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Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU

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Re: Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU

#121
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help me understand your thinking. I was very against Brexit (and still am). What is there to be gained, in your opinion? In my view, you traded being one of the leading voices in what is increasingly shaping up to be one of the world's superpowers for being a somewhat isolated middle power, nostalgic for its former glory. Why would that be worth it?

UK did not need the EU for trade agreements. Those can be set up separately. There were a number of examples where the UK kept losing control, and instead having the EU try to determine the direction. This led to loss in sovereignty and freedom. Sadly though it doesn't seem like the UK politicians are taking advantage of this (regulatory, laws, borders, immigrations etc) just yet, but at least now it's possible. My p…

Of course you can now set up your own trade agreements, but so can Fiji, I suppose. The point is that you have a lot less negotiating power going it alone, instead of as part of an economic superbloc that you can influence as one of its biggest members.

The time of individual European "great powers" has long gone, but somehow, large fractions of the respective populations do not realize it. Band together, or be swept aside. That nationalistic reflex is not helping.

Re: Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU

#122
post #59

It is constantly shocking to me that no matter how many times and where in the west people vote against immigration (which is what most of these votes boil down to), they can never get it. It's truly a crown in the gutter moment where you can be completely off-the-wall nuts (vide AfD) and, if you're just willing to campaign on anti-immigration, your ranks will instantly swell. Yet the establishment is somehow complet…

Most of the politics comes down to tribalism. And within this tribalism nothing works better than Us vs Them. Immigration is one of the best "us vs them" debates. It rallies lot of support.

But then often immigration isn't the problem. It is a solution preying on the fear of people that "outsiders" are harming their opportunities, housing, way of life etc. The real problem is that people are not making living wages and wages are not catching up to cost of living.

As politicians pushing anti-immigration come to power they also realize this problem. They'd rather not solve immigration because then they need to face up to the actual living wage crisis issue. It also helps keeping the immigration talking point open so that it can be used in next election.

Re: Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU

#123

Many may change position when they grow up Also young people always blame last gen for whatever, so expects -8 ~ 0 years old would vote for exit again…

Brexit was six years ago, well ten if you go by the date of the referendum, it's hardly a generation. The negative affect has been felt pretty much instantly after the UK left and the benefits are mostly either a bit fluffy, scheduled for the future or down right lies.

The article also says nothing about how the same age group votes at the time, but the numbers I can find suggests that over 70% votes remain. The leave side was pretty much fueled by an age group that has felt a decline in British industry and employment, much of which would have happened regardless of the EU. Immigration and Eastern European workers was just a convenient scape goat for the right, but it was believable for those who had suffered through the UKs decline in areas such as manufacturing. The younger demographics never saw this, they primarily saw the benefits the EU provided.

Re: Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU

#124
post #90
post #85

Been reading a lot of novels set during the golden years of the British Empire. It is both amazing and terrifying how far a country can fall in less than a century… which for some lucky people is a single lifetime.

Both the average and mean UK citizen is unambiguously better off today than whenever the golden age of the empire was.

this is a flawed logic. Because almost any country is better than decades ago. you need to compare BE to top countries now and places in ranking, to see if it's better. UK, is it better than Norway, Switzerland or Japan? No. Not even top 10 in any metric, cleearly huge fall. Only top level thing left is universities and scientific research.

Re: Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU

#125
post #74
post #17

I was too young to vote in the referendum. I’m incredibly angry about having lost freedom of movement. If the UK by some miracle rejoins the EU I will make the jump to Europe the very same day. Still looking for a way out in the meantime. The UK just keeps kicking young people down. The boomers voting against our interests are whipping us into working to pay for their triple locked pensions.

> Still looking for a way out in the meantime. Have you got an ancestor that was born in Canada? [1] It sounds like that a child of a "red coat" born on the lands that would become Canada is sufficient... [2] [1]: [Heads Up: Canadian Genealogy is about to get VERY popular!]( https://old.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/comments/1qqkzte/heads_up... ) > On December 15, 2025 Canada enacted "Bill C-3", granting citizenship to peop…

I’m not sure Canada is doing well right now. Young people are really struggling and we are dealing with housing crisis. There is also trade conflicts with the United States.

An anti immigration sentiment has also taken over half the country due to rising costs and shortages, which is trickling down to various aspects of the life here.

The harsh weather is not pleasant either. Ironically, young Canadians are looking to move elsewhere.

Re: Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How old are you now, and how much of what you believe now is the same as when you were 16-24? It shouldn't be controversial to say that young people are brimming with idealism while being low on experience. FWIW I think Brexit was dumb but I never felt strongly about any of it because it doesn't effect me in any way. I'm not saying their views on Brexit specifically are likely to change.

I'm in my 40s, and I have only gotten more and more progressive as I've "grown up". You want to know why? Because I've met more marginalized people. When I was 16, I didn't know anyone who was openly queer, and I lived in a moderately-affluent, nearly-all-white area of the US. Now, I know many people who are queer, poor, disabled, and/or people of color, and because I was raised to care about people and believe to va…

It's funny how people say that: "You'll get more conservative as you grow older". So far that hasn't happened. I basically know zero queer, poor, coloured, disabled or other types of people that might struggle to fit in to modern society, but in the past 30 years I've only become more and more accepting of the choices of others.

Only weird twist is that I have become a royalist.

Re: Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU

#127
post #65

The UK is such a trap for professionals. It's one of the worst places in the developed world for living standards of white-collar professionals, except a tiny slice of finance workers in London. Especially bad for engineers, and has been for a long time.

I was reading about UK housing and had to look up "rising damp." We don't have that here, or at least not to the level we need a word for it.

DPC is pretty routine these days, and a lot of old houses get the treatment before they're flipped (as is the custom of our times)

Re: Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU

#128
post #11

No surprise, you had to be over the age of 39 before you were more likely to vote for Brexit. By the time we got around to implementing it enough old people had died off that the vote would have gone the other way already.

The Brexit-induced impoverishment of UK will inevitably lead to a reduction in the scope of the NHS and so kill off its supporters. So Brexit is kind-of self healing.

I went to George's hospital the other day and saw a punchy flyer talking about the lack of NHS services, with the kicker "Privatise now!"

That's what we're dealing with. Underinvestment only enriches their camp.

Re: Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the establishment knows how integral to the economy immigration is and because it isn't that easy to stop even for an island. Unless you want to shut down tourism and trade.

Stopping is a long way from "actively encouraging it and calling racist everybody who disagree" (and actively hide horrific stuff like the rape gangs).

If the guy who was once second in line to the throne is in a rape gang, and that's been covered up for years, maybe it's not an immigrant thing.

Re: Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU

#130
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Poles and Romanians are "other" enough to be hated... Ironically Britain had then to "import" people from Asia, Africa to e.g. work in the hospitals. The foreigner-hate is so short-sighted. Your underpaid hospital worker, house cleaner, fruit picker, taxi driver, UberEats delivery is usually foreign, they don't mind working the exploitative conditions because for them the money is much better than home, provi…

First, they didn't have to. Crazy idea: educate more people, lower barriers to entry, hire people from poorer western countries and not Africa. Poland has hospitals staffed 100% by Polish people. What prevents UK from doing the same? Second, if immigration was only for skilled workers to plug shortages of certain skills, it would not be a problem. It's a problem because in 2025 estimated 41 thousand unskilled people,…

I'm sure the UK has way more than 41 thousand shitty jobs with shitty pay that no native really wants. I doubt they're not working because they don't want to.

In Canada the standard complaint is that "immigrants take the jobs" not that "immigrants aren't working". It seems like it's a lot easier to get a job at a Tim Hortons if you speak Hindi like the owners and managers. A job at a restaurant if you speak Levantine Arabic.

And those are just the public tip of the iceberg. Construction crews are mostly foreign. Our roofers were Indian. Our landscapers were Lebanese / Syrian. The people we interacted with spoke great English, but their workers didn't.

The big difference is that Canada had constant immigration. They came over 40 years ago and since they had trouble finding employment became entrepreneurs and restaurants and construction and other blue collar services are the most fertile areas for entrepreneurs. Now they have a huge advantage in hiring low cost labor.

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