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Comment by lostlogin | Hacker News Reader

> Additionally, we've now seen the EU survive the departure of a major economic power (the UK).

I don’t really understand the impact of Brexit on the euro, as Britain wasn’t on it. But clearly they were a key part of the EU. It’ll be interesting to see which side regrets the move more.

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The answer is already clear: Britain regrets the move more.

In June 2025, 56% of people in Great Britain thought it was the wrong decision:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-po...

It's hard to imagine this number would be going down after recent events like USA suddenly threatening arbitrary new tariffs on the UK.

>In June 2025, 56% of people in Great Britain thought it was the wrong decision

It's not so clear when you consider that 48.1% of the original referendum voters wanted to stay in the EU. I'm honestly very surprised by this poll, 8% change is pretty minimal considering the turmoil the country has gone through since 2016.

How much of this can be explained by older voters dying in the intervening 10 years, I recall that demographic skewed much more heavily Leave in 2016

Half the issue is the definition of ‘voter’. Turn-out is abysmal and polling has been crap in major ways. Calling someone eligible to vote a ‘voter’ is probably only right 50-60% of the time.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/general-election-2024-t...

> In June 2025, 56% of people in Great Britain thought it was the wrong decision:

How many thought it was the right decision at the time?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_U...

Remain was 48% so it's actually not that large of a swing in total. It's not like it was 5% remain and now it would be 56% or something.

But it does indicate if the referendum was taking place today it might swing the other way.

Note the turn out too. 72% isn’t great for a major change like this. The non-voters would easily swing it either way as a landslide.

Agree, that's a good point. Perhaps many who would have voted remain just didn't think it was a chance it would pass so sort of stayed home because of that.

But only 56% in a poll? Is that enough for another referendum and guarantee rejoin? EU politicians have made it clear, ALL UK opt-outs will be gone if UK rejoins, whether it is UK opt-out regarding budget (like paying billions less in annual EU fees like UK did before), to special fishing rights pre-Brexit, to forced to adopt Euro currency and drop Pound sterling.

Rejoining is seen as politically too risky in the short term. As you observe, the UK would not get back its privileged position, there are probably some bargains to be struck but a track to the Euro currency is almost certainly mandatory and that'd be unpopular because people really like our banknotes for some reason and the Euro deliberately just looks like play money, the illustrations deliberately don't show real structures to avoid associations with the nations where those things were built.

But while "Leaving was a bad idea" isn't enough to seriously push for actual re-entry to the EU it's certainly a good sign for the EU and for the Euro. The EU is a massive bureaucracy, and I think we underestimated how much "a massive bureaucracy" might be the thing we wanted in this role..

> Rejoining is seen as politically too risky in the short term. As you observe, the UK would not get back its privileged position,

Just curious, what privileges did it have? I can think of keeping it currency only.

Opt outs for Schengen, the Euro, all police and justice policies, and the charter of fundamental rights

Also a multi-billion pound rebate on what Britain contributed to the EU budget. Thatcher negotiated it in 1984 and it’s never coming back.

I was there about 8-10 years ago and again for a few weeks just recently.

Perception is hard to measure objectively, but the UK does not feel like it’s on an upswing when compared to last time I was there.

That's crazy it's not even moved 10% from the vote guess by and large people are pretty happy with their vote.

I don’t know if you can confidently claim that the vote represented the view of the population at the time.

There was a small pro brexit margin, and loads didn’t vote. I don’t dispute the vote result, I just wondering what the result would have been if there had been higher turnout.

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