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Record number of people in UK live in ‘very deep poverty’, analysis shows
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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Makes sense. If nothing else is available, we have to work with what we have.
And thank you for the clarification. To clarify my point: I am not saying that Brexit was an absolute economic disaster... but that some wealthy Brexit supporters benefited disproportionately compared to the average citizen and therefore pushed forward the populist campaign that ultimately led to the exit.
Yeah, the bets were in on the £ already as it was way overvalued.
The seeds of Brexit were sown when we didn't get a referendum on Maastricht. That changed the game considerably and even further with Nice and Lisbon. It meant that regulating with common law would be replaced with Roman civil law, which is much more prescriptive and is unable to be changed by precedent.
I'm just in favour of decentralisation, every time power has been centralised in Europe it has ended badly.
I want to express my thoughts on this point. I believe that two things are true at the same time:
Concerning European this imho boils down to two contrary tendencies: The bigger the EU and its bureaucracy gets the less efficient it works while at the same time the efficiency of the EU economy is increasing through ever deeper cooperation and standardization.
Following this line of thought, the question of whether the EU benefits or harms its citizens is largely decided by the ratio of additional costs due to bureaucracy to benefits due to cooperation. Since the advantages of cooperation, especially within the single market, are immense (and are becoming increasingly important in a world where the major powers are increasingly hostile to European states), I tend to view the EU positively, even if centralized administration can create new problems. After all, what would be the alternative? European nation states have worked against each other and waged war for centuries. Now that the European colonial empires have collapsed and lost a great deal of influence, I find it highly questionable that this model would be promising in today's world.
I think competitive advantage is better than comparative in areas of innovation. The EU's precautionary principle is safe, but timid. Roman civil law is restrictive and slow to adapt because judges cannot set precedent at lower levels and must apply the law as it is written.
The trend in the UK is of devolving power to the nations. I'm not sure how far that could go. Will we see a return to regions like Wessex and Mercia? We only have representative democracy as a hangover of having to choose someone to travel to London on a horse. We have the technology now to communicate at light speed, and will soon have enough compute power to make the civil service 90% smaller.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/landmark-devolution-bill-brings-new-dawn-of-regional-power
Sorry to revisit this so lately!
Yes, competition is better for innovation than cooperation... hence why mono/oligopols like google, meta etc. are harmful for innovation even though those companies are undeniably very innovative. Outside of economic I still prefer lame, boring cooperation as it costs societies, and in the last resort people, less money and lives in the long run which tend to be otherwise wasted in for example competitive wars.
This devolving of power to smaller forms of organization is, in general, a good idea. However it may rapidly become a disadvantage as political and economical power are dwarfed by bigger organizational forms like national states (let alone billion people collectives like China and India). Those powers can, in the competitive scenario which is still the norm, strong arm small nations (like Wessex or Mercia) into unfavorable conditions for them.
Final note to your last paragraph: My ideal would be a direct democracy, leaving out any potentially corrupt representative. I honestly believe this is within reach due to the communicative advances you mentioned.