What's the political climate like in the UK right now?

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I haven't really been keeping up much lately with UK politics. Just wondering what's going on across the seas and how the overall political climate is. Also want to know what's going on with Brexit, as I'm hearing multiple things about it, of either getting silently killed or just slowly happening.

It's happening, but it's being kept out of the news. The United Kingdom will be neither America nor Europe; it will be an independent country once again. This excites me.

Brexit, along with the spin off stories, absolutely dominates the news here and has done for 2 years. Right now Parliament is in recess so there is a short reprieve though.

with the weak as piss politicians, the in party squabbling, the disappearance of a 3rd party option and the never ending accusations and people shooting themselves in the foot over anti-semitism and Islamophobia, I would say UK politics has seen better days!

It's gone on for far longer than that. 2016 was when we left - it was in the news for many, many years before that.

Didn't dominate though. Since the vote it feels like every news story has a Brexit angle somewhere.

Haha, love your wording! I guess that makes our countries two that have seen better days... probably most western countries at this point.

Just Brexit, pretty much. May is probably the most redundant PM ever, and we're looking at a no deal Brexit but I don't even know what that means.

Oh, and Farage is still campaigning. Basically just a joke. This is what happens when you let the public make decisions on global matters.

I don't know what Farage's direction is. He came to the US to help quite a few individuals on different campaign and make various media appearances. Didn't know he was still trying to keep up a political career.

Brexit on WTO lines.



UKIP is still going but I'm not a part of it any more.



Socialists and their love of actually letting the people have a voice.

Personally right now I don't feel we are looking at no deal. There will surely be twists and turns to come and we may end up there still, but right now I feel that Reece-Mogg will actually be the downfall of no deal and it is his doings that will lead us into a soft Brexit (BRINO to some).

If I could briefly look at things from his perspective, I think he's succeeded in framing the argument as being between hard Brexit (Chequers) and ultrahard Brexit (no deal). Really it should be between soft Brexit (EEA) and no Brexit at all, particularly now we're at the stage where even the hard Brexiteers are admitting it will be bad for the country!

What is the main economic benefit to remaining in the EU for the UK? What would be the pros and cons of Brexit?

We are yet to see the EU's response to the chequers proposal. Your Farage types are already screaming 'BRINO' at it and I suspect it will get watered down further (do we really think the EU will offer free movement of goods without us taking on the four freedoms?)

I'm glad you're asking the easy questions!

The main economic benefit to remaining in the EU is that the EU (and the wider EEA) is basically a giant common rulebook. A business working anywhere in the EU knows that most of the rules are going to be the same, particularly when it comes to standards for goods and services. This makes it much easier to follow the rules, and do business all over the continent. It also means that governments know that they're each using the same set of standards, so they don't need to impose their own checks or other trade barriers at the border. Finally, leaving the EU's customs union will make us subject to the EU's Common External Tariff, which is a tax on exports - this would drive up prices and hold down wages.

The benefits to being in the EU include:

- The economic benefits of Single Market and Customs Union membership (as outlined above).
- Citizens have the right to live and work everywhere in the union, without the need for visas. This right is now being taken away from over 60 million people because a small fraction voted to!
- We have a veto over the direction of the largest economy in the world.
- Northern Ireland: Britain and Ireland have a long and difficult relationship. The result of Britain's meddling is that the island is divided sharply along political and sectarian lines. Northern Ireland is majority Protestant and supports being part of the UK, but has a substantial Catholic minority (I think the country is something like 42% Catholic, 5% non-religious, and less than 1% non-Christian religion) which generally supports being part of Ireland. In the late 90s, a peace treaty was signed which recognised that both views were legitimate, and amongst other things came to a compromise whereby Northern Ireland would be part of Britain, but Northern Irish people would be both British and Irish and the border would be very relaxed. Leaving the EU means imposing a hard border in Ireland, which at best will be very disruptive to people who move across it casually as part of their daily lives, and at worst risks the resumption of the civil war. Various compromise deals have been rejected for moving NI too far from GB. It doesn't seem possible to resolve this issue.
- We could remain part of collaborative projects on issues such as intelligence, space, transport of nuclear isotopes, and energy production. Some of these could be sorted out (we'll probably get early agreements to continue using energy interconnectors and sharing intelligence) but it looks like we've lost the money we invested in a European GPS system.
- The EU is deep in the process of entering into free trade agreements with most countries in the world. Leaving will mean we do not have access to these agreements.

Advantages of leaving:

- The referendum is seen as highly democratically legitimate, and ignoring it would cause disillusionment or even civil unrest.
- Being part of a union sometimes means compromising and implementing laws that you wouldn't implement on your own. This really upsets some people.
- In theory, leaving the EU means we can strike our own trade deals. This doesn't mean very much when the EU is basically the biggest trade deal in history and is forming many more deals of its own.

How many people know the intricacies and complexities of the EU in their full? Fewer than 10%? Fewer than that? I can assure you it's no more than 20% of the people who voted, and that's being generous. Only those with political or maybe economic knowledge will truly understand what it means. So why did Cameron even offer this referendum in the first place? It was bound to be disastrous from the start.

Yet, even when extended to them, they still voted against the economic experts of the U.K. I'm for giving the public a voice, but I'm not hiring an electrical engineer to do my plumbing or a politician to maintain a nuclear reactor, and that's exactly what the Brexit referendum was.

People know a bad thing when they see it. Your argument is an anti-democratic one. People saw an overarching mess of a thing and they want rid of that.