9 ms·

This was a massive infowar against the whole country. There are tons of gullible people to 'convince' using their own prejudice, and there were quite a few peop

This was a massive infowar against the whole country. There are tons of gullible people to 'convince' using their own prejudice, and there were quite a few people who saw it as a quick rise to power -- most of these people did very well with it as well! The goal was never in doubt really, and it was never the 'good of the country', or its people.

mcphage 3y ago
I’d blame the politicians, mostly… taking a <4% margin on a non-binding referendum as an excuse to self-immolate was entirely a decision by the people in charge.
- Whoppertime 3y ago
  So how else should have they responded to the referendum and the people's will?
  - sk11001 3y ago
    It's not about the response after it happened, it's about whether you should set decades of foreign policy based on a single vote with a small margin.
    - Whoppertime 3y ago
      The 2000 Election between Bush and Gore was a single vote with a small margin that decided the course of middle east policy for the next 100 years 2016 and 2020 has Small margins and shaped a lot of important foreign policy 2024 seems like it may be more of the same
      - sk11001 3y ago
        The difference from the EU referendum is that there's a presidential election every 4 years and 2-term limit.
      - staticman2 3y ago
        The 2000 Bush vs Gore election only shaped middle eastern policy in the sense that Bush's parents deciding to not use Birth control in 1945 shaped middle eastern policy. It's not really the same sort of cause and effect as a direct election on a particular issue.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    “You elected us to make tough, sometimes unpopular decisions. We’ll take this under advisement, but until important details are worked out this cannot be immediately acted upon responsibly.” There’s a reason the resolution was non-binding. Maybe an act this big should have required 2/3 majority.
    - Whoppertime 3y ago
      "Until important details are worked out this cannot be immediately acted upon responsibly". That sounds exactly like the 3 years of Will they Won't they that made up the Theresa May Administration and her handling of Brexit!
  - midasuni 3y ago
    “You have 47 tabs open, are you sure you wish to close your web browser” Good enough for something g as inconsequential as pressing alt-f4, but not for ripping away the birthright and citizenship of tens of millions of people.
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      Another referendum to accept or reject specific terms would have been justified. But people did not vote to leave the EU accidentally.
  - dagmx 3y ago
    Require more than a simple majority for a change that would change the entire working mode of the countries economy? And while we’re at it, make it illegal for politicians to spread baseless misinformation? If you say something you have to back it up.
  - FridgeSeal 3y ago
    Literally the grandparent comment talks about how the whole brexit was basically a massive propaganda event, “people’s will” seems like a bit of a stretch. The Tories knew exactly what they were doing, and how they were doing it, and could have backed out at almost any time. Knowing that they were deliberately misleading people, they arguably should have backed out instead of going ahead with their colossally atrocious decision. In short: referendum and people’s will kind of requires an informed populace and an informed decision, the Brexit vote was neither of those things. Maybe the only upside was demonstrating to everyone else what a godawful decision it is to self-immolate by leaving the EU is.
  - xoa 3y ago
    It's a democracy. The entire house of commons are there by the "people's will" too are they not? Their entire job as professional political representatives is to more carefully weigh decisions based on what they think is best for their constituents and their nation. Why should a single non-binding non-mandatory simple majority referendum with plenty of lies slung around and dark money override democracy in your mind? They should have responded in such ways as 1: "Thank you for your interest we will take the result under advisement and form a committee to study the matter" and then shit can it. If "the people" cared enough they'd make it an election issue. 2. "We have come up with three proposals for how to respond. There will be another referendum, this time binding, with ranked choice (or whatever) to decide which specific path to take, with status quo as option 4. At least 60% of at least a 60% turnout is necessary to pick one, otherwise we stick with the status quo." Then run that. Or many other choices. But make no mistake there were LOTS of options beyond the extreme one picked.
    - dfawcus 3y ago
      It is not possible in the UK to have a "binding referendum", merely a "self executing one". i.e. one where prior legislation is activated based upon the result of the poll.
  - skissane 3y ago
    They should have required a "double majority" - both a "Leave" majority nationally, and a "Leave" majority in at least three out of the four constituent countries. Then "Leave" would have failed. Obviously, they should have announced this rule before having the referendum. There is precedent for this - Australia uses effectively the same criteria for constitutional amendments (both a majority nationally and a majority in the majority of states). Although, unlike Australia, the UK doesn't have a written constitution, and isn't formally a federation (although devolution has given it quasifederal features), the UK definitely needs something like that given the extreme lopsidedness of its population (one of its four members, England, being roughly 80% of the total
  - dfawcus 3y ago
    Legally they could have ignored it. Then taken their knocks in the next GE.
    - mike_hearn 3y ago
      They did that. That was the constitutional crisis that occurred after the next election, in which all the major parties promised to respect the referendum and implement the vote, thus ensuring it was fought mostly on domestic issues. Then after being elected large numbers of MPs announced that in fact they weren't going to let the UK leave, and wanted to impose a second "People's Vote". These MPs had done exactly what some people on this thread are asking for: they agreed to a referendum and then decided they didn't like the result so they wouldn't obey it. What happened next seems to have been largely memory holed: Johnson kicked the rebels out of the Conservative party (Labour did not), sending his party from having a majority to deep minority. Parliament then went entirely rogue and attempted to take over the Brexit process from the government in order to directly kill it. Johnson asked for a new election to take the mess back to the people, and the rogue MPs denied that too. They knew full well they had directly stabbed the electorate in the back and they'd all lose their jobs at the next GE as a result, so they just ... refused to hold a GE. This was by far the biggest constitutional crisis the UK has had in my lifetime. Representative democracy is built on the basic assumption that if politicians say they believe in X, campaign on X and then get voted in because of X, that they will actually vote for X in Parliament. If large numbers of MPs claim they will support something and are just baldly lying, democracy dies. And that's what happened. The crisis was ended only by a stroke of luck: the head of the Liberal Democrats became so delusional she began to drink the rebel MPs own kool-aid, and think that the population actually supported their desire for a second People's Vote. After blocking a new election for a long period, she decided to vote with Johnson's remaining loyal MPs to trigger one, at which point all the rebels including her were wiped out. Every single one lost their seats. So, what you ask for actually happened. It didn't work because the British people voted the same way and for the same things they did in the referendum.
      - dfawcus 3y ago
        Except I was not asking for it, simply making an observation. If the MPs actually wanted to be successful in thwarting it, they should have blocked the sending of the Article 50 notification. i.e. either placed conditions on the notification Act, or denied it passing. My view is that they were too craven (or stupid) at the time to show their true convictions. Anyway, the faffing about was a different Parliament, the withdrawal was sent 29th March 2017, then we had a GE and May lost her majority. I'd not view any of those "rogue parliament" events as a constitutional crisis, they're representatives, not delegates. As has been pointed out before, we have no legitimate expectations from anything an MP says to be elected. Our only recourse is to subsequently vote them out. A constitutional crisis would only really have happened if the Scottish MPs (possibly with MSPs) had acted to thwart things - i.e. end the Union; but the then SNP folks were (and still are) too happy in their gravy. As to an earlier 2019 GE, with the FTPA they were not obliged to do so. Yes their faffing about was annoying, and I take the view that folks were just sick of them dithering, hence the 2019 GE result. However, one should not really speak of the UK being a democracy. We (well strictly England, as the Scottish rules are generally ignored) are an absolute monarchy where parliament has wrested away most of the power, and handed it to the cabinet, which really means the PM. (The Scottish monarchy was never absolute.) As has been observed in the past, the UK is essentially an elected dictatorship, which depends upon those in power being "good guys". Recent events have shown how fragile that is, yet still it has not been (and probably will not be) reformed.
  - tim333 3y ago
    Figured out the deal and then gone back for a do you want this vote?
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    Don't allow a vote between "remain" (which was pretty clear what it meant), and an unspecified "leave" (which everyone could interpret according to their own wishes). That is, if I didn't want to remain, did I want a hard exit? A Switzerland-like situation? Something else? Voting "leave" didn't mean that I would get what I wanted.
    - mike_hearn 3y ago
      Nor did voting Remain. The EU isn't a static thing.
  - oh_sigh 3y ago
    The obvious answer is to it have the standard be "50% + 1". If the desire is to do nothing or do something, and the vote is roughly equal, then generally you should just do nothing because of the increased cost of doing something. If 66%+ or 75%+ of people want to do something, then go for it.
- midasuni 3y ago
  But then we had a chance to reverse it in 2017 and 2019 and failed to.
- passwordoops 3y ago
  They painted themselves into a corner because just like the Democrats of 2016 (and even now TBH) they really didn't listen to the "plebs" and honestly believes the vote was going to be a landslide to remain. So yes, blame the politicians, but blame them for staying in their echo chambers instead of learning what people actually want. Which in 2016 was a change from the status quo
  - bananapub 3y ago
    > They painted themselves into a corner er what? david cameron immediately quit and then theresa may immediately went full-hard-brexit without bothering to try to figure out actual goals or compromise or get anyone on board.
    - passwordoops 3y ago
      Which are consequences of painting themselves into a corner
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
"Never let a good crisis go to waste"
passwordoops 3y ago
I was living there for the vote. Only one coworker was pro-Brexit and the morning after we asked him to list what it is he thought they gained. Each item (control over immigration, control over trade, control over labor, etc etc) were things the UK already had control over. He said, and I'll never forget his expression, "Oh. I hadn't realized that"
- kypro 3y ago
  Did the UK have a legal obligation to allow EU citizens to live and work freely in the UK while in the EU? Did the UK have the legal right to alter trading regulations? For example, could the UK decide to import chlorine washed chicken from US while in the EU? Did the UK have a legal right to discriminate against labours from the EU who applied for jobs in the UK? Please feel free to add context to my questions, because I've had enough of these conversations to know you'll have reasons why although we couldn't control our borders, trade and labour in many circumstances that it doesn't matter. I'll probably agree with you in most cases. But unless the EU literally does nothing and serves no purpose, obviously there are things that we can do now we are out of the EU which we could not do while in the EU. Please decide whether the EU forces us to do things but those things we are forced to do are good, or the EU does nothing at all, but we should still stay in it. You can't have it both ways. I'll also note, we've massively reduced the number of migrants coming from Eastern Europe, this is something that we literally could not legally do while in the EU.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >I'll also note, we've massively reduced the number of migrants coming from Eastern Europe, this is something that we literally could not legally do while in the EU. What did "less Eastern Europeans" (but repalced now with Asian and African migrants) improve for the UK?
    - skissane 3y ago
      Well, you could argue it improved racial/ethnic diversity, as European immigrants were replaced by non-European immigrants. Probably not the kind of improvement most Brexit supporters had in mind.
thriftwy 3y ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > By whom? By the same folks who periodically murder their dissidents who’ve fled to the UK with polonium tea or ricin umbrellas.
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    Come on, you can't be serious about that. Yeah, I'm aware what pops out when you type "Timeline" in Wikipedia's search.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      “Russia meddles in UK politics” isn’t a controversial claim.
      - thriftwy 3y ago
        The magnitude cannot be nearly as much as to be sufficient. It is two orders of magnitude less than needed to conjure Brexit out of blue and then win it. Such a feat can only be done by inside parties. Otherwise, everybody meddles in everybody else's politics all the time, chiefly US and the UK, so when they complain about it is like when a pro poker player complains that he was stripped pantsless by a newbie. It can only be a smoke cover. First of all, pro players never complain in good faith.
- butler14 3y ago
  There’s a trend of democracy being under attack, and Trump and Brexit are good examples of that
  - Whoppertime 3y ago
    When the solution people suggest is that the Brexit vote never should have happened, it seems like they are suggesting the only way to protect democracy is stop people from being able to vote
amadeuspagel 3y ago
This attitude, this contempt for "gullible people to 'convince'" - 'convince' in sneer quotes, as if these people are not really 'convinced', rather ideas grow in them like maggots - this attitude lost the referendum.
- paxys 3y ago
  > this attitude is exactly how high-class brits managed to lose the brexit vote Brexit is exactly what the high-class brits wanted. Look at where the campaign funding came from. The people who lost out were working class.
  - buserror 3y ago
    Yes, mostly because they were ALSO under the assumption that the promise of deregulation was such a great thing. The manipulation wasn't entirely one sided on the plebs, it was a concerted effort, and not just ONE international interest had their fingers in it...
  - Whoppertime 3y ago
    No way. Remain was supported by people who thought of themselves as Citizens of the World, not citizens of Britain. Their biggest complaint is not being able to freely live in Paris or Brussels like they could under the EU paradigm, and they don't care about sovereignty being eroded because they don't physically make things. The EU rules about how curvy your Bananas or Cucumbers are allowed to be is irrelevant, as they are in the Jet Setting Zoom class and can do their job anywhere
  - amadeuspagel 3y ago
    I removed the part about class before I saw your reply, and before I saw another comment in the same thread illustrating it: > Weigh brexit vote by tax paid per year, lifetime tax paid, or years having to live with the consequences, by educational attainment, and you get a remain landslide. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38818107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38818107
hammock 3y ago
Germany is the top dog in the EU. If Britain was still a part of the EU, they would not so easily have been able to support Ukraine and the US in the bombing of Nord Stream 2, and the prospects for the Ukraine War could look much worse than they do
- skissane 3y ago
  I don't think that's actually true. The EU hasn't been doing anything to stop its member states from going further in military support for Ukraine, so the UK would still have been able to go further than Germany wants to go even if it were still an EU member. EU control over foreign and military policy has clear limitations. Most decisions in that area are done by unanimity (so Germany has no more power to block them than any other member state), and for those done by a qualified majority, while Germany has the largest vote (having the largest population, 19%, it was smaller pre-Brexit), it can be outvoted (65% of population is the threshold). Generally it involves the EU adopting a consensus position on certain issues, but leaving member states free to adopt their own policies in areas for which no consensus position was been adopted, and (very often) to go beyond the consensus in ways compatible with it.
  - infamia 3y ago
    I think what you're saying is technically true, but it is practically very difficult or impossible to achieve because of political realities within the EU. Hungary has blocked $54B of aid for Ukraine for almost three months now with no end in sight. The EU has to bribe countries like Hungary just to make something happen after months of delay. Meanwhile, the UK delivers aid how and whenever they like (including many firsts like western battle tanks, cruise missiles, etc.). The UK would be under a lot of pressure not to act unilaterally, and many more people in Ukraine would likely have died as a result. Either that, or some other non-EU country (e.g., the U.S.) would have to pick up the slack. It is pretty difficult to argue that in the case of Ukraine, UK's autonomy has come in very handy indeed and was one of the promised benefits of Brexit. The EU has been consistent in it's messaging, but it's deeds have not always lived up to when and what they've said they'll deliver.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
miohtama 3y ago
Every democratic country deserves the government they get
- bananapub 3y ago
  what on earth does that mean?
paulmd 3y ago
Further, it’s the same infowar that’s run against the Aussie and US populations every election cycle. Conservative media in general and Murdoch media in particular has been knowingly, openly collaborating with Russians for years now. We are talking about a president who asked for collusion on national TV during a presidential debate after all. The Russian collaboration and funding via NRA and Maria Butina, etc. The senators who went to Russia for the 4th of July. Paul Ryan openly commenting “who he thought was on russias payroll”. Etc. The Russian infowar on the US was no less drastic and no less successful, and that’s just the most recent iteration on it, it’s been openly going on for at least 15 years here too (since the 2008 election at least).

mcphage 3y ago

I’d blame the politicians, mostly… taking a <4% margin on a non-binding referendum as an excuse to self-immolate was entirely a decision by the people in charge.

Whoppertime 3y ago
So how else should have they responded to the referendum and the people's will?
- sk11001 3y ago
  It's not about the response after it happened, it's about whether you should set decades of foreign policy based on a single vote with a small margin.
  - Whoppertime 3y ago
    The 2000 Election between Bush and Gore was a single vote with a small margin that decided the course of middle east policy for the next 100 years 2016 and 2020 has Small margins and shaped a lot of important foreign policy 2024 seems like it may be more of the same
    - sk11001 3y ago
      The difference from the EU referendum is that there's a presidential election every 4 years and 2-term limit.
    - staticman2 3y ago
      The 2000 Bush vs Gore election only shaped middle eastern policy in the sense that Bush's parents deciding to not use Birth control in 1945 shaped middle eastern policy. It's not really the same sort of cause and effect as a direct election on a particular issue.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  “You elected us to make tough, sometimes unpopular decisions. We’ll take this under advisement, but until important details are worked out this cannot be immediately acted upon responsibly.” There’s a reason the resolution was non-binding. Maybe an act this big should have required 2/3 majority.
  - Whoppertime 3y ago
    "Until important details are worked out this cannot be immediately acted upon responsibly". That sounds exactly like the 3 years of Will they Won't they that made up the Theresa May Administration and her handling of Brexit!
- midasuni 3y ago
  “You have 47 tabs open, are you sure you wish to close your web browser” Good enough for something g as inconsequential as pressing alt-f4, but not for ripping away the birthright and citizenship of tens of millions of people.
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    Another referendum to accept or reject specific terms would have been justified. But people did not vote to leave the EU accidentally.
- dagmx 3y ago
  Require more than a simple majority for a change that would change the entire working mode of the countries economy? And while we’re at it, make it illegal for politicians to spread baseless misinformation? If you say something you have to back it up.
- FridgeSeal 3y ago
  Literally the grandparent comment talks about how the whole brexit was basically a massive propaganda event, “people’s will” seems like a bit of a stretch. The Tories knew exactly what they were doing, and how they were doing it, and could have backed out at almost any time. Knowing that they were deliberately misleading people, they arguably should have backed out instead of going ahead with their colossally atrocious decision. In short: referendum and people’s will kind of requires an informed populace and an informed decision, the Brexit vote was neither of those things. Maybe the only upside was demonstrating to everyone else what a godawful decision it is to self-immolate by leaving the EU is.
- xoa 3y ago
  It's a democracy. The entire house of commons are there by the "people's will" too are they not? Their entire job as professional political representatives is to more carefully weigh decisions based on what they think is best for their constituents and their nation. Why should a single non-binding non-mandatory simple majority referendum with plenty of lies slung around and dark money override democracy in your mind? They should have responded in such ways as 1: "Thank you for your interest we will take the result under advisement and form a committee to study the matter" and then shit can it. If "the people" cared enough they'd make it an election issue. 2. "We have come up with three proposals for how to respond. There will be another referendum, this time binding, with ranked choice (or whatever) to decide which specific path to take, with status quo as option 4. At least 60% of at least a 60% turnout is necessary to pick one, otherwise we stick with the status quo." Then run that. Or many other choices. But make no mistake there were LOTS of options beyond the extreme one picked.
  - dfawcus 3y ago
    It is not possible in the UK to have a "binding referendum", merely a "self executing one". i.e. one where prior legislation is activated based upon the result of the poll.
- skissane 3y ago
  They should have required a "double majority" - both a "Leave" majority nationally, and a "Leave" majority in at least three out of the four constituent countries. Then "Leave" would have failed. Obviously, they should have announced this rule before having the referendum. There is precedent for this - Australia uses effectively the same criteria for constitutional amendments (both a majority nationally and a majority in the majority of states). Although, unlike Australia, the UK doesn't have a written constitution, and isn't formally a federation (although devolution has given it quasifederal features), the UK definitely needs something like that given the extreme lopsidedness of its population (one of its four members, England, being roughly 80% of the total
- dfawcus 3y ago
  Legally they could have ignored it. Then taken their knocks in the next GE.
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    They did that. That was the constitutional crisis that occurred after the next election, in which all the major parties promised to respect the referendum and implement the vote, thus ensuring it was fought mostly on domestic issues. Then after being elected large numbers of MPs announced that in fact they weren't going to let the UK leave, and wanted to impose a second "People's Vote". These MPs had done exactly what some people on this thread are asking for: they agreed to a referendum and then decided they didn't like the result so they wouldn't obey it. What happened next seems to have been largely memory holed: Johnson kicked the rebels out of the Conservative party (Labour did not), sending his party from having a majority to deep minority. Parliament then went entirely rogue and attempted to take over the Brexit process from the government in order to directly kill it. Johnson asked for a new election to take the mess back to the people, and the rogue MPs denied that too. They knew full well they had directly stabbed the electorate in the back and they'd all lose their jobs at the next GE as a result, so they just ... refused to hold a GE. This was by far the biggest constitutional crisis the UK has had in my lifetime. Representative democracy is built on the basic assumption that if politicians say they believe in X, campaign on X and then get voted in because of X, that they will actually vote for X in Parliament. If large numbers of MPs claim they will support something and are just baldly lying, democracy dies. And that's what happened. The crisis was ended only by a stroke of luck: the head of the Liberal Democrats became so delusional she began to drink the rebel MPs own kool-aid, and think that the population actually supported their desire for a second People's Vote. After blocking a new election for a long period, she decided to vote with Johnson's remaining loyal MPs to trigger one, at which point all the rebels including her were wiped out. Every single one lost their seats. So, what you ask for actually happened. It didn't work because the British people voted the same way and for the same things they did in the referendum.
    - dfawcus 3y ago
      Except I was not asking for it, simply making an observation. If the MPs actually wanted to be successful in thwarting it, they should have blocked the sending of the Article 50 notification. i.e. either placed conditions on the notification Act, or denied it passing. My view is that they were too craven (or stupid) at the time to show their true convictions. Anyway, the faffing about was a different Parliament, the withdrawal was sent 29th March 2017, then we had a GE and May lost her majority. I'd not view any of those "rogue parliament" events as a constitutional crisis, they're representatives, not delegates. As has been pointed out before, we have no legitimate expectations from anything an MP says to be elected. Our only recourse is to subsequently vote them out. A constitutional crisis would only really have happened if the Scottish MPs (possibly with MSPs) had acted to thwart things - i.e. end the Union; but the then SNP folks were (and still are) too happy in their gravy. As to an earlier 2019 GE, with the FTPA they were not obliged to do so. Yes their faffing about was annoying, and I take the view that folks were just sick of them dithering, hence the 2019 GE result. However, one should not really speak of the UK being a democracy. We (well strictly England, as the Scottish rules are generally ignored) are an absolute monarchy where parliament has wrested away most of the power, and handed it to the cabinet, which really means the PM. (The Scottish monarchy was never absolute.) As has been observed in the past, the UK is essentially an elected dictatorship, which depends upon those in power being "good guys". Recent events have shown how fragile that is, yet still it has not been (and probably will not be) reformed.
- tim333 3y ago
  Figured out the deal and then gone back for a do you want this vote?
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Don't allow a vote between "remain" (which was pretty clear what it meant), and an unspecified "leave" (which everyone could interpret according to their own wishes). That is, if I didn't want to remain, did I want a hard exit? A Switzerland-like situation? Something else? Voting "leave" didn't mean that I would get what I wanted.
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    Nor did voting Remain. The EU isn't a static thing.
- oh_sigh 3y ago
  The obvious answer is to it have the standard be "50% + 1". If the desire is to do nothing or do something, and the vote is roughly equal, then generally you should just do nothing because of the increased cost of doing something. If 66%+ or 75%+ of people want to do something, then go for it.
midasuni 3y ago
But then we had a chance to reverse it in 2017 and 2019 and failed to.
passwordoops 3y ago
They painted themselves into a corner because just like the Democrats of 2016 (and even now TBH) they really didn't listen to the "plebs" and honestly believes the vote was going to be a landslide to remain. So yes, blame the politicians, but blame them for staying in their echo chambers instead of learning what people actually want. Which in 2016 was a change from the status quo
- bananapub 3y ago
  > They painted themselves into a corner er what? david cameron immediately quit and then theresa may immediately went full-hard-brexit without bothering to try to figure out actual goals or compromise or get anyone on board.
  - passwordoops 3y ago
    Which are consequences of painting themselves into a corner

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

"Never let a good crisis go to waste"

passwordoops 3y ago

I was living there for the vote. Only one coworker was pro-Brexit and the morning after we asked him to list what it is he thought they gained. Each item (control over immigration, control over trade, control over labor, etc etc) were things the UK already had control over. He said, and I'll never forget his expression, "Oh. I hadn't realized that"

kypro 3y ago
Did the UK have a legal obligation to allow EU citizens to live and work freely in the UK while in the EU? Did the UK have the legal right to alter trading regulations? For example, could the UK decide to import chlorine washed chicken from US while in the EU? Did the UK have a legal right to discriminate against labours from the EU who applied for jobs in the UK? Please feel free to add context to my questions, because I've had enough of these conversations to know you'll have reasons why although we couldn't control our borders, trade and labour in many circumstances that it doesn't matter. I'll probably agree with you in most cases. But unless the EU literally does nothing and serves no purpose, obviously there are things that we can do now we are out of the EU which we could not do while in the EU. Please decide whether the EU forces us to do things but those things we are forced to do are good, or the EU does nothing at all, but we should still stay in it. You can't have it both ways. I'll also note, we've massively reduced the number of migrants coming from Eastern Europe, this is something that we literally could not legally do while in the EU.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >I'll also note, we've massively reduced the number of migrants coming from Eastern Europe, this is something that we literally could not legally do while in the EU. What did "less Eastern Europeans" (but repalced now with Asian and African migrants) improve for the UK?
  - skissane 3y ago
    Well, you could argue it improved racial/ethnic diversity, as European immigrants were replaced by non-European immigrants. Probably not the kind of improvement most Brexit supporters had in mind.

thriftwy 3y ago

[flagged]

ceejayoz 3y ago
> By whom? By the same folks who periodically murder their dissidents who’ve fled to the UK with polonium tea or ricin umbrellas.
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Come on, you can't be serious about that. Yeah, I'm aware what pops out when you type "Timeline" in Wikipedia's search.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    “Russia meddles in UK politics” isn’t a controversial claim.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      The magnitude cannot be nearly as much as to be sufficient. It is two orders of magnitude less than needed to conjure Brexit out of blue and then win it. Such a feat can only be done by inside parties. Otherwise, everybody meddles in everybody else's politics all the time, chiefly US and the UK, so when they complain about it is like when a pro poker player complains that he was stripped pantsless by a newbie. It can only be a smoke cover. First of all, pro players never complain in good faith.
butler14 3y ago
There’s a trend of democracy being under attack, and Trump and Brexit are good examples of that
- Whoppertime 3y ago
  When the solution people suggest is that the Brexit vote never should have happened, it seems like they are suggesting the only way to protect democracy is stop people from being able to vote

amadeuspagel 3y ago

This attitude, this contempt for "gullible people to 'convince'" - 'convince' in sneer quotes, as if these people are not really 'convinced', rather ideas grow in them like maggots - this attitude lost the referendum.

paxys 3y ago
> this attitude is exactly how high-class brits managed to lose the brexit vote Brexit is exactly what the high-class brits wanted. Look at where the campaign funding came from. The people who lost out were working class.
- buserror 3y ago
  Yes, mostly because they were ALSO under the assumption that the promise of deregulation was such a great thing. The manipulation wasn't entirely one sided on the plebs, it was a concerted effort, and not just ONE international interest had their fingers in it...
- Whoppertime 3y ago
  No way. Remain was supported by people who thought of themselves as Citizens of the World, not citizens of Britain. Their biggest complaint is not being able to freely live in Paris or Brussels like they could under the EU paradigm, and they don't care about sovereignty being eroded because they don't physically make things. The EU rules about how curvy your Bananas or Cucumbers are allowed to be is irrelevant, as they are in the Jet Setting Zoom class and can do their job anywhere
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  I removed the part about class before I saw your reply, and before I saw another comment in the same thread illustrating it: > Weigh brexit vote by tax paid per year, lifetime tax paid, or years having to live with the consequences, by educational attainment, and you get a remain landslide. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38818107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38818107

hammock 3y ago

Germany is the top dog in the EU. If Britain was still a part of the EU, they would not so easily have been able to support Ukraine and the US in the bombing of Nord Stream 2, and the prospects for the Ukraine War could look much worse than they do

skissane 3y ago
I don't think that's actually true. The EU hasn't been doing anything to stop its member states from going further in military support for Ukraine, so the UK would still have been able to go further than Germany wants to go even if it were still an EU member. EU control over foreign and military policy has clear limitations. Most decisions in that area are done by unanimity (so Germany has no more power to block them than any other member state), and for those done by a qualified majority, while Germany has the largest vote (having the largest population, 19%, it was smaller pre-Brexit), it can be outvoted (65% of population is the threshold). Generally it involves the EU adopting a consensus position on certain issues, but leaving member states free to adopt their own policies in areas for which no consensus position was been adopted, and (very often) to go beyond the consensus in ways compatible with it.
- infamia 3y ago
  I think what you're saying is technically true, but it is practically very difficult or impossible to achieve because of political realities within the EU. Hungary has blocked $54B of aid for Ukraine for almost three months now with no end in sight. The EU has to bribe countries like Hungary just to make something happen after months of delay. Meanwhile, the UK delivers aid how and whenever they like (including many firsts like western battle tanks, cruise missiles, etc.). The UK would be under a lot of pressure not to act unilaterally, and many more people in Ukraine would likely have died as a result. Either that, or some other non-EU country (e.g., the U.S.) would have to pick up the slack. It is pretty difficult to argue that in the case of Ukraine, UK's autonomy has come in very handy indeed and was one of the promised benefits of Brexit. The EU has been consistent in it's messaging, but it's deeds have not always lived up to when and what they've said they'll deliver.

deleted 3y ago

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miohtama 3y ago

Every democratic country deserves the government they get

bananapub 3y ago
what on earth does that mean?

paulmd 3y ago

Further, it’s the same infowar that’s run against the Aussie and US populations every election cycle. Conservative media in general and Murdoch media in particular has been knowingly, openly collaborating with Russians for years now. We are talking about a president who asked for collusion on national TV during a presidential debate after all. The Russian collaboration and funding via NRA and Maria Butina, etc. The senators who went to Russia for the 4th of July. Paul Ryan openly commenting “who he thought was on russias payroll”. Etc. The Russian infowar on the US was no less drastic and no less successful, and that’s just the most recent iteration on it, it’s been openly going on for at least 15 years here too (since the 2008 election at least).