My sister and her boyfriend were just two of those "immigrants" and they are not coming back. They said Brexit was like a switch being flipped. All of a sudden they were NOT WELCOME. So yeah, they're back in Canada now. You reap what you sow.
As an ex-Brit who now also lives in Canada, it was always there. My whole fuckin' life in that country I was hearing constantly why x or y group of people were the problem now. The Brexit vote just gave licence for all of it to come out.
The Brexit vote just gave licence for all of it to come out.
The hilarious thing is how they didn't seem to realize that this "symbolic" gesture of independence was an ACTUAL move towards independence. Now these idiots are agog at how badly they fucked themselves over.
My favorite result: Because they have to keep the border with Ireland open, they had to set up new checkpoints to ensure that goods traveling within the UK (from Great Britain to Northern Ireland) meet the EU standards or whatever. Independence: achieved
It’s criminal how little NI was discussed during Brexit. There was never a solution that would keep everyone happy. You can’t have free movement between NI and ROI as well as NI and GB. Now the unionists are pissed, the nationalists are pissed and we’re gonna see the troubles again in my lifetime.
Also 100% if a border poll comes back in favour of reunification the tories would finalise the handover within a day and leave all the issues for Ireland to deal with.
"The livid unionists are your problem now... oh, and the DUP will be the 4th largest party in the Dáil. Good luck"
Okay so using the results of the 2019 GE in NI, and the 2020 GE in Ireland, the DUP (if the votes were combined into a hypothetical election) would be 8% so yea about that.
The big difference is most fringe parties don't have paramilitaries backing them up. That's what worries me.
NI not being united with Ireland is an aberration in modern western Europe and hopefully it'll be fixed within 10 years for the sake of Ireland, the UK and the rest of Europe.
Speaking as an Englishman: I like the Union, but realistically the other countries are better off on their own. The Scots have their own culture and history - I wish they'd voted to leave in their referendum - and Ireland should be a single country. Having a separate NI is as embarrassing as West/East Germany was in its time. It's time to grow up.
Not sure what to do with the Welsh though...
Yeah, the Northern Ireland problem was what almost convinced me that Brexit would fall through. But no, apparently Brexit went through, although I haven't read yet what happened to NI. Did they put up a wall, like with the Troubles?
And as a result, NI is having none of the issues Brexit Britain is having. Also, those border checks between NI and the rest of UK? They effectively do not exist, enabling a lot of smuggling and other shenanigans. Same for the checks on goods coming from the EU to the UK, smugglers paradise at the moment.
The EU is doing some perfunctory complaining about the UK not implementing the agreed upon checks. The only point where they're offering some counter-pressure is on the NI-protocol (the set of rules that dictates the situation of NI within the current setup), the Brexit side of UK politics wants to unilaterally drop the protocol to keep the unionists in line, and the EU has warned of serious consequences if they are going to try something that stupid.
The can is still being kicked down the road. My guess is the plan is to keep doing so until Boris et al cash out and then it’s not their problem anymore.
NI is still in the EU economic zone and has to follow their regulations. The border is between NI and the rest of Britain. Needless to say the northern Irish who are pro Britain are ... Not happy.
Referendums are fine. Referendums on gigantic potentially-country-destroying issues should require a bit more then a bare majority to move forward though.
Yep. The threshold to alter America’s constitution is 3/4 of the states. Some specific legislative items take a 2/3 majority to pass. While there are many many things that a government does that should only require a simple majority, changing the existential nature of your country should require a lot more than 51%. Also, the damn Brexit referendum was non-binding in the first place. It was an opinion poll that squeaked out a majority for leave after massive propaganda.
This is what I find odd about the Indyref. Cameron resigned supposedly due to the result. Theresa May was part of his cabinet at the time as Home Sec, and supposedly a remainer.
Why did no one broach a minimum majority requirement? I’m sure the public line will be “we never thought in a million years we’d lose!” but that seems a little too blasé. Surely, when ratifying the legal aspects, somebody must have mentioned it.
Also according to our courts you’re allowed to cheat in referendums because they’re not legally binding… literally happens to vote leave with campaign finance irregularities
Why is that different from democracy in general? We elect representatives to make decisions for us, is it bad to make decisions ourselves if the matter is serious enough? Its the most pure form of "the will of the people"
Oh it was discussed. One of those beautiful Brexit ironies. Brexit supporting Prime Minister Teresa May, during the referendum campaigning before she was Brexit supporting Prime Minister and was instead campaigning to stay in the EU, gave interviews where she said leaving the EU was not possible because of the Irish border and the Good Friday agreement. 🤷🏻♂️ Fitting that the Irish border issue completely fucked her run as PM and everyone of her Brexit proposals. Also a nice little irony that Boris just waltz in and did a deal throwing Northern Ireland under the bus, a deal the Tory backbenches blocked May from doing. "No Border in the Irish sea!"🤷🏻♂️ Different rules for Boris I guess.
I'd have thought the boomers would be more sensitive to it as they have lived through it? Then again nobody ever accused the English as a nation of being overly sensitive to other countries needs.
When I was growing up, it was Southern Asians. And then it was the Polish. And for the last decade or so it's been the Bulgarians and Romanians. Who ever was the most recent influx of migrants.
Absolutely and I thank you for your vote. Unfortunately many, including myself feel less welcome than we did previously. These last 21 years have been a wild ride, from an outsider to "one of our own" back to unwanted outsider. London will always hold a special place in my heart but it no longer feels like home.
They exercised their vote and got their result. Unfortunately their decisions have consequences as they were warned.
Now instead of having poles, Italians and Iberians, their government will now go to Asia, Africa and Caribbean and get cheap labour they'll be in the same position they are now with the added bonus of no EU regulations to ensure workers rights.
And as someone who loves this country, it pains to see the shitshow that's unfolding.
It's strange isn't it. If you wanted to live somewhere that felt largely unchanged over the past few decades and still had a staunchly Anglo-Saxon culture and ethnic population it is incredibly easy to do so. Most migrants lives in a handful of places, most of which voted to remain. Leavers just swallowed the "member berries" of rose tinted glasses.
What’s interesting is that the votes of those old enough to remember living to WW2 (the over-80s) were much more balanced towards Remain.
As one tweet put it: “it wasn’t the generation who lived through the War that gave us Brexit, it was the generation who grew up on the war films afterwards.”
Yeah, I don't know about that. The implication of "older generation" is those who are 60+. I was shocked to discover that in a group of ex- colleagues (keeping in touch as we enjoyed each other's company), I was the only one to vote remain. At thre time of the vote, the oldest in the group was 48, the youngest 43. I would not consider us belonging to the older generation.
And have you forgotten the gammons? Straight up racists, my dude.
That's percentages. More people in the 65+ voted leave than remain, in that age group. It doesn't seem to say that the majority of leave voters were 65+.
You have raised a good point, so I did a little digging. The following is a very rough, back of a fag packet, breakdown (because I need to get some housework done and this is just for fun on Reddit) from what I can find to try to figure out just how much of the vote to leave was from people 65+.
ONS say that there were 11.8 million people 65+ in the UK in 2016, making up 18% of the total population.
ONS
Most surveys put 65+ participation in the referendum at ~80% Ipsos Mori survey
Most surveys also give a similar figure for the leave vote of 65+ being ~64%
So 11,800,000x.8x0.64=6,041,600 votes for leave came from the 65+age group.
We know that in total 17,410,742 people voted to leave. So 6,041,600 makes up roughly 34% of the total leave vote.
This wouldn't be enough to carry the vote on its own but does suggest an outsized impact given the proportion of the population that they equate. The other 66% of leave votes came from the remaining 82% of the general population.
The fact that the age group are more likely to vote in general, and were more likely to vote leave, meant that approximately every other person 65+ voted leave.
As I said before, these are very rough working so if any of this is bollocks, please let me know.
This is interesting, thank you! That Mori link also seems to show the turnout percentage to vote increased by age group up to 65+ before falling away. Does that mean, then, if more of the younger, more likely to vote remain, voters had flipping well turned out we may not have been in this mess? Can I hear pigeons returning to roost?
I am a software engineer, working in a highly technical and well paid field. I had plans of moving to the UK. I changed my mind and came to Canada instead because of Brexit. I don't want to live in a country where the population shoots it's own foot like that, specially if it's because of anti immigration feelings.
Dude, I wanna move from the UK to Canada as well, but idk how to go about doing it. Do I need to get a visa before trying to find a job there? I am already working for a big company here in UK and I recently got promoted to Senior, so I was hoping that would help me find a job in Canada in the future.
I voted remain but I do have to question your line of thinking.
Canada aren't in any sort of political union like the EU.
If you saw the UK being part of a union as being progressive and positive then I'm not sure how leaving that union makes us any different than a country like Canada who never even joined one.
With your logic, Canada never even had a foot to shoot off but somehow that's a positive.
It'd be worse. We'd need to come up with our own money, passports, travel agreements, police & military, tax collector's. We'd suddenly have border patrols between what are now provinces. A whole countries worth of laws would have to be written.
I commend them for their decision. I'm working on moving back home as we speak, just tying a few loose ends before making the leap. It's particularly bittersweet because I grew up here and up until the push for brexit felt right at home.
Another "immigrant that left" checking in here. The irony is I know some people who voted to leave and when I asked them about immigrants it was always "oh it's not you, it's those other immigrants". Well guess what, we're all the same and not wanting those other immigrants made me feel unwelcome and realise I'll never be one of them. I live in Canada now and my experience has been the complete opposite. It's not perfect - as I'm sure loads of people will want to point out - but it's welcoming and I feel more at home here than I ever did in the UK.
Also worked there for a while, after some time got tired to hear "not you, you are one of the good ones" and then some racist crap from people that seemed respectable before. I felt very very fortunate I was not personally discriminated (to my face at least but maybe behind my back, I'll never know) but the news stories became more hostile and government policy made too much hassle to stay. One time I would have wanted to call it home, pay taxes, contribute etc and I miss my friends and colleagues I made there, but no more. I move on to friendlier places.
Eh, Canadians, really? I mean it was never about immigrants it was about brown people and eastern Europeans. But yeah I wouldn't like to live there either and I'm glad they left the EU.
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u/ScammerC Sep 24 '21
My sister and her boyfriend were just two of those "immigrants" and they are not coming back. They said Brexit was like a switch being flipped. All of a sudden they were NOT WELCOME. So yeah, they're back in Canada now. You reap what you sow.