I think that Brexit may not have caused our problems but it's probably hampering our ability to recover from them. The silver lining I'm hoping for is that it the EU was both the wallpaper we were using to cover up the cracks, and a scapegoat. So maybe now, along with the various crises, we will get a bit of a wake-up.
I also think that if Labour get in, the HoL is abolished and electoral reform of some kind is put through, it will actually change people's attitudes. One of our problems is that people think the system is to be protected, that it has to be this way because it's always been this way and it has some value because it's old. I have read some historian (forget who) saying that the reason so much of Europe doesn't mind being in the EU as it changed and didn't mind so much moving to the Euro is that they don't have such entrenched history. So many of them have always had big changes since ooh, the fall of Austro-Hungary probably, that change is far less of a big deal. This allows people to accept change for the better.
This was an interesting thing for me to read personally, even part of me feels something of an attachment to our institutions but we mustn't - just because something is old does not mean it works. Quite the opposite in some cases.
We would need to fully commit not some half-arsed repeat of what went before
Presumably that would involve joining the Euro? I'm not going to repeat all the stuff about having control of our own currency and the unique power that gives us, but joining the euro would be the single most disastrous thing we could do. I think the limit of future involvement with the EU should be membership of the single market (and bringing back FoM obviously), and customs union. I'd go one further and join Schengen, but realistically that's never going to happen.
I think that Brexit may not have caused our problems but it’s probably hampering our ability to recover from them
Its a force multiplier in most cases although in some it has created new problems.
Plus several years have been wasted on it rather than actually addressing the issues and even more years before that blaming the EU for everything.
It's a whole lot easier to throw mud that sticks at Brexit than it is to encapsulate the last 40 years.
I mean, neoliberalism is pretty hard to make an enemy of when your whole system depends on it.
