The British Brexit facepalm thread

Brexit is summed up thusly: "We want to leave the EU. The whole country. Apart from this bit..." *points at the NI/ROI border* "...we want that bit to stay in the EU."

Introversion said:

From this side of the Atlantic, it seems somewhat like

UK: We want a unicorn, or we'll run away.
EU: Not possible, sorry. But here's a nice little pony you can have.
UK: Nope, we want a unicorn. Stop trying to thwart the will of our democratic process.
EU: Uh... Well, let us know what kind of pony you'd like. Maybe we can get you a red one?
UK: Ok, how about this: You give us a unicorn, and we'll agree to call it a pony? Also, we're not paying for it.

Click to expand...

It looks like that from here, too.

I'm wondering if "you're trying to have your cake and eat it" is going to be replaced with "you're trying to have a Brexit", except Brexit already has a slang meaning: "Joe said he was leaving ages ago but he's just sat in the kitchen Brexiting". Also, I wish Boris Johnson rhymed with something unpleasant, because Jeremy Hunt's name's already become rhyming slang but Boris Johnson truly deserves for his name to be immortalised as cockney rhyming slang for the only word the BBC will bleep out after 9pm.

Perhaps "do a Boris Johnson" will become slang for when someone messes up something even worse than the last person did. For example: "Jack's done a right Theresa May. He was supposed to check the tyre pressures but ended up puncturing all of them." "yeah well John's gone and totally Boris Johnsoned the whole thing. I said we should call the AA but no, he said he used to work at his mate's garage back in the day. First he tried to fix the tires with duct tape then he somehow managed to set fire to the engine and we only just got away in time before the whole thing blew up and now the insurance company won't pay out because the "repairs" weren't done by a qualified mechanic."

Why is there still so much support for Brexit among Brits? It's because a lot of people have bought into the idea that Brexit is going to fix all the problems caused by austerity over the last decade. It's almost like a religion the way they believe it's some kind of saviour. They blamed the wrong enemy and were manipulated by rich bastards who write tabloids and put adverts on buses and billboards lying about how much money we send to the EU saying we can spend it on the NHS instead, saying that Britain is "full", implying that loads of immigrants are coming over making all the poverty problems much worse. Reality is that the Tories have systematically underfunded services like the NHS, police, schools, failed to invest in affordable housing and failed to invest anything back to communities that have to deal with loads of extra people living there without the resources to deal with it.

Also you get more immigrants in poor areas than in rich areas. Probably that's inevitable as immigrants themselves aren't usually that wealthy, at least when they first come over. But we all know that immigrants come here to work and bring taxes and boost the economy, so who benefits? Businesses benefit. The middle classes benefit. Why was so little of it invested back into communities and services that were stretched by the growing population? No-one cared enough about working class communities to even consider the question. They still don't. You still get middle class people wringing their hands and not understanding why people voted for Brexit.

Yes it's very frustrating when loads of people blame the wrong enemy and vote for something that was never, ever going to actually fix the problem. They were manipulated by the tabloids (owned by very rich people) and arseholes like Farage and Johnson who deliberately whipped up anti immigration and anti EU sentiments and have been for years. They sold everyone this lie that Brexit is somehow going to fix everyone's problems. They did it for their own personal financial gain.

And you know the worst thing? When Brexit fails to fix anything, that's going to substantially increase the amount of disaffection among the working classes. Brexit was the Great Hope for a Better Life. Sooner or later the Brexit bubble will burst and then we're going to be in an even worse situation. I blame the middle classes who failed to invest in poor communities as much as I blame poor people for believing the lies and shooting themselves in the foot with Brexit. But most of all I blame the very wealthy berks that manipulated people into believing in Brexit almost like it's a religion.

I voted remain, not because the above mentioned problems don't exist but because they were actually caused by the Tories failing to invest in ordinary communities and subjecting the country to a decade of "austerity" because some merchant bankers (in both senses of the term) totally fucked up the economy in 2008. We needed a change of UK government. Leaving the EU was only ever going to make it worse. But I can see why Corbyn is taking the stance that he is. He's looking to get a "softer" Brexit which would give the working class Brexit supporters what they think they want and he's also going to actually invest properly in the NHS, local communities, affordable housing and various other things to alleviate poverty and strain on services which would give people what they actually want and need. If there's a general election now I'd vote for whichever remain party's standing in my area (Green or Lib Dem*) but I'll be hoping that Corbyn can split the leave vote enough for the remain parties to get a majority.

*hopefully they and Plaid Cymru will do the thing where they don't stand against each other to not split the remain vote