The truth of this meme is it pretty much proves we've always had our own sovereignty; as it states, none of these decisions were enforced by the EU. Our governments have been responsible for all the key decisions that have effected the UK, for many years.
Our Tory government - the current one - is also responsible for the deregulation of the fracking industry; something the EU weren't keen on because it would affect the lives of too many people - detrimentally. On Saturday, I asked a Brextremist who lives less than 5 miles from the key fracking site in Lancashire about fracking's dangers and his answer was, 'As long as we're not buying Russian gas I don't care where we get our gas from.' He also pooh-poohed the idea of any long-lasting effects on the Lancashire countryside, despite evidence that earth tremors are REAL not made up by Remainers.
The sad irony is that this person wants to frack because he doesn't want Russian gas. This is the Russia that the EU has sanctions against. Russia backed Brexit because they don't like the EU being bigger and more powerful than them. Trump's USA backed Brexit because the EU regulates them too highly. The madness is that most Brextremists don't believe anything except what they believe, even if they can be categorically proven to be wrong. The moment they start losing an argument they just give you 'that smile', the smile that says, "You know nothing." The arrogance of Brextremists is going to bring the country to its knees and the scariest thing is THEY DON'T CARE.
I don't know if they simply think it won't affect them or if they really think that the sunny uplands of wealth is just around the WTO corner. What I do know is they get a far bigger voice in the media than Remain voters want; because every time a fisherman in Cornwall or a factory worker up north says, 'We voted leave, we should just leave.' I admit none of these people actually understand what they're wishing for, but it's a powerful voice and one that resonates among the fence-sitters. You hear more dissenting voices you start to think, 'Hmm, they might be right.'
The Remain vote has increased, allegedly; people have died and new voters eligible; the problem is if you go to some of the most depressed areas of the country, those who voted Leave because they actually thought it was a protest against their misery, their vote has hardened and got even more desperate and angry. The country is truly split between Leave and Remain; far worse than disagreements between Labour and Tory voters or Celtic and Rangers fans and Remainers who live in Remain strongholds cannot accept that the ignorant rest of the country doesn't agree with them...
I appreciate that simply by calling leave voters 'ignorant' is fanning the fires, the problem is I don't think that many of them really knew what they were doing, but now they've done it and one of the few times they've voted they won and they're not going to let that be taken away from them. This is why Theresa May's 'deal' has been pilloried by all sides. Remainers hate it because we're not in the EU any more and Brexiteers hate it because we still are; it was the best of both worlds deal to reflect the 52-48 split. It was a compromise that no one wants, but probably needs.
Another issue that is constantly ignored is the cognitive dissonance and subconscious nihilism of a large percentage of leavers. Faced with all kinds of worst case scenarios, if they even accept the viability they deny it or worse still accept it as 'a price worth paying' - surely a worse country than what we had isn't what these people voted for, yet 2 years down the line some of them will tell you that's exactly what they voted for. A perfect example of this is the aforementioned man who doesn't want Russian gas. When asked what his kids would do or how they'd cope with fracking, your man simply doesn't care. Like a number of other rabid Tory leavers I've met, he actually wants his children to suffer because 'They shouldn't have it as easy as we had it!' This, in my humble opinion, warrants a 'What the Actual Fuck?' response. Have we created such bitter and twisted baby boomers - the generation who honestly never had it so good - that they'd actually like to see their children and grandchildren have less opportunities than them?
Actually, probably not, because this is where the cognitive dissonance is at its worst. Brextremists are so convinced that the sunny uplands of prosperity is so close, they're children will thank them for this decision, despite them not being allowed to travel all over Europe. Some leave nutters simply argue that getting rid of all the foreigners will allow us to have FULL employment; a country that has no one on benefits because they'll all be out wiping arses and cleaning toilets - because that's what our 'feckless' youth want, yes?
I've actually met people who think Nigel Farage would be a better PM than anyone else. This has nothing to do with anything apart to highlight just how crazy some people really are. I've met people who advocate things such as WTO rules or No Deal, who refuse to believe that nothing will change; that all the countries of the world will be queuing up at our door to do business, despite there being zero evidence, just facile windbag blowhards telling us trade deals will be the easiest in history. We currently have a good deal for something with the semi-autonomous Faroe Islands - how good is that?
The problem is regardless of all the evidence, all the experts, all the warnings; it's all Project Fear and it will remain Project Fear even after we leave. It will be the EU's fault for making it difficult for us; it'll be the remainers for not believing enough; it'll be the unemployed, the foreigners, the Muslims, the single mothers, the disabled, the left wing - it'll be a long list of people to blame for the shitstorm heading our way and this blame will be attributed without even a hint of irony. Brexit for Brextremists is essentially having yourself on film killing someone and then swearing black is white that it's fake news, manipulated footage, taken out of context, just remainers smearing them - everything will be blamed, no one will say, 'Yep, I killed someone' because it is and will continue to be everyone else's fault.
The government is responsible for this huge divide and now they really don't know how to solve it. Why? Because without the EU we won't have half the money for investment that the Tories have already never invested in. Throw £1.6bn at the opposition to sweeten the deal; despite the fact that we get £20bn back from the EU - every year - in rebates to ensure the government invested in areas that need help. If you're a Tory voter, can you honestly tell me of one investment project this current government has been responsible for? Just one. I'll take anything at this point.
The Tories don't invest in the economy; they free it up to be commercialised. Look at the Probation Service as a perfect example. Or the cuts to the infrastructure of the country; such things as the reduction in police numbers and police auxiliary workers - only a Tory PM would say there's no correlation between cuts in police and rising crime. If that's the case, why is crime rising?
Okay, you hate Labour. You won't vote for Corbyn. That's fair enough; I mean Labour have been in power so little in the last 40 years there's no real way of you knowing what it would be like. It's like imbeciles I hear who said they never made money during New Labour's 13 years in power... Funny how they won two elections with landslide victories where even Tories voted for them; I wonder just how much these people really struggled compared to say 2019?
The worst case scenario and, in my now not so humble opinion, the most logical outcome is civil unrest whatever happens. Parts of the country will burn and the Tories will continue to bleat on about Labour hating Jewish people - because, you know, the future of the country hangs on whether half a dozen supposed Labour party members said something hateful - Tories say hateful things about the unprivileged Muslim community (or Sadiq Khan) all they want and never get accused of racism for very long, but 95% of all Labour antisemitism is anti-zionism - criticism of the Israeli government's rather Nazi attitude to the indigenous Palestinians; but you can't do that. You can criticise every government in the world but not Likud because they're Jewish.
The country is really fucked; it was fucked before the Brexit vote and now it's massively divided and the hate that's risen to the surface isn't going to go away quickly. Unless the Tories invest BILLIONS of pounds into the economy (and then we need to be able to deal with other countries) it will get worse, especially after Brexit. The Tories will have to do something they've avoided doing for 40 years - spending money on people who don't vote for them. Do you really think that's going to happen?
There will be no way under the sun to reunite this country. Even if us remainers are all 100% wrong and Brexit is the boost we've all needed; there will be a large percentage who will hate each other because of what they've done. As we're not likely to be 100% wrong then the hate between leave and remain will fester and eventually boil over; oh and we won't have enough police to deal with it.
The bottom line is people who hate the EU are ignorant of what they've done for this country. The laws they hate, no one can actually name. The EU's laws are protectionist at worst; to protect the people and the environment from unscrupulous idiots who did all of the things in the meme at the top of the page. The problem is, these people haven't just allowed the unscrupulous to sway their opinions, they did it without really trying. They still have no understanding of the things the EU has actually done for everyone in Europe. Yes, there are victims, but aren't there victims when you get a Tory or a Labour government? You see hairy arsed twats complaining about the treatment of Africans as an excuse why they don't want to be in the EU, but ask them how they feel about the government's treatment of the disabled or disenfranchised and you'll probably get 'Fuck them' as a throwaway excuse.
This is a situation that cannot be won because we've reduced a huge swathe of the population to bigots quoting nasty lies and believing them; people who really don't care about their neighbours, so care even less about people 'over there'. You can't divide the country into two - leave and remain - although I'm surprised our government, rooted in imperialism, haven't considered it; I mean, we did it for Israel and India and that worked out really well, didn't it? We backed white South African supremacists over indigenous peoples, so why not stick all remainers down south and all leavers up north; put a wall round Scotland because they're a problem to post-Brexit democracy.
At the weekend, I decided it was more pointless trying to show a Leaver the error of their ways than it was hoping Tottenham will win a trophy. When people would rather see their children worse off than see the country stay reasonably okay, you know you have no chance of winning an argument that they won't let you have. We need to Leave to show everyone what happens; if it works - fine, but if it doesn't you might start getting some people realising that maybe they fucked everyone over, including themselves. However horrible that idea might sound, it could be the only way to heal the rifts and get us going again.
