The UK is a great country. Over the long term it'll probably be fine, if it manages not to disintegrate. Even I, as a European, could see some possible upsides to Brexit. Not worth the downsides, but still. However, it requires playing it well and subtly, which the current government (and the couple of previous ones; Britain has been terribly governed for a long time)seems intent on not doing. It requires pragmatism, not ideology. At the moment it is looking weak and desperate. For example, I really cannot understand how someone would think that the UK was exploited as part of the single market, but the Australian farce is acceptable. Or why the TPP is an idea worth antagonising most of Europe.

Maybe it will get worse but the anti-brexit campaigns at the time painted a much much more negative picture than what I am seeing.

Think for a second, for fuck's sake. You could order from China, Venezuela, or Kazakhstan before. Why on earth would have been ordering something from the UK impossible?

The problem was not individuals getting their packages from Amazon.uk or M&S. The problem is that taxes are mechanically going up, that paperwork is more expensive and complicated, and that there are delays at the borders, which make exporting anything perishable a non starter.

Also, you now have to pay additional dues and taxes. This seems inconsistently applied: I have several packages from the UK who went through he border fine, but other did not. But it still is a problem when it happens, and illegal when it does not.

Also, it now takes weeks where it used to take days.

Also, a lot of things cannot be exported plain and simple if standards diverge. Which they will, otherwise the UK won't have a deal with the US.

> Maybe it will get worse but the anti-brexit campaigns at the time painted a much much more negative picture than what I am seeing.

You should not have got your points for remaining from the Telegraph. Even the Grauniad never said that nothing whatsoever would be going to cross the border.

And again, we are only 6 months in.

Who said you can’t. I also ordered there but stopped doing because customs handling adds high fees now. I get charged a flat 10 EUR on top of every order and 20% VAT. Many online stores already charge me UK VAT first so I end up paying VAT twice and the refunding process is burdensome.

> I can go back to live there with little problem if I want despite being told otherwise.

Lucky you. I’m a EU citizen and either in the UK for a few years. I’m not settled and I can’t go back. I would need a corporate visa sponsor and would end up coupled to said employer with no legal protections.

> They did so much better at vaccinating because the EU didn't screw things for them like for all the member nations etc.

Maybe. But right now we’re pretty even and the situation looks better in the EU. Definitely have more freedoms than my British friends right now.

I have yet to see something positive to come out of Brexit. Even the good vaccination program happened while EU rules were still in effect.

Things like roaming charges are much less significant than travel restrictions and quarantine requirements; travel and tourism has fallen off a cliff, so we can't separate out the Brexit impact.

We've another critical Brexit event coming up in the form of the end of the settled status transition period.

This was true in the Trump era. Prior to the pandemic, by most metrics America was doing very well in Trump's first few years. The economy was doing well, unemployment was low, and even metrics like African-American unemployment were reaching historically low levels. For the average American who didn't pay attention to the news, that time period was probably one where you had a job, it paid well, and things were looking good. But if you listened to the media you'd think that America was literally burning to the ground.

No, they do, but in most cases the effects emerge in the long run. Most laws take several months or years to go into effect, and then more time for patterns to emerge, and even more time for them being actually measured.

Take taxes. In the UK, the budget is approved in Spring (let's say 2020). Any change in income tax or corporation tax will go into force a year later, so April 2021. Individuals must file their returns the following January 2022, with nominal penalties for delaying an extra month. Statistical aggregation then takes place, which can take several more months. So basically, you won't know the immediate effect of a tax policy until almost 3 years later - and that's just for short-term effects! Actual long-term patterns might not be visible before 5 or 10 years have passed. In the meantime, we'll already be debating further changes, while we've not even fully absorbed the previous ones.

And taxes are as straightforward a field as you can have! Legislation on things like building standards typically carries some slack to give people time to adapt, and measuring effects of changes can be very hard even over a decade.

Both very substantially influence the day-to-day, but usually on very different time scales.