[native_samples]

The polls said the same for the British population before the referendum process started. The population changed its mind before the vote.

Actually, you have to be careful with polls. Polling showed a very clear and strong majority of the British population did not like the EU and were basically opposed to it, but a significant chunk of those people were scared of the threatened economic and tax consequences (which were in the end a lie - there was no emergency tax hike and no recession). If they had not been threatened with ruin then the Leave vote would have been much higher.

The EU has demonstrated it is willing to create essentially unlimited amounts of disruption in order to stop countries leaving. It won't play nice, or respect the wishes of the electorate. It will fight them. Inevitably that scares people, it did in the UK too. This does not mean that those people actually like their situation.

[phatfish]

You have to be careful about referendums too, especially when the government organizing them disenfranchises a group of citizens that are very likely to vote a certain way (UK migrants in the EU).

People didn't vote to remain in the EU because they were scared, no matter how much you want it to be that way. There are real tangible benefits of EU membership that UK citizens didn't want to loose.

Last I checked the UK had left, it has not been stopped. That one thing caused a lot of problems for the conspiracy theorists and anti-EU crowd who were suggesting it was not possible for a country to leave. Now the goal posts have been moved on that argument to the EU trying to make it "as hard as possible".

I wonder if leaving the UK is harder than leaving the EU. We might get to find out soon.