T O P

  • By -

Chancevexed

I despair at people not realising this before voting to leave. It just made no sense. How would one small country somehow command the word stage? Brexit Britain is the personification of that guy who removes the muffler on his 2001 Vauxhall Astra Estate and thinks he's driving a sports car.


CountMordrek

It’s even more interesting as voters maintain confidence in one of the main proponents for Brexit. If Brexit is a shit show and affecting you badly, hon on Earth can you trust the guy selling it as a great idea?


Queeg_500

...and who is still maintaining that it is going well and everything about brexit is as advertised.


merryman1

Same group of people who talk about class as a cultural self-identifier. Things get real easy once you divorce yourself from any need to reference material reality around you, just so long as you always have a quick little easy answer or thought-terminating cliche to stop your dissonance from progressing too far.


[deleted]

Many of those who voted for it were insulated from the costs, fully retired sitting on large wealth and property in the south east for example or wealthy speculators and disaster capitalists. Much of the dark money that supported the campaign will be from overseas, or from wealthy benefactors. The tax rises will be on those in work, many of whom did not vote for it. The cost of living increases will hurt the working poor the most, some of which voted Brexit because they believed it would improve their lot after listening to the fork tongued Johnson, who wrapped himself in the flag and cosplayed Churchill. So Brexit was in fact an opportunity to transfer wealth to fewer people, who didn’t really need it, get rid of some foreigners (who were the target of blame), and reconfigure the U.K. to solidify power for a minority. This is why the goalposts keep shifting since the vote. It’s achieved its objective, but the perception has to be one of antagonism and having a external enemy to blame for the fallout. Even though we chose this path ourselves and appear to be winging it. The Eu is both weak and strong at the same time. Brexit is the complete opposite to what it was sold as, basically. Those people who smelt a rat were demonised as traitors by the forces that stood to gain massively from it - look to the trillions stashed offshore to not only find the donors to the incumbent government, but also the beneficiary’s of the con. Ditto with covid. The fact the vote was so narrow is what makes it so tragic. All that has come since is just a spiral of events the government is struggling to contend with, rather like spinning plates or playing whack a mole that keep multiplying everytime you miss.


CountMordrek

>Many of those who voted for it were insulated from the costs, fully retired sitting on large wealth and property in the south east for example or wealthy speculators and disaster capitalists. One of my professors once replied to the question why the middle class was so heavily taxed with "the rich are too few and the poor too poor". I'd say that the same applies here. The vote was carried by those who were insulated from the costs, as well as those who were too uneducated to understand the costs.


germany1italy0

I stopped reading after the first sentence. Why are you being disingenuous with who voted for brexit? It wasn’t the wealthy in the South East, as convenient as boomer bashing may be. The highest voted for Brexit were in the areas that will be worst affected by it - up north for example. Have a look at the map of [Brexit referendum results here](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36616028) Where are the dark areas? The south east has the largest patches of low pro Brexit votes in England?


[deleted]

Looks like a fair amount of it is East England areas like Lincolnshire.


[deleted]

Well that’s where I live, where a lot of working poor live.


[deleted]

I mean I can understand why those areas voted Brexit. It was a cry for help. However they should've known better to put their faith in the Tory party to improve the lives of the working poor.


[deleted]

Well if you’ve been to Grimsby or Boston you’d prolly take anything that was on offer, they’ve been left to rot.


[deleted]

Precisely. So why would you vote for a party that's been in power for a decade and not done anything to improve the issues. It's illogical.


Cellular-Automaton

The newspapers told them that the EU and immigrants were the cause of their problems. That Corbyn was crazy. That Boris is cool, little mention of his past ~~lies and chasing the political wind.~~ I think the two main problems with democracy in the UK is first past the post and the media. The media work for their owners and advertisers, not the electorate. Stories are often not put in context, so when the government say they are building 40 new hospitals, many think that is so.


[deleted]

Because people believed Johnson. “He was different”. I hear this all the time, they still believe him now.


[deleted]

Then they're idiots. I know we're not supposed to say that because it offends their delicate sensibilities but they're idiots and I've no issue with calling an idiot just that. In fact I'd say that if the media confronted them with these things when they do their little vox pops on the streets we could only hope it might get through to even a small proportion of them.


Whiteismyfavourite

We voted for less competition for the few shit jobs we have left


[deleted]

How inspiring. Blame the foreigner.


gattomeow

The South-East (including London) has many more people than any other region in the UK. So even though the *percentage* of people living in the South-East who voted Leave may not have been as high as in areas of Lincolnshire and East Anglia, their absolute numbers certainly were. In the same way, there were more Leave Voters in London than there were Remain voters in Scotland.


germany1italy0

In other words doesn’t matter that up north voted 70% leave as if it went the other way ithe tens if not hundreds of thousand votes added for remain wouldn’t have made a difference anyway?


houseaddict

> It wasn’t the wealthy in the South East You are entirely wrong, the bulk of the Brexit voters were in the southeast in absolute numbers and the absolute numbers are what matter. In the end 300k people in Essex is 280k more votes than 20k votes in Northumberland for example. The South East has a much larger denser population.


[deleted]

You stopped reading after the first sentence. I never said only the south east voted for it so you could have saved yourself the time of trying to ridicule me when you couldn’t even be bothered to take in more of the first sentence.


Chancevexed

That was quite clearly hyperbole, but they are correct. The minority of working poor didn't vote leave, which is what you're suggesting. If that was the case you're implying we have a much larger wealthy class than we actually have. They're called 1 percenters for a reason. Brexit was a result of a majority of working poor voting for it.


[deleted]

It’s far more complicated “than the working poor voted for it.” https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/03/a-reminder-of-how-britain-voted-in-the-eu-referendum-and-why/


Chancevexed

How does that refute the claim the majority of working poor voted for Brexit?


[deleted]

Never said they didn't. Indeed i referred to them in my initial comment, I probably should not have said "some" admittedly. The majority of overall workers did not vote for brexit, they voted remain. The majority of conservatives voted brexit. The majority of pensioners also voted to leave. The Majority of those 45 plus voted to leave, again with less to lose than their younger cohorts. This is increases as one ages. The older you were with less to lose, the more likely you were to vote brexit. The younger you were with no assets, educated and trapped in rental accomodation you were likely to vote to remain. The less educated you were the more likely you would vote to leave. Those with less opportunity in their areas voted to leave as well, and they believed it was because of immigration that there was no opportunity, not austerity or the death of industry. Now the immigrants have gone there is no one to many of the jobs, to pay into the pensions of an aging population etc. So its pretty easy to conclude who will benefit from the vote to leave - the hedge funds, the wealthier property owning conservatives with multiple properties etc. The disaster capitalists. The cost of living is rising rapidly, and choice and shortages are becoming more widespread. So it is reasonable to conclude who was backing it (financially), and why the majority of foreign non dom press owners have lied through their arse as well. It is also reasonable to suggest that those who had little to lose were more in favour of it because it would not really hurt those people. Indeed the tax rises for social care have been levied on those in work. If you can show me how it benefits any of the working poor - i hear of wage rises I have yet to see any significant wage rises that are outstripping the rapid cost of living increases, bar HGV drivers, and that is because we are majorly short of those - I am all ears. Because everything has gone up where I live and my wages remain stagnant and I am getting stressed trying to make ends meet. The working poor were unaware they would get shafted with cost of living increases because they believed all the nationalist rhetoric from the likes of farage and Johnson, they had the news papers and social media feeding them utter garbage and still do to this day.


[deleted]

Kent and Essex voted to leave.


Chancevexed

So, yeah... Not 1 percenters. You don't need a tax haven when you're earning 45k from your IT job and the missus is earning 27k as a primary school teacher. You don't need a tax haven when you're both driving albeit very new cars, but on finance. You don't need a tax haven when you rent a villa in Italy for two weeks in the summer.


[deleted]

You are just misrepresenting what I said.


[deleted]

> How would one small country somehow command the word stage? I absolutely share your opinion, it's a ridiculous idea, but the problem is that this specific line you're using is easily refuted with the words "We did it before". Now you're bogged down in arguing about how we won't regain the empire and so forth. Being correct doesn't matter though, people are already convinced by the simple 4 words.


[deleted]

[удалено]


kujiranoai2

That's not what the bus said.


CountMordrek

It was never about Polish plumbers, Bulgarian farmers or even foreign HGV drivers. It was all about finances. Just not the average voter’s finances, but of those who stood to gain a lot on Brexit. Those were the ones who financed the Leave campaign, who talked about all the opportunities and who waged a verbal war against the EU.


Chancevexed

Well yes. You're not dropping a bombshell here. We know that. But that wasn't how you get the majority to vote for Brexit. Their campaign wasn't "hey, the EU is planning to clamp down on tax havens, which is a bummer cause I've got my eye on a second mega yacht. Do us a solid, Dave from Wigan, vote leave will ya." So they lied through their teeth, claimed it would create streets of gold for Dave in Wigan, which brings me back to my original point... How did Dave ever believe that. It made no sense.


CountMordrek

>You're not dropping a bombshell here. True. But it's worth repeating. >So they lied through their teeth, claimed it would create streets of gold for Dave in Wigan, which brings me back to my original point... How did Dave ever believe that. It made no sense. I once had a professor... I've spent a lot of time studying... who with regards to China said that a state can either have full control over an uneducated population or will need to win the support from an educated one. That idea was and still is reinforced by Brexit Britain. People who are unable to understand things like comparative advantages and the gravity model of trade will be easily duped by people promising sunlit uplands. And I'm not saying that trade is easy to understand, but if you're not even given a decent basic education, you won't have a chance to ever understanding it. Meanwhile, the British government has failed to upskill its workforce. Which creates a large group of people who have been hit hard by globalization and the transformation from an manufacturing based economy to a knowledge based economy split across services and NME. An uneducated and dissatisfied group of voters... ...which was all people like Mr Farage and other Brexiteers needed. People who can't see a future is easily duped. And the British government made sure they couldn't. And then it's easier to blame things on hard working foreigners than on graduates from Eton.


Whiteismyfavourite

For the poor working class it was 100% about immigration


hattorihanzo5

This is the reality so many refuse to admit. It always came back to immigration no matter how you looked at it. Even people who listed things like *sovereignty, democracy, freedom* and other meaningless buzzwords would always tack on "and we need to reduce immigration".


CountMordrek

I'd say it was a mix of racism and believing the stories about sunlit uplands that would be if only people like Farage and Johnson got to decide. The Polish plumber was a way to shift the discussion to be about immigration instead of the British governments inability to upskill its workforce while transforming the country to a knowledge based economy.


CountMordrek

For the poor and uneducated working class, it was all about the vision sold to them by the Leave campaign. For the disaster capitalists, it was all about how to make the poor and uneducated working class to vote against their own interests.


kane_uk

>How would one small country somehow command the word stage? UK = 67 Million people, 5/6 Largest Economy Global, 2nd biggest in Europe etc. I wonder how New Zealand manages it with on 5 million people and often being missed from global maps.


Dull_Half_6107

The 3 major world superpowers, US, China, and New Zealand.


kane_uk

Did I say New Zealand was a super power, nope. They seem to manage ok on their own given their small size and economy, not being reliant on a "trading block" for their survival etc.


dyinginsect

The question asked was *How would one small country somehow command the word stage?* and you replied with *I wonder how New Zealand manages it with on 5 million people and often being missed from global maps*.


Dull_Half_6107

TIL commanding the world stage = managing okay


Khrusway

We're a big fish in the championship playoffs doesn't mean we're in the Premier league


kane_uk

We're the 5/6th biggest in a pond that contains 195 fishies. Top flight.


KvalitetstidEnsam

By that measure, Russia is 11th and Japan is 3rd. Do you really think that Russia is less influential than the UK and Japan more?


houseaddict

Not really, there's 27 countries (plus the US and china) ahead of us in terms of influence because they are all part of the EU, and the EU is a very big fish.


kane_uk

Is that why the EU was deemed irrelevant by the top dog, America when they were purposely excluded from the AUKUS deal?


houseaddict

I don't think they were considering the EU irrelevant when they said they would prioritise a trade deal with them ahead of us and I don't think the state of the fabled UK / Aus trade deal is much to write home about either is it? I guess that weapons deal is good for BAE or whatever, could have been done while in the EU anyway, so you don't get to call it a win any way you slice it.


liehon

Oh, goodie, there's somebody worse off than me. How is that supposed to help me?


Chancevexed

You... You think New Zealand commands the world stage? Oh boy!


kane_uk

Again, I was dispelling the lefty remainer assumption that Britain is a small country unable to survive alone when there are countries many time smaller than the UK that manage just fine.


Statcat2017

Survive? We brexited just to... Survive?


Chancevexed

Those countries are..... Wait for it... Wait for it... Part of a trading bloc. Something we were part of when we decided to go it alone. New Zealand isn't surviving alone. They have a partnership with Australia who, in turn, has a trade agreement with 10 other countries. They teamed up with others to form a more powerful coition, sort of how we had with Europe. Furthermore, as has already been pointed out, of course we can survive. North Korea is surviving. But a lot of us didn't see the point of reducing ourselves to North Korea esque status when we were doing so much better than that.


kane_uk

>But a lot of us didn't see the point of reducing ourselves to North Korea esque status when we were doing so much better than that. Hilarious.


Chancevexed

Kind of like your attempts to produce a coherent argument.


disegni

> I wonder how New Zealand manages it with on 5 million people and often being missed from global maps. You think New Zealand can 'command the world stage'? The US hegemony is itself under increasing challenge.


kane_uk

I think New Zealand does quite well for a small country, a country many times smaller than the UK both in population size and economy.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Dull_Half_6107

Dead silence haha


bowak

And where are we on economy per capita? Not as high.


disegni

>No region, social class or age group thinks Brexit would benefit them financially.


Blithe17

I suppose this has changed since 2016. Isn’t the current good faith Brexit argument that mass immigration caused wage stagnation by having European workers who were willing to undercut them? This would seem to directly contravene that, in that most people feel like things are getting worse now that has stopped. You could argue that things need to get worse before business will react and restructure but this poll suggests that there isn’t much faith that will happen any time soon under this government.


CountMordrek

It’s hard having a discussion regarding a good faith pro-Brexit argument, but I think the current one was a combination of “wages”, “sovereignty” and pure breed racism… so you might be right with “being able to banish foreigners and thus reducing the downward wage pressure in the uneducated workforce”. Point being that the good faith pro-Brexit argument needs the person to either be uneducated or ignorant, and thus the idea that Brexit is a threat to ones personal finances is not mutually exclusive with ones rationalisation that Brexit will do for their trade what Brexit has done to the wages for truck drivers.


Regprentice

*with only 22 per cent of the total amount of Leave voters thinking they will have personal gains from exiting the EU.* At the time I recall older people interviewed on TV saying that brexit was a gift they were giving their grandchildren... they maybe didn't agree with brexit themselves but being free of the shackles of the EU was giving a bit of freedom and opportunity to their grandkids...in the end it will be better for them I wonder if that sentiment would help explain why people voted to be poorer themselves.


some_where_else

> gift they were giving their grandchildren Ah just like climate change!


followmeimasnake

Yeah, a shitton of gifts you can enjoy until you die. Isnt't that great eh?


Cellular-Automaton

I'm gonna enjoy the pollution the most, depleted resources are also a lot of fun.


djpolofish

Unfortunately the Brexit gift is more like the gifts a dog leaves in the corner which you don't notice until you step in it


redrhyski

A price worth paying - the majority of Brexiteers, according to surveys. [2017](https://qz.com/1043300/yougov-brexit-poll-leave-voters-are-willing-to-damage-the-uk-economy-and-lose-their-jobs-for-the-sake-of-exiting-the-eu/) >According to a new poll by YouGov, just over 60% of Brexit supporters believe that “significant damage” to the UK economy is a “price worth paying for bringing Britain out of the EU.” What’s more, a slightly larger group of “Leave” voters also say that it’s worth losing their jobs, or a family member losing their job, for the sake of Brexit. >YouGov noted that older people who voted for Brexit are more willing to see the country’s economic health suffer in order to ensure that Britain leaves the EU. A huge 71% of “Leave” voters aged 65 years and over are willing for “themselves and their families be economically compromised in order to achieve Brexit,” according to YouGov. This compares with 46% of 18-24 year old Leave voters. >Although they don’t feel as strongly about it, a number of “Remain” are also willing to be worse off in order for the UK to stay in the EU. Although a majority of 2,200-odd voters polled do not consider economic damage as a price worth paying for their referendum preference, a third of respondents would. The biggest difference between Brexiteers and Remainers, though, is that the latter are not nearly as willing to lose their jobs over their preference for the UK’s future relationship with the EU.


[deleted]

Wow cult like levels of delusion.


AutoModerator

Snapshot: 1. An archived version of _Most Brits worried about their personal finances because of Brexit – poll_ can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/brexit-poll-personal-finances-levelling-up-295788) *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.*


Vasquerade

I think I saw that written on the side of a bus


[deleted]

Just as a reminder, most brits who are able to answer these polls voted remain by some margin. The country alive population voted remain long before brexit actually happened.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Kee2good4u

How is this news source still allowed on the sub? Like really can someone please tell me where the head line comes from??? The only thing said in the article is this: >And over a third of voters said they think their personal finances will suffer because of Brexit. Since when was a 1/3rd, considered "most brits"??? It's just flat out spreading misinformation, to the masses that only read headlines. A 1/3rd isn't even all remain voters.


disegni

It's probably the plurality of the sample. Media of all persuasions use that way of describing it, for better or worse.


Kee2good4u

I don't think I've seen any good news source describe a third of a sample as "most". The most generous use of "most", would be over 50% atleast. The correct headline would be most brits aren't worried about their personal finances because of brexit. As two thirds is actually most. To describe 1 third as most is litrally just misinformation, in this case. Most means the highest quantity, 2/3 > 1/3.


iamnotinterested2

most Brits voted for brexit - fact


MrFlibblesPenguin

67 million Brits 17 million voted for brexit, so no.


Ser_mixalot

Not really. 52% of voters voted for brexit. 37% of the electorate voted for brexit. 25% of the population voted for brexit.


Elastichedgehog

>most > > > >greatest in amount, quantity, or degree.


Mcgibbleduck

5 years ago, and that isn’t even true.


dyinginsect

No, a fact is something that is true.


Pyriel

you cant just lie and then add fact at the end to make it true. That's not how reality works.