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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 (contr

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.
    - mytailorisrich 3y ago
      How is this an improvement or even a goal in itself, though? At best it is irrelevant (what should we care about people's ethnicity or 'race'), at worst it is a negative, cue social issues all over Europe.
      - skissane 3y ago
        I was pointing out the irony that Brexit produced an outcome which many of its supporters did not want, and even wrongly thought that it would help avoid. My choice of the word “improved” was intended to accentuate that irony, not express a stance on the value of that outcome in itself
        mytailorisrich 3y ago
        Brexit does help. If anything what we've seen is that democracy in the UK is for show, not real... It is actually tragic that voters are the butt of the jokes here when, really this is quite serious.
        skissane 3y ago
        Brexit does help with what?
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Helps to show that no matter what the public chooses, the end result will always be shit.
        mytailorisrich 3y ago
  - kypro 3y ago
    It's forced us to pay more to retain staff in certain sectors which now have skill shortages since leaving the EU. That could be a good thing depending on if you're the person receiving the pay rise. I have no strong opinion on Brexit, but one of the reasons I was opposed to it was because it allowed us to import cheap labour into the NHS. This is something we are now struggling to do and will likely mean we will need to pay NHS workers more to attract talent from elsewhere in the world.
- dfawcus 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? Yes. As long as they're not a burden on the state*. The "4 freedoms". > 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? No. Trade is an EU power (competence). > Did the UK have a legal right to discriminate against labours from the EU who applied for jobs in the UK? No > 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. While massively increasing "legal immigration" from outside the EU by instituting a bunch of incompetent policies. i.e. "point based" but with no caps on numbers. Basically we reclaimed a bunch of political powers (the non EU immigration not being one of those), and now only have ourselves to blame for how we exercise those powers. * There are 90 day rules about being present and not able to support oneself. However for political reasons, the UK was never able to use those. We don't have population registers, so can not track where folks are. The prior Labour "ID card" scheme which would have allowed such was scrapped after every other party promised to scrap it in the next GE, and a different party got in.
  - kypro 3y ago
    > Basically we reclaimed a bunch of political powers (the non EU immigration not being one of those), and now only have ourselves to blame for how we exercise those powers. 100% agree. I'm not in favour of reducing migration, but assuming the UK public wanted to reduce migration to say ~100,000 as the Tories promised, we would have struggled to do this while in the EU. I think a lot of people wrongly thought that our membership in the EU was the reason net migration was so high, in reality is was simply that our politicians wanted it to be high and therefore found other ways to keep it high after we left the EU.
- mrtksn 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? Yes but also had the right to deny that to those who couldn't take care for themselves(can't be burden to the society). So can't stop them from coming but doesn't have to keep the freeloaders. UK choose not to pursue that but could have. > 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? Yes, just different legislative path. UK was full EU member since the beginning and they created those trade deals within EU and they can change them within EU. Obviously they will need to convince others about the benefits of the chlorinated chicken so they can pass that change but they also need to do the same for the electorate in the UK ehen outside of EU. > Did the UK have a legal right to discriminate against labours from the EU who applied for jobs in the UK? No. The idea is that meritocracy prevails, arbitrary discrimination is not OK. EU people apply for jobs freely, employers are free to chose the person who would like to work with and they can chose to work with a Brit or EU citizen if the like to. Why do you want the UK government discriminate against people and force employers to hire those they don't want to? What's wrong with meritocracy? > EU literally does nothing and serves no purpose EU's primary purpose is the create peace in Europe by making countries inter-depended and give common access to the resources. If you want to operate a car factory in Berlin, you don't have to conquer Berlin - you can just go there and buy or start one. Beside this primary purpose, EU has many many more functions. It sucks or excels in some and does OK in others.
  - kypro 3y ago
    > Yes but also had the right to deny that to those who couldn't take care for themselves(can't be burden to the society). UK choose not to pursue that but could have. The vast majority were not economic burdens though? So no we couldn't have pursed that apart from in the very small minority of cases where that was the case. We'd then need to go through a costly and timely legal process of proving it and deporting them. > Yes, just different legislative path. UK was full EU member since the beginning and they created those trade deals within EU and they can change them within EU. Obviously they will need to convince others about the benefits of the chlorinated chicken so they can pass that change but they also need to do the same for the electorate in the UK ehen outside of EU. I don't disagree with this, but it's also not wrong to say the the EU removed the ability from UK law makers to make trade deals independently of the EU. This meant everything the UK wanted to do we had to do with the approval of other EU nation states which often had different economies, cultures and economic goals. The argument that we would have more control to make our own trade deals outside of the EU is true, although a good argument can be made that those trade deals will not be as favourable if we're acting independently of the worlds largest trading block. Neither black or white is helpful in my opinion. > No. The idea is that meritocracy prevails, arbitrary discrimination is not OK. EU people apply for jobs freely, employers free chose the person who would like to work with and they can chose to work with a Brit or EU citizen if the like to. Why do you want the UK government discriminate against people? I don't personally, no. But a lot of people in the UK didn't want UK jobs to be on offer to labourers from low-wage Eastern European countries. I take the highly controversial view that the UK government should suppress working class wages via mass migration and ensure the UK public are educated enough to not need to compete with foreign low-skill labourers. I want agricultural workers and NHS staff to be under paid if it means cheaper food and health care for natives, but obviously if you're a labourer working in those sectors you might not view this arrangement so favourably. People have also taken moral disagreement with me about whether it's right to engineer a migrant labour underclass at the benefit of natives, but if you don't discriminate against people from low-wage economies then this is almost inevitably the result.
buserror 3y ago
Heh, I am a EU immigrant to the UK, been with my wife 30 years, and both my in-laws were rabbid brexiters of course.... Until I told them they were voting for literally preventing their daughter and me the life we've been living. Their grandkids, everything wouldn't have been possible without her being allowed to work there, and me being able to work here... They hadn't realized that of course, because you know, as far as immigration goes, they were just fine with the lovely polish lady at the shop, and me of course, what they didn't want is 'them' (not entirely clear who that is).
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  Brexit doesn't prevent people from Europe immigrating to the UK, and was never pitched as doing that, so you might not have been representing it correctly to your in-laws unless you had no skills and were not in education when you immigrated.
  - cassianoleal 3y ago
    Brexit makes it a lot harder for EU nationals to go to the UK. Sure it doesn't prevent it altogether, but it creates many barriers and increases cost and uncertainty. I went to the UK long before Brexit and currently hold settled status but had all that not been the case I'd probably be in Spain, or the Netherlands, or perhaps Germany. Going to the UK would simply not be worth the hassle when I have so many other much more accessible options, and in places where I wouldn't feel like I'm being done a favour for being allowed to live there, work there, pay my taxes and do my shopping there, helping British organisations modernise themselves and become more competitive, helping grow the GDP...
    - mike_hearn 3y ago
      > Brexit makes it a lot harder for EU nationals to go to the UK. Harder yes, but buserror said it was voting for "literally preventing their daughter and me the life we've been living". That statement is "literally" not true, unless buserror could not have met those requirements at any point in the past decades. Having requirements is not the same thing as absolute prevention.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
Yeah, I have to imagine an expression of disbelief here. No EU country has control over immigration or trade. EU citizens can move anywhere they want in europe, EU companies can trade anywhere they want in europe. That's the point. If I were the only person of a certain view, and being told something so absurd by a group of people, in earnest, my face would drop too.
- skissane 3y ago
  > No EU country has control over immigration EU countries have lots of control over immigration. Each gets to decide its immigration levels from outside the EU (to be technical, outside the EEA+Switzerland), and which of those immigrants it wants under what terms The EU only controls intra-EU immigration and some aspects of asylum/refugee policy. Rest-of-world immigration remains a national competency in which the EU has very little say. Same is true for nationality and citizenship
  - amadeuspagel 3y ago
    Yes, EU countries can refuse to allow someone to immigrate if every single other EU country refuses too. Lots of control.
    - skissane 3y ago
      A person who immigrates to one EU country does not immediately gain access to others. To gain EU freedom of movement rights, they have to either be naturalised as a citizen (and member states have immense freedom to decide the requirements for that–the shortest is 5 years, same as the UK, and some of those states are talking about increasing it), or else they have to apply for EU long-term residence status. EU long-term residence status requires five years legal residence in an EU member state, with exclusions for students and seasonal workers, and member states are allowed to reject applications on various grounds (such as national security). Until an immigrant acquires either citizenship or long-term residence status, their right to work in one EU country is not transferrable to any other. Also, Denmark and Ireland have opt-outs from long-term residence, and the UK did too prior to Brexit, so it does not apply to them.
ninkendo 3y ago
> He said, and I'll never forget his expression, "Oh. I hadn't realized that" Are you sure he wasn’t just saying what you wanted to hear in order to end the discussion? Most people don’t want to talk politics at work if they’re the single only person who holds a view, and if everyone’s angry that brexit happened and is badgering him to say why he thinks it was a good idea, perhaps he found that the path of least resistance was to say basically “hmm, guess you’re right”. (Note, I’m not pro-brexit, this is just my experience when talking politics at work. Those who hold minority views don’t often want to litigate them at length with coworkers, and you the ones who do… you probably don’t want to work with.)
illiac786 3y ago
Some neighbours voted for Brexit. When questioned, they said, which I will never forget either: “we thought we’d fancy a change”… This kind of stuff makes me doubt democracy sometimes. (But then I look at the alternatives, it cures me of any doubt)

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.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    How is this an improvement or even a goal in itself, though? At best it is irrelevant (what should we care about people's ethnicity or 'race'), at worst it is a negative, cue social issues all over Europe.
    - skissane 3y ago
      I was pointing out the irony that Brexit produced an outcome which many of its supporters did not want, and even wrongly thought that it would help avoid. My choice of the word “improved” was intended to accentuate that irony, not express a stance on the value of that outcome in itself
      - mytailorisrich 3y ago
        Brexit does help. If anything what we've seen is that democracy in the UK is for show, not real... It is actually tragic that voters are the butt of the jokes here when, really this is quite serious.
        skissane 3y ago
        Brexit does help with what?
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Helps to show that no matter what the public chooses, the end result will always be shit.
        mytailorisrich 3y ago
- kypro 3y ago
  It's forced us to pay more to retain staff in certain sectors which now have skill shortages since leaving the EU. That could be a good thing depending on if you're the person receiving the pay rise. I have no strong opinion on Brexit, but one of the reasons I was opposed to it was because it allowed us to import cheap labour into the NHS. This is something we are now struggling to do and will likely mean we will need to pay NHS workers more to attract talent from elsewhere in the world.
dfawcus 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? Yes. As long as they're not a burden on the state*. The "4 freedoms". > 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? No. Trade is an EU power (competence). > Did the UK have a legal right to discriminate against labours from the EU who applied for jobs in the UK? No > 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. While massively increasing "legal immigration" from outside the EU by instituting a bunch of incompetent policies. i.e. "point based" but with no caps on numbers. Basically we reclaimed a bunch of political powers (the non EU immigration not being one of those), and now only have ourselves to blame for how we exercise those powers. * There are 90 day rules about being present and not able to support oneself. However for political reasons, the UK was never able to use those. We don't have population registers, so can not track where folks are. The prior Labour "ID card" scheme which would have allowed such was scrapped after every other party promised to scrap it in the next GE, and a different party got in.
- kypro 3y ago
  > Basically we reclaimed a bunch of political powers (the non EU immigration not being one of those), and now only have ourselves to blame for how we exercise those powers. 100% agree. I'm not in favour of reducing migration, but assuming the UK public wanted to reduce migration to say ~100,000 as the Tories promised, we would have struggled to do this while in the EU. I think a lot of people wrongly thought that our membership in the EU was the reason net migration was so high, in reality is was simply that our politicians wanted it to be high and therefore found other ways to keep it high after we left the EU.
mrtksn 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? Yes but also had the right to deny that to those who couldn't take care for themselves(can't be burden to the society). So can't stop them from coming but doesn't have to keep the freeloaders. UK choose not to pursue that but could have. > 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? Yes, just different legislative path. UK was full EU member since the beginning and they created those trade deals within EU and they can change them within EU. Obviously they will need to convince others about the benefits of the chlorinated chicken so they can pass that change but they also need to do the same for the electorate in the UK ehen outside of EU. > Did the UK have a legal right to discriminate against labours from the EU who applied for jobs in the UK? No. The idea is that meritocracy prevails, arbitrary discrimination is not OK. EU people apply for jobs freely, employers are free to chose the person who would like to work with and they can chose to work with a Brit or EU citizen if the like to. Why do you want the UK government discriminate against people and force employers to hire those they don't want to? What's wrong with meritocracy? > EU literally does nothing and serves no purpose EU's primary purpose is the create peace in Europe by making countries inter-depended and give common access to the resources. If you want to operate a car factory in Berlin, you don't have to conquer Berlin - you can just go there and buy or start one. Beside this primary purpose, EU has many many more functions. It sucks or excels in some and does OK in others.
- kypro 3y ago
  > Yes but also had the right to deny that to those who couldn't take care for themselves(can't be burden to the society). UK choose not to pursue that but could have. The vast majority were not economic burdens though? So no we couldn't have pursed that apart from in the very small minority of cases where that was the case. We'd then need to go through a costly and timely legal process of proving it and deporting them. > Yes, just different legislative path. UK was full EU member since the beginning and they created those trade deals within EU and they can change them within EU. Obviously they will need to convince others about the benefits of the chlorinated chicken so they can pass that change but they also need to do the same for the electorate in the UK ehen outside of EU. I don't disagree with this, but it's also not wrong to say the the EU removed the ability from UK law makers to make trade deals independently of the EU. This meant everything the UK wanted to do we had to do with the approval of other EU nation states which often had different economies, cultures and economic goals. The argument that we would have more control to make our own trade deals outside of the EU is true, although a good argument can be made that those trade deals will not be as favourable if we're acting independently of the worlds largest trading block. Neither black or white is helpful in my opinion. > No. The idea is that meritocracy prevails, arbitrary discrimination is not OK. EU people apply for jobs freely, employers free chose the person who would like to work with and they can chose to work with a Brit or EU citizen if the like to. Why do you want the UK government discriminate against people? I don't personally, no. But a lot of people in the UK didn't want UK jobs to be on offer to labourers from low-wage Eastern European countries. I take the highly controversial view that the UK government should suppress working class wages via mass migration and ensure the UK public are educated enough to not need to compete with foreign low-skill labourers. I want agricultural workers and NHS staff to be under paid if it means cheaper food and health care for natives, but obviously if you're a labourer working in those sectors you might not view this arrangement so favourably. People have also taken moral disagreement with me about whether it's right to engineer a migrant labour underclass at the benefit of natives, but if you don't discriminate against people from low-wage economies then this is almost inevitably the result.

buserror 3y ago

Heh, I am a EU immigrant to the UK, been with my wife 30 years, and both my in-laws were rabbid brexiters of course.... Until I told them they were voting for literally preventing their daughter and me the life we've been living. Their grandkids, everything wouldn't have been possible without her being allowed to work there, and me being able to work here... They hadn't realized that of course, because you know, as far as immigration goes, they were just fine with the lovely polish lady at the shop, and me of course, what they didn't want is 'them' (not entirely clear who that is).

mike_hearn 3y ago
Brexit doesn't prevent people from Europe immigrating to the UK, and was never pitched as doing that, so you might not have been representing it correctly to your in-laws unless you had no skills and were not in education when you immigrated.
- cassianoleal 3y ago
  Brexit makes it a lot harder for EU nationals to go to the UK. Sure it doesn't prevent it altogether, but it creates many barriers and increases cost and uncertainty. I went to the UK long before Brexit and currently hold settled status but had all that not been the case I'd probably be in Spain, or the Netherlands, or perhaps Germany. Going to the UK would simply not be worth the hassle when I have so many other much more accessible options, and in places where I wouldn't feel like I'm being done a favour for being allowed to live there, work there, pay my taxes and do my shopping there, helping British organisations modernise themselves and become more competitive, helping grow the GDP...
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    > Brexit makes it a lot harder for EU nationals to go to the UK. Harder yes, but buserror said it was voting for "literally preventing their daughter and me the life we've been living". That statement is "literally" not true, unless buserror could not have met those requirements at any point in the past decades. Having requirements is not the same thing as absolute prevention.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

Yeah, I have to imagine an expression of disbelief here. No EU country has control over immigration or trade. EU citizens can move anywhere they want in europe, EU companies can trade anywhere they want in europe. That's the point. If I were the only person of a certain view, and being told something so absurd by a group of people, in earnest, my face would drop too.

skissane 3y ago
> No EU country has control over immigration EU countries have lots of control over immigration. Each gets to decide its immigration levels from outside the EU (to be technical, outside the EEA+Switzerland), and which of those immigrants it wants under what terms The EU only controls intra-EU immigration and some aspects of asylum/refugee policy. Rest-of-world immigration remains a national competency in which the EU has very little say. Same is true for nationality and citizenship
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  Yes, EU countries can refuse to allow someone to immigrate if every single other EU country refuses too. Lots of control.
  - skissane 3y ago
    A person who immigrates to one EU country does not immediately gain access to others. To gain EU freedom of movement rights, they have to either be naturalised as a citizen (and member states have immense freedom to decide the requirements for that–the shortest is 5 years, same as the UK, and some of those states are talking about increasing it), or else they have to apply for EU long-term residence status. EU long-term residence status requires five years legal residence in an EU member state, with exclusions for students and seasonal workers, and member states are allowed to reject applications on various grounds (such as national security). Until an immigrant acquires either citizenship or long-term residence status, their right to work in one EU country is not transferrable to any other. Also, Denmark and Ireland have opt-outs from long-term residence, and the UK did too prior to Brexit, so it does not apply to them.

ninkendo 3y ago

> He said, and I'll never forget his expression, "Oh. I hadn't realized that" Are you sure he wasn’t just saying what you wanted to hear in order to end the discussion? Most people don’t want to talk politics at work if they’re the single only person who holds a view, and if everyone’s angry that brexit happened and is badgering him to say why he thinks it was a good idea, perhaps he found that the path of least resistance was to say basically “hmm, guess you’re right”. (Note, I’m not pro-brexit, this is just my experience when talking politics at work. Those who hold minority views don’t often want to litigate them at length with coworkers, and you the ones who do… you probably don’t want to work with.)

illiac786 3y ago

Some neighbours voted for Brexit. When questioned, they said, which I will never forget either: “we thought we’d fancy a change”… This kind of stuff makes me doubt democracy sometimes. (But then I look at the alternatives, it cures me of any doubt)