How do we resolve the Brexit mess?

The Future’s Blue! said:
It was all about the wording. They were told that they will get special rights to stay, not realising that what they were meaning was that the host country would let them apply for citizenship and lose rights to the UK system.

Strangely, none of them asked the question before flying back to the UK to vote for it.
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as I said stupid and not listening to anything that clashed with what they wanted to hear. Fucks given none
 
fulabeer said:
Yes, finally a thread about what to do about improving things rather than moaning about what has happened!

Contrary to what "some" people on here may think about my political leaning, i knew Brexit wouldn't go well.
I knew there would be a price to pay. That things would go downhill, at least for a while.
However, this was more to do with the people in power. If you don't have a leader with big balls and strength, then it was never going to work. We didn't, so there is no surprise on my part.
People here like to split people into Brexiteers and Remoaners. I class myself as an Inbetweener!

I have never been a fan of the European Union. It is a mishmash of self-serving countries masquerading a some sort of family. But a pack is stronger than a lone wolf!
As a trading pact, i thought it was good if not ideal. Some of the workers rights and protection it afforded was great for example. We also got back a lot of the money put in back as subsidies, so that was never an issue. Immigration needed to be better controlled, not stopped.
I was a fan of us dumping the pound. If we was part of the Union, then that should have went.
But they had other aspirations, and the directions some wanted it to go was worrying.
Allowing some Countries into the Union that shouldn't really be, was only to assert control and dominance over them. Some of the EU leaders were toxic and had their own personal agendas.

So there were parts i liked and parts about the Union i didn't.
I was hoping a near miss with the vote might have been enough to wake everybody up, and for the Union to make changes for the better.
However, being self employed, i like risks and like a challenge. So my attitude since was be positive and try and make it work. Others just seem to want to moan.
I buy from all over the world, so buying from the EU is no different (paperwork wise). I was hoping for more trading agreements to be done by now. Covid seems to have stalled some of them. Changing leader every few months hasn't helped.

So as for a solution.
Re-joining doesn't seem viable at the moment. We have seen recently the self-serving vindictiveness of the EU in all it's glory.
I cannot see anything they have done to make it attractive to re-join. It would be a hard sell if it was going to be on worse terms than before. So like the Remoaners, they need to let it go and work constructively to find a solution for the future. Without EU reforms, it's never going to work.

So at least for now, we should adopt the US dollar, align ourselves with them, and fill in the Channel Tunnel...There you go simple! :)
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We could also do with a 'Trump-style' wall built mid-channel with only a very narrow door!
 
Mr Kobayashi said:
This is fantasy alternative history nonsense.

We can't join the single market and not the EU.

The EU isn't going to negotiate with the UK unless it means the UK adopting full membership.
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Didn't Farage say we could be like Switzerland? Access to the single market through bilateral agreement?
 
I'm With Stupid said:
It was absolutely insane to me that anyone living abroad would vote for Brexit. But then again, the most anti-immigrant places are always the towns the no immigrants want to go to. Like this classic...

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Ha.
Hadn't seen this.
Ol Acaster didn't have to flex his fantastic comedy chops here....his work was done for him.
 
inbetween said:
It will take decades because rejoin is not the same as remain. Look at Turkey, they started the process nearly 20 years ago and for many reasons they still haven't joined. There's no chance that the population will just accept rejoin at any price, no chance.

Rejoin will mean a negotiation to join and at the first pass that would likely mean taking the Euro amongst many other things compared to remain and that's where it will fall apart unless we can negotiate opt-outs. In reality virtually all of the energy for rejoin would be spent on negotiating how not to rejoin.... So really what is the point in rejoining?

A lot of people mistakenly believe that whilst we were in the EU we were 'given' freedoms to not take the Euro and so on but this isn't true. We had to negotiate our way out of certain aspects of the various treaties. The Major government had to negotiate the opt-out of Schengen and the Euro, it wasn't as though we just said no thanks.

Whilst in the EU we were better able to negotiate opt-outs but it's very different from outside. To be honest we would be better off negotiating some form of single market access/membership, I've always thought that EFTA would be a good fit for the UK. Obviously it would of been better to remain but that ship sailed 7 years ago.
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EFTA is off the table. The EU have stated it's not an option.

It's full membership or nothing.

The EU have offered us options to ease trade like the Pan Mediterranean Convention, but the government turned it down.

Our days of negotiating opt outs are gone. If we rejoin, it will be on their terms.
 
blueinsa said:
You think?

Best of luck with that. A few on here are taking this to the grave with them.
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I think the reason most of us despair so much is unlike General Elections, we can’t reverse it a few years down the track. We have unilaterally decided to make ourselves poorer and more isolated - and there’s nothing that can be done to go back. We’ve inflicted a wound upon ourselves which is not going to heal for many years. And it was completely unnecessary. No-one made us do it.

This thread gives some of us an outlet to vent about all that. That has been the principal function of this thread for some time, and widely known as such. And will remain so, most likely.

I hardly talk about Brexit in the real world. I rant to my girlfriend about it once a fortnight, possibly less these days; apologise to my son whenever I see him (about once a month) and take the piss out of my Brexit voting mates (who I know can take it). Did that yesterday to someone I know who’s a judge, (unusually) a working class Tory who voted to leave. Thanked him for it and said he must be pleased with how well it’s going! He laughed and gave as much back!

Others on here live and breathe it, but I definitely don’t. But I thought it was a huge mistake and sadly I’ve been proved correct, and coming on here, into this echo chamber, gives me an outlet that prevents me being an insufferable bore about the subject in the real world. If it makes me a bore on this thread, then I’ll live with that.

We do need to move on, and make the most of it though. I fully accept that. Hopefully Starmer will be more hawkish about realigning in some ways, once elected. I think that will soothe a lot of the wounds. At least for me.
 
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The Future’s Blue! said:
It was all about the wording. They were told that they will get special rights to stay, not realising that what they were meaning was that the host country would let them apply for citizenship and lose rights to the UK system.

Strangely, none of them asked the question before flying back to the UK to vote for it.
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You don’t have to have citizenship, just residency.
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
I think the reason most of us despair so much is unlike General Elections, we can’t reverse it a few years down the track. We have unilaterally decided to make ourselves poorer and more isolated - and there’s nothing that can be done to go back. We’ve inflicted a wound upon ourselves which is not going to heal for many years. And it was completely unnecessary. No-one made us do it.

This thread gives some of us an outlet to vent about all that. That has been the principal function of this thread for some time, and widely known as such. And will remain so, most likely.

I hardly talk about Brexit in the real world. I rant to my girlfriend about it once a fortnight, possibly less these days; apologise to my son whenever I see him (about once a month) and take the piss out of my Brexit voting mates (who I know can take it). Did that yesterday to someone I know who’s a judge, (unusually) a working class Tory who voted to leave. Thanked him for it and said he must be pleased with how well it’s going! He laughed and gave as much back!

Others on here live and breathe it, but I definitely don’t. But I thought it was a huge mistake and sadly I’ve been proved correct, and coming on here, into this echo chamber, gives me an outlet that prevents me being an insufferable bore about the subject in the real world. If it makes me a bore on this thread, then I’ll live with that.

We do need to move on, and make the most of it though. I fully accept that. Hopefully Starmer will be more hawkish about realigning in some ways, once elected. I think that will soothe a lot of the wounds. At least for me.
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I like you.
 
BobKowalski said:
And this is our problem. Entitlement. First, the EU is not some convivial club, it’s an aggressive trade block that protects its own interests and is a bastard to negotiate with when you are a non-member, as we found out. The EU serves the interests of its members, not non-members, and has no interest or mandate to be ‘nice’.

Second, the EU has no interest or desire to make itself attractive to join. It doesn’t have to. The benefits are clear and obvious and if a country can’t see that or isn’t interested then don’t join. Currently, there is a queue of countries who want to join. One of them is fighting a bloody war in part because it wanted to join. The EU isn’t going to reform to suit the UK because the UK is no longer a member. We quit, and once we quit, bang went any leverage we had.

At some point, people have to start accepting the reality of our situation. There is no rejoin. Anything that smacks of cooperation with Europe is ruled out. We are stuck with a crappy deal for the foreseeable. Trade with the EU will be sub-optimal and more expensive, although NI will continue to benefit via Dublin (a member) lobbying on their behalf and still being within the EU Single Market.

But, if anyone is waiting for the EU to make themselves acceptable to the UK then they are deluding themselves as much as Brexiteers did in the first place.
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But Bob, what about when the German car makers knock on Frau Merkel’s door begging her to make a deal?
 
The Future’s Blue! said:
It was all about the wording. They were told that they will get special rights to stay, not realising that what they were meaning was that the host country would let them apply for citizenship and lose rights to the UK system.

Strangely, none of them asked the question before flying back to the UK to vote for it.
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To be fair, if these idiots (the Brexit voters who had the house in Italy) had been properly living in Italy - registered address there, paying whatever taxes and social security obligations applied to them etc - before Brexit actually finally happened, they would have been able to stay without getting citizenship. This is the position I’m in in Germany- I have a (renewable) 10 year residence permit. I haven’t read the article but I’m guessing their problem is they thought they could move to Italy to retire after Brexit and found themselves liable to get a visa which they are not rich/high-skilled/young enough to qualify for.
 
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