Why Remainers Angry about Brexit

It often seems to be the Leave voters who are most upset about Brexit despite being on the winning side but many Remainers are angry about Brexit too for different reasons. The more revelations that have come out over the last 2 years the more the frustration with the result has become focused as anger at the way the leave campaign was run and lied to win the referendum.

As someone who voted to remain in the EU because of the bigger picture and understanding that our economy and all parts of life are very closely interwoved with the EU in a multitude of ways it gets very frustrating to hear it suggested that we can easily leave overnight on 29th March 2019 without a deal. It's equally frustrating that interviewers don't follow up with additional questions to any Brexiteer that suggests this as a desirable outcome as the impact of literally no deal with be disastrous for our country. The recent problems with the supply of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) highlight how unrelated processes can all be linked and interruptions can cause unexpected consequences. I'd anticipate that pubs would experience difficulty with beer and soft drinks without carbon dioxide but never have expected that shortage of CO2 would affect poultry supplies.

Leaving with literally no agreement will cause disruption across the country. We will obviously lose customs agreements affecting imports but we will also have no authorised aircraft engineers, delivery of radioactive isotopes for cancer treatment will be stopped, mobile networks for roaming will be impacted, flights to EU may be unable to fly as we will have lost the Open Skies agreements as an EU member. Easyjet have already setup abroad to ensure that they can operate in the EU after Brexit.

The frustration is all the more pointed because it was all so predictable. The Vote Leave campaign dismissed all the voices of experts as scaremongering and labelled it "Project Fear" but the predictions are coming true as time progresses. Read the Government booklet sent to every household and it's eerily accurate how much is now proving to be correct.

There were so many different visions of Brexit such as Leave MEP Daniel Hannan stating "no-one is threatening our place in single market" and lots of people voted Leave for many reasons including dislike of David Cameron that "the will of people" as a single viewpoint is nonsense. There are such a huge range of  "wills of the people" that it's impossible to claim it is one single thought.

No deal was never mentioned as an option indeed it was claimed to be the easiest deal in history so now that "No deal" is being touted as a possible option it's even more frustrating for those who wanted to remain and realise the impact.

Anger also stems from the fact that Brexit will take away our rights. We will lose the right to live and travel anywhere within the EU. We will lose the right to healthcare when we're travelling within the EU and we will lose the rights available to EU citizens to be protected any any EU country when we are abroad.

EU Budget Payments & EU Agencies

The discussion about the amount of money paid to the EU is also a source of frustration and misleading information. The numbers claimed on the side of the Boris Bus were misleading enough but the suggestions that we get nothing back for our membership fee rarely seems to be countered. In reality there are many agencies that we are part of within the EU that we part fund via our membership and will want to be associated with in future. In order to do so we will need to pay money towards their running costs which is likely to be a big chunk of the money we would have paid to the EU instead. The net outcome is that we could end up paying the same as being a member of the EU but without any of the benefits because we're paying separately and get less access as a "third country" non member.

The types of agencies that we are likely to want to rejoin are Europol that our police are key members of helping us fight crime, Euratom that deals with atomic safety, EMA, European Medicines Agency that licences new drugs for use in the EU and ESA dealing with aircraft safety. There will also be others out of the 40+ EU agencies that we are members of and require access to after Brexit. In addition we have already lost the jobs and advantages of EU agencies that were based in the UK. These employed UK staff directly as well as those who catered for visitors to the agencies such as hotels and restaurants. A few tens of thousands of jobs perhaps and not visible in the economy but it also highlights our ongoing loss of influence.

Even if we decide we don't want to be part of these EU agencies we will need to setup our own UK versions of them, all of which will cost us money and we'll lose the economies of scale that come from running an agency for 28 countries rather than just one. I'd fully expect that these costs will be significant and with everything else will wipe out any saving that is claimed on the EU membership cost.

The cost of Brexit so far has begun to rack up. Instead of cutting what we're spending, we are paying out for thousands of new UK civil servants to plan and manage the Brexit process with many more still being recruited. Current costs appear to be around the £3 billion per year mark with increases to come. Just one area that is already 30% of the cost we had as an EU member and with none of the benefits.