The Islands of Versilia wrote:Ostroeuropa wrote:It was a ballot box riot, comparable to when minorities burn down their own communities. Support was over 70% of laborers, and 59% of the unemployed.
It’s just... so absolutely stupid that we found ourselves patting each other on the back for leaving the our best trading partner and overall boon to our national wealth and are now selling ourselves out even harder to the US and China. We’ve weakened ourselves to the extent that even if we’d tried we’d be barely anything more than a regional power - one that lacks a spine no less.
Had we been smarter, we would’ve stayed in Europe and actively worked to reform it so that it would be more beneficial not only to Britons but Europeans as a whole so that we could regain some semblance of hegemony or global power.
The EU trade arrangements do not benefit the people who voted for Brexit. That we've gone from one set of arrangements that exclude the needs of these regions, to another set of arrangements that exclude them, does not mean they aren't alternatives that have been ignored. People are acting like there's a binary between "EU" and "Not in the EU" in terms of trade deals, and comparing the ones we're writing now to the ones when we were in the EU, obviously that's worse for everyone.
But, that's kind of the point. Our current trade set up is designed to benefit remainer areas at the expense of leave ones.
Like, for comparison of how gaslighty that is, imagine if "If we repeal Jim Crow, things will get worse for you." and then it's repealed, and they just write even worse anti-black laws while telling black people they are thick and didn't listen to the warnings. It's rich remainer regions blaming areas impoverished by trade arrangements geared to benefit remainer areas that their poverty is their own fault and they should have accepted arrangements geared to benefit remainer areas and impoverish leaver ones, because the alternative "Will be worse", rather than us writing trade agreements with an eye towards regional equality.
"If you say the rich shouldn't pay 10% less taxes than the poor, you're going to ruin your economies and things will get worse, we're the experts here."
"The rich shouldn't pay 10% less taxes than the poor."
"ALRIGHT! We'll pay 15% less! There, you got what you wanted and now everything is ruined, are you happy now you dumb fuck?"
This is the attitude the remainer areas and those writing our trade arrangements have had to this issue, and the gloating over how brexit is going to impoverish those who voted for it more as though it's some divine inevitability is used to obscure the fact that this is a result of the *policy choices being made in how to handle brexit*, policy choices made to protect remainer areas interests as best as they can be protected (since that is where the wealth currently is) and without consideration for leaver areas needs, and that there are alternatives which could result in a more balanced approach that make remainer areas slightly worse off, but greatly enrichen leaver areas so there is parity. Instead, we're pursuing a policy of protecting the wealth of remainer areas as much as possible, which essentially means we're copying the trade dynamics people objected to in the first place.
It's also fostering classist sentiment in that now the rich remainer areas have given themselves an excuse to pretend the poverty isn't a direct result of them designing policy to enrich them at the expense of leaver areas, and will result in them blaming leaver areas for their own poverty because "They voted for it". This meme is also being pushed by progressives because they have no self-awareness and largely engaged with Brexit in terms of "That's racist", and because of the impacts Progressive ideology has in terms of making them hate the white working classes in the first place and lack empathy for them, see here;
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/articl ... _privilegeAdvocacy for altering the EU so it benefitted leaver areas rather than impoverishing them would have been helpful, but should have been undertaken decades ago.
My expectation is that we'll see something akin to Brexit arise again with another trade reform movement arising in Leaver areas, and if it achieves a majority, the attitude will be far more hostile and less conciliatory to remainer areas interests as a result of how remainer interests handled this opportunity for reconciliation, which simply swings the pendulum. It will also indicate to the international community that trade agreements with Britain are unstable, largely because of the factional conflict and the selfishness of remainer areas and their relentless pursuit of their own interests at the expense of the rest of the country, and how this results in continual backlash and tearing up of agreements.
Hopefully, foreign pressure will resolve the issue as other countries become aware of the dynamic and start refusing to make deals with us unless we can show the leave areas will be satisfied with them.