[rich_sasha]

I felt in most pro-Brexit messages, there was an undercurrent of "...because we are better" or "and then they won't steal your jobs". EU parliament? Full of foreigners. Immigration? All foreigners. What's wrong with the steel industry? Foreigners working cheaply in other countries, or undercutting honest British workers here in Britain.

That's not to say there aren't adverse effects of internationalisation, or to belittle people who suffer from them. But this whole "taking back control" agenda was steeped with British exceptionalism and exclusivity.

Immigration was literally the sticking point of what triggered the whole shitshow. When David Cameron did his EU roadtrip to negotiate a better deal for the UK ("give us what we want or we'll leave"), there were 2 sticking point requests: lower the EU fee, and curb EU immigration. EU said no, Cameron called the talks over, and organised the sorry referendum.

[raxxorrax]

There was the argument of sovereignty for example which was aggressively shot down as xenophobia, although it is pretty much true. Nobody within the EU ever denied that it to be a reality, it was openly talked about.

The argument was that there is a larger scope that is also relevant for international policy, but that wasn't even mentioned anymore.

So people were directly and obviously lied to and their argument was misconstrued and people just didn't buy it. If the lie wouldn't have been created, maybe the EU would be larger today.

Perhaps it wasn't a smart move to leave. But the advertising for remaining in the EU was extremely incompetent. To reduce it to xenophobia is still reductive like that.

[biscotte_]

One of the big thing that triggered the EU debate os the inability to expel Abu Al I dont know what, famous pro-Al Qaida preacher that could not be expelled because of EU laws, and bragged about being housed by the UK taxpayer while preaching Jihad quietly.