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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 legi

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

> 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.