As an outsider with no horse in the race, and pays little attention to domestic affairs of foreign nations - has Brexit actually been that awful for people?
For all of the doomsday talk, hand-wringing, and sky-is-falling bluster, nothing substantial/consequential seems to have materialized.
> For all of the doomsday talk, hand-wringing, and sky-is-falling bluster
You have to be careful about these arguments. A lot of them were post-fact rationalisation by Brexiteers who needed to justify their actions, and they did it by erecting strawmen. Nobody said that the sky would be falling. Nobody sane, anyway. What was said was things like “immigration will happen anyway because the UK has a structural need for manpower”, which is true and immigration is still increasing; “this will create more red tape rather than less”, which it did; “exports will fall and it is our major market”, which they did and it still is; and so on.
If you read actual prospective papers from the time, the warnings were true, give or take the massive spanner in the works that was Covid. The EU did not roll over, and the UK did not get access to the single market without costs. The UK was sidelined and just spent 10 years cap in hand trying to get free trade deals. Fishermen are not better off, far from it. Environment regulations did get to shit. The cost in terms of GDP was massive. Poverty did rise (although it was bound to rise anyway with pre-Brexit policies).
If the whole thing is not a massive self-inflicted shot in the feet, I don’t know what is.
Is it not one of those "rip the band-aid off" things and endure temporary pain for long term gain?
Sometimes continuing the status quo is attractive, but wrong in the long term.
The EU moves appeared to be out of spite at the time. Perhaps things will thaw over time?
The UK has a long history of being fiercely independent, so I can at least understand the desire to separate from the EU (which appears, to a foreigner, to be assembling into a nation of states, similar to the US).
> Is it not one of those "rip the band-aid off" things and endure temporary pain for long term gain?
Not really, because Brexit cannot deliver what its supporters are still saying it will. It won’t have its cake after having eaten it and there are no sunny uplands of milk and honey. It was a scam, internal Tory politics that went out of hand.
> The EU moves appeared to be out of spite at the time.
The thing is, the EU did not move. The vast majority of what happened was utterly predictable. The UK was never going to get access without contributing, it would never have worked with the treaties and there would never have been the necessary support amongst member-states to change them. All of this was clear from day 1. As was the fact that the EFTA members had no interest in welcoming the UK. Never mind the fact that May had no plan whatsoever and Boris was a lying bastard so trust was in short supply anyway.
> Perhaps things will thaw over time?
Of course. The UK physically cannot get away from Europe. And the EU has strong interests in having good relations with the UK over the long term. Things will improve, and however terrible it was during the negotiations, there were other lows before in the History of Europe. It’s still cold comfort for the people living through it.
> The UK has a long history of being fiercely independent
That’s how they like to see it. The UK has more of an history of meddling and playing divide and conquer games with the rest of Europe. It was never outside European politics at any point in time since the Romans. It is not more fiercely independent than France or Poland.
> which appears, to a foreigner, to be assembling into a nation of states, similar to the US
The EU is nothing like the US. It is not a nation and does not have a central government. The whole construction depends on the member-states approving it indefinitely. It is a club of countries, not a federation.
> The EU is nothing like the US. It is not a nation and does not have a central government. The whole construction depends on the member-states approving it indefinitely. It is a club of countries, not a federation.
I addressed most of your comment in my down-thread comment - but I'd like to point out here that this is almost exactly how the US was started via it's Articles of Confederation[1].
Over time, the loosely formed "club" of states were determined to be too weak, which in order to address growing problems (simplifying a bit) led to the birth of a much stronger centralized government. Over time, even a war was fought to compel states to remain in the union (another simplification but you get the gist).
Prior to the Constitution being ratified, each state was it's own nation state, complete with it's own culture, customs, way of life, etc - hence the name "The United States".
>Nobody said that the sky would be falling. Nobody sane, anyway.
At a previous job I worked, there were lunchroom conversations among the younger developers (in their 20s), all of a leftist persuasion. They were convinced that people in the UK would be dying because there was no access to medicine (that came from the mainland), and even in some cases hunger (though they didn't go so far as to claim starvation).
For the rest of you it may be the case that the people saying these same things were online, and therefor suspect (as it should be), but for me these were real-life conversations that I overheard. Perhaps this phenomenon was atypical, and almost everywhere else it was untrue, and of course you shouldn't take my word for it either, but with proper skepticism keep in mind I'm reporting something different here.
> At a previous job I worked, there were lunchroom conversations among the younger developers (in their 20s), all of a leftist persuasion. They were convinced that people in the UK would be dying because there was no access to medicine (that came from the mainland), and even in some cases hunger (though they didn't go so far as to claim starvation).
That’s not really serious. I am not talking as serious the noise from people like Gisela Stuart, either. Though I still have a flyer that explains that 70 millions Syrians will invade the UK because Turkey was a candidate (!)
Listening to what politicians like Cameron (yuck) and Tory, Lib Dems and Labour remainers actually said is a different story. There still are recordings of debates and speeches, it’s not hidden. Most of them warned of severe consequences and little gains, not the end of the world.
If anything, remainers were not very good at playing the emotional card.
> For the rest of you it may be the case that the people saying these same things were online, and therefor suspect (as it should be), but for me these were real-life conversations that I overheard.
I was there, I remember very well. I split my time between London and Newcastle at the time, talk about worlds apart…
Darn near every graph/poll I've seen completely ignores COVID-19 happening, and points to economic turmoil (which every nation on the planet suffered). AKA, the data is political and not objective.
The rest of the world enjoys trade relations with EU member nations, but aren't part of the EU themselves.
So, besides EU citizens (whatever they're actually called) being able to freely come/go from the UK, what else actually happened that was negative?
The immigration issues brought up by Brexit supporters, in my opinion, cannot casually be tossed aside. The UK isn't a huge nation, and having it's culture and national identity changed so rapidly by outsiders is a net negative for any society - something many nations are currently grappling with today (including the US).
You mentioned the EFTA rejecting the UK in another comment - my googling indicates EFTA is made up of 4 relatively small nations. Is this really a significant problem? Won't those nations openly trade with the UK in time, like they do with the rest of the world (hinting at my "spite" comment from earlier).
Reviewing all of your comments in this thread, so far, nothing seems to be an actual problem for the UK.
My opinion here is meaningless since I do not live in the region - but I just want to point out your responses are slightly colored by your political views - as you indicate which politicians you believe are liars but somehow others are fine, etc. Perhaps there's some objective truth to what you are asserting, but I'm not seeing it very clearly.
None of it. And you can't get a remainer to admit it, ever. They'll just deny they ever said anything was going to happen, and call leavers stupid liars again. According to remainers, all of that screaming they were doing is because they thought Brexit would slightly weaken the £.
Purely a protest of the wealthy and the haters of export? It didn't seem like it at the time. I thought they were fighting a Nazi-ridden post-apocalyptic deathscape. The numbers of dead from medication shortages was supposed to be massive. Was that ever a sane or good-faith prediction?
For all of the doomsday talk, hand-wringing, and sky-is-falling bluster, nothing substantial/consequential seems to have materialized.