I saw the whole Brexit thing first hand and I also saw how EU Membership was sold in my home country of Portugal which was way poorer, and the arguments were anchored on completelly different things.
The whole argumentation in Britain was anchored on quite massive Delusions of Grandeur (i.e. “Britains and Britons are better than the rest”) amongst most of the population (even Remainers used the argument that “we can better change the EU from the inside”, a viewpoint anchored on the idea that Britons knew better that everybody else) whilst in Portugal it was almost the opposite since one of the attractions of EU Membership was bringing better laws to Portugal from Europe (back in the 80s there was this whole idea that everything from richer nations abroad was better, which in this specific subject turned out to be mainly true).
Also on the Economic side of the argumentation, in Britain which is a much wealthier country the argument that “we lose money because of the EU” (which, by the way, was total bollocks) was easy to believe, whilst in Portugal it would be a crazy hard sell since the country is much poorer and the only natural resource it has is the sun, which is hardly something that could be claimed that the EU wanted to steal ;)
Then there’s also the whole “big” (relative to the rest) country and “small” country side of the argumentation - being part of a big group is a massive protection for small countries in a World were medium side and bigger countries will invariably bully smaller ones, not always in peaceful ways (just look at what Russia, China and the US do, the latter sometimes via proxys as is doing at the moment via Israel).
So I strongly suspect that in Moldova the arguments were similar to those in Portugal and not at all like those in Britain.
Eh. They joined back in the days with a completely shot economy. WWII, then the loss of the colonies, all that coal+steel industry failing on the world market and getting further gutted by Thatcher, etc. Then they joined, and their economic situation improved. Then they left, and it has reverted to its shot state.
What Portugal has less off is absurdly rich people, but don’t think for a second that the median Portuguese is worse off than the median Brit: London is a financial hub surrounded by a third-world country and it wasn’t really that different when they were still in the EU: It was EU structural funds which kept the British periphery somewhat afloat.
Thinking of it, that was probably the reason the nobs wanted to leave: Looking at the balance sheets they didn’t see “oh we’re paying in, and we’re getting stuff out”, they saw “oh, we’re paying in, and the plebs are getting stuff out”. Can’t have that.
I don’t think Britain ever got out of being poor, and that at least had something to do with Brexit happening. Sure, there’s London with it’s finance people doing things that make money without actually needing to do any work, and other big cities do OK, but the rest of us scrape by. Former mining towns, former manufacturing towns… None of these places came back to life. They’re not anything now. Just former something towns. And by and large, they voted for Brexit to happen. It wasn’t a particularly sensible decision, but there you are. More of a protest vote that got out of hand.
That said, I think Portugal is still poorer by a long way. I lost count of the number of times I clicked Brazil while playing Geoguessr and it turned out it was Porto or something. It’s an East Europe country that happens to be in the west.
I saw the whole Brexit thing first hand and I also saw how EU Membership was sold in my home country of Portugal which was way poorer, and the arguments were anchored on completelly different things.
The whole argumentation in Britain was anchored on quite massive Delusions of Grandeur (i.e. “Britains and Britons are better than the rest”) amongst most of the population (even Remainers used the argument that “we can better change the EU from the inside”, a viewpoint anchored on the idea that Britons knew better that everybody else) whilst in Portugal it was almost the opposite since one of the attractions of EU Membership was bringing better laws to Portugal from Europe (back in the 80s there was this whole idea that everything from richer nations abroad was better, which in this specific subject turned out to be mainly true).
Also on the Economic side of the argumentation, in Britain which is a much wealthier country the argument that “we lose money because of the EU” (which, by the way, was total bollocks) was easy to believe, whilst in Portugal it would be a crazy hard sell since the country is much poorer and the only natural resource it has is the sun, which is hardly something that could be claimed that the EU wanted to steal ;)
Then there’s also the whole “big” (relative to the rest) country and “small” country side of the argumentation - being part of a big group is a massive protection for small countries in a World were medium side and bigger countries will invariably bully smaller ones, not always in peaceful ways (just look at what Russia, China and the US do, the latter sometimes via proxys as is doing at the moment via Israel).
So I strongly suspect that in Moldova the arguments were similar to those in Portugal and not at all like those in Britain.
Eh. They joined back in the days with a completely shot economy. WWII, then the loss of the colonies, all that coal+steel industry failing on the world market and getting further gutted by Thatcher, etc. Then they joined, and their economic situation improved. Then they left, and it has reverted to its shot state.
What Portugal has less off is absurdly rich people, but don’t think for a second that the median Portuguese is worse off than the median Brit: London is a financial hub surrounded by a third-world country and it wasn’t really that different when they were still in the EU: It was EU structural funds which kept the British periphery somewhat afloat.
Thinking of it, that was probably the reason the nobs wanted to leave: Looking at the balance sheets they didn’t see “oh we’re paying in, and we’re getting stuff out”, they saw “oh, we’re paying in, and the plebs are getting stuff out”. Can’t have that.
I don’t think Britain ever got out of being poor, and that at least had something to do with Brexit happening. Sure, there’s London with it’s finance people doing things that make money without actually needing to do any work, and other big cities do OK, but the rest of us scrape by. Former mining towns, former manufacturing towns… None of these places came back to life. They’re not anything now. Just former something towns. And by and large, they voted for Brexit to happen. It wasn’t a particularly sensible decision, but there you are. More of a protest vote that got out of hand.
That said, I think Portugal is still poorer by a long way. I lost count of the number of times I clicked Brazil while playing Geoguessr and it turned out it was Porto or something. It’s an East Europe country that happens to be in the west.