Tim Sewell

In fairness to Remain, the basis for their position was the established rules that apply to 3rd countries with regard to their relationship with the EU and contrast that with the status quo of what our current membership of the union meant to the UK.
Those rules were and remain facts for 3rd countries whether its to do with trade, immigration or other regulations and have always been easily verified.
In contrast, the Leave campaign was largely based more on feelings than it was facts.
Which is fine, I suppose, as we're all human so feelings matter, but unfortunately trade agreements and established rules for 3rd countries can't be overcome by three word nebulous slogans such as "Take Back Control".
So from 1st. January 2021, the only thing that has and will matter is the factual reality of being a 3rd country to our nearest major trading partner.
The UK could've negotiated to leave the EU but still be part of the single market, like Norway for example, and this option was actually stated as an intention by this journalist below shortly after the referendum.

I mean, I know its just the statement of a journalist who had previously been sacked by another newspaper for lying and I'm guessing he's probably faded into obscurity since but, still, he was one of the leaders of the Vote Leave campaign so that intention does seem at odds with everything that has happened since and what they have attempted to negotiate.
The Government's repeated bleatings that they would seek an "Australian style deal" was just an absolute nonsense as, with Australia not actually having a deal with the EU, it was actually code for no deal.
It was often stated that the Government might as well be saying "Afghanistan style deal" or "Mongolian style deal" but even that wasn't accurate as both of those countries have more favourable arrangements with the EU than Australia.
Its happened though so we are where we are with the agreement they eventually did negotiate and have to deal with it.
One major obstacle is the lack of preparation time for it whilst the Government ran the clock down and the lack of experience to deal with the practicalities.
Prior to the single market, when we exported gear either for sale or for touring, it was the same level of pain in terms of documentation and shipping/customs agents whether we were sending it to Munich or Miami.
After the single market, sending gear to Munich suddenly became indivisible to sending it to Middlesbrough and UK businesses have had almost thirty years of trading that way.
Not only does it mean that new processes like JIT manufacturing have evolved to benefit from it but there are an enormous amount of companies who have never had to deal with all but the scantest import/export procedures for their goods or supply lines.
The procedures involved now to send something to Munich requires the same specialist skills that were last needed almost three decades ago and they just aren't there.
When the mitigation work for the Millennium Bug was happening, there were a lot of systems that were created using COBOL that necessitated a lot of retired programmers being brought back to earn serious cash as those skills had left the workforce as they hadn't been required any more.
I think it might be the same story for a lot of UK pensioners who had the experience of how to navigate the hoops to jump through to get machinery from London to Paris in the 80s !
The impact of being a 3rd party trying to get goods into the EU across its land borders is well known and isn't Project Fear, its just the reality of it.
This site is used by transportation companies to show real time info on waiting times at borders :
https://www.transporeon.com/en/expertise/corona-update/real-time-overview-international-traffic/
If you look at Poland and compare the waiting times at its border with its EU neighbours such as Germany, Slovakia and the Czech Republic with its border with Belarus then the difference is clear.
What is also clear from that are the delays at the channel ports of the UK.
The mitigation of the UK authorities in using holding areas away from the ports themselves means that the expected media coverage of endless queues at Dover hasn't happened but oddly enough that actually demonstrates something even more concerning.
Namely that the amount of traffic is down as companies can't get the formalities sorted but also because EU transport companies are now reluctant to send trucks to UK as the delays both way are costing them too much money to make it worthwhile.
Importing and exporting goods is one of those things that a majority or even a sizeable minority of people don't have any direct experience of but it is something that because of the supply chain processes that have built up since we joined the single market we are all impacted by, whether its for buying a book off Amazon or a lettuce from Tesco.
Disruption to those supply chains, by which I mean delays rather than flat out stoppages, will eventually trickle down to everyone but, like anything, its only when it gets personal that it hits home !
Nikon UK have today had to act in this regard 

The salient point in this is not if they get it resolved or even necessarily how long it takes them but in terms of how they resolve it.
When you had frictionless trade and now you've had a lot of friction put back in then the only way to remove it will likely to be to polish it away with money.
If you can't get your cameras imported efficiently or without variable delays because of admin then you have to hire dedicated staff.
If you can't get them brought in by ship/lorry due to the penalty cost of shippers having to deal with the customs procedures then you'll have to fly them in.
If you can't get reliable lead times for re-supply then you'll have to hold more stock to mitigate it.
All of that costs money and its inevitable that it will find its way to being added to the retail price.
Even when Covid goes away, when all the companies have caught up with training their admin staff to deal with the processes, when the government have tarmacced over the rest of Kent to accommodate the lorries, we will still not have frictionless trade because no 3rd country can have frictionless trade with the EU.
So it means more cost to export and more cost to import.
The EU aren't punishing us with some new rules, we punished ourselves by not understanding them when we are a part of it.
Still, those fish are much happier now so there's that.
 

Yeah so did I, there was a lot of ideology and feelings wasn't there in the run up to the referendum and very little fact. You had to brush it off and do a character judgement on those advocating for which direction to go. My character judgement on Farage, Gove, Boris, Cummings, Arron Banks, Tice, etc. was that I didn't like them. Unintelligent dilettantes from Eton. Privileged little fixers and opportunists. All middle aged white men with an axe to grind. Probably all racist too.
If this puts me into the category of "snobby" then fair enough, it's a label that was pinned on the remain side because we were painted into a corner by people like Farage holding a pint down the pub, and enough people believed it. We are liberal elites apparently!! When a culture turns against intelligent thinkers and well travelled people with an open minded view of foreigners then you know your country has a racism and class problem.

What does a NZ guy know about UK politics... My country founded the NHS. It had a strong social welfare system long before many other countries. That is something to be proud about. Not everything should be left to the private sector and competitive free market capitalism. Unless you want to pay astronomical amounts of money into the pockets of private insurance companies that is. Have you seen the price of health care in the US and Germany?
The school meals stuff you are so ill informed about it hurts. This was a campaign by a British footballer to help out during corona times with free food for children, and the government was tasked to come up with a fair scheme. Looks like nearly all the public funds used for it went into the pockets of a dodgy private company.
That is not about government spending lacking efficiency... It is about an incompetent, corrupt, borderline criminally negligent Conservative party, the misuse of public funds and an overall party philosophy that favours capitalism over starving children.
A functional, competent government that does not run a country into the ground, invests in peoples lives rather than profiteering from them at every opportunity, can actually spend money efficiency and encourage a lot of growth.

I'd just like to be able to shoot some video in non-deserted situations with my FS5, that I bought during the first lockdown!

Yeah - except for the groups of cops every 10 metres with massive sticks!

My Uncle lived in a flat on Smithdown and, yeah, the difference in how Parly looked when we were driving up it on the bus going to visit him pre and post riot was marginal 🙂 .
The front page of today's FT shows the wholly anticipated direction of travel now that this government is free of those pesky EU rules.

The painful economic recovery from COVID and "re-adjustment" to Brexit trading conditions will give convenient cover for the unscrupulous to exploit any sort of removal of protections.
And this is only week two.

What ?
Thats not scorn and derision, its the absolute reality of the situation when this party has an 80 seat majority.
Lets not forget that in September 2020, they used that majority to pass a bill that would allow them to break international law.
And then used that majority to vote down an amendment to the bill that would have required "ministers to respect the rule of law and uphold the independence of the courts".
 
Considering all of this was set in motion while still a member of the EU, how did any of that require the UK to leave the largest trading bloc in the world?
More to the point, how will the uncompleted elements fare with even the government's best case scenario of a 5% reduction in GDP with the deal that they negotiated compared to the one we had ?
How are the airport and the port going to be impacted by the UK leaving the bloc too? Hostile environment in the UK, more restrictions on travel from the UK to the EU and the painful import/export process of being a 3rd country to its nearest substantial market is a concern, I would've thought.
I'm guessing you're from Teeside, so more of the £180 million pounds that region has had in funding from the EU in the past six years would certainly have come in handy over the next years to support these and other initiatives.
Whilst it is great news for your area to have had the current Conservative chancellor making the trip up there with his cheque book, a previous Conservative chancellor had a cunning plan for my city when they decided that there was no point trying to win us round to "their" way of thinking and hence not worth their effort and called for its "managed decline".

It was the EU investment that provided the money for Liverpool to recover, not central Government, and that is why we voted to Remain and continue to reject the Conservatives.
I honestly hope it works out for you and they don't subsequently shit on your region but, unfortunately, that 80 seat majority they were handed means we don't even have a two party system to oppose them even if they do.
Incidentally, we also have a Metro Mayor of our Region but it hasn't stopped the funding cuts from central government, both pre and post Covid-19, so devolution is not a panacea. It just passes the buck of which library or meals on wheels service to close to someone else other than the government. 
 
Cheers and good luck.

Quite. I was there at the time (grew up in Birkenhead and latterly Toxteth) and I saw the results of the historic trashing of Liverpool of which that was just another episode. I was at my Mum's friend's flat by the Rialto when mates of her daughter's rushed in to tell us that people were coming on to the streets after the beating of two local lads in a cop van in the city centre. It was a wild few days; mind you, afterwards you could barely tell the difference up Parliament Street, since it had still looked like a fresh bomb site before the riots - there were still huge flattened stretches left over from WW2 - in 1981! - that told anyone willing to keep their eyes open just how much of a fuck successive governments, mostly Tory, gave about Liverpool and the North.
Anyone, *anyone* who thinks the Conservatives will help working people anywhere, let alone in 'the provinces' is either too young to remember or too dumb to understand what's been in front of their faces for decades. It certainly wasn't the fault of the EU that 9 out of 10 of the most deprived areas in the EU are in the UK, yet the very people who helped sustain that 'world-beating' performance are those who were believed when they campaigned to remove the only barriers to them continuing it.
Anyway. We're entering a period where a lot of people are going to suffer, while a tiny few will prosper mightily. Maybe those who are still convincing themselves that Brexit and the Conservatives are going to usher in a golden age will, after a few years of that, start to understand that they've been conned.
But I'm not holding my breath.

To say that both phenomena stem from similar origins is not to say that British leavers would necessarily have voted for Trump - that would be simplistic. Besides, he's a particular kind of American figure of a type that most British people find intrinsically unappealing. I think it's safe to say, however, that many British Leavers - were they Americans who had grown up in America and were in similar socio-economic situations in the USA as they are here - would be in the category of voters who could be expected to be Trump voters.
British Leave voters were more likely to be older, white, less educated, hold more reactionary views and be less economically active than Remain voters. A similar profile to Trump voters in the USA.
Anyway, whether or not that's the case - in both countries, people who felt their worries weren't being listened to voted for things that will inevitably make their lives even worse after believing the lies of extremely rich and well-connected politicians who actually couldn't give a flying fuck about them.

The bottom line is that if someone voted to leave in 2016 and then voted Conservative in 2019 to "get Brexit done" then that person now better hope and pray that their domestic policy requirements align precisely with those of the Conservative party.
Because from here until 2024, that person is going to get exactly what the Conservative party determine that they are going to get and no more.
And with the 80 seat majority that they helped deliver for them, they have ensured that it will be unopposed.
If anyone is in any doubt about how that might work out, then a quick glimpse of their voting records should prove enlightening.

This poll was, of course, taken, after watching his performance in office for four years so not indicative of any correlation between Brexit voters feelings about him in 2016 when obviously he wasn't actually in office yet.
In any case, neither UKIP nor the Brexit party won a single constituency in the UK general elections either, so using UK constituency voting intention is not really even a useful indicator of a link between Brexit and, well, Brexit.
Particularly when you consider that Nigel Farage, the undisputed high priest of Brexit, has never been able to win a parliamentary seat in his whole career despite seven attempts over a period of two decades.
Where you will find a link between Brexit and UK voting is, of course, is when you look at the election record of UKIP etc in the European Elections where due to those utilising proportional representation rather than first past the post, the number of votes cast as a whole is reflected in the number of seats awarded.
So UKIP/Brexit Party etc can get fairer representation in the parliament that they were demonising than they can in their own parliament.
Which is all a bit awkward really isn't it ?
It also blows a big hole in the lack of "sovereignty" as well as surely the EU would have insisted on the UK adopting proportional representation too ?
So, of course, the UK has always had sufficient "sovereignty" to determine its own election processes irrespective of being in the EU or not and could also have chosen to establish this fairer method of distribution of seats in it own parliament.
This would have afforded the supporters of the UKIP/Brexit Party etc a genuine stake in shaping domestic issues.
But of course, the reason that proportional representation will always be voted down in the UK can be found in the result of the 2019 general election.
The Conservatives got 43.6% of the votes cast in the country and were rewarded with 364 seats (56% of the total seats).
Whereas between them, the Labour & LibDems got 43.7% and received only 214 seats (32.92% of the total seats).
It was framed as a Brexit election but with the way the constituency boundaries have been re-drawn over the years it delivered an 80 seat majority that means the Conservative party can now basically rule by decree.
Under proportional representation, they wouldn't have had a working majority even with the support of parties allied to Brexit such as UKIP etc.
So the bigger and actually more damaging impact of Brexit isn't just Brexit itself, as damaging as it is to wilfully impose economic sanctions on yourself, but that it has now delivered at least five years of unopposed space in which the Conservative government can impose policies that will be no friend to the working class.
There were many legitimate grievances from working class people that voted to Leave in 2016.
Unfortunately, they were aimed at the wrong parliament.

To say that both phenomena stem from similar origins is not to say that British leavers would necessarily have voted for Trump - that would be simplistic. Besides, he's a particular kind of American figure of a type that most British people find intrinsically unappealing. I think it's safe to say, however, that many British Leavers - were they Americans who had grown up in America and were in similar socio-economic situations in the USA as they are here - would be in the category of voters who could be expected to be Trump voters.
British Leave voters were more likely to be older, white, less educated, hold more reactionary views and be less economically active than Remain voters. A similar profile to Trump voters in the USA.
Anyway, whether or not that's the case - in both countries, people who felt their worries weren't being listened to voted for things that will inevitably make their lives even worse after believing the lies of extremely rich and well-connected politicians who actually couldn't give a flying fuck about them.

That's the thing that would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. The anti-elitists' answer to their woes was to elect a 'billionaire' to the US Presidency (who filled his cabinet with other billionaires, who promptly gave themselves a massive tax cut at the expense of programmes designed to help those at the bottom and in the middle), while in the UK they elected the most old-Etonian-heavy cabinet in living memory (while also ditching our most important and valuable international alliance at the behest of a bunch of public schoolboys).
Yet apparently it's bad form to characterise Leavers and Tory voters as numbskulls and racists.

The Tories did their best to undermine scrutiny in the UK parliament and even the courts. Indeed the exact terms of the Brexit we got on 1st Jan were finally negotiated so late, that it was a week before the 1st Jan and during Christmas that it got dumped before the UK parliament. Our democratically elected representatives had no choice but to pass it as-is, with no amendments, because it was a choice between that or a hard Brexit on WTO terms. So having backed Labour and the Scottish into a corner, Boris finally got his wish for the deal to be passed without any real scrutiny what-so-ever.
Which is probably why it throws so many people under the bus, like musicians for instance to whom the EU offered a touring visa, but the Tories rejected. Then again, since when have the Tories been anything other than complete philistines when it comes to the arts?

And the answer is to vote Tory?!

This is exactly the way the EU works. If we don't like our MEPs, we un-elect them.
I am no fan of overreach when it comes to centralised governments. No fan of that at all. I do agree the government should be directly representative of the people. That's why a coalition is a better representation of a nation. They work together, bridge divides, compromise. This is also why the EU was set up. It was not built to revive the monopolies of Germany, France, etc. and crush British industry. It was set up to prevent war in Europe and further cross border collaboration. There are hundreds of examples of this collaboration in the UK. Big state-funded EU projects and infrastructure we take for granted. Scientific communities and joint projects, the free flow of EU talent into the country's creative sector, in filmmaking, music, video game development, plus a hell of a lot more. Who would want to come to us now? All those easy to use privileges have been taken away and replaced with an inflexible Tory points based immigration system. It is now more bureaucratic, more uncertain, and more red tape for businesses too.
If you directly elect every leader and every official you leave your democracy wide open to popularism and knee jerk reactions by the general public, based on misinformation and social media bullshit. There has to be some stability and some form of steady government. As far as I know the President is a revolving role switching between countries. What in particular did the previous EU commission president do to so hinder the UK anyway? Specifically?
Especially not now we have left.
Voluntarily given up our voice in Europe which could be have been used to positively reform it and increase our share of the pie.
And that UK democracy with 8 layers stays the same regardless of whether we are in the EU or not. Dominic Cummings basically wanted to rip it all up and basically have a dictatorship at the top with no checks and balance. He wanted to abolish most of the civil service for starters.
Wish you would though. I am still waiting for all the specific advantages for me to be communicated by somebody on the Leave side but as usual it's just a load of hot air about taking back control!
I am no fan of so-called liberal elites either but if it is unaccountable, unelected elitism that's the enemy, voting Tory is about the maximum you can do to further it and that kind of cronyism. Recently the Tories got battered over the free school meals bullshit and their response has been to get a crony company to distribute free meals to parents, claim they're worth £30 when actually they receive about £5 worth of shit food to last them nearly a full week of schooling. Whilst the company involved creams off the profit.

I think of these things in the most simple terms, such as, what impact will it have on my life, and what has happened? 
 
Simple day to day things like:
- Takes longer to queue at the airports. 
- Can’t use my UK streaming accounts abroad. 
- Some shipping fees from Europe are more expensive. 
- EU muscians I work with are now cautious about travelling to the UK due to added costs, hence less income for me! 
- Cancellation of funding for EU funded projects, back to the drawing board. 
I’ve personally felt no benefit, and so far I can’t see what benefit there will be for my day to day. 
Unfortunately, a lot of the more intelligent arguments for leaving seem to be quilted with hardcore patriotism - some type of false ideology built on an imaginary pedestal that died decades ago. 
I do believe that the swing for the Tories will die out as the younger generation take their place with a refreshed mindset, and Brexit will turn to Brentry and take over all media for what feels like 100 years. 

One of Brexit's results will almost certainly be Scottish independence (and who can blame them? They were told in 2014 that voting to stay in the UK would protect their EU rights and Single Market membership - both of which have now been removed from them despite their having decisively voted to remain in the EU). The loss of those Scottish seats, combined with our antiquated first-past-the-post electoral system will make it a lot easier for the Conservatives to remain in power for as long as they keep the South East happy. The north, the midlands - well, it's not as if they're not used to being ignored by central government, is it? At least in the EU those regions had access to billions in regeneration funds - you may well say that those funds were the UK's contributions, re-routed by the EU - but just watch to see how much of that cash gets 're-routed' by the Tories.
The fact is that all those who voted to 'take back control' are in for a surprise - the control won't be taken back by them, it's being taken back by those who hated the fact that there was a higher level of regulation that meant they couldn't get a worker's right removed here and an environmental regulation there removed by having a quiet word with a chum in a private club. They'll no longer have any barrier to whatever they wish to do in order to further enrich themselves. The mostly non-working people (look it up - one of the highest correlations with a Leave vote was economic inactivity) who voted to leave have bequeathed those of us who still have to work with a couple of decades of declining rights, incomes and environmental protection, while handing the Rees-Moggs of this world yet another mouthful of gold.
At the end of the day, you didn't need to know much about the EU to figure out that Brexit would screw everyone but the rich - you only had to look at the collection of crooks, spivs, chancers and nutjobs who were front-and-centre of the Leave campaign. But sure - it's going to herald a new age of localised democracy and levelling up - Michael and Boris said so, so it must be true.

One of Brexit's results will almost certainly be Scottish independence (and who can blame them? They were told in 2014 that voting to stay in the UK would protect their EU rights and Single Market membership - both of which have now been removed from them despite their having decisively voted to remain in the EU). The loss of those Scottish seats, combined with our antiquated first-past-the-post electoral system will make it a lot easier for the Conservatives to remain in power for as long as they keep the South East happy. The north, the midlands - well, it's not as if they're not used to being ignored by central government, is it? At least in the EU those regions had access to billions in regeneration funds - you may well say that those funds were the UK's contributions, re-routed by the EU - but just watch to see how much of that cash gets 're-routed' by the Tories.
The fact is that all those who voted to 'take back control' are in for a surprise - the control won't be taken back by them, it's being taken back by those who hated the fact that there was a higher level of regulation that meant they couldn't get a worker's right removed here and an environmental regulation there removed by having a quiet word with a chum in a private club. They'll no longer have any barrier to whatever they wish to do in order to further enrich themselves. The mostly non-working people (look it up - one of the highest correlations with a Leave vote was economic inactivity) who voted to leave have bequeathed those of us who still have to work with a couple of decades of declining rights, incomes and environmental protection, while handing the Rees-Moggs of this world yet another mouthful of gold.
At the end of the day, you didn't need to know much about the EU to figure out that Brexit would screw everyone but the rich - you only had to look at the collection of crooks, spivs, chancers and nutjobs who were front-and-centre of the Leave campaign. But sure - it's going to herald a new age of localised democracy and levelling up - Michael and Boris said so, so it must be true.

One of Brexit's results will almost certainly be Scottish independence (and who can blame them? They were told in 2014 that voting to stay in the UK would protect their EU rights and Single Market membership - both of which have now been removed from them despite their having decisively voted to remain in the EU). The loss of those Scottish seats, combined with our antiquated first-past-the-post electoral system will make it a lot easier for the Conservatives to remain in power for as long as they keep the South East happy. The north, the midlands - well, it's not as if they're not used to being ignored by central government, is it? At least in the EU those regions had access to billions in regeneration funds - you may well say that those funds were the UK's contributions, re-routed by the EU - but just watch to see how much of that cash gets 're-routed' by the Tories.
The fact is that all those who voted to 'take back control' are in for a surprise - the control won't be taken back by them, it's being taken back by those who hated the fact that there was a higher level of regulation that meant they couldn't get a worker's right removed here and an environmental regulation there removed by having a quiet word with a chum in a private club. They'll no longer have any barrier to whatever they wish to do in order to further enrich themselves. The mostly non-working people (look it up - one of the highest correlations with a Leave vote was economic inactivity) who voted to leave have bequeathed those of us who still have to work with a couple of decades of declining rights, incomes and environmental protection, while handing the Rees-Moggs of this world yet another mouthful of gold.
At the end of the day, you didn't need to know much about the EU to figure out that Brexit would screw everyone but the rich - you only had to look at the collection of crooks, spivs, chancers and nutjobs who were front-and-centre of the Leave campaign. But sure - it's going to herald a new age of localised democracy and levelling up - Michael and Boris said so, so it must be true.

I’m just here for the bronzed MILF’s.

Appreciate what you're saying, but I guess we sure would like to be going into a 3rd lockdown after 25 deaths than after 70K+. There's governmental incompetence and then there's 21st century UK Conservative Party governmental incompetence!

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A lot of assumptions about me in this I don't like. But let's focus on the facts.
If we rewind to 2005, you are probably not with a strong opinion on the EU. Probably getting on with your life just fine. Country seems to be doing well. Certainly better than the state of it today after 10 years of the Tories. I am from a 'red' Labour area. Manchester. Tony Blair did a decent job of running all of the country not just London, and Manchester was booming, pretty much. This is after a full 30 years of EU membership and a so-called political union... it is actually far more of an economic one than what the Express would have you believe about Merkel bossing us around.
Post-Brexit, how is your life better. And what will you personally gain from it. Answers on a postcard please...
Here is what was in it for me... To be clear - nothing. Under EU membership as a Brit I spent 8 years living in Berlin visa free, with travel around Europe as easily as getting train to London from Manchester. I had a life in Berlin, very valuable to me. Now I have a 90-day max stay and have to pay as much as 40% import duties and VAT on anything I buy from Amazon or a UK website when in Berlin. Camera deals, eBay, that kind of thing, is now ruined. Meanwhile the German post has stopped sending to the UK altogether, whilst they decide how to restructure the cost of postage. It used to be that anything I couldn't bring back to the UK in my luggage would be put in a box and go back that way. Not any more. It will likely now get hefty charges stamped on it and there will be tons of paperwork to fill out.
Now, imagine if you are running a UK or Europe based business. The European based side can't serve customers in the UK at all at the moment... can't use the post. The UK side now has a 600 page document to familiarise itself with, and staff cannot avoid duties and VAT when sending to their biggest neighbours and trading partners. It's shit. In terms of bureaucracy the EU actually cut down on paperwork, especially in terms of the movement of goods and people.
Meanwhile people now require a visa of course to work in a different EU country if they are British, which means the younger generation won't have the same freedom as I did, creatively, as a filmmaker, to escape the high rents of Manchester and London, or to explore new places and meet new people. It's a disaster for them. Getting a visa is expensive and requires health cover, which is also expensive. Hundreds of quid a month expensive. Before, it was free and on the NHS for emergency care throughout the EU, be it in Manchester, Barcelona or Berlin.
The EU gave us free roaming, 100GB per month with EE for £20 to use throughout Europe, they spurred the private sector on to abolish some of their highest charges. It saved me a fortune in Berlin. The EU gave online streaming one market for DRM, so that Amazon UK could stream the British content in Europe, for when you are on holiday or living here. The cross border portability of content like movies and TV shows has now ended.
Moreover, I can't find a single benefit of Brexit for me... Not a single thing. It's all more expensive, more hassle, less freedom, depressing shit.
The irony of you saying the 'democratic' Referendum crushes the idea that the newspapers (like the Express, Daily Mail and tabloids) and powerful vested interests get to decide the results... When actually the outcome was the direct result of the newspapers banging on about refugees and EU bureaucracy for years on end, and the powerful vested interests of people like Farage or Johnson... mostly vested in themselves, as opportunistic scumbags. When you say that MPs get to decide election results, you ignore the fact they are the elected representatives of the people. However for this to work, democratic society has to be well informed. Over the EU, they were not. Simple as that. And if MPs and government had no power to plot the course of the nation, what's the point of voting for them in the first place? All this anti-parliament BS that came up during the debates on Brexit and the court cases, with the press attacking the judiciary, was a scandal. Very few so-called working class British people voted for Brexit knowing in factual terms exactly what was in it for them. They just got wound up emotionally. Like I said before, rewind to 2005 or even 2010 and nobody down my local pub in Manchester is talking about how much their daily lives are hindered by fishing quotas and tariffs on Japanese imports, and how they can't wait to leave the EU to negotiate their own. Let alone, "we can't wait to leave in order to get all those specific advantages including X, Y, and Z".
The very fact you haven't listed any specific advantages for your own life, livelihood, town or village of Brexit tells me a lot...
How about putting to one side the 'taking back control' and the slogans for a moment and listing the explicit benefits you have personally felt since 1st January 2021.
The first corona vaccine is German by the way.