[Brendinooo]

Which outcomes - economic?

I'm not from the UK, but my impression was that for many it wasn't about economic optimization, it was also about the notion of freedom - being less intertwined with the EU (and thus its regulations, economics, security concerns, etc.). Immigration was probably an issue as well.

If freedom was the issue, you get the freedom and work out the consequences later. Some people would rather feel like their nation has more control over their destiny, even if that destiny isn't as comfortable as it could have been under someone else's control.

I would also contend that as long as Brexit hasn't happened, there are plenty of forces that would want to keep the status quo and would therefore try to project as much negativity as possible.

Also, I'm not an economist, futurist, or a stockbroker (so one can correct me if I'm wrong), but humans aren't always great at predicting things in these areas. So it's not fair to assume that there is no positive outcome.

[pavlov]

...it was also about the notion of freedom - being less intertwined with the EU (and thus its regulations, economics, security concerns, etc.)

That is an illusory kind of freedom because you can't turn the clock back. Reducing trade with the EU would be a loss for everyone. If the UK breaks from EU norms and enacts its own regulatory frameworks, that just means more overhead for companies that want to operate there... And so on.

The English habit of blaming Europe for regulations has always puzzled me, because pre-EU Britain was in many ways a bureaucrats' paradise. The number of civil servants peaked in the mid-1970s and has been declining since.

From what I've heard, just getting a telephone line in '70s England could be a nightmare. There's a lot of things that are so much better today thanks to a pan-European competitive environment and free trade. Imagine if Britain had created its own mobile phone standard instead of going with the European GSM. That would have been more "independent", but to no benefit at all.

A lot of things post-Brexit will end up like that: it's just easiest for everyone if Britain tags along with the EU standards rather than reinvents the wheel -- only Britain won't have a say in the processes anymore.

[moomin]

This is a funny one. The economic argument was principally a Remain argument, and was for the most part ignored. I think this was for two reasons 1) there's plenty of people who just didn't buy it, there was enough smoke thrown for many believe it wasn't settled, but I think more powerfully 2) a lot of people don't really think their economic well-being is linked to the country's economic well-being. In particular, there's a belief that a worse economy will principally affect London. (Sadly, it appears the opposite is the case.)

Anecdotally, I've spoken to a number of Leavers who talk about taking back control (most of them also believe immigration is a problem). They tend to be working class and feel that the government doesn't listen to them. I really seriously doubt this vote will make a blind bit of difference on that front.

[icc97]

It's still my feeling the underlying powerful reason for people voting for Brexit was immigration.

The rest was just a smokescreen to pretend like that wasn't their only reason.

[pja]

According to Dominic Cummings (who ran Vote Leave) it was absolutely the case that immigration was the No 1 driver for the vote to leave the EU. So much so that they had to explicitly set aside 15 minutes at the beginning of every focus group to let people rant about immigration before they could get them to move on to anything else at all.

Anecdotally, this is also what my parents found on the doorstep.

[ionised]

The sad fact there being that immigration being an issue rather than a net benefit itself was a distraction perpetuated by the Murdoch press.

Fear of 'the other' is a timeless scapegoating tactic when you really want to distract people from the real causes of their problems.

In the case of the UK those problems are entrenched and systemic classism and privilege, a financial services industry rife with fraud and cowboy behaviour and our own sycophantic career politicians that compared to the EU, have done very little for the working poor and other disadvantaged demographics in society.

[pjc50]

Lead Leave campaigner Dominic Cummings has a (long) article on this in which he claims that the "£350m for the NHS" statement was the core of the campaign after extensive focus-grouping:

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/dominic-cummings-brexi...

(We really need a good word for "forward-looking statements that are really unlikely to be true"; not quite lies, but very highly misleading. If Brexit was a form of insurance it would be the mis-selling scandal of the century.)

[Balgair]

I think we can all see what is happening: the Bulkhead-ing of nations. Yes, Brexit may be freedomcentric, or boomer-centric, or racist, or whatever. But the trend is a larger one that is happening across the west and the 'developed' world in general. Nations are responding to the changing world (AI, the coming CRISPR revolution, IoT doomsdays, etc, and climate-change taking the lion's share) by closing themselves down to globalization and immigration and trying to bulkhead their people against the waves of change. I am on the fence as to if it will 'work' as a method. Maybe for some countries it will, maybe not for others or smaller groups of others. But I think we can all see it starting to happen in many countries.

[1337biz]

To be honest I never understood that responsibility argument. In my worldview, countries have to take responsibility for the externalities they produce. Meaning for example environment destruction is an issue that needs global attention.

But citizens of countries are adults and have to live with the consequences of their dealing. When a country is poor it is not the responsibility of other country to feed it but of the people to change their government.

[Balgair]

Because most people, when they look at a starving child in a warzone and was forced into child-soliderdom, respond with compassion for that other human. Not by berating their parents for not taking 'responsibility' and allowing a tyrannical warlord to slaughter said parents for being from a different tribe of some sort or another.