Honest question because I'm ignorant, but did any (well, many/most since I'm sure there are outliers) mainland Europeans think it would benefit the British?

As an American generally uninformed on the manner, I only heard of pro-Brexit people in Britain.

Brexit was a vote by Britain to lose all influence in its largest export market and instead hamper its industries with dual regulation and increased barriers to trade. Nobody thinking rationally would think it was a good idea. The referendum passed because people were largely ignorant of what Europe actually is and because the referendum put a boring, complicated state affairs against a fill-in-the-blanks fantasy option.

The fact that they had literally no idea what would happen to Northern Ireland after Brexit tells you all you need to know about how well considered the idea was.

> how well considered the idea was.

Part of this is down to the politicians who were running the show - David Cameron, the prime minister at the time, thought the referendum was a good way to put the issue to bed - you've had your vote, we're staying in, shut up.

He more or less directly said that they weren't going to make any concrete plans, because he thought the idea was so bad that they weren't going to spend the money on them, and because releasing explicit plans would probably just give ammunition to the 'leave' side. It certainly would have torpedo'd one of the major arguments of the 'remain' vote, which was that a vote to leave was a vote for uncertainty.

So in that way it was a self-fulfilling threat - you don't know what's going to happen because we refuse to make a plan!

> The referendum passed because people were largely ignorant of what Europe actually is

This too is a failure of politicians over several decades - the EU was always 'them', not 'us'. It was something that happened somewhere else. It was convenient to blame the EU when UK politicians couldn't or didn't want to fix something. MEPs were always pretty anonymous, unknown by local people who then (predictably) didn't turn out to vote in EU elections very much.

No, except every countries eu-exit party. Every europeen country has a ~20% block of people who want the ratatouille of leaving EU, no immigrants, etc. Luckily countries with a multi party democracy evade being hijacked by them so far.

To the rest of europe brexit looks like voting Donny back in: the bicycle-stick-frontwheel meme. Except brexit was a bit more contained so easier to laugh at, Donny siding with the enemy in our biggest armed conflict is no joke.

Thanks! That is what I thought. Good reminder that each country has their own relatively small (but maybe annoyingly vocal) eu-exit supporters.

How have those countries spun Brexit's failure? Just... "that wouldn't happen to US because we would be DIFFERENT?"

They stopped talking about it. They dropped the issue from their list. In my country they went to covid masks, siding with Russia in Ukraine (one of our ministers literally called zelensky a dictator) and now back to border controls I believe. It's like the "today I'm an expert in X" meme.

They always have like five taking points to whip their base in anger and it doesn't really matter what they are but they're always a bit lunatic.

I don't think it was a majority of people anywhere, but it was certainly very popular among the bases of right-wing parties across the continent.

I always find it so confusing - the same people that want group X (Palestinans, Kurds, Tibetans, Catalonia, etc....) to have their own government/country, hate that Brits want to control their own country.

You're talking about two very different sentiments. People see leaving the EU as a foolish decision. But Britain has every right to make that decision if it wants. I don't know of anyone outside of Britain who "hates" that they left (in the sense of feeling anger or offense).

In fact a lot of the sentiment tends to be more like "good riddance".

Interestingly there seems to be even more foreigners working in London now than before Brexit. Just with less rights I guess.

You're talking as though there were blue EU tanks rolling through the English countryside and bombers from Brussels flattening biscuit factories. Britain is not and was not oppressed, it's just a former imperial power with a heavily financialized economy that is no longer the biggest wheel in a larger regional economy.

Yeah the EU is totally to the UK like Israël is to the Palestians or Turkey to the Kurds. The EU put a wall around the UK and is slowly colonizing the area.