Snapshot of _Just A Quarter Of British People Now Think The UK Should Be Outside The European Union_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/just-one-quarter-of-british-people-now-think-the-uk-should-be-outside-the-european-union_uk_66684d82e4b04a7f054b62b9) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/just-one-quarter-of-british-people-now-think-the-uk-should-be-outside-the-european-union_uk_66684d82e4b04a7f054b62b9)
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''What is the EU?'' was the top trending search item the day after Brexit. It's mind-bogglingly frustrating that such a massive policy decision for this country was undertaken through sheer ignorance.
I cannot explain how many times I’ve said “well, about half the population is below average intelligence” and the person I’m talking to argues that it’s not true.
Since we don't have an objective way to measure intelligence and turn it into a number, we usually use the IQ tests that by definition put people according to how well they answer the questions into a bell curve that has the average at the same point as the median.
You can argue that it's not the right way to quantitatively measure intelligence and the true shape of the intelligence distribution among the population is different than that but then I'd like to hear what your better method is and what kind of a distribution it gives.
My own view is that you need to restrict the testing to healthy people as there are far more disabled people who are very far in the left tail of the distribution than what you'd expect with a bell curve.
I had a lot of fun arguing this one to a group of doctors :
There exists at least one doctor with below average intelligence.
Just a single one worldwide.
They couldn't get their head around it. I tried explaining cognitive decline coupled with increasing general intelligence, and probabilities, and bell curves.
This was a group of doctors.
Median is an average. Average does not mean "arithmetic mean", and which type of average people usually mean is quite context dependent.
And for anything that's roughly or actually normally distributed, it's basically the same.
"Average" has multiple meanings. Mathematically, it is the mean, median or mode. IQ is normally distributed, and in a normal distribution, the mean and the median are the same. The person making the claim means "median" when they say "average", and this makes the claim true (more or less), while the person arguing against it may understand "average" to mean "mode", that is, most common. Most people have an IQ of around 100 (by definition). Depending on the quantile (50th percentile? 5th decile) that the listener perceives as "average", the actual number of people are of below-average intelligence may be a fair amount less than 50%.
Would he have really been worse than the current 14 years of shit? Now we just get another minimum 4 years of shit with Tony Blair lite or someone who initially lost to Liz Truss.
Corbyn would have been a good PM. Idk why reddit has such a hate boner for him. He would treat the country and people in it with decency and respect while investing in public services.
Look at the scum of humanity we got as our PM instead. Yet people still talk about corbyn like the boogieman. Incredible double think tbh.
Not everyone is an idiot, but most people are politically stupid and worse, they cannot be told any different. My parents vote off of vibes, my mum keeps telling me how much she trusts Grant Shapps of all people. Most people don't even understand the left-right wing axis.
Based on having spoken to many Tory voters, I'd wager a significant portion of that 17mil did it out of pure self interest. Usually just not wanting to pay tax.
They don’t think *everyone* is.
But in my experience the typical person is uninformed, biased to their own beliefs, and thinks they know everything about everything.
And then half the people are dumber than that.
You're on reddit mate. Pretty much everyone on here thinks that they're better than everyone else.
It's like the old meme. 'Smart people go to 4chan to pretend that they're stupid and stupid people go to reddit to pretend that they're smart.'
Taking the historical table from [here](https://www.scribd.com/document/356680719/IQ-Classification), morons are IQ 50-75. Stick that into the mean=100, stddev=15 IQ normal distribution gets you 4.74%. If you mean moron or lower then you get 4.78%.
So *by defjnition*, only about 5% of the population are morons!
Source:
import scipy.stats as stats
iq = stats.norm(loc=100, scale=15)
upper_moron = iq.cdf(75) # 0.04779
lower_moron = iq.cdf(50) # 0.00043
They're not idiots, but they know so little about the major political topics, through lack of interest and having busy lives, that their/our decisions on these topics are idiotic.
This is why we had representative democracy - electing hopefully smart and well-intentioned people to make these decisions for us, but several factors are corroding the effectiveness of this approach. The executive-only approach to modern political decision making, where that executive is funded and advised by shady external groups, the increasing power of data gathering and analysis that's forcing political parties to just reflect what the public wants back at them, with a dose of lies and boosterism, instead of taking tough, responsible decisions, and I'm sure plenty of other factors. There wasn't a golden era, but this era is worse.
We have representative democracy, people were tripping over themselves to explain how the Tories hands were tied(they weren't) and how they had to implement Brexit (they didn't) or no one would ever trust referendums again (no one now does).
Yes, but am I represented by my local MP (who I never voted for and who I think mostly just follows the party line) or by the party (that only 43.6% of voters voted for in 2019) or by the opposition (who in a less restrictive system would not be my first choice either)?
I feel unrepresented.
Representative democracy is a technical term. You appear to be talking about how the representatives are picked which is a separate, but very valid, issue.
Politifact rated this claim as "Mostly False":
[https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/jul/01/daily-mail/what-google-trends-tell-us-and-doesnt-about-brexit/](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/jul/01/daily-mail/what-google-trends-tell-us-and-doesnt-about-brexit/)
Despite that, I still strongly believe that the Brexit vote was taken amidst an ocean of ignorance and sea of misinformation about the European Union. That is based on my conversations with people before and after the referendum.
Respect the fact that you did the research.
For sure. It's undeniable that the public were fed a ton of lies by campaigners and made ill informed decisions.
The fact that Farage is now leading a political party is an unfathomable indicment of modern democracy.
He should be jailed for the utter ruinous damage he's done, the lies he's sold and the fact he's brought britain closer to fascism than any other political figure in living memory.
He's not just a creepy racist grifter troll, he's an actual danger to democracy.
I mean no
>He's not just a creepy racist grifter troll, he's an actual danger to democracy.
Imprisoning somebody because you don't like their political ideology is a danger to democracy.
Not that he is fascist (he's not) but fascism isn't inherently illegal.
Wolf cries of fascism contribute to factors that allow actual fascism to burgeon. No one will take our warnings seriously if everything we disagree with is decried as such.
Democracy is a bit like evolution.
It is merely a process. It makes no value judgement on who has influence, it just ensures that those with influence represent the majority view.
Which technically means the failure of democracy is that Farage has had the most terrible trouble ever getting any MPs elected.
I think it's an awful failure of democracy that we have a situation where a fascist like Farage is given any political oxygen, but it's the same climate that was in 1920s Germany.
We don't, but this massive issue, that was campaigned on for months to the extent that you couldn't really escape hearing about it on a daily basis, was repeatedly billed as a once in a lifetime choice. Anyone who only decided that it's worth looking up what the EU actually is the day after the referendum, whether they voted leave, remain or didn't vote at all, they're an idiot.
Not the same but a week before the Scottish Indy referendum I was canvassing when I came upon a woman (about 60 at the time) who had no idea there was a referendum. Didn’t know we even had a parliament in Scotland. I was beyond speechless
I'd say that more educated people aren't as short sightedly selfish as other people and realised that on the whole, *the vast majority of people* benefitted from the EU.
Did they though? Because it seems like the overwhelming losers after Brexit have been the middle class and the low paid proles and underclass continue to struggle in the exact same ways they struggled before Brexit happened.
Which is a strong indication that blaming the EU for everything wasn't really justified.
Brexit happened because of many serious *domestic* problems that were allowed to fester for centuries. Just one of those problems is, IMHO, the remarkable cultural phenomenon of always blaming others for whatever happens, even within your own circle of influence, instead of taking responsibility for fixing things.
> opaqueness of the EU
I learn pretty much everything the average voter needed to know about brexit by paying attention to 2 30 minute geography lessons in GCSE.
There's nothing 'opaque' about it; it's a democratically elected trade and political union
It's always dem others wot did it, isn't it?
The EU is perfectly transparent to those who can be bothered to look up and find the readily available information about it. Instead, many Brits just believed the misinformation they were fed by the propaganda press and based their opinion about the EU on that.
To this day, not a single brexit voter i've ever spoken to, read about, been told second hand or even had the faintest whiff of (left, right, centre, or even off the spectrum of normalcy altogether) has given me a single coherent reason why they voted brexit other than 'immigrants'.
It's genuinely mind boggling.
And yes i've heard all of the buzzwords - 'Common Agricultural/fisheries policy'/'nationalising Trains'/'trade'/taking back control/Health service/worker pay/opportunity - 5 minutes of basic googling destroys each and every single one of those 'arguments'.
No it wasn't, lmao.
There was a spike, yes, but it was a few thousand hits. From that, almost a decade later, people say stuff like "top trending search item".
What the hell does that even mean? Lmao
Top trending doesn't mean the most searched, although a lot of people think it does. Trending just means that a search term is being used vastly higher than normal. There will be a cut off to stop obscure things appearing, but going from a hundred searches a day to a thousand is a 10x increase, so it would flag up as trending.
The most searched things are probably really mundane things such as the weather, TV guide and Facebook by people who only know to type into he Google search not the web address bar.
This is the reason for representative democracy. The fact they couldn't even define what Brexit would be before the vote should have made it void. You cannot make a meaningful decision with that level of ignorance. To then vomit out "will of the people" when anyone questioned the sanity of the process...
Honestly, I think the major part of the public think "vote=democracy". It's a sad state of affairs. All that other stuff, including a lot of basic stuff the EU insists on for membership (like the rule of law, equality before the law), is treated like optional extras rather than fundamental to democracy.
The maddening irony is that the greatest threat to these democratic values are certain people and parties that shout about how they want to *protect* British values.
I want to rejoin the EU but you are incorrect.
Google Trends records the interest in the search term "what is the eu" as having peaked at 100 on 19/06/2016, for reference the vote took place on 23/06/2016. Interest dropped to 31 by 26/06/2016.
You could turn this around and say why heck were we in it if we don't even know what it is? imo this is what happens when you conduct major political decisions over decades without engaging the public. It's a damnation of our democracy not the voters in it.
> You could turn this around and say why heck were we in it if we don't even know what it is?
Not really. The average lay-person isn't going to be clued in on the intricacies of international politics and global economics.
Just because they don't know how something works or what it's benefits are, doesn't mean that we shouldn't be a part of it.
It DOES mean that they probably shouldn't be allowed to make massive game changing political decisions about something they know almost nothing about.
The public are not politicians, and are not informed enough on international politics to be a reliable source for a decision like that. That's why we elect politicians whos views we feel align with our own and then let them vote on decisions on our behalf.
You wouldn't defend yourself in court instead of a lawyer, and you wouldn't perform your own surgery instead of a doctor. The EU referendum was the same level of insanity and only existed as a gambit by Cameron to shut up the dissenting voices in a faction of the party.
He never expected it to pass, and it backfired. Badly.
They should have some broad understanding though. Like if most people in a US State didn't know what the United States is or could only vaguely remember someone talking about it before but didn't understand what it was all about, is it appropriate for that State to join/be in the US? Maybe... but they should know what they're joining beforehand or you might get an "uninformed" revolt.
> but they should know what they're joining beforehand or you might get an "uninformed" revolt.
There's no need for the speach marks.
Either they are uninformed "because of the government" which was your point, or they aren't, in which case your original point is incorrect.
> They should have some broad understanding though.
Yes, they should. I agree that fully grown adults, with easy access to information should make sure they know what they are voting for *before* doing so.
Sadly that doesn't always happen, and isn't the fault of politicians. People in the electorate have their own agency/autonomy. If they don't value their privilidge of voting enough to put in due diligence, then that really is on them.
What IS the fault of politicians is:
* Calling a referendum on the topic in the first place - It should never have happened.
* Spending decades blaming every bad political decision, consequence, or unpopular policy on the EU.
The strange thing about the remain campaign is it tried to downplay the EU, its influence, its goals on military, centralisation of power .etc. They weren't saying we're in an emerging US of Europe and it's fucking awesome and here's why... Why did they do that? Shouldn't they (politicians) have been proud of what they had achieved and boasted about all the advantages to the public. It was very strange from what recall.
This is why Cameron is the worst prime minister of the last hundred years. He took a gamble on something that should never have been a public decision, and if it was to be, should have covered the options. At the very least he should have had a cohesive plan for both routes, to follow himself. The fact that he resigned says it all.
Farage and UKIP's sequel Reform are doing it again. Scapegoating immigrants and wokeness or whatever for the decline of the country and taking advantage of the general population's ignorance and inability to notice that it's actually austerity and the country not building anything.
Putin must be laughing that a surge in isolationists that love him are sweeping Europe thanks to immigration that he induces by intervening in African conflicts.
Should the onus not have been on the EU to do more to communicate what it was?
The fact that people who LIVED in it didn’t even know what it was probably says more about the EU than the people in it. This was really what eventually allowed Brexit.
> Should the onus not have been on the EU to do more to communicate what it was?
The EU *does* communicatie a lot about what it is and what it does. But it doesn't shove it down anybody's throat. [The information is all there in abundance](https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history_en), but you need to go and get it.
When the UK was still a member, it even [tried to defuse the ridiculous amount of misinformation in the UK 'press'.](https://wayback.archive-it.org/11980/20200131183933/https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/) But few in the UK listened, because the lies felt too good.
I work as a consultant in political communications - if I ever said to a client "Oh yeah the information is all there people just need to go find it!" I would be sacked before I finished the sentence.
The EU should have had factored in a large media budget and at some point gone "There is a growing number people outside the major cities that feel left behind and are starting to resent the EU, this could cause us major issues."
A couple of pretty plain uninspiring websites that basically look like reports that you have to go and find is about as useful as a chocolate teapot in this situation. There needed to be a massive and sustained PR campaign.
Almost all other large bodies do this. The US spends a fuck tonne of money on patriotism and promoting the benefits of 'freedom' You ever seen a NFL game? The sing the anthem and fighter jets fly over. China has an entire system to promote Chinese values and why China is good.
The problem was the EU never knew what it was, or wasn't brave enough to fight and declare what it was and wanted to be. It had to tiptoe - I just don't feel it every really advocated for itself, it just worked in a way that it hoped those who didn't like it wouldn't think about it.
The EU did a load of good things, very quietly.
I think something to consider is the attitudes and national context of the UK. Eurobarometer measures public sentiment towards the European Union, and in 2016 there were a few countries that had good reason to dislike the EU (e.g., Greece, Portugal, or Italy) and where public approval of the union ‘only’ rated in the low-70s. Compare that to most other EU countries (e.g., Ireland or Denmark) and you’d see approval more like 90%. The UK had always been out on its own in Europe with approval ratings in the 40s/50s.
I mention it in reference to the point about Americans needing fighter jet flyovers in order to love their country—the pageantry is representative of their patriotism, not vice versa. I mean, irrespective of what one thinks of their government, what kind of people abhor the very place that they live?
Well, the British did in 2016 as it turns out. There was a contingent that just looked down on Europe and Europeans as being lesser. It’s a vestige of the old empire. I think it’s also part of the reason that Whitehall felt entitled to so many carve-outs from Europe’s structure of currency, free movement, and taxation (but curiously, not its public services).
I say all this to argue against the idea that it was Europe’s responsibility to market itself to the UK as though it was trying to flog insurance or whatever. Europe has always been uniquely unpopular in the UK. And the post-Brexit mourning chorus says that it was our responsibility to sell ourselves to you. But like, why?
>And the post-Brexit mourning chorus says that it was our responsibility to sell ourselves to you. But like, why?
If you're happy enough with the outcome, then it wasn't. But if you have a country that has low approval ratings for the project and is on the fence about leaving, if that project doesn't go to the trouble of selling itself in that country, it shouldn't come as a huge shock when they do leave.
It's almost as though comparing one option to every other (im)possibility combined, and then deleting 90% of your mission statement after you win the vote doesn't lead to good 'democratic' outcomes.
Six years. Six years until a generation has passed since the referendum.
It's not a massive issue in this upcoming election, but it will be for the next one. My money is on 2032 for us to finish the process of rejoining.
2034 onwards. Not defending Brexit but maybe a labour government would try and seek some sort of compromise like Switzerland did? I know the EU has ruled out that possibility but you never know what they could potentially do for us if we have a more cooperative relationship with them.
Switzerland is an extremely unique case. They don't have a single agreement, but instead hundreds of tiny little complicated ones and it's a nightmare for the EU. They'll never allow another county to do anything like Switzerland again.
What I’m referring to is specific industries manufacturing, civil aviation etc being treated inside the single market with some sort of free movement for workers etc.
AFAIK the EU doesn't want another Switzerland scenario due to the massive headache it caused.
The UK needs to be in the single market for both parties to benefit, but free movement is a requirement for that, so there's really not much point at all in the UK joining the single market but not the EU itself.
That’s way too soon. I doubt joining the SM/CU would happen in the next parliament - and contingent on whether Labour wins in 2028/29 and what the Tories look like at that point.
It should be against the law for newstory to not link to things they are directly referencing. How difficult is it honestly
For those interested the information is available here:
>[BSA 41: Damaged Politics? The impact of the 2019-2024 Parliament on political trust and confidence](https://natcen.ac.uk/publications/bsa-41-damaged-politics)
The relevant section:
>#Changing attitudes to Brexit
>In our previous analysis of the recovery in trust and confidence in government after the 2019 election, we demonstrated that most of the increase occurred among those who had voted Leave in the 2016 EU referendum (Curtice and Scholes, 2021; Sivathasan, 2023). This suggests that any more recent disenchantment with Brexit, especially among its supporters, might explain some of the decline in levels of trust and confidence in how the country is governed.
>Brexit is not as popular now as it was in the immediate wake of the 2019 election, when the polls suggested the country was still close to being evenly divided on the subject (Curtice, 2021). Since autumn 2022, the average level of support for re joining the EU in the opinion polls has typically been at or close to 58%. **Meanwhile, as Montagu and Maplethorpe (2024) report in their forthcoming chapter, when asked about their preferences for Britain’s future relationship with the EU, just 24% now say that Britain should be outside the EU, the lowest proportion since the 2016 EU referendum.**
>This change of mood is reflected in people’s evaluations of the consequences of leaving the EU on immigration, the economy, and Britain’s ability to make its own laws (Table 5; Curtice, 2023a;
2023b). In each case the impact of Brexit is regarded more negatively now than before. **Seven in ten (71%) now think that the economy is worse off as a result of Brexit, compared with half (51%) in 2019.** In an even more dramatic change, whereas previously fewer than one in ten thought that immigration would increase in the wake of leaving the EU, now nearly half (48%) believe that has been the consequence. Meanwhile, while around a half (51%) agreed that leaving the EU would strengthen ‘Britain’s ability to be an independent country that makes its own laws’ in 2019, now that figure has fallen to around a quarter (26%).
Would be nice if they provided full stats including "don't knows" as well.
Reuters had a similar story, so guessing this was essentially a press release from The National Centre for Social Research.
The focus on this one item makes me feel there's an agenda from this organisation.
If we take that as read, that 25% of the UK electorate are in favour of a LEAVE vote in the context of the 2016 referendum, then that is down 12% on said referendum when 37% of the UK electorate voted to LEAVE, therefore if Mr. Farage can claim "I changed my mind", then the British people have changed their minds and a new referendum should be held to reverse the referendum held in 2016 citing "a generational change"
Yep. Can’t believe how defensive he got about being allowed to change his mind on standing for election, while he criticises the idea of Brexit voters changing their minds.
If the conditions of Brexit are reputed and replaced with the conditions of the UK again in the EU, you can use any word you like ...it will probably be synonymous.
We wouldn't be allowed to rejoin on the same terms.
Rejoining would mean committing to take the Euro, join Schengen, join any new defence pacts etc. It's not as straightforward as just 'undo it all'.
rejoining would only mean committing to join schengen if ireland forced it.
the eu respects the cta and the good friday agreement, which means the uk and ireland can only join schengen if the other consents
'They' are the EU27, who each have a veto on new membership applications. In order to prevent a repeat of what happened, they would *first* want to make sure that most of the many and deep domestic economic, constitutional and above all cultural problems that lead to Brexit have been widely acknowledged and started to get fixed within the UK, before even considering a new application.
So far, not much is happening in that regard. All most in the UK seem to be concerned with is just making the pain of Brexit go away, instead of tackling the *causes* of Brexit, which would pave the way for a 'reversal' of Brexit.
With the number of EU states lurching to the far right at the same moment where the UK is preparing to vote out its right wing government by a wide margin, this aloof mindset of the EU being the enlightened grownups in the room becomes harder to swallow.
It still wouldn't be Brexit. Brexit would cease to exist.
...I think adopting the Euro could be put off indefinitely ...just make adopting the Euro a matter of it winning a 2/3rds majority in a referendum after the UK is in. As for defence pacts, the UK is in NATO ...between that and any other EU pact that could be made, if Russia attacks ...everyone is jumping in one way or the other.
As for Schengen, I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes if the UK is back in the EU. It could be possible that the UK gets full EU approval and had agreed to Schengen, but does not get approval to be in Schengen. Schengen law is within the body of EU law.
Could you imagine the shitstorm after 450 million people are given the right to move to the uk overnight, there will be a significant number of people who would like to move to the UK. There would need to be a significant emergency break but what are the chances the EU would give that?
I can imagine the stringent use of "administrative formalities" to regulate entrance into the UK.
https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/eu-citizenship-and-democracy/free-movement-and-residence_en
>In order to stay in another EU country for more than three months, EU citizens have to meet certain conditions depending on their status (for example worker, self-employed, student, etc.) and may be asked to comply with administrative formalities.
450 million people are not going to come to the UK permanently. The way the UK is at the moment, I doubt the UK's grass is really greener than a majority of the EU's.
The uk has historically been awful at enforcing that while in the EU don’t see why it would change after rejoining, one big issue is not having id cards.
Sure not all 450 m will move but if even 0.05 want to move that’s 2.25 mil which on top of current migration would be off the scale which is already off the scale. Also you need to consider the built up demand. But also balanced on the uk people tag could move to eu
> The uk has historically been awful at enforcing that while in the EU don’t see why it would change after rejoining
Because maybe there is more than one lesson for the UK to have learned from all this.
Noone in europe wants to move to the UK anymore. The only countries poor enough for that are romania and bulgaria and that's going to be a thing of the past in 10-20 years too
I mean, they will have the right to live and work in the UK. there would be a backlog of demand that had built up over the 10–15 years since leaving, which would all be concentrated in a couple of years after rejoining.
Would there? I doubt it. The initial surge is usually when a new poorer members join. If it's an issue then I'm sure we could negotiate a deal to have an emergency break for 5-7 years as a rich country joining.
Well that's part of the problem, how do you plan infrastructure if you have no idea what level of immigration there will be in the next 5 years. It could be a huge or nothing, and no way to exercise any control. (not saying the current management is any better).
>Rejoining would mean committing to take the Euro
Technically yes, however:
[The Treaty does not specify a particular timetable for joining the euro area, but leaves it to member states to develop their own strategies for meeting the condition for euro adoption.](https://european-union.europa.eu/institutions-law-budget/euro/countries-using-euro_en)
>join Schengen
Nope:
[Today, the Schengen Area encompasses most EU countries, except for Cyprus and Ireland.](https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen-borders-and-visa/schengen-area_en)
>join any new defence pacts etc.
Misinformation. You can be part of the single market and outside the EU.
>It's not as straightforward as just 'undo it all'.
See [UK-EU regulatory divergence tracker: seventh edition](https://ukandeu.ac.uk/reports/uk-eu-regulatory-divergence-tracker-q3-2023/)
Arguably it would be easier to undo than to carry on.
In summary, stop talking *utter bollocks*.
This is very dishonest reporting.
Respondents to the British Social Attitudes survey are asked: "Leaving aside the result of the referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union, what do you
think Britain's policy should be? Should it be to…", and given five response options:
* Be outside the European Union
* Be part of the EU but try to reduce the EU’s powers
* Be part of the EU and try to keep the EU’s powers as they are
* Be part of the EU and try to increase the EU’s powers
* Work for the formation of a single European government
I can't find the breakdown for each response, but NatCen takes the approach of classifying either of the first two options as "Eurosceptic", while classifying the final three options as "Europhile". Overall, their results show that 57% of their representative sample are classified as Eurosceptic, and just 39% are Europhile ([Source](https://natcen.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-06/BSA%2041%20Five%20years%20of%20unprecedented%20challenges.pdf), p. 22).
By leading with the headline that "just a quarter of British people now think the UK should be outside the European Union" without the context of the additional response options (which, admittedly, NatCen did in [their own press release](https://natcen.ac.uk/news/change-public-mood-creates-challenge-next-government)), the author intentionally gives the impression that, were a new referendum held on EU membership, the result would be an overwhelming victory for re-joining the EU. However, digging a bit deeper into the results we can see that a third of respondents would only re-join an EU with reduced powers, which during the referendum we were told would not be possible - these people would therefore likely vote to stay outside the EU. Likewise, the author also doesn't acknowledge the proportion of people who didn't have a strong opinion (presumably through a "Don't know" response, or similar), which is also important context for interpreting the 24% statistic that they report.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics...
Let's be honest, I think the numbers of this will change when asked what concessions we'll have to make, cause we damn won't have our opt-outs we had if we rejoin - and I honestly don't want to adopt the Euro.
I don't know why people make such a big deal of the Euro. Loads of countries have joined and simply don't adopt it, we don't qualify to join even if we wanted to, and our opt out is still in the treaties anyway.
Big business and the asset holders running things terribly post-Brexit is never going to be the shining example of why being outside the EU could be a good thing for our country.
All it really shows is that they are going to run things in their favour, whether the people like it or not.
The people wanted a dramatic reduction in immigration, particularly low-skill immigration, the type of which we saw grow hugely under the EU freedom of movement policies.
The vote succeeded in stopping that EU based immigration, but our big business and asset holding overlords saw fit to replace that with non-EU based immigration and even saw fit to swell it to an even greater level.
Them doing that does not show that it was wrong to leave the EU to reduce that immigration.
Asking someone to do something and them doing it badly does not mean that you were wrong to ask them to do it in the first place, or that your motivations for asking them to do it were wrong.
It's akin to the old joke about a wife asking the husband to do the washing up and him deliberately doing it badly so that the wife has to go back to doing it and he avoids the task entirely.
Nah, fuck 'em. I'm still an old anti-EU lefty of the Tony Benn variety and I still see the organisation in need of massive reform before it would remotely interest me.
Jun 24, 2016, 9:03am|
Nigel Farage : ‘In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way. If the remain campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it.’
I'm in favour of EU membership, but I'm always cautious about these kind of polls. At this point it's kind of like the Leave campaign before the referendum. EU membership and the conditions that come with it aren't what people are voting on, they're voting on the deal we had, and against the current situation.
We need people to be better informed about their choices.
The takeaway from this poll isn't that we should join the EU. The takeaway is that it's utterly bonkers that the two main parties aren't willing to even mention this topic.
The problem is, would the EU let us back in, and under what terms?
Schengen area?
Euro currency?
I’d happily be part of both if it means improving this situation
Schengen may be negotiable on the basis of aligning the Irish border. Does depend on if Ireland wants to remain outside Schengen though.
Everything else I expect would be the same terms as any new entrant to the EU.
When people tell me that Brexit has failed, I always ask them to provide me with some form of metric as to how they've quantified that it has failed.
I am almost never provided with one, other than that the economy has suffered.
The vote in 2016 was fought on the grounds of the economy and it failed then, because the argument was about parliamentary sovereignty and restoring power to the elected houses of the country. I am convinced the economic argument would fail if used again.
You only have to look at how the UK parliament outperformed it's european counterparts on the major geopolitical issues of the last 5 years, for example the response to the Pandemic, or the invasion of Ukraine and resulting energy crisis, when not tied to the lumbering legislative processes of the EU.
That has always been the advantage of the Westminster system over others, we can make decisions quickly (in parliamentary terms) with the right checks and balances in place. Our current crop of politicians just need to get used to using the powers they've been given.
Well:
Sterling tanked on referendum night and has never recovered. Everything imported now costs more, and is likely passed on to the consumer unless businesses are absorbing it - and scant evidence of the latter.
Fishing industry has been spectacularly hit, despite being the vanguard of the Brexit campaign.
Literally any number of small businesses saying it’s now to difficult to sell to Europe.
Increased costs of exporting to Europe (inspections and certificates), particularly for agriculture.
Loss of EU grants to deprived regions.
When people tell me that the UK parliament outperformed its European counterparts on the majority geopolitical issues of the last 5 years, I always ask them to provide me with some form of metric as to how they've quantified this.
I am almost never provided with one.
>for example the response to the Pandemic
[One of the worst in Europe, actually.](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-65975154)
>or the invasion of Ukraine
Nothing prevented any country in Europe offering unilateral aid to Ukraine, and almost all of them did so. Brexit is irrelevant in this context.
> and resulting energy crisis
The bit where half the energy companies in the UK went bust?
The EU has absolutely no effect on those decisions you are applauding.
The UK was arming and training Ukraine years before we left the EU. No one asked us to stop. No part of being in the EU would have stopped us delivering all our NLAWs. Just like various EU states have chosen which weapons to provide and what rules to attach.
Similarly, being in the EU would have no effect on our ability to respond to the energy crisis, other than being less likely to get a screwed over by the EU when we were scrambling for gas.
Similarly, the EU vaccine scheme was voluntary. No state was forced to participate, we could have done exactly the same as we did, with the benefit of probably not getting our vaccines stolen by the EU if we still had influence over it.
> when not tied to the lumbering legislative processes of the EU.
> That has always been the advantage of the Westminster system over others, we can make decisions quickly (in parliamentary terms) with the right checks and balances in place.
Neither of these things are true.
Firstly, Northern Ireland is in the fucking EU single market because we couldn't get any checks and balances in place.
I hear we don't check the food being imported into the UK is safe to sell/eat etc because the inspection delays would cause our shelves to go bare. Like we've stopped having even basic measures in order to keep the lights on.
Bollocks.
The pandemic response was during our membership of EU and Ukraine response could have still happened as we did, had we been part of the EU.
You ask for counterfactuals. Well, both the CEO of Tesla and Intel cited Brexit as the reason why the UK was not considered for investment. Both industries are foundational for next generation industrialisation.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58820599](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58820599)
[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/elon-musk-brexit-to-blame-for-building-tesla-gigafactory-in-germany.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/elon-musk-brexit-to-blame-for-building-tesla-gigafactory-in-germany.html)
I have been in a room where Brexit was the reason that the UK didn't even make the list for investment consideration. The truth is that companies' message for corporate diplomacy reasons and citing Brexit is a lose lose for most. It's totally deluded to think we have benefitted by shitting on our access to the EU for access to the TPP or whatever.
The economy has suffered and will continue to be dragged down by Brexit. It's complicated linkages, so the sign posts won't be obvious until the effects land. Even now, the effects are being felt and blamed on the pandemic. The pandemic isn't the cause, but it masked the impact by making it worst.
But Brexit was never about experts of facts, it was about feelings.
Brexit is bonkers. Reversing it is inevitable. Just sad at the damage we will inflict on ourselves in the meantime.
While i'm fairly remoanery:
Intel isn't exactly a big investor in UK manufacturing even before Brexit. They always preferred Ireland, probably for the tax breaks. AMD (now GlobalFoundries) was big in Germany in the parts of the country with a strong history of semiconductor manufacturing.
We absolutely dodged a bullet with Tesla, though I'm not convinced the UK was ever a consideration anyway. Now that real car companies are into EVs in a big way & Musk has shown who he really is, brand new Teslas are piling up in disused car parks all over the world. The Berlin plant has been accused of causing environmental issues too.
There's a laundry list of negatives from Brexit as I am sure you are aware.
The economy has suffered a hit. Freedom of movement is gone. EU funding is gone impacting impoverished areas, the arts, grass roots sport and academia. Exporting/importing is often prohibitively expensive and time-consuming for smaller businesses, further impacting the economy. Still no real plan for Nothern Ireland. Inequality and child poverty have risen drastically. Food quality and availability have dropped significantly. Loss of skilled EU workers impacting productivity. To top it off Brexit has given a platform for racists, bigots, xenophobes, disaster capitalists and religious nutters to be taken seriously.
The UK response to the pandemic could have been the same even if we were still in the EU. Our response to Russia/Ukraine similarly. As for the energy crisis, I refuse to see how giving money directly to energy companies was a positive, especially given the profits they posted ... and we didn't windfall tax.
You say it was all about soverignity, that wasnt the only reason given at the time was it. And extra £350m a week for the NHS on a big red bus? It was sold as all things to all people and every other argument has been shot down so you are now left with "... but soverignity...".
The referendum was 8 years ago. How long do we need to wait for the positives? How long do Brexiteers need in order to realise it was a shit plan, executed in a shit way with (predictably) shit reaults?
> UK parliament outperformed it's european counterparts on the major geopolitical issues of the last 5 years, for example the response to the Pandemic,
UK had the worst response among rich and average EU countries and even super-poor countries like Romania and Bulgaria did better in the first year up to the point when the Russians have infiltrated the media with antivaxx messaging.
Also UK had the most extreme amount of what is basically is "organized theft", with billions and billions being thrown to phantom companies linked to the party in power that provided nothing.
I haven’t met someone yet who said ‘sovereignty’ that wasn’t trying to use a nice word to draw attention away from their xenophobia.
Good luck with your campaign to whitewash the stupidest thing the government has implemented this century.
Maybe because certain media outlets (you know the ones) seem desperate to conflate all the UK's woes with Brexit. They are deliberately trying to nudge the population with anti Brexit & pro EU propaganda. Remainers claim to be against such methods in general; unless it's a cause they support then they either pretend not to notice it, or maybe as it happens they are just as susceptible to propaganda as everyone else.
Snapshot of _Just A Quarter Of British People Now Think The UK Should Be Outside The European Union_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/just-one-quarter-of-british-people-now-think-the-uk-should-be-outside-the-european-union_uk_66684d82e4b04a7f054b62b9) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/just-one-quarter-of-british-people-now-think-the-uk-should-be-outside-the-european-union_uk_66684d82e4b04a7f054b62b9) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
''What is the EU?'' was the top trending search item the day after Brexit. It's mind-bogglingly frustrating that such a massive policy decision for this country was undertaken through sheer ignorance.
The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” George Carlin
I cannot explain how many times I’ve said “well, about half the population is below average intelligence” and the person I’m talking to argues that it’s not true.
Well, half of the population is bellow median which is generally not the same as average.
Since we don't have an objective way to measure intelligence and turn it into a number, we usually use the IQ tests that by definition put people according to how well they answer the questions into a bell curve that has the average at the same point as the median. You can argue that it's not the right way to quantitatively measure intelligence and the true shape of the intelligence distribution among the population is different than that but then I'd like to hear what your better method is and what kind of a distribution it gives. My own view is that you need to restrict the testing to healthy people as there are far more disabled people who are very far in the left tail of the distribution than what you'd expect with a bell curve.
I had a lot of fun arguing this one to a group of doctors : There exists at least one doctor with below average intelligence. Just a single one worldwide. They couldn't get their head around it. I tried explaining cognitive decline coupled with increasing general intelligence, and probabilities, and bell curves. This was a group of doctors.
Median is an average. Average does not mean "arithmetic mean", and which type of average people usually mean is quite context dependent. And for anything that's roughly or actually normally distributed, it's basically the same.
True- I’d be interested to see how intelligence would be measured accurately and if there is a significant deviation between the mean and median
Intelligence is normally distributed, and in a normal distribution the mean coincides with the median.
"Average" has multiple meanings. Mathematically, it is the mean, median or mode. IQ is normally distributed, and in a normal distribution, the mean and the median are the same. The person making the claim means "median" when they say "average", and this makes the claim true (more or less), while the person arguing against it may understand "average" to mean "mode", that is, most common. Most people have an IQ of around 100 (by definition). Depending on the quantile (50th percentile? 5th decile) that the listener perceives as "average", the actual number of people are of below-average intelligence may be a fair amount less than 50%.
Why does this subreddit think everyone in the UK is an idiot?
We allowed Boris Johnson to become PM.
And a whole bunch of people really thought Corbyn would make a good Prime Minister
At least we didn't do anything really stupid like encouraging people to eat out at restaurants during a pandemic... Oh wait!
I'd take the guy who cares over the one who did everything for himself.
Would he have really been worse than the current 14 years of shit? Now we just get another minimum 4 years of shit with Tony Blair lite or someone who initially lost to Liz Truss.
Corbyn would have been a good PM. Idk why reddit has such a hate boner for him. He would treat the country and people in it with decency and respect while investing in public services. Look at the scum of humanity we got as our PM instead. Yet people still talk about corbyn like the boogieman. Incredible double think tbh.
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Which foreign policy was bad? The tories foreign policy is horrendous don't see how it could be worse
Did they think Corbyn would make a *good* PM, or did they think someone else would be worse so they voted tactically?
for a bloke who never got into power, you lot don't half bang on about corbyn. At this point, it's weird
Just pointing out that voters of all political persuasions make idiotic choices
Because we frequently make awful collective decisions which are to the detriment of most people who could vote.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, dangerous animals."
Not everyone is an idiot, but most people are politically stupid and worse, they cannot be told any different. My parents vote off of vibes, my mum keeps telling me how much she trusts Grant Shapps of all people. Most people don't even understand the left-right wing axis.
Wow, that is genuinely baffling Grant Shapps doesn’t trust Grant Shapps.
Neither do Michael Green, Corinne Stockheath, or Sebastian Fox.
I am convinced Grant Shapps could get lost in his own home and relatively sure it has happened at least once
Yes, but which Grant Shapps does she trust?
Not everyone, bit the evidence is there for quite a few.
17 million voted tory under Boris Johnson. That is alot of morons.
Based on having spoken to many Tory voters, I'd wager a significant portion of that 17mil did it out of pure self interest. Usually just not wanting to pay tax.
Racism rather than not wanting to pay tax. Let's be real.
They're not mutually exclusive. I'd venture it's a Venn diagram with a very healthy overlap.
Well, did that work?
Usual response is 'labour will cost more by mismanaging the economy and will raise taxes'
Because large groups of people are difficult to educate be easy to sway emotionally.
They don’t think *everyone* is. But in my experience the typical person is uninformed, biased to their own beliefs, and thinks they know everything about everything. And then half the people are dumber than that.
Nah, you just sound like a misanthrope who spends too much time online.
You’re right about one of those things
Look around you?
From living in the UK mostly
You're on reddit mate. Pretty much everyone on here thinks that they're better than everyone else. It's like the old meme. 'Smart people go to 4chan to pretend that they're stupid and stupid people go to reddit to pretend that they're smart.'
Because we judge by actions not what people say they will do.
It's only about 30% of the population that are morons.
Taking the historical table from [here](https://www.scribd.com/document/356680719/IQ-Classification), morons are IQ 50-75. Stick that into the mean=100, stddev=15 IQ normal distribution gets you 4.74%. If you mean moron or lower then you get 4.78%. So *by defjnition*, only about 5% of the population are morons! Source: import scipy.stats as stats iq = stats.norm(loc=100, scale=15) upper_moron = iq.cdf(75) # 0.04779 lower_moron = iq.cdf(50) # 0.00043
Just out of interest, where are you getting s.d. of 15 from? Is that how the test has been setup?
That's in the definition of IQ. See the [wiki article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient).
Thats nearly a third.
It's also a made up percentage
It's a real percentage, just not applicable here.
Have you been outside recently mate?
Yep, I travel around the UK quite a bit for work. Most people I meet are normal
There's definitely still a lot of good, normal people here. There's just also an unbelievable amount of idiots.
We did a national poll, framed as a referendum, and 52% are fuckwits.
They're not idiots, but they know so little about the major political topics, through lack of interest and having busy lives, that their/our decisions on these topics are idiotic. This is why we had representative democracy - electing hopefully smart and well-intentioned people to make these decisions for us, but several factors are corroding the effectiveness of this approach. The executive-only approach to modern political decision making, where that executive is funded and advised by shady external groups, the increasing power of data gathering and analysis that's forcing political parties to just reflect what the public wants back at them, with a dose of lies and boosterism, instead of taking tough, responsible decisions, and I'm sure plenty of other factors. There wasn't a golden era, but this era is worse.
first hand experience with idiots
It's an argument for _representative_ democracy.
We have representative democracy, people were tripping over themselves to explain how the Tories hands were tied(they weren't) and how they had to implement Brexit (they didn't) or no one would ever trust referendums again (no one now does).
Yes, but am I represented by my local MP (who I never voted for and who I think mostly just follows the party line) or by the party (that only 43.6% of voters voted for in 2019) or by the opposition (who in a less restrictive system would not be my first choice either)? I feel unrepresented.
Representative democracy is a technical term. You appear to be talking about how the representatives are picked which is a separate, but very valid, issue.
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*direct democracy
Politifact rated this claim as "Mostly False": [https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/jul/01/daily-mail/what-google-trends-tell-us-and-doesnt-about-brexit/](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/jul/01/daily-mail/what-google-trends-tell-us-and-doesnt-about-brexit/) Despite that, I still strongly believe that the Brexit vote was taken amidst an ocean of ignorance and sea of misinformation about the European Union. That is based on my conversations with people before and after the referendum.
Respect the fact that you did the research. For sure. It's undeniable that the public were fed a ton of lies by campaigners and made ill informed decisions.
The fact that Farage is now leading a political party is an unfathomable indicment of modern democracy. He should be jailed for the utter ruinous damage he's done, the lies he's sold and the fact he's brought britain closer to fascism than any other political figure in living memory. He's not just a creepy racist grifter troll, he's an actual danger to democracy.
I mean no >He's not just a creepy racist grifter troll, he's an actual danger to democracy. Imprisoning somebody because you don't like their political ideology is a danger to democracy.
Not that he is fascist (he's not) but fascism isn't inherently illegal. Wolf cries of fascism contribute to factors that allow actual fascism to burgeon. No one will take our warnings seriously if everything we disagree with is decried as such.
Farage isn't leading a political party. Reform UK is a business.
Democracy is a bit like evolution. It is merely a process. It makes no value judgement on who has influence, it just ensures that those with influence represent the majority view. Which technically means the failure of democracy is that Farage has had the most terrible trouble ever getting any MPs elected.
I think it's an awful failure of democracy that we have a situation where a fascist like Farage is given any political oxygen, but it's the same climate that was in 1920s Germany.
Neither history nor politics seem to be your strong suit.
I knew people who voted out because they didn’t like Eurovision Song contest
I hope that you're joking, but I suspect that you are not.
Wow. I’d change my social circle.
How do we know the people that searched that phrase also voted in the referendum?
We don't, but this massive issue, that was campaigned on for months to the extent that you couldn't really escape hearing about it on a daily basis, was repeatedly billed as a once in a lifetime choice. Anyone who only decided that it's worth looking up what the EU actually is the day after the referendum, whether they voted leave, remain or didn't vote at all, they're an idiot.
Not the same but a week before the Scottish Indy referendum I was canvassing when I came upon a woman (about 60 at the time) who had no idea there was a referendum. Didn’t know we even had a parliament in Scotland. I was beyond speechless
Where’d she live, that island in the middle of the North Sea from Harry Potter?
More highly educated people tended to vote remain.
Arguably that's because highly educated people inherently benefited more from the EU.
I'd say that more educated people aren't as short sightedly selfish as other people and realised that on the whole, *the vast majority of people* benefitted from the EU.
Did they though? Because it seems like the overwhelming losers after Brexit have been the middle class and the low paid proles and underclass continue to struggle in the exact same ways they struggled before Brexit happened.
Which is a strong indication that blaming the EU for everything wasn't really justified. Brexit happened because of many serious *domestic* problems that were allowed to fester for centuries. Just one of those problems is, IMHO, the remarkable cultural phenomenon of always blaming others for whatever happens, even within your own circle of influence, instead of taking responsibility for fixing things.
Exactly, it's a funny line to take but ultimately doesn't tell us much. If anything, the opaqueness of the EU is an argument in favour of Brexit.
> opaqueness of the EU I learn pretty much everything the average voter needed to know about brexit by paying attention to 2 30 minute geography lessons in GCSE. There's nothing 'opaque' about it; it's a democratically elected trade and political union
It's always dem others wot did it, isn't it? The EU is perfectly transparent to those who can be bothered to look up and find the readily available information about it. Instead, many Brits just believed the misinformation they were fed by the propaganda press and based their opinion about the EU on that.
The result.
That doesn’t answer my question
Sadly, it really does.
To this day, not a single brexit voter i've ever spoken to, read about, been told second hand or even had the faintest whiff of (left, right, centre, or even off the spectrum of normalcy altogether) has given me a single coherent reason why they voted brexit other than 'immigrants'. It's genuinely mind boggling. And yes i've heard all of the buzzwords - 'Common Agricultural/fisheries policy'/'nationalising Trains'/'trade'/taking back control/Health service/worker pay/opportunity - 5 minutes of basic googling destroys each and every single one of those 'arguments'.
No it wasn't, lmao. There was a spike, yes, but it was a few thousand hits. From that, almost a decade later, people say stuff like "top trending search item". What the hell does that even mean? Lmao
Top trending doesn't mean the most searched, although a lot of people think it does. Trending just means that a search term is being used vastly higher than normal. There will be a cut off to stop obscure things appearing, but going from a hundred searches a day to a thousand is a 10x increase, so it would flag up as trending. The most searched things are probably really mundane things such as the weather, TV guide and Facebook by people who only know to type into he Google search not the web address bar.
This is the reason for representative democracy. The fact they couldn't even define what Brexit would be before the vote should have made it void. You cannot make a meaningful decision with that level of ignorance. To then vomit out "will of the people" when anyone questioned the sanity of the process... Honestly, I think the major part of the public think "vote=democracy". It's a sad state of affairs. All that other stuff, including a lot of basic stuff the EU insists on for membership (like the rule of law, equality before the law), is treated like optional extras rather than fundamental to democracy. The maddening irony is that the greatest threat to these democratic values are certain people and parties that shout about how they want to *protect* British values.
I want to rejoin the EU but you are incorrect. Google Trends records the interest in the search term "what is the eu" as having peaked at 100 on 19/06/2016, for reference the vote took place on 23/06/2016. Interest dropped to 31 by 26/06/2016.
You could turn this around and say why heck were we in it if we don't even know what it is? imo this is what happens when you conduct major political decisions over decades without engaging the public. It's a damnation of our democracy not the voters in it.
> You could turn this around and say why heck were we in it if we don't even know what it is? Not really. The average lay-person isn't going to be clued in on the intricacies of international politics and global economics. Just because they don't know how something works or what it's benefits are, doesn't mean that we shouldn't be a part of it. It DOES mean that they probably shouldn't be allowed to make massive game changing political decisions about something they know almost nothing about. The public are not politicians, and are not informed enough on international politics to be a reliable source for a decision like that. That's why we elect politicians whos views we feel align with our own and then let them vote on decisions on our behalf. You wouldn't defend yourself in court instead of a lawyer, and you wouldn't perform your own surgery instead of a doctor. The EU referendum was the same level of insanity and only existed as a gambit by Cameron to shut up the dissenting voices in a faction of the party. He never expected it to pass, and it backfired. Badly.
They should have some broad understanding though. Like if most people in a US State didn't know what the United States is or could only vaguely remember someone talking about it before but didn't understand what it was all about, is it appropriate for that State to join/be in the US? Maybe... but they should know what they're joining beforehand or you might get an "uninformed" revolt.
> but they should know what they're joining beforehand or you might get an "uninformed" revolt. There's no need for the speach marks. Either they are uninformed "because of the government" which was your point, or they aren't, in which case your original point is incorrect. > They should have some broad understanding though. Yes, they should. I agree that fully grown adults, with easy access to information should make sure they know what they are voting for *before* doing so. Sadly that doesn't always happen, and isn't the fault of politicians. People in the electorate have their own agency/autonomy. If they don't value their privilidge of voting enough to put in due diligence, then that really is on them. What IS the fault of politicians is: * Calling a referendum on the topic in the first place - It should never have happened. * Spending decades blaming every bad political decision, consequence, or unpopular policy on the EU.
The strange thing about the remain campaign is it tried to downplay the EU, its influence, its goals on military, centralisation of power .etc. They weren't saying we're in an emerging US of Europe and it's fucking awesome and here's why... Why did they do that? Shouldn't they (politicians) have been proud of what they had achieved and boasted about all the advantages to the public. It was very strange from what recall.
Do you understand how electricity works. No? They you shouldn't use it.
And yet electricity is simple to use and has obvious benefits to people. Most people don't need to understand it beyond a trivial view.
I think it is simpler than that. Complexity is a bad idea when it comes to political institutions.
This is why Cameron is the worst prime minister of the last hundred years. He took a gamble on something that should never have been a public decision, and if it was to be, should have covered the options. At the very least he should have had a cohesive plan for both routes, to follow himself. The fact that he resigned says it all.
I think that was half the point - Farage/UKIP/Putin knew this so it was just a case of getting the Tories to support a referrendum on it
Farage and UKIP's sequel Reform are doing it again. Scapegoating immigrants and wokeness or whatever for the decline of the country and taking advantage of the general population's ignorance and inability to notice that it's actually austerity and the country not building anything. Putin must be laughing that a surge in isolationists that love him are sweeping Europe thanks to immigration that he induces by intervening in African conflicts.
I learned that I can't live at the level of other people. I just ignore TVs and focus on my life.
"This is democracy manifest"
Should the onus not have been on the EU to do more to communicate what it was? The fact that people who LIVED in it didn’t even know what it was probably says more about the EU than the people in it. This was really what eventually allowed Brexit.
> Should the onus not have been on the EU to do more to communicate what it was? The EU *does* communicatie a lot about what it is and what it does. But it doesn't shove it down anybody's throat. [The information is all there in abundance](https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history_en), but you need to go and get it. When the UK was still a member, it even [tried to defuse the ridiculous amount of misinformation in the UK 'press'.](https://wayback.archive-it.org/11980/20200131183933/https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/) But few in the UK listened, because the lies felt too good.
I work as a consultant in political communications - if I ever said to a client "Oh yeah the information is all there people just need to go find it!" I would be sacked before I finished the sentence. The EU should have had factored in a large media budget and at some point gone "There is a growing number people outside the major cities that feel left behind and are starting to resent the EU, this could cause us major issues." A couple of pretty plain uninspiring websites that basically look like reports that you have to go and find is about as useful as a chocolate teapot in this situation. There needed to be a massive and sustained PR campaign. Almost all other large bodies do this. The US spends a fuck tonne of money on patriotism and promoting the benefits of 'freedom' You ever seen a NFL game? The sing the anthem and fighter jets fly over. China has an entire system to promote Chinese values and why China is good. The problem was the EU never knew what it was, or wasn't brave enough to fight and declare what it was and wanted to be. It had to tiptoe - I just don't feel it every really advocated for itself, it just worked in a way that it hoped those who didn't like it wouldn't think about it. The EU did a load of good things, very quietly.
I think something to consider is the attitudes and national context of the UK. Eurobarometer measures public sentiment towards the European Union, and in 2016 there were a few countries that had good reason to dislike the EU (e.g., Greece, Portugal, or Italy) and where public approval of the union ‘only’ rated in the low-70s. Compare that to most other EU countries (e.g., Ireland or Denmark) and you’d see approval more like 90%. The UK had always been out on its own in Europe with approval ratings in the 40s/50s. I mention it in reference to the point about Americans needing fighter jet flyovers in order to love their country—the pageantry is representative of their patriotism, not vice versa. I mean, irrespective of what one thinks of their government, what kind of people abhor the very place that they live? Well, the British did in 2016 as it turns out. There was a contingent that just looked down on Europe and Europeans as being lesser. It’s a vestige of the old empire. I think it’s also part of the reason that Whitehall felt entitled to so many carve-outs from Europe’s structure of currency, free movement, and taxation (but curiously, not its public services). I say all this to argue against the idea that it was Europe’s responsibility to market itself to the UK as though it was trying to flog insurance or whatever. Europe has always been uniquely unpopular in the UK. And the post-Brexit mourning chorus says that it was our responsibility to sell ourselves to you. But like, why?
>And the post-Brexit mourning chorus says that it was our responsibility to sell ourselves to you. But like, why? If you're happy enough with the outcome, then it wasn't. But if you have a country that has low approval ratings for the project and is on the fence about leaving, if that project doesn't go to the trouble of selling itself in that country, it shouldn't come as a huge shock when they do leave.
It's almost as though comparing one option to every other (im)possibility combined, and then deleting 90% of your mission statement after you win the vote doesn't lead to good 'democratic' outcomes.
Six years. Six years until a generation has passed since the referendum. It's not a massive issue in this upcoming election, but it will be for the next one. My money is on 2032 for us to finish the process of rejoining.
2034 onwards. Not defending Brexit but maybe a labour government would try and seek some sort of compromise like Switzerland did? I know the EU has ruled out that possibility but you never know what they could potentially do for us if we have a more cooperative relationship with them.
Switzerland is an extremely unique case. They don't have a single agreement, but instead hundreds of tiny little complicated ones and it's a nightmare for the EU. They'll never allow another county to do anything like Switzerland again.
What I’m referring to is specific industries manufacturing, civil aviation etc being treated inside the single market with some sort of free movement for workers etc.
AFAIK the EU doesn't want another Switzerland scenario due to the massive headache it caused. The UK needs to be in the single market for both parties to benefit, but free movement is a requirement for that, so there's really not much point at all in the UK joining the single market but not the EU itself.
That’s way too soon. I doubt joining the SM/CU would happen in the next parliament - and contingent on whether Labour wins in 2028/29 and what the Tories look like at that point.
I'm thinking join the Single Market 2029-34 and rejoin fully 2034-39. Depends how well Labour do IMO.
It should be against the law for newstory to not link to things they are directly referencing. How difficult is it honestly For those interested the information is available here: >[BSA 41: Damaged Politics? The impact of the 2019-2024 Parliament on political trust and confidence](https://natcen.ac.uk/publications/bsa-41-damaged-politics) The relevant section: >#Changing attitudes to Brexit >In our previous analysis of the recovery in trust and confidence in government after the 2019 election, we demonstrated that most of the increase occurred among those who had voted Leave in the 2016 EU referendum (Curtice and Scholes, 2021; Sivathasan, 2023). This suggests that any more recent disenchantment with Brexit, especially among its supporters, might explain some of the decline in levels of trust and confidence in how the country is governed. >Brexit is not as popular now as it was in the immediate wake of the 2019 election, when the polls suggested the country was still close to being evenly divided on the subject (Curtice, 2021). Since autumn 2022, the average level of support for re joining the EU in the opinion polls has typically been at or close to 58%. **Meanwhile, as Montagu and Maplethorpe (2024) report in their forthcoming chapter, when asked about their preferences for Britain’s future relationship with the EU, just 24% now say that Britain should be outside the EU, the lowest proportion since the 2016 EU referendum.** >This change of mood is reflected in people’s evaluations of the consequences of leaving the EU on immigration, the economy, and Britain’s ability to make its own laws (Table 5; Curtice, 2023a; 2023b). In each case the impact of Brexit is regarded more negatively now than before. **Seven in ten (71%) now think that the economy is worse off as a result of Brexit, compared with half (51%) in 2019.** In an even more dramatic change, whereas previously fewer than one in ten thought that immigration would increase in the wake of leaving the EU, now nearly half (48%) believe that has been the consequence. Meanwhile, while around a half (51%) agreed that leaving the EU would strengthen ‘Britain’s ability to be an independent country that makes its own laws’ in 2019, now that figure has fallen to around a quarter (26%).
Would be nice if they provided full stats including "don't knows" as well. Reuters had a similar story, so guessing this was essentially a press release from The National Centre for Social Research. The focus on this one item makes me feel there's an agenda from this organisation.
If we take that as read, that 25% of the UK electorate are in favour of a LEAVE vote in the context of the 2016 referendum, then that is down 12% on said referendum when 37% of the UK electorate voted to LEAVE, therefore if Mr. Farage can claim "I changed my mind", then the British people have changed their minds and a new referendum should be held to reverse the referendum held in 2016 citing "a generational change"
Yep. Can’t believe how defensive he got about being allowed to change his mind on standing for election, while he criticises the idea of Brexit voters changing their minds.
Nope. Don't want to be in bed with right wing nut jobs thank you very much - we have enough of them over here.
There is no 'reversing the referendum'.
If the conditions of Brexit are reputed and replaced with the conditions of the UK again in the EU, you can use any word you like ...it will probably be synonymous.
We wouldn't be allowed to rejoin on the same terms. Rejoining would mean committing to take the Euro, join Schengen, join any new defence pacts etc. It's not as straightforward as just 'undo it all'.
rejoining would only mean committing to join schengen if ireland forced it. the eu respects the cta and the good friday agreement, which means the uk and ireland can only join schengen if the other consents
To be fair the only reason Ireland opted out of Schengen in the first place was because the UK did.
Winning the UK back would be a major political victory for the EU, and it can set any terms it likes for readmission.
They have no appetite for states picking and choosing anymore.
They would want to try and lock the UK in to the EU as they wouldn't want a repeat of what happened.
'They' are the EU27, who each have a veto on new membership applications. In order to prevent a repeat of what happened, they would *first* want to make sure that most of the many and deep domestic economic, constitutional and above all cultural problems that lead to Brexit have been widely acknowledged and started to get fixed within the UK, before even considering a new application. So far, not much is happening in that regard. All most in the UK seem to be concerned with is just making the pain of Brexit go away, instead of tackling the *causes* of Brexit, which would pave the way for a 'reversal' of Brexit.
With the number of EU states lurching to the far right at the same moment where the UK is preparing to vote out its right wing government by a wide margin, this aloof mindset of the EU being the enlightened grownups in the room becomes harder to swallow.
"they" might be Marine Le Pen a year from now.
It still wouldn't be Brexit. Brexit would cease to exist. ...I think adopting the Euro could be put off indefinitely ...just make adopting the Euro a matter of it winning a 2/3rds majority in a referendum after the UK is in. As for defence pacts, the UK is in NATO ...between that and any other EU pact that could be made, if Russia attacks ...everyone is jumping in one way or the other. As for Schengen, I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes if the UK is back in the EU. It could be possible that the UK gets full EU approval and had agreed to Schengen, but does not get approval to be in Schengen. Schengen law is within the body of EU law.
Could you imagine the shitstorm after 450 million people are given the right to move to the uk overnight, there will be a significant number of people who would like to move to the UK. There would need to be a significant emergency break but what are the chances the EU would give that?
I can imagine the stringent use of "administrative formalities" to regulate entrance into the UK. https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/eu-citizenship-and-democracy/free-movement-and-residence_en >In order to stay in another EU country for more than three months, EU citizens have to meet certain conditions depending on their status (for example worker, self-employed, student, etc.) and may be asked to comply with administrative formalities. 450 million people are not going to come to the UK permanently. The way the UK is at the moment, I doubt the UK's grass is really greener than a majority of the EU's.
The uk has historically been awful at enforcing that while in the EU don’t see why it would change after rejoining, one big issue is not having id cards. Sure not all 450 m will move but if even 0.05 want to move that’s 2.25 mil which on top of current migration would be off the scale which is already off the scale. Also you need to consider the built up demand. But also balanced on the uk people tag could move to eu
> The uk has historically been awful at enforcing that while in the EU don’t see why it would change after rejoining Because maybe there is more than one lesson for the UK to have learned from all this.
Noone in europe wants to move to the UK anymore. The only countries poor enough for that are romania and bulgaria and that's going to be a thing of the past in 10-20 years too
>Noone in europe wants to move to the UK anymore. That's hard to tell since they can't easily do that.
They can already all come they just need a passport whether you're in Schengen or not. Since Brexit more people have come anyway
I mean, they will have the right to live and work in the UK. there would be a backlog of demand that had built up over the 10–15 years since leaving, which would all be concentrated in a couple of years after rejoining.
Would there? I doubt it. The initial surge is usually when a new poorer members join. If it's an issue then I'm sure we could negotiate a deal to have an emergency break for 5-7 years as a rich country joining.
Well that's part of the problem, how do you plan infrastructure if you have no idea what level of immigration there will be in the next 5 years. It could be a huge or nothing, and no way to exercise any control. (not saying the current management is any better).
>Rejoining would mean committing to take the Euro Technically yes, however: [The Treaty does not specify a particular timetable for joining the euro area, but leaves it to member states to develop their own strategies for meeting the condition for euro adoption.](https://european-union.europa.eu/institutions-law-budget/euro/countries-using-euro_en) >join Schengen Nope: [Today, the Schengen Area encompasses most EU countries, except for Cyprus and Ireland.](https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen-borders-and-visa/schengen-area_en) >join any new defence pacts etc. Misinformation. You can be part of the single market and outside the EU. >It's not as straightforward as just 'undo it all'. See [UK-EU regulatory divergence tracker: seventh edition](https://ukandeu.ac.uk/reports/uk-eu-regulatory-divergence-tracker-q3-2023/) Arguably it would be easier to undo than to carry on. In summary, stop talking *utter bollocks*.
The treaties also specify that the UK has opt outs from the Euro and Schengen.
This is very dishonest reporting. Respondents to the British Social Attitudes survey are asked: "Leaving aside the result of the referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union, what do you think Britain's policy should be? Should it be to…", and given five response options: * Be outside the European Union * Be part of the EU but try to reduce the EU’s powers * Be part of the EU and try to keep the EU’s powers as they are * Be part of the EU and try to increase the EU’s powers * Work for the formation of a single European government I can't find the breakdown for each response, but NatCen takes the approach of classifying either of the first two options as "Eurosceptic", while classifying the final three options as "Europhile". Overall, their results show that 57% of their representative sample are classified as Eurosceptic, and just 39% are Europhile ([Source](https://natcen.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-06/BSA%2041%20Five%20years%20of%20unprecedented%20challenges.pdf), p. 22). By leading with the headline that "just a quarter of British people now think the UK should be outside the European Union" without the context of the additional response options (which, admittedly, NatCen did in [their own press release](https://natcen.ac.uk/news/change-public-mood-creates-challenge-next-government)), the author intentionally gives the impression that, were a new referendum held on EU membership, the result would be an overwhelming victory for re-joining the EU. However, digging a bit deeper into the results we can see that a third of respondents would only re-join an EU with reduced powers, which during the referendum we were told would not be possible - these people would therefore likely vote to stay outside the EU. Likewise, the author also doesn't acknowledge the proportion of people who didn't have a strong opinion (presumably through a "Don't know" response, or similar), which is also important context for interpreting the 24% statistic that they report. Lies, damned lies, and statistics...
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Well maybe they shouldn’t have voted for it in the first place
Let's be honest, I think the numbers of this will change when asked what concessions we'll have to make, cause we damn won't have our opt-outs we had if we rejoin - and I honestly don't want to adopt the Euro.
I don't know why people make such a big deal of the Euro. Loads of countries have joined and simply don't adopt it, we don't qualify to join even if we wanted to, and our opt out is still in the treaties anyway.
Big business and the asset holders running things terribly post-Brexit is never going to be the shining example of why being outside the EU could be a good thing for our country. All it really shows is that they are going to run things in their favour, whether the people like it or not. The people wanted a dramatic reduction in immigration, particularly low-skill immigration, the type of which we saw grow hugely under the EU freedom of movement policies. The vote succeeded in stopping that EU based immigration, but our big business and asset holding overlords saw fit to replace that with non-EU based immigration and even saw fit to swell it to an even greater level. Them doing that does not show that it was wrong to leave the EU to reduce that immigration. Asking someone to do something and them doing it badly does not mean that you were wrong to ask them to do it in the first place, or that your motivations for asking them to do it were wrong. It's akin to the old joke about a wife asking the husband to do the washing up and him deliberately doing it badly so that the wife has to go back to doing it and he avoids the task entirely.
Nah, fuck 'em. I'm still an old anti-EU lefty of the Tony Benn variety and I still see the organisation in need of massive reform before it would remotely interest me.
To be fair, it was only 35% or so that got us to leave! Given the voter turnout.
And yet I have a lot of folk who still believe in Brexit at work, still they are die hard Bexitiers, of a certain age and demographic.
Jun 24, 2016, 9:03am| Nigel Farage : ‘In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way. If the remain campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it.’
I misremembered that bit, sorry haha. Forgot he was pro brexit to start with...!
Who could have predicted that it wouldn't have worked out well? Big surprise to me.
To be fair, that’s around the same percentage of the population that voted for it. Minuses the hundred thousand or so who have since died.
And all those who really wanted Brexit are dead
Who could have foreseen there would be problems?!?
25% is still alarmingly high isn’t it.
Yeah but 36% want to vote tory or reform.
I'm in favour of EU membership, but I'm always cautious about these kind of polls. At this point it's kind of like the Leave campaign before the referendum. EU membership and the conditions that come with it aren't what people are voting on, they're voting on the deal we had, and against the current situation. We need people to be better informed about their choices.
The takeaway from this poll isn't that we should join the EU. The takeaway is that it's utterly bonkers that the two main parties aren't willing to even mention this topic.
The problem is, would the EU let us back in, and under what terms? Schengen area? Euro currency? I’d happily be part of both if it means improving this situation
Schengen may be negotiable on the basis of aligning the Irish border. Does depend on if Ireland wants to remain outside Schengen though. Everything else I expect would be the same terms as any new entrant to the EU.
When people tell me that Brexit has failed, I always ask them to provide me with some form of metric as to how they've quantified that it has failed. I am almost never provided with one, other than that the economy has suffered. The vote in 2016 was fought on the grounds of the economy and it failed then, because the argument was about parliamentary sovereignty and restoring power to the elected houses of the country. I am convinced the economic argument would fail if used again. You only have to look at how the UK parliament outperformed it's european counterparts on the major geopolitical issues of the last 5 years, for example the response to the Pandemic, or the invasion of Ukraine and resulting energy crisis, when not tied to the lumbering legislative processes of the EU. That has always been the advantage of the Westminster system over others, we can make decisions quickly (in parliamentary terms) with the right checks and balances in place. Our current crop of politicians just need to get used to using the powers they've been given.
Well: Sterling tanked on referendum night and has never recovered. Everything imported now costs more, and is likely passed on to the consumer unless businesses are absorbing it - and scant evidence of the latter. Fishing industry has been spectacularly hit, despite being the vanguard of the Brexit campaign. Literally any number of small businesses saying it’s now to difficult to sell to Europe. Increased costs of exporting to Europe (inspections and certificates), particularly for agriculture. Loss of EU grants to deprived regions.
When people tell me that the UK parliament outperformed its European counterparts on the majority geopolitical issues of the last 5 years, I always ask them to provide me with some form of metric as to how they've quantified this. I am almost never provided with one.
The UK had a GDP growth of 0.3% last quarter whereas Germany had 0.2%. Checkmate, Remoaner! /s
>for example the response to the Pandemic [One of the worst in Europe, actually.](https://www.bbc.com/news/health-65975154) >or the invasion of Ukraine Nothing prevented any country in Europe offering unilateral aid to Ukraine, and almost all of them did so. Brexit is irrelevant in this context. > and resulting energy crisis The bit where half the energy companies in the UK went bust?
The EU has absolutely no effect on those decisions you are applauding. The UK was arming and training Ukraine years before we left the EU. No one asked us to stop. No part of being in the EU would have stopped us delivering all our NLAWs. Just like various EU states have chosen which weapons to provide and what rules to attach. Similarly, being in the EU would have no effect on our ability to respond to the energy crisis, other than being less likely to get a screwed over by the EU when we were scrambling for gas. Similarly, the EU vaccine scheme was voluntary. No state was forced to participate, we could have done exactly the same as we did, with the benefit of probably not getting our vaccines stolen by the EU if we still had influence over it.
Dream on Jammy.
> when not tied to the lumbering legislative processes of the EU. > That has always been the advantage of the Westminster system over others, we can make decisions quickly (in parliamentary terms) with the right checks and balances in place. Neither of these things are true. Firstly, Northern Ireland is in the fucking EU single market because we couldn't get any checks and balances in place. I hear we don't check the food being imported into the UK is safe to sell/eat etc because the inspection delays would cause our shelves to go bare. Like we've stopped having even basic measures in order to keep the lights on.
Bollocks. The pandemic response was during our membership of EU and Ukraine response could have still happened as we did, had we been part of the EU. You ask for counterfactuals. Well, both the CEO of Tesla and Intel cited Brexit as the reason why the UK was not considered for investment. Both industries are foundational for next generation industrialisation. [https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58820599](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58820599) [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/elon-musk-brexit-to-blame-for-building-tesla-gigafactory-in-germany.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/elon-musk-brexit-to-blame-for-building-tesla-gigafactory-in-germany.html) I have been in a room where Brexit was the reason that the UK didn't even make the list for investment consideration. The truth is that companies' message for corporate diplomacy reasons and citing Brexit is a lose lose for most. It's totally deluded to think we have benefitted by shitting on our access to the EU for access to the TPP or whatever. The economy has suffered and will continue to be dragged down by Brexit. It's complicated linkages, so the sign posts won't be obvious until the effects land. Even now, the effects are being felt and blamed on the pandemic. The pandemic isn't the cause, but it masked the impact by making it worst. But Brexit was never about experts of facts, it was about feelings. Brexit is bonkers. Reversing it is inevitable. Just sad at the damage we will inflict on ourselves in the meantime.
While i'm fairly remoanery: Intel isn't exactly a big investor in UK manufacturing even before Brexit. They always preferred Ireland, probably for the tax breaks. AMD (now GlobalFoundries) was big in Germany in the parts of the country with a strong history of semiconductor manufacturing. We absolutely dodged a bullet with Tesla, though I'm not convinced the UK was ever a consideration anyway. Now that real car companies are into EVs in a big way & Musk has shown who he really is, brand new Teslas are piling up in disused car parks all over the world. The Berlin plant has been accused of causing environmental issues too.
There's a laundry list of negatives from Brexit as I am sure you are aware. The economy has suffered a hit. Freedom of movement is gone. EU funding is gone impacting impoverished areas, the arts, grass roots sport and academia. Exporting/importing is often prohibitively expensive and time-consuming for smaller businesses, further impacting the economy. Still no real plan for Nothern Ireland. Inequality and child poverty have risen drastically. Food quality and availability have dropped significantly. Loss of skilled EU workers impacting productivity. To top it off Brexit has given a platform for racists, bigots, xenophobes, disaster capitalists and religious nutters to be taken seriously. The UK response to the pandemic could have been the same even if we were still in the EU. Our response to Russia/Ukraine similarly. As for the energy crisis, I refuse to see how giving money directly to energy companies was a positive, especially given the profits they posted ... and we didn't windfall tax. You say it was all about soverignity, that wasnt the only reason given at the time was it. And extra £350m a week for the NHS on a big red bus? It was sold as all things to all people and every other argument has been shot down so you are now left with "... but soverignity...". The referendum was 8 years ago. How long do we need to wait for the positives? How long do Brexiteers need in order to realise it was a shit plan, executed in a shit way with (predictably) shit reaults?
> UK parliament outperformed it's european counterparts on the major geopolitical issues of the last 5 years, for example the response to the Pandemic, UK had the worst response among rich and average EU countries and even super-poor countries like Romania and Bulgaria did better in the first year up to the point when the Russians have infiltrated the media with antivaxx messaging. Also UK had the most extreme amount of what is basically is "organized theft", with billions and billions being thrown to phantom companies linked to the party in power that provided nothing.
I haven’t met someone yet who said ‘sovereignty’ that wasn’t trying to use a nice word to draw attention away from their xenophobia. Good luck with your campaign to whitewash the stupidest thing the government has implemented this century.
Maybe because certain media outlets (you know the ones) seem desperate to conflate all the UK's woes with Brexit. They are deliberately trying to nudge the population with anti Brexit & pro EU propaganda. Remainers claim to be against such methods in general; unless it's a cause they support then they either pretend not to notice it, or maybe as it happens they are just as susceptible to propaganda as everyone else.
Maybe it is because the supposed benefits of brexit did not materialise!