this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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Watching Brexit was one of the most bizarre world events I’ve seen in my life. Truly the slowest, clear-cut train crash in modern times. Literally everybody knew it was dumb, everybody knew what the result was going to be, and nothing really deviated from expectations.
Hell, when they were playing musical chairs with PMs over enacting the changes and kept blowing past all of the “absolute deadlines” I started to wonder if they were just going to pretend the vote never happened and just live their lives as usual. Frankly, they might’ve gotten away with it.
Bizarre indeed, but at the same time highly entertaining. Real life comedy at its best!
Depends if you are watching or in it
Well the people in it had a majority deciding in favor of it in a free election. And afterwards the people that voted against it had four years to adjust to it, for instance by migrating into an EU country.
Also it was perfectly possible to form a political stance to overthrow the non binding referendum but instead people voted Boris Johnson in a "landslide victory" to make sure Brexit gets done.
There were plenty turning points for society as a whole and individual possibility to leave the dumpsterfire behind. The people in the UK are getting exactly what they wanted.
As a person in the UK, I got the exact opposite of what I wanted. I was too young to vote at the time, so I, along with everyone else my age, had no say in our future, whereas my grandad voted for Brexit and died before it actually happened, so he won't have to live with the consequences.
It's also caused me a whole load of problems directly, since I'm a language student and I went to Germany for part of my year abroad. There's so much more bureaucracy, as well as significant fees. So no, the people in the UK are not getting what they wanted at all. Maybe apart from those idiots who went on about "British sovereignty" and rubbish like that.
Germany is struggling with a lot of demographic change and desperately needs young people. If you like it here and feel welcome enough (something unfortunately many Germans dont show towards "brown" people) you could emigrate to Germany.
I really enjoyed living and studying in Germany, so it's definitely something I'd consider doing!
(On a side note, the "Black" part of my username actually has nothing to do with skin colour, in the same way that Gandalf the Grey didn't have grey skin! It's just about the colour of the robes.)
I'm baffled by how you lump everyone into such a close vote as 'getting what they wanted', with an undertone suggesting you mean 'getting what they deserved'.
Most people can't just up and leave their country; to do so would mean causing more damage to their lives than just sitting in the shit sandwich they've been served by the useful idiots that made this mess.
Then there's the whole issue with Russian interference that 'probably happened' according to MI5/6, but needed a full investigation which Alexander Boris de Pfelelfllellogram Johnson - likely being in Russian pockets already - obviously quashed.
Can't upvote this enough. I was in London before the vote, there was obviously a ton of people against it. This should have required at least a 2/3 majority.
They should have required the non-binding referendum to actually be non-binding, especially considering how vague the question and answers were and how few people participated.
It's a long string of Tory failures that they enacted pretty much only so they could keep their hands on power.
Cameron > made the referendum part of the 2015 manifesto to stop UKIP splitting the Tory vote.
May > enacted Article 50 to stop the totally-not-UKIP/disaster capitalists from paralysing the party
Johnson > made 'oven ready shit ~~biscuit~~ Brexit' part of the 2019 manifesto so he could whip his party of YesMen into doing whatever the fuck he liked.
Makes me so so angry.
Sounds like you were in it — I was thinking about this the other day, was the thought at the time (maybe at the beginning of it) that a lot of other countries were also fed up with the EU’s rules and would follow Britain out the door or something? It just all seems so random from the outside.
I wasn't, but that wasn't Britain's reasoning. Although it sure played a part in the EU trying to make it as hard for them as possible to leave
The EU didn't make it particularly hard, they actually were way too lenient and made quite a number of concessions, mostly in order to not escalate the Northern Ireland situation.
It was the UK that kept insisting on renegotiating the Withdrawal Agreement over and over again, and the EU was lenient enough to let them have their way whenever they asked for renegotiation.
2016 was a weird time and you could argue it was the point when western politics veered off in the direction of populism over policy.
As a British citizen (sorry subject), it was a horrifying moment to be woken up by my girlfriend to learn that we had voted to leave by the smallest of margins.
And later that year we watched America elect a bonafide psychopathic narcissist as the president of the United States.
Why the majority elect to be kept under the boot with aggressive fiscal policies which reward the wealthy is beyond me.
Brexit was sold on lies and false promises of the 'benefits' Britain would see when we become 'independent' again.
For a long time, I was convinced they would actually turn around and stop the whole endeavour, as it was clearly a giant, unforced blunder. But here we are...