Admittedly, I don’t know much about Brexit, but from what I have been exposed to, it seems like a decisively economical and political impairment that made travel and business with the rest of Europe more difficult and costly. Since it is so highly criticized as a terrible move, why doesn’t the UK just rejoin the EU?
Many good answers in this thread (and some stupid ones) but there are a few critical issues that the current British government will not accept.
First, currency. GB does not want to give up control over the pound, and their previous agreement did not force them to adopt the Euro. There are several other EU countries that have not yet adopted the Euro, but all except Denmark are obligated to switch over once certain criteria are met. GB might be able to negotiate that privilege again, but the EU is in a stronger bargaining position now.
Second, immigration. For as much as their country is suffering from their own strict immigration policies, the conservative government is still making political hay out of xenophobia and bigotry. Reopening the borders would be a tacit admission that their rhetoric was bullshit.
Third, taxes. Joining the EU means contributing to the EU, and while their nation may save money overall due to improved trade relations, the conservative government has made the cost of admission another talking point.
Basically, the current government would have to renegotiate readmittance to the EU, and they would get a worse deal than they had before. Doing so would make it obvious that leaving was a mistake, and their government could only be consisered an objective failure. So they won’t do it, even if it is the best option available.
Why didn’t Denmark have to switch to the Euro? I can see how back in the 70s the UK had enough bargaining power to keep the Pound, but Denmark?
Every country that joined the EU after the 1992 Maastricht treaty has to adopt the euro. Denmark signed that treaty, UK as well, but if they rejoin, they’d more than likely be treated as a new member.
I disagree - on paper sure they would, but at the end of the day the UK is the ≈2nd biggest economy in Europe (UK and France make up 2nd & 3rd and who is bigger changes every couple of years), unlike Georgia or Moldova or whoever else where their joining is barely noticeable.
That means that the EU is more likely to want the UK to join, vs smaller countries wanting to join the EU, although it would be mutually beneficial of course - the UK would likely increase the EU’s power a little more than the EU would increase the UK’s power, but saying that hides the fact that it’d probably be a 10+% increase in both cases.
Of course the EU could make an example of the UK if they were want to rejoin, but if they were to look at it objectively then they’d most likely reach the conclusion that the negatives of making the concessions they made before are far outweighed by the additional collective power of having the UK as a member.
The best outcome for the EU would be to drag their feet and wait a decade for readmittance. Right now companies are moving from the UK to the EU.
Making the same concessions and signal to every other country that you can just hop in and out on a whim? Uhhh I have a bridge to sell you if you really believe that.
UK would likely increase the EU’s power a little more than the EU would increase the UK’s power
This belongs on the side of a Brexit bus.
So Britain is in a sunk cost fallacy situation? If so who exactly in power is preventing us to rejoin?
Well, ostensibly it’s the voters. Vote for progressive candidates.
Those other countries still accept the euro though right?
I think they do, but probably not guaranteed everywhere. Denmark might not, but I don’t know for sure. I know Czechia does close to the borders, but I haven’t been to the other countries myself to know.
The ones who fucked our country don’t want to admit they were wrong.
The party that’s been in charge of our country has been dismantling and selling everything worthwhile for over a decade, and the only viable alternative party seems to be running on “we don’t want to change anything major, but at least we’re not those guys” because they’re too scared to say anything after their last leader got torn apart constantly by the right-wing press.
I’m honestly worried about what we’ve become and how everything is just getting worse here. Nobody seems to have any hope for the future anymore, there are no positive things to look forward to, just a constant spiral of rising costs and declining health and public services.
The sad truth is it will need to get much worse until conservatives will admit there is a problem and let progressives solve it.
It has always been this way. You either live in a progressive, upwardly moving state with improving quality of life or you get stuck in a conservative, stagnant or downward trending place where people are more concerned with “others” than they are with doing anything productive as a society. As a species, we seem to slowly wobble back and forth between these extremes. It’s maddening.
it’s like an unstable ex-girlfriend trying to get back together. and now she’s down on her luck with even less to offer.
UK just needs to suck a few dicks and we’re all good ;)
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Britain had a highly favourable agreement with the EU that it negotiated decades ago. If it wanted to rejoin, it would do so without those privileges.
No more £ for you.
they can £ sand
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Also a rebate, as one of the top 3 economies we should have paid a lot more in than we were.
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There are a lot of reasons, but I think it boils down to the people in charge do not want the embarrassement of crawling back to the EU.
It would be total ego destruction and that is simply untennable. This is what happens when the right gets enough power to make a change and then has to experience consequences.
Something something leopards and faces.
Not only that but the EU doesn’t want to make it seem like people can come and go as they please. So they will make serious demands for rejoining.
This is the big one, admitting it was a mistake.
Screw England, let’s just let Scotland and Wales join without them
Wales voted out
if we held the referendum again - no new voters, everyone votes exactly the same as they did before - remain would win simply because enough elderly leave voters have died since then that now it would swing the other way, so its likely is sentiment is not trending positive
U forgot abt northern ireland
Extremely based opinion
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My question is if the EU would even want the country back. Would you want to deal with a country that flip-flops that hard?
IMO the flip-flop would basically kill any bargaining capacity from the UK. Before it was * but what if we leave, we’re stronger together and you have more to loose by letting us leave than by giving us a small concession* now it’ll be Why do you want any special concession ? You’re a new member like any other and have to abide by the same rules
IMO, it would show the power and value of the EU. The UK would be far more willing to admit that they shouldn’t have left if they can get back in. The EU stands to gain from such a prominent country (and one that can say so from experience) undeniably admitting that it’s better to be in the EU than to leave. That’s some stellar advertising of the economic value of the EU.
Though they definitely shouldn’t bend every rule to let them back in. The pound should be replaced by the euro. It’s dumb that the UK got that exception.
For sure. But UK would be admitted as a “regular” member, without many of the exemptions UK had before. I can imagine they might get the currency exemption this time around as well, though.
It’s not an on-off relationship.
Assuming the UK could get itself together and find the political willpower to do so…it still won’t be easy. The EU has to agree to it, and it would require all members of the EU approving them rejoining.
As I recall, the EU warned them that if they left it would be very challenging for them to rejoin. The idea was to discourage them from leaving the EU in the first place. But they did. And now they have to live with the consequences.
I’m not an expert in this topic at all, but there’s a few reasons i can see. One major reason is that you’d have to get a big portion of the country to admit that they were totally wrong and got badly scammed, which people (especially that particular portion of people) won’t allow themselves to admit.
They made their decision to leave, now they have to deal with the consequences of that decision.
Try to remember that almost half of us did not vote to leave in the first place and knew it was a mistake. The Brexit vote was won on the tiniest of margins mainly due to a criminal misinformation campaign.
There was no mandate in that vote for the UK leaving the single market - something that those liars campaigning for Brexit said that we would never do. I firmly believe that all of the Brexit campaigners should be rotting in prison for the incalculable damage they did to our nation. Many people were tricked into voting against their best interests because they were told that leaving the EU would mean more money for the NHS, or it would protect their daughters from all the Turkish rapists joining the EU next week, or all the other total fucking nonsense the criminal liars told them through Facebook.
The thing is your electorate let itself be manipulated like that and as you said the perpetrators are still very much at large. It follows they will manipulate the electorate again and there’s no reason to believe the same demographic won’t easily fall for new lies. (Unless they died off.)
This sucks for the Brits who knew better but it also means the EU would let an unreliable partner back in if nothing changed. It seems the pro Brexit crowd will need to learn the hard way that no really you were lied to and you still have to bear the consequences of your own actions (vote).
Being lied to isn’t an excuse to accept racist fearmongering and plainly suicidal economic reasoning. Nor is it an excuse for the project fear slander that happened at the time. They were lied to and were also told the truth. And you who voted to stay also need to learn that your vote doesn’t abdicate Britain either. You’re in this together.
You only needed a slim 50% to split? Not like a 2/3rds majority?
Yup. And the rerendum wasn’t even legally binding.
The whole thing still boggles my mind, it was something like 52/48 on a non-binding vote, and everyone is just like, “Ok, I guess we’ve got to do it then,” even though it seemed to be the most obviously stupid decision in the world. There’s alot I like about Britain’s system of government, but that such a major decision hinged on the barest of margins is just weird, at least in the US we’ve got huge hurdles before we can change our Constitution (though that too can cause problems trying to get some things fixed).
The 2000s have just been filled with so many epic, unforced face-plants across countries and companies, it’s like we’re living in the Age of Idiocy. Either that or Russia had its tendrils everywhere and somehow convinced a great number of people to make the stupidest decisions ever, to which they took advantage of that… by doing their own epic face-plant.
I think humans tended to do such epic face plants for a lot longer. But these days every idiot and their dog has a smartphone to record everything and an internet connection to share it to the world. You look a lot more silly with your epic face plant if it’s captured in 4K and broadcast to the world.
Random side note: if you want to hear about a rather epic historical face plant there’s a good video on the Erfurt latrine disaster on YouTube.
Oh, I totally agree with how it happened, the point is, it happened, and a good deal of the people who made it happen , are still in power. The problem is no onw will do anything about it. As you say, almost half didn’t vote for it, but over half did, and there-in lies the problem. “they were lied to” Yeah, but they voted based on those lies.
If I’m not mistaken, the pro-Brexit party (they call them Torys) has been in charge. If they want to move in a different direction, they need to vote different people in, which has not been happening very quickly.
Politics is complicated, basically.
It’s really weird, as the whole EU deal was Margaret Thatcher’s legacy, and her own party threw it away!!!
I think they wanted to play on the EU outrage, but they didn’t actually want to leave.
The EU deal was nothing to do with Thatcher. She never wanted the UK to join the EU and vehemently opposed the Maastricht Treaty.
She supported economic union, not political.
I’m no fan of Thatcher but she did some good things during her tenure - negotiating the UK’s place in the EU and setting up Channel 4 spring to mind - and I honestly think she would be utterly devastated if she saw what her party had become today.
Worth noting that the true pro-Brexit party was UKIP, but the conservatives wanted their voters so adopted a pro brexit stance.
I don’t think most Tory’s really wanted it to happen (bad for business), David Cameron thought he could get an easy win by holding a referendum and nipping the Brexit talk in the bud, but bit off more than he could chew.
Brexit remained popular with voters for a while, and conservatives have leaned into it being the right decision and demonising immigrants since because they’re fucking up everything else.
Many Tory’s wanted it to happen so they could create a corporation-haven of sorts without the EU having a say in it. Essentially getting rid of “annoying” regulations that keeps people safe.
Yeah, I think there was a bit of a split.
Either way, both sides had self serving intentions, which is oddly enough what unites the conservatives.
It’s like thinking about marrying your ex-wife again, just after you went through an awful divorce, that took years to get accomplished, which you had insisted in. It would make you look somewhat stupid and the question is whether your ex-wife would let you move back in to your former house (i.e. the EU). Who knows…
You wanted it, you got it, now live with it!
Sure, but in this analogy, your ex wife was great partner that was good for you and you only broke up because you thought you could do better. Only after your divorce, you realize you aren’t actually doing better on your own and want your ex wife back, but are too afraid to admit it. And also your ex wife might not want you back anymore (if she does, she’s gonna ask you to really prove you’re committed).
It won’t happen as long as the Conservatives are in power. They’ve been pushing the Brexit is great agenda for ages and have finally admitted that maybe it’s not brilliant, but it’s still pretty great mind you.
There is probably going to be an election in January or February of 2024, because of the utterly stupid way that UK politics works there may not be an election, who knows, but if there is an election and
ifwhen the conservatives lose and labour win it might be under cards but it’s probably going to take years if it does happen.
