New Referendum Would Flip Brexit Result 10 Years On, Poll Finds (opens in new tab)

These questions aren't comparable. Japan had a crash modernization followed by a brief outburst of violent colonialism, which they thought was the style at the time but was actually in decline almost everywhere else.

Britain had an empire that lasted hundreds of years, and whose greatest legacy is linguistic and temporal system dominance. Having spent centuries proclaiming itself to be the literal center of civilization to most of the world, is it really surprising that ambitious individuals gravitate toward it? This is the common culture that Britain set out to impose on its possessions.

It's especially ironic (though not especially surprising) that immigration from former territories went way up after Britain forcibly detached itself from the EU. Perhaps the Brexiteers wil offer to secede from the world next - build a national space program and launch Britain into orbit as a second satellite that can service its markets while orbiting the planet from a distance.

Having a storied history, culture, and customs go beyond simple birthright citizenship and xenophobic behavior to enforce said culture and sense of identity. The US, for all its faults, exemplifies how unnecessary it is to rely solely on where you were born— anyone can move to the US, get citizenship, and call themselves “American.” I honestly cannot understand what “connection with the land” even means in reality. Most people aren’t farmers, and land has no inherent culture. People do, and culture is acquired by living in it and participating in it. Culture also changes overtime and is, like the earth itself, for the living.

This idea that for some reason other human beings cannot embrace, be a part of, and contribute to existing culture simply because they were born in a different country is flagrantly absurd. It’s also how people who are born somewhere, but don’t “look the part” have to fight an uphill battle to prove they are.

So yeah, Japan could be called Japan if people who live there are culturally Japanese, participate in shared culture, and contribute to it. I am also absolutely aware that isn’t possible by any reasonable means currently, but it doesn’t change the fact it should be.

Objectively, Japan needs to do something about its culture. It’s literally killing the country.

Pretty sure a Japanese person could say the same thing about the U.K.

>with new arrivals that have no commmon culture or connection to the land

actually Britain still see these arrivals. Brexit restored immigration from people with more walks of life and with a more worldwide origins. There is no fast track for any nationality, like when EU citizens didn't need a visa, so companies are blind to origin.

You only got rid of the maudzits français / stronzo francese who liked the queen way too much and feel at home everywhere. The Québécois, the Swiss, the Dutch and a part of Europe look at Britain as an example for that : it's so funny to see them struggle with the UK ETA app while they no longer have Tyrrells crisps, as they keep complaining about british food and were mean about the tapestry anyway.

But was this show worth the losses that Britain had ?

It's never too late to apply again, Britain hasn't deviated from its course of rule of law and democracy

Great Radiolab on this topic

https://radiolab.org/podcast/americanish-2306

It's also fun to watch people's heads explode over the hypocracy pointed out by this episode. Short version: If Samoa has to follow non-racial discrimination rules than Samoa as a place of Samoans will cease to exist. Without taking a side, the same is true of Israel.

Easy question with an easy answer that threatens a lot of bad people: immigrants are good.

> Is Britain British without British Bourgeoisie that have lived there for thousands of years with new arrivals that have no commmon culture or connection to the land?

Thousands of years? Are you talking about celts?

Because Romans later arrived in Britannia and founded Londinium. Is it British when it was founded by those pesky Romans?

Or are you complaining about later populations, such as Vikings or Normans? I mean, they haven't been to the British isles for thousands of years. How can Britain be British with those smelly frenchmen?

Unless what you really are trying to do is complain that Britain now has too many brown people.

Excuse me, are you holding up the British as some kind of pure, undisturbed ethnicity?

You mean the celts who were conquered by Romans who were conquered be Angles who were conquered by Normans? Who speak this bastard language we're using now, where most vocabulary is Latinate upon bones of Germanic?

> Why is it okay for one but not the other? Where does this double standard come from ?

Because in Japan AIUI they haven't been infiltrated by people pushing narratives that being eg White British is inherently racist, that to not open your borders to one and all is racism and xenophobia (you can see lots of examples of such people in the post about the Swiss referendum on the 10M population limit), which they do in order to gain for them and their communities.

The existing minority populations know they can abuse our good nature, our placidity, our leftist politicians, and even the English language in order to gain, and to position themselves as continuous victims. Some feminists do the same. The idea that the whole of the UK is full of angry white supremacist racists is the kind of propaganda I allude to (it's funny how many US folk here fall for it).

(I am British, lived here all my life, live in a county with many areas of significant minority populations, and just old enough to have observed plenty of change in England)

It's not ok in Japan either.

And its "homogeneous identity" is mostly a construction, dating back from the Meiji era.

And Heian period Japan had a completely different set of values, not less nor more valid than Meiji era Japan, just different.

So the identity of a nation is not something eternal nor absolute.

Heck, there is even proof Japan has been a mosaic of at least three sets of human populations in prehistoric times, arrived at different times on the land.

So here you are: yes Japan was, long time ago, a land of immigration.

Japan never colonised India, Japan never colonised an African nation, Japan never colonised a Caribbean nation.

Britain overnight cannot have a fresh start from its past, even the royals have ties to other nations. The England that was always English never existed and its history will always be rooted in the British empire (where the sun never set).

The result of the poll in the article seems to be a soft rebuke of the kind of viewpoint you espouse.

> Can Japan be called Japan without Japanese that have lived there for thousands of years and their homogeneous identity?

> Why is it okay for one but not the other? Where does this double standard come from ?

Disingenuous question; even people who like Japan and Japanese culture tend to dislike how xenophobic and racist it is.

Are you British or do you live in Britain?

I don't understand Japanese culture well enough to comment on it, but if it contained the ugliness of xenophobia and white supremacy as they exist in America I'd surely oppose it.

Which is pretty much aligned with what more level-headed people predicted would happen, if my memory is correct. There was a strong push for UK to leave EU, but it was more based on emotion than rational. Of course the 'right' used the narrative of prosperity to get votes, but it never really made sense economically to leave the strong economic power of the EU and try to be independent again.

The UK is not the empire it was once, they need ties with mainland Europe, their closest trading partners, to be economically viable. So this doesn't entirely come as a surprise to me.

> "The British GDP has been reduced by 6–8%, business investment has been reduced by 12%, and trade volume has been reduced by 15%, compared to what it could have been if the U.K. had remained in the EU."

The average person doesn't care about any of that.

If ~99% of those gains go to ~0.1% of people, the average person does not care.

What they do care about is, did MY expenses go up higher than MY wages. Did MY opportunities get better or worse...

In the UK example, the result is potentially even worse - but I would guess the response to COVID & global wars are likely to have a bigger impact on that than Brexit.

Ah yes, economists are famously capable of accurately projecting a decade in the future.

The first time in history people have been able to accurately predict a counter-factual.

Of course, any economic gains weren't guaranteed and were predicated on competent national government and we saw what happened there.

However, net-net, I'd rather have one shite layer of government, rather than two.

A successful rejoin referendum would probably help contain Reform.

However such a referendum is basically taboo in the British public discourse.

what does 'undermine' means here? It seems that there is a 'correct' way of thinking, and if you don't play along you're an enemy or a Russian asset or whatever. Not very democratic.

I'm afraid that it looks as if there are plenty of other contenders for those who might wish to undermine the EU, now and in the future.

Trump would be happy if the UK joins the US. With Canada. And Greenland. ;-)

A change of this magnitude probably should've been like an American constitutional amendment; a stricter requirement than 50%+1 vote.

> At the time "polls" predicted a Remain win.

This is a common trope but is simply not true. The polls were really tight[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United...

Reform don’t need 50%, though. I don’t think even Margaret Thatcher’s landslide got more than 40% of the vote.

I'm sure that's part of why, but the bigger reason is probably a more reflexive "well we switched more left and it didn't help, what if we go the other way." After a dramatic Labour win, they're just Conservative-lite. That kind of "well this didn't work, lets go the other way" response doesn't necessarily mean anything about any party's actual popularity.

Those two outcomes are not mutually exclusive. A first-past-the-post system can give the power to a minority, if the opposing votes are divided. In the 2024 elections, Labour got a third of the votes but almost two thirds of the seats.

If they do, Reform would almost certainly form government on a minority of the vote. Brexit was a yes/no question.

It's been quite meh economically - we'd be wealthier if we'd remained. Also immigration went up which is not what a lot of Brexiters were hoping.

I think a lot of the Brexit vote was just people being fed up and voting for something different. In my experience few Brexit voters are happy with what arrived.

You don't know how bad it can get. See Ukraine.

We would have had a quorum requirement if it was a proper referendum but it wasn't, it was claimed to be purely advisory. Of course, it was never going to work like that if leave won. David Cameron is an arse.