UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both [email protected] and [email protected] .
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.
[email protected] appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
view the rest of the comments
I'm an American. I do understand the cost of re-entering the EU; given how clearly abysmal the decision was, why is no party talking about a re-join process? Is it because many of Labour's base were Leavers? Is it something that might come up if they have a couple of successful terms? Is it political cyanide?
Why, when Brexit is clearly unpopular, has had directly and observable damage to the British economy, and was a shock to everyone that it passed (not least the protest voters, which we're struggling with over here ourselves) - why is no-one bringing up a Join effort?
ELIaA (explain like I'm an American)
Yes, part of it is because Labour's base has many leave voters. This screwed Labour in 2019 as no-one could square that circle (amongst other problems).
But also: even if there's a very real "brexgret" thing, good luck getting anyone to admit they voted wrong. "Leave" became such a central identity to many people that poking that would have unpredictable emotional reactions.
Given how long a rejoining process might take anyway it's better to leave it for a while, make some smaller and less controversial agreements with the EU.
I understand there's also an ego thing. Britain had a pretty sweet deal under the previous EU membership, and they won't get that again if they rejoin.
But if Europe weathers the nationalistic wave (as it seems to be), and gains more members, things are going to get increasingly worse - relatively - for Britain.
But, fuck, I have no idea why Trump was able to win in 2016, and even more why he's got any chance in 2024. So I'm in no position to judge the stubborn holding to Brexit, as it destroys the livelyhoods of the very people who voted for it.