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New Referendum Would Flip Brexit Result 10 Years On, Poll Finds
- MilnerRoute 4mo agoTufts University asked an academic what the financial results were for the UK: "The British GDP has been reduced by 6–8%, business investment has been reduced by 12%, and trade volume has been reduced by 15%, compared to what it could have been if the U.K. had remained in the EU." https://now.tufts.edu/2026/06/08/10-years-after-brexit-vote-are-uk-residents-seeing-benefit https://now.tufts.edu/2026/06/08/10-years-after-brexit-vote-...
- Insanity 4mo agoWhich is pretty much aligned with what more level-headed people predicted would happen, if my memory is correct. There was a strong push for UK to leave EU, but it was more based on emotion than rational. Of course the 'right' used the narrative of prosperity to get votes, but it never really made sense economically to leave the strong economic power of the EU and try to be independent again. The UK is not the empire it was once, they need ties with mainland Europe, their closest trading partners, to be economically viable. So this doesn't entirely come as a surprise to me.
- dijksterhuis 4mo agoYour username is weirdly on point for discussion of the topic at hand i guess xD
- bpye 4mo ago> Which is pretty much aligned with what more level-headed people predicted would happen, if my memory is correct. Of course this was painted as "project fear", and Michael Gove famously said that people had had enough of experts.
- mrguyorama 4mo ago>Of course the 'right' used the narrative of prosperity to get votes They used lies. Literal fabrications out of whole cloth. They said that the UK was spending hundreds of millions of pounds on the EU, and if they pulled out they could use that money on like the NHS or something. Lies.
- gadders 4mo agoThe first time in history people have been able to accurately predict a counter-factual. Of course, any economic gains weren't guaranteed and were predicated on competent national government and we saw what happened there. However, net-net, I'd rather have one shite layer of government, rather than two.
- bonzini 4mo ago> However, net-net, I'd rather have one shite layer of government, rather than two. To make a parallel that might work for California or NY. In Europe however there is no single country that is so much better than the others at making money, in the same way as those two. Even countries that didn't enter the EU (Switzerland, Norway) accepted most of the EU regulations because they need some of them. The UK in that respect already had the sweetest deal of all EU members; and, unlike Switzerland or Norway, actually had a say on the regulations that it had to follow. Plus, they had and have a messy situation due to (non-EU-related and therefore unaffected by Brexit) agreements that the border with Ireland cannot be a customs union, so the only thing a competent national government could do was to tell people they had been duped and promised something impossible. The result would have been a Switzerland- or Norway-like non-membership, with small benefits and less power in the EU.
- elzbardico 4mo ago[flagged]
- gambiting 4mo agoThe only stupid thing about sanctions on Russia is that they aren't harsh enough.
- Beijinger 4mo agoI 100% agree. They need to be much harsher and will lead to a regime change soon. But not in Russia, but in Germany (AfD), UK (Farage) and France (LePen), as predicted by Emmanuell Todd. ;-)
- gambiting 4mo ago...how can you wish for such a thing?
- elzbardico 4mo ago[flagged]
- gambiting 4mo agoWell, I hope they pay you well to come online and write this nonsense. If you're writing this out of your own free will without compensation then that's just sad.
- elzbardico 4mo ago[flagged]
- cindyllm 4mo ago[dead]
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- calvinmorrison 4mo ago[flagged]
- gspr 4mo ago[flagged]
- tomhow 4mo agoPlease don't ever comment like this on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. This is only a site where anyone wants to participate because others make the effort to do better than this. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gspr 4mo agoI agree, and I apologize. My emotions overflowed. That being said – and with no reduction in my apology – I'm very glad to see that the comment my anger was directed at (a wild political statement without anything backing it up or anything contributing to further discussion) was also reprimanded. This kind of "contribution" to the discourse is a major threat to free societies, and should be called out (calling the author a moron is, of course, not the best way of doing that).
- tomhow 4mo agoThanks for the contrition. We hadn't reprimanded that user as yet, not because we regard it as a good comment (we certainly don't), but because we hadn't gotten to it. That's almost always the reason why we may reprimand one comment but not another bad one in a subthread. We're often not reading through subthreads in order of the discussion; we have different views of comments we look at to help us find the worst ones. Often, we get to other comments later, or if not, users who comment like that repeatedly will be reprimanded at another time, and eventually banned if they keep it up. > This kind of "contribution" to the discourse is a major threat to free societies I'd appeal to you to be less alarmist about comments posted on a niche tech-focused text-only discussion board. People can have strongly opposing opinions and even unhealthy ways of expressing political positions without necesssarily being "a major threat to free societies".
- onlyrealcuzzo 4mo ago> "The British GDP has been reduced by 6–8%, business investment has been reduced by 12%, and trade volume has been reduced by 15%, compared to what it could have been if the U.K. had remained in the EU." The average person doesn't care about any of that. If ~99% of those gains go to ~0.1% of people, the average person does not care. What they do care about is, did MY expenses go up higher than MY wages. Did MY opportunities get better or worse... In the UK example, the result is potentially even worse - but I would guess the response to COVID & global wars are likely to have a bigger impact on that than Brexit.
- marcusverus 4mo agoAh yes, economists are famously capable of accurately projecting a decade in the future.
- mynameisash 4mo agohttps://archive.ph/giLPA https://archive.ph/giLPA
- noncoml 4mo agoI don’t buy it. They are getting ready make Farage a prime minister, based on the exact same premise: xenophobia.
- Dig1t 4mo ago[flagged]
- dijksterhuis 4mo agoAs someone who is white british -- this isn't happening. Please stop regurgitating right wing US talk show talking points. It's boring.
- Dig1t 4mo agoJust look at the data, you say "it isn't happening" but it's easy to prove. University of Manchester: https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/code/briefings/dynamicsofdiversity/how-has-ethnic-diversity-grown-1991-2001-2011.pdf https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/code/briefings/... 1990: White British 95% 2025: White British 77% 2050 (projected): White British 57% Many parts of London the percentage in schools is already below 20%. Here are projections for the near future: https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/p/what-the-uk-population-will-look https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/p/what-the-uk-population-wil... Here is the data from the UK government itself: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/dbdaa603-71e2-4050-8605-690fd0df4491 https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tab...
- dijksterhuis 4mo agoas per sibling comment, your headline stats are cherry picking two things that are not representative of the whole of the uk. university of manchester is a university, and since the cameron/clegg tuition fee change it was more profitable to attract international students. that’s not representative of the wider population, data is skewed. so you’re cherry picking some stats that are not representative there. london, well it’s lahndahn. it’s in no way representative of the rest of the uk. remember how people complain about london centric decisions made that have no relation to where they live? because lahndahn is not representative of the rest of the country. when i go home to oxfordshire i don’t get confused with where i am because oxfordshire is obviously not the same place as lahdahn. the projections are just projections and judging from the domain name aren’t from anywhere official. so i’ll gloss over them as i cba. the one national statistic you’ve found - the a 4% share change from 69% ish to 64% over five years for school pupils, this is not white british people becoming a minority. it is a very long way to go until we’re under 50% in that one statistic. here a better statistic from the 2021 census, actually tracking national level ethnicity > “White" remained the largest high-level ethnic group in England and Wales; 81.7% (48.7 million) of usual residents identified this way in 2021, a decrease from 86.0% (48.2 million) in 2011. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/ethnicity/bulletins/ethnicgroupenglandandwales/census2021#ethnic-groups-in-england-and-wales https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/cultural... 80% is a long way off from 50%. i know it makes you all scared and insecure inside. but don’t forgot, these other people are just that. other people. the only scary thing about them is whatever is running through your own mind, or whatever bs people are spouting on social media. in reality, they’re not that scary actually. usually they’re really lovely humans. try speaking to some of them some time.
- stronglikedan 4mo ago[flagged]
- bonzini 4mo agoSpeaking of incompetent politicians, let me remind you of the Liz Truss lettuce...
- nephihaha 4mo agoLiz Truss tells an interesting anecdote of how when she became PM, she was given a list of things she was supposed to do. I think this is the reality of today's politics and is not democracy.
- ErroneousBosh 4mo ago[flagged]
- jfengel 4mo agoThere's a play called The Audience, which is a series of meetings between Queen Elizabeth and her prime ministers. It's a fascinating lens through which to view British history. It runs up through Tony Blair. I'd love to see a final update: Truss: Hi, I'm Liz Truss Elizabeth: Urkh! (dies) Curtain (The Audience is the basis of the TV show The Crown. The audience parts of The Crown are the most interesting. As the show goes on, it's less about British life and more about royal scandals, ho hum. Gillian Anderson gives an amazing turn as Thatcher; it's too bad the rest of that season is so tedious.)
- tonyedgecombe 4mo agoIf you want to gauge how well it went take a look at investment in the automotive industry and its production figures. We went from making two million cars a year to just 750 thousand. Investment plummeted. Note that even the sole prominent Brexit economist predicted this.
- zuzululu 4mo agoNone of this should be surprising unless you've been just gobbling up whatever you heard through mainstream media. Britain is at a breaking point. There are existential questions to be asked: Is Britain British without British Bourgeoisie that have lived there for thousands of years with new arrivals that have no commmon culture or connection to the land? Can Japan be called Japan without Japanese that have lived there for thousands of years and their homogeneous identity? Why is it okay for one but not the other? Where does this double standard come from ? The fact is the loudest voice in the room so far has never been representative of the answer to the above questions.
- miltonlost 4mo ago[flagged]
- wetpaws 4mo ago[dead]
- slashdev 4mo agoThat’s a very simplistic take on a complex problem. Unrestricted immigration destroys democratic high trust societies. There is a balance to be found, as in all things. It isn’t simply diversity always good or always bad.
- orwin 4mo agoInequality destroy high trust societies, and low trust cultures implement a surveillance state to replace trust.
- BobaFloutist 4mo ago> Unrestricted immigration destroys democratic high trust societies. In the United States it's pretty clearly the nativists destroying the society, the immigrants are largely baffled about what the hell we're doing to ourselves and why.
- mcphage 4mo ago
- henearkr 4mo agoThat's a dangerous situation for EU: - UK would rejoin EU, - and then, later on, Reform would reach power and undermine EU just like Orban did. So maybe it would be better to refuse UK its reentry into EU...
- Beijinger 4mo agoTrump would be happy if the UK joins the US. With Canada. And Greenland. ;-)
- bojan 4mo agoA successful rejoin referendum would probably help contain Reform. However such a referendum is basically taboo in the British public discourse.
- nephihaha 4mo agoThe taboo is the notion that the European Union needs to be reformed (no pun intended!). I was a Remainer, and do not regret that, but I hoped the EU would clean house. (Yes, the UK should do as well btw. Scotland should be independent. The House of Lords, Whitehall and Royal Family need a major overhaul.)
- AndrewDucker 4mo agoWhat reforms do you want to see from the EU?
- bojan 4mo agoAs someone who's pro-EU, I'd also really like to see major reforms within the organization. While it contributes enormously to the welfare of the continent, the EU is by design dysfunctional and toothless. I'm a pessimist, there is so much money behind the forces that want to see the EU fall apart because small individual countries are easier to buy off, I don't see how we can defend against that. We'll only know what we lost when it's gone, but then it'll be too late.
- mono442 4mo ago[flagged]
- ptaffs 4mo agoAt the time "polls" predicted a Remain win. Between the vote and the eventual Brexit along with protests, there was a government petition for a redo and a Remain optimism that a re-do would flip the result. For this poll to me meaningful, I would expect to see declining support for Reform. But the opposite is happening. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revoke-article-50-petition-brexit-trump-second-referendum-a8835606.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revoke-artic...
- bojan 4mo ago> At the time "polls" predicted a Remain win. This is a common trope but is simply not true. The polls were really tight[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United...
- ceejayoz 4mo agoYour link largely agrees; the "Polls of polls" shows a general consensus on a tight Remain win, and the chart shows the convergence being very late in the game.
- moomin 4mo agoReform don’t need 50%, though. I don’t think even Margaret Thatcher’s landslide got more than 40% of the vote.
- ceejayoz 4mo agoA change of this magnitude probably should've been like an American constitutional amendment; a stricter requirement than 50%+1 vote.
- f33d5173 4mo agoWhat percentage of the vote was required to join the EU? The EU effectively constitutes a relinquishment of sovereignty, but that's not how it was sold to citizens, they were told that they could leave at any time.
- moomin 4mo agoThis is why these kinds of decisions shouldn’t be flipped on a marginal vote. Most countries require a supermajority before doing something like this. Sadly this now cuts the other way and the EU is highly unlikely to enter into anything with us without serious guarantees.
- masfuerte 4mo agoWe would have had a quorum requirement if it was a proper referendum but it wasn't, it was claimed to be purely advisory. Of course, it was never going to work like that if leave won. David Cameron is an arse.
- Beijinger 4mo agoThis post is 2 years old and pretty bleak: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/broken-britain/ https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/broken-bri...
- po1nt 4mo agoDidn't the polls say the same before brexit? I don't get it. They left to stay away from regulations, just to put even harsher ones.
- rich_sasha 4mo agoAlso today: UK cutting infrastructure investments into healthcare and education by £5bn to fund defence [1]. I'm all up for defence spending in Europe, but if you had anything to do with British state education or healthcare, you know what a desperate move this is. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-07/uk-plans-hospital-school-funding-cuts-to-boost-defense-budget https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-07/uk-plans-...
- po1nt 4mo agoYou don't know how bad it can get. See Ukraine.
- socalgal2 4mo agoI'm curious what valid reasons there are against Brexit? AFAICT, most people arguing it is/was bad are ignoring any kind of evidence. The UK is doing fine, especially relative to other EU countries. None of the things the anti-Brexit side claimed would happen have happened.
- tim333 4mo agoIt's been quite meh economically - we'd be wealthier if we'd remained. Also immigration went up which is not what a lot of Brexiters were hoping. I think a lot of the Brexit vote was just people being fed up and voting for something different. In my experience few Brexit voters are happy with what arrived.
- anonymousiam 4mo ago"we'd be wealthier if we'd remained" Briton would be even wealthier still if they had never joined the EU in the first place. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8822/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
- tim333 4mo agoDebatable. Britain used to be a bit of a mess around joining in 1973. Check out British disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_British_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_British_disease Sick man of Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe Things then picked up, especially in finance when in 2014: London overtakes New York to be named world's finance capital https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-overtakes-new-york-to-be-named-worlds-finance-capital-9394994.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-overtakes-new-... then Brexit screwed that up. The charges in your link are nothing compared to that lot really. Headline today: Britain’s debt rising at fastest rate in the world – bar Botswana I mean you can't really say how it would have gone but tearing up the trade deals with your main trading partners is seldom great for business.
- socalgal2 4mo ago
- mbirth 4mo agoMost of the people that want to rejoin the EU never realised that Brexit happened at the same time as COVID and they believe that all the bad things that happened since were due to Brexit and Brexit only. All the while ignoring that most EU countries are not that much better off. Just look at the GDP growth.