The strangest thing about brexit is that all it took was one single 50% vote to exit.
After untold time, money, effort and history put into joining Europe, you’d have thought that tearing the whole thing down would have required best of three votes to exit, or a supermajority, or a 12 month cooldown followed by a deciding second vote, or an “time apart” period before ending the relationship.
Instead all it took was some politicking and a vote and it’s over. Seems a huge flaw in the planning of joining Europe in the first place. I suppose they didn't anticipate brexit as a real possibility.
I remain flabbergasted that Brexit happened but wasn't the overwhelming victory of Boris Johnson & the conservative party at the end of 2019 basically a re-statement by the population that they wanted it?
IIRC that was basically a single issue election after which Brexit was more or less fast-tracked without continued internal opposition.
Up until that point there had been a series of delays and rejections of Brexit plans in parliament and it looked like it might not happen.
(I'm not British and have only watched this from afar so I'm actually curious about if this read is accurate.)
The vote wasn't binding, and didn't specify exactly what a vote to leave even meant so there were multiple points at which a functional state could have course corrected.
Everyone except those that keep their money in the British offshore banking system, the real reason behind Brexit as Eu banking regs would have been a big problem.
It is estimated that half of the worlds wealth resides in the British offshore banks.
Almost half of the worlds wealth is in real estate, which is hard to store offshore or in a bank. British banks probably store less than $5 trillion or less than 1% of global wealth.
I find it puzzling that every suggestion of how to recover relative prosperity for a western society reads like it was written by stage coach drivers or their reluctant employers.
UK unemployment is somehow¹ only like 3.5%. To win relative to other countries you need to automate away domestic service and maintenance jobs and put those people in higher paid jobs, jobs related to exports, etc.
I'm going to guess Slovenia isn't passing the UK by making impossibly complex privatization scams that need more people to get other people, their communications or their goods from point A to B, domestically or convince them to pay more for that..
¹ Of course a plan like that excludes the people not seeking work so there are other options.. But the plans you hear from politicians are basically how to make a profit gouging your people for their savings and somehow indefinitely maintain a higher GDP as a result of those internal redistributions of money.
I would say things are worse but it's difficult to disentangle it from the other major events like Covid and the war. Also worth pointing out that the UK's economic stagnation began well before Brexit and goes back to the 2008 crash: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FvPzCWYXwAEoIRu?format=jpg&name=....
As someone who supports Brexit, I always thought there would be greater costs in the short term but getting out of institutional structure of the EU would be beneficial long term, as long as we take advantage of the institutional freedom and try to get onto a different path as a country (investing heavily in science and technology, having a more rational approach to regulation, having an immigration system that attracts great talent while also controlling the borders and thus making the whole thing less toxic).
I haven't overall changed my view as the EU still seems to be on a very bad path as I see it, I can't say I'm hugely optimistic about the UK either though. There are glimmers of hope like the new ARIA institution for blue sky science, but the main political parties are a pretty depressing spectacle.
The trouble is the UK electorate has no appetite for the kind of changes that would make Brexit a success. Instead we are going to slowly creep back in over the coming decades. Having such a large trading block right on our doorstep makes that inevitable.
In Australia no-one ever discussing anything about current propsperity in the context of "disentangling it from the other major events like Covid and the war".
Sure those are things, but we are not trying to make sense of current affairs through that lens as a major factor.
As someone who has spent a significant amount of time in the UK and the Czech Republic (an EU country) since Brexit, both places are worse off now, but the Czech Republic is significantly more worse off than Britain. I have plenty of anecdotal evidence, but it suffices to look at inflation statistics, with Czechia at 15.1% and the UK at 9.07% for 2022. I haven't noticed any empty shelves, except for eggs, which were caused free-range chicken quarantine (according to a store worker). Maybe it's a coincidence, but as far as I can tell, this crisis has nothing to do with Brexit.
Compairing UK and the Czech Republic is like apples and oranges. A comparison with France or Germany would be more appropriate (but this way Brexit looks really bad).
Comparison to European economies (which suffered through the same coronavirus pandemic and the same, if not worse, energy crisis) might bring some clarity.
Those who are anti-Brexit are loving it as they are blaming EVERYTHING caused by Ukraine war and gas prices inflation on Brexit. They are just as much the liars as the Brexitiers they accuse of being so. Some of them will in fact will be reading this and being in glee and loving how much Putin's invasion has helped them.
I'm more curious about how it compares to other Western nations. There's only a sentence or two about that, and neither gives specifics.
A lot of the issues listed - high inflation, product shortages, worker shortages, strikes, etc. all happened here in the US and worldwide as far as I'm aware.
Readit News
After untold time, money, effort and history put into joining Europe, you’d have thought that tearing the whole thing down would have required best of three votes to exit, or a supermajority, or a 12 month cooldown followed by a deciding second vote, or an “time apart” period before ending the relationship.
Instead all it took was some politicking and a vote and it’s over. Seems a huge flaw in the planning of joining Europe in the first place. I suppose they didn't anticipate brexit as a real possibility.
IIRC that was basically a single issue election after which Brexit was more or less fast-tracked without continued internal opposition.
Up until that point there had been a series of delays and rejections of Brexit plans in parliament and it looked like it might not happen.
(I'm not British and have only watched this from afar so I'm actually curious about if this read is accurate.)
But due to our awful electoral system, they achieved that with only around 40% of the vote
Rupert’s Australia's ‘deadliest export’.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/rupert-s-our-dead...
It is estimated that half of the worlds wealth resides in the British offshore banks.
But half does seem like an exaggeration. 1/10 would be more believable.
https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-spiders-web/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYfnkLurLA8
UK unemployment is somehow¹ only like 3.5%. To win relative to other countries you need to automate away domestic service and maintenance jobs and put those people in higher paid jobs, jobs related to exports, etc.
I'm going to guess Slovenia isn't passing the UK by making impossibly complex privatization scams that need more people to get other people, their communications or their goods from point A to B, domestically or convince them to pay more for that..
¹ Of course a plan like that excludes the people not seeking work so there are other options.. But the plans you hear from politicians are basically how to make a profit gouging your people for their savings and somehow indefinitely maintain a higher GDP as a result of those internal redistributions of money.
It's been a hugely divisive topic from what I've gathered in the last years.
Are things on average worse, or the same, or better?
As someone who supports Brexit, I always thought there would be greater costs in the short term but getting out of institutional structure of the EU would be beneficial long term, as long as we take advantage of the institutional freedom and try to get onto a different path as a country (investing heavily in science and technology, having a more rational approach to regulation, having an immigration system that attracts great talent while also controlling the borders and thus making the whole thing less toxic).
I haven't overall changed my view as the EU still seems to be on a very bad path as I see it, I can't say I'm hugely optimistic about the UK either though. There are glimmers of hope like the new ARIA institution for blue sky science, but the main political parties are a pretty depressing spectacle.
Sure those are things, but we are not trying to make sense of current affairs through that lens as a major factor.
It's just surreal to me that brexit is just in the top 3 events in the past few years.
The coronavirus pandemic was an absolute shitshow of wasted money. A ton of locals left the workforce as well. We're paying for that on top of Brexit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KloM9uVcIOY
It was hugely divisive between 2016-2019 but once it dropped off the media's radar people mostly stopped talking about it (before corona).
Or it's no longer divisive, as in, nobody has a clue anymore because too many things happened and nobody can follow the trail of economic hardship?
A lot of the arguments I heard were things like, "we don't want Brussels having such a strong say in our <country/government/people/culture/etc>!"
Do you feel the economy is worse but you have better control or options?
A lot of the issues listed - high inflation, product shortages, worker shortages, strikes, etc. all happened here in the US and worldwide as far as I'm aware.
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