Ok Jim555, caring about the UK didn’t come across to me in your earlier posts. No worries. I’m sorry to hear your FIRE plans could be disrupted by this.
I actually care deeply about the UK (I have plans to FIRE there) and it saddens me so much that this has caused so much division and mess. As a European, I don't mind at all if countries want to leave the EU, but the UK has handled this badly. There should have been negotions for possible scenario's first and then people should have had their say. Now the Brexiters were basically given a blank check and ran with it. I don't think many Leavers intended to vote for a hard Brexit.
One of the slogans on the Brexit side during the referendum was something along the lines of “Love Europe, hate the EU”. I voted remain so I’m not endorsing this, but it is clear many people dislike the structure of the EU and the way it goes about things but actually have nothing against Europe itself and like Europe and being European a lot. I can accept this view. I kind of think the EU should concentrate on the things that the individual countries can’t do on their own I.e. trade, environment and security. I can understand the view of not wanting the EU to get involved in other things e.g. single currency etc.
If the referendum had been:
1. Remain
2. Remain but reform the EU and our relationship with it
3. Leave (but as Imma says with a clear definition of what that would look like)
Then I reckon 2 would have won.
Sadly being a choice between 1 and 3 made it difficult to campaign for 1. It’s instantly on the back foot. Leave sounds positive, assertive, taking back control etc. It by its very nature sounds optimistic and patriotic. For me it was clear that remaining was actually the patriotic choice but saying “we’ll just stay and remain as we are” instantly sounds needy and pathetic.
As a result the remain campaign just played on project fear and quite rightly no one believed it. Saying we’ll slowly decline over a twenty to thirty year period doesn’t have the punch so they went for nonsense statements such as emergency budgets, and immediate disaster. What they should have done was state the positive case for being in the EU in a really patriotic and positive way. Instead they were complacent and wishy washy, and that makes me as angry as I feel towards Cameron putting his party above the national interest in the first place.
I fail to see how the democratic will of the people is relevant here when both campaigns were so shoddily run and information provided so sub-standard. I would be genuinely interested now after these last three years how a second referendum would turn out. The Irish border I can barely remember being discussed too much, when it should have been one of the key talking points. As Imma says I can easily see this leading to the break up of the UK in the worst case. Did people vote for that?
From a FIRE perspective though all we can do is keep indexing, minimise expenses, hone as many skills as possible and cycle lots (because it’s cool) I.e. all things we want to be doing anyway.
