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Brexit Hit to UK Economy Double Official Estimate, Study Finds

100 points by donohoe 11mo ago

neogodless 11mo ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933317 Brexit reduced UK GDP by 6-8%, investments by 12-18% [pdf] (nber.org) 6 days ago | 157 comments
thih9 11mo ago
https://archive.is/71gGy https://archive.is/71gGy
- anovikov 11mo ago
  archive.is gives be a verification loop for about a week running, from any browser. is it working for any of you guys?
  - neom 11mo ago
    works fine here
  - arprocter 11mo ago
    If you edit the address they have other TLDs that might work: archive.today archive.fo archive.li archive.md archive.ph archive.vn
JKCalhoun 11mo ago
Not British but asking, is there anyone in the U.K. defending Brexit at this point? I mean it sounds like we're just debating how bad it was, not whether it was bad.
- spacebanana7 11mo ago
  The only upside is that we can buy BYD cars with fewer tariffs.
- Doches 11mo ago
  Reform UK is still technically defending Brexit; they've just switched to the no-true-Scotsman argument that real Brexit was never delivered and that they're the ones that can make good on the promises from the referendum. Which is horseshit, obviously.
- 7952 11mo ago
  People will defend the idea of Brexit but condemn the implementation. And people avoid debating it directly anyway.
  - Cthulhu_ 11mo ago
    They would've been better off if they could have set up an agreement with the EU, but they didn't get one that satisfied all parties - plus they had a weak negotiating position.
    - Normal_gaussian 11mo ago
      It was particularly weakened by obvious issues with the UK's political leadership - the EU knew that the UK didn't know what it really wanted and didn't have negotiators with the mandate to get it.
- nailer 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - dekken_ 11mo ago
    > it allowed the UK to control its own migration policy. UK is still in the ECHR, so, not really, not yet
    - dlahoda 11mo ago
      old contract, uk known to commit to its past commitments.
    - nailer 11mo ago
      That’s true. Labour opposes leaving. But their leader has near record low approval rating so that may not mean anything.
  - Nextgrid 11mo ago
    > allowed the UK to control its own migration policy Has that helped? Seems like they traded-off Eastern European migrants (who all fled during the pandemic because life in their own country is now much better than in the UK) for Middle Eastern migrants who have nothing to lose and for whom this disaster of a country is still an upgrade over what they had before.
    - nailer 11mo ago
      Leaving the EU is required but not sufficient to fix UK migration.
  - troupo 11mo ago
    > and it allowed the UK to control its own migration policy. As in: Brits found out that they need to queue like the rest of the world to get into the EU and migration from the EU decreased. However, net migration to the UK has increased since Brexit.
  - gpderetta 11mo ago
- richrichardsson 11mo ago
  What a lot of the pro-Brexit crowd finally admitted is that Brexit was always going to be a bitter pill to swallow and they knew it. Conveniently none of them wanted to say that in the lead up to the vote. 5 years ago when they began admitting this, they claimed it was going to be a 10 year process before the "benefits" of Brexit can be felt. Here we are. I guess Brexit benefits will be like Fusion Energy or Full-Self-Driving; always a few years into the future.
  - dlahoda 11mo ago
    let meet here and discuss status of eu newfascism in 5 years. uk will not be part of it.
    - gpderetta 11mo ago
      indeed, with Mr Brexit on track to become next PM, UK will have its own brand of it.
    - pjc50 11mo ago
      No, the UK will have its own indigenous fascism with a little Union Jack printed on it.
    - retsibsi 11mo ago
      > eu newfascism What do you mean by this, concretely? Or in other words, if we check back in 5 years, what would cause you to say 'yeah I was wrong, eu newfascism {doesn't exist || hasn't progressed as badly as I expected}'? edit: to the downvoters, what do you object to here?? I'm trying to pin down the meaning of the parent comment, because without some kind of definition, a phrase like 'eu newfascism' is all heat and no light. My 'in other words...' framing was not based on the assumption that the parent commenter will be proven wrong; I'm just asking 'what would it take to falsify this?'
    - blipvert 11mo ago
      Ahem, in 5 years Nigel Farage will have persuaded the idiots to willingly up their human rights, as enshrined in the ECHR. Churchill’s great achievement to prevent the horrors of the Nazi regime happening again. Let’s see how that work out.
- reedf1 11mo ago
  It is completely verboten for the political class to mention Brexit or its reversal.
- anovikov 11mo ago
  It seems to have become a taboo topic. There are too many people who voted for it and now realise it has been a mistake and want to forget about it, anyone who reminds them, will be seen negatively. It also can't be reversed anyway so there's no upside in this discussion - reversing means becoming "just one" of the EU states because the Union has been explicit that they won't allow any perks, not even keeping the pound - which is just too much for public to stomach.
- basisword 11mo ago
  The people who voted for Brexit have moved on to the next stupid bogeyman. In a few years we'll see the fruits of that with Reform in power demolishing what's left of the Uk economy. And still, the masses won't learn.
  - FridayoLeary 11mo ago
    What are we supposed to learn? That the Tories are rubbish and Labour are even worse?
    - pjc50 11mo ago
      The real driver of all of this is the press. There's a lot of immigrant-blaming propaganda that diverts attention from real issues.
      - benmmurphy 11mo ago
        if the government wasn't incompetent in how they are handling certain immigration issues the anti-immigration parties would not have any momentum. for some bizarre reason the government is pursuing a course of action that is poisoning the well when it comes to immigration in the UK. i think immigration can bring a lot of benefits to the UK but by bringing in poor performing migrants into the UK it can end up turning the public against all immigration.
        basisword 11mo ago
        The anti-immigration parties have made immigration the cause of all our problems when it's the cause of practically none of them. Now the government are wasting time appeasing idiots who believe everything they read on X instead of actually focussing the real problems in the country. Anyone that believes Nigel Farage can come up with a functional plan to solve a single fucking problem is in for a surprise if he's ever in power. Unfortunately it shouldn't be a surprise because the last time they backed him it was a disaster too.
- jaccola 11mo ago
  Yes. Many people still support it. Even if Brexit is objectively bad this is self-evidently obvious, people are very bad at changing their minds and lots of people voted for it. Maybe over half would now vote to remain, but most pundits thought this would be the case before 2015, so who can say for certain (e.g. Nigel Farage is more popular than ever and he is Mr Brexit). It is way too early to judge the success or failure of leaving the EU, and part of it will be down to chance. There are also intangible reasons (e.g. feeling of national identity, distaste for bureaucracy) people voted leave and, while I don't think they make up for the loss, I don't think they should be poo-pooed. I personally would have liked to remain in the EU but I don't think the EU is obviously good, or leaving the EU is obviously a terrible idea.
  - nprateem 11mo ago
    Unless you obviously want to benefit by eg retiring/ moving there.
- StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
  Purely from a sovereignty points of view, it makes a lot of sense if you think your country being independent is important. From an economic point of view, it will probably never make sense because the UK was shielded from most of the EU most stupid decisions through carve out. They were out the disastrous currency union. They were not fully in Schengen. They had a lot of leeway with regulations. Coming back would probably be a mistake however. They would most likely be forced to join the eurozone.
  - jjbinx007 11mo ago
    The "sovereignty" argument is a bit misleading though. It's basically regulatory alignment.
    - StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
      You can write it without the quotes you know, it's an actual word. I think it's a real argument personnally and the heart of the issue. That was the main question of the Brexit referundum: do you want to be a part of this pan-European union of people and surrender some of your country power to this union? You can argue that the subsequent trade agreement and the alignment that followed have reintroduced some of the same constraints, which is true, but practically and conceptually speaking it is a very different kind of situation.
      - jjbinx007 11mo ago
        Regulatory alignment is very different to "surrendering some of your country's power". You've proved my point.
- FridayoLeary 11mo ago
  The EU is undemocratic, horribly mismanaged and reduces sovreignty. The feeling is we were putting in more then we were getting out. Now i can't accuse the Brexit negotiators of acting with competence. Neither can i claim that it has brought any short to medium term benefits. But the situation wasn't great either way. The referendum was a choice between a bad option (remaining) and an even worse option.
  - joshuaissac 11mo ago
    > The EU is undemocratic EU Members of Parliament for the UK were elected via proportional representation, whereas Westminster MPs are elected via the comparatively undemocratic first-past-the-post system, where a party with 14% of the national vote gets just 1% of the seats in Parliament (Reform UK, GE 2024), and one with 34% of the vote gets 63% of the seats (Labour, GE2024). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c886pl6ldy9o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c886pl6ldy9o
    - StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
      While I broadly agree on this specific point, there is a lot to be said about the overall democratic legitimacy of the EU. The constitution was rejected by referundum by at least two members states before being plainly reintroduced as a treaty and summarily imposed. Parliament has no power of initiative. Commissionners appointments are frankly opaque when it comes to how portfolios are handed out. Then, you have the way the eurozone is structure. It's literally a prison. The treaties don't provide an orderly way out of and TARGET 2 ensures that leaving means complete economic chaos so countries are basically stuck. This situation has been used in the past to justify bludgeoning a population into obedience and impose extrem austerity to protect rich members unwise creditors. Brexit was only possible because of the pound sterling and that's not a possibility the union extends to new comers.
  - surgical_fire 11mo ago
    > The EU is undemocratic, Elaborate how exactly it is undemocratic. I always ask imbeciles that repeat this bullshit, and they can never articulate this point. They either never reply or change the subject. Typically they gesture at the EU commission being unelected, but they ignore that the commissioners are nominated by each member state (and all member states are supposedly democracies. And I say supposedly because Hungary exists). The nominees then have to be approved by the EU parliament (which is elected). Saying that EU is undemocratic is like saying that a country with a prime minister is undemocratic because he was not directly voted for. Which is not an argument that can be taken seriously. And I say this as someone that dislikes that EU commission is appointed by the member states government. The problem with this is that it mixes internal politics with EU politics - for example, in national elections I may vote for parties based on national issues, but I would vote for a different party in an explicit EU election.
- krona 11mo ago
  Nobody I know of who voted for Brexit did it because they thought it would make the country (or themselves) any richer or poorer.
  - skeletal88 11mo ago
    Why did they vote for it?
    - tonyedgecombe 11mo ago
      Xenophobia.
    - nprateem 11mo ago
      For some it was a protest vote. And some people are idiots.
    - graemep 11mo ago
      Its mostly a matter of identity. Do you feel European or British? Its much like any secessionist movement. This partly explains the high ethnic minority vote for Brexit, because its hard to feel European if you are not of European origin. It is also a matter of class identity. Being a remainer is a lot posher than being a leaver.
      - surgical_fire 11mo ago
        This is so weird. I live in EU, but I am not originally from Europe. I have a EU citizenship at this point though. That said, I am staunchly pro EU, and would always vote for further integration. In truth, I even think that EU federalization would be a good idea. I have no idea why immigrants of all people would have a nationalistic stance on this.
        graemep 11mo ago
        > That said, I am staunchly pro EU, and would always vote for further integration. In truth, I even think that EU federalization would be a good idea. It is necessary. Having a common currency without a common budget has been a disaster. > I have no idea why immigrants of all people would have a nationalistic stance on this. How is it a nationalistic stance? You are preferring one identity over another - either way is just as nationalistic. Immigrants from outside the EU do not like immigrants from the EU being given preference from their countries of origin, often places with strong historical links to Britain, where English is widely spoken, etc.
- Peanuts99 11mo ago
  Not really, but I'll take every opportunity I can to complain about it's impacts.
- blipvert 11mo ago
  “There was a better Brexit, but it goes to a different school” is the mentality. Sophistry incarnate, that bunch.
- Delphiza 11mo ago
  I think that a lot of people will still support Brexit. Leaving the EU allows a (future) government to do a lot of stupid things. Throwing out good fiscal policy, eroding human rights, aggressively stopping boats or changing migration rules, reversing climate change regulation. A lot of people believe, or will be led to believe (because previous governments were hamstrung by the EU), that those stupid ideas are actually quite good ideas. Brexit was necessary for those ideas to be implemented. An individual's view on whether those ideas are good or not will correlate with their continued support of Brexit.
- greener_grass 11mo ago
  There are. The rhetorical strategy is to argue that Brexit was a good idea, but it has not been implemented properly. Look for the phrases "Brexit means Brexit" and "proper Brexit".
  - JKCalhoun 11mo ago
    Sounds similar to the things I hear about Communism. It's purportedly the best system… just that no one yet has done it right.
- graemep 11mo ago
  I do defend it, no point here because I always just get downvoted and people cannot grasp the points made because they do not want to. Compare how the UK has done since 2016 compared to either the government forecasts of what would happen in the event of a Brexit vote, or to the other big western European economies and you can see the problems. The fact that one estimate is double another gives you a clue to how uncertain these estimates are.
- michaelbuckbee 11mo ago
  The poll mentioned in the article has 56% of respondents saying that Brexit was a bad idea, so roughly half seem ok with it.
- ed_voc 11mo ago
  I didn’t vote in the referendum and I’m fairly apathetic about Brexit. I wouldn’t dispute that there are downsides, but I do see the positive as no longer being part of an institution many British people consider deeply problematic. -Commission’s monopoly on legislative initiative -Technocratic “fast-tracking” of democracy via trilogues. -cult-like mentality around ever-closer union making devolution unthinkable within the commission. -Commission’s direct funding of media and its proposed expansion of the Media+ budget give it the ability to spend money directly promoting the narratives and priorities it wants to see amplified. -Legislative attrition; passing legislation not through genuine consensus, but through persistence — re-proposing it until the Commission secures its preferred outcome. As we’re currently seeing with the chat control proposal The way the EU has behaved in defense negotiations has further solidified my thoughts on this. Tying fishing rights to defense cooperation[0] then after the UK made concessions demanding billions with no say on how the money will be spent. [0] https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-eu-defense-pact-really-does-depend-on-fish-european-minister-warns/ https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-eu-defense-pact-really-do...
wateralien 11mo ago
Rejoin.
- surgical_fire 11mo ago
  The thing about rejoining is that the UK would likely not get the same preferential treatment, exemptions and so forth it used to enjoy before Brexit.
  - jjbinx007 11mo ago
    True, but it's still better than what we have now.
    - surgical_fire 11mo ago
      I don't live in the UK, but my impression from the outside is that rejoining is a political minefield within the UK? Like, you guys have the Farage party leading in polls right now. I don't think any move in the direction of rejoining is realistic with the possibility of his party ruling the UK in a few years. The real benefit from Brexit was felt outside of the UK. Although it was a shame to lose such an important country, the results were so disastrous for the UK that any *exit became extremely unpopular in other EU countries. Even far right parties in other EU countries had to completely scrape or severely tone down any rhetoric to leave the EU. Nowadays their goals are more to weaken the EU from within (which is still bad, but better than having those absolute retards campaigning to leave).
      - monerozcash 11mo ago
        > but my impression from the outside is that rejoining is a political minefield within the UK? Probably less of a minefield than it is perceived as, a huge chunk of the "leave"-voters are dead now.
neom 11mo ago
"So again, these are ludicrous scare – these are scare stories that are being put up. Even if sterling, even if sterling were to fall a few percentage points after Brexit, so what?" - Nigel Farage 2016. It's down what? 15/20% from pre-brexit? I really wonder how people like Nigel Farage sleep at night. Just fine I suppose, but I really do wonder how. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-nigel-farage-brexit-economy-pound-sliding-vote-leave-a70782 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum...
- Doches 11mo ago
  Presumably most of Farage's personal income at this point is ultimately denominated in USD, so he's probably benefiting just fine from sterling's fall...
- croes 11mo ago
  They blame immigrants
  - pjc50 11mo ago
    As you can see from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45996860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45996860 , blaming immigrants is a magic ticket to being able to do whatever you want.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- Lapel2742 11mo ago
  > I really wonder how people like Nigel Farage sleep at night. These people have no morals or ethics. They are psychopaths that only care for themselves. Even if it comes at devastating costs for others. Brexit was a complete success, for Nigel Farage. The last thing I heard is that his party leads the polls in the UK. In my country the spokesperson of the far-right party (AfD) was caught saying: "The worse things get for Germany, the better it is for the AfD". That's their mindset.
  - 11mo ago
petercooper 11mo ago
Yes, but look at all the upsides.
- echelon_musk 11mo ago
  Rose tinted glasses required.
  - Cthulhu_ 11mo ago
    But then you can't see the blue of those sweet blue passports as well!
    - echelon_musk 11mo ago
      At least my pint glass still has a crown on it.
shrubble 11mo ago
What is the impact of the “Boriswave” immigration policy on the economy, I wonder?
- echelon_musk 11mo ago
  One thing that frustrated me around this time was that the UK's "stop the boats" campaign (although launched under Sunak) was just a lazy clone of an anti-immigration slogan first launched in Five Eyes partner Australia back in ~2013. At the time I remember seeing a meme of Captain Cook's ship off the coast of Australia with 'Stop the Boats' stamped beneath it to highlight the hypocrisy.
  - nailer 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - IAmBroom 11mo ago
      Anything but fair. Eggregiously racist, more like.
      - nailer 11mo ago
        There’s a reply to you in the comment above.
    - hackable_sand 11mo ago
      You are going to need to edit your comment again.
- Havoc 11mo ago
  Doubt it has a big impact. Immigrants from richer western nations are net contributors to budget while those from poor countries are on average a drain. Uk locals land somewhere in between. Brexit lead to more immigrants from poor countries but I doubt it moves the needle overall
mananaysiempre 11mo ago
Original paper: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34459 https://www.nber.org/papers/w34459 (semi-paywalled, download counts are per IP address).
cuuupid 11mo ago
Not to just say “skill issue” but… isn’t this just a skill issue? The main negative impact seems to be trade but the UK already has free trade agreements post-Brexit with the EU. Most of the remaining differences in hurdles are paperwork, which seems like an opportunity for automation that should be almost trivial with AI. The US has successfully automated most compliance based hurdles in the last couple years from finance to law to contracting. Looking at the positive impacts and lack of growth from those… also skill issue? Not having to follow regulations from the EU is also a huge boon yet the UK seems to have taken no advantage of this. Which to me is especially concerning because for years we have been hearing that Europe is lagging behind in development because of over-regulation in fields like AI, yet when freed of those shackles the UK seems to be lagging just the same. The other positive impact heavily touted was reduced net immigration. This >could< have had a short term positive impact (heavily debatable long term cutting off access to talent pools) yet they have almost 3x’ed the reduction in immigration from the EU with an increase in immigration from other sources. The effects of this are pretty palpable as the UK now has its own flavor of nationalist movement, has not seen wage increases in advanced sectors due to supply forces in their labor market, and universities are relying on overseas students to increase tuition revenue - training a labor force that will largely churn. The last one I’ll hit is not having to follow EU laws. After Brexit, instead of taking advantage of legislative sovereignty, the UK temporarily codified all EU law to avoid disruption. Parliament has had ~5 years to review the laws but from what I can tell has made almost no progress (~10%) and extended the expiration because… they haven’t had time to read the other laws. So overall while I’m no type of economic analyst it would seem the problems of Brexit are not actually Brexit, but almost all competency issues. If there’s British tech talent in this thread there’s probably a billion pound opportunity in just easily automating trade paperwork or helping UKG review the remaining EU laws.
- pjc50 11mo ago
  Regulatory divergence is a cost all of its own. The main impact of Brexit is that manufacturers have to check three sets of rules rather than two and print "UKCA" next to "CE" on goods. As well as all the customs checks which appear because of divergence, including those within the UK because of the NI farming question. The idea of growth through liberalization should have been subject to the question "which rules, exactly" before getting to the point of the referendum.
cjs_ac 11mo ago
Brexit was an economic policy decided on emotional terms: most Britons voted on the basis of I like Europe or I don't like foreigners, and economic forecasts about potential effects were just throwaway talking points to bolster those preconceived opinions. Unlike the US, we have no common vision of a destiny to manifest; unlike the Russians, we have no expansionist goals; unlike the French, our political system is an outcome of a thousand years of compromise, not blazes of revolutionary zeal. We are just an archipelago of people quietly bumbling our way from cradle to grave, buffeted by the winds of change, and taking the advantages they afford us while we can. Brexit was a mistake, but there is no way back to the privileged position we once held in the EU, and so anyone who still wants to talk about it is just a pointless shit-stirrer.
- graemep 11mo ago
  I think you are right about people's motives, but there is more to it than economic policy. There are a lot of implications to "ever closer union".
- rplnt 11mo ago
  > anyone who still wants to talk about it is just a pointless shit-stirrer. Talk about Brexit you mean? I think it's important to point out if it was a bad decision caused by deception, even more so if that was driven by illegal foreign influence. One can learn and perhaps something similar won't happen again, be it in UK or elsewhere. Brexit bombing already had a positive effect on other countries where this topic went from prime serious discussion to something only Russian parrots keep bringing up.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- sys_64738 11mo ago
  You shouldn't be making decisions such as Brexit on economic terms. It doesn't matter if it's a mistake just as it doesn't matter about thinking the country can go back. Brexit is a 100% permanent outcome from the referendum vote. Those changing their minds now as they thought it might not happen, or doing it for fun, are directly responsible for the outcome. BoJo delivered what the people demanded and now Britain's place as an island off the NW coast of the EU is cemented - warts and all.
blipvert 11mo ago
For the benefit of those outside of the UK, Nigel (Mr. Brexit) Farage’s right hand man in Wales, Nathan Gill was just jailed for taking bribes from Kremlin stooges to parrot their propaganda in the EU parliament. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/21/nathan-gill-former-reform-uk-wales-leader-jailed-bribes-pro-russia-statements-mep https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/21/nathan-gill...
- pjc50 11mo ago
  Dodgy money is a theme. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/did-dups-controversial-brexit-donors-break-law-by-refusing-/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/d... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48611704 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48611704
- sys_64738 11mo ago
  And Nige has an EU passport through his German wife.
  - blipvert 11mo ago
    I bet that they talk foreign on trains, too. The filthy beggars!
- tim333 11mo ago
  The biggest funder of Brexit of course had a Russian wife, company called Ural Holdings, several meetings with Russian diplomats and weird company finances where he suddenly went from almost broke to millions through opaque offshore financing.
frankest 11mo ago
Brexit was the proof that Putin can influence first world countries via social media. That effort is now franchised to in every country. Plant panic and fear, sow division and erode the EU in a first step to dismantle it. Step two was funding greens to reduce Nuclear and increase dependence on his energy products so he can fund his military and oligarchs. By spreading extreme left policies that seem unreasonable to normal people he opens the door to install his own populists at the helm of any country over time. Step three is war to leave his permanent mark by re-expanding Russia and avoiding jail. God knows what else motivates him to do damage. His apparatus works too well because social media is perfect for spreading fear. Humans evolved socially to protect themselves and the #1 thing they want to spread is things that others should be watching out for. Now the lions at the river are largely manufactured to keep the flock contained and obedient.
- ceejayoz 11mo ago
  I love how your first paragraph is about Putin sowing division as a strategy, and then the second paragraph is… sowing division. [chef's kiss emoji]
  - frankest 11mo ago
    Describing how he is doing is not the same as doing it. Being able to describe it comes from reading his propaganda spread in a number of small EU members who their native languages - different languages same song all over social media. Two of the countries that are neighbours had their own “strong man” populists both advertising to their constituents they will take a chunk of the other country’s territory. Posts had the same maps and all. Just swapping countries. His machine is literally copying itself and betting on people who don’t talk to neighbours or in another language.
Esophagus4 11mo ago
One of the proposed benefits was cutting bureaucracy and regulation (retained EU laws) that made the EU one of the worst investment and business growth environments in the world, which was a drag on UK/EU economies. But it seems like the UK lost their political will to drop the hammer on regulation after Brexit, and they actually kept most of those legacy EU laws and only nixed a few. UK experts: why was that? What made them lose their will? It seemed to me once you were in for a penny, you were in for a pound and you had to go all the way to realize the benefits. Now you just have a situation with even more regulatory complexity due to differences between the UK/EU, but the UK got none of the benefits. They’ve fallen between two stools.
- pjc50 11mo ago
  The simple explanation is there was no plan. There was no list of named regulations, just a handwave against the concept of regulation to begin with. Then comes the reality that, for physical products, deregulation in the UK market limits you to the UK market - for a global exporter, you have to comply with CE rules anyway for your EU customers, and you aren't going to make a separate cheap/worse product for UK customers. Not to mention the NI question. Physical reality bites as well: you can deregulate fish https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-fishing-uk-fisheries-act-b2866310.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-fishin... , but that doesn't solve the underlying environmental issues and at best allows fishermen to collapse stocks sooner.
- hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago
  They didn’t lose the “will” to get rid of EU regulations. It was never practical in the first place. The idea that the UK was gonna get rid of EU regulations was based on a fundamental lie, that outside of some very specific minor stuff they were onerous, and was based on a lie of omission, about what would happen if they did. If they did get rid of the regulations they wouldn’t be able to trade with their largest trading partner anymore, whereas the trading partner would have over a 100 alternative countries they could replace the UK with. Getting rid of well defined EU regulations would then additionally require passing tons of regulations through a complicated political process. It would require retraining existing bureaucrats and hiring new bureaucrats. It would require rewriting tons of software. It would require exposing themselves to new loopholes because so many regulations and laws they weren’t getting rid of interacted and depended on EU regulations in ways that would not be clear before getting rid of them. Negotiations between the EU and the UK paralyzed the UK political sector for half a decade. Getting rid of decades of EU regulations (which the UK was the biggest driver of along with France and Germany, and held a veto power on every single one), would tie up the Uk Leadership in at least a decade of political bickering and inaction.
martin_a 11mo ago
Maybe it's because I'm not a native speaker but that headline is terrible to read and process. Is it "good" English to write it that way? It's possibly the shortest way, yes, but that's everything I'd give to it. :-D
- haspok 11mo ago
  It's not "good" English, but certainly the usual "newspaper headlines" style. You have to get used to it.
  - pickledish 11mo ago
    Hah yeah, I'd never really thought about it, but newspaper headlines must be a late-game boss for non-native speakers, they are super convoluted
- xethos 11mo ago
  Sure, it's not incredible, and it's biased to a headline style formatting, but I think the biggest factor is the HN submission character limit
  - martin_a 11mo ago
    That's what I thought at first, too, but that is the actual original and full headline. So either Bloomberg has HN in mind or that's just their style... :-D
Pet_Ant 11mo ago
I'd have more respect for Brexiteers if they just said they wanted autonomy regardless of the economic implications. It's at least a coherent position. Reminds me of my grandma trying to justify having a coke with every meal "to aid digestion". Just have your coke, it's fine, but own it.
- orwin 11mo ago
  And some do have that position. I think I 100% agree with you, people should own their opinions and ideas. Usually when they don't, it's because it's ideas they didn't built but still hold tight, for the only reason that someone they like said it on TV/YouTube.
- qcnguy 11mo ago
  They did say that!
  - Pet_Ant 11mo ago
    Some did, some didn't. I have seen interviews with many Brexit voters who said they would not have voted if they had known it would effect them economically in this or that way. So that's not owning it.
    - qcnguy 11mo ago
      The people showing you those interviews have a massive agenda though. Was it BBC? C4? They search for such people until they find them. Some of them might even be fake, the BBC admitted recently to showing fake footage of a Trump speech and if they're willing to do that they're definitely willing to fake other stuff. Look at gdp numbers or other economic stats. British voters aren't worse off because of brexit. They're told they are and probably some of them believe it, but it's not true, you can see that in the data. Anyway during the campaign Remain politicians said there would be economic impact. Leave said it won't be as bad as is claimed (they were right), but even if there is an impact it's worth it to regain control over other things. That was their argument. In a vote with 30 million+ voters you can find people who will say anything, but there was no way anyone could miss that message.
insane_dreamer 11mo ago
Has there ever been a bigger own-goal than Brexit? (You could argue the US electing Trump, but at least that's somewhat reversible. Though now that they've done it twice, maybe it is the bigger self-harm.)

100 points by donohoe 11mo ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933317 Brexit reduced UK GDP by 6-8%, investments by 12-18% [pdf] (nber.org) 6 days ago | 157 comments

thih9 11mo ago

https://archive.is/71gGy https://archive.is/71gGy

anovikov 11mo ago
archive.is gives be a verification loop for about a week running, from any browser. is it working for any of you guys?
- neom 11mo ago
  works fine here
- arprocter 11mo ago
  If you edit the address they have other TLDs that might work: archive.today archive.fo archive.li archive.md archive.ph archive.vn

JKCalhoun 11mo ago

Not British but asking, is there anyone in the U.K. defending Brexit at this point? I mean it sounds like we're just debating how bad it was, not whether it was bad.

spacebanana7 11mo ago
The only upside is that we can buy BYD cars with fewer tariffs.
Doches 11mo ago
Reform UK is still technically defending Brexit; they've just switched to the no-true-Scotsman argument that real Brexit was never delivered and that they're the ones that can make good on the promises from the referendum. Which is horseshit, obviously.
7952 11mo ago
People will defend the idea of Brexit but condemn the implementation. And people avoid debating it directly anyway.
- Cthulhu_ 11mo ago
  They would've been better off if they could have set up an agreement with the EU, but they didn't get one that satisfied all parties - plus they had a weak negotiating position.
  - Normal_gaussian 11mo ago
    It was particularly weakened by obvious issues with the UK's political leadership - the EU knew that the UK didn't know what it really wanted and didn't have negotiators with the mandate to get it.
nailer 11mo ago
[flagged]
- dekken_ 11mo ago
  > it allowed the UK to control its own migration policy. UK is still in the ECHR, so, not really, not yet
  - dlahoda 11mo ago
    old contract, uk known to commit to its past commitments.
  - nailer 11mo ago
    That’s true. Labour opposes leaving. But their leader has near record low approval rating so that may not mean anything.
- Nextgrid 11mo ago
  > allowed the UK to control its own migration policy Has that helped? Seems like they traded-off Eastern European migrants (who all fled during the pandemic because life in their own country is now much better than in the UK) for Middle Eastern migrants who have nothing to lose and for whom this disaster of a country is still an upgrade over what they had before.
  - nailer 11mo ago
    Leaving the EU is required but not sufficient to fix UK migration.
- troupo 11mo ago
  > and it allowed the UK to control its own migration policy. As in: Brits found out that they need to queue like the rest of the world to get into the EU and migration from the EU decreased. However, net migration to the UK has increased since Brexit.
- gpderetta 11mo ago
richrichardsson 11mo ago
What a lot of the pro-Brexit crowd finally admitted is that Brexit was always going to be a bitter pill to swallow and they knew it. Conveniently none of them wanted to say that in the lead up to the vote. 5 years ago when they began admitting this, they claimed it was going to be a 10 year process before the "benefits" of Brexit can be felt. Here we are. I guess Brexit benefits will be like Fusion Energy or Full-Self-Driving; always a few years into the future.
- dlahoda 11mo ago
  let meet here and discuss status of eu newfascism in 5 years. uk will not be part of it.
  - gpderetta 11mo ago
    indeed, with Mr Brexit on track to become next PM, UK will have its own brand of it.
  - pjc50 11mo ago
    No, the UK will have its own indigenous fascism with a little Union Jack printed on it.
  - retsibsi 11mo ago
    > eu newfascism What do you mean by this, concretely? Or in other words, if we check back in 5 years, what would cause you to say 'yeah I was wrong, eu newfascism {doesn't exist || hasn't progressed as badly as I expected}'? edit: to the downvoters, what do you object to here?? I'm trying to pin down the meaning of the parent comment, because without some kind of definition, a phrase like 'eu newfascism' is all heat and no light. My 'in other words...' framing was not based on the assumption that the parent commenter will be proven wrong; I'm just asking 'what would it take to falsify this?'
  - blipvert 11mo ago
    Ahem, in 5 years Nigel Farage will have persuaded the idiots to willingly up their human rights, as enshrined in the ECHR. Churchill’s great achievement to prevent the horrors of the Nazi regime happening again. Let’s see how that work out.
reedf1 11mo ago
It is completely verboten for the political class to mention Brexit or its reversal.
anovikov 11mo ago
It seems to have become a taboo topic. There are too many people who voted for it and now realise it has been a mistake and want to forget about it, anyone who reminds them, will be seen negatively. It also can't be reversed anyway so there's no upside in this discussion - reversing means becoming "just one" of the EU states because the Union has been explicit that they won't allow any perks, not even keeping the pound - which is just too much for public to stomach.
basisword 11mo ago
The people who voted for Brexit have moved on to the next stupid bogeyman. In a few years we'll see the fruits of that with Reform in power demolishing what's left of the Uk economy. And still, the masses won't learn.
- FridayoLeary 11mo ago
  What are we supposed to learn? That the Tories are rubbish and Labour are even worse?
  - pjc50 11mo ago
    The real driver of all of this is the press. There's a lot of immigrant-blaming propaganda that diverts attention from real issues.
    - benmmurphy 11mo ago
      if the government wasn't incompetent in how they are handling certain immigration issues the anti-immigration parties would not have any momentum. for some bizarre reason the government is pursuing a course of action that is poisoning the well when it comes to immigration in the UK. i think immigration can bring a lot of benefits to the UK but by bringing in poor performing migrants into the UK it can end up turning the public against all immigration.
      - basisword 11mo ago
        The anti-immigration parties have made immigration the cause of all our problems when it's the cause of practically none of them. Now the government are wasting time appeasing idiots who believe everything they read on X instead of actually focussing the real problems in the country. Anyone that believes Nigel Farage can come up with a functional plan to solve a single fucking problem is in for a surprise if he's ever in power. Unfortunately it shouldn't be a surprise because the last time they backed him it was a disaster too.
jaccola 11mo ago
Yes. Many people still support it. Even if Brexit is objectively bad this is self-evidently obvious, people are very bad at changing their minds and lots of people voted for it. Maybe over half would now vote to remain, but most pundits thought this would be the case before 2015, so who can say for certain (e.g. Nigel Farage is more popular than ever and he is Mr Brexit). It is way too early to judge the success or failure of leaving the EU, and part of it will be down to chance. There are also intangible reasons (e.g. feeling of national identity, distaste for bureaucracy) people voted leave and, while I don't think they make up for the loss, I don't think they should be poo-pooed. I personally would have liked to remain in the EU but I don't think the EU is obviously good, or leaving the EU is obviously a terrible idea.
- nprateem 11mo ago
  Unless you obviously want to benefit by eg retiring/ moving there.
StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
Purely from a sovereignty points of view, it makes a lot of sense if you think your country being independent is important. From an economic point of view, it will probably never make sense because the UK was shielded from most of the EU most stupid decisions through carve out. They were out the disastrous currency union. They were not fully in Schengen. They had a lot of leeway with regulations. Coming back would probably be a mistake however. They would most likely be forced to join the eurozone.
- jjbinx007 11mo ago
  The "sovereignty" argument is a bit misleading though. It's basically regulatory alignment.
  - StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
    You can write it without the quotes you know, it's an actual word. I think it's a real argument personnally and the heart of the issue. That was the main question of the Brexit referundum: do you want to be a part of this pan-European union of people and surrender some of your country power to this union? You can argue that the subsequent trade agreement and the alignment that followed have reintroduced some of the same constraints, which is true, but practically and conceptually speaking it is a very different kind of situation.
    - jjbinx007 11mo ago
      Regulatory alignment is very different to "surrendering some of your country's power". You've proved my point.
FridayoLeary 11mo ago
The EU is undemocratic, horribly mismanaged and reduces sovreignty. The feeling is we were putting in more then we were getting out. Now i can't accuse the Brexit negotiators of acting with competence. Neither can i claim that it has brought any short to medium term benefits. But the situation wasn't great either way. The referendum was a choice between a bad option (remaining) and an even worse option.
- joshuaissac 11mo ago
  > The EU is undemocratic EU Members of Parliament for the UK were elected via proportional representation, whereas Westminster MPs are elected via the comparatively undemocratic first-past-the-post system, where a party with 14% of the national vote gets just 1% of the seats in Parliament (Reform UK, GE 2024), and one with 34% of the vote gets 63% of the seats (Labour, GE2024). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c886pl6ldy9o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c886pl6ldy9o
  - StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
    While I broadly agree on this specific point, there is a lot to be said about the overall democratic legitimacy of the EU. The constitution was rejected by referundum by at least two members states before being plainly reintroduced as a treaty and summarily imposed. Parliament has no power of initiative. Commissionners appointments are frankly opaque when it comes to how portfolios are handed out. Then, you have the way the eurozone is structure. It's literally a prison. The treaties don't provide an orderly way out of and TARGET 2 ensures that leaving means complete economic chaos so countries are basically stuck. This situation has been used in the past to justify bludgeoning a population into obedience and impose extrem austerity to protect rich members unwise creditors. Brexit was only possible because of the pound sterling and that's not a possibility the union extends to new comers.
- surgical_fire 11mo ago
  > The EU is undemocratic, Elaborate how exactly it is undemocratic. I always ask imbeciles that repeat this bullshit, and they can never articulate this point. They either never reply or change the subject. Typically they gesture at the EU commission being unelected, but they ignore that the commissioners are nominated by each member state (and all member states are supposedly democracies. And I say supposedly because Hungary exists). The nominees then have to be approved by the EU parliament (which is elected). Saying that EU is undemocratic is like saying that a country with a prime minister is undemocratic because he was not directly voted for. Which is not an argument that can be taken seriously. And I say this as someone that dislikes that EU commission is appointed by the member states government. The problem with this is that it mixes internal politics with EU politics - for example, in national elections I may vote for parties based on national issues, but I would vote for a different party in an explicit EU election.
krona 11mo ago
Nobody I know of who voted for Brexit did it because they thought it would make the country (or themselves) any richer or poorer.
- skeletal88 11mo ago
  Why did they vote for it?
  - tonyedgecombe 11mo ago
    Xenophobia.
  - nprateem 11mo ago
    For some it was a protest vote. And some people are idiots.
  - graemep 11mo ago
    Its mostly a matter of identity. Do you feel European or British? Its much like any secessionist movement. This partly explains the high ethnic minority vote for Brexit, because its hard to feel European if you are not of European origin. It is also a matter of class identity. Being a remainer is a lot posher than being a leaver.
    - surgical_fire 11mo ago
      This is so weird. I live in EU, but I am not originally from Europe. I have a EU citizenship at this point though. That said, I am staunchly pro EU, and would always vote for further integration. In truth, I even think that EU federalization would be a good idea. I have no idea why immigrants of all people would have a nationalistic stance on this.
      - graemep 11mo ago
        > That said, I am staunchly pro EU, and would always vote for further integration. In truth, I even think that EU federalization would be a good idea. It is necessary. Having a common currency without a common budget has been a disaster. > I have no idea why immigrants of all people would have a nationalistic stance on this. How is it a nationalistic stance? You are preferring one identity over another - either way is just as nationalistic. Immigrants from outside the EU do not like immigrants from the EU being given preference from their countries of origin, often places with strong historical links to Britain, where English is widely spoken, etc.
Peanuts99 11mo ago
Not really, but I'll take every opportunity I can to complain about it's impacts.
blipvert 11mo ago
“There was a better Brexit, but it goes to a different school” is the mentality. Sophistry incarnate, that bunch.
Delphiza 11mo ago
I think that a lot of people will still support Brexit. Leaving the EU allows a (future) government to do a lot of stupid things. Throwing out good fiscal policy, eroding human rights, aggressively stopping boats or changing migration rules, reversing climate change regulation. A lot of people believe, or will be led to believe (because previous governments were hamstrung by the EU), that those stupid ideas are actually quite good ideas. Brexit was necessary for those ideas to be implemented. An individual's view on whether those ideas are good or not will correlate with their continued support of Brexit.
greener_grass 11mo ago
There are. The rhetorical strategy is to argue that Brexit was a good idea, but it has not been implemented properly. Look for the phrases "Brexit means Brexit" and "proper Brexit".
- JKCalhoun 11mo ago
  Sounds similar to the things I hear about Communism. It's purportedly the best system… just that no one yet has done it right.
graemep 11mo ago
I do defend it, no point here because I always just get downvoted and people cannot grasp the points made because they do not want to. Compare how the UK has done since 2016 compared to either the government forecasts of what would happen in the event of a Brexit vote, or to the other big western European economies and you can see the problems. The fact that one estimate is double another gives you a clue to how uncertain these estimates are.
michaelbuckbee 11mo ago
The poll mentioned in the article has 56% of respondents saying that Brexit was a bad idea, so roughly half seem ok with it.
ed_voc 11mo ago
I didn’t vote in the referendum and I’m fairly apathetic about Brexit. I wouldn’t dispute that there are downsides, but I do see the positive as no longer being part of an institution many British people consider deeply problematic. -Commission’s monopoly on legislative initiative -Technocratic “fast-tracking” of democracy via trilogues. -cult-like mentality around ever-closer union making devolution unthinkable within the commission. -Commission’s direct funding of media and its proposed expansion of the Media+ budget give it the ability to spend money directly promoting the narratives and priorities it wants to see amplified. -Legislative attrition; passing legislation not through genuine consensus, but through persistence — re-proposing it until the Commission secures its preferred outcome. As we’re currently seeing with the chat control proposal The way the EU has behaved in defense negotiations has further solidified my thoughts on this. Tying fishing rights to defense cooperation[0] then after the UK made concessions demanding billions with no say on how the money will be spent. [0] https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-eu-defense-pact-really-does-depend-on-fish-european-minister-warns/ https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-eu-defense-pact-really-do...

wateralien 11mo ago

Rejoin.

surgical_fire 11mo ago
The thing about rejoining is that the UK would likely not get the same preferential treatment, exemptions and so forth it used to enjoy before Brexit.
- jjbinx007 11mo ago
  True, but it's still better than what we have now.
  - surgical_fire 11mo ago
    I don't live in the UK, but my impression from the outside is that rejoining is a political minefield within the UK? Like, you guys have the Farage party leading in polls right now. I don't think any move in the direction of rejoining is realistic with the possibility of his party ruling the UK in a few years. The real benefit from Brexit was felt outside of the UK. Although it was a shame to lose such an important country, the results were so disastrous for the UK that any *exit became extremely unpopular in other EU countries. Even far right parties in other EU countries had to completely scrape or severely tone down any rhetoric to leave the EU. Nowadays their goals are more to weaken the EU from within (which is still bad, but better than having those absolute retards campaigning to leave).
    - monerozcash 11mo ago
      > but my impression from the outside is that rejoining is a political minefield within the UK? Probably less of a minefield than it is perceived as, a huge chunk of the "leave"-voters are dead now.

neom 11mo ago

"So again, these are ludicrous scare – these are scare stories that are being put up. Even if sterling, even if sterling were to fall a few percentage points after Brexit, so what?" - Nigel Farage 2016. It's down what? 15/20% from pre-brexit? I really wonder how people like Nigel Farage sleep at night. Just fine I suppose, but I really do wonder how. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-nigel-farage-brexit-economy-pound-sliding-vote-leave-a70782 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum...

Doches 11mo ago
Presumably most of Farage's personal income at this point is ultimately denominated in USD, so he's probably benefiting just fine from sterling's fall...
croes 11mo ago
They blame immigrants
- pjc50 11mo ago
  As you can see from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45996860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45996860 , blaming immigrants is a magic ticket to being able to do whatever you want.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
Lapel2742 11mo ago
> I really wonder how people like Nigel Farage sleep at night. These people have no morals or ethics. They are psychopaths that only care for themselves. Even if it comes at devastating costs for others. Brexit was a complete success, for Nigel Farage. The last thing I heard is that his party leads the polls in the UK. In my country the spokesperson of the far-right party (AfD) was caught saying: "The worse things get for Germany, the better it is for the AfD". That's their mindset.
- 11mo ago

petercooper 11mo ago

Yes, but look at all the upsides.

echelon_musk 11mo ago
Rose tinted glasses required.
- Cthulhu_ 11mo ago
  But then you can't see the blue of those sweet blue passports as well!
  - echelon_musk 11mo ago
    At least my pint glass still has a crown on it.

shrubble 11mo ago

What is the impact of the “Boriswave” immigration policy on the economy, I wonder?

echelon_musk 11mo ago
One thing that frustrated me around this time was that the UK's "stop the boats" campaign (although launched under Sunak) was just a lazy clone of an anti-immigration slogan first launched in Five Eyes partner Australia back in ~2013. At the time I remember seeing a meme of Captain Cook's ship off the coast of Australia with 'Stop the Boats' stamped beneath it to highlight the hypocrisy.
- nailer 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - IAmBroom 11mo ago
    Anything but fair. Eggregiously racist, more like.
    - nailer 11mo ago
      There’s a reply to you in the comment above.
  - hackable_sand 11mo ago
    You are going to need to edit your comment again.
Havoc 11mo ago
Doubt it has a big impact. Immigrants from richer western nations are net contributors to budget while those from poor countries are on average a drain. Uk locals land somewhere in between. Brexit lead to more immigrants from poor countries but I doubt it moves the needle overall

mananaysiempre 11mo ago

Original paper: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34459 https://www.nber.org/papers/w34459 (semi-paywalled, download counts are per IP address).

cuuupid 11mo ago

Not to just say “skill issue” but… isn’t this just a skill issue? The main negative impact seems to be trade but the UK already has free trade agreements post-Brexit with the EU. Most of the remaining differences in hurdles are paperwork, which seems like an opportunity for automation that should be almost trivial with AI. The US has successfully automated most compliance based hurdles in the last couple years from finance to law to contracting. Looking at the positive impacts and lack of growth from those… also skill issue? Not having to follow regulations from the EU is also a huge boon yet the UK seems to have taken no advantage of this. Which to me is especially concerning because for years we have been hearing that Europe is lagging behind in development because of over-regulation in fields like AI, yet when freed of those shackles the UK seems to be lagging just the same. The other positive impact heavily touted was reduced net immigration. This >could< have had a short term positive impact (heavily debatable long term cutting off access to talent pools) yet they have almost 3x’ed the reduction in immigration from the EU with an increase in immigration from other sources. The effects of this are pretty palpable as the UK now has its own flavor of nationalist movement, has not seen wage increases in advanced sectors due to supply forces in their labor market, and universities are relying on overseas students to increase tuition revenue - training a labor force that will largely churn. The last one I’ll hit is not having to follow EU laws. After Brexit, instead of taking advantage of legislative sovereignty, the UK temporarily codified all EU law to avoid disruption. Parliament has had ~5 years to review the laws but from what I can tell has made almost no progress (~10%) and extended the expiration because… they haven’t had time to read the other laws. So overall while I’m no type of economic analyst it would seem the problems of Brexit are not actually Brexit, but almost all competency issues. If there’s British tech talent in this thread there’s probably a billion pound opportunity in just easily automating trade paperwork or helping UKG review the remaining EU laws.

pjc50 11mo ago
Regulatory divergence is a cost all of its own. The main impact of Brexit is that manufacturers have to check three sets of rules rather than two and print "UKCA" next to "CE" on goods. As well as all the customs checks which appear because of divergence, including those within the UK because of the NI farming question. The idea of growth through liberalization should have been subject to the question "which rules, exactly" before getting to the point of the referendum.

cjs_ac 11mo ago

Brexit was an economic policy decided on emotional terms: most Britons voted on the basis of I like Europe or I don't like foreigners, and economic forecasts about potential effects were just throwaway talking points to bolster those preconceived opinions. Unlike the US, we have no common vision of a destiny to manifest; unlike the Russians, we have no expansionist goals; unlike the French, our political system is an outcome of a thousand years of compromise, not blazes of revolutionary zeal. We are just an archipelago of people quietly bumbling our way from cradle to grave, buffeted by the winds of change, and taking the advantages they afford us while we can. Brexit was a mistake, but there is no way back to the privileged position we once held in the EU, and so anyone who still wants to talk about it is just a pointless shit-stirrer.

graemep 11mo ago
I think you are right about people's motives, but there is more to it than economic policy. There are a lot of implications to "ever closer union".
rplnt 11mo ago
> anyone who still wants to talk about it is just a pointless shit-stirrer. Talk about Brexit you mean? I think it's important to point out if it was a bad decision caused by deception, even more so if that was driven by illegal foreign influence. One can learn and perhaps something similar won't happen again, be it in UK or elsewhere. Brexit bombing already had a positive effect on other countries where this topic went from prime serious discussion to something only Russian parrots keep bringing up.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
sys_64738 11mo ago
You shouldn't be making decisions such as Brexit on economic terms. It doesn't matter if it's a mistake just as it doesn't matter about thinking the country can go back. Brexit is a 100% permanent outcome from the referendum vote. Those changing their minds now as they thought it might not happen, or doing it for fun, are directly responsible for the outcome. BoJo delivered what the people demanded and now Britain's place as an island off the NW coast of the EU is cemented - warts and all.

blipvert 11mo ago

For the benefit of those outside of the UK, Nigel (Mr. Brexit) Farage’s right hand man in Wales, Nathan Gill was just jailed for taking bribes from Kremlin stooges to parrot their propaganda in the EU parliament. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/21/nathan-gill-former-reform-uk-wales-leader-jailed-bribes-pro-russia-statements-mep https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/21/nathan-gill...

pjc50 11mo ago
Dodgy money is a theme. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/did-dups-controversial-brexit-donors-break-law-by-refusing-/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/d... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48611704 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48611704
sys_64738 11mo ago
And Nige has an EU passport through his German wife.
- blipvert 11mo ago
  I bet that they talk foreign on trains, too. The filthy beggars!
tim333 11mo ago
The biggest funder of Brexit of course had a Russian wife, company called Ural Holdings, several meetings with Russian diplomats and weird company finances where he suddenly went from almost broke to millions through opaque offshore financing.

frankest 11mo ago

Brexit was the proof that Putin can influence first world countries via social media. That effort is now franchised to in every country. Plant panic and fear, sow division and erode the EU in a first step to dismantle it. Step two was funding greens to reduce Nuclear and increase dependence on his energy products so he can fund his military and oligarchs. By spreading extreme left policies that seem unreasonable to normal people he opens the door to install his own populists at the helm of any country over time. Step three is war to leave his permanent mark by re-expanding Russia and avoiding jail. God knows what else motivates him to do damage. His apparatus works too well because social media is perfect for spreading fear. Humans evolved socially to protect themselves and the #1 thing they want to spread is things that others should be watching out for. Now the lions at the river are largely manufactured to keep the flock contained and obedient.

ceejayoz 11mo ago
I love how your first paragraph is about Putin sowing division as a strategy, and then the second paragraph is… sowing division. [chef's kiss emoji]
- frankest 11mo ago
  Describing how he is doing is not the same as doing it. Being able to describe it comes from reading his propaganda spread in a number of small EU members who their native languages - different languages same song all over social media. Two of the countries that are neighbours had their own “strong man” populists both advertising to their constituents they will take a chunk of the other country’s territory. Posts had the same maps and all. Just swapping countries. His machine is literally copying itself and betting on people who don’t talk to neighbours or in another language.

Esophagus4 11mo ago

One of the proposed benefits was cutting bureaucracy and regulation (retained EU laws) that made the EU one of the worst investment and business growth environments in the world, which was a drag on UK/EU economies. But it seems like the UK lost their political will to drop the hammer on regulation after Brexit, and they actually kept most of those legacy EU laws and only nixed a few. UK experts: why was that? What made them lose their will? It seemed to me once you were in for a penny, you were in for a pound and you had to go all the way to realize the benefits. Now you just have a situation with even more regulatory complexity due to differences between the UK/EU, but the UK got none of the benefits. They’ve fallen between two stools.

pjc50 11mo ago
The simple explanation is there was no plan. There was no list of named regulations, just a handwave against the concept of regulation to begin with. Then comes the reality that, for physical products, deregulation in the UK market limits you to the UK market - for a global exporter, you have to comply with CE rules anyway for your EU customers, and you aren't going to make a separate cheap/worse product for UK customers. Not to mention the NI question. Physical reality bites as well: you can deregulate fish https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-fishing-uk-fisheries-act-b2866310.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-fishin... , but that doesn't solve the underlying environmental issues and at best allows fishermen to collapse stocks sooner.
hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago
They didn’t lose the “will” to get rid of EU regulations. It was never practical in the first place. The idea that the UK was gonna get rid of EU regulations was based on a fundamental lie, that outside of some very specific minor stuff they were onerous, and was based on a lie of omission, about what would happen if they did. If they did get rid of the regulations they wouldn’t be able to trade with their largest trading partner anymore, whereas the trading partner would have over a 100 alternative countries they could replace the UK with. Getting rid of well defined EU regulations would then additionally require passing tons of regulations through a complicated political process. It would require retraining existing bureaucrats and hiring new bureaucrats. It would require rewriting tons of software. It would require exposing themselves to new loopholes because so many regulations and laws they weren’t getting rid of interacted and depended on EU regulations in ways that would not be clear before getting rid of them. Negotiations between the EU and the UK paralyzed the UK political sector for half a decade. Getting rid of decades of EU regulations (which the UK was the biggest driver of along with France and Germany, and held a veto power on every single one), would tie up the Uk Leadership in at least a decade of political bickering and inaction.

martin_a 11mo ago

Maybe it's because I'm not a native speaker but that headline is terrible to read and process. Is it "good" English to write it that way? It's possibly the shortest way, yes, but that's everything I'd give to it. :-D

haspok 11mo ago
It's not "good" English, but certainly the usual "newspaper headlines" style. You have to get used to it.
- pickledish 11mo ago
  Hah yeah, I'd never really thought about it, but newspaper headlines must be a late-game boss for non-native speakers, they are super convoluted
xethos 11mo ago
Sure, it's not incredible, and it's biased to a headline style formatting, but I think the biggest factor is the HN submission character limit
- martin_a 11mo ago
  That's what I thought at first, too, but that is the actual original and full headline. So either Bloomberg has HN in mind or that's just their style... :-D

Pet_Ant 11mo ago

I'd have more respect for Brexiteers if they just said they wanted autonomy regardless of the economic implications. It's at least a coherent position. Reminds me of my grandma trying to justify having a coke with every meal "to aid digestion". Just have your coke, it's fine, but own it.

orwin 11mo ago
And some do have that position. I think I 100% agree with you, people should own their opinions and ideas. Usually when they don't, it's because it's ideas they didn't built but still hold tight, for the only reason that someone they like said it on TV/YouTube.
qcnguy 11mo ago
They did say that!
- Pet_Ant 11mo ago
  Some did, some didn't. I have seen interviews with many Brexit voters who said they would not have voted if they had known it would effect them economically in this or that way. So that's not owning it.
  - qcnguy 11mo ago
    The people showing you those interviews have a massive agenda though. Was it BBC? C4? They search for such people until they find them. Some of them might even be fake, the BBC admitted recently to showing fake footage of a Trump speech and if they're willing to do that they're definitely willing to fake other stuff. Look at gdp numbers or other economic stats. British voters aren't worse off because of brexit. They're told they are and probably some of them believe it, but it's not true, you can see that in the data. Anyway during the campaign Remain politicians said there would be economic impact. Leave said it won't be as bad as is claimed (they were right), but even if there is an impact it's worth it to regain control over other things. That was their argument. In a vote with 30 million+ voters you can find people who will say anything, but there was no way anyone could miss that message.

insane_dreamer 11mo ago

Has there ever been a bigger own-goal than Brexit? (You could argue the US electing Trump, but at least that's somewhat reversible. Though now that they've done it twice, maybe it is the bigger self-harm.)