> Why you would live in the EU, vote for Brexit and then cry when leaving the EU to return 'home' is beyond me though.

I was going to hastily comment that surely the Brits living abroad were not the ones voting for Brexit but then right there in the article:

> ”Yes I voted out, but I didn’t realise it would come to this, my application has been rejected and we are on our way home – the wife is in tears, she’s distraught if I’m honest and I’m not too happy at the prospect of returning back to the UK.”

This is exactly like that meme on Twitter:

> 'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.[0]

Nope, I can't beleive it's come to this either.

[0]: https://twitter.com/cavalorn/status/654934442549620736

~95% of expats were against brexit, but interview enough people and you can eventually find some real fools.

It’s just another case of a news agency focusing on entertaining people even if it’s misleading them.

I'd disagree mildly. I remember that around the time the UK actually left the EU, a newspaper in Dubai (strongly against Brexit) interviewed a group of British expats. Out of the responses, only a quarter were mildly against Brexit while the rest were actively in favor of it. The numbers were even further skewed if I were to incorporate personal conversations.

In general, I've found Brits outside the UK in touristy/retiree expat hotbeds like Spain, Portugal or Dubai to be extremely in favor of Brexit, and mostly racist. Britons in the Isles or in other countries tend to be really friendly and open minded. This could be a reflection of the kind of expats who move to places - older expats might choose sunny places like Spain or Dubai while younger expats might prefer to settle down in the US or Germany, where there are better career opportunities.

Polls said EU expats where very much in favor of staying.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/eu-referendum-three-quart...

In France, Germany and Portugal, Stay was on just over 77 per cent, below Austria on 85 per cent.

In Sweden, the figure was 59 per cent, 60 per cent in Cyprus, 66 per cent in Italy, 73 per cent in Spain and 74 per cent in Belgium.

I guess it could be said that 1800 of the demographic which reads the Evening Standard is not an accurate reflection of the British expat population too. Unless we have demographic data on how they were polled, it can't be taken at face value. My data was also mostly a reflection of the expat demographic I was in touch with most (45+ male and female), so I guess that observation too cannot be taken at face value without a more randomized set.

yes but if you flip the numbers is gets weird. a third of expats in Italy wanted the UK to leave the EU? that doesn't mean it would be hard to find someone to interview for "entertainment". Every third group should have someone.

Find someone that wanted to leave the EU and is fine with the new situation isn’t enough, they needed to find people who voted to go and then where significantly negativity impacted.

Yeah, and I'm sure the author of this article worked hard to find that one paydirt quote which feeds its audiences' preconceptions... especially if the stats about how expats voted in the Brexit referendum someone else posted are correct. (Or maybe they didn't even bother? I've never heard of this news site, it looks like a generic WordPress theme and it's registered anonymously. All the usual fake news warning signs are there but it just fits everyone's preconceptions so well...)

Here is the same article from an established, pro-Brexit news website:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1415577/Brexit-news-...

Edit: Saw too late to delete that The Express also got it from Global247news, which seems to be less than a year old according to https://whois.domaintools.com/global247news.com

If this is a fake news article, the Daily Express indeed also fell for it because it's clearly where they copied that from: 'Anthony Cook, who has lived in Spain for seven years, told Global247news: “The Spanish dream is over for me, it’s time to go back to Cardiff."' This happens a lot more with fake news than it really ought to, and with publications a lot more respectable and trusted than the Express.

Which begs the question what did this person think they were voting for if not that?

I get that sometimes people aren't sure what the fine details of something might be on a complex issue, but it's right there in the slogan: "out of the EU"

They are people driven by the same bullshit nativist propaganda.

I live in a very democratic city. My neighbor down the block is a ~45 year old retired first responder due to a disabling knee injury. He’s mostly at home watching cable news during the week and transformed into a die-hard “conservative”, with the flags, stickers, etc.

Great guy, but deluded by propaganda. We usually talk fishing and baseball, as our sons play together. I avoid political talk at all times as the irony of a young, disabled former unionized government employee with free healthcare is both anti-gov and anti-union is too much for me.

You have some discipline. At some point I would open up that Pandora’s box, kids or not.

It’s always the “others”.

Someone I know recently lamented that their daughter (who has a physical disability) would no longer qualify for certain subsidies for a prosthesis because they don’t have a job. However the daughter’s husband does have a full time job, and the daughter home schools her daughter. They still qualify for some SNAP benefits (food stamps). The idea that The State wouldn’t make an allowance for this situation was galling to them. I agreed. But within 5 minutes they were back to complaining about welfare queens who don’t have jobs.

I like that you assume they were thinking.

That is absolutely hilarious - funniest thing I’ve read today. You can’t make this stuff up.

It's good for clicks - the thick-as-pigshit expat Leave voter sawing the branch underneath themselves. In reality most Brits in Europe did not vote Leave, but of course the media have to two-sides everything for "balance".

It's the top story on https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/

> A certain amount of amount of British people were working "cash in hand" and not paying any tax

This was a grey area already when UK was still an EU member. EU was based on "free movement of workers, services and capital", but the residency rights of non-economically active citizens of other EU countries are ...complicated. You have the right to reside the first 6 months in another country as a jobseeker. In practice, nobody would know when you have entered the country, so you could always claim that you are within your 6 months and you are a jobseeker, so in practice deporting EU citizens was close to impossible, so countries didn't even try. But those Brits probably weren't staying in Spain strictly legally, even when they were EU citizens.

A EU citizen may also stay longer than 6 month in another member state, if she has sufficient resources and comprehensive health insurance cover. There is also a right of permanent residence after five years of legal residence.[1]

[1] https://www.bmi.bund.de/EN/topics/migration/law-on-foreigner...

> Why you would live in the EU, vote for Brexit and then cry when leaving the EU to return 'home' is beyond me though.

They may have expected a right-to-residency that had different terms.

This article doesn't go into such details, however, so it'll be difficult to tell.

They thought it would only happen to others, as usual... They were so deep in disinformation that they called “project fear” any attempt to explain them what the situation would actually be. Because of course, who in their right mind would avocate for leaving the EFTA? Surely, brits spend money locally, so why wouldn’t the local governments bend the rules whilst the British government gets all jingoistic about continental queue jumpers?

It’s all fun and games until the borders get closed.

In the end, real people from both sides of the referendum pay the price.

Or Spain has a history of leniency towards undocumented immigrants and they thought they'd get the same treatment.

If course the problem with breaking the law is it opens you up to selective enforcement if Spain decides it wants to thumb its nose at the Brits in particular.

Because they think they will not be affected, only others would be? Not saying this is correct, just that they probably think this

I think the sad reality is a lot of folks vote based on a sort of instinct / sentiment. They hear truisms / sentiment that they like and someone convinces them X is that sentiment too. So they vote for X with little to no knowledge of what X is or means or how it plays out in any kind of reality.