Hey everyone and welcome to the Understandable English Podcast.
Today I'm going to talk about a topic that you've probably heard a little bit about.
That topic is Brexit.
So, what is Brexit?
What is this strange word?
So Brexit is essentially the UK leaving the European Union, the EU.
And people say Brexit for Britain Exit.
It is kind of a short form of Britain Exit brexit.
So today's podcast will be very neutral.
I will not be biased and i will not talk about my own personal opinion on this issue, but rather i would like to tell you what brexit is, How it has happened and why did the UK vote to leave the EU.
So, for a start, the UK joined the European Union in 1973, so quite a long time ago, almost at the beginning of the creation of the EU.
However, there has always been a very strong feeling of separateness or otherness, A feeling that the UK is somehow different from other European countries.
I think that perhaps one of the reasons for this is that the UK is an island separate from the mainland, the main continent of Europe.
So, the culture, the history and many different aspects of the country are separate.
In 2016, there was a referendum, a vote.
A referendum is essentially when the people vote and decide a big political decision for the country.
In this case, it was whether the UK should leave or remain, stay in the European Union.
When this vote was called, when it was decided to have this vote, no one really believed that the UK would actually vote to leave.
The Prime Minister, the government at the time in general, thought that it would be a way of calming people down that wanted to leave and it would be something that they could do to get rid of the question.
However, the results were that people voted to leave.
There was a majority to leave the EU.
52% of the UK voted to leave the EU.
However, it is worth knowing that this was primarily England and Wales.
Both Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to remain by quite a large majority.
I know too many Russians and people around the world, they think that seems pretty crazy.
Why would they want to leave the EU?
The EU seems like quite a nice place, it's peaceful, people live well there.
So why?
Why did people decide this all of a sudden?
Well, there were three main arguments, three arguments that were kind of important for many different people.
The first and most controversial is immigration.
Of course, as a part of the EU, there was freedom of travel.
So anyone from any European country could travel to live or work in the UK.
Many people saw the demographics, the population of the UK change over time as new people came into the country to work and to live.
Whether or not this is a bad thing or a negative thing is a completely different question.
Because I think there are very good arguments for immigration.
However, some of the population felt maybe scared or worried of these changes.
They felt like their country was changing, that it was becoming something different, that they didn't recognise these new things and new people coming into the country.
As British,
Perhaps there was also a small amount of racism involved, but I definitely can't say this for everything.
As there certainly are people that make the argument for a more strict immigration system.
So only allowing people to move who are going to positively benefit the country.
The second main argument or main reason that people seemed to vote for leave was the economy.
It was an economic argument.
Within the EU.
Businesses have to obey, they have to take part in European regulations, which is basically european laws.
They were also limited um in what deals they could make so, for example, with trade, the sort of trade deals that they could do with other countries.
Some people argued that if the uk left the eu, they would have full control over their economy.
They would be able to make deals with any countries that they wanted to.
They would not have to give money to the European Union and help other countries that weren't doing as well.
In a way, the UK would become more independent and more focused on itself than other european countries.
There was also a very strong feeling that things were quite unfair in the eu, that it benefited germany and france and belgium the most.
These countries seem to hold most of the power in terms of decision making.
The third main reason that voters said that they voted to leave the European Union was something called anti-establishment populism.
That sounds very complicated, but I will try to explain simply.
Essentially, what this means is people felt very disconnected from politics, from the politicians, from the European government.
And they felt a little bit angry.
They felt like these people were not making decisions for them.
That they were being ignored.
I think that this was probably a very important reason.
Not a lot of people actually understood how the European Union worked.
They didn't really understand how laws were made.
They didn't understand the system and it felt like a lot of decisions were outside of their control.
So after the vote, this is pretty much all we heard about on the TV, on the news for years.
Honestly, we are still hearing about it today.
It is non-stop because after the vote happened, it took a long time to make an agreement, to make a deal last year in 2020 and i believe it was january and the uk officially left the eu, But there was an agreed year of transition.
What this means is that things pretty much stayed the same.
Nothing changed apart from the official declaration, the official statement that the UK had officially left.
But in December, It officially and practically left everything.
And thankfully they managed to make a deal just a few days before we completely left.
And now the UK is no longer a part of the European Union.
It is a completely separate country.
Is this a good thing?
Well, only time will tell us.
Time will show us how this affects life in the UK.
Of course, it creates a lot of problems.
This can be problems with travel.
It can be problems with the economy.
Many businesses are talking about moving to the European Union.
It will also take time to make deals with other countries and to begin to stand on our own as a separate country.
Whether or not you or even I think it is a good thing, it has happened.
And unfortunately, well, yeah, unfortunately we have left and it is over.
So I think that it is very much important to make the best future that we can.
I really hope that things will improve here and that we will start to develop as a country and succeed into the future.
However, it is also worth adding that I actually still have an EU citizenship.
Being born in Northern Ireland, I was able to get citizenship for both the United Kingdom and Ireland, making me both an Irish and British citizen.
The benefits of this is that a lot of these decisions don't really affect me very much.
I can still use my Irish passport to travel and work in the European Union wherever I want to.
This is fantastic and a really good benefit.
I'd be interested to hear your opinion and thoughts on Brexit and the UK leaving the EU.
So feel free to message me and give me your opinion, what you have heard about it and how you think this will be.
Thank you very much for listening.
I hope you have a wonderful day.
And, as always, if you have any ideas or suggestions for a new topic or episode of the podcast, please let me know.
Goodbye.
