Brexit is a disaster for the UK economy

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Firms 'banging heads against wall' over post-Brexit trade

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said businesses were still grappling with EU trading arrangements and more red tape.

It comes as a separate report from the Centre for European Reform suggests Brexit may have reduced UK trade by around 7%

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64052849

Meanwhile immigration is at an all time high:

https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/news/2 ... -in-the-uk

So what exactly was the point of us coming out of the EU? Personally I would like to see us back in the EU. I didn't vote in the referendum as I was undecided but now I would vote for us to rejoin.

It certainly has been an enormous flop so far. Though I've read that some of the bread-heads think it'll start to show economic returns (for them) in a few years. Not that I ever wanted it, and nor did half the population, but Boris told them to eff off and rammed it through anyway. And somehow he got an electoral mandate after he'd done it.

The Covid lockdowns and subsequent trade disruption were an avoidable "crisis". The coming global depression will certainly count as a "disaster". I suspect you'll find the economics of Brexit barely merits a footnote in future textbooks.

Most politicians were pro EU.

The reason is simple after UK parliament work there is huge money making opportunities working for the EU just look at Neil kinnock as an example.

Unfortunately Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas as they say.

Remainers always stooped to silly arguments about racism etc and being anti immigrant etc which was dumb

It was about accountability to give a simple example a man knocks on your door saying “vote for us” you say “well I would vote for you but I don’t agree with this policy”or “what are you going to do about this issue?”

They say well “we can’t do anything because it’s EU law and we have signed up to following that for better or worse”

That’s not accountability or democracy.

Yesterday it was immigration

Today it may be going to war

In the future it might be compulsory euthanasia

Who can predict the future watering down your democracy or weakening the control link between power and those ruled over is a dangerous thing

What were the exact policies that made UK people want to leave EU?

I'm genuinely curious.

Xenophobia, misinformation, downright lies. £350m a week extra for the NHS (one of Boris’s).

… the usual.

Well, if it was about immigration policies then it must have been downright lies - East EU has been blocking immigrant quota and fighting illegal migration and it is not even the main topic of arguing between the "Old" and "New" EU (judicary abuses and limited media freedoms are).

Nigel Farage and UKIP eating into the Tory vote and swaying public opinion. Farage is a very effective and dangerous politician..

In arguably the best book on British politics published in 2022, Michael Crick suggests that in the past half-century, this country’s five most significant politicians have been Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Alex Salmond, Boris Johnson – and Nigel Farage. The first four exerted their influence on events by getting elected to high office. The fifth, Farage, did not. But his influence is as strong today as ever.

Farage’s case for inclusion on this select list rests on two things. The first is his potent ability to connect with the public. As one of his media advisers puts it: “He speaks fluent human.” The other is his unmatched ability to influence other politicians without engaging with them directly, without ever displaying much discernible interest in policy, without getting elected to parliament, without ever having run anything, and in spite of leaving a trail of enemies and political casualties in his wake.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ies-labour

Indeed. I heard that the UK gov could have exercised an opt-out on Eastern European immigration, but never took it up.

Uncontrolled immigration from mostly EU countries was perceived to put pressure on access to things like school places or doctor`s appointments, it drove up the shortage of social housing.

For indigenous British working class people in lower paid jobs they found themselves competing with economic migrants who were willing to work harder for less.

Some of these migrants shared rooms or slept in sleeping bags on hard floors. It didn't really matter because the exchange rate outside the euro made such sacrifices profitable.

A UK cleaner probably makes the same as a doctor in Moldova for example in currency terms, so a non skilled person from working in the UK would have been able to either send money left over home or save & return to their country rich once they had converted their savings to their local currency.

It was also great for the richer segment of the population as rents & house prices exploded, a lot of these people made a lot of money, not to mention suppressed wages for the lower paid that didn't keep up with property prices making business owners richer

Of course some stayed & didn't return home increasing the population further.

Not blaming these people its just economics and opportunity, but many British people started to feel used & fed up with this situation.

They felt a basic supply & demand issue was obvious, more people less housing, less medical appointment spaces, less chance of their child getting a space at the school nearest to them. Supply & demand is quite a simple thing to understand.

One cake the more people turn up less for everyone.

Even animals understand the concept which is why they are protective & territorial of their hunting grounds etc..

Anyway people got fed up of bringing this issue up and people like Nigel Farage explained in clear terms that the reason why immigration cannot be controlled is because of open borders or EU law that Britain cannot opt out of.

David Camron our PM then tried to make a deal with the EU but they basically told him to go away not interested.

Exasperated he gambled and launched a referendum on EU membership. He thought he would win & put the matter to rest once and for all.

He possibly didn't understand that his party & the majority conservative press that has been anti EU for about 30 years telling everyone how terrible it was and blaming every incompetence on Europe like Mad Cow disease in the 90`s, suddenly doing a 180 turn saying how great it was & that we should stay probably wouldn't make sense to most people who were told to blame the EU.

It didn't work & Britain voted to leave.

Some will blame the immigration issue but smarter people will blame the accountability issue, people realised they had no power over government policy & their democracy didn't stand for much.

So immigration issue was a catalyst to highlight the issue of democratic accountability that i mentioned above

And now we're out of the EU immigration is at a record high:

What is the problem?

The issue is the huge and rising scale of immigration (a record 1.1 million residence visas were granted to non-UK nationals in year to mid-2022 - par. 1)
Immigration added around seven million to the UK population in the two decades up to 2020 – accounting for over four-fifths of total growth (par. 11)
Mass immigration places mounting pressure on already-overstretched public services. There were nearly 700,000 new GP registrations by migrants in 2019/20 (par. 14).
Record immigration requires a home to be built in England every five minutes to meet the skyrocketing demand for homes (par. 17)
An extensive body of research has consistently found that immigration is a huge cost to the UK Treasury (£13 billion per year - UCL study, 2014/15) – with non-EU immigration (which is presently the fastest rising tranche of immigration) having the biggest fiscal costs (para 19).
Six in ten of the public support reducing immigration (Deltapoll) and nearly 8 in 10 say the government is handling immigration poorly (YouGov). (Par. 23).
Demos found in 2018 that about three-quarters of the public considered that immigration had increased divisions (para 27).
Politicians’ repeated promises to reduce and control immigration have been blatantly abandoned and betrayed, harming voter trust and democracy itself.


https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/what-is-the-problem

I don't believe that right-wing politicians actually want to reduce immigration, as that would rob them of their most valuable dog-whistle. The idea is to whip people up into a constant state of grievance about it, and keep them there by making promises and enacting stunt policies like the Rwanda business. The last thing they want to do is take some decisive action as it would remove the incentive to vote Conservative, and also voters might start to notice the problems that arise from it.

Those that make the laws (politicians) are the same rich people that personally make money from immigration, mainly from rising rents & property prices.

Their political donors (businesses & corporations) profit from cheap labour

They`ll always tweak the laws to suit themselves

I suspect its the same in the US about China, the republicans claim to be against China but their rich donors make so much from cheap labour they cant break business ties too much even if it harms the US.

There is a very simple fallacy in this:
Those immigrants provided a huge part of workforce to keep the economy going.
They worked using less housing than British workers doing the same job would - you admitted it yourself.
They used healthcare and they also provided healthcare - how many immigrant doctors and nurses have you seen? How many hospital cleaners and maintainers? How much more does keeping a hospital cost without cheap immigrant workforce?

They take a part of the cake - but they contribute to the cake even more.

Every rich country has it this way, even Poland recently became well-off enough to attract immigrants.

If you kick out immigrant workers, you simply stay with a lot of work not done.

^ How did economies ever survive before the age of mass immigration? It's also no accident that mass immigration has coincided with a continual loss of purchasing power generation upon generation for those on the receiving end of it.

There is some truth about the turmoil that would be caused by turning off the migration spigot, but an analogy might be that the country is like a patient unnecessarily dependent on a drug - take them off it and there will be pain and upset , perhaps they may even need medical intervention - but no doctor would recommend a patient continue taking a drug because it will be painful to stop.

There were simply less goods.
For thousands of years, most of the population were peasantry, working hard in agriculture and often operating on bare survival level.
Then, with industrial revolution, you had mass migration from countryside to cities.
Since then, the technology-economy-demography system was never stationary.

Which particular generations do you have in mind? AFAIK, UK started a policy of letting in lots of migrant workers right after WWII.

If you want to function as an isolated economy with lots of pensioners and a deficit in working age people, I'm not the one to try to stop you.
Your native business people will be the ones to try.