Do you think we have benefited from Brexshit?
Well, were still here, bumbling along, not a lot has changed on the face of it.
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No, definitely not, the country voted against its own interests and they’ll do it again at the next election…
Our Special Relationship has gone down the swanny. Maybe we need our good friends in Europe more than ever.
Is it time for a “Risk Assessment”?
Not central to the Brexit thingy bob though.
underpants haven’t come down
I can see how for many people this is a commonly held view - after all, day to day, many do not experience any significant change. Or even changes that can be easily and directly linked to Brexit. And that is ok if you base your views purely on personal experience.
There are many others who would strongly disagree. Those are people who are involved in businesses that deal (or dealt) with the EU. Those are fishermen and farmers whose products were sold in the EU. Those are people who in some way lived and worked in both the UK and in Europe. People who are involved in the this country’s administration of regulations, of standards, of security. And of course people who gather and report the data on the economic performance of the UK.
It is surely fair to say that in terms of assessing the pluses and minuses of Brexit it might be more useful to understand the views of those more directly involved. They will have experienced the changes and impacts. Whereas those with pretty much zero involvement have pretty much zero insight - unless of course they decide to go read up on that impact.
So I’m going to suggest that if you are not directly involved in the changes, if you are happy to claim Brexit has had little impact (which means you’ve not made any effort to understand the impact) then you are only voicing the opinion “I do not know, I have no informed opinion”.
For some folks, the “Big Picture” is done and dusted, the big picture phase was a lonely place, not many (on the face of it) seemed bovered, at a time when change was possible, that time is gone, nuff said.
The care industry has suffered greatly. If we have to recruit Filipino carers and nurses and doctors from across the world you have to wonder why we left the EU. Filipinos could bring their whole family so many have now settled here for good. Many EU workers would tend to go back to their country eventually. But back before Brexit they could come and go seasonally when we needed extra labour. Makes no sense to remove that free movement, when the situation we have now is tenfold in terms of people coming in from all over the world and no chance for them to return in most cases.
It was our successive governments that failed to make the most of the EU membership. There was a great deal of laziness and a whole heap of blaming the EU for everything wrong with the country. Well we left and the country is a complete shambles. Thanks Nige!
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I beg to differ. Britain is changing fast and not for the better.
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There is an enormous amount of truth in that. The UK joins the EU and enters the single market - surely the greatest ever export and trade opportunity ever for any country. And successive governments did close to zero to support and enable that opportunity.
Where was the push for European languages at schools and universities? Where the efforts to give UK businesses understanding of different European cultures and how to navigate them? Where was the integration initiatives - us as kind of outsiders integrating into the new Europe? Where was the support and guidance for accessing EU grants and investments - be sure that European businesses and local authorities were very adapt at that.
Significant more effort and money went into securing inward investment in the UK for Japanese (etc.) factories who would build things and then they would export to the UK. That inward investment is good - but it was as if the effort of exporting to the EU was also subcontracted.
And then, after Brexit, with such little non-English speaking overseas sales and export capability in our own businesses, is it any wonder the so called sunlight uplands of new trade deals with other countries has completely failed to compensate for the loss of EU trade?
Because of my age I was torn between voting to remain or abstaining in the brexit vote. The result was not going to affect me as much as a younger person. If I had been younger I am sure I would have voted to leave but I eventually voted to remain. I thought the European Common Market was a good idea but the following political integration not so good. Just another layer of corruption.
That’s because we haven’t actually left have we, it’s just gone undercover with the occasional bad thing happening to the public, like long queues at the airports or lorries at Folkstone to make sure we regret our decision to leave.
If we had a PM with balls like Putin or Trump we would be smelling of roses now and dictating to Europe.
No the UK left, with one of the harder Brexit options. Get over it.
I don’t dispute that but it has been since the times of the Horse and the Stable Door.
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Back in the fifties and sixties hospitals were filled with British nurses and doctors, since joining the EU with their open door policies it’s rare to a white person working in the hospital…Why’s that?
Mobility of Labour.
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Sat round the table circa 1992 with manufacturing managers who were discussing how many more components and sub assembly units should be farmed out to China. I said to them. you lot are Loco but, they weren’t bothered.
The rot was there well before Brexit 
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