Summary
Five years after Brexit, its promises of sovereignty, economic gains, and reduced migration remain unfulfilled. While Brexit offers regulatory flexibility, its overall impacts are largely negative.
The UK economy has suffered a £100bn annual output loss, with GDP 4% smaller than it would have been without Brexit.
Trade barriers have reduced exports, particularly to the EU, with small businesses and sectors like agriculture and fishing hit hardest.
Migration has surged to record levels, but net EU migration has turned negative.
Public dissatisfaction is high, with 59% believing Brexit has gone poorly.
Knowing very little about UK politics and even less five years ago I seem to remember casually analyzing leaving the EU as a dumb idea but what do I know.
More than 52% of British people in 2016 and still more than many now, I bet. I always supported Remain but before I voted I wanted to do my due diligence and re-evaluate. It took googling “brexit pros and cons” and all of 5 minutes reading a BBC infographic to confirm that basically everything the leave campaign said was completely and utterly wrong.
The fact that most people still voted for it despite the obvious lies was way more disappointing to me than the racism. Back then I thought better of people.
I know a couple of people who said they didn’t know what to vote for so voted for the default, which they thought was to leave.
Some other old person said he doesn’t like immigrants (or specifically people of a certain skin colour) and wants back gold top milk (which apparently the EU took away…).
Somebody else saying they don’t want Brussels telling us what to do and we need our fishing rights back. Also immigration.
My future, my son’s future, all now shaped in a more restrictive way because of people’s views like this.
Ironically for the old racist man we now have less white Europeans immigrants as before and more from Africa and India regions, at least in the area I live. I love it how it’s backfired on him.
Everyone with an IQ over room temperature knew leaving the EU was a losing move for everyone but the oligarchs looking to snap up businesses for cheap. They’re intentionally driving the UK economy into the ground so they can snap everything up in a fire sale knowing that their wealth is safely protected in foreign investments. They’re trying the same playbook over in the US now. Trump will tank the US economy (not to mention gut the anti-monopoly regulations) and then the megacorps will start gobbling.
Has Brexit cost them anything politically? Or is it still the exact same bullshit as before Brexit happened? Sure seems like nothing has changed.
We really do live in a post-truth era. Zizek was right when Snowden dropped his docs. He said based on the response to the Iraq War torture leaks, he didn’t expect anything to change. That big disclosures mean basically nothing now. God damn it he was so fucking right.
The problem with the modern media is that they frame everything in the context of money. Thus they ignore that the Britons joined just for the economy. They are a staunchly capitalist country that never managed to fit within the EU spirit. They kept resisting the integration and asking opt-outs for every initiative. During the exit process they acted as spoilt children, they absorbed all the attention and time of the European council and brought all the other activities nearly to a standstill. All of that tedious process ended up with a partial exit, the UK is still standing on the edge with one foot in and another out.
At this point I think that the best thing to do to stop crying over the spilled milk and do not even dare to think to come back, it would be just a pain for everybody.
Nah let us back in but as a standard new member without any of the special shit, please our government needs adult supervision.
Nah let us back in
Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
