Oh wait, no, it's just that absolutely everything got harder, more expensive, more nationalistic, more pathetic and sad.
It's all incredibly depressing.
Here's hoping our kids manage to vote us back in as soon as those Tory f's are out.
Btw, things aren't as split down party lines as they may seem. Half the Tory party are Europhiles, and I know many of my Labour friends are anti-EU in a libertarian small government sense.
The sad fact is that it's exactly these people (in the Midlands, NE, those on lower wages, in rural communities, etc) who (generalising a bit, not much) voted out - these are the communities who will be hit hardest.
It explains a minor boost on the left, not main leaver sentiment.
Here's to another decade of Labour being out of government. (Again).
IIRC the forecast economic damage is lost opportunity for growth rather than immediate losses, and any actual immediate losses could be easily dismissed (especially by this lot) as “COVID losses, not Brexit”.
We'll see. Personally, I'll always feel and be European. I reckon we'll be back.
Of course you could say that Brexit has nothing to do with British culture.
It was driven by the same core concerns about national sovereignty.
EDIT: I meant "peculiarly British", but I haven't the heart to edit that typo.
Is that language really necessary? Such divisive language doesn't help the debate at all. As mentioned below, it's also totally incorrect. Labour heartlands voted massively for leave. Labour and Tories went into the election saying they would honour the referendum vote. Tories cleaned up an 80 seat majority in December 2019 winning many Labour seats campaigning on the goal to get Brexit done.
Brexit has happened. I voted remain but I've moved on. Harbouring such negativity and pessimism isn't healthy.
It's even more ridiculous than America. The whole thing's rigged, 60% of the country didn't want the Tories handling this and somehow they have an 80 seat majority!
New old people are created every day. So I wouldn't necessarily count on it.
I hope you're right though.
Europe is a tricky problem, but the way Brexit specifically has happened (Lie, Damned Lies, and fake statistics - at best) means the only real lesson from this is that referenda are truly disastrous for complex policy decisions.
Yeah, I think that's definitely the big lesson.
I feel it's exacerbated by decades of tabloid propaganda.
It’s easy to say “they condemned themselves” and they _were_ naive to buy into the cake-type Brexit narrative, but if the choice had been between status quo and “we’ll try to negotiate this sort of attainable deal”, people would have had some idea on what they were voting for. As it was, it could have been anything from Norway+ to autarky.
Fun fact: this is actually how we got the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. This is commonly derided as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, but the actual legislative history is that the EU had already negotiated and passed identical term lengths five years prior. They also added a reciprocality clause, granting the same term lengths in the EU to any country that also extended terms in their own jurisdiction. This is a ratchet: there's no mechanism for an American or European to object to longer terms, aside from unilateral withdrawl that will disadvantage the first-moving party. In practice, the US agreed to longer terms, because what else are they going to do? Let France or Germany have more protection for their films than the US has?
(DMCA Section 1201 happened in a similar manner, but replace the EU with the WTO. The US wouldn't pass anti-circumvention laws first, so they snuck it into TRIPS, and then used that to force the DMCA into being. The beauty of international law is that you always can find another institution to launder policy through. If there was no TRIPS, then maybe they could have bundled it into NAFTA.)
People don't like it when they object to something, and their elected representatives try and shut down their concerns. That makes them feel disenfranchised. Brexit was the inevitable result of politicians doing unpopular things and using the EU as an excuse for it. Eventually, someone was going to say "why don't we just not have international agreements"? Bonus points if you are actually one of those politicians looking to get out of, say, an upcoming tax agreement. Cause the problem (anti-democratic ratcheting), sell the solution (economic isolationism)!
the EU parliament can't do any of these things
it can't even propose legislation
at best it's a rubber stamp for the Council and the Commission
The solution to the EU being "undemocratic" is to make it democratic: move decision-making power to the European Parliament and away from member states. You can have democracy or soverignity but not both.
I think there is a decent chance that sometime in the next few years there will be another Scottish independence referendum, that this time "Yes" will win, and then an independent Scotland will apply to rejoin the EU.
I think Scottish independence, combined with demographic changes in Northern Ireland – Catholics are likely to outnumber Protestants, possibly as early as this year's census, but if not in 2021, then almost certainly in 2031 – have a decent chance of leading to Irish reunification in the next couple of decades.
If Scotland and a united Ireland are in the EU, will the United Kingdom of England and Wales still want to stay out? (And will they still keep the "United" in their name?)
(Even Welsh independence might happen eventually, but I think that is a fair way further off than Scottish independence or Irish reunification.)
I must admit that part of me likes the irony of the UK "forging it's own path" resulting Westminster losing power and it's states gaining independence.
As a side note, I think it's better to refer to the northern Irish as republicans and unionists. The division is due to the partition of Ireland and not religious beliefs. The division lines might be the same but religious labels add irrelevant impactions. You don't have to be Catholic to be in favour of reunionification and vice versa.
The reason I spoke of Catholics and Protestants is because there is a religious background question ("what religion you were raised in") on the Northern Ireland Census, and it is widely expected to flip in this year's census, and if not this year, then almost surely by the next census in 2031.
By contrast, the Northern Ireland Census doesn't directly ask about whether one identifies as "republican/nationalist" or "unionist". The closest thing it comes to that is the question of whether one identifies as British, Irish, Northern Irish, or some combination of those three. But it isn't clear how exactly the answers to that question map to the community divide.
Religious background doesn't exactly map to community affiliation, but it mostly does. One thing to keep in mind is the distinction between small-u unionism (pragmatic support for the continuation of the status quo) and Big-U Unionism (support for traditional Unionist symbols such as the Orange Order parades, 12th of July celebrations, etc) – a decent percentage of Catholics support the former, very few (if any) Catholics support the later. Likewise, there are some Protestants who would vote for Irish reunification but very many of those would not want to associate with traditional nationalist community symbols.
> The division lines might be the same but religious labels add irrelevant impactions.
I think, historically, the religious division did play a major role in the partition of Ireland in the early 1920s. Many unionists saw Unionism and Protestantism as going hand-in-hand. The Republican/Nationalist side placed less emphasis on religion – although the vast majority of Republicans/Nationalists were Catholics, there was a small Protestant minority among them. Now, as the decades have passed, with continuing secularisation, religion is less an issue than it used to be, but it still lurks in the background. The DUP was originally strongly linked to the Free Presbyterian Church, although the DUP has de-emphasised the religious linkage as time goes by. Their traditionalist moral stances (anti-abortion, anti-LGBT rights, etc) have even won them the support of the ultra-conservative end of Northern Irish Catholicism, but that's only about 2% of the electorate. Still more than the number of Protestants voting for Sinn Fein or SDLP.
The reason I mention it is because I've encountered too many people in continental Europe who assume the Troubles were purely due differences in religious beliefs which seems absurd given how similar those two branches of catholicism are. I realize it's entirely based on my personal experience but I've seen it too often to ignore!
I agree that it is a complex situation, and that while religion is a major factor, it is not the only factor, and painting it as purely about religion is an oversimplification. On the other hand, I worry that many people oversimplify it in the other direction, and try to present it as if it has nothing to do with religion, which is false.
> which seems absurd given how similar those two branches of catholicism are
I think you mean Christianity, not Catholicism here.
Britain and Ireland have a long history of religious conflict and sectarianism. In recent decades, the intensity of that conflict has dropped down dramatically, in large part due to secularisation. But decades ago, it was much more intense.
That conflict was never primarily about religious doctrine, although religious doctrine still had a big role to play in it. A lot of it was about the fear that Catholicism was a means for foreign Catholic political powers – Spain, France, etc – to take over. It was also about who was the rightful king – Catholic King James VII and II was removed in a coup in 1688 and replaced with his Protestant daughter Mary and son-in-law William of Orange. James had an authoritarian ruling style, which caused a lot of conflicts with Parliament; but he was also an advocate of religious toleration, which was deeply unpopular with the majority of Protestants; those two factors combined led to his removal. James sought to regain the throne, and many Irish Catholics supported him, along with France. His supporters (the Jacobites) fought a war (with French help) to gain control of Ireland (the Williamite War of 1689 to 1691), but lost. (His supporters included some Protestants, especially conservatives who viewed the removal of the king in a coup as a threat to the legitimacy of the monarchy.) Protestant Unionists in Northern Ireland still celebrate their side's victories in that war to this day, particularly on the 12th of July.
Tribalism prevails, humans have no fix. Perhaps in another reality or dimension it is conceivable for people to come together and form a truly resourceful world government.
Wait till you see how the lack of world coordination keeps this virus thriving in half of the planet. While we plot beautiful statistics to show which tribe has less cases in a non-uniform response.
Hail the great UK for awakening the UKIP with their fantastic referendum promise to reduce pest immigrants to hundreds. The UK had it long coming, the country lives in the 19th century, never moved towards becoming a modern republic. And now, people are shocked we voted out of the EU. Bad news is old news.
It is the UK's tradition to be a lone fighter in favour of customary nationalistic tribalism and island mentality. Worse of it is that it ended up waking up the dormant retarded far right around the world. Hell yea! great way to start 2021 UK!.
The EU has really been quite a convenient scapegoat, not just in the UK. I wonder if politicians on all sides will/can continue to blame the EU now that the UK has "full control". I have a feeling that, yes, they will.
As much as I consider myself a pan-European, the European institutions, governance and government unfortunately make for a (mostly deservedly) great political target.
However that seems not be happening, nor does there seem to be any will towards it.
It seems people actually quite like each other, and they like to be able to visit each other, and trade with each other, even though they speak different language or have different religion. In fact in the world today, tribalism seems to becoming more and more on fringe.
I don’t believe for a second that people voted for Brexit because of tribalism. Some might have, but they were definitely a tiny minority.
I don't know about your other examples, but there is definitely some will toward Scotland voting themselves out of the UK. There was already a referendum about it a few years ago, and there has been more talk again recently since Scottish voters didn't want Brexit and many would love for Scotland to be able to break from the UK and rejoin the EU.
I bet even most people voting for Brexit didn’t want this hard “we are on our own, and we don’t care for nobody” type Brexit as you would expect if tribalism prevailed (as evident that most people even in favor of hard no deal Brexit still favor CANZUK).