UK Politics

Hey hey hey, calm down. Not everyone asked for it. We have to deal with it too. I never wanted to leave so seeing so.ethi g like this makes me kinda happy and if we can get back in that be great so I can go back to some sort of normalcy. What's the deal with the aggressive stance of what has happened must stay that way?

Yeah that's not how the EU works and also a very simplistic way of looking at the world and global politics. In the UK 48% of people voted to remain so to lump an entire country together simplistically is naive. In the UK general election the Tories got 43.6% of the vote but because of our flawed democracy the tories got absolute power and that allowed them to pursue their aggressive and bombastic version of Brexit.

In any democracy people can change their minds and should be encouraged to do so, not aggressively condemend forever. The UK would likely be welcome to rejoin the EU; poltically it would strengthen the EU to show that leaving is negative and rejoining remains beneficial. It was also strengthen the argument that the EU needs to integrate further as a block because the hostile competing world of blocks such as the US, China, Russia and in the future India we'll be better together. But the UK would have to rejoin without all the opt-outs etc established over the original membership.

However the poll is of limited value; there really is not a clamouring to rejoin the EU at present. It's also not likely to be a simple thing to convince people to rejoin - the threshold for leaving was in many ways lower than the threshole for rejoining. Rejoining the EU now would mean no opt out for the Euro (which remains unpopular in the UK), and financially supporting the Common Agricultural Programme which is a mess. It also has to be said, leaving the EU has not been as bad as had been painted and negative elements have been obscured by the Covid pandemic in people's minds.

The UK leaving the EU has been grossly simplified into a "good vs evil" narrative, in large part because of the idiocy and behaviour of the UK Government and Boris Johnson - the UK's Donald Trump. The reasons for the UK leaving have been simplified into "ignorance and stupidity" so the many of the other reasons have been ignored and the EU has done nothing to address genuine flaws.

For example the conflicts between freedom of movement and the effects on jobs markets for low skilled segments of the population - that drove a lot of people in less prosperous "leave" areas to vote for leaving. Those people have been exploited by Leave campaigners, and the problem is certainly not entirely related to the EU (it is also part of the globalisation debate as well as major failures in UK government in evening economic growt). But the EU still has issues to address about the conflict between the benefits of freedom of movement overall versus the poorer economic areas in all countries that do not seem to be benefiting. That has all been obscured by the noise and simplification of the narrative over Brexit. Also there are many other major problems: the broken and distorted CAP, the flaws in the Eurozone which were exposed in the 2011 financial crisis, the failure of the EU to manage it's outer borders together and the democractic deficit at the heart of the EU. Also just look at the inability of the EU to deal with authoritarian regimes such as Hungary and increasingly Poland.

It's an easy and lazy narrative to dismiss the UK leaving the EU as "madness", "stupidity" and "you made you bed, now lie in it". There are certainly elements of that, but it obscures a truely hugely complex and more nuanced picture and that harms both the EU and the UK. I wanted to remain, and it's nice to see polls switching from being 50:50 to more pro-EU but that does not mean a referendum in favour of rejoining the EU would succeed. The political will is just no there yet and the

i think you're mostly right. our country did not commit properly to the EU project. we were constantly looking for opt-outs and excuses.

in the UK's defense for not joining at the start, we were vetoed twice by Charles De Gaulle. i wonder what the timeline would have looked like, had this not happened. 🙁

i dont think the UK should be let back in to the EU any time soon, but would you consider a longer term, distant future where the UK, or more likely it's component countries, are admitted back into the EU? certainly on terms that require full integration, with absolutely no opt-outs? what is your take on that?

i ask because i'm looking to escape to the EU myself at some point, but it would be disheartening to see if people there don't like us solely because of our government being stupid enough to hold a referendum for a political gamble.

Turns out you can't have a discussion about the EU on a UK-based Lemmy community without someone randomly popping up who can't comprehend that the UK isn't a hive-mind and also seems to think they speak for the EU.

Happens every single time.

Who is the 'you' you keep referring to in this scenario? It's certainly not me, or my friends, or my family, or the people I work with.

It's not a majority of the voters in the wider UK anyway - the age breakdown of the referendum result and some basic demographic maths tells us that, of the people who cast a vote on that particular day in June 2016 who are still alive today, a majority voted Remain - and that's before your even add in the huge numbers of people who have turned 18 since 2016 who skew heavily Remain/Rejoin too.

So really I ask - what the fuck are you talking about?

Imagine not seeing the manipulation that lead to the (minority of the actual voting population) leave vote, and thinking your own government isn't doing the same shit to you on whatever relevant topic.

That's a lot of anger to carry for the wrong bunch of people, but hey, you do you...

This is like as dumb as leaving was. You want to deny the bloc one of the largest economies on Earth, a financial center of the world? Over hurt feelings?

Boooo, second chance! Second chance!