I was too young to vote in the referendum. I’m incredibly angry about having lost freedom of movement. If the UK by some miracle rejoins the EU I will make the jump to Europe the very same day. Still looking for a way out in the meantime.
The UK just keeps kicking young people down. The boomers voting against our interests are whipping us into working to pay for their triple locked pensions.
> On December 15, 2025 Canada enacted "Bill C-3", granting citizenship to people born before Dec. 15, 2025 with ANY level of Canadian ancestry they can document. (It used to be a "first generation limit")
> ancestors domiciled in the former colony of Newfoundland are still considered as Canadian born or naturalized for the purpose of citizenship by descent.
> I'm incredibly angry about having lost freedom of movement.
I think this was indicative of much of the thinking on both sides of the debate though; focusing tightly on a single, subjective aspect for or against.
"Why the EU is important / abhorrent to me right now?" rather than something like "What is the anticipated future nature of the EU and what does that mean for the UK?"
I feel for you. I moved away to New Zealand long before brexit and then did move to Europe for awhile and freedom of movement made that easier than otherwise. However, if you're mid 20s now you don't need it to move places, you can easily get working visas for EU countries or Australia or NZ or Canada, and there are paths then to citizenship. Everywhere has it's troubles of one kind or another. I grew up in the UK and while I have plenty of good memories, I feel like it's a miserable place when you're trying to get on in the world. And the pay for IT professional is atrocious.
Brexit was six years ago, well ten if you go by the date of the referendum, it's hardly a generation. The negative affect has been felt pretty much instantly after the UK left and the benefits are mostly either a bit fluffy, scheduled for the future or down right lies.
The article also says nothing about how the same age group votes at the time, but the numbers I can find suggests that over 70% votes remain. The leave side was pretty much fueled by an age group that has felt a decline in British industry and employment, much of which would have happened regardless of the EU. Immigration and Eastern European workers was just a convenient scape goat for the right, but it was believable for those who had suffered through the UKs decline in areas such as manufacturing. The younger demographics never saw this, they primarily saw the benefits the EU provided.
While support _is_ higher amongst young people, most polling, when asked as a yes/no question, shows majority support in most or all age cohorts for rejoining.
The UK is such a trap for professionals. It's one of the worst places in the developed world for living standards of white-collar professionals, except a tiny slice of finance workers in London. Especially bad for engineers, and has been for a long time.
Regardless of the value of Brexit, people tend to be biased against things that have happened or are around them when things are bad.
Like when people are against a president if the economy isn't doing well, regardless of if the alternative candidate would've been better.
This also isn't an issue thats being campaigned on. If there was another vote to join the EU, and people got flooded with anti-eu messaging specifically targeted at the demographic, I'd bet that number would drop.
IIRC, only education outranked age in predicting how likely you were to vote leave. In short, the younger and more intelligent you were, the more likely you were to vote remain.
Yep, there's a lot of (continuing) economical damage and still a lot of new immigrants every week.
I think some time still needs to pass before Brexit politicians dare to change their stance, now confronted with the results of their choice.
In the mean time, Brexit rules are quietly being undone without losing face too much. See the EU-UK trade deals from May 2025.
I don't think they can. The UK got a lot, and I mean a lot, of special privileges when they joined the EU, even more so than the French. When they come back again with their tail between their legs, they won't get the same treatment a second time. This will make rejoining much, much harder than just clicking "Undo".
I think the idea I see here that young = modern = pro-EU and old = anti-EU by ignorance is a gross oversimplification which doesn't stand.
I personally was very pro-EU in my youth and deeply soured as I knew more and more to the point I'm staunchly against nowadays.
It started in 2005 with the referendum result being ignored. Then 2012 came with the shambolic management of the Greek crisis, something even the IMF points as ineffective. Then I was paid to put in place the Green Taxonomy and I saw how unready and dumb the whole thing was. Then there was the rejection of the Draghi report which made lose hope.
I find the mix of the euro being a deeply unfair currency union strongly advantaging Germany at the expense of the periphery, the fact that Germany keeps playing on it and amplifying the effect in direct violation of the treaty and yet always get a hall pass and their holier than though attitude despite being basically free loaders completely impossible to tolerate.
The 2019 CEP study showed it well. The union costs billions of GDP to France and Italy to give a minor advantage to the German. It's a dogmatic straight jacket managed by priests with zero actual economic understanding and serving the interests of a big mercantilist using development funds to shore up its tributaries in the east and still managing to gradually lose relevance as it can't even manage having a proper strategy despite the advantages, and a few fiscal parasites around it.
At 36, I deeply wish from my country to be free of the monster than the union has become and deeply ressent being a prisoner of a monetary union which intentionally didn't plan an exit path. And for what? Surrendering the ability to make law to the citizen of other countries who share neither my language, nor my culture, clearly don't have the same vision of the future than us and wants to force us into their ineffective model? No, thanks. No GDP gains or alleged diplomatic weight is worth this debasement.
I don't understand Brexiters because being out of the euros they had the best of both worlds but I respect their desire to be truly sovereign and free from the constant Germanic hegemonic push.
Edit:Lots of downvotes, very few counterarguments. I'm guessing facing the tensions at the heart of the project makes some of you frankly uncomfortable.
It is constantly shocking to me that no matter how many times and where in the west people vote against immigration (which is what most of these votes boil down to), they can never get it.
It's truly a crown in the gutter moment where you can be completely off-the-wall nuts (vide AfD) and, if you're just willing to campaign on anti-immigration, your ranks will instantly swell. Yet the establishment is somehow completely incapable or unwilling to capitalize/capture this.
Been reading a lot of novels set during the golden years of the British Empire. It is both amazing and terrifying how far a country can fall in less than a century… which for some lucky people is a single lifetime.
Well they don’t vote, so it doesn’t matter. And by the time they get around to voting usually the older you get the more conservative you get, so it’ll change.
32 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 56.0 ms ] threadBy the time we got around to implementing it enough old people had died off that the vote would have gone the other way already.
The UK just keeps kicking young people down. The boomers voting against our interests are whipping us into working to pay for their triple locked pensions.
Have you got an ancestor that was born in Canada? [1]
It sounds like that a child of a "red coat" born on the lands that would become Canada is sufficient... [2]
[1]: [Heads Up: Canadian Genealogy is about to get VERY popular!](https://old.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/comments/1qqkzte/heads_up...)
> On December 15, 2025 Canada enacted "Bill C-3", granting citizenship to people born before Dec. 15, 2025 with ANY level of Canadian ancestry they can document. (It used to be a "first generation limit")
[2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/comments/1qqkzte/heads_up...
> ancestors domiciled in the former colony of Newfoundland are still considered as Canadian born or naturalized for the purpose of citizenship by descent.
I think this was indicative of much of the thinking on both sides of the debate though; focusing tightly on a single, subjective aspect for or against.
"Why the EU is important / abhorrent to me right now?" rather than something like "What is the anticipated future nature of the EU and what does that mean for the UK?"
Also young people always blame last gen for whatever, so expects -8 ~ 0 years old would vote for exit again…
The article also says nothing about how the same age group votes at the time, but the numbers I can find suggests that over 70% votes remain. The leave side was pretty much fueled by an age group that has felt a decline in British industry and employment, much of which would have happened regardless of the EU. Immigration and Eastern European workers was just a convenient scape goat for the right, but it was believable for those who had suffered through the UKs decline in areas such as manufacturing. The younger demographics never saw this, they primarily saw the benefits the EU provided.
For instance: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/brits-would-overw...
Like when people are against a president if the economy isn't doing well, regardless of if the alternative candidate would've been better.
This also isn't an issue thats being campaigned on. If there was another vote to join the EU, and people got flooded with anti-eu messaging specifically targeted at the demographic, I'd bet that number would drop.
Looks like today's youth continues that trend.
Unfortunately the UK has a voting cohort that is both large and willing to screw over subsequent generations.
I personally was very pro-EU in my youth and deeply soured as I knew more and more to the point I'm staunchly against nowadays.
It started in 2005 with the referendum result being ignored. Then 2012 came with the shambolic management of the Greek crisis, something even the IMF points as ineffective. Then I was paid to put in place the Green Taxonomy and I saw how unready and dumb the whole thing was. Then there was the rejection of the Draghi report which made lose hope.
I find the mix of the euro being a deeply unfair currency union strongly advantaging Germany at the expense of the periphery, the fact that Germany keeps playing on it and amplifying the effect in direct violation of the treaty and yet always get a hall pass and their holier than though attitude despite being basically free loaders completely impossible to tolerate.
The 2019 CEP study showed it well. The union costs billions of GDP to France and Italy to give a minor advantage to the German. It's a dogmatic straight jacket managed by priests with zero actual economic understanding and serving the interests of a big mercantilist using development funds to shore up its tributaries in the east and still managing to gradually lose relevance as it can't even manage having a proper strategy despite the advantages, and a few fiscal parasites around it.
At 36, I deeply wish from my country to be free of the monster than the union has become and deeply ressent being a prisoner of a monetary union which intentionally didn't plan an exit path. And for what? Surrendering the ability to make law to the citizen of other countries who share neither my language, nor my culture, clearly don't have the same vision of the future than us and wants to force us into their ineffective model? No, thanks. No GDP gains or alleged diplomatic weight is worth this debasement.
I don't understand Brexiters because being out of the euros they had the best of both worlds but I respect their desire to be truly sovereign and free from the constant Germanic hegemonic push.
Edit:Lots of downvotes, very few counterarguments. I'm guessing facing the tensions at the heart of the project makes some of you frankly uncomfortable.
It's truly a crown in the gutter moment where you can be completely off-the-wall nuts (vide AfD) and, if you're just willing to campaign on anti-immigration, your ranks will instantly swell. Yet the establishment is somehow completely incapable or unwilling to capitalize/capture this.