Admittedly, I don’t know much about Brexit, but from what I have been exposed to, it seems like a decisively economical and political impairment that made travel and business with the rest of Europe more difficult and costly. Since it is so highly criticized as a terrible move, why doesn’t the UK just rejoin the EU?
If I’m not mistaken, the pro-Brexit party (they call them Torys) has been in charge. If they want to move in a different direction, they need to vote different people in, which has not been happening very quickly.
Politics is complicated, basically.
It’s really weird, as the whole EU deal was Margaret Thatcher’s legacy, and her own party threw it away!!!
I think they wanted to play on the EU outrage, but they didn’t actually want to leave.
I’m no fan of Thatcher but she did some good things during her tenure - negotiating the UK’s place in the EU and setting up Channel 4 spring to mind - and I honestly think she would be utterly devastated if she saw what her party had become today.
The EU deal was nothing to do with Thatcher. She never wanted the UK to join the EU and vehemently opposed the Maastricht Treaty.
She supported economic union, not political.
Worth noting that the true pro-Brexit party was UKIP, but the conservatives wanted their voters so adopted a pro brexit stance.
I don’t think most Tory’s really wanted it to happen (bad for business), David Cameron thought he could get an easy win by holding a referendum and nipping the Brexit talk in the bud, but bit off more than he could chew.
Brexit remained popular with voters for a while, and conservatives have leaned into it being the right decision and demonising immigrants since because they’re fucking up everything else.