On the other hand, since brexit happened most international research teams in UK have lost key members to other countries so maybe someone finally took notice.
When it goes the way someone wants they call that "democracy" ;)
[0] https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-w...
There’s many ways to calculate what that expenditure should be but looking at the most recent pre Brexit numbers, 2018 was 150.7B, 2019 was 158.3B. Extrapolate that trend and 2023 would be 7.6 * 4 + 158.3B ~= 188.7, where the real number is projected at 186.7B.
PS: That link only specifies 2020 and 2021 as seeing COVID specific spending but the UK health system was still being slammed in 2022 while also trying to catch up on delayed procedures etc. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
NHS Funding Act 2020
The lie was that we save that much by leaving the EU, the fact that our health service was underfunded and has had budget increases in line with inflation and population growth doesn't change that it was a lie - we could've (and would have) increased NHS spending regardless of the Brexit vote.
Because the net contribution to the EU was (significantly!) less than £350M.
It wasn't a suggestion to spend more money on the NHS. It was a suggestion to spend the money they claimed we gave the EU every week.
So it was actually a lie on a bus.
The figure was closer to £250M (after the rebate), but when they were given the amicable opportunity to restate the original claim around the correct figure, they doubled down on the £350M lie.
Turkey has never been "set to join" the EU. They'd like to join, sure.
There are significant criteria they would need to fill to join, and everyone knows they won't do it any time soon; they were going backwards on some at the time of the campaign and are arguably further back eight years on.
If Turkey met all the criteria they'd be a perfectly viable member of the EU. But then if I had the physiology, brains, feathers, gait and quack of a duck, I'd be a duck.
https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/enlargement-p...
"On 13 December 1999 the Helsinki European Council adopted the Commission proposal to grant Turkey the status of an applicant for EU membership."
Coming up on 24 years ... and counting. Great job, everyone involved.
36 years. This is actually higher than the median age of Turkey's population.
Sorry, no. It was profoundly* dishonest.
I have a leaflet that was dropped through my door talking about Turkey joining the EU as if it was something imminent and guaranteed (it is neither).
It featured a map that prominently suggested this was a gateway to all things nefarious by showing Turkey as a coloured region without a label, surrounded by Iraq and Syria, which were.
It's the single most dishonest thing I've seen in politics in my life.
* I'm actually not sorry. This claim is ludicrous.
It's officially classed as a candidate. That doesn't seem consistent with "Never joining" unless the EU knowingly lied to Turkey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_Eur...
I said it was not imminent (it isn't) or guaranteed (and it isn't).
Nobody lied to Turkey. They know there are economic, political, social etc. targets that they have to meet before they progress to EU membership.
I've been a candidate for lots of things I didn't get. Haven't you?
They first applied in 1987, 29 years before the Brexit vote. It has been more than seven years since that vote.
The very Wikipedia page you're pointing at shows how badly it is going for Turkey after we left. Basically, the process is as close to ended for good as it can be. Turkey is less likely to succeed in joining the EU than the UK is to rejoin.
And everyone knew how serious those problems were, particularly regarding human rights, and the direction of travel.
The Leave campaign absolutely lied about Turkey's chances of joining, because only the spectre of Turkey being a member soon fit with the idea of Syrian refugees fleeing across the border into, thus, the EU, from their very current conflict.
It was never close to true.
And the scurrilousness of the leaflet was pointed out, too.
But xenophobia sells.
If I start shouting to millions of people that you've been beating your wife, there's literally nothing you can say to undo this damage.
If you deny it, you'll just bring further attention to the lie.
If you ignore it, I'll keep bringing further attention to the lie.
Politics only works well when everyone follows some basic decorum.
Even back in 2015 it was pretty clear that Turkey was probably never going to join the EU - at least a generation off if ever. They have nominally been trying to join since the 1980s and its going nowhere in large part because of a lack of progress on Turkey's side and also signficant skepticism of further expansion on the EU side.
There is a lot of talk about Ukraine joining for instance, but its far from clear despite the expressed political will on both sides that it will ever happen for various reasons. These include the question of Ukraine meeting entry thresholds or EU members willing to absorb a member the size of Ukraine and the funding implications its entry would bring. Despite that, Ukraine is signficantly more likely to join than Turkey was in 2016.
No because there is nothing wrong with the EU telling Turkey these are the entry standards for membership. Turkey didn't meet those standards and were backsliding on lots of issues esp around human rights and political/media freedom. It also had unreasolved territorial issues with other member states namely Greece which completely block ascension.
Yes and No because the politics of this are complex both within the EU and in Turkey. Focusing just on the EU side:
There are lots of voices in the EU that want to see Turkey join the EU. Its an important (if sometimes difficult) NATO partner, and in many ways esp in its cities, a very European nation in its history and culture (Istanbul and Antalya are both great hoilday destinations btw - I recommend). We have a lot in common with Turkey. Its also a large econmy and an important bridge to central asia and the middle east. This is why Turkey was accepted as a candidate in the first place.
However there were real voices against Turkey's membership motivated from concerns over the impact to the balance of power within the EU, funding implication for bringing in such a large member with lots of regional depravation, doubts over Turkey ever meeting entry requirements, and the more ugly outright islamophobia and racism.
If you want to cut to the chase then yes the EU kinda sorta lied to Turkey because its officals know these facts, but Turkey's officals themselves are in on it for their own internal politics which I won't get into in part because I know much less about it. It suited both nations to play this ascension dance and technically it was possible that conditions might change and people's minds might be changed. Its a process not a binary.
An important missing piece is that not that long ago, when it officially became candidate, Turkey was seen as a secular, progressive state in the Middle East. Its recent backsliding into autocratic medieval theocracy pretty much ended the idea that Turkey would join without serious changes in government policy and constitution.
The Scottish referendum in 2014 didn't have the same problem because the SNP campaigning for independence were in power in Scotland and had negotiated the referendum with the UK government.
But I'm not sure that's dishonesty in that people were deliberately saying things that were not true - people were instead saying "These are the things made possible if we leave the EU and you vote for a party that wants this in a general election."
"So within two years, before the negotiation with the EU is likely to be complete, and therefore before anything material has changed, we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU." - David Davis [https://conservativehome.com/2016/07/14/david-davis-trade-de...]
Coming to a free trade agreement with the EU should be "one of the easiest in human history" - Liam Fox [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-40667879]
Brexit would leave arrangements on the Irish border "absolutely unchanged" - Boris Johnson [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-35692452]
This meant that even when Leave won, there was a great amount of confusion and turmoil over what that actually implied. That's why the Chequers deal fell through despite fulfilling the outcoem of the referendum.
I wouldn't have minded this so much if there was a continued democratic process to decide between various possible Brexits. There's an argument that the decision of elected MPs constitutes a democratic process, and I am sympathetic to that argument. I guess I would counter that this was such a momentous change and that very few people had elected their local MP on the basis of what their position on the EU was.
I wouldn’t even say that Labour’s top leadership was really pro-remain at the time. Cameron was at least being honest (in this instance).
Making an effectively irreversible decision after single vote won with a slim majority seems like not the brightest idea.
They should’ve had a referendum to approve the negotiated deal and if that failed started the entire process all over.
Blaming politicians, other than as individuals, doesn't work. The electorate put those politicians in their positions in the first place. The responsibility always lies with us. If a voter votes for an arsehole who lies and deceives them, yes the arsehole is responsible for the lies and deception, but ultimately the decision to trust them with power is on the voter. It's on us to do our homework.
Is limited choice democracy?
But democracy today is reduced to a limited choice with limited input of just a simple X in a box of those limited choices once every so many years/decades/lifetime.
The original 51% attack
So the Leavers were right about that in the end. Horizon isn't important compared to constitutional issues, but this is one more argument that just didn't turn out right.
The EU is one big collaborative project. I'm pro EU for this very reason, so surely the leavers argument has to be 'some, but not too much collaboration makes sense'.
Of course that assumes a coherent argument from brexiteers...
Taking this Horizon story as an example, the fact that we've rejoined shows that EU membership isn't necessary for it, but it still has "years out of the deal" as a negative for Brexit and I don't think any improvement to count as a positive?
Exporting to the EU is hard: lots of standards checks.
Importing from the EU is easy: whole categories of imports are left unchecked, because new rules aren't being enforced as a matter of policy, which is the only way we have food security, for example.
As such it wouldn't surprise me at all if both your perspective and GP's perspective are true - cheaper imports would be better for everyone but the government doesn't "want" them because they'd politically inconvenience a relatively small number of people very visibly.
I was then surprised to see American cereal is now sold in the UK, and it's packed with the colourings and additives British parents in the 1990s would have refused to have in the house. Pre-Brexit, "No artificial colours or flavours" could be pretty much assumed for all cereal sold in Britain, even the colourful, sugary ones.
That's no longer the case. Example: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/282819954
Contains Tartrazine (E102)*, Sunset Yellow (E110)*, Brilliant Blue (E133), Allura Red (E129)*
E102 — in the EU, not allowed in cereal
E110 — allowed, although the UK government previously asked manufacturers to stop using this
E133 — not easily determined from Wikipedia, although there's an example of British manufacturers stopping its use in the 2000s.
E129 — allowed I think.
They were commonplace in drinks aimed at kids (Tizer for example) for years.
Putting them in breakfast cereals is IMO mindblowingly irresponsible; the food producers know for sure (because the link has been established with little doubt) that tartrazine and sunset yellow worsen child behaviour.
No. The most you could claim is that we were a few weeks earlier with a vaccine than the rest of Europe, but then we'd have been developing our vaccine within an EU framework if we'd been in, so who knows what additional benefits that would have brought.
We rejoined the exact same framework we were already a member of and this is a score counted in Leave's column?
This is wild logic.
Horizon is a framework. We rejoined it. End of argument.
It's extremely clear what's meant here: the EU is a big thing with problematic parts, and parts that are OK. Horizon is OK and uncontroversial. The UK wanted the useful low risk collaborations without the dangerous lets-unify-Europe-into-a-megastate parts, and that is what is now happening. The Leavers said this could be done, the Remainers said it was all or nothing, the Leavers are being steadily proven correct.
Now this is delusional. The "prime Leaver", Nigel Farage, thinks Brexit has failed and has said so. The press is full of Leavers saying the country is broken right now.
The only thing that marks out the current government's version of Brexit as fundamentally different to Farage's version of Brexit is that they have to stay on planet lucid -- e.g. with regard to the Northern Ireland agreement.
And he is not the only Brexiteer to say that Brexit has failed to deliver; they are all at it. The thing is it has failed to deliver stuff that they were all too stupid to understand it could not deliver.
And many of the worst things happening at the moment are the very predictable consequence of backing out of agreements; the "small boats crisis" for example.