Peter-S wrote: ↑Fri Jun 18, 2021 8:47 am
-JC- wrote: ↑Thu Jun 17, 2021 10:12 pm
Well mine was a statement, yours was countering. Usually the person countering would add something to, well counter. You just did the equivalent of the schoolyard "No u". It's ok though, I've not met one person who can coherently explain why they thought Leave was a good idea, so didn't really expect much in the way of detail. You've aways seemed way smarter than the average Brexiteer though so was prepared to be surprised.
The thing is JC, the word 'stupid' is potentially insulting. Had you said walking along a railway track was stupid I would probably agree but there will be times that it is safe so an explanation why would still be good. A bold statement that Brexit, with its many facets, was 'always' stupid raises you above 17million people that disagree without a hint of justification. I am aware that 16m people probably support your views, although maybe not calling Brexit stupid as such, but you can't expect much of a counter argument with that approach. I have no problem with you not agreeing with Brexit but I'm not going to try and convert you on a car forum because I'm sure I can't be better than all the other people that can't put forward a coherent argument.
Fair enough. I do think that the idea was a poorly thought out one, the full implications of it weren't understood by the politicians let alone the electorate, and the public were demonstrably lied to by Johnson, Farage etc. They pushed for it because it suited them, not the country. My opinion is that many people voted leave out of either some sort of old fashioned rose tinted idea of having a British empire again, because of misinformation circulated in the tabloids about Euro bureaucracy or plain old fashioned racism.
I work in immigration, and had told people that it won't stop 'foreigners taking our jobs and claiming our benefits'. In fact it's the opposite of what those people want - immigration into the UK is now harder for Europeans, but it's created/creating shortages in the labour market that need to be filled. That's meant new immigration avenues for everyone, whereas before it was just Europeans that could do jobs like seasonal agricultural work (fruit pickers etc). So all it's done is swapped poorly paid white eastern europeans for poorly paid people of any skin colour.
The 17m you speak of - opinions have changed somewhat since:
In recent months, a handful of polls by ComRes, Deltapoll and YouGov have posed that question again. On average, they have found that 53% would vote Remain and 47% Leave - the same as at the end of January.
(
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-55416939 )
15.5m now say they would still vote leave, so ~1.5m people admit they made a mistake. With the benefit of the information we should have had before going to the polls, the decision would have been 53% in favour of remaining, based on those polls. Admittedly not as accurate as the sample size of a formal referendum. I'm actually suprised the numbers aren't higher than that for people who are prepared to admit they made a mistake. Let's face it too, people are stubborn, the numbers for people who know it but can't admit it will be high too, not to mention those who can't even admit it to themselves.
We've seen lost jobs due to compaines leaving the UK and taking their business abroad, companies stopping imports into the UK, devaluation of the pound, fiascos with commercial traffic into the UK, fishing rights etc, lies about the NI border, loss of rights to live and work in Europe to name just a few negatives. Have there been any (real, measurable) positives to Brexit so far?