5 ms·

I have no doubt you're right, but I'm just not familiar with the specific details. What are some real ways they stand to "profit immensely"?

benwad 6y ago
Lowering taxes, lowering regulatory and environmental standards, and undoing workers' rights legislation can all increase the wealth of those who are already wealthy. I'm not saying all of those things are in the pipeline, but they've all been proposed by pro-Brexit politicians (and this article is one example of lowering regulatory standards).
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  Privatising the health system is the elephant in the room that's been talked about a lot.
  - callamdelaney 6y ago
    The Conservatives aren't stupid enough to privatize the NHS. It's a straw man argument - the NHS, much like the EU, is irrationally loved by the common voter and only Labour can get away with privatizing it, having perpetuated the complete myth that they are in some way its defenders while, according to them, the evil conservatives always have some corrupt plan to sack it off.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  Oh and second amendment style gun rights too
  - dash2 6y ago
    I find it very hard to believe that that would be a popular policy in the UK. Got evidence?
    - sofixa 6y ago
      Yeah, even policemen rarely have guns in the UK, allowing everyone to have one would be lunacy.
      - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
        You know we can own shotguns and full power rifles (303) in the UK. Thankfully the armed police have very stringent training in the Uk.
        gadders 6y ago
        And even larger I think. A chap I spoke to at lunchtime has a .308 for deer hunting. What we can't have is pistols, apart from 20 or so people in the Olympic pistol shooting teams.
        sofixa 6y ago
        Yes, you can, but you can't buy them at Tesco with zero paperwork.
        Izkata 6y ago
        Nor can you in the US (you need to apply for a permit and pass background checks), so not sure what your point is.
    - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
      Farage mentioned it and decent proportion of Brexiteers would go for it.
  - bodelecta 6y ago
    Absolute nonsense. Only a few days ago it was the 25th anniversary of Dunblane, a massacre that will never be forgotten and out of which the snowdrop petition forced the government to have some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Who in the UK looks at the US and thinks "yes, we should have more guns"?
    - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
      A lot of the hardliner Brexiteers would go for it (an Englishman's home is his castle) an Farage actually mentioned it. Brexiteers would see tony martin as a hero.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Not actually an EU competence. Brexit is irrelevant to gun law and some EU countries are fairly liberal. (Is this another one of those issues where someone is in favour of Brexit because they think the EU prevents something that is nothing to do with them, because they've been lied to by the UK press again?)
- gadders 6y ago
  I think there is a case to be made that not all regulations are good regulations, and the UK can perhaps move faster than the EU - for instance by permitting genetically edited (via CRISPR) food to be grown and sold. Do you know what does help keep the wealthy wealthy? A ready supply of cheap labour from outside the UK.
- gobsmacked 6y ago
  > lowering environmental standards This is much talked about but so far I've only been seeing the opposite. Since brexit, the UK has so far banned fish trawling in the North sea, banned live export of animals, banned the import of fois gras, and created a much more environmentally friendly alternative to the EU's (absolutely atrocious) common agricultural policy. > lowering regulatory standards I'd argue that not all regulation is good regulation, e.g. the GDPR > Lowering taxes This is could feasibly happen and you could say it already is by looking at the way the tories have further rigged the housing market and stamp duty post-covid. But I fail to see what that has to do with the EU really. I don't know a lot on this subject though. > undoing workers' rights legislation I can see this one happening sadly. Am I not right in saying though that a lot of workers rights come from the judiciary, not the government? Example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56123668 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56123668
shubb 6y ago
There are some theories in the UK that are close to conspiracy theory. Many leading brexit proponents are rich people who made their money from the collapse of the soviet union and have assets largely outside the UK. One conspiracy theory is that they are attempting to crash the UK economy in order to buy the dip, make money from shorts and the sell off of state assets. Another conspiracy theory is that brexit has an ideological basis in the idea of the soverign individual - related to the idea of the randian hero, the idea is that as states weaken in power, rich people will be able to transcend citizenship and attain some kind of libertarian utopia where they can do what ever they want. One of the leading brexiteers dad wrote a book about it which apparently has some following, but maybe people are just surprised that right wing politicians want a smaller state. There is also an idea that the UK and its dependencies (e.g. virgin islands) are a tax haven. A lot of brexit money came from US activist billionaires and hedge funds, but a lot of it came from very rich russians who fled tot he UK in the 1990s with huge amounts of money that Russia say was stolen visa corruption and other criminality. The theory is that brexit was a response to EU money laundering and tax evasion rules that would have linked these rich criminals to their money to its sources, leaving them open to russian legal challenge. The theory is that for those people, brexit was a means to escape the net. In my opinion, the role these factors played is probably overstated - brexit was primarily a backlash against globalisation and change, and a protest against the UK status quo by parts of the population that didn't believe they benefited enough from it, much like the election of Trump in the US.
- 7_my_mind 6y ago
  There was no grand conspiracy and no master architects of chaos. It was simply a meme that got out of hand. It started out as a sentiment, a set of ideas that I would call liberal chauvinism. Then anti-immigration got on board. Then the Tories tried to win the anti-immigration folk back, but instead got swallowed by the BREXIT movement, along with a big chunk of Labour.
  - propertymagnate 6y ago
    This seems pretty much it to me.

benwad 6y ago

Lowering taxes, lowering regulatory and environmental standards, and undoing workers' rights legislation can all increase the wealth of those who are already wealthy. I'm not saying all of those things are in the pipeline, but they've all been proposed by pro-Brexit politicians (and this article is one example of lowering regulatory standards).

marcus_holmes 6y ago
Privatising the health system is the elephant in the room that's been talked about a lot.
- callamdelaney 6y ago
  The Conservatives aren't stupid enough to privatize the NHS. It's a straw man argument - the NHS, much like the EU, is irrationally loved by the common voter and only Labour can get away with privatizing it, having perpetuated the complete myth that they are in some way its defenders while, according to them, the evil conservatives always have some corrupt plan to sack it off.
Mauricebranagh 6y ago
Oh and second amendment style gun rights too
- dash2 6y ago
  I find it very hard to believe that that would be a popular policy in the UK. Got evidence?
  - sofixa 6y ago
    Yeah, even policemen rarely have guns in the UK, allowing everyone to have one would be lunacy.
    - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
      You know we can own shotguns and full power rifles (303) in the UK. Thankfully the armed police have very stringent training in the Uk.
      - gadders 6y ago
        And even larger I think. A chap I spoke to at lunchtime has a .308 for deer hunting. What we can't have is pistols, apart from 20 or so people in the Olympic pistol shooting teams.
      - sofixa 6y ago
        Yes, you can, but you can't buy them at Tesco with zero paperwork.
        Izkata 6y ago
        Nor can you in the US (you need to apply for a permit and pass background checks), so not sure what your point is.
  - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
    Farage mentioned it and decent proportion of Brexiteers would go for it.
- bodelecta 6y ago
  Absolute nonsense. Only a few days ago it was the 25th anniversary of Dunblane, a massacre that will never be forgotten and out of which the snowdrop petition forced the government to have some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Who in the UK looks at the US and thinks "yes, we should have more guns"?
  - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
    A lot of the hardliner Brexiteers would go for it (an Englishman's home is his castle) an Farage actually mentioned it. Brexiteers would see tony martin as a hero.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Not actually an EU competence. Brexit is irrelevant to gun law and some EU countries are fairly liberal. (Is this another one of those issues where someone is in favour of Brexit because they think the EU prevents something that is nothing to do with them, because they've been lied to by the UK press again?)
gadders 6y ago
I think there is a case to be made that not all regulations are good regulations, and the UK can perhaps move faster than the EU - for instance by permitting genetically edited (via CRISPR) food to be grown and sold. Do you know what does help keep the wealthy wealthy? A ready supply of cheap labour from outside the UK.
gobsmacked 6y ago
> lowering environmental standards This is much talked about but so far I've only been seeing the opposite. Since brexit, the UK has so far banned fish trawling in the North sea, banned live export of animals, banned the import of fois gras, and created a much more environmentally friendly alternative to the EU's (absolutely atrocious) common agricultural policy. > lowering regulatory standards I'd argue that not all regulation is good regulation, e.g. the GDPR > Lowering taxes This is could feasibly happen and you could say it already is by looking at the way the tories have further rigged the housing market and stamp duty post-covid. But I fail to see what that has to do with the EU really. I don't know a lot on this subject though. > undoing workers' rights legislation I can see this one happening sadly. Am I not right in saying though that a lot of workers rights come from the judiciary, not the government? Example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56123668 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56123668

shubb 6y ago

There are some theories in the UK that are close to conspiracy theory. Many leading brexit proponents are rich people who made their money from the collapse of the soviet union and have assets largely outside the UK. One conspiracy theory is that they are attempting to crash the UK economy in order to buy the dip, make money from shorts and the sell off of state assets. Another conspiracy theory is that brexit has an ideological basis in the idea of the soverign individual - related to the idea of the randian hero, the idea is that as states weaken in power, rich people will be able to transcend citizenship and attain some kind of libertarian utopia where they can do what ever they want. One of the leading brexiteers dad wrote a book about it which apparently has some following, but maybe people are just surprised that right wing politicians want a smaller state. There is also an idea that the UK and its dependencies (e.g. virgin islands) are a tax haven. A lot of brexit money came from US activist billionaires and hedge funds, but a lot of it came from very rich russians who fled tot he UK in the 1990s with huge amounts of money that Russia say was stolen visa corruption and other criminality. The theory is that brexit was a response to EU money laundering and tax evasion rules that would have linked these rich criminals to their money to its sources, leaving them open to russian legal challenge. The theory is that for those people, brexit was a means to escape the net. In my opinion, the role these factors played is probably overstated - brexit was primarily a backlash against globalisation and change, and a protest against the UK status quo by parts of the population that didn't believe they benefited enough from it, much like the election of Trump in the US.

7_my_mind 6y ago
There was no grand conspiracy and no master architects of chaos. It was simply a meme that got out of hand. It started out as a sentiment, a set of ideas that I would call liberal chauvinism. Then anti-immigration got on board. Then the Tories tried to win the anti-immigration folk back, but instead got swallowed by the BREXIT movement, along with a big chunk of Labour.
- propertymagnate 6y ago
  This seems pretty much it to me.