On this day, the 31st of January 2020. The United Kingdom leaves the European Union, becoming the first and, to this day, only country to do so.

34 comments

  2. Still 2nd biggest economy in Europe, probably not the best choice to leave the EU but not tragic as some have predictated.

  4. still upsets me 🙁

    i wish them all the best though, at the end of the day the UK is still one of the EU’s closest allies.

    i realise the irony of this coming from a norwegian

  7. TBH Brexit would’ve been very straightforward if Northern Ireland wasn’t a thing. I mean, Britain is an island, so it’s natural that they weren’t as integrated in the EU as France or whatever. Also, all tensions were about the Irish border.

    Time will tell how things develop. I do hope that everybody starts loving each other and we’ll create EU2 that everyone is satisfied with, but at the same time I’m aware that this is not the usual course that history takes.

  8. What a shame. The reasons why should be explored more closely – how aggressive anti-migration and anti-cohesion rhetoric can be used to inflame a populace that outright *should* benefit from labour both educated and uneducated, and how local/national policies refuse to address issues and wealth redistribution from this incoming labour. Brits should have prospered from the EU, but they didn’t, and it wasn’t the EU’s fault.

  13. I have mixed feelings on this (though more on the negative side). On one hand i am very sad that the UK chose to leave – and even more so for the effects that the Brexit has caused and is still causing both in the UK as well as in the EU.

    However on the other hand on the more technical side I am kind of happy that the UK proved that it could leave and that it did leave – exactly as the rules stated without the UK facing any EU interference – showing that the EU is not preventing countries from leaving.

  18. The acrimony generated from the whole process still seems to be felt to this day. Independent of the debate about the UK leaving the EU, the way it was done was unecessarily hostile.

    Still, now that it’s done both the UK and the rest of the EU bloc can forge their own respective paths.

  19. Well according to wikipedia, they really are doing better, so congrats to the UK, I guess.

    P.S I’m not saying that all countries would do better and should leave the EU, most simply couldn’t or couldn’t afford it. I’m just saying that UK is obviously doing better without the EU.

  22. Personally people in this subreddit are heavily biased for EU. They don’t see the cons of being in EU and i’m not sure if being in EU long term is good for a traditionalist.

    LGBT funding pushing new “family” definition and greedy politicians accepting said money in my country is appalling. EU is moving towards “supercountry” status and pushing and punishing anyone that dares to leave with insane trading policies. It feels like they will soon have too much power and the individual weaker baltic countries will have not much say. Just look at what happens when Poland is against abortion. EU is outraged.

    EU is realistically just few strong and economically rich countries like Germany. Weaker/more poor countries in the Baltics are heavily reliant on the funding that’s coming from the EU which can be a good thing (road optimization, health care, public school funding etc) but can also be a bad thing of being overly reliant and increasing countries debt by the billions.

    Certain amount of national debt is good but there has to be a line. And that the money comes with strings attached and various laws. I feel like Greece leaving EU and reverting back to their currency and purging their debts could have came out stronger than staying in EU. Though Greece main problem was corrupt government which lied about their debt value and 0 manufacturing and all tourism country.

  23. >We persist in regarding ourselves as a Great Power, capable of everything and only temporarily handicapped by economic difficulties. We are not a great power and never will be again. We are a great nation, but if we continue to behave like a Great Power we shall soon cease to be a great nation. Let us take warning from the fate of the Great Powers of the past and not burst ourselves with pride.

    Sir Henry Tizard – 1949

  28. Regardless of EU membership status, UK remains one of most reliable allies for Estonia when it comes to foreign and defence policy issues. Thank you guys!

  31. Moving forward, one hopes that at the very least some more benefits from being outside of the single market are obtained for the British. Long port of entry queues, empty shelves and more bureaucracy don’t seem to be doing them many favors…

  32. I support the EU project in general, but one has to admit that how it came about disregarded public opinion and democracy at critical junctures.

    Over enough time, I could see how the British public, a nation with a proud, albeit imperfect history of democratic rule could be resentful of how the whole project came about. Granted, someone had to propose a European vision, someone had to develop it, but when a democratically assented to “common market” becomes a different entity that provides for things like “complimentary European citizenship”, the entire matter should have demanded the **direct** democratic consent of ordinary citizens.

    I understand the haste that Western governments had to capitalize on the fall of the Soviet Union at the time, but one wonders who was the person who stopped and thought, “maybe we should put this all up to a vote?” and were then completely *drowned out* by the supporters of the art of “treaty-craft” instead.

    I maintain that had Maastricht and the EEA Agreement been put up to a pan-European referendum, perhaps Britain would still be in the EU. Or not. Either way, it would have probably spared us the absolutely shitshow that was 2016 and onward British-EU politics.

  34. What bothers me most about Brexit was how the narrative changed from “Vote Brexit, we’ll make sure to keep access to the European market” to “Brexit means Brexit, Fuck the EU and the Remoaners” after a slight majority voted for Brexit.

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