Was Brexit a failure

[King Of The Kiwis]

The left say Brexit is responsible for everything bad that’s happening in the UK right now. But is it really and would the UK have been better off staying in the EU?

 

[John R. Brown M.D.]

As an European it's an absolute success because it made the existance of Great Britain like 99% less annoying.

 

[Troonos]

Brexit is just their scapegoat bogeyman, like niggers consider whitey, and the American left consider the MAGA movement. They need something to blame all their failures on.

 

[Teghern]

If it rains it's cos brexit.
Admittedly bad timing because of self inflicted covidery but I say it is worth it to be a proud not-European.

 

[Magicicada_septendecula]

I'd say "no" just because any issues attributed to Brexit are not actually caused by leaving the EU, but rather the fact that Brexit was carried out by elites who never wanted it anyway, so they deliberately fuck it up at every chance.

 

[Beautiful Border]

Brexit is just their scapegoat bogeyman, like niggers consider whitey, and the American left consider the MAGA movement. They need something to blame all their failures on.

It's a bit of both. I don't think Brexit was a good move for the UK, but there's also people who will blame literally anything bad that has happened since 2016 on it. It's basically the inverse of the whole "vibecession" narrative the media is trying to push in the US, where they're trying to convince everyone the American economy is actually doing fantastic, don't believe your lying eyes. Even though things in the UK aren't great at the moment, if you took The Guardian or /r/unitedkingdom at face value you'd think British people had resorted to cannibalism by now.

Arguably the worst part about Brexit is the certain subset of people who have never gotten over it and accepted it as a fact of life. It's always a certain type of person. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle England types. Probably lives in Bristol. Can't go ten minutes without some bizarre non-sequitur about "lies on the side of a bus" or "sunlit uplands" they think is the height of wit. They talk about Brexit like the result came in yesterday and not eight years ago. The longer in time we move away from the vote the more concerning it gets, frankly.

 

[eatler]

Not Britain existed before that, that was the real problem.

 

[Halfnium Bomb]

My understanding is the Brit populists wanted Brexit in order to get away from EU globohomo.
Unfortunately the globohomo is coming from inside the house.

 

[Waifu Days]

My understanding is the Brit populists wanted Brexit in order to get away from EU globohomo.
Unfortunately the globohomo is coming from inside the house.

The British elites have sabotaged any real effect Brexit could have had. The UK was headed towards self-destruction long before leaving the EU and most of their problems are not caused by the EU.

I really was hoping other countries would have followed shortly after.

 

[Beautiful Border]

My understanding is the Brit populists wanted Brexit in order to get away from EU globohomo.
Unfortunately the globohomo is coming from inside the house.

Brexit happened for a very simple reason: For decades the British government blamed the EU for unpopular decisions it made. Everything from mass immigration to austerity to deindustrialization was blamed on the "unelected bureaucrats in Brussels" - but on the other hand, they had no intention of ever actually leaving it. They thought they could keep this arrangement up indefinitely: They got to carry out their agenda while the EU copped the bad press for it, without any regard for the accumulative effect this would have on the British public.

In other words, the British political class was too stupid to realize that if they kept using the EU as a scapegoat, it would eventually give people the feeling that maybe they didn't want to be in the EU anymore.

 

[draggs]

Taking back your sovereignty is never a failure

 

[Kerr Avon]

It failed because no one sent Ursula von der Leyen to the choir invisible

 

[Quindoll]

Brexit was a funny trainwreck. Now in my opinion it is maybe not the main factor, but it is making the economical situation worse. At least that is the common opinion of economists:

https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/brexit-2/

https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/brexit-ii/

https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/after-brexit-2/

https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/after-brexit/

Surveys answered by European and US economists.

The negotiations were the most amusing. The EU was a united front and attemps to use Poland to break it weren't really working for the UK. The EU choose Michael Barnier for the negotiations. He had around 450 experienced civil servants with him and they were used and knowledgeable about the economic, social and cultural agreements that came with a gradual integration over the years.
The UK had to gather civil servants from it's existing institutions and universities, which were then relocated into a new Brexit-Ministry.

Combine that with the GDP and other economic datasets and you get a pretty good idea who is in the better negotiating position. At the very least the Br*tish politicians cannot use the EU as scapegoat for everything anymore and have to take more direct responsibiltiy. That might be funny.

As another note. I want to read a few books on the topic of Extra-Territorial laws, such as the USA is applying them. They apply their laws to foreign entities. And it works, because their size and economic power makes it possible. One example would be the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act

The US do it. China is writing those laws into law currently as well. So now what would happen if China sanctions the US telecom sector and the US sanctions the China telecom sector. Than you couldn't cooperate with either without violating the Extra-Territorial of one side.
I think this will hit the smaller economies first and will only be a problem for the larger economies later on. So in theory that issue would become an issue for the UK before it would become one for the EU. But one will see. But it puts a bad taste towards the concept of sovereignty.

 

[Teghern]

Something important to bear in mind also is that true brexit has never been tried, ideally we'd have had a staged exit and proper de-coupling period to be Norway 2. Sadly it got fucked by ideologues so now we get the worst of both worlds, very sad.
When I voted leave in 2016 it was because I didn't believe in a Federal Europe, other people like my family members did so because they caught the line that as said literally everything used to get blamed on Eurocrats (just take a sampling of Daily Mail/express headlines to get a feel for this). Meanwhile the entire establishment of poncy toffs managed themselves an unholy alliance with the rainbow brigade, they thought they had it in the bag.
Then pork-stuffer Hameron bottled it and we got a hostile takeover by remainers who spent the best part of 4 years cocking everything up for everyone, the highlight of this was of course the CUK saga, before reaching final resolution with Alexander "Serial inseminator" Johnson.

That in retrospect it is all being labelled as a disaster just because muh lines not going up is very grating for me, because for most of us it was never ever a pipe dream prosperity thing (disregard the "lets go WTO!" controlled opposition idiots), the economy being nice is good and all but what is really important is not being a subject state.

 

[Product Placement]

It's one of the reasons but not the reason. But Brexit made the right people sweat, so not all bad.