Another elephant in the room

hmmmm... Not shy of a "potboiler" and even elephants in the room. And Sunday morning politics is getting my montropism into gear...

The issue of how democratic democracy is and how best to vote for things, the risk of flipping one way or another pancake like etc is a good topic and the tricky thing with any discussion is working towards a shared conclusion - ideally one that all agree will be the best.

Selfishness, just wanting to contradict for the sake of it, and arrant stupidity are really confounding problems.

Andy Burnham was right to bring up the elephant in the room - people (myself included) struggle to admit they can be wrong and subject to being manipulated at the best of times and even more at the worst.  They also often direct their ill feeling at entirely the wrong target in my personal experience.  It wasn't about having another referendum it was about highlighting who was actually responsible for the problems the UK is in at present.

(suggest anyone reading this jumps ahead if they agree with the problem and want to get to my comments w/r/to to solutions)

Anyway:

The economic argument - stupid idea to leave: source https://brexitfactbase.com/4-economic-context/brexit-impact/

Geopolitically - stupid idea to leave: source https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/brexit-10-foreign-policy  and because GDP dropped the vulnerability to "bad faith actors" from both east and west has intensified as the UK can't afford to defend itself.  "soft power" has been eroded: source www.britainsworld.org.uk/.../the-big-ask-23-2026

Socially - stupid idea to leave and the public now seeing this " Current Consensus: National tracker charts show a sustained majority—roughly 56% to 57% of Britons—now viewing the decision to leave as "wrong", alongside a steady multi-year lead for those favoring rejoining the EU over staying out."      source www.aljazeera.com/.../brexit-10-years-on-what-has-changed-in-the-uk-explained-in-maps-and-charts

"The British public's view that Brexit has failed is stable and structurally reinforced by the economy and demographics." source: https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54925-what-do-britons-think-of-brexit-10-years-since-the-referendum

BUT - here's the rub, once people learn about what it will cost to go back, like giving up the pound and accepting standard EU rules it could easily be persuaded to not rejoin.  This is broadly set up on right wing versus left wing political lines: source https://brexitfactbase.com/17-opinions-of-brexit/current-attitudes-to-rejoining/

So who "won" from brexit?

Multi-national corporations

The "Bureaucracy Industry"

UK universities (for a while at least)

EU competitors

I'll leave the reader to look up the sources there as I'm getting a bit weary of having to support stating the obvious - sorry...

To paraphrase the Frank Sinatra song a heck of a lot of people should be in chorus: "Bregrets, I've had a few" - but they are just like in the song probably too few for them to bother about mentioning and have moved on to complaining about the people who are trying to sort out the mess failing to do so.

Geography has it - the UK IS PART OF EUROPE - before modern roads and railways getting by sea to mainland Europe was easier than getting to other parts of the UK.  On the other hand the UK had fought of invasion and developed a world-wide network and empire thro' commanding the sea ways.

Brexit was the result of a long-standing, unresolved tension. One half of the UK viewed the big picture through the lens of modern geography, economics, and European proximity. The other half viewed the big picture through the lens of historical global networks, legal sovereignty, and a distinct island identity.

This problem is not going to go away - the UK has swapped arguing about how to stay in Europe for arguing how to live alongside it.

The identity crisis will continue: source https://ecipe.org/publications/negotiating-uncertainty-uk-eu-relations/

There's a bit of a wait before a land bridge comes back between the UK and mainland Europe the next mini-ice age that will reconnect the UK to Europe has likely been delayed by global warming so resolving things that way is maybe 100 to 200 thousand years away.

So "out of the box" solutions anyone?

1 A dual citizenship model. - individuals join Europe - pay for it but get the benefits. The Big Winner: Gen Z, Millennials, and Remote Knowledge Workers.  Secondary Winners: The tech sector and digital platform providers who build and secure the infrastructure for millions of cross-border digital identities.

2 A league of European cities rather than states (it worked in the past). The Big Winner: Global Metro-Hubs (specifically London) and Regional Governments.  Secondary Winners: Multinational corporations who get to base themselves in highly efficient, custom-regulated economic zones.

3 Turn states into corporations - business deals rather than international politics - it's there by de-facto process anyway, lets get rid of the charade. The Big Winner: Logistics Giants, Energy Conglomerates, and Large Manufacturers.   Secondary Winners: Civil servants and corporate lawyers who are quietly hired to manage these massive, un-elected joint utilities.

4 Let the money talk and let the computer algorithms calculate what is signed up to and what isn't.  The Big Winner: The UK Tech, Biotech, and AI Sectors.   Secondary Winners: Data scientists, economic analysts, and AI developers who build the algorithms that dictate national law.

.

I don't see our situation now as a binary choice between being in or out. As I've said previously Europe itself is changing and I think he way Mark Carney in Canada is approaching the EU is something we should be looking at closely as its starting to look more like a an alliance of like minded countries than a single state Europe. Some politicians in Europe want to go back a economic union of easier trade and co-operation than being a superstate, I think this is a far more sensible and practicle solution to either being in or out.

I can't think of a single benefit of Brexit can anyone else?

Yep that makes sense - option 3 of the "out of the box" solutions from above.

A "new alliance" kills off the toxic binary in or out context.

It gets around the trade problems as small businesses can escape the bureaucracy.

It moves towards the current "minilateral" approach of the current government strategy. 

And the EU is up for it: source https://euperspectives.eu/2026/02/von-der-leyen-backs-multi-speed-eu/

I still support option 1 as well tho' - the younger people are the ones who so often end up paying for the stupidity of older people.  Let them make their own decisions and learn from them be they good or bad as soon as possible in my opinion.

It's not, but looking at the reactions of many people in the days and weeks after Brexit, that time hadn't rewound was a big shock.

That's one of the problems when you peddle nostalgia like that and give people the chance to vote for it, of course most will vote to be 40-60 years younger and thinking that they would know then what they know now.

I remember a conversation where somebody was banging on about immigration and how terrible it was ad we should never have let Windrush happen and I asked him, if his preferred option would have been to encourage women back into workplaces they'd been excluded from when the men came home from the war? Funny how he had no real answer to that question. Most people don't realise that one of the reasons we had so much immigration from the Commonwealth was because it was felt politically expedient to exclude women from the workplace and put them back into the home "looking after" their husbands

It's not, but looking at the reactions of many people in the days and weeks after Brexit, that time hadn't rewound was a big shock.

That's one of the problems when you peddle nostalgia like that and give people the chance to vote for it, of course most will vote to be 40-60 years younger and thinking that they would know then what they know now.

I remember a conversation where somebody was banging on about immigration and how terrible it was ad we should never have let Windrush happen and I asked him, if his preferred option would have been to encourage women back into workplaces they'd been excluded from when the men came home from the war? Funny how he had no real answer to that question. Most people don't realise that one of the reasons we had so much immigration from the Commonwealth was because it was felt politically expedient to exclude women from the workplace and put them back into the home "looking after" their husbands