Agreed that confirmation bias is dangerous. Exports to the EU declined briefly after Brexit took effect but are now back to where they were before, presumably s

Agreed that confirmation bias is dangerous. Exports to the EU declined briefly after Brexit took effect but are now back to where they were before, presumably since companies adjusted to the new bureaucracy and found it's not that big of a deal. So this "special kind of mental gymnastics" doesn't seem to be gymnastics at all but rather an accurate assessment of the situation. One may wonder how people got this so wrong? "The truth is that the UK was in a very priviledged spot within the EU before it left and it made good use of that position, both in a political and economic sense" Well, it's not really the case unfortunately. The UK was in a seriously under-privileged position inside the EU because its services based economy hardly benefited from the single market, which focused primarily on free movement of goods (benefiting Germany) and people (primarily benefiting eastern Europeans), but not on free provision of services (which would have benefited UK business). Instead services provisioning remained a patchwork of local regulations and barriers to entry. As a consequence, leaving the EU single market didn't impact most British businesses to the extent predicted (by pro-EU economists, see my other comment), as they either weren't massive exporters to Europe to begin with, or were having to deal with local red tape and varying rules anyway. There's a discussion of this problem here: https://euagenda.eu/upload/publications/untitled-46447-ea.pdf https://euagenda.eu/upload/publications/untitled-46447-ea.pd... This situation remained in place for decades because despite what the media may have claimed to people elsewhere in Europe the UK had essentially no influence, no ability to change anything and its "privileges" such as they were primarily consisted of opt outs of EU policies. But those opt outs were negotiated long ago, no more were in the offering and the ones that existed were under more or less permanent attack even when written into apparently watertight treaties. For example the EU was constantly attempting to force financial services out of London and the UK had to go to court, I think several times, to get these attempts blocked. Regulations were often interpreted in overtly political ways, again, specifically to damage the UK (see how "equivalence" rules aren't actually about equivalence, by universal agreement). It was often an antagonistic relationship despite being a member. So the reason people don't talk about Brexit much in the UK is because the process was so drawn out and the eventual impact so minimal compared to COVID that there's really just not much to actually say.