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Comment by metalman | Hacker News Reader

the pre vote discusions centered on " The Count Binface" getting more than 5% of the votes as bieng a sign of great discontent, 25% + suggests that politics as it is, wont be for long.

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The average tenure of leadership in the UK is reliably measured in produce and it’s gotten no better.

Brexit needs to be reversed already.

Brexit cannot be reversed if people dont get their act together. And that will take a good amount of time and effort.

In the meantime…meet our next “PM of the month”!

I voted Remain, and hoped the EU would get its house in order if the UK stayed in it. Unfortunately neither of these things happened. Both the EU and the UK have become increasingly authoritarian, including on internet matters.

> Brexit needs to be reversed already.

Support for reversing Brexit / rejoining the EU is a bit mixed:

> While 55% of Britons say they support the UK rejoining the EU, this falls to just 35% if the UK had to rejoin without its prior opt-outs, with 43% opposed

* https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54925-what-do-britons-thin...

The UK had a pretty unique setup previously, and I'm not sure if the EU would really go along with it again.

> I'm not sure if the EU would really go along with it again.

Sounds like Project Fear to me! The EU needs Britain more than Britain needs them! The German car/French wine/etc. industry will beg the European Commission to give Britain all their opt-outs back to secure a rejoin!

> 58% of French people and 63% of Germans support the UK rejoining the EU

> However, 58-61% think the UK should have to participate in all major EU policies if it rejoined, like Schengen and the Euro

> If it were only willing to rejoin with its old opt-outs, support for the UK rejoining falls to 36% in France and 39% in Germany

* https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/55023-ten-years-after-the-...

The Economist wrote a few articles on the topic, e.g. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/12/30/britain-and-the...

Which is... quite weird, really, because the former opt-outs were mostly fairly minor. I assume they'd be allowed stay out of Schengen in practice; Ireland's not in it and they have an essentially un-closeable border with Ireland (this is, incidentally, the main reason Ireland's not in Schengen in the first place). And realistically the EU has shown no appetite for dragging countries who don't want it into the eurozone; see Poland.

> Which is... quite weird, really, because the former opt-outs were mostly fairly minor.

Schengen and the Euro were hardly minor:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_opt-outs_from_E...

There were only four (now three) countries in the EU that got any opt-outs at all, and the UK the most opted-out items (4):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opt-outs_in_the_European_Union

What I'm getting at is that _in practice_ they would not be subject to Schengen or the euro anyway. For Schengen, see the Northern Ireland situation post-Brexit; exactly the same problem would emerge. For the Euro, see Poland.

While I voted remain I'm not sure about rejoining fully now. A lot of the problems were with the upheaval, like food companies selling to the EU often couldn't do it economically without the single market and went out of business. Rejoining won't suddenly unbankrupt them.

All of the major parties except for Reform withdrew their candidates in protest of Farage.

> All of the major parties except for Reform withdrew their candidates in protest of Farage.

This doesn't make sense. If they wanted to protest Farage, wouldn't they be better off running a serious candidate against him?

Farage engineered this situation to try to take control of the narrative about the investigation into £5m of undeclared income/gifts.

They neutered that move by not entering the contest in the first place. And Binface (with support of 32 other candidates) turned it into a humiliating exercise.

They plan to eject Farage from Parliament after their investigation concludes. Farage was trying to delay the investigation, or perhaps prove a point that his voters don't care.

A "serious" by-election is what Farage wanted. You don't protest by playing along. You protest by doing your best to express how much of a farce it is.

Farage can't say "The people want me more than your other serious candidates even after this controversy" if there are no serious candidates running.

I get that, but if this was actually a chance to beat him, wouldn’t that have been better?

They wouldn't have beaten him. Farage would win and he knows that otherwise he wouldn't have called the by election.

Ah, okay, then that makes sense. Thanks :-)

I think it was a major tactical mistake for them to withdraw. Binface is the only thing which turned it into a proper contest.

They will run for the next election in a few months - the investigation has just resumed.

I think it was a cop out on their part myself. Although to be pedantic, British politicians traditionally "stand" rather than "run" like their American counterparts.

They already did two years ago. They have better things to do than to take part in this circus.

They have more than enough time, labour and money to contest that seat. It smells like a cop out to me. If it was in Scotland, this situation would never have happened since the SNP is supposed to contest every seat.

They will in a few months.

Obviously. Everyone know this. The vote predictions knew this too.

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