What was it actually supposed to accomplish? I mean, I'm an American who mostly followed the whole thing via UK chat and panel shows so I'm sure I missed a ton of detail, but I don't remember there being an over-arching goal, just a lot of little nebulous promises like somehow generating an extra 350 million a week for the NHS, but with no actual plan for how any of that was actually going to happen. It seemed like the whole point was to let xenophobic shit disturbers flick the Vs at Europe, and the vague notion that once Brexit was done it'd finally be open season on "those bloody immigrants."

[–] sci 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The campaign talked of frictionless trade deals with Europe, but while it looked good on paper the small print came littered with problems that made trade slightly harder than it had been as a member. The new customs processes has seen haulers transporting goods needing to fill out extra paperwork while new infrastructure has been needed to deal with queues.
The UK adopted a new points based immigration system, a promise of the Vote Leave campaign, in January 2021. This removed the right for EU workers to come to the UK without a visa and implemented the target to cut immigration to the tens of thousands. The target does appear unlikely, given the number of residence visas issued was higher in the year ending June 2022 than in any year since records began - with 1.2 million issued. Meanwhile, Brexit has created a shortage of 330,000 workers in UK.

[–] Kichae@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago

This is some of the rhetoric the Leave campaign used to garner votes, but none of it is what it was supposed to accomplish.

The architects of Brexit were proponents of William Reese-Mogg's ideology of the Sovereign Individual, which basically states that the wealthy should be above the law and outside the pervue of the state. It also calls for the collapse of democracy, via the withholding of the rich's wealth from the state via tax immunity.

It's still unclear whether the Sovereign Individualists will succeed in their goals, but they haven't failed yet, and Brexit was a necessity hurdle on their journey.

[–] mycatiskai@lemmy.one 3 points 2 years ago

I watched a DW video about some woman who voted for Brexit running a shellfish farm and with all the new regulations she's dealing with very short shelf life seafood that has to get to the EU with a bunch more red tape. She is losing money and might have to sell her side business because of all the excessive fees she now has to pay to get her seafood out of the country. Totally a leopards ate my face party member.

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