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Thanks, those are the sort of splits of opinion that would seem probable. I did wonder, looking at the high profile examples I listed, whether something unusual might be taking place for reasons I couldn't think of, but that shows it isn't.
So why does the UK have to be different? Why are France and Germany not so motivated to block people from other parts of the European continent from living there?
Presumably because not nearly as many EU citizens decided to move to France or Germany as decided to move to the UK. so Freedom of Movement didn't cause the infrastructure/housing/jobs issues in those countries that it caused in the UK.
You could try accepting that when I say, I believe X because of Y, I actually am telling you what I think, and am not just making up excuses? Ditto for most Brexiters. The reason that many Brexiters will tell you that FOM migration has contributed to the massive housing crisis is because FOM has almost certainly done exactly that.
I really can't see that EU citizens are the single most important factor in this. What proportion of UK residents are EU citizens? Isn't it 1 in 20? Scarcely a huge proportion.
1 in 20 (which on a quick google appears to be about right) is actually a huge number if you consider that those people all require housing and other infrastructure etc. It means that, to a first approximation, for every 20 existing houses in the UK, you'd need to build another one to accommodate EU migration. Bearing in mind that the vast majority of those people arrived over a period of not much more than 10 years, that requires an incredible rate of building houses, GP surgeries, schools, etc.
Also bear in mind that the migration isn't even around the country: 5% averaged across the country means that some places will be less than 5%, other places will be a lot more than 5%.
Why do you you think property prices and rents are so high? (Clue: Think about how prices in a free market work to match supply and demand. So if suddenly there are more people who want houses to live in, property prices and rents will inevitably go up because that's how markets work!).
Presumably because not nearly as many EU citizens decided to move to France or Germany as decided to move to the UK. so Freedom of Movement didn't cause the infrastructure/housing/jobs issues in those countries that it caused in the UK.
I don't exactly see what Sunak lack of competence has to do with Brexit? Brexit only meant decisions are made in the UK not Brussels, not that said decisions will be good ones
In that case, I look forward to your enlightening us on what the actual situation regarding net EU migration into France and Germany is, and specifically which part of my post is not correct...?
In that case, I look forward to your enlightening us on what the actual situation regarding net EU migration into France and Germany is, and specifically which part of my post is not correct...?
But in the context of housing pressures, that's not very meaningful unless you also supply
(a) The figures for the % of the original population of each country that has emigrated to another EU state - since it's net migration rather than total immigration that determines pressure on housing stock and infrastructure, and
(b) An indication of the timescale over which that migration happened: 1 million people arriving over the course of - say - 30 years is much easier to accommodate that the same number of people arriving over the course of 10 years.
But in the context of housing pressures, that's not very meaningful unless you also supply
(a) The figures for the % of the original population of each country that has emigrated to another EU state - since it's net migration rather than total immigration that determines pressure on housing stock and infrastructure, and
(b) An indication of the timescale over which that migration happened: 1 million people arriving over the course of - say - 30 years is much easier to accommodate that the same number of people arriving over the course of 10 years.
Even still, is the only solution really something as drastic as completely blocking free EU immigration?
Why not just slow it a bit, by imposing additional conditions, e.g. you can't claim benefits unless you've been working a certain number of hours a week for 12 months, you are restricted to private healthcare for the first 6 months (unless it's an emergency), etc.
So the freedom of movement is still there, provided you accept those conditions, but many of the objections Brexiters had at the time have been dealt with. This would deter "casual" migrants I suspect.
Just completely cutting off a freedom - and not just from the "new" EU countries, but other EU countries who had FoM to the UK since 1973 such as France and Germany - seems drastic in the extreme. Basically it's using a sledgehammer to "fix" a problem rather than a more subtle tool.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
You could try accepting that when I say, I believe X because of Y, I actually am telling you what I think, and am not just making up excuses? Ditto for most Brexiters. The reason that many Brexiters will tell you that FOM migration has contributed to the massive housing crisis is because FOM has almost certainly done exactly that.
But how much though, compared to other causes? Not much, I suspect, and if it was such a big problem, would the government not be trying to drastically block all immigration now? The answer of course is no, because we have such things as an NHS staff crisis partly caused by a lack of immigrants from the EU. The government knows this and knows that immigration has more advantages than disadvantages - but is not willing to admit it made the wrong decision to block free migration from the EU, for reasons of pride and saving face. If you've invested a lot of time, money and effort into a flagship policy like Brexit, you can't say 3 years later that you realise it was a silly mistake - even if you know it was. And I suspect that most Tory MPs, aside from the ERG lot, realise Brexit was a silly mistake but don't really know what to do about it (and to be fair, it is a hole that is difficult to get out of) so instead persist on insisting it was a great idea.
What also makes me sceptical is how the justifications for Brexit have changed. In 2016 it was all about "take back control" (if you're a Tory supporter I can see the appeal of this, to be fair, but no-one seems to mention it anymore), "more money for the NHS" (? - the NHS is in a far worse state than before 2016) and "immigrants taking our jobs" (when in fact we needed those EU migrants for jobs).
Brexit campaigners realise that Brexit has not propelled the UK into the sunlit uplands (quite the opposite) and now need to find other justifications to prop up their cause. And what better scapegoating than to blame the housing crisis on EU migration, rather than the Government's own failure to fix the problem.
1 in 20 (which on a quick google appears to be about right) is actually a huge number if you consider that those people all require housing and other infrastructure etc. It means that, to a first approximation, for every 20 existing houses in the UK, you'd need to build another one to accommodate EU migration. Bearing in mind that the vast majority of those people arrived over a period of not much more than 10 years, that requires an incredible rate of building houses, GP surgeries, schools, etc.
A surgery now needs 10 GPs rather than 9 and one part-timer. Clue here: Free EU immigration could help employ more doctors!
A class now has 20 pupils rather than 19.
A housing estate needs 100 houses rather than 95.
Doesn't seem a significant increase to me, and thus strains on services are far more likely to be as a result of other things. Such as the Government not running the NHS properly. It's been since Covid (and - coincidentally - since Brexit) that the NHS has fallen apart, for whatever reason, and I have to admit I don't fully understand the reasons. It was working reasonably well, IMX, before 2016.
And yes, it does take time to build houses - but that, to my mind, does not justify blocking EU immigration as a short-termist panic solution while they are being built.
Also bear in mind that the migration isn't even around the country: 5% averaged across the country means that some places will be less than 5%, other places will be a lot more than 5%.
I suspect that the cities are the areas which attract the most migrants (more jobs), and cities are best placed to expand a little. I live in an urban area and there are plenty of migrants - in my block probably more than 50% are non-UK citizens.
Why do you you think property prices and rents are so high? (Clue: Think about how prices in a free market work to match supply and demand. So if suddenly there are more people who want houses to live in, property prices and rents will inevitably go up because that's how markets work!).
Assuming you subscribe to the free market in rental as an absolute truth and something that absolutely has to be followed. Some might want to explore ways to do something with the rental market to make it more affordable. Not an easy job I suspect and requires a radical rethink of philosophy - but would it be more radical than removing 50-year-old freedoms?
I don't exactly see what Sunak lack of competence has to do with Brexit? Brexit only meant decisions are made in the UK not Brussels, not that said decisions will be good ones
You may call it incompetence ( and they are incompetent that’s for sure ), but Modi cancelling pre-organised meeting with Sunak ( a leader ) to meet with EU and US leaders is a telling statement of being ignored .
Not to mention that the G20 declaration about new trade initiative was signed by US, EU , Indie , Saudis and other gulf states , Indie, France , Germany - all mentioned by name .
UK - was simply ignored .
Global Britain we were promised after brexit but we have desperate nation looking for anyone to be nice to us .
Nahh, don't buy that, it was an issue that had been festering in the Conservative party for more than 40 years, the man in the street couldn't really give a monkeys apart from when outrage was manufactured by the Tory press at the likes of bendy bananas etc.
Nahh, don't buy that, it was an issue that had been festering in the Conservative party for more than 40 years, the man in the street couldn't really give a monkeys apart from when outrage was manufactured by the Tory press at the likes of bendy bananas etc.
Both the LibDems and the SNP called for referendums on EU membership around the time of the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty.
UKIP were the largest party in the 2014 EU elections, so it was important to a reasonably significant chunk of the population.
Both the LibDems and the SNP called for referendums on EU membership around the time of the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty.
UKIP were the largest party in the 2014 EU elections, so it was important to a reasonably significant chunk of the population.
Maybe I kept very odd company (I don't think so!) but I seem to remember in the 90s and the pre-credit-crunch 00s, leaving the EU was very much a fringe opinion only subscribed to by the more dinosaur-like figures in the Tory party (Cashosaurus euroscepticus,Choposaurus itchenrejectus and the like) and their followers. Most seemed to not care either way, and more people (IMX) seemed to appreciate the freedoms the EU offered than resented the EU. It seemed to be all blown up in the early 2010s for reasons of political gain, as a convenient scapegoat for people to (re)direct anger towards during post-credit-crunch austerity.
You may call it incompetence ( and they are incompetent that’s for sure ), but Modi cancelling pre-organised meeting with Sunak ( a leader ) to meet with EU and US leaders is a telling statement of being ignored .
Not to mention that the G20 declaration about new trade initiative was signed by US, EU , Indie , Saudis and other gulf states , Indie, France , Germany - all mentioned by name .
UK - was simply ignored .
Global Britain we were promised after brexit but we have desperate nation looking for anyone to be nice to us .
That's the fourth reason I dislike Brexit with a passion. Damage to the UK's reputation and loss of influence.
I have personal reasons to intensely dislike Brexit, but I also dislike it due to it being fundamentally anti-freedom (FoM in this context) and because it makes trade with the continent more difficult and bureaucratic.
But - and while I am not really a patriot - it has also, IMO, damaged the UK's reputation. Brexiters used patriotism to get what they wanted, whatever it was, but the UK has become a lesser nation since it happened. And while I am not a patriot, I will never forgive Brexiters for the damage they have done, in my eyes, to the UK's reputation.
I actually don't know what the answer is; the government has put the UK in a hole with no obvious easy fixes. But someone has to start restoring the country's reputation and restoring relations with our neighbours. For reasons of pride, the current government absolutely will not do this, but I do have more faith in Labour. Granted at the moment they are too "Brexity" for my liking but I don't believe for a second that they are true believers. They're just playing an unfortunately necessary political game to maximise the votes at next year's election. (Labour already have the liberal left's vote, so they don't need to bother with pleasing that bloc particularly; they have to please the small-c conservatives).
Maybe I kept very odd company (I don't think so!) but I seem to remember in the 90s and the pre-credit-crunch 00s, leaving the EU was very much a fringe opinion only subscribed to by the more dinosaur-like figures in the Tory party (Cashosaurus euroscepticus,Choposaurus itchenrejectus and the like) and their followers. Most seemed to not care either way, and more people (IMX) seemed to appreciate the freedoms the EU offered than resented the EU. It seemed to be all blown up in the early 2010s for reasons of political gain, as a convenient scapegoat for people to (re)direct anger towards during post-credit-crunch austerity.
This rather reads like you're trying to claim that the people who agree with you on Brexit are genuine and normal, but the people who disagree with you on Brexit - their beliefs are all just blown up and not real or something.
Have you considered that maybe it might be an idea to try accepting that other people genuinely disagree with you, and trying in the spirit of debate to understand why they believe what they do, instead of continually trying to make out that their beliefs are somehow false or not genuine?
Those of us who support Brexit [*] - we really aren't trying to make stuff up or be dishonest or find scapegoats or anything like that: We really are arguing for what we believe is best for the future of the UK.
[*] 'those of us' - haha. I can almost forget I actually voted Remain in 2016, while seeing arguments on both sides. Since then I've come to the view that FOM made Brexit unavoidable.
That's the fourth reason I dislike Brexit with a passion. Damage to the UK's reputation and loss of influence.
I have personal reasons to intensely dislike Brexit, but I also dislike it due to it being fundamentally anti-freedom (FoM in this context) and because it makes trade with the continent more difficult and bureaucratic.
But - and while I am not really a patriot - it has also, IMO, damaged the UK's reputation. Brexiters used patriotism to get what they wanted, whatever it was, but the UK has become a lesser nation since it happened. And while I am not a patriot, I will never forgive Brexiters for the damage they have done, in my eyes, to the UK's reputation.
I actually don't know what the answer is; the government has put the UK in a hole with no obvious easy fixes. But someone has to start restoring the country's reputation and restoring relations with our neighbours. For reasons of pride, the current government absolutely will not do this, but I do have more faith in Labour. Granted at the moment they are too "Brexity" for my liking but I don't believe for a second that they are true believers. They're just playing an unfortunately necessary political game to maximise the votes at next year's election. (Labour already have the liberal left's vote, so they don't need to bother with pleasing that bloc particularly; they have to please the small-c conservatives).
Yes, the solution does require ending Freedom of Movement.
It is blindingly obvious that the number of people around the World who would want to move to and live in the UK is massively, massively, greater than the number of people that we can plausibly accommodate. In that situation, we have little option but to 'ration' how many people can come here, and the least bad way of doing that is to impose rules that ensure the people who can come are those people who have the most compelling reasons to do so, or those who for other reasons we really want to have in the UK. That is what our visa and asylum systems attempt (imperfectly but approximately) to do. We simply can't afford to also maintain a system in which anyone from lots of European countries can come to the UK with very little reason to do so and almost no ability for the UK Government to control those numbers: Not least because it's totally not fair on people from outside the EU who do have compelling/humanitarian reasons why they need come to the UK if they get blocked from coming because the UK migration numbers have been so swollen from people from - say - Romania or Hungary with no UK connection - coming here on little more than a whim.
Brexit campaigners realise that Brexit has not propelled the UK into the sunlit uplands (quite the opposite) and now need to find other justifications to prop up their cause.
Once again you're doing this thing where you refuse to accept that those of us on the Brexit side are actually arguing for what we genuinely believe. I really don't understand why you (and other Remainers) keep doing that?
The housing crisis IS partly caused by EU migration. Not entirely - there are several other factors behind the crisis too (including, as you rightly imply, the Government's failure to build enough houses), but EU migration is certainly one of the causes. Again, I do not understand why you (and other Remainers) refuse to accept reality.
Assuming you subscribe to the free market in rental as an absolute truth and something that absolutely has to be followed. Some might want to explore ways to do something with the rental market to make it more affordable. Not an easy job I suspect and requires a radical rethink of philosophy - but would it be more radical than removing 50-year-old freedoms?
You seem here to imagine that how markets work is some kind of arbitrary doctrine to be believed in not not to be believed in. It isn't that at all: It's simply how markets work and an inevitable consequence of human behaviour. Prices, left to their own devices, will normally naturally tend to a level that approximately matches supply and demand - as countless Governments around the World have discovered to their cost when they've tried to regulate prices (or rents) - usually to disastrous consequences.
It would certainly be great to make the rental market more affordable. But the ONLY sustainable way you can do that is to create conditions in which lower rent levels become the price that matches supply and demand - and that requires either increasing the supply of houses to rent, or reducing the numbers of people looking for houses to rent, or both.
Once again you're doing this thing where you refuse to accept that those of us on the Brexit side are actually arguing for what we genuinely believe. I really don't understand why you (and other Remainers) keep doing that?
That's evidently true of some Brexit supporters but not all. Opinion polls show a proportion of those who voted for it have since changed their minds. But there are those who instigated and promoted it and may well know it has gone badly, but can't admit it. Would you, personally, consider it has gone well?
That's evidently true of some Brexit supporters but not all. Opinion polls show a proportion of those who voted for it have since changed their minds. But there are those who instigated and promoted it and may well know it has gone badly, but can't admit it. Would you, personally, consider it has gone well?
To be honest, I don't think Brexit has gone that badly - at least, post 2020. It hasn't been a smooth ride, but it is a massive change in the UK's regulatory framework and trading/political status - arguably the biggest single change for the UK in many decades: And huge political changes never go smoothly - real life and real World problems always get in the way. Given the magnitude of the change, nothing unusually bad has happened and life is largely continuing just as normal for almost all of us. The ceiling really hasn't caved in and the country hasn't collapsed in the way that a lot of ardent Remainers seem to want to pretend it has.
To my mind, the main good things are:
Actually did what the British people voted for in the referendum
Completely solved the problem of very high ongoing net EU migration - which was a serious problem that really did need to be solved. I'm particularly happy that meant we could then be much more flexible with helping people from Ukraine and Hong Kong - who arguably did need the help
The potential for the UK to develop laws and regulations in a way that suits the UK rather than going along with laws that are designed more for continental Europe (although due to inertia/politics/Government incompetence/whatever, that remains a potential that the UK Government hasn't yet really taken advantage of).
And the main bad things are:
Lower GDP (by a few %)
Lots of short term regulatory teething problems that caused pain to businesses as they adapted, plus similar admin burden on existing EU citizens resident in the UK who had to sort out paperwork.
Government half-paralysed between 2016 and 2020 as politicians argued about the nature of Brexit (I would say, caused by having the referendum without a clear idea upfront what Brexit meant plus politicians on both sides (Brexit and Remain) being too intransigent about what they wanted
I do think it's somewhat ironic that, after 4 years of political wrangling after 2016, we basically ended up with - broadly - the only Brexit arrangements that were ever going to be feasible given our and the EU's red lines. There was really no way we were ever going to get a Brexit deal substantially different in principle from the one we actually got - so we could've saved ourselves a huge amount of bother if MPs had just accepted what was inevitable and got on with it after the referendum.
Nahh, don't buy that, it was an issue that had been festering in the Conservative party for more than 40 years, the man in the street couldn't really give a monkeys apart from when outrage was manufactured by the Tory press at the likes of bendy bananas etc.
I'm a "Man in the Street" and I can assure you that I most certainly did give a toss - for over twenty years, in fact. So did a vast number of my friends and acquaintances in the same street. In fact, across all the streets, there were 17,410,742
That's evidently true of some Brexit supporters but not all. Opinion polls show a proportion of those who voted for it have since changed their minds. But there are those who instigated and promoted it and may well know it has gone badly, but can't admit it. Would you, personally, consider it has gone well?
It's gone swimmingly because, as I said earlier, the UK is no longer a member of the EU. That is really all that matters; the rest - the plusses, the minuses, the moans and the groans - is just "noise."
I must say that supporters of unbridled immigration to the UK (whether from the EU or elsewhere) make me chuckle. This country is suffering from an acute lack of housing. Go to any big city and you will witness that. "Beds in Sheds" abound with people living in appalling conditions. Schools struggle to accommodate all the pupils who need places. GP appointments are almost an impossibility for many people and many of them end up at A&E, jeopardising their ability to deal with real emergencies. The answer to all this? Ship in more and more people!!!!!
Incredible as it may seem, those people need accommodation, their children need schools, they will all need medical attention at some time or another - none of which are particularly abundant. I'm sorry, but you couldn't make it up. And people who voted to leave the EU (with our membership facilitating limitless and unfettered access to the UK for 450m people) are branded as lunatics.
I must say that supporters of unbridled immigration to the UK (whether from the EU or elsewhere) make me chuckle. This country is suffering from an acute lack of housing. Go to any big city and you will witness that. "Beds in Sheds" abound with people living in appalling conditions. Schools struggle to accommodate all the pupils who need places. GP appointments are almost an impossibility for many people and many of them end up at A&E, jeopardising their ability to deal with real emergencies. The answer to all this? Ship in more and more people!!!!!
You seem to be assuming that Remainers/Rejoiners all want unlimited immigration, which is of course an over-exaggeration. I would suggest that few people want ‘unbridled’ immigration, but instead immigration that is fair, doesn’t treat immigrants as inhuman scum or use dehumanising language about them (such as ‘ship in’). In my view, the UK certainly needs some immigration, especially in sectors which regularly see staff shortages.
Incredible as it may seem, those people need accommodation, their children need schools, they will all need medical attention at some time or another - none of which are particularly abundant. I'm sorry, but you couldn't make it up. And people who voted to leave the EU (with our membership facilitating limitless and unfettered access to the UK for 450m people) are branded as lunatics.
Why are you apologising? You’re obviously not sorry.
It is not true that being in the EU meant that 450million people had limitless and unfettered access to the UK. There obviously were restrictions, especially those with a criminal record. And why would 450million EU residents want to move to the UK anyway? Most would prefer a country with a better quality of life.
You’re also forgetting that EU membership enabled many UK citizens to make a living abroad. Not just British expats immigrants retiring to a Spanish villa, but also people working.
I’m not sure I would describe people who voted to leave as lunatics, but I would question the mentality of people voting to leave to stop immigration, considering we now have less power to deport people (Dublin Agreement), less cooperation with the EU to control immigration and also seeing as the EU doesn’t really have much control over people emigrating from Africa and Asia into the UK.
I'm a "Man in the Street" and I can assure you that I most certainly did give a toss - for over twenty years, in fact. So did a vast number of my friends and acquaintances in the same street. In fact, across all the streets, there were 17,410,742
Did 17,410,742 really care that strongly about it though? And did that many want to leave the EU in 2006 or in 1996 (and that was my point, that the fashion for blaming the EU for everything was very much a 2010s thing)? Or did a lot of people just put a cross against one of the options without having a strong view either way? Or did a lot of people just vote Leave to spite Cameron? Or did a lot of people vote Leave because they believed the nonsense that the NHS would miraculously get better (ROFL) if they did?
It's gone swimmingly because, as I said earlier, the UK is no longer a member of the EU. That is really all that matters; the rest - the plusses, the minuses, the moans and the groans - is just "noise."
"The only thing that matters is the UK is no longer a member of the EU".
And to hell with the consequences for many of us?
To give just one - and not the only - example of how Brexit has impacted my life adversely: a year or two ago I had to wait two months for my computer to be fixed, due to bureaucracy incurred in sourcing the parts from Germany. Bureaucracy that didn't exist before. And people who require services such as this have to suffer to enable Brexiters such as yourself to achieve the ideological purity of leaving the EU?
I must say that supporters of unbridled immigration to the UK (whether from the EU or elsewhere) make me chuckle. This country is suffering from an acute lack of housing. Go to any big city and you will witness that. "Beds in Sheds" abound with people living in appalling conditions. Schools struggle to accommodate all the pupils who need places. GP appointments are almost an impossibility for many people and many of them end up at A&E, jeopardising their ability to deal with real emergencies. The answer to all this? Ship in more and more people!!!!!
And this is all the fault of EU migration (see below) and not down to insufficient housing or inflated rents? To me that is a typical tactic to guilt-trip Remainers into believing that freedom of movement is bad.
And as for the NHS, well, cutting down on the supply of workers from the EU can't have helped. But again, a Brexiter excuse for a problem which I am sure is more likely to be caused by NHS mis-management, either internally or from the Government.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Yes, the solution does require ending Freedom of Movement.
It is blindingly obvious that the number of people around the World who would want to move to and live in the UK is massively, massively, greater than the number of people that we can plausibly accommodate. In that situation, we have little option but to 'ration' how many people can come here, and the least bad way of doing that is to impose rules that ensure the people who can come are those people who have the most compelling reasons to do so, or those who for other reasons we really want to have in the UK. That is what our visa and asylum systems attempt (imperfectly but approximately) to do. We simply can't afford to also maintain a system in which anyone from lots of European countries can come to the UK with very little reason to do so and almost no ability for the UK Government to control those numbers: Not least because it's totally not fair on people from outside the EU who do have compelling/humanitarian reasons why they need come to the UK if they get blocked from coming because the UK migration numbers have been so swollen from people from - say - Romania or Hungary with no UK connection - coming here on little more than a whim.
I say once again, would slowing down the immigration not help? It does not require ending freedom of movement. Making FoM to the UK less attractive without banning it would surely achieve something? I've heard it said before that the EU does allow conditions to be attached to FoM, as long as there is not an outright ban.
And as for the casual dismissal of "trivial" reasons for migrating, what about, for example, a UK citizen that meets a partner in, say, Romania on holiday? Brexit and the end to FoM means that it's difficult for them to get together: the only reliable solution is for both to live in Ireland, which requires both of them to leave their home country and give up their job. (It's just as well that the UK does still have FoM to Ireland, otherwise there would be no reliable solution at all). But I suppose the Brexiter attitude is simply to suggest only getting together with someone of your own nationality - and why I think Farage, with his German wife, met during the EEC/EU era, is particularly hypocritical in this respect.
And besides, to me there is something fundamentally and absolutely wrong about ending 50-year-old rights. To me it is completely unacceptable to do this.
I've brought up this example before but if the farming lobby persuaded the government to severely restrict access to the countryside, citing abuse of the footpaths by "townies" (and exaggerating the problem to be greater than it is), should it be implemented? Or is there a fundamental reason related to preservation of long-term rights why this should not be done?
Once again you're doing this thing where you refuse to accept that those of us on the Brexit side are actually arguing for what we genuinely believe. I really don't understand why you (and other Remainers) keep doing that?
Firstly to my mind Brexit has made life worse for UK citizens, on mutiple levels. Less freedom, both to movement and to trade. Life has been made more difficult. The UK is increasingly sidelined. To me, it seems obvious that the disadvantages of Brexit far, far outweigh any advantages.
Secondly, IMX, not so much on here but in real life, a lot of Brexiters give weak arguments for their views, such as "the UK is no longer in the EU - that is all that matters" from the post above.
The housing crisis IS partly caused by EU migration. Not entirely - there are several other factors behind the crisis too (including, as you rightly imply, the Government's failure to build enough houses), but EU migration is certainly one of the causes. Again, I do not understand why you (and other Remainers) refuse to accept reality.
"Partly",but how much? And how much compared to other causes?
We could help fix the housing crisis by abolishing AONBs and national parks and allowing unregulated housebuilding on them. A new mega-city could be built in Sussex and Surrey and I'm sure that would do a lot to alleviate the housing crisis. So if this is unacceptable, why is removing 50-year-old freedoms acceptable?
Were other solutions less radical than ending long-standing freedoms considered? If not, why not? (But in any case, I don't seem to remember housing issues being mentioned as a rationale for Brexit before the referendum. The 'immigrants stealing our jobs' line and the 'more money for the NHS' line seemed to be much more prevalent, in addition to the old classic 'take back control', of course. Hence, my theory that this is a retrofitted rationale for Brexit, one which has been thought up in recent years now that the earlier reasons are harder to justify).
(For point of clarification, I do not support abolishing AONBs and national parks, but just bringing up the question as to why one is acceptable and one is not).
You seem here to imagine that how markets work is some kind of arbitrary doctrine to be believed in not not to be believed in. It isn't that at all: It's simply how markets work and an inevitable consequence of human behaviour. Prices, left to their own devices, will normally naturally tend to a level that approximately matches supply and demand - as countless Governments around the World have discovered to their cost when they've tried to regulate prices (or rents) - usually to disastrous consequences.
It would certainly be great to make the rental market more affordable. But the ONLY sustainable way you can do that is to create conditions in which lower rent levels become the price that matches supply and demand - and that requires either increasing the supply of houses to rent, or reducing the numbers of people looking for houses to rent, or both.
To be honest, I don't think Brexit has gone that badly - at least, post 2020. It hasn't been a smooth ride, but it is a massive change in the UK's regulatory framework and trading/political status - arguably the biggest single change for the UK in many decades: And huge political changes never go smoothly - real life and real World problems always get in the way. Given the magnitude of the change, nothing unusually bad has happened and life is largely continuing just as normal for almost all of us.
In addition to the real practical problems, which I have already discussed, I think there is an attitude change, and a change in the UK's image overseas. There is thus, for those of us who preferred the old, pre-2016 UK, a loss of national pride. The UK was once, up to and including the days of Cameron, was seen as a rational, liberal and tolerant country, and welcoming to foreigners. UK culture, especially UK music was once widely respected during the golden era starting in the mid-60s and lasting for about 50 years. Now the UK seems to me more authoritarian, more right-wing, less welcoming, more insular, and has a government obsessed with culture wars and demonising the "woke" and which is not taken especially seriously internationally (I know from direct experience that Johnson was generally seen as a bit of a buffoon, a bit of a joke, in certain continental countries).
I suppose it basically depends what sort of country you want the UK to be. Brexiters are probably happy with 2020s UK, Remainers (and others on the liberal-left spectrum) are probably not.
Well, 37% of them of course (and discounting EU citizens who were banned from participating, despite the whole question impacting them more than anyone else)!
37% (including the non-voters) isn't a mandate for radical change, though I would have certainly accepted a Norway arrangement. Complete lack of compromise, with not a single concession being made to remainers, is my big, big problem and I know, from other posters on here and people I speak to privately, that I am not alone. Think about it. 63% of UK citizens did not vote for Brexit. 63% of us didn't dislike the existing setup enough to vote Leave. So it's a complete untruth to say "the British people voted for it", because 63% of us didn't. So why (rhetorical question) did Brexit have to happen? The answer of course is a badly-thought-out and badly-designed referendum, in which Leave was allowed to pass on very soft criteria. Such a radical and extreme change should have required a stronger mandate, such as greater than 50% of all UK adult citizens to actively vote Leave.
My problem with simple-majority referenda is exactly the same as my problem with FPTP. Both completely sideline and ignore large sections of the population. Thanks to our electoral system, in 2020s Britain, only Tory voters and Brexiters count, it seems. "The tyranny of the largest minority".
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