How I imagine that would go:
They can come back with zero special privileges, as one among equals.
This is exactly why I don’t think they’re coming back just yet. If there’s one thing leavers and remainers agreed on it’s british exceptionalism. Remainers didn’t want to leave because EU in general was beneficial, remainers didn’t want to leave because UK had a good thing going in the EU and giving it up was stupid. Remainers want to join only if they get at least some of their special privileges back.
Maybe in another 10 years they’ll be more receptive towards joining without special privileges.
I’m ready now. Fuck sterling, fuck the vetos, fuck the opt-outs, etc. Yeah, the special arrangement we had was amazing and put us in a privileged position and we’ll be diminished if we rejoin without them, but that’s still a far better situation than we find ourselves in now. So yeah, warts and all; I’m in.
We should have gone full metric and adopted the Euro years ago. Then all this bollocks about pints and good old sterling would have been done with.
As usual with UK we do everything half arsed and settle for second best.Whores don’t get second chances… At least they don’t get taken back the first wife lol
Bregret is a Britch
My hope is that Labour are playing this smart. They’ll bang on about how Brexit won’t change, but that “we’ll look to increase economic and social strengths via our relationship with the EU”. We’ll reintroduce entry to the single market, ensure freedom of movement, and basically rejoin in everything but name - and then eventually say “well, if we want to rejoin it’s basically a tick in a box”.
The EU will likely be happy for the UK to rejoin, even without punishment. The most reliable ally in the battle against Euroscepticism is a former Eurosceptic that can say how shit things were after leaving, and how much better they are since rejoining.
If the UK applies to rejoin, this time no Thatcher UK Rebate or any other special exceptions. UK leeches were a thorn in our side for way too long. This time you better pay what you actually owe. And say bye-bye to your stupid currency. Euro adoption or nothing.
That’s quite an acerbic way to talk about people.
Keep in mind 2 nations within the UK didn’t want to leave along with a large chunk of the other two.
Keep in mind 2 nations within the UK didn’t want to leave along with a large chunk of the other two.
Irrelevant. It is like saying the Lombardia and Veneto do not agree with what Italian government decide: it could be true but they cannot do whatever they want, they are part of Italy.
I’ve lived in a couple of countries of Europe, including the UK whilst it was an EU Member.
The spirit about the EU in the UK was always different, no “stronger as a group” mindset, always “what’s in it for me” and trying scheme after scheme to see if they could swindle the rest of the EU.
Then on top of it all there were all the many insults to the EU - and by extention the people in it - during the Leave Referendum and even afterwards, coming from amongst others top people in party in government, including the PM.
I remember how even the Remainers were running around with delusions of national superiority: for example one of their arguments were “We should stay and change the EU from the inside”, as if Brits knew better what the EU should be than the other 470 million people in it.
The EU doesn’t really need that kind of member nation, more so when we’re dealing with another one like that in our midst: Hungary.
Respect is earned, not due, and the UK has a lot of work ahead to earn it.
Not here to try and change your mind but I’ll reiterate what I said before, not everyone wanted to leave. The negatives you give are mostly related to Leavers. Keep that in mind when you’re being aggressively negative to the “UK”, it’s not one lump.
I’m sorry but the UK is the entity we’re talking about, not actual persons - individuals can’t join or leave the EU on their own hence it’s the actions of the actual formal nation state that get judged when it comes to joining or leaving the EU.
Consider the possibility that it’s your nationalist feelings (and given the huge role of British Nationalism in Brexit that’s not actually a good thing) that are making you confuse the country and the actions of it by the hand of it’s elective representatives, with you yourself and people like you - the actions of the nation never really represent all people in that nation and it’s not really healthy (IMHO) to identify yourself with The Nation.
People being critical of a country seldom means they’re critical of everybody in that country, unless they’re nationalist far-right morons, in which case their problem is a lot bigger than merely talking in an acerbic way about a nation.
You’ve mistaken what I said I think. I was reiterating that the UK is 4 nations. I wasn’t talking about individuals. I think it’s safe to say we’ve reached the end here though given your rhetoric to I’ll leave you to your opinions.
Whilst I don’t disagree with your facts, I disagree with your tone.
It’s really understandable for EU folk to be angry with us. Our newspapers are toxic, the BBC promotes Farage and we were always going for British exceptionalism, with Brexit being the ultimate act of We’re Better Than You sentiment.
Me, you, 48% of the then voting public, Scotland and NI didn’t buy it, correct, but genuinely the right approach to EU irritation with the UK is apology, not “stop being mean” and not “it wasn’t my part of the UK”.
We’re not out of the woods yet. Britain’s most unelectable politician of all time, with nine losses in hand-picked constituencies may well win Clacton because the stupidly corrupt Conservative party couldn’t keep their stupidly corrupt MPs honest. How “we’re not a bunch of racist loonies” is that going to look across the channel? Yes, a bunch of us are going to turn away from the stupid racist Conservative party, but a lot of them are going to turn to the even more stupid, even more racist, even more anti EU Refuse UK Party.
They could do what Norway does, paying for an almost membership that doesn’t give them any voting rights.
Only apparently in the EU power circles nobody wants yet another “special deal” like Norway or (even worse) Switzerland.
Why not? Pay into the EU, adopt all EU laws, get one fishing or banking exception and no vote in laws. I’m all for it.
There’s absolutely no chance of us getting a fishing exception. That was highly contentious when we were one of the big three EU countries. No way would they agree to that whilst also letting us back in after throwing all our toys out of the play pen.
With the fight over the pound in the 80s and 90s when they first formed the EU, I would be very surprised if the EU didn’t force the UK to adopt the Euro to rejoin
Euro, Schengen and no special exceptions.
Why would they. Like the above comments says they have much more to gain by UK having to slink back so why would they put barriers to that.
It’s also not as if the pound is a particularly weak currency like the French Frank or the German Deutsche Mark was.
They don’t want to make it easy to get back in, so that other countries aren’t tempted to leave in the first place. They shouldn’t reward temper tantrums.
I would have thought the inverse would have been true that they would want to reward coming back It seems like a petulant philosophical view to suggest that the EU would not let the UK back in.
After all doing so would demonstrate that leaving is non-practical
If a kid throws their ice cream on the floor, giving them another one soon afterwards doesn’t in any way teach the other kids not to throw their ice cream on the floor. This is very firmly a “no ice cream for you then” situation. I think labour realise they if they tried to rejoin, they would get a very rough ride indeed from the EU with massive amounts of playing hardball and that the best they can hope for in the next five years really is some softening and smoothing of the deal for being cooperative. We agree to fund EU science a bit, they let us back into erasmus, that kind of thing (although specifically not that).
But joining the EU takes a decade or more sometimes, and the “but it’s really very simple, we follow most of the EU rules already because we’re a former member” is as stupid as the “oven ready deal” and “German car manufacturers will insist we get a great deal” nonsense.
It’s also not as if the pound is a particularly weak currency like the French Frank or the German Deutsche Mark was.
The Deutsche Mark was famously stable and the biggest official foreign exchange reserves after the dollar, it was much stronger than the pound sterling.
This kind of cycle back and forth between full-throated conservative idiocy and then demanding to be saved from the consequences of their own actions is what really makes me so depressed about the majority of voters.
I could excuse a young person maybe for being naive and inexperienced enough to think conservativism might have some kind of merit, but grown-ass adults have literally no excuse to ever believe the right-wing ever about anything.
Not just in the UK, but everywhere.
Well their voting system that overinflates the seats of the winning party does not help either.
Can we just first have Scotland back in? Just to fuck with England.
Seconded
Thirded so long as we can drop the border down to include Cumbria, Northumberland, and Tyne & Wear… maybe North Yorkshire, too. I’d love to be Scottish if they’d be happy to have us!
If Greater Manchester declares itself a city state, please can we join? Maybe let Wales in too as long as they take responsibility for Liverpool.
Manchester should be fine, and Wales is a given. Who wants to pay £4bn for a project which only benefits England?
We may need to include Merseyside, Lancs and Cheshire just to have a land connection between New Scotland and Wales so we don’t have to consider touching England.
I would love for the UK to rejoin the EU, but the survey results mentioned in the article don’t really support the claim that there is a general desire to do so. A shift from 52% against to 52% in favor of EU membership is really not that significant.
- it is more about the trend
- 52% is a lot, if the other party has 35% and the rest “do not know”…
This is not a “will the UK try to rejoin one day” trend, this is a brexit regret trend.
The people responding “rejoin” to these polls probably imagine that EU accession will be done on the previous terms. If you did the same graph but made it clear to pollees that rejoining would entail a switch to the Euro and many more legislative constraints, it would almost certainly read overwhelmingly “Stay out”.
There has been no change for 1.5 years now, what trend? The 1.5 years where it changed a little(!) prior?
the trend between 3 years ago and now. also, don’t forget to combine that knowledge with my point 2.
Why specifically 3 years? Any other time frame will not support your argument? There is no trend on either direction currently, has not been for 1.5 years.
Brexit happened at the end of January of 2020, so 3 years is really the only viable amount of time to consider {since this year isn’t over to be considered).
The fact that in 1.5 years there was no change IS a trend.
And notice the overall change after merely 3 years.
Clickbait
Also, lol
Yeah when they fixed their bs and gone through the entire year long joining process and without extras.
Joining at this point would require an insane effort on the UKs side. I am pretty sure that an undemocratic institution like the house of lords would not be acceptable under current EU laws and that is not even accounting for the UKs voting system. The UK would also have to join the currency union. The last point alone makes rejoining very unlikely in my opinion. I think the only thing UK citizens can realistically hope for is, at best, something similar to the Norway model.
Norway is a rule taker that pays into the EU without any influence. They’re also tiny and they know it. This is said with love from a neighbour who would love to see Norway join the EU.
I don’t think the UKs collective ego would allow them to join on Norway terms.
If I remember it correctly, members of the EFTA such as Norway have a vote with veto, and during the Brexit Deal negotiations they weren’t at all keen on having the UK joining the EFTA because it’s far bigger than all the others and would likely dominate.
Yeah, all EFTA members have veto rights towards new members, and you’re pretty much correct but it’s even worse. The UK economy is bigger than all other EFTA countries combined. There’s no way they’d let the UK in.
Brentrance.
Breturn
Breunion
When the EU turns around and predictably tells us to fuck off:
The EU won’t turn you down, but you won’t want to meet the necessary conditions
As the vote for new EU Members is one with veto rules, my bet is that it’s going to be an opportunity for all manner of EU members to make demands, such as Spain demanding Gibraltar back.
Brenter
Breturn!
Brcatdoor
Of course we do, but it ain’t gonna happen. Best you can hope for is the custom union in seven to ten years’ time.
I’m pretty anti-brexit, but I’m not sure whether I’m pro-rejoining. Taking the clusterfuck we’ve landed in and turning it in to somehow an even bigger clusterfuck may not necessarily yield good results and definitely won’t be some silver bullet. The massive middle finger we’d justifiably get from the EU should probably give us pause.
somehow an even bigger clusterfuck
I agree that rejoining won’t magically solve all problems but I don’t see how it would make things worse.
This. It’s not just a switch to be flipped.
What’s done is done. From day 1 after the referendum it was obvious to everyone that the UK would spend the next 50 years trying to mitigate the impact of that ridiculous decision. Hotting the “rejoin” button is not necessarily a short cut to the end.
