I voted remain but I spend a lot of time with group of people who voted leave. Some of them have realised the leave campaigners basically had no evidence to back up their claims and so feel lied to but, sadly, the others are just angry - and I mean really angry.
They want out at all costs because the “EU is telling us what to do”. Revoking article 50 would be a bad idea for civil stability but going through with it seems to me, to be economic suicide (ask any small business owner or retailer how it’s going at the moment and they’d say the process has already started). A bad deal (like this) really did seem the best of an awful situation to me - it reflected the vote, 48/52. Half the country (probably more since a million or so people have now become old enough to vote who couldnt before) didn’t want to do this so perhaps it should be an awkward compromise that gives both sides a bit of what they want.
> Revoking article 50 would be a bad idea for civil stability
What are they going to do? Lets be honest, the UK are the most impassioned people of all. They will not do anything. They aren't French, they aren't Spanish. Maybe they will have an extra cup of tea.
Especially when you consider it's the old that voted for Brexit. This stuff about riots is overplayed, if it was going to happen it would have started already.
If the pro brexit rallies are anything to go by the number of people who truly feel passionately for it are not bothered enough to take to the streets.
What proportion of 16 year olds are paying tax? My guess is <1%.
How many 16 year olds work enough to make above the minimum exemption? (£11,580) My guess is very few. Minimum wage for 16-18 year olds is £4.20/hr, but they'd need to make above £5.56 (11580/40/52) to have to pay income tax as they cannot work more than 40h a week.
I also assume the vast majority have no/negligible assets to earn income off.
So the only tax they would be paying is VAT, which everyone, including tourists, pay and shouldn't confer the right to representation.
Just as children are expected to pay maintenance for their parents when they are as adults in care homes, its reasonable to expect parents to pay maintenance for their children when they are getting educated. Its unrelated to being a adult. Besides that, you are right.
> Out of curiosity, how has "EU is telling us what to do" affected these people to make them so angry?
The one area that EU is failing behind is convincing it's own citizens that EU is well functioning democracy working for their common interest.
There are many reasons for this. EU institutions are transparent but due to complexity they are seen as opposite by many ordinary citizens. European Parliament elections attract usually significantly lower interest then national or local elections. Some EU institutional mechanisms have so many checks and balances that they seem to be completely beyond control of ordinary voters.
So it is easy to perceive EU as large Brussels-based, tax-distributing and self-serving bureaucracy conspiring to take away our freedoms and tax money. And many politicians capitalize on that.
Edit: Personally I am also not a fan of politicians like Jean-Claude Juncker or Donald Tusk. But I still prefer them over likes of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or Comrade Eleven.
I wish I knew, I have asked and the best I can sumise is that their lives haven’t gone they way they hoped, the UK government has historically blamed stuff on the EU (a bit like someone blaming stuff on their manager to a customer) so they correlate the two “my life is not what I hoped because of the EU”, sprinkle on some patriotism (well I’m “British”) and the fear that 52/48 isn’t strong enough to see their “win” over the line and you get angry people. I could be way off but this is the best conclusion I have come to.
The general sense is that elected officials can be quite good at blaming others for their own failures (this tendency is by no means limited to British government). The EU is the convenient scapegoat in European politics, even if Britain has wide latitude to opt out of swathes of EU politics or even drive the EU itself as one of the largest members.
The other point you make is quite true: even Brexiteers didn't think they would win the referendum. And the problem is that, in unexpectedly winning, they wanted to lock their success in quickly, before anyone could discover the problems in their arguments. And when they themselves found the problems, well, see the point I made: it's not the Brexiteers' fault that they couldn't come up with a deal that the EU would like, it's the EU's fault that Britain is in this mess.
This is a complicated topic, but a short and overly basic version:
There are many people in the UK - as in the US, as in most of the West, actually - for whom neoliberalism has not been kind.
They see immigrants getting jobs and struggle to make ends meet and have been told via various right wing media outlets (in the UK, principally the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Sun, Telegraph and Times newspapers), that there are two causes: uncontrolled freedom of movement in Europe and the political classes that are taking their marching orders from an unelected European Commission.
This view misses out important details. Firstly, it's not accurate in the slightest. It also doesn't reflect the fact the sort of people who are the root cause are the rich globalists who don't pay tax, such as people who own the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Sun, Telegraph and Times newspapers, for example.
However, the view has been built up over entire lifetimes. There are sprinklings of truth about sovereignty (akin to the fact that States have limited powers in the US), inefficiencies in how the European Union does its business (c.f. the Strasbourg/Brussels move and split), and so on.
However the UK gets far more economic benefit than it spends, and the poorest of communities like South Wales have had far more spent on it in targeted social programmes by the EU than has ever been spent by Westminster.
Let me give you a direct example: Lincolnshire is a farming community that had seen declining populations for decades. A large number of farming labour jobs have been filled by people from Europe - particularly Eastern Europe - because they are prepared to do work locals are not, at a price that locals will not consider.
Lincolnshire is a hard Leave area. Boston is IIRC the highest Leave vote in the country. When you ask there people why, one of their favourite anecdotes is the strain the Europeans put on local services.
They sit in an A&E unit waiting hours to be seen, and are surrounded by Eastern Europeans. They think "all these people here are the reason my waiting time is so long, they're using services I pay for! If we got rid of them, I'd have been seen by now!"
The context they are missing is that multiple A&E units in that county were slated for closure. The reason they remain open is because of high demand - from Eastern Europeans.
If we block freedom of movement, they would not be seen quicker. The unit would not exist. It would be closed. But that's not how they see it.
The real culprit as to why waiting times are so high is not because of the Eastern Europeans waiting with them, but because the government has cut funding, because tax receipts are lower than they could be, because certain rich businessmen have lobbied for tax breaks and then told the editors of the papers they own to blame the foreigners...
So there is a huge amount of anger built out of lies and misdirection that will take generations to undo. And they are so convinced of these lies, they are prepared to cause chaos. One of them before the last referendum murdered an MP (a woman called Jo Cox), and that will be but the first of many.
For anyone outside the UK, it's worth taking a look at the European Commission's Euromyths page. Since 1992, the Commission has been producing regular bulletins to correct erroneous stories about the EU in the British press. The absurdity and quantity of these stories is quite staggering.
> However the UK gets far more economic benefit than it spends, and the poorest of communities like South Wales have had far more spent on it in targeted social programmes by the EU than has ever been spent by Westminster.
The UK contributes more to the EU budget than it receives back. Ceteris paribus, the UK could fund all the same programmes, and have huge buckets of cash left over.
> A large number of farming labour jobs have been filled by people from Europe - particularly Eastern Europe - because they are prepared to do work locals are not, at a price that locals will not consider.
If locals don't want to do the work for the going rate, and there aren't foreign nationals willing to undercut them, the going rate will rise.
"The UK contributes more to the EU budget than it receives back. Ceteris paribus, the UK could fund all the same programmes, and have huge buckets of cash left over."
Yeah. Right. Problem: They are going to lose the 1 trillion euro claring. Tax income from that was likely already higher than the UKs EU budget contributions.
> because they are prepared to do work locals are not, at a price that locals will not consider.
Fortunately, those locals are able to purchase their produce at a lower price, with the benefits they claim which is being paid for by the migrant's taxes.
Thanks for the summary. The root cause of the problem is not so far from what is happening in the US. Many in the hinterland have tried to attribute their misfortune to various forces like immigration or other countries(China, Canada, Mexico).
Truth is that it's an unforseen confluence of factors. In the US the reasons for current upheaval against neoliberalism include(but not restricted to):
1. The nature of the electoral college and legislatures causes equal weight to all areas irrespective of population and wealth.
2. Patchy labor mobility due to affordability and labor evolution[2]
3. Rise of more efficient manufacturing outside the US(sometimes helped with stolen technology).[0]
4. Trying to solve difficult problems with simple ideas[1]
I always wondered if the right path in the future was to create legislation that has a built in "retrospect" clause and "behavior" component in it.
They want out at all costs because the “EU is telling us what to do”. Revoking article 50 would be a bad idea for civil stability but going through with it seems to me, to be economic suicide (ask any small business owner or retailer how it’s going at the moment and they’d say the process has already started). A bad deal (like this) really did seem the best of an awful situation to me - it reflected the vote, 48/52. Half the country (probably more since a million or so people have now become old enough to vote who couldnt before) didn’t want to do this so perhaps it should be an awkward compromise that gives both sides a bit of what they want.