no, very much not what I’m saying. From my first post in the thread (bolding mine)
I apologise then. But the fact still remains, after four years of searching, not a single pro-Brexit claim has survived more than a moment’s scrutiny.
And furthermore this is too important to be an agree-to-disagree thing. This is a foolhardy ‘decision’ which will ruin thousands, make the country weaker, and take decades to recover from, if at all.
Decades. Nobody voted for that, even if the ‘we’ll have short-term pain then be fine’ were true.
Jesus, Brexiters even refuse to be specific on what ‘short-term’ means.
I suspect it’s because they want it to mean whatever they want it to mean. Just like everything else to do with Brexit.
I think we’ve had this discussion before, and I doubt any good will come of it, but to answer this point: I mainly voted to leave because I have personally experienced, through my work, at least 3 examples of EU legislation that have not only been a huge inconvenience to implement, but also are actively unhelpful to consumers. That was enough for me, but I think it’s not unreasonable to assume that if I experienced that in my relatively small field of work, others were experiencing similar things. And I don’t mean easily debunked nonsense about straight bananas.
I still believe that in the long run, the UK will be able to benefit economically from not automatically subsidising an extra layer of government, I fully accept the pain this will cause in the short and medium term. Is that selfish? Yes, I fully acknowledge that (and have done in the past). It is unlikely to affect me directly in a meaningful way. I’m sorry for those who have been disrupted by it. But I would lay the blame for that at least equally at the door of an organisation that probably started with good intentions but in recent decades has simply become too big for its boots - namely, the EU itself.
What has caused far more pain and upset than the decision itself is the complete incompetence with which our politicians dealt with it, May and her advisers have the most blame to carry here but I also think those who continued to try and stop the process were misguided at best.
My point is that the Remain campaign had to recognise the actual problems and concerns that the large majority of Britons had with the EU government and its principles of ever closer union and freedom of movement. David Cameron tried to negotiate some measures with the EU to address those concerns and came back with a set of weak, wishy-washy agreements that were little more than platitudes. And that was the high point of the effort to alleviate those concerns. What’s more, several vocal Remain supporters decided to make those concerns a polarising issue by throwing out labels such as xenophobia. Fostering an us versus them atmosphere during a campaign, especially when “them” is a majority, is both stupid and a pretty good way to lose a campaign. Which is what happened to Remain.
What regulations?
Were they supported by the UK in Council?
Are they ones the government will undo with Brexit? Or will we be obliged to follow them in order to not wreck the economy?
And finally, baby/bathwater tradeoffs.
Parliament itself passes dumb laws all the time, but I don’t find that in and of itself a reasonable cause for dismantling the UK unless it were clear and obvious that doing so would provide economic opportunities.
Believe. Yep.
I know that EU membership has been proven to boost the UK economy enormously because it eliminates bureaucracy for business, makes goods and services travel faster and easier, and provides a form of uniformity of standards.
Brexit undoes all that. We will be needlessly duplicating standards and bureaucracy just to be ‘sovereign’, while still having to have goods checked at borders, in and out of the country.
Being outside the EU, not ‘subsidising’ a layer of government, will be more expensive. We’ll be spending more just to stand still.
The incompetence goes all the way down to voters, who refuse to educate themselves on the complexities of international trade and governance.
Sorry, but I don’t discuss my work on social media/this board. I know this looks like a cop out, but there we are.
Very likely they were, but that’s irrelevant to my position. Opposing them would probably have made no difference. Plus, bureaucrats of all nationalities are nearly always in favour of more regulations, it is their raison d’etre after all.
I don’t know - not immediately, but I believe it is possible, in time. They’re probably not the highest priority.
No, they are almost completely irrelevant in that regard.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean here but leaving is a price I’m personally willing to pay. Others view it differently of course.
Of course the parliamentary system isn’t perfect. But at least we have more direct representation and accountability than we get with the EU.
I accept that having common standards is good for trade, and regulations are obviously the only way to achieve that. The problem is, in my direct experience the EU has been laughably bad at achieving this in an acceptable manner. Effectively swapping the EU parliament and Council for more trade negotiators seems to me to be worth a try.
You seem to be seriously suggesting that all voters should “educate themselves on the complexities of international trade and governance”. This seems equally unrealistic as the assumptions on which you say some voted for Brexit. You can argue that holding the referendum in the first place was a mistake, or that the terms of it were all wrong, and I’d probably agree with that, but making ridiculous statements doesn’t really help your case.
The accusations of lies in the Brexit campaign are more than mirrored in the transparent lies told with a straight face by the whole cabinet, in particular the Chancellor, and also by the Bank of England.
We were assured that if we voted to leave that it would spark a recession,
This article states concerns over what could happen but Osbourne left us in no doubt that our economy would pretty much collapse, the pound would drop like a stone and the stock market would crash.
Later on the Bank of England admitted it had “Made a mistake” - what was really meant was that it lied
In the event and following the result every single negative prediction in relation to the economy turned out not only to be wrong, but 180 degrees wrong - every single economic indicator turned positive.
All this was widely reported very heavily in broadcast media, and left leaning press, and attempt to gainsay any of these predictions was met with a storm of derision. I wonder how many voters were persuaded to vote on the basis of these predictions - all on the basis of an organised orchestrated lying campaign of fear.
The Remain campaign was based on a prophecy storm of lies and and fanciful predictions of doom and disaster - none of which have emerged. I expect that Remainers will now attempt to affix every single problem that we have faced and will face in the future upon Brexit despite that all these will largely be cyclical impacts such as stock overvaluations, currency realignments etc. These may or may not be anything at all to do with Brexit, most likely any negative statistic will be part of the round but will certainly be attributed to Brexit because Remainers are myopically affixed to their ‘correctness’ and will force any data to fit their ‘truth’ a bit like the conspiracy theorist tries to twist every fact or lack of data into their model of the world.
Not true. At all. Proposals have to go through an obscene number of hoops to be passed in the EU, and the machinery bends over backwards to ensure compromise and lowest common denominator. The UK’s ‘defeats’ are an incredibly small number.
Which ones are? Name them.
I have never, ever heard a Brexiter able to name any. Apart from made-up ones about vacuum cleaners that again, don’t really make trashing the country worthwhile/
Ah, I’m alright Jack, sod everyone else.
Oh mate. Ohh, mate.
I used to believe that. If you think an FPTP parliament which gives a massive majority on a 1% swing is accountable or direct, then I don’t know how I can help you.
What other experience have you seen? In my experience, the EU is a world leader in achieving common standards. Seriously. During the whole Brexit drama it calmly signed extensive deals with Japan, MERCOSUR and Australia, not to mention the Canadian one signed just a bit before.
As Brexit is apparently all about sovereignty over prosperity, colour me extremely skeptical. Given what we’ve seen, what we’ve heard about what Brexit actually means in practice, which is entirely different from the witches’ brew of 2016, I think you’ll be sorely disappointed.
How is it ridiculous? You don’t need to have 16-volume tomes of international trade law to know that geography in world trade is hugely important, and the idea that you can pretend an economic superpower 20 miles away doesn’t exist and won’t outclass you in every single negotiation is simply risible. And that’s just the EU. The US and China will be even more merciless.
I love that you list all this stuff while ignoring that the Leave campaign did even worse.
[URL=“https://twitter.com/ChrisGiles_/status/1180543804396453889”]
The worst that Remain can be accused of is reporting what professional bodies were warning, with the data they had. Yes, Remain had a job to cast a gloomy picture, but you forget that in every evidence-based study there is no scenario in which Brexit helps the UK in any way, shape, or form.
And while those professional bodies have revised their models and admitted that their anticipated initial reactions to Brexit were more pessimistic, they have continued to be absolutely bang right about the overall impact of Brexit on Britain, which continues to be, in the real world, net negative for the UK in all possible scenarios.
Unlike Leave, which, when proven wrong on absolutely everything they claimed, completely invent whole new lies on an industrial scale. It’s Donald Trumpism by committee.
I still haven’t seen a plan to make Brexit succeed. By anyone, anywhere.
I haven’t seen any arguments that make a modicum of sense once they’re scrutinised in the slightest manner.
But at least ignorance is fought in one way - Dead Cat has pretty much admitted that he sees benefits for himself alone and sees those as worth going for even if the rest of the country suffers because of it. Pity that he’ll not even see benefits for himself, either.
I live with the knowledge that Brexit has already failed. It simply cannot survive contact with reality.
In a few years’ time, supporting Brexit will be like having supported invading Iraq.
pops in
Oh, I see the Brexiteers are still being, well, what they are. You own this now, you know!
Have a wee think about the gravity model of international trade when youse get a moment, eh?
Oh, and the transition period can be extended up to two years, but the decision needs to be made in July this year. Our excellent government thinks they have the bandwidth to cope with all the transition discussions, and deal with the novel coronavirus at the same time, and leave the transition period at the end of 2020. Well, good luck with that!
Remember, Leavers, this is what you voted for.
pops out
Oh, one more thing.
Fucking good luck getting the harvest in this year. You’ll all be down in Lincolnshire doing your bit for Blighty, I take it?
That is simply not a rebuttal of the pessimist lies of Remain, its not even an explanation, you have not debunked one iota of the links - you haven’t even acknowledged that they were wrong, I really don’t care about your so-called best projections on existing data - they were wildly wrong and predictably so - they were transparently wrong even before the vote had been held.
If that is how Remain supporters make calculations based upon best data then I really do not want any of them involved in running the country, heck I would not want such blindingly rubbish financial predictors and any level of involvement in any form of financial planning - its not really enough to say they were doing the best with what they had - their whole reason for existence is for getting it right, and if they are too dumb to identify weaknesses in their data collection then they really have no place in government or any form of national responsibility.
They were not wrong by a small amount, they were not even wrong by a large amount - they were wrong by such magnitudes that they have no credibility on the economy at all and as such their opinions are utterly untrustworthy - their advice cannot be used, it is meaningless.
Present me with some pro-Leave economic predictions that have been completely vindicated.
I’ll wait.
Flawed as they were, the predictions of the BoE, OECD, IMF and all those were at least evidence-based attempts to work things out - and they all enjoy a consensus that Brexit is nothing but bad news for us.
But if you’re going to continue to hide behind this flimsy argument, perhaps something more tangible will help you come out of your trench.
You’re in a manufacturing trade which relies on just-in-time production. Brexit completely fucks up your supply line, making getting parts slower, more expensive, and reaction times to hiccups less efficient.
Do you:
a) move to somewhere that hasn’t decided to abandon reason and fuck up your supply line;
b) sell your business and retire while the going was good; or
c) wrap yourself in the Union Jack and face ruin?
Seriously: what specific, tangible benefits can I expect to see from Brexit? Not wishy-washy meaningless about borders and sovereignty (on which I note you exclude the possibility of nuance on whether or not having sole control of borders or laws are hallmarks of sovereignty), but something which actually got people to give a shit about Brexit, about there being more jobs, more money and so on?
I just can’t understand this state of mind:
‘Gee, Remain got some things wrong, but I’ll completely ignore how badly wrong Leave have gotten everything and insist we’ll do just swell!’
Are you really blaming the lack of fruit and vegetable pickers on Brexit rather than the Corona Virus? The EU right of freedom of movement still applies during the transition period. It’s just being overridden by emergency health measures. Just the same as is happening in continental Europe. Read the news and the blame is firmly on the Corona Virus travel restrictions.
Note that the FT article reports that the labour shortage is happening throughout western Europe, and also affecting the United States.
Also, Brexit was being blamed for forecasted supply disruptions last year. Apparently there were some actual shortages of pickers, but they were incidental to the overall food supply and less disruptive than the weather.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-farming-labour/brexit-crisis-tipped-for-british-asparagus-as-eu-seasonal-workers-stay-away-idUKKCN1QZ06R
Maybe you’ve got a different perspective, or the inclination to do a detailed national analysis, but personally I didn’t notice any supermarket shortages of asparagus or strawberries last year.
The “lowest common denominator” is exactly the problem with the rules we end up with - by trying to cater to everyone, they end up being useless in many cases, especially for countries like the UK that have already dealt with the issues that the new regulations try to address. Without the associated time and expense of going “through an obscene number of hoops”. You have nicely encapsulated a lot of my opposition to the system, thank you.
As I said, I’m not prepared to discuss in detail, but in one of the cases I can do so without revealing the nature of my work, so I will: the EODR (European Online Dispute Resolution). In my industry, we already have a very good dispute resolution system that works reasonably well. So not only is the EODR redundant, it is actively unhelpful in that it will simply route any disputes through to the existing system. And yet we were obliged to implement it and inform consumers about it anyway. OK, not the end of the world but just another irritating example of unnecessary and unhelpful EU interference.
More importantly, we haven’t “trashed the country” - despite doom-laden predictions, nearly everything has continued to function perfectly well (at least until the pandemic hit, which is unrelated) and will likely to continue to do so after the end of the transition period. Yes there has been and will be a cost, which is disappointingly high largely due to the way things have been done politically (in particular the triggering of Article 50 prematurely and without a proper plan) but such is life.
I said it wasn’t perfect, what I meant was that the actions of everyone’s local MP (and by extension, their party and, where relevant, government) are accountable. For example, I didn’t vote for my incumbent MP in the last election (though I have done in the past and their party most reflects my views overall) because I felt they should have done more to stand up to what I saw as failings in the way their party was conducting its campaign. Similarly, if people don’t like the way their MP is voting in parliament, they can vote against them at the next election. I’d suggest more people educating themselves about that would be a better use of time than learning about international trade relations, but we’re talking about unicorns either way.
Well, clearly we have had different experiences. To be honest I’m not really that bothered about the final outcome so I won’t have anything to be disappointed about. Like most elections, how you voted and the outcome probably makes little difference in the long run.
You said “The incompetence goes all the way down to voters, who refuse to educate themselves on the complexities of international trade and governance.” - I said that expecting voters to “educate themselves on the complexities of international trade and governance” is ridiculous. You seem to now be changing your position into one of simple geography. My position is that of course trade with the EU is important, and I think we should be able to accomplish that equally well without all the other problems of EU membership.
I have always acknowledged this. You seem surprised that people vote with self interest in mind, is this a new concept to you?
How has it failed?
I agree this is a possible outcome and although I know it will be little consolation, I will be suitably apologetic if so (and I publicly declared this the day after the referendum, though at the time I said I would look back in 5 years - it now seems that won’t be nearly long enough to make a fair judgement). But it’s far too early to say with certainty at this point.
Well it’s good to see that Project Fear is alive and kicking, even if the kicking is against the floor and comes with a douse of crying and screaming, but do go on with your temper tantrum. In the meantime, you’re ignoring the basic reasons that people voted for Leave.
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The EU as an institution and its government were unpopular. Remember the polls take after the Brexit vote? Only 9% of Remain voters had “a strong attachment to the EU and its shared history, culture and traditions” as their main reason for wanting to stay in. And that was the side with the fewer votes.
How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday... and why - Lord Ashcroft Polls](https://twitter.com/ChrisGiles_/status/1180543804396453889) -
People viewed the EU as being increasingly federalist and were opposed to its goal of “ever closer union.” There was a going trend from 1992 to 2014 to either leave the EU or reduce its powers. The trend peaked in 2012 at 67%, but was still at 62% in 2014.
https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/38975/bsa32_eu.pdf (pdf, p.5) -
People viewed the EU as undemocratic. Remember the Treaty of Lisbon? It was supposed to be a new EU constitution. However, it was rejected in referendums by France and the Netherlands. Tony Blair cancelled the UK’s referendum. So what did the EU do? They decided that the constitution should be a treaty, with a few different words, but the same fundamental ideas. Bit since it was labelled a treaty, it could avoid most of the referendums. The governments of France and the Netherlands refused to rehold their referendums and had Parliamentary votes instead. Gordon Brown, who had taken over for Blair, did likewise for the UK weaselling out on promises made by Blair to hold a referendum. It was basically an expansion of EU powers by deception. It wasn’t the only example.
Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe - Wikipedia -
The payments made by the UK to the EU were quite unpopular. In 2015, the year before the referendum, the UK’s net contribution was £10.8 billion. In 2016, it was £9.6 billion. That’s a hell of a lot to pay for some shared services and membership in the club.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/814388/190618_HMT_2018_Annual_Statement_on_European_Finances_web.pdf (pdf, p.12) -
The extra layer of government bureaucracy imparted by the EU was widely resented. Does that even need a cite?
There were other issues behind the Leave vote. Immigration was the second biggest one behind sovereignty, but there were also concerns about EU expansion, the future of the Euro, fisheries policy, and many others. You seem to think that the majority of British people are a bunch of irrational dupes who are swayed by campaign slogans. The reality is that they recognised that there were several major problems with the EU and with Britain’s obligations to the EU. They weighed the problems against the benefits that EU membership brought, and decided that the negatives of EU membership outweighed the positives. You’re concluding that the people who voted differently than you are irrational because they disagreed with you. It’s that conclusion that is irrational.
All of which reinforces my previous statement: the Leave campaign presented a fantasy, Remain presented reality, and people voted for the fantasy.
I can’t discuss mine either, but in my extensive experience Brexit has and will continue to massively increase inefficiency and poor behaviour in every sector as far as the UK are concerned.
This “bureaucrats just make up regulations to keep themselves busy” is errant nonsense. It has also, by some strange coincidence, been a persistent thread in the decades of anti-EU propaganda the right-wing have been selling.
No we don’t. We may even get less direct representation and accountability in Parliament than we did in Europe, thanks to the House of Lords.
And that’s not even touching on the influence of unelected bureaucrat Dominic Cummings.
So you’ve presented an article from May 2016 that presents quite a reasonable assessment of the potential outcome of Brexit as understood at the time (remembering that May was still being deliberately vague about what Brexit actually was at the time), but you’ve changed “could” to “would” to support your argument. Rather telling, that.
One thing I do note from the article is that Leavers immediately demanded Carney’s resignation, presumably for daring to contradict their “sunshine, rainbows and lollipops” version of events.
The article says that “jobs would be lost in the capital if Brexit goes ahead”. They have been and continue to be so.
It says that “London-based European transactions would inevitably shift to the Eurozone”. They have and continue to do so.
Osbourne’s speech said that “a vote to leave would be a major blow to the health of the UK economy and the capital”. It has been and continues to be so.
This is a gross misrepresentation of what that article - and what Andrew Haldane - said.
You mean the article from mid-2016 when, as noted already, nobody knew what Brexit actually was?
Remain, like the Bank of England, were wrong about the timeframe in which these things would happen. Based on my own conversations with various senior industry contacts, businesses were largely maintaining a “holding pattern” while they waited to see which of the 31 flavours of Brexit they were going to be served. And it took a while to get the answer on that, remember? It wasn’t even clear for years whether Brexit was actually going to happen.
But how did the economy do once the likely terms of Brexit were known? Did the pound surge? Are new businesses flooding into the UK? Are we making brilliant new trade deals?
Specatular projection. Any media outlet that dared to contradict the Leave propaganda was promptly accused of being “left-leaning” and “pro-Remain” no matter what. Nigel Farage was frequently invited onto television to spout his talking points - but every time he got caught out in a lie, the Leave campaign simply attacked whomever had dared to challenge him.
As for the “organised orchestrated lying campaign of fear” - again, that is some spectacular projection. Remember the years of a constant torrent of anti-immigrant and anti-EU propaganda by right-wing media such as the Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph? Remember the billboard showing the ravening hordes of foreigners just waiting to descend on the UK if it didn’t vote “Leave”? Is any of this ringing a bell?
This isn’t remotely true.
Given the way Leavers have constantly blamed the failure of their fantasies to materialise on “Remoaners” over the past several years, this appears to be yet more projection.
I have, and you have significantly misrepresented the content of all of them. Some of them even support the Remain side of the argument. So while the articles themselves may not be wrong (I can’t speak to the journalistic rigour of a website called “businessesforsale” that didn’t even present a full quoted sentence in the article), your use of them to support your arguments was.
If this is how Leave supporters make arguments…never mind.
No, it actually means that the Leave campaign identified the negatives associated with the EU and Remain responded more or less with “It’s the economy, stupid.” But what worked for Clinton in 1992 didn’t work for Remain in 2016. In a (expectedly biased) column on the Remain campaign strategy, Will Straw, the executive director of Britain Stronger in Europe notes their lack of an “emotionally resonant message”. He also notes that Remain “insisted that voters simply wanted facts on the economic impact”. Additionally, he lists Cameron’s “hopeless renegotiation of EU membership” as a factor that worked against Remain. Basically, the renegotiation’s message was that the EU was terribly flawed, but we’re going to have to live with it. Britain Stronger in Europe - horrible framing and imagery, and a message bordering on the disingenuous - Jon Worth Euroblog
But go ahead, identify the positives of the EU that Remain campaigned on. Britain Stronger in Europe didn’t even mention the EU in their campaign launch and the EU was an avoided topic on their website. Britain Stronger in Europe - horrible framing and imagery, and a message bordering on the disingenuous - Jon Worth Euroblog Stuart Rose said people would “make a hard-headed, practical calculation in the coming referendum”. That’s not an inspiring message. Where’s the glowing endorsements of the EU’s mission, goals, or purpose? The best promotions of the EU I remember that weren’t about the economy were some win-win situations like cooperating on security or crime. And the easy, effective counter to those was that if they were win-win, then a rational EU would agree to those situations after Britain left the EU.
I’m sorry to learn that. On that basis, it seems your industry needs to get its house in order. Which they are still able to do, outside the EU, without the EU shitting all over my industry.
Not at all - it is self-evidently, obviously true. Widget-makers make widgets. Regulation-makers make regulations. It is, as I said, their raison d’etre. It’s like the tax laws in this country (and no doubt many others). They never get simpler, only more complicated. No doubt much of the EU and individuals involved in it are well-intentioned, I wouldn’t suggest otherwise, but the net effect is the same.
I don’t really follow your argument here, except you’re right of course about the Lords being unelected (I happen to believe they have about the right amount of - limited - influence on our lawmaking, and can’t see an obvious improvement beyond the sensible reforms of the late 90s). In general elections we vote for a local candidate who then represents us in parliament. In European elections we vote for national parties who then send a proportional number of people to represent us in parliament. Do you really feel more directly represented by your MEP than your MP? I believe a significantly larger number of people could name their MP than the number who could name any of their MEPs.