We’re Leaving The EU.
In case you missed it, by living under a rock or another country outside of the EU – Britain voted to leave the EU. When I say we voted to leave the EU, I mean there was a 72% turnout, and the margin was 3.8% in favour of Leave. Which doesn’t seem like enough to base a major decision of the future of the country on. Though if Remain had won I probably wouldn’t be saying that.
Having said that, there is a petition calling for a second referendum that’s already been signed by over two and a half million people (at time of writing). I’m one of them, because why the hell not.
I’ve gone from genuinely terrified to mildly anxious as long as I don’t think about it too much. We tried to explain it all to my thirteen-year-old nephew this afternoon – a conversation that started with an apology. Because I’m sorry Taylor, but it’s your generation that will have to live with this. The generation before us, who mostly voted leave according to a You Gov poll, won’t be around as long to deal with the mess we made.
Wales overall voted to leave, though again by a small margin. My country voted to remain.
My wife caught a snippet of conversation between a couple of elderly gentleman on the bus who were pleased because now it will go back to the good old days.
I’m trying to figure out when those good old days were…
So now what happens?
Well, like I said in my previous post, it isn’t as simple as we up and leave and carry on with our lives. Something called Article 50 needs to be invoked and then we will have two years to negotiate our future with the EU. The longer that takes the worse our bargaining chips are so it needs to be done sooner rather than later.
So it can take two years, but it might take six months. But it won’t start until Cameron and the other parties leaders discuss it and let the EU know. Which Cameron would like to happen in October when he steps down, but the other EU members might not want to wait until then.
After that, the rest is uncertain, because we can’t say for sure what the deal will be in terms of trade and travel, with the rest of the EU. There are a few options but there’s no knowing for sure at this point.
What we do know is that the pound has been massively devalued, the entire countries credit has too. Even if we didn’t leave (the referendum is an opinion, not legally binding) the deal Cameron negotiated with the EU on certain things like benefits, migrants and bailing out other Eurozone states is now void. The EU may not even accept our remain.
The EU probably wouldn’t let us back in.
More Uncertainty.
Another certainty is that while will have some money spare, a lot of councils, businesses, laboratories and charities will lose their funding, subsidies and support that they got from the EU. The 350 million that the Leave campaign quoted was horribly inflated, and while yes, a lot of money will not go to the EU, a lot of money won’t be coming back from the EU.
Now we have to trust that the government will fund everything that the EU. Another uncertainty. In my opinion, we can barely trust the government to fund the NHS or the benefits system, let alone anything else in the country. We can trust them to fund themselves though. Pay rises, expenses, curtsey cars and nurses are travelling to underfunded hospitals on buses to a twelve hour night shift they’re probably paid just over minimum wage for. If they’re lucky.
All this uncertainty, this is what we have really voted for. We can’t say for sure if it will be better or worse, we can’t say for sure whether is will improve immigration or make it worse or not impact it at all (more likely).
If this is what we have voted for, why vote at all? So many people seem to be clamouring for more information suddenly – what is the EU? What does leaving mean? What the hell did I just vote for? If you weren’t sure of all the details – and to be honest neither campaigns had much of an impact that the media had – why vote at all? Why vote for something you don’t understand?
It boggles the mind.
This is something that has instead of bringing the country together and returning us the strong Britain we desire – we’ve simply divided the country further. Scotland are thinking about independence again and Wales are at the mercy of Westminster regardless of how we voted.
These are not the good old days.
The world has changed. The world is about to change again.
For the better, I hope.