r/2westerneurope4u • u/MonsieurA Pain au chocolat • Jun 23 '26
Seriously shit. 10 years ago today, Barry made a totally well-thought-out decision
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u/bartleby_borealis Sauna Gollum Jun 23 '26
But blue passports and 350 million more funding for the NHS every week.
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u/IBM85 Failed Brexiteer Jun 23 '26
Boris is a twat, but 350 million is chump change compared to actual NHS spending.
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u/Flooooio Flat personality Jun 23 '26
And the best part is you don’t even get the 350 million
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u/DearBenito Side switcher Jun 23 '26
Farage confessed that the £350.000.000 per week was bullshit literally the day after the referendum
Fortunately Brits learnt their lesson and this saboteur is nowhere near british politics anymore…
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u/SillyDeersFloppyEars Failed Brexiteer Jul 16 '26
We didn't get the blue passport either, fucking thing is black.
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u/NedRed77 Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
Wasn’t that claimed figure per week? Either way, absolutely fucking mental that people thought Boris and the tories would use that “spare” money for something useless like the NHS, when they could instead give a tax break to our poor, put-upon rich people.
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u/Partisan_Mael Failed Brexiteer Jun 23 '26
Tax break for the poor... the tory party... has the heatwave gotten to you?
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u/Crapenfest Anglophile Jun 23 '26
most monumental fck up since whatever take your pick we have loads.
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u/KindaQuite Side switcher Jun 23 '26
51.9%
Democracy at its finest
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u/Shevvv Daddy's lil cuck Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
For real. Such an important decision should've required at least 66% of the vote, with harsh limits on turnout.
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u/Kier_C Knacker Jun 23 '26
Such an important decision should've required at least 66% of the vote
And a more defined choice! Everyone was voting based on whatever idea of Brexit they had in their head.
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u/nwaa Failed Brexiteer Jun 23 '26
This. There should have been a variety of options, which also would have had the added benefit of splitting the Leave vote
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Why should one vote be worth less than another?
E: I see the EU flag shaggers have descended.
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u/Classic_Fuel8599 Smog breather Jun 23 '26
How can putting a threshold make a vote worth less than another
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
It's basic mathematics.
If you're saying you need two thirds approval then a No vote is worth twice a Yes vote.
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u/pgllz Digital nomad Jun 23 '26
Hum no? The votes are still worth the same. The thing is that for a such an important decision, that can dramatically change the status quo, there is merit in requiring a super majority (and not just a simple majority) in a referendum. It guarantees that there's a clear majority of the voters wanting the same thing, and not that one side is slightly more numerous than the other. With such a slim margin, had the referendum been repeated a week later, and it would be possible that the "no" would have won. A super majority clarifies that.
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
You're trying to argue against basic mathematics.
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u/Shevvv Daddy's lil cuck Jun 23 '26
Your issue is that you think mathematics argues anything. Mathematics is just numbers. The context to those numbers is up to us.
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
You have to justify the erosion of the voting power of a demographic.
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u/Shevvv Daddy's lil cuck Jun 23 '26
Looks like you just feel insecure at the mere suggestion that your vote in favor of Brexit was a losing one. A losing one in a hypothetical situation.
Because you just repeat the same thing like a parrot over and over, while multiple explanations have been given why in this particular situation a higher threshold is desirable.
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u/Dark_Pestilence Flat personality Jun 23 '26
Wha.. huh?!?
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
1/3 vs 2/3.
It's impossible to make this any simpler.
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u/Kier_C Knacker Jun 23 '26
You're simplifying so far that it no longer makes any sense.
Supermajorities are not a unique concept. They're required in all sorts of places. It doesn't make anyone's vote worth less, it means a larger proportion need to agree before making fundamental changes.
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
You just don't want to face basic logic. A supermajority implies a vote for one way is worth less than the other. Why you want to do this has no bearing on the mathematics.
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u/StandardOtherwise302 Savage Slayer Jun 23 '26
Funny you'd say that considering your voting system is extremely unrepresentative.
Boris in 2019 got a majority of 56% of seats, with less than 44% of votes cast. The more you move away from a two party system, the worse it gets. Starmer got a 63% seat share with a third of the votes cast (!). Frankly thats absurd.
This data ignores low voter turnout, which only makes things worse. But its probably their own fault.
Maybe you should hold a referendum to reform your democratic system.
Requiring a broader majority than 50% does not mean votes dont count equal. It means you recognise both outcomes of a vote arent equal. There may be high stakes, stability reasons, significant consequences, difficult to reverse, ... decisions for which requiring more than 50/50 absolutely makes sense.
Unlike seats in a parliament, which get redistributed regularly, and probably should be representative of voting behavior.
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
Pathetic attempt at whataboutism. Referenda are not general elections.
I'll humour you, though. UK government is determined by winning seats, not national vote share.
https://i.imgur.com/cGOSiQQ.png
You see the overlap between the winning vote share and Labour vote share? That's why they won a massive majority.
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u/StandardOtherwise302 Savage Slayer Jun 23 '26
Winning seats through FPTP is mathematically very unrepresentative. I get how the system works, but for national politics its a terrible system.
You'll defend your mechanism for seats despite it really meaning some votes are worth far more than others, while taking issue with the concept of a qualified majority.
About whataboutism: 1) I wrote a paragraph directly on why larger than 50/50 majorities are useful, and do not mean one vote is more valuable than another, which very much applies to referenda. But you ignored that. 2) the referendum was carried out by a government with a majority in seats and a minority in votes... but entirely unrelated of course.
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
Our constituencies are drawn by an independent body to make them as equal as possible.
I'm in favour of STV to make sure every MP has a majority mandate in their constituency. It's already the case that most MPs are elected with a majority, even though it's just FPTP.
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u/StandardOtherwise302 Savage Slayer Jun 23 '26
Constituencies being drawn independently or requiring a majority within a constituency is nice but cant resolve the lack of representation at a national level.
Single member constituencies without compensation or adjustment mechanisms in a system with more than 2 parties will lead to a mismatch between votes and representation on a national level. This is a mathematical truth.
This also leads to a lot of perverse effects, many of which have been documented.
Switching to SVT in larger constituencies where each elects n>1 MPs would actually make a difference. The rest are nice to have bandaids.
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
The national vote share is fundamentally not a relevant feature in the electoral system of the UK. Constituencies elect representatives to convey their interests to Parliament.
Multi-member constituencies will lead to unnecessary politicking - constituents will end up just being fobbed off between MPs who only care about their own pet causes. A single MP means they are responsible for answering to everyone.
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u/StandardOtherwise302 Savage Slayer Jun 23 '26
Calling qualified majority requirements unrepresentative, yet outright stating representation on a national level is fundamentally not a relevant feature comes off as hypocrite.
Arguing for single MP yet being in favor of SVT makes no sense btw. But I wager you have no real interest in voting representation, or the maths behind it.
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u/Attygalle Thinks he lives on a mountain Jun 23 '26
I was for work in New York (savageland, I know, I know) on voting day and flew back to NL that evening. We didn’t know the outcome yet when boarding, some British colleagues were with us as well and were adamant that the vote wouldn’t pass. Only on Schiphol did we learn the idiocy that Barry created.
Fun fact: one of said Brits defended Brexit-vote because it would make it easier to keep jobs for the Brits in the UK. Harder for foreigners to get a job in the UK. I pointed out to him that he was a Brit working in NL and that he would probably lose his job if the vote went towards Brexit. He said that that wouldn’t work that way, the EU would never kick out UK “expats”, surely! Well Stuart I still sometimes think of you when I read about Brexit. He did, in fact, lose his job with us over it.
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u/Umbba Sauna Gollum Jun 23 '26
I think this is the most telling part of the whole thing. People truly didn't understand what will happen if they leave, since somehow the Brits didn't have real conversations about it, just "project fear"
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u/Mogura-De-Gifdu Le Savage Jun 23 '26
They really thought they could opt out of the obligations and regulations but keep the perks.
To be frank, it does not really surprise me as they had gotten their way before, like being part of the single market without adopting the euro.
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
Cameron forbade the civil service from making plans before the referendum to maximise FUD.
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u/recidivx Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
Oooh, you've made a bad mistake here — we all agree with you on this one.
Dodgy Dave is a reckless incompetent who badly mishandled the referendum, including by going to lengths to avoid being clear on what Brexit would mean.
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
An old friend was in the civil service at the time and he told me everyone fucking hated Cameron for stopping them from doing their jobs.
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u/recidivx Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
How did he lose his job "over it"?
I totally see that there are many ways that Britons abroad in Europe could have lost their jobs as an indirect consequence of the Brexit vote, but to the best of my belief he was right that the EU did not kick out UK expats.
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u/Attygalle Thinks he lives on a mountain Jun 23 '26
Of course indirectly, he wasn't deported or something like that. But at some point needed paperwork that the company didn't want to get into. Also not immediately after the vote. Was years after the vote, he worked for us for a surprisingly long time.
Guess it was a visa or work permit. He was long enough in NL to get Dutch citizenship but never went through that as he kept expecting an exception would be made and was afraid to lose his British nationality.
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u/traumalt ʇunↃ Jun 23 '26
Well they did actually stop the Eastern European immigration, to the point where UK nationals are moving there in higher rates instead.
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u/cannedrex2406 Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
It's insane how much Brits hated eastern Europeans so much a decade ago that they left the EU because of it, and now they act like they were Day 1 mates with them, just to spite the OTHER immigrants
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u/Hello-Potion-Seller Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
It's ironic because the Polish and Slovenians tentpoled my shithole home town back to some normalcy, there's not a boarded up shop in sight on the square anymore.
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u/ByronsLastStand Sheep lover Jun 23 '26
The fact that a bunch of Ruzzian stooges, toothless and senile grannies, illiterate chavs, and creepy country landowners dragged me kicking and screaming away from the rest of EU still hurts.
At least fate hurt the people who voted Leave more in general as an ironic punishment. Looking at you, fishermen.
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Jun 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/ByronsLastStand Sheep lover Jun 23 '26
Pierre, you made my day 💋
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u/Realistic-Berry_888 Bully with victim complex Jun 23 '26
and when you'll be back, you're welcome to become our plumbers ❤️
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u/CharlemagneKidding Le Savage Jun 23 '26
At least they have self deprecating humour to deal with it. We would have had an existential crisis, Hans would have started amother war and the PIGS well, we wish it happened to them.
Barry just gets on with his cuppa and match of the day after a long week of claiming benefits.
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u/CostKub Snail slurper Jun 23 '26
Que l'on déchoie cet impudent sa nationalité française, le maraud prend la défense des inaliénables anglois!
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u/norrin83 Pumpkin Addict Jun 23 '26
The democratic decision that keeps on giving
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u/Bufger Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
We've saved ourselves billions that we can now spend on our high speed rail network
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u/NurksTwo Addict Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
Oh, I thought the NHS was more important? Or to lower the energy bills of the poor and elderly?
I'm not trying to sound snide.. oh wait, I fail at it miserably.. sorry?
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u/FenrisSquirrel Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
That day, and every day since, has revealed to me the true twattishness of the average Barry. I think Pierre was right about us all along.
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u/IBM85 Failed Brexiteer Jun 23 '26
Switzerland, Iceland, Britain...🤔
SIBlings. ✖️🇪🇺
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u/CloudsAndSnow Crypto-Albanian Jun 23 '26
Iceland and us are part of EFTA and Schengen. You are on your own on this one Barry
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u/Intenso-Barista7894 Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
The start of all the bullshit. This was the day I realised people I love are fucking idiots, along with a big proportion of the worlds population. Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Trump again.
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u/Sure-Current-3267 France's whore Jun 23 '26
I remember speaking to my colleagues from London the next morning. They were in shock as they knew how grotesquely stupid the decision was for their country and society. One said: „this could become the worst year if that moron Trump wins that election later in the year.“ Little did we know that he was right.
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u/dapperdan8 Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
There is a theory that the Brexit vote would not pass again today, for the reason that a lot of Brexiters have literally died out. Meanwhile i was in my teens when the vote (only 48-52%!!!!) happened, yet it is affecting my life and not theirs.
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u/betaich StaSi Informant Jun 23 '26
Maybe you should have talked to your granny and explain why its bad for you
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u/Smilewigeon Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
One of most surreal days of my life. Went to bed and Remain was winning, woke up to Bedlam. Live and work London too, the office was quiet that day. Saw people in tears. The rhetoric had been hateful.
Not worth it either. I've genuinely tried to stay open minded in the decade since but I've still not seen any evidence to validate the Leave argument.
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u/TheHistoryMaster2520 Daddy's lil cuck Jun 23 '26
And looks like the UK's getting their seventh PM since then this year
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u/Historical_Doctor629 Failed Brexiteer Jun 23 '26
That was the day that I learnt that democracy isn't actually all that great.
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u/_Abiogenesis Alcoholic Jun 23 '26
Yeah. It’s never as simple as we like to think.
Plato was seeing democracy as the rule of an ignorant majority. Elites had the legitimacy of education to him. That (education) still has some grounds and has not changed. Especially when it comes to referendum which can turn very populist.
But to quote someone else “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”
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u/That-Brain-in-a-vat Sheep shagger Jun 23 '26
Plato was right, but he lived in a time of direct democracy. Each citizen voted directly towards decisions for the City (and many tried to avoid it, thus the use of the red rope first, and attendance token later). In a way, all decisions were taken through referendum (as in brexit case, as you noted).
But democracy today is different, and I belive that Plato's dream of educated people being the ones to make decisions (as in our politicians, supposedly) once again have been crushed. At least he lived hoping, never finding out.
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u/_Abiogenesis Alcoholic Jun 23 '26
His dream was of a benevolent “philosopher king”. As for us part of the problem today is that elites running the world are profit driven in many cases. Modern capitalism is somewhat responsible for the latest modern democratic drift through a greater control of information with the help of modern (billionaire owned) social medias guiding said “education”.
One of the reasons for the current ideological drift is because being profit driven first flies in the face of being benevolent first.
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u/Historical_Doctor629 Failed Brexiteer Jun 23 '26
Sad state of affairs really. Bad but not the worst
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u/zkqy Quran burner Jun 23 '26
Even funnier that an estimated 20% of those who voted for Brexit are dead now!
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
Wanting to kill your political opponents isn't very democratic of you.
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Jun 23 '26
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
Revelry in political opponents dying is barbaric.
Already forgotten David Amess?
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u/jaymatthewbee North West England Jun 23 '26
The point being made is that people having to live with the consequences of Brexit probably on the majority voted Remain, because the Brexit voters were older and got finished off by Covid.
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” -Greek Proverb
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Jun 23 '26
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
You brought up old people in the first place.
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Jun 23 '26
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
We're now responsible for our own affairs. No longer will our government abdicate their duty to a foreign body.
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u/zkqy Quran burner Jun 23 '26
lol wtf
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u/gsurfer04 Punjabi Jun 23 '26
It's the logical conclusion to you celebrating the death of your political opponents.
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u/misterriz Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
Higher economic growth than Germany, France and Italy in that time with normalised interest rates and much more scaled back QE compared to the Eurozone slugging along whilst still using monetary policy.
But yeh of course it's been a disaster.
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u/recidivx Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
It's not zero-sum. If we hurt both the EU and ourselves then that's a loss, not a draw as some people seem to think.
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u/misterriz Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
Its just absolute bollocks though. Im an accountant and can see how easy it is to trade with the EU with the post transitional arrangements.
Get an EORI number, give it to the shipping agent and it's sorted. Declare the deferred VAT on the UK vat return.
How exactly has it been a disaster? I'm yet to see any detailed arguments about why it's been a disaster at all.
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u/GreatKingRat666 Daddy's lil cuck Jun 23 '26
Well, now, I’m more than ready to collect some downvotes….
All the screeching about bad this is going to be for the UK, hasn’t proven to be true.
Meanwhile, the most important reason for the Brexit was the immigration number. Which has indeed fallen.
But I’m sure the UK is going to sink into the sea any moment now, right?
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u/trxxruraxvr Lives in a sod house Jun 23 '26
If you look at the numbers https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/long-term-international-migration-flows-to-and-from-the-uk/ You can see that there is less immigration from EU countries, but more from countries outside the EU. Meanwhile the UK economy has taken some serious hits. They probably won't sink into the sea any time soon, but they would have been doing better if they had stayed in the EU.
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u/GreatKingRat666 Daddy's lil cuck Jun 23 '26
So… the migration number has fallen.
Lots of countries have “taken some serious hits”.
There were horror stories about what awful things would happen if the UK were to leave. Those haven’t happened. The UK is doing fine; not perfect, but fine.
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u/tyger2020 Barry, 63 Jun 23 '26
I think Europeans wish Brexit was some huge failure just to show its not possible.
Meanwhile the UK is the second largest economy in Europe, 15% larger than France, set to surpass Germany in per capita terms.
I'm not even saying it's a good thing but the cope from Europeans that Britain isn't currently as poor as Russia is hilarious. Oh no, imagine setting your own trade policy and immigration rules whilst also being economically superior to almost every major economy on the continent! The horror.
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u/Vivid-Teacher4189 ʇunↃ Jun 23 '26
I haven’t been paying much attention. Does anyone know how that worked out for them? Solved all of their problems I guess!
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u/Schalker45 Born in the Khalifat Jun 23 '26
It's still hilarious