• Question: What is your opinion on brexit?

    Asked by anon-202055 to Sophia, Sarah, Meirin, George, Emily, Andy on 5 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-202049, anon-201583.
    • Photo: Sarah O'Sullivan

      Sarah O'Sullivan answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      Oooh controversial! I’m not a fan of brexit, I feel that the original referendum came at a time when the public were very disenfranchised with the political system and the outcome din’t necessarily reflect the true beliefs of the country but more the want for change in the system. Plus the referendum has so many issues with the campaigns on both sides and whether it was binding. What really annoys me though is that research in universities has already been really affected by this and all the unknowns that go with it. With all the things we might struggle with after the big day, it seems very short sighted to do this without a good plan or something that resembles a deal

    • Photo: Andy Buckley

      Andy Buckley answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      Most scientists aren’t big fans. At least, I know none who are, and many who are strongly against. More generally, I don’t think anyone is arguing that there are tangible benefits anymore: it’s more about a clash of beliefs on how the UK should interact with the rest of the world, with introduction of barriers only doing bad things economically (for all involved, other countries included, but we’re the most affected).

      Particle physics is protected to some extent, because the world experimental center at CERN is a European organisation, but not an EU one. We will lose EU research income, though, and that’s a big deal because the UK has been very good at bidding for that money. Covering that shortfall probably involves cutting existing UK uni budgets. Maybe more important in the long run, Brexit will make it harder for us to attract top researchers from Europe, who make up about 50% of temporary and permanent physics researchers in the UK. That will unavoidably reduce the international impact of the UK’s research: we’re an international field, so we need to be hiring internationally excellent people, some but not all of whom will be UK natives.

      All in all, I’m opposed on the grounds that it only does bad things for us. Many people are unhappy with how things have been for them in the last 10 years, but leaving the EU really won’t help: no-one’s even claiming that it will, anymore. And for the last couple of years Brexit has dominated our politics so much that there’s been very little movement on the real problems. SAD FACE

    • Photo: George Fulton

      George Fulton answered on 5 Mar 2019: last edited 5 Mar 2019 6:17 pm

      In research terms, Brexit is not great. Research requires collaborative work and a large chunk of funding comes from the EU, having said that, I am sure that universities and collaboration with EU will continue even after Brexit, if a funding agreement can be made, but it is a shame that we will not be working with the EU on these projects as equal partners.

      I think Andy’s answer is a really good one and he is probably better placed than I am to answer this.

    • Photo: Sophia Pells

      Sophia Pells answered on 6 Mar 2019:

      I don’t think I’ve spoken to any scientists who are happy about brexit. Science relies very heavily on collaboration between countries and nuclear physics in particular uses a massive collaboration of scientists across Europe. Brexit might make collaborations like that more difficult in the future as it might be harder for scientists to live and work in other European countries 🙁

    • Photo: Emily Lewis

      Emily Lewis answered on 6 Mar 2019:

      As the others have mentioned, almost everyone working in science is not happy with Brexit because we work closely with European institutions on many projects. I worry that we are going to be excluded from a lot of the money from grants and from the larger experiments. We are also going to lose out on many of the European scientists who come over to work here and lose opportunities for our scientists to go and study in Europe in return.

      I also think politicians have spent too much time doing nothing about it when the UK has other issues that have been ignored like the NHS and policing.

    • Photo: Meirin Oan Evans

      Meirin Oan Evans answered on 7 Mar 2019:

      I do know a couple of scientists who were in favour of brexit at the time of the vote, not sure how their opinion has changed (just wanted to point out not all scientists are against brexit).
      For me personally, it’s sad that UK science research looks like it’ll suffer from brexit, for the reasons that the other scientists have given. So this is the main factor which leads to my negative opinion on brexit.

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