Usually I'm extremely sympathetic of Brexit woes considering the slim majority, lying Leave campaign, and considering the vote happened immediately after the EU refugee crisis where anti-EU sentiment was at a high all over the union.

I also usually remind the people that call for blood that, at the time, countries like France, Italy, Czechia, Austria, the Netherlands, Greece, and others had the same level or higher anti-EU sentiment. That people are lucky only the UK's leadership was stupid enough to allow the vote to happen when it did, and that the UK's population aren't any more guilty or deserving of punishment than a slew of other European populations.

But UK farmers? Nah. These people are business owners who should be expected to do their research. These people should've known that cutting ties with the strictest food market on Earth and opening the floodgates to food from elsewhere would damage their business. They voted for Brexit overwhelmingly. I have much less sympathy for these people.

The positive is that the Tories are heading for an electoral catastrophe. And farmers hold immense sway for the Tories in a way they don't with Labour.

The dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed.

If only someone had told them that this exact outcome would happen.

"They negotiated trade deals which literally see us slaughtered," she continued. "They're the worst trade deals in the world."

I mean, the UK is a net food importer. Trade deals that lower the bar to obtain agricultural output are a plus for the UK, in aggregate. That was one of the few real arguments you could make, that the UK could lower the barriers to agricultural imports, whereas in general, it was hard to do in the EU.

Doing so is bad for British farmers, sure, that's zero-sum insofar as it's just a transfer of wealth between British people eating food and farmers, but they permit leveraging comparative advantage in other countries, so you get economic efficiency gains.

Like, the one group of economists that I saw that was arguing for Brexit was led by an economist specifically arguing on the point that it'd permit the UK lower barriers to agricultural imports more than the European Union Customs Union would permit for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Minford

A confirmed eurosceptic, he is a supporter of the Better Off Out campaign to leave the European Union because he believes that the net economic costs to Britain of its policies are substantial. He argues that they are in most respects contrary to free market principles and that British citizens had no power to alter them.[25] In 2016, Minford was a notable member of the Economists for Brexit group which supported the referendum campaign for the UK to leave the European Union.[26] He believes that Brexit could increase GDP by 6.8%,[27][28] and could reduce prices for British consumers.[29]

I mean, I'm American, and I still went out and read his papers to see what people were arguing on both sides. If I were a British farmer and was thinking about Brexit and where I want my country to go and the impact it might have on my business, I'd damn well read what the material being put out is.

I was skeptical that Minford is right that when you take into account all the pros and cons into account, that the UK is better-off out, but I don't dispute that he's right on being able to lower barriers to agricultural trade trade is more-favorable to the UK; if the UK could take that in isolation but otherwise be in the EU, sure, it'd be better-off. And what the UK is doing now is nothing compared to what he wanted to do -- he was arguing for, in Brexit, unilateral elimination of all British import tariffs. You think that British farmers are seeing disruption under a few trade deals with major agricultural exporters, that'd be a heck of a lot more disruptive.