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Comment by tsujp | Hacker News Reader

As a Brit this (Brexit) pisses me off to no end. The fact that my ability to trivially work and live in Europe is now robbed from me because of the Brexit referendum based on lies to sway the masses to vote for it means dreams I have about essentially trying even country in Europe for work, play, and general life is a lot harder.

Yeah, no one likes a vote not turning out in their favour (in case it isn't obvious I voted to remain) but this feels a lot more life changing to me (a 27 year old) because I still have a lot of my life ahead of me.

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What makes it even worse is that Cameron made a verbal committment to ensuring that ex-patriates gone for more than 15 years would be able to vote in the Brexit referendum, and did not make good on that promise.

Look, I left the UK 33 years ago, and am a dual citizen of the UK & US. I would never think of voting or in any way participating in regular UK politics - I left, my choice, that's over with.

But Brexit was different. It directly affected my rights as a citizen, to travel and work and live freely within the EU, and Cameron's fuck up and lies took that away from me (and my daughter) without my ability to vote on it.

I can't say for sure, but there are supposedly about 5.5M expat Brits. How many of them are over the 15 year limit for voting I don't know but I would guess that there are enough that it could have made a difference to the vote. I would also guess that an overwhelming of those (excluding the idiots on the Costa del Sol) would have voted against Brexit.

Not that this excuses false promises, but: why should expatriates who left a country decades ago get any say in pivotal decisions on its future? That seems like a really dumb idea.

> But Brexit was different. It directly affected my rights as a citizen

You got some nice free perks at no cost to yourself and are now sore that the people who had had a less lopsided exposure (i.e. needed to shoulder costs for benefits you could enjoy without downside) decided, rightly or wrongly, the costs (non-existent to you) were not worth the benefits. I can see how that would be annoying to you personally, and I will not attempt to defend anything else about Brexit, but generally few decision making processes are improved by voluntarily involving more free-riders.

> why should expatriates who left a country decades ago get any say in pivotal decisions on its future? That seems like a really dumb idea

We don't. If you have not resided there for 15 years or longer, you have no vote. And I'm totally fine with that, it makes sense to me, for a variety of reasons, including that I pay no taxes in the UK, and that to a large degree nothing that happens in the UK affects me directly (it does affect my family, but they all get their own vote).

However, most democracies have a general policy of not taking away the rights and priviledges of citizenship without giving those affected a vote to at least nominally affect the decision. I remain a UK citizen and could return there to reside at any time. It is precisely because (a) this is a pivotal decision about the future and (b) it was a decision that would change the status of anyone with UK citizenship, whether or not they resided there, that I felt that someone like myself should have been able to vote. So for example, had Brexit actually been a vote on some sort of reconfiguration of the relationship with the EU that ended up with UK citizens still having the same individual relationship with the EU (unlikely, but you can half imagine it, I think), again, I don't think that people like me should have been able to vote. But when you're going to strip millions of people with the right to permanently reside in the UK of their relationship with the EU, it seems democratic and fair to me that you give them some say.

And Cameron apparently felt that way too, or at least voiced that opinion during his final election campaign, but then didn't follow through (not really a surprise).

> had Brexit actually been ...

Hindsight is 20/20; but this was Cameron's major oversight. The referendum should've been "more or less EU", not "yes or no EU".

He would've gotten a very strong mandate for less and the EU would've been forced to accommodate. (They wouldn't want to risk losing the UK.)

Alas.

The referendum was set up that way specifically because Cameron felt he couldn't lose such an "extreme" choice, and then when people voted for less EU - as they always do in every country - the question would be sufficiently vague that it could have been ignored. As it always is. The binary choice was really quite a stroke of luck because it made it impossible for the government to pretend the decision had been implemented when it hadn't been, despite obviously being desperate to do so.

As for the EU being "forced" to accommodate, that tactic was also tried. That was Cameron's pre-referendum negotiations. It was a total failure, he was rebuffed on everything and hardly talked about his supposedly great deal after he returned because it was clear to all that the EU had compromised on nothing. Both during the process and after it, the EU's position was always the same and boiled down to "we don't care what voters think, you obey entirely or quit and accept that we'll blank you from then on".

> The binary choice was really quite a stroke of luck because it made it impossible for the government to pretend the decision had been implemented when it hadn't been, despite obviously being desperate to do so.

I believe there was a referendum in Wales on more independence, with a stronger result (60+% in favor), which was basically ignored. (That is: much handwringing and discussion whether the mandate was clear enough). There was a link with Theresa May - she may have been in Welsh parliament.

Could be this one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Welsh_devolution_refere...

If that recollection is roughly correct, political implications of the Brexit result would be "whatever suits you best".

This seems counterfactual. The EU was fine losing the UK. They may not have wanted it, but nobody broke down in tears over it.

The UK already had exceptional status on various rules - they were more a half-member than a full member. So clearly, the EU already cared enough to make exceptions. The Brexit vote was different: the UK government chose[1] to interpret its results as a requirement to leave the EU. That's not something an outsider can upend without interfering in the day-to-day governance of the state. And no member state wants the EU to interfere with its sovereignty on that level. So the only possible outcome was acceptance.

On the other hand, had Cameron gone to the EU with a 90% "less EU" mandate in hand, the EU would either have to accede or kick the UK out. Kicking out a member state... pfffft. I would guess it can be vetoed by any member state - or at least any other (not being kicked out) member state. And some would - their EU track record is such that they could be next.

Basically, the EU had no choice whilst respecting sovereignty of Member States. A less/more vote would have put the onus of kicking out a member on the EU, something I don't see the member states reaching a unanimous decision on. Which would leave negotiation.

You should lose voting rights 12 months after you leave, which is when tax and residency starts being considered as "not" - I've said this before Brexit too,if you leave you lose all rights (including things like unemployment and healthcare)

I say this as an expat and a vote leave individual (flame away).

That's a ridiculously short time. If someone takes a position in another part of the world (perhaps behind the wheel of a large automobile), for a year or two, they could trivially find themselves coming back to a government they were unable to vote for, which will govern their lives for up to 4-5 years.

I'm not advocating for the rights of expats to be expanded, and I'd probably support some of them being shrunk somewhat, as a general rule.

I just think that a once-in-several-generational essentially constitutional vote is different, and that the normal rules (which I support) should be modified for such a thing.

There is a difference between being out of the country and making a choice to not be part of it, obviously it requires some degree of flexibility but you shouldn't be able to abandon the country and then expect benefits or any say in how it's run, same applies to any country.

The easy other point is people who haven't even stepped foot in the country in decades are dictating to people who still live there and drawing money away despite contributing very little when they did live there and absolutely nothing for the past 20 years in their hovel in Spain or whatever the current sufferer of British expats is.

A reason in favour of expats voting is that they should have a say on things that affect their citizenship.

You can definitely argue how far that argument holds sway - after all, any government could change its citizenship rules for expats. But Brexit clearly was a different case than regular elections. The government was embarking upon a sea change for expats - changing the rules of the game while playing.

What annoys me even more is that it's just accepted by the mass media.

Many of the current ills in the UK are directly or indirectly caused by Brexit, from labour shortages to increased haulage costs leading to a trade deficit and rising food prices. The whole thing has just been an obvious disaster. Specifically, the Office of Budget Responsibility [1] "estimates that our GDP will be 4 per cent lower than it otherwise would be because of Brexit (even without any further deterioration in the UK/EU relationship) and Brexit disruption to supply chains has already contributed to 6 per cent higher food prices". Using the most recent figure for national GDP from the Office for National Statistics [2] of £616.870 b, that's a cost of ~£2.5 bn. Nothing in comparison to the £4bn that the Tories have spent on broken PPE that they propose to burn to generate power [3] but still, a hell of a lot.

I will probably vote labour at the next election. It angers me deeply that they aren't campaigning about rejoining the EU – but were I to vote for the lib dems, who are, I fear a Tory would get in. I feel deeply that now, EVERYTHING IS WORSE FOR NO PURPOSE. Why! It's an absolute head-meet-desk (or foot-meet-gun) moment and it just seems to have been...accepted. The Union is breaking apart, we are stuck with an incompetent government by even its own piss-poor standards, with no democratic recourse and no option for undoing the damage done. Urgh. No wonder I've essentially decided to emigrate (to Europe).

[1] https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2022/05/the-economic-co... [2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp [3] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/10/4bn-of-nhs-c...

> accepted by the mass media.

Encouraged by the mass media. Brexit is one of the biggest ever newspaper campaigning successes. They simply had to lie about everything.

> EVERYTHING IS WORSE FOR NO PURPOSE.

Yes, and it's enraging; we're dealing with a delusional political class who care about nothing but themselves, and the press support them because otherwise the oligarchs who own the papers might face more tax or scrutiny.

It sucks, I'm sorry. "Lying to the masses" is a terrifying problem, and one that deserves study. It's like school shootings in America - it horrific when it happens, and we know it's going to happen again. What can you do the next time the masses get lied to? It shames me to say I don't know, either, and I'm not even sure where to start.

The masses were indeed lied to a lot during the referendum campaign, but it was primarily by the Remain side:

- Osborne: We will impose massive emergency taxes if you are naughty enough to vote leave (a lie).

- Cameron: I will definitely not resign as PM if I lose the vote (a lie which made the previous lie more believable, he resigned immediately)

- Cameron: I will trigger Article 50 immediately (a lie).

- HM Treasury: Voting leave will cause an immediate recession that will destroy 500,000-800,000 jobs according to expert modelling (wrong, baseless)

- Clegg: the EU army Brexit supporters talk about is a fantasy (a lie, the first post-brexit EU meeting was dominated by the sudden urgency of setting up an EU army)

- Obama in 2016: UK at the "back of the queue" for a US trade deal if voting for Brexit. A lie, turned out Cameron had asked him to say this, by 2018 US Treasury Secretary was saying "UK at front of the queue" for trade deal when ready.

- A vote to leave would cause Scotland to leave the union (didn't happen).

- John Major, Paddy Ashdown, Nick Clegg: The referendum vote is final and a once in a lifetime decision (a lie, all these politicians agitated for a second referendum)

- Cameron: my negotiations secured a "special status" for the UK in EU (a lie sent to every household in the UK via mailshot: everything Cameron got agreement on was either not new or not legally binding).

- Osborne: families will be exactly £4300 a week worse off if leaving the EU (an attempt to divide modelled reduction in GDP growth by population which is nonsensical, even the BBC rejected this one).

HN is flooded with self proclaimed "EU citizen" types so this perspective is rarely presented here, but the reality is that especially once they realized they might lose, a staggering number of influential media and political elites started lying their pants off to try and ensure they'd win. This probably backfired in the end, as their lies were often quite transparent and led people to wonder what they were all so afraid of.

In today's world, it is clear that the old voters are robbing the young of a lifestyle that the young want. The old live with a mental model that is far removed from what the young want.

If you want to make it an "old vs. young" argument, then the old have collectively contributed to their country far more than the young. So they definitely have a say in their country's policies.

The young from the UK can still apply for a visa, like the young from many other countries not in the EU. They also have a higher chance of getting one, probably.

I think the division was between the educated and non-educated (i.e. early school leavers). As the school leaving age has risen over the past few decades, that happened to track with age. In other words, Brexit voters were what you could diplomatically call "low information voters" (I'd call them "thick racist dipshits" but that's probably why I'm not a politician).

Another factor is that the core Brexit (and Conservative) voters are retired home-owners, who are less directly connected to the productive side of the economy. The media they consume keeps them in that fantasy bubble. Take the Daily Express for example, which has reality-defying headlines that would put the North Korean Ministry of Information to shame.

So other than some clues (rising prices that can be blamed on global conditions, longer queues at airports that can be blamed on staff shortages and so on) they probably believe Brexit is going just fine.

Right now your post is heavily downvoted, but I see this trend in the US as well. A generation that benefited from good government generally decided "eh, things are going well, let's make everything harder for our children" and pulled up the ladder that they had just climbed.

Worse: they're far removed from responsibility. They vote to break things and are insulated from the results.

It doesn’t help that one of the most popular search queries after Brexit was “What’s Brexit?” suggesting a lot of people didn’t even know what they were voting for.

Yet you have no evidence to show any significant overlap in the Venn diagram of actual voters and people who searched that term, much less the reason they searched that term.

>Yet you have no evidence to show any significant overlap in the Venn diagram of actual voters and people who searched that term, much less the reason they searched that term.

The weeping and wailing began the night of the referendum. By the next morning we were confidently told by the press, Reddit, and Twitter that millions of Leave voters were already regretting their vote (and, as per TimPC's claim, were only now trying to find out what Brexit is), and that another referendum was thus the only fair/democratic/correct thing to do. (That even if such millions of Regretters actually existed that does not mean that a revote would occur is a minor technicality.) All part and parcel of the relentless effort since the referendum to invalidate its outcome by any means necessary.

Yes, the behaviour of the #FBPE types and of the EU after the referendum transformed me from a Remainer to a Brexit supporter. I voted to remain, but the contemptuous anti-democratic lunacy of my own side turned me against them.

Anger on Leavers' part against delay on Brexit did not become significant until 2019. The Supreme Court agreed that there was reasonable basis for the Miller case, and (more controversially) unexpectedly ruled for her in the second Miller case. But Leavers understandably came to see both lawsuits as part and parcel of the aforementioned unrelenting attempt on Remainers' part to stop Brexit by any and all means, whether legitimate or not. The fact that Miller actively campaigned for revoking Article 50 didn't help the Remain cause, and discredited her claim during the first case that she wanted to protect parliamentary sovereignty.

It's pretty clear in retrospect that what drove the Labour collapse in 2019 (In some Red Wall seats—seats that Labour had held with massive majorities for 50-100 years—the Tories didn't have to gain a single vote to win) is both Labour Leavers unhappy about their party not continuing its 2017 acceptance of Brexit coming, and Remainers who disliked the idea (whether explicit among Lib Dems, or implicit among much of Labour) of ignoring a democratic vote in 2016. That's why another referendum was so unpopular, because no one believed that it would not be rigged against Leave.[1]

Those who in other circumstances might have supported a "People's Vote" didn't, because they saw it as yet another attempt to delay and prevent Brexit via Neverendums. I think Leave would have won another referendum conducted under the circumstances of the first one, but Leavers understandably didn't trust the People's Vote folks to implement another referendum in any way that Leave can again win. Not after 3.5 years and counting of shenanigans such as the Miller case.

[1] Even supporters of same, no matter what they said. That's why they were for it.

That was investigated at the time, it appeared to be mostly children searching for what their parents were talking about.

The idea that only ignorant people could vote against the EU is a popular meme amongst Remainers but actual polls have shown consistently there's little difference in EU knowledge between the two camps and to the extent one side has an advantage, it's those who wanted to leave who knew more.

Maybe, though impossible to know what proportion of folks who searched that actually voted.

I spent a couple of years in Spain more than a decade ago and recognise I was fortunate to do that at the time. Today, post-brexit, it would be significantly harder.

The consequences of the vote were clear 6 years back. The problem is since then, there have been endless attempts to deliver a different outcome. To muddy the waters and suggest that actually what people really wanted was prize A, B, or C.

We left the EU and articles like this shouldn’t surprise anyone.

I am not familiar with the politics of Brexit but surely no one voted because they wanted to lose their right to live and work in Europe? I suppose there was something else that was considered less appealing about being part of the EU?

Actually, the main voting motivation was exactly that, just framed as removing the rights of Europeans to live and work in the UK. Maybe some people didn't know it cuts both ways but that was the prime promise of the Brexiteers.

I recall reading that it appealed to Brits with immigrant backgrounds because they felt like Europeans are having it too easy or something like that.

The other argument was about having a point system instead of letting anyone in, so the European engineers and Indian engineers for example would have the same rights and this will yield in more meritocratic system.

Somehow the companies are not good enough in picking the employees with the correct skillset, for example a British company is hiring unskilled Hungarians as engineers so to fix this the British companies first need to get a permission from the government which will evaluate the person, pay fees and wait a few month for processing to do the right kind of hires.

Funniest part were Brits living in Spain, going to UK to vote in favor of Brexit and then being surprised when later Spain was sending them back to UK.

Brexit and the Brexit vote is a complicated mess.

Voting to remain meant voting for the status-quo, something many people weren’t happy with for perfectly legitimate reasons.

Voting to leave meant, well it meant all things to all people. The leave campaign focused on the boundless opportunities offered by leaving the EU and becoming a “more sovereign” nation, while ignoring the practical realities of life without the EU. So while Brexit certainly bring opportunities not available with the EU, it’s not clear the UK is in a position to capitalise on those opportunities, and loosing access to your largest trading partner certainly doesn’t make thing easier.

EU come with baggage, that’s undeniable, but it also brings tremendous benefits, which the UK had become used to, and no longer recognised as EU benefits. And when you offer people the opportunity to get rid of the baggage, and they don’t the benefits that they’re also getting rid off, it’s easy to see why people voted leave.

> perfectly legitimate reasons.

Can you elaborate on these legitimate reasons?

Substantial portions of the UK have seen stagnation for going on decades now. Every I visit my parents, who don’t live in London, I’m reminded of how many parts of the UK have become totally frozen in time, slowly decaying.

That stagnation has slowly eroded away peoples hope of a better future. Things aren’t getting better, they’re either staying the same or sliding backwards.

None of this of course has anything to do with the EU, if anything the EU development funding was they only thing preventing an even worse backslide. But the UK government deliberately refused to advertise when EU money was used to develop areas (something the EU has now banned), and has for decades used the EU as a scapegoat for the failure of national government. Do that for enough years, and it’s shouldn’t be much surprise that people started believing the rhetoric.

Additionally free movement of people brought it own issues, almost all of the self inflicted. A number of areas in the UK suffered greatly due to the abusive, and almost certainly illegal, practice of farmers hiring cheap imported labour that was underpaid, and abandoned outside of harvest season. The result of populations of starving abandoned Eastern Europeans forced into criminality in order to survive winter. Another catastrophic failure of national government, but when you’re being mugged by someone who doesn’t speak English, I doubt your going to take the time to understand why your mugger is mugging you.

The great irony of all this, is that the EU in its own way saw these issues, and gave members ways of limiting migration from newly joined member states, while those states completed their integration process and could create their own local opportunities with the help of the EU. The UK in its infinite wisdom decided to forgo all those controls and allow complete freedom of movement from day 0, and then blame the EU for the somewhat predictable results.

I don’t blame the EU for any of the above problems. They’re almost entirely the result of national government refusing to properly engage with the EU. But the problems had real impact on peoples lives, and the inability of UK government to acknowledge or tackle them meant there was no reason to believe they would get better while we remained in the EU. So I can see why leaving becomes an clear and obvious solution.

Quite frankly I think the greatest Brexit benefit is the removal of the fig leaf the EU provided for national failures of government. The UK government’s incompetence is on full display, and if we’re lucky, we finally get some competent politicians again.

National chauvinism is a strange beast: there is often (perceived) virtue in taking negative consequences in stride, even when those consequences outstrip the claimed goals. It’s possible that the majority of Brexit voters don’t want to lose the rights associated with being EU citizens, but may take pride in shouldering that as a consequence.

They wished to remove the right of Europeans to live and work in the UK. It was repeatedly explained that this was reciprocal.

That wasn't the real wish at all. They wished to remove the right of certain kinds of Europeans to live and and work in the UK. That nice white very caucasian French well-educated doctor and their spouse? Not a problem.

I'm not sure about that; the Poles and Romanians targeted would definitely classify as "white" and "caucasian". But there's no sense in xenophobia.

I would remind you that Italians were not accepted as "white" within the USA until relatively recently.

The racial politics of the US have nothing to do with Brexit.

The racial politics of the USA w.r.t Europeans are largely derived from intra-European racial politics, and so the former reflects the latter.

Younger generations are thankfully easing up on this stuff, but eastern Europeans were not seen as "real Europeans" by western Europeans for a very long time. The same was true, though to a lesser extent of southern Europeans in the eyes of northern Europeans, something that stopped being so true a bit earlier.

Assuming good faith on the part of Leave voters, there was a sustained political and media campaign of straightforward lies (“the economy will improve”, “immigration will be reduced” etc) which convinced a lot of people.

The government campaigned for remain…

Yes, sorry, poor choice of words. Fixed.

I'm not sure if I can motivate you with this but - I know it comes with a lot of disadvantages, but the EU is becoming more toxic each year, and also grows in scope with seemingly no end in sight.

Being a part of the EU was the wrong call for the UK, in my opinion.

Brexit implementation was painful like a bandaid, but in the long term you will benefit from this.

The price you'll need to pay is just worse economy for a decade or two, and more difficult travel/work etc, but you will have more freedom as an independent nation. That has real value.

I haven't seen an HN post that content-free in a very long time. Congratulations?

I could easily be more specific but, why? It's done. Try to focus on the positive aspects of being outside the EU.

>why?

Because without content, a comment is useless, empty propaganda. If you have a position, feel free to argue it by stating your principles, the facts, and how applying the principles to those facts lead you to the position. Otherwise you're noise at best, and a bad-faith actor looking less to persuade others to your view and more to simply damage others by wasting their time, at worst. And frankly, certain positions, like yours, for example, are closely associated with bad faith actors, so you might have to work even harder to assure readers.

Okay, then how about this: By being part of the EU, a country will be spending part of a massive and bureaucratic organization that has failed financial audits for 2 decades (a measurable argument) and basically gives you less and less control over your own actions as a nation.

If you happen to be less keen on immigration, then the EU is also a bad place as the enforcement is pretty weak.

I think those are pretty reasonable arguments that come down to one thing: autonomy for nation states.

> Try to focus on the positive aspects

Which are? I never see anything other than vague and vacuous emotional appeals in the positive column. By now people should be able to point at concrete positive outcomes.

What's done can be undone.

Once the EU gets rid of the veto, countries that aren't France and Germany are in a LOT of trouble.

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