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Comment by racktash | Hacker News Reader

I voted Remain in the referendum and my stance on the matter hasn't changed. To me, it always made sense to be part of the EU. I say this up front in case what I say next is read in the wrong light.

I get wary when so many people, or so it seems to me, delight in the economic situation Britain is in, pointing out how duped the sad saps that voted Brexit must now be feeling.

But from the Brexit voters I've talked to, the whole point was always political independence. When Ireland fought to be independent of the UK, to take but one example, pointing out the economic negative effects is to miss the point of seeking independence completely. I know the situation between the UK and EU is different to that of the UK and Ireland of old. My point is that the UK has strong, old political traditions that some felt, rightly or wrongly, were being interfered with by foreign political institutions.

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I do remember the narrative around the economic outcome from it shifting considerably. Anecdotally, I remember seeing in real time the shift among family/acquaintances of the economic impact being a fake project fear mirage to a price worth paying over the course of a couple of years. I imagine if 'independence' also evaporates, it will be similarly discarded.

From the outside looking in, I didn't hear much about political independence and interference before Brexit. It was all economic control of your own destiny; that sort of talk.

I'm afraid that what you're saying is just grasping at straws for the people who were either lied to, or aware of what would happen but still malicious enough to follow through. It's fitting a narrative to a problem afterwards, I think.

Again, I'm in the US, and followed Brexit closely (because I was terrified of the impact on the comedy panel shows. . . just kidding), but don't live there anymore.

The public political slogans on both sides were dominated by economic arguments.

In the case of the Remain side, this was a concrete, measurable benefit that could be pointed to – a very powerful argument in favour of staying. On the Leave side, I believe the economic arguments/claims made were mostly in reaction to the Remain claims: trying to weaken the Remain side's economic claims with their own rebuttals as it were.

I make NO claims, either way, as to who is "right" about the economic argument – I have my own opinion, already stated, but I am just not clever enough or well read enough to KNOW the answer to such a complex question.

My point in this whole thing is that I don't think the majority of everyday people who voted Leave were motivated by the economic claims. A few, no doubt, were convinced by the "extra money for XXX" claims, but I think the far stronger concern was political sovereignty and independence.

I voted Remain thinking it made economic sense. But I was also pro-Remain because I liked the idea of a closely integrated (politically) Europe. A Europe with a standard set of human rights, a common citizenship and so on. Not everybody shared this vision (clearly), and not because they are simpletons who expected a new golden age on the event of leaving.

Were those really foreign political institutions when Britain was directly involved in their creation and Thatcher's governments basically wrote much of the rules of the free trade area?

> Were those really foreign political institutions when Britain was directly involved in their creation and Thatcher's governments basically wrote much of the rules of the free trade area?

Are you talking about the EU? Because its governing institutions would rightly be seen as foreign (or at least not domestic/ours), until Britons' felt national identity becomes European rather than British. That matters more than the legalistic actions taken by some politician or any particular policy.

That’s the question. Why did so many of the British never feel the EU is “theirs” even though objectively they were one of the most powerful countries in the Union and were instrumental in designing the rules?

It might have made some kind of difference if enough politicians after 1990 would have bothered to explain that to the British public.

> Why did so many of the British never feel the EU is “theirs” even though objectively they were one of the most powerful countries in the Union and were instrumental in designing the rules?

> It might have made some kind of difference if enough politicians after 1990 would have bothered to explain that to the British public.

If I'm understanding it correctly, the UK had ~10% of the EU Parliament seats. Even if that was objectively more than anyone else had, it's still quite a minority.

I'm not British, but the all the kinds of things you focus don't seem like they'd be at all significant for one's felt identity, especially when it competes with a long-established felt identity. Felt identity is formed by other things than "we have a large but clearly minority voting bloc" or "some economic policy was strongly influenced by a domestic politician 40 years ago."

To be fair, there is a lot of interference by foreign organisations - just look at how much money the Tories get from Russian donations.

And then you don't let Scotland go when they try to remain.

>When Ireland fought to be independent of the UK, to take but one example

This woefully misunderstands Irish Independence (UK oppressed Ireland but the EU never oppressed the UK) but if you wish to use that analogy:

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-brexiteers...

"But if the Brexiteers are, to that extent, right about the Anglo-Irish Treaty, they are hopelessly wrong about it in so many other ways. They miss three big things: the balance of power, the danger of partition and the folly of ignoring the complexity of the Border. "

"Secondly, the achievement of the version of Irish freedom made possible by the Treaty came at a fearful price: acceptance of the partition of Ireland. The Brexiteers do not fancy that part of the analogy."

You'll just have to sit back now and watch the inevitable breakup of your country.

The other problem is the "We were lied to" Narrative -- as if every political campaign ever didn't involve lying and outright spin. The British wanted to believe those lies and that's the crux of the difference because deep down because of the British Empire -- Brits today feel 'exceptional' and deserve more than other Europeans hence the 'give us a special deal' trope.

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