely a tiny minority.
• MBCook 6y ago
  At least your representatives are not about to have a vote on if your democracy should pay attention to the results of its own elections.
  • mhh__ 6y ago
    But look at all the no evidence!
• redis_mlc 6y ago
  Nah, the EU won't last another 5 years. Brexit was a howto manual for the other member states. :)
• alastor2020 6y ago
  - Tory f's are out Is that language really necessary? Such divisive language doesn't help the debate at all. As mentioned below, it's also totally incorrect. Labour heartlands voted massively for leave. Labour and Tories went into the election saying they would honour the referendum vote. Tories cleaned up an 80 seat majority in December 2019 winning many Labour seats campaigning on the goal to get Brexit done. Brexit has happened. I voted remain but I've moved on. Harbouring such negativity and pessimism isn't healthy.
  • gorgonzola88 6y ago
    Helicoptering others who maybe haven’t processed (perhaps they’re losing more relative to you?) and suggesting a stiff upper lip is pompous Brit af
  • mattmanser 6y ago
    "Cleaned up"? They got just 43% of the popular vote! It's even more ridiculous than America. The whole thing's rigged, 60% of the country didn't want the Tories handling this and somehow they have an 80 seat majority!
• skissane 6y ago
  > Here's hoping our kids manage to vote us back in as soon as those Tory f's are out. I think there is a decent chance that sometime in the next few years there will be another Scottish independence referendum, that this time "Yes" will win, and then an independent Scotland will apply to rejoin the EU. I think Scottish independence, combined with demographic changes in Northern Ireland – Catholics are likely to outnumber Protestants, possibly as early as this year's census, but if not in 2021, then almost certainly in 2031 – have a decent chance of leading to Irish reunification in the next couple of decades. If Scotland and a united Ireland are in the EU, will the United Kingdom of England and Wales still want to stay out? (And will they still keep the "United" in their name?) (Even Welsh independence might happen eventually, but I think that is a fair way further off than Scottish independence or Irish reunification.)
  • galvin 6y ago
    The SNP's majority and the remain vote in Scotland certainly give credence to that idea. Given how close the last referendum was the Brexit issue could easily be enough to tip the scales, granted it's always difficult to predict what other factors might be in play. I must admit that part of me likes the irony of the UK "forging it's own path" resulting Westminster losing power and it's states gaining independence. As a side note, I think it's better to refer to the northern Irish as republicans and unionists. The division is due to the partition of Ireland and not religious beliefs. The division lines might be the same but religious labels add irrelevant impactions. You don't have to be Catholic to be in favour of reunionification and vice versa.
    • skissane 6y ago
      > As a side note, I think it's better to refer to the northern Irish as republicans and unionists The reason I spoke of Catholics and Protestants is because there is a religious background question ("what religion you were raised in") on the Northern Ireland Census, and it is widely expected to flip in this year's census, and if not this year, then almost surely by the next census in 2031. By contrast, the Northern Ireland Census doesn't directly ask about whether one identifies as "republican/nationalist" or "unionist". The closest thing it comes to that is the question of whether one identifies as British, Irish, Northern Irish, or some combination of those three. But it isn't clear how exactly the answers to that question map to the community divide. Religious background doesn't exactly map to community affiliation, but it mostly does. One thing to keep in mind is the distinction between small-u unionism (pragmatic support for the continuation of the status quo) and Big-U Unionism (support for traditional Unionist symbols such as the Orange Order parades, 12th of July celebrations, etc) – a decent percentage of Catholics support the former, very few (if any) Catholics support the later. Likewise, there are some Protestants who would vote for Irish reunification but very many of those would not want to associate with traditional nationalist community symbols. > The division lines might be the same but religious labels add irrelevant impactions. I think, historically, the religious division did play a major role in the partition of Ireland in the early 1920s. Many unionists saw Unionism and Protestantism as going hand-in-hand. The Republican/Nationalist side placed less emphasis on religion – although the vast majority of Republicans/Nationalists were Catholics, there was a small Protestant minority among them. Now, as the decades have passed, with continuing secularisation, religion is less an issue than it used to be, but it still lurks in the background. The DUP was originally strongly linked to the Free Presbyterian Church, although the DUP has de-emphasised the religious linkage as time goes by. Their traditionalist moral stances (anti-abortion, anti-LGBT rights, etc) have even won them the support of the ultra-conservative end of Northern Irish Catholicism, but that's only about 2% of the electorate. Still more than the number of Protestants voting for Sinn Fein or SDLP.