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4meAndyou · F
Very little. I know that the EU open border policy was very disturbing to about half of the British people, who then decided they no longer wanted their country flooded with immigrants taking their jobs.
Unfortunately, the Brits signed some sort of contract with the EU, and they are having a very sticky time trying to get out of it.
Theresa May failed abysmally to negotiate Brexit, and Boris Johnson is the Brexit choice in Parliament, and he isn't really making any headway either.
That's really all I know, (or think I know). I could be wrong about some of it.
Unfortunately, the Brits signed some sort of contract with the EU, and they are having a very sticky time trying to get out of it.
Theresa May failed abysmally to negotiate Brexit, and Boris Johnson is the Brexit choice in Parliament, and he isn't really making any headway either.
That's really all I know, (or think I know). I could be wrong about some of it.
TheThinker · 56-60, M
@4meAndyou
[quote]I know that the EU open border policy was very disturbing to about half of the British people, who then decided they no longer wanted their country flooded with immigrants taking their jobs.[/quote]
While undoubtedly there's some truth in this, it's more that the prospect of the EU's new upcoming Anti-Tax-Avoidance Directive was very disturbing to a handful of very rich people, who for decades have been enjoying the benefits of offshore tax havens (in the Channel Islands and the like), various tax avoidance schemes, and even money laundering.
The new EU laws would have put a stop to all that, hence the sudden desire to exit the EU as quickly and in as "hard" a fashion as possible (essentially to get us out from underneath the European Court of Justice).
Hence the extremely well-funded (to the point where some of it was subsequently deemed illegal) leafleting campaign; where dozens of anti-EU leaflets were stuffed through people's doors, many of them containing outright lies.
Not forgetting Boris Johnson's infamous slogan on the side of a bus that said if we left the EU we could give our beloved National Health Service £350m/week extra (also a lie and one they've more or less admitted since then). From what I gather this is what swung the vote for a lot of people... which when you think that the Leave vote was only 51.9% is pretty dubious.
(Hilariously Nigel Farage, a prominent figure on the Leave side, said before the vote that if it were only, say, 52% Remain then we'd have to have a second referendum. After Leave won by 51.9% he's been [i]awfully[/i] quiet about that!)
Clearly quite a lot of people did have genuine concerns about being in the EU, some regarding immigration issues, others regarding things like sovereignty, but many others had little idea of what they were voting for and were just after £350m/week more for the NHS.
Apparently the most-Googled thing the day [i]after[/i] the result was "What is the EU?"...
[quote]I know that the EU open border policy was very disturbing to about half of the British people, who then decided they no longer wanted their country flooded with immigrants taking their jobs.[/quote]
While undoubtedly there's some truth in this, it's more that the prospect of the EU's new upcoming Anti-Tax-Avoidance Directive was very disturbing to a handful of very rich people, who for decades have been enjoying the benefits of offshore tax havens (in the Channel Islands and the like), various tax avoidance schemes, and even money laundering.
The new EU laws would have put a stop to all that, hence the sudden desire to exit the EU as quickly and in as "hard" a fashion as possible (essentially to get us out from underneath the European Court of Justice).
Hence the extremely well-funded (to the point where some of it was subsequently deemed illegal) leafleting campaign; where dozens of anti-EU leaflets were stuffed through people's doors, many of them containing outright lies.
Not forgetting Boris Johnson's infamous slogan on the side of a bus that said if we left the EU we could give our beloved National Health Service £350m/week extra (also a lie and one they've more or less admitted since then). From what I gather this is what swung the vote for a lot of people... which when you think that the Leave vote was only 51.9% is pretty dubious.
(Hilariously Nigel Farage, a prominent figure on the Leave side, said before the vote that if it were only, say, 52% Remain then we'd have to have a second referendum. After Leave won by 51.9% he's been [i]awfully[/i] quiet about that!)
Clearly quite a lot of people did have genuine concerns about being in the EU, some regarding immigration issues, others regarding things like sovereignty, but many others had little idea of what they were voting for and were just after £350m/week more for the NHS.
Apparently the most-Googled thing the day [i]after[/i] the result was "What is the EU?"...