5 ms·

I am not familiar with the politics of Brexit but surely no one voted because they wanted to lose their right to live and work in Europe? I suppose there was so

I am not familiar with the politics of Brexit but surely no one voted because they wanted to lose their right to live and work in Europe? I suppose there was something else that was considered less appealing about being part of the EU?

tomstuart 4y ago
Assuming good faith on the part of Leave voters, there was a sustained political and media campaign of straightforward lies (“the economy will improve”, “immigration will be reduced” etc) which convinced a lot of people.
- dogma1138 4y ago
  The government campaigned for remain…
  - tomstuart 4y ago
    Yes, sorry, poor choice of words. Fixed.
pjc50 4y ago
They wished to remove the right of Europeans to live and work in the UK. It was repeatedly explained that this was reciprocal.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  That wasn't the real wish at all. They wished to remove the right of certain kinds of Europeans to live and and work in the UK. That nice white very caucasian French well-educated doctor and their spouse? Not a problem.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    I'm not sure about that; the Poles and Romanians targeted would definitely classify as "white" and "caucasian". But there's no sense in xenophobia.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      I would remind you that Italians were not accepted as "white" within the USA until relatively recently.
      - Veen 4y ago
        The racial politics of the US have nothing to do with Brexit.
        PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        The racial politics of the USA w.r.t Europeans are largely derived from intra-European racial politics, and so the former reflects the latter. Younger generations are thankfully easing up on this stuff, but eastern Europeans were not seen as "real Europeans" by western Europeans for a very long time. The same was true, though to a lesser extent of southern Europeans in the eyes of northern Europeans, something that stopped being so true a bit earlier.
woodruffw 4y ago
National chauvinism is a strange beast: there is often (perceived) virtue in taking negative consequences in stride, even when those consequences outstrip the claimed goals. It’s possible that the majority of Brexit voters don’t want to lose the rights associated with being EU citizens, but may take pride in shouldering that as a consequence.
avianlyric 4y ago
Brexit and the Brexit vote is a complicated mess. Voting to remain meant voting for the status-quo, something many people weren’t happy with for perfectly legitimate reasons. Voting to leave meant, well it meant all things to all people. The leave campaign focused on the boundless opportunities offered by leaving the EU and becoming a “more sovereign” nation, while ignoring the practical realities of life without the EU. So while Brexit certainly bring opportunities not available with the EU, it’s not clear the UK is in a position to capitalise on those opportunities, and loosing access to your largest trading partner certainly doesn’t make thing easier. EU come with baggage, that’s undeniable, but it also brings tremendous benefits, which the UK had become used to, and no longer recognised as EU benefits. And when you offer people the opportunity to get rid of the baggage, and they don’t the benefits that they’re also getting rid off, it’s easy to see why people voted leave.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  > perfectly legitimate reasons. Can you elaborate on these legitimate reasons?
  - avianlyric 4y ago
    Substantial portions of the UK have seen stagnation for going on decades now. Every I visit my parents, who don’t live in London, I’m reminded of how many parts of the UK have become totally frozen in time, slowly decaying. That stagnation has slowly eroded away peoples hope of a better future. Things aren’t getting better, they’re either staying the same or sliding backwards. None of this of course has anything to do with the EU, if anything the EU development funding was they only thing preventing an even worse backslide. But the UK government deliberately refused to advertise when EU money was used to develop areas (something the EU has now banned), and has for decades used the EU as a scapegoat for the failure of national government. Do that for enough years, and it’s shouldn’t be much surprise that people started believing the rhetoric. Additionally free movement of people brought it own issues, almost all of the self inflicted. A number of areas in the UK suffered greatly due to the abusive, and almost certainly illegal, practice of farmers hiring cheap imported labour that was underpaid, and abandoned outside of harvest season. The result of populations of starving abandoned Eastern Europeans forced into criminality in order to survive winter. Another catastrophic failure of national government, but when you’re being mugged by someone who doesn’t speak English, I doubt your going to take the time to understand why your mugger is mugging you. The great irony of all this, is that the EU in its own way saw these issues, and gave members ways of limiting migration from newly joined member states, while those states completed their integration process and could create their own local opportunities with the help of the EU. The UK in its infinite wisdom decided to forgo all those controls and allow complete freedom of movement from day 0, and then blame the EU for the somewhat predictable results. I don’t blame the EU for any of the above problems. They’re almost entirely the result of national government refusing to properly engage with the EU. But the problems had real impact on peoples lives, and the inability of UK government to acknowledge or tackle them meant there was no reason to believe they would get better while we remained in the EU. So I can see why leaving becomes an clear and obvious solution. Quite frankly I think the greatest Brexit benefit is the removal of the fig leaf the EU provided for national failures of government. The UK government’s incompetence is on full display, and if we’re lucky, we finally get some competent politicians again.
mrtksn 4y ago
Actually, the main voting motivation was exactly that, just framed as removing the rights of Europeans to live and work in the UK. Maybe some people didn't know it cuts both ways but that was the prime promise of the Brexiteers. I recall reading that it appealed to Brits with immigrant backgrounds because they felt like Europeans are having it too easy or something like that. The other argument was about having a point system instead of letting anyone in, so the European engineers and Indian engineers for example would have the same rights and this will yield in more meritocratic system. Somehow the companies are not good enough in picking the employees with the correct skillset, for example a British company is hiring unskilled Hungarians as engineers so to fix this the British companies first need to get a permission from the government which will evaluate the person, pay fees and wait a few month for processing to do the right kind of hires.
- breadloaf 4y ago
  Funniest part were Brits living in Spain, going to UK to vote in favor of Brexit and then being surprised when later Spain was sending them back to UK.

tomstuart 4y ago

Assuming good faith on the part of Leave voters, there was a sustained political and media campaign of straightforward lies (“the economy will improve”, “immigration will be reduced” etc) which convinced a lot of people.

dogma1138 4y ago
The government campaigned for remain…
- tomstuart 4y ago
  Yes, sorry, poor choice of words. Fixed.

pjc50 4y ago

They wished to remove the right of Europeans to live and work in the UK. It was repeatedly explained that this was reciprocal.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
That wasn't the real wish at all. They wished to remove the right of certain kinds of Europeans to live and and work in the UK. That nice white very caucasian French well-educated doctor and their spouse? Not a problem.
- pjc50 4y ago
  I'm not sure about that; the Poles and Romanians targeted would definitely classify as "white" and "caucasian". But there's no sense in xenophobia.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    I would remind you that Italians were not accepted as "white" within the USA until relatively recently.
    - Veen 4y ago
      The racial politics of the US have nothing to do with Brexit.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        The racial politics of the USA w.r.t Europeans are largely derived from intra-European racial politics, and so the former reflects the latter. Younger generations are thankfully easing up on this stuff, but eastern Europeans were not seen as "real Europeans" by western Europeans for a very long time. The same was true, though to a lesser extent of southern Europeans in the eyes of northern Europeans, something that stopped being so true a bit earlier.

woodruffw 4y ago

National chauvinism is a strange beast: there is often (perceived) virtue in taking negative consequences in stride, even when those consequences outstrip the claimed goals. It’s possible that the majority of Brexit voters don’t want to lose the rights associated with being EU citizens, but may take pride in shouldering that as a consequence.

avianlyric 4y ago

Brexit and the Brexit vote is a complicated mess. Voting to remain meant voting for the status-quo, something many people weren’t happy with for perfectly legitimate reasons. Voting to leave meant, well it meant all things to all people. The leave campaign focused on the boundless opportunities offered by leaving the EU and becoming a “more sovereign” nation, while ignoring the practical realities of life without the EU. So while Brexit certainly bring opportunities not available with the EU, it’s not clear the UK is in a position to capitalise on those opportunities, and loosing access to your largest trading partner certainly doesn’t make thing easier. EU come with baggage, that’s undeniable, but it also brings tremendous benefits, which the UK had become used to, and no longer recognised as EU benefits. And when you offer people the opportunity to get rid of the baggage, and they don’t the benefits that they’re also getting rid off, it’s easy to see why people voted leave.

mrtksn 4y ago
> perfectly legitimate reasons. Can you elaborate on these legitimate reasons?
- avianlyric 4y ago
  Substantial portions of the UK have seen stagnation for going on decades now. Every I visit my parents, who don’t live in London, I’m reminded of how many parts of the UK have become totally frozen in time, slowly decaying. That stagnation has slowly eroded away peoples hope of a better future. Things aren’t getting better, they’re either staying the same or sliding backwards. None of this of course has anything to do with the EU, if anything the EU development funding was they only thing preventing an even worse backslide. But the UK government deliberately refused to advertise when EU money was used to develop areas (something the EU has now banned), and has for decades used the EU as a scapegoat for the failure of national government. Do that for enough years, and it’s shouldn’t be much surprise that people started believing the rhetoric. Additionally free movement of people brought it own issues, almost all of the self inflicted. A number of areas in the UK suffered greatly due to the abusive, and almost certainly illegal, practice of farmers hiring cheap imported labour that was underpaid, and abandoned outside of harvest season. The result of populations of starving abandoned Eastern Europeans forced into criminality in order to survive winter. Another catastrophic failure of national government, but when you’re being mugged by someone who doesn’t speak English, I doubt your going to take the time to understand why your mugger is mugging you. The great irony of all this, is that the EU in its own way saw these issues, and gave members ways of limiting migration from newly joined member states, while those states completed their integration process and could create their own local opportunities with the help of the EU. The UK in its infinite wisdom decided to forgo all those controls and allow complete freedom of movement from day 0, and then blame the EU for the somewhat predictable results. I don’t blame the EU for any of the above problems. They’re almost entirely the result of national government refusing to properly engage with the EU. But the problems had real impact on peoples lives, and the inability of UK government to acknowledge or tackle them meant there was no reason to believe they would get better while we remained in the EU. So I can see why leaving becomes an clear and obvious solution. Quite frankly I think the greatest Brexit benefit is the removal of the fig leaf the EU provided for national failures of government. The UK government’s incompetence is on full display, and if we’re lucky, we finally get some competent politicians again.

mrtksn 4y ago

Actually, the main voting motivation was exactly that, just framed as removing the rights of Europeans to live and work in the UK. Maybe some people didn't know it cuts both ways but that was the prime promise of the Brexiteers. I recall reading that it appealed to Brits with immigrant backgrounds because they felt like Europeans are having it too easy or something like that. The other argument was about having a point system instead of letting anyone in, so the European engineers and Indian engineers for example would have the same rights and this will yield in more meritocratic system. Somehow the companies are not good enough in picking the employees with the correct skillset, for example a British company is hiring unskilled Hungarians as engineers so to fix this the British companies first need to get a permission from the government which will evaluate the person, pay fees and wait a few month for processing to do the right kind of hires.

breadloaf 4y ago
Funniest part were Brits living in Spain, going to UK to vote in favor of Brexit and then being surprised when later Spain was sending them back to UK.