UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
view the rest of the comments
Not from the UK but... the damage is already done right?
I mean rejoining was always going to be inevitable, the only question is whether it's now or in 50 years, or incrementally over 50 years.
Point is, it will be on EUs terms.
It was utter stupidity. The only nation in the history of the world to impose economic sanctions on its self. The nation was lied to so a select few very rich people could make their lives easier.
Do you know what the most googled term was after the referendum? "What is the EU?"
A very naïve view on how the world works. There are plenty of countries that have voted for secession, and secession will always have an economic impact.
It can only be considered stupid if there was enough information to understand the effects of the decision prior to taking it. Because of the lies and money spent on campaigns, the relevant information was tainted. Sitting on your high horse and calling people stupid is never going to convince people to change their minds.
The most googled search reference of 2016 was not “What is the EU?”. It did not even strike the top 10.
I agree Brexit was a bad decision, but two wrong don't make a right. Attacking people for being misinformed is not an intelligent choice imo.
C'mon man.
An article from The Times?
A magazine based in the US; with search terms involving the US election, hurricanes, and the Powerball?
These are obviously search terms exclusive to the US.
Here are the 2016 search results directly from The Goog, itself - but from the UK - y'know, where Brexit happened.
While not number 1 under the "What is" section, it does pop as #4, alongside "What is Brexit" at #2.
It was top in a sub category of a specific country. This is not what the poster said. All I am saying is keep the arguments for rejoining genuine. Don't give the conmen ammunition to feed on.
~~I was with you until this comment, that's intellectually dishonest to focus on the specific words instead of the intent~~
Edit: I misread
Read it again
You're right, I misread. Sorry for the previous response.
Sorry, just a bit angry about it. None of the lies have come true and the politicians refuse to talk about it like it hasn't made things worse in the country.
I am with you all the way on that one.
Sorry but I find this naive. The information was there. We have a highly literate population and widespread technology that means the vast majority of the adult population have instant access to unparalleled levels information through a user-friendly device carried in their pockets. It is unacceptable for them to use 'I don't have a PhD in economics' as an excuse for not bothering to inform themselves before voting, in this day and age.
I agree there were lies and disinformation, but for many Brexiters this isn't what decided their vote. Indeed, many of them were crystal clear that they thought Brexit was a desirable outcome regardless of whether it would cause economic damage - 61% of Leave voters saying significant economic damage would be a price worth paying, 39% going further and saying they'd consider it acceptable if Brexit led to them or their family members losing their jobs.
We shouldn't make excuses for these people. Call a fool a fool.
Typical gaslighting narrative. Everything was there right in front of your face.
I have a 70 year old living next door to me who was bragging about having her first email address last month. It is this sort of ignorance that you conmen rely on.
I'm relying on the fact that:
Your point on a 70 year having less access to modern technology does not represent most of the population. It doesn't even represent most 70 year olds - my parents are that age and they've both had email addresses since the 1990s and smart phones for over a decade, and use them very actively.
What does represent the wider population is that a majority of Leavers were pretty clear they wanted Brexit to happen regardless of any economic consequences. They didn't vote based on empirical factors, they voted based on ideology. Brexit wasn't science for them, it was religion.
So you are saying that conning most of the population is perfectly acceptable. While ignoring the fact that the con was in the information given.
Says who? Which moron broke with the traditional lies and told people there would be economic consequences?
People voted for Brexit because the lies were that things would be cheaper, there would be no change in access to Europe, and we would have more money for services. Didn't you have a bus around your village?
I literally linked to an example of polling on this matter. If you Google it you'll find the were several more similar ones - e.g. there was one showing that many Leave voters considered the breakup of the UK a price worth paying too. They didn't give a shit.
You made a quote. Where is it from?
Scroll up buddy. I quoted my previous comment (which you had selectively quoted from) which includes the hyperlink to a news article about one such poll. But as I said, there were several polls along these lines showing analogous results during the Brexit period.
The devil is always in the question when it comes to polls. As you originally stated 61% of Leave voters. The poll covered 2,043 Leave and 2,248 remain voters. Which breaks down to the fact, out of the 4291 polled 1247 were happy to take on economic damage to get a Brexit, 30% of the people who voted were happy to accept economic damage. The poll was in 2017 so before anyone had any real information on what that damage entailed. The public were still being gaslighted at that time that there would be no damage. Any information they did have was tainted. Expecting people to understand the good V's the bad is unrealistic in the extreme.
Now that people have some of that information, remembering there is more hardship to come, you still have the same 30% who wish to stay out of the EU. Given the vote again under the same circumstances only 31% would commit to voting to leave, 55% would vote remain and that leaves 6% up for grabs on either side.
From that it is an easy conclusion that people did not have the relevant information. Now that they have it, the voting would change dramatically. You still have the 30% of voter base who are Eurosceptical. Whereas 55% are not interested in the slightest.
They asked the question separately to Leave and Remain voters on whether they would be willing to cause significant economic damage to the UK economy to get their way. 61% of the Leave voters (vs 34% of the Remain voters) they polled answered yes.
The referendum was in 2016. Most of the Remain campaign's information was about the economic impact. The government send a leaflet to every household. The Bank of England published a report into the economic impact. Business leaders and economists spoke out. The economic damage of Brexit was a topic - the topic - discussed extensively before the referendum.
This really is pathetic in the extreme.
But, I was told people were not stupid and they knew what they were voting for. How dare I assume they didn't understand the implication and how dare I think I know more about it than they did.
I understand your point that attacking people and calling them stupid wont "make them change their mind". But they had the time to research and understand the implications before the referendum. They've had much more time now to go back over it.
Banging your head on the wall pretending it won't hurt, doesn't make you misinformed or need education. It makes you stupid and it needs to be called out. I don't need to convince someone that banging their head on a wall will hurt.
Sadly, I do need them to stop banging their head on the wall. As it's a shared house and we've all got to live here. Holes in the wall ain't helping anyone.
Stupid is as stupid does. You have no evidence that people understood. There is plenty of evidence people are changing their mind now they are seeing the effects.
agree with this but just to add that the assertion that "what is the eu" was the most googled term is wrong, but slightly less wrong if you refer to a uk source, it's still not there but "what is brexit" and "what is article 50" did appear in the top tens by region. source: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/top-google-searches-trends-2016-uk
There was a top trending search within the UK for "Brexit", which was also within a sub category. I am sorry but this is a far cry from what you said. I agree Brexit is bad, but using information that is not correct gets swooped up by the con artists that try and push the Brexit narrative.
I'm from the UK and from the North. Don't try and understand the stupidity of these people from these areas as economically developed as the worst parts of former soviet states now in the EU. These areas received a lot of EU development funding and still voted for Brexit AND the Tories (in 2019) that imposed austerity that made their post 2008 lives worse.
They are thick as mince and deserve the ridicule as much as the lying brexit politicians deserve jail time.
The only hope to not repeating the mistakes is the best quality education for as many people as possible. This hopefully enough of the smart ones from these areas are politically aware and active enough to offset the manipulation of the morons.
South west here, and it was the same here. We got so much EU funding for so many things - for a while we had the fastest broadband in the UK (yes, including London and the south east) because the EU paid for it, not to mention roads, farm subsidies, and a bunch of other "regional development fund" stuff - and now all that money is gone and the UK government haven't replaced it with anything. Brexit support here was like 60%, because too many people believed the lies.
I think ultimately what most people were really voting for in the referendum was an end to austerity and an end to top-down decisions made by faraway people who don't understand the real lives of people in these regions. The mistake they made (because of lying politicians) was that the problem was the EU, rather than our own government.
I think we should have just renegotiated stuff with the EU on the threat of leaving rather than playing our entire hand
I agree. There were definitely a few things with the EU that weren't working well. The one that stirred up a lot of emotion here was the matter of fishing, because there was a lot of very real tension between local fishermen and the fishing boats from France and Spain. But leaving the EU wasn't the right answer to these problems. Having an adult conversation to find a way of improving things was the right way.
I think conservatives voting against their own interests is a very well established trope. Certainly is in Australia.
Plenty of octogenarians who vote conservative while complaining their pension is too low and they can't afford rent.
Diplomacy is all about concessions and what each country wants. The UK can sell security and an expansion to the EU market. The biggest thing the EU sells is standards.
The stuff that is coming into the UK atm is dogshit. This sums up exactly how things are going.
But it like she says in the video. The UK are frogs in the slow boil pot. We are going to have a bad incident before people wake up. The sad part is that having a bad incident like BSE etc has long term effects. The BSE crisis of the 90 in the UK took 15 years to reverse. Unfortunately a bad incident would be a large trigger point for removing the last of the Brexiteers.
The UK will certainly be on less favourable terms than they left if they rejoin. The pound will be a hot issue. This new system that Macron wants to create is an unknown quantity. We have to wait for a change of government before we find out what it entails. The EU have shown that they want to deal more with Starmer than they do with the Tories by mentioning it at a time Starmer was visiting. It also shows that the UK has something that the EU wants, or more specifically France and Germany wants.
Please elaborate, because the last “security” thing I saw out of the UK was their stupid bill attempting to back door encryption as well as having vendors sit on zero days so they (and hackers out there) could exploit them. None of that would be good for the EU, let alone the world.
The whole point of the EU is to stop Europe from continuously going to war with each other.
The UK has a very credible military base. Germany and France have tried in the past to combine the military forces of Europe. This is not to undermine the French who also have a credible force. Germany does not and could not argue it was in the same league. The UK military has been diminished under the Tory government, but the expertise is still around.
Maybe the EU’s terms will be better for UK workers and the climate.
Rejoining isn’t necessarily inevitable. Any damage is already done and any gain from attempting to rejoin the EU within the next decade or so will be undone by the show of political instability.
Now that the UK has left, it’s better to stay out and just make do with what they have. Maybe if the government was less incompetent or more forward thinking then the UK would be able to use the fact that London is the second most important city in the world and do something actually useful or innovative.
It is true that there is no evidence of rejoining just yet. If the Tories remain in power after the next GE then the con will continue. This will mean more divergence from EU standards, with the obvious result of making it harder to rejoin. Starmer has promised closer alignment. Convergence will make the case of rejoining so much clearer and more acceptable. As I have already said, our import processes have gapping holes. If we get an incident because of this, then the case to rejoin will be complete. An attack on a country's health will change people opinions immediate effects.
To me all of this says that we need to educate previous Tory voters exactly what they are voting for, and convince more kids to vote.
Nah. When I say rejoining is inevitable, I mean "in all but name". As in, the coming decades will be spent working towards all the advantages of being in the EU without joining the EU. Reduced tarrifs, immigration treaties, streamlined imports et cetera.
Well that would make Brexit a huge success would it not?
No, Britain could simply have remained and not had to endure the deleterious effects of leaving.
Having left, now they have to work on regaining the advantages they once had.
If Britain can manage to get back every benefit of being in the EU without actually being in the EU, that will be potentially the biggest success story that could possibly come from brexit.
Good lord. Obviously that's not possible.
UK voted to leave the EU when obviously they would be worse off. Therefore, UK governance had to leave the EU, but of course they will spend the foreseeable future working to diminish the problems that leaving created.
For example, as part of the EU you have free trade. Leaving the EU no free trade. Therefore, they'll spend the next n years developing agreements to cut tariffs and reduce red tape.
It’s not possible but your the one who said they would spend the next few years working to get every benefit of the EU like free trade without rejoining, if that was pulled off, then Brexit would definitely be a success.
And they don’t have to go back to the EU although it makes the most sense, they can really go anywhere else in the world and try to get a trade deal, it’s really a matter of pride as to who they go to trade with.
What I actually said...
Yeah, and if they can successfully achieve what you said, that would make Brexit successful, would it not?
... and if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike.
The damage wasn't a one time thing, it's ongoing. The longer we're out the more damage that will be done.