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Comment by matthewmorgan | Hacker News Reader

Germany didn't just open its own doors, it opened the door to the whole of the European Union. Shortly afterwards the brexit vote happened. Coincidence?

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It's a coincidence. David Cameron promised the Brexit referendum in 2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Brexit And even that was a reaction to UKIP's growing popularity.

Furthermore, the United Kingdom has never been part of the Schengen area and was not immediately impacted anyway.

Brexit happened because the racists thought EU was stealing their money. in reality its the other way around. Has the illegal immigration into Britain stopped since Brexit?

Britain is better off with brexit than if it had stayed. People voted for brexit because they wanted to determine their (british) future and not be tied to the eu. Brexit was never delivered as promised because the vote was only given because they thought that it would fail. Immigration (economic migration) again is the fault of the government bowing down to the echr rules that it actually does not need to. Europe is the sinking titanic and the UK lifeboat needs to detatch itself or be dragged down with it.

Britain is not apart from Europe, the continent. It has, and always will be, deeply connected. Leaving the EU didn't mean it got to sail away to a new place, it just meant no longer having a powerful seat at the table.

Effectively, Britains future is always tied to the EU, as the EUs is tied to Britain. If Europe has a big economic failure then it will drag the UK down regardless of politics. If Europe has a war the UK will not be unaffected. If Europe does well the UK will also do well. Removing yourselves from being part of the decision making for the area that you are part of, especially when you had a great deal of influence, was monumentally stupid.

That all said, I understand why the British people wanted to lash out at the establishment. The problem is that they've been (as have we all, in every country) been manipulated by those who do not have our best interests as a goal. The problems in the UK came from, and could have been solved by, the political and business leaders, regardless of EU membership. They just don't want to.

> Leaving the EU didn't mean it got to sail away to a new place, it just meant no longer having a powerful seat at the table.

Not necessarily: it could also mean that rather than being one voice among 28 in negotiations, they are now one voice against one (the EU as a whole). Potentially. More pessimistically, 3.6 trillion versus 19.4 (in terms of GDP). Or more pessimistically still, as you indicate, no voice versus one.

I think that the truth is somewhere between those options.

Absolutely nonsensical, in what way do the way the vote was given impact the outcome?

Economists and analysts at Cambridge Econometrics found that, by 2035, the UK is anticipated to have three million fewer jobs, 32% lower investment, 5% lower exports and 16% lower imports, than it would have had been. The report states that the UK will be £311bn worse off by 2035 due to leaving EU. The UK is not better off with Brexit at all, it is severely hindered by removing itself out of a trading agreement with it's nearest partners. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit)

Its not what the people want its what the elites want. And the Elites want cheap labour which means immigration. The Elites (the ones who favoured Brexit) wanted Brexit because they could write their own rules regarding a lot of things; all to favour their class not the working class.

Immigration was a handy tool with which to entice the working class to vote for Brexit.

Immigration never stopped. It just switched from cheap Eastern European Labour to African and Middle Eastern cheap labour.

Once again the Working Class got duped. They voted for it.

the irony is that the immigration in UK increased after brexit. source: some random tweet I've seen.

Here’s a source with the bias that immigrants prefer Britain over the EU because Britain offers more incentives. And yet, needs more migrants:

> The population growth was driven entirely by net migration because more people died than were born in Britain for the first time in 50 years

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/immigration-fuel...

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