Residents in a Hampshire town have delivered a mixed verdict on Brexit as GB News visited Gosport to mark the sixth anniversary of the UK breaking free from the clutches of the European Union.
The town of Gosport is home to 64 per cent of voters who opted to leave the Brussels bloc in 2016, significantly higher than the 52 per cent across the UK.
Four years later, on January 31, 2020, at 11pm, the UK officially withdrew from the bureaucratic bloc after years of arduous negotiations and countless parliamentary debates.
Opening up on whether she believed it was the right decision six years later, one resident blamed Britain’s decision to leave the European economic alliance for the state of people’s lives today.
She said: “Yeah, no, it’s gone really bad, like the cost of everything has gone up. You know, people’s lives are miserable.
Asked if she blames that on Brexit, she nodded: “Yes, 100 per cent.”
Meanwhile, another man offered a more measured response, arguing the move had little impact on his life.
“I live in a little town in Gosport. I’ve lived here for a long time,” he told the People’s Channel. “I’ve not noticed any difference. So I’ve just got on with my little life and got on. It doesn’t make a difference to me.”
Residents offered GB News a mixed review
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GB NEWS
A third told GB News: “I voted to stay. I’m quite happy to admit that, and I think some of what we’ve lost since we left, we’ll never get back.
“And I think we’re beginning to realise now that we were stronger when we had a much bigger pool, that we could go into economically monetary value, and just being able to sell our goods abroad, really.”
But Nana Akua adamantly disagreed with the final resident, blasting: “We weren’t stronger, we were weaker!
“We were relying on other people to do everything for us. And now it’s all down to us.”
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Nana insisted the UK was stronger out of the EU
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GB NEWS
However, appearing on GB News, political strategist James Frayne argued it was standard for a group to have buyer’s remorse – whatever the outcome.
He told Nana: “Well, the first thing I’d say is, if you imagine that we actually voted to stay in the back in 2016, and you looked at the people that regretted saying that they’d voted to remain…
“The amount of regret that people that voted to remain would have been absolutely astronomical.
“It’s just the nature of the beast that people tend to regret to some extent, the change that they voted for.”
He continued: “I think there is a perception amongst a minority of voters that it hasn’t gone terribly well. Even Nigel Farage himself would have said it hasn’t gone terribly well.
“I think what the important thing is to remember are two things. Firstly, that those leavers that think things haven’t gone terribly well tend to blame politicians for having implemented it badly.
“So initially they blamed politicians for having negotiated in a weak and slow manner, which is why they turned against Theresa May so aggressively at the time.
“This has all been overtaken by a whole bunch of other events now, so they don’t look at the the problems that this country faces, problems with border control, low growth, general political incompetence.”
Mr Frayne also partially blamed the Tories’ “reluctant acceptance” of the 2016 result, which culminated in the Government “basically making no changes”.
“They didn’t use any of the the additional freedoms that they got. They just accepted the same old way of doing things and – shock, horror. It basically stayed the same,” he added.
“We just theoretically took back control, but then pulled none of the levers that that control gave us,” the strategist concluded.