It was a decisive victory for Leave, and it was made very clear to everyone voting that it was a once-in-a-generation referendum, the outcome of which would be respected.
MPs would then have been voted out for overruling the will of the people.
There was a referendum. Remain lost. Last year we had another General Election, with the Conservatives campaigning on a platform to get Brexit done, and they won decisively.
What I’ve actually been doing is resisting attempts to conflate two separate claims:
1) The claim that the EU has never forced the UK to do anything. Sheer nonsense. This is the claim I disputed all those levels above;
2) The claim that laws the EU has historically forced upon on the UK have been harmful.
There are plenty of examples of the latter (take the Tampon Tax as one [0]), but that’s not the claim I was making.
I haven’t advanced the latter claim because it is irrelevant.
Providing evidence of historic harm is not a prerequisite for principled opposition to the EU having the power to impose laws and overrule national courts.
EU nationals come to the UK, and they participate in both the labour and housing markets.
A small number act to stimulate supply in those markets (e.g. entrepreneurs setting up businesses, or construction workers building the pitiful number of new homes that get built each year), but the vast majority simply add to the demand-side, driving down wages and increasing rents and property prices.
This applies to both skilled and unskilled migrants. The former often come with savings and significant professional experience. Great for businesses, rubbish for our young people.
If young people in the UK genuinely didn’t want to do “menial” jobs, employers would either increase the pay until they filled the roles, or invest in the more highly skilled labour necessary to render those roles redundant.
I should point out I’m talking about both skilled and unskilled labour here.
British university graduates don’t stand a chance when they’re undercut by French, Spanish or Italian professionals with a decade of professional experience willing to work for peanuts.
It’s good to know EU nationals don’t need housing, so the millions residing in the UK aren’t adding any pressure whatsoever to our existing housing crisis.
Of course, how could I forget the brownfield sites.
I’ll let all the young people know there isn’t a housing crisis after all, and seeing as the millions of EU nationals residing in the UK don’t need housing, young people needn’t worry.
By definition, the laws the EU have forced on the UK were opposed by the UK government, and would not have made their way into UK law had they not been forced by the EU.
You’re using PPP-adjusted figures which distort the picture. The latest wave of migration to the UK has been from Romania, not Poland.
I’m not talking about refugees, I’m talking about economic migrants, both skilled and unskilled.
In any event, please could you explain to me how adding approx. 3.5m EU nationals to the UK benefits young people?
Consider the challenges faced by young people in the UK today, including widespread unemployment and underemployment, and a chronic housing shortage where the supply of housing is virtually fixed.
For the benefit of non-UK readers, the source in question (The Guardian) is a left-wing newspaper that is highly critical of the current UK government, and has been opposed to Brexit throughout the process.
> I live in the UK. Brexit will only make my life worse. I don't see any upside to it.
Brexit has clearly had a significant detrimental effect on your life, given it happened eleven months ago and you’re still writing about it in the future tense.