A Very British Civil War

The why and wherefore of Brexit

In this article I aim to explain the inexplicable; the reasons why Brexit happened and the awful aftermath. Naturally, this is merely my perspective of what happened (and my opinions of the people involved) but as someone who lived through the whole rigmarole of Britain being in the EU, leaving the EU and surviving post-brexit, I feel I have a pretty good handle on it.

In the Beginning

First we have to go back to when the UK initially joined the EU. This wasn’t a unanimous decision but it was pretty definite (about 70% for) and yes it did involve a referendum and lots of arguing. In the end we went in and the rest, as they say, is history. The British have always been suspicious of Europe (or bloody foreigners as many like to call them) and it didn’t take long to find something to complain about. Despite all of the advantages of the EU the British people have always thought they were being short-changed by the bureaucrats; whether it was assigning farm subsidies or regulating sausage production (a fictional but hilarious episode from Yes Minister). There was uproar when muddled thinking on the agriculture policy of the EU led to ‘wine lakes’ and ‘butter mountains’ of over production. Eventually most of the lunacy was ironed out and we even managed to re-negotiate the membership fees more to our liking.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Things settled down and the UK began to feel the benefits of belonging to Europe. Cheaper imports of exotic foods and cheap wine for example. Having freedom of movement around the EU led to many taking vacations abroad, to the extent that nowadays people in the UK balk at the idea of staying home for their holidays. This was most sharply illustrated during the pandemic where certain sections of the population were going insane at the thought of not being able to live it up on some Spanish resort. A lot of Brits even moved out to places like Spain, Portugal and France on the back of it. Additionally the increasing flow of tourism into our islands and the increased export of British goods (especially food such as beef, which really got up the nose of the French), meant bigger profits for the wealthy and successful.