Question: What was the real reason for the departure of the UK from the EU ?

Why did Britain decide to leave the E.U. ?
What are the real underlying reasons?

How much of this had to do with immigration and the free movement of people?

How much of this had to do with the economy and labor market?

Why does it seem like the bureaucrats leading the E.U. are so out of touch with the common people?
Some people have claimed what we are seeing is really an ideological conflict being waged amongst civil society. What is really going on here? It seems like there are deeper things happening under the surface.

 

Brexit backers say E.U. bureaucrats have created far too many burdensome regulations.

The anti-EU camp argues that leaving the EU will be good, as it gives Britain freedom to determine its own fate: to decide about taxes, fishing, immigration, and other issues which are of the utmost importance for the economic and political well-being of the British people.

But the single most important issue for voters is probably immigration:
If Britain leaves the European Union, it's likely to be because of immigration. The issue is more important than the economy for most voters in Thursday's referendum, polling firm Ipsos Mori says. And more than 50% of voters who plan to back a British exit (Brexit) from the EU cite migration as the main reason.

The Brexit referendum also appears to have drawn widespread support from the working class. Britain has historically deep class divides. Voters with less money and education are more likely to support leaving the union. Robert Tombs, a historian at the University of Cambridge, said this stems from a sense of abandonment among poor and working-class Britons. The Brexit debate has become a vessel for anti-establishment and anti-elite feelings directed at the leaders of mainstream British political parties as much as at Europe. And this likely ties into the labor market too, as the lower class is feeling increasingly disenfranchised.

As we have seen in so many other parts of the world, free and open trade between different countries is not necessarily good for labor. But immigration may be playing a big role in this as well.

Prime minister Cameron has claimed that the Brexit would be devastating to Britain's economy. But then again this may just be a reflection of the economic class divide, between capital and labor (i.e. the interests of the working class are diametrically opposed to the interests of big financial institutions).

 

The elephant in the room is that the public services and the NHS are about to collapse under the sheer weight of numbers. The reason that the elitists don't care about it is because they're wealthy enough to not need the public services, and because they have private health plans.

 

Personally, I think it has a lot to do with immigration and the refugee problems.

 

A lot of it has to do with the lies the Brexit brigade told. Many people are already regretting their decision to vote for leave.
I watched the programme with Nick Robinson last night. He interviewed a few knuckle draggers, one of whom claimed he voted leave because he wanted to make Britain great again.

Nick Robinson asked him to explain what he meant, because he, himself, didn't understand. Turns out the idiot voter thought the Great in Great Britain, meant great- as in fantastic.

You couldn't make it up.

edit: It does appear the chickens are coming home to roost for the leave campaign, who made all sorts of ridiculous promises they can't possibly keep.

Boris Johnson has been amazingly quiet for him. Watch him start back peddling like mad later on.

It's early days yet, but so far so bad. All the predictions made by those hated experts are coming true.

 

For me the reason to vote leave was one of Sovereignty, British laws should be (in my opinion) made by British Politicians that I can vote out of office. The European political integration was something I can not accept.

All the other issues that were discussed, and other people may have voted based upon those issues are for them to decide. But for me Sovereignty.

 

Incompatible with my national identity.

 

So this was a vote more towards people wanting the gov't to be more for the people and not just the elite? If so, all those R's in the US cheering for it are cheering for the folks they don't like in the US. Middle class and poor. Seems odd they would be for the people wanting the gov't to act for all people. That is the USA conservatives.

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In only 2 days? I would think very little has actually happened. I read it will be a 2 yr or so process to fully leave the EU.

 

The problem was mainly about Polish immigration which has been increasing the unemployment rate among the British working class and driving down wages of British workers. There are around 2 million EU migrants in the UK, most of whom are from Eastern Europe. At least that was what I heard on BBC 5 Live yesterday. Brexit is a revolt of working class voters who had enough of mass immigration.


There are more than 50,000 Polish immigrants living in the West Midlands, many of whom settled after Poland entered the EU in 2004. Erdington, five miles from Birmingham city centre, has a large Polish population.

 

Well, quite a lot has happened. The pound has plummeted, the markets are in crisis mode and Standard and Poor have lowered Britain's AAA rating.
Everything the experts predicted is on course to happen.
Mark Carney's attempt to calm the markets helped to stabilise the pound by promising to inject £250 billion on top of normal trading allowances, but the forecast is there is worse to come.
The experts have been absolutely right so far, with one glaring omission. They did not expect the British to be stupid enough to vote to leave.

On top of that, British politics is in turmoil.

 

The NHS is starved of funding, which is the real reason it's on the state of collapse.
The biggest problem facing the NHS is the elderly with multiple health problems blocking beds.
The NHS needs immigrants.

 

Immigrants get old and infirm with multiple health problems too you know?

 

No, I don't. Your gut instinct is wrong again.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/cut-immigration-nhs-nurses-deported

That was bad enough, but more than 4% of NHS nurses are from the EU - and that figure was rising because of the difficulties of recruiting from outside the EU due to the salary cap.

 

What foreigners don't age? Well I didn't know that! Looks like my gut instinct has failed me; last time that happened seems like a hundred years ago.

 

You're wrong there, too. It lets you down all the time.

EU migrants who come to the UK are young and come to work, not elderly.

 

Yes, most of them come to work here and in doing so undercut our indigenous craftsmen and tradesmen, and by charging less makes their tax contributions (if any) minimal. My gut feeling tells me that of every 5 who pay full rate taxes, 50 pay hardly any at all. So much for being 'net contributors to the economy'?

 

Yes, the markets have gone down. But I wonder how much of that is just the natural dichotomy between labor and capital.
Anything that improves wages or working conditions tends to cut into business and lower profits. That's just a naturally antagonistic relationship that has always existed. Capital naturally wants access to lower cost labor and foreign markets. Nationalism does not make the stockholders happy.

Now some of the market panic just has to do with agitated investors and unfounded fears. So to a large extent the market will bounce back, as we have already begun to see.

One of the big questions that has been asked, will they earn enough to pay for themselves when they do eventually become elderly? If not, who's going to take care of them at that point? We needn't get into that question here, but just wanted to mention that point.

 

None of it. It's all due to the result of the referendum.

No, we haven't.

No, it isn't one of the big questions being asked. By that time they'd have paid their dues like some of the rest of us.

 

Well, it seems that the UK very desperately wants to stay in the single market, but now Merkel is trying to hold that over their heads and use it as leverage. She has given the UK an ultimatum: accept the free movement of people or leave. That basically puts EU leaders in control of the UK's immigration policy. Maybe Merkel is making a calculated bet the UK will not be willing to call her bluff ?

EU supporters want what they want and do not seem to be willing to make any compromise to their vision. Things have gotten ugly.

 

What makes you think it's bluff?

Don't blame Remain supporters for that. Blame the brexit campaigners who lied their socks off.

 

Mainstream politicians in (or close to) office like stability and continuing with our political union with Europe provided stability in this context. Some people, within the major parties and beyond, believed the EU is a major problem for varying reasons and being unable to effectively push for change within the mainstream, established fringe organisation and campaigns, from which UKIP rose to the top.

UKIP was small but had a charismatic leader and a lot of populist rhetoric to play with (much of it was targeted at non-EU migration but details don’t matter with rhetoric). The mainstream parties had become bland and lazy so UKIP could make a lot of easy ground. To fight the growing popularity and political threat of UKIP, the Conservative party was forced to agree to the referendum. At the time, they were confident they could win it though, as were most commentators.

A number of people saw the opportunity for personal gain (or avoiding personal loss) and a number of fundamentally anti-EU proponents stepped in to the light though. A mess of a campaign filled with lies and misinformation from both sides resulted but the “leavers” (arguably with more practice) were better at that so were better able to sell their version of the lie to the masses.

Note that absolutely nothing here has the slightest thing to do with any actual pros and cons of the UK being a member of the EU (or going through the process of leaving for that matter).

 

It would be easier if members here pointed out which specific lies were told by the remain side.

A lot of what some voters called lies, were actually warnings of what could happen.

 

The REASON is low IQ's were being run into the nation and when low IQ's vote a nation falls

 

They were warnings without any empirical foundation. In other words, what 'could' happen isn't the same as what 'will' happen? It was shameless scaremongering such as hyperbolic figures from discredited financial bodies such as 'every household will be £4,300 worse off' and 'economic shock' frighteners, all dressed up as a predictions.

 

The warnings were seriously made and backed by evidence and came from experts ( who have been proven to be right).

What , if any, lies did they tell?