What will the UK do wrt Brexit?

Great Debates
1723

There were always going to be trade-offs, and anybody who was paying attention knew there would be trade-offs. The UK was paying a steep price for the services that the EU provided, and they’ve managed to maintain most of the services they wanted (as shown be the EU’s own statement: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_2531) while jettisoning the ones they disliked. There should have been no expectation that UK citizens would be able to keep all the benefits of EU membership such as EHIC or to the use of EU citizen passport lanes.
Travel after Brexit: How leaving EU will affect your holiday | Evening Standard

But for the services they’ve lost, the UK is already taking steps to replace them. For example: Britain to replace Erasmus with new 'Turing scheme' to fund British students to learn abroad

1724

https://www.riskscreen.com/kyc360/news/what-does-the-brexit-deal-mean-for-financial-services/

From Jan. 1, U.K.-based financial institutions lose automatic access to the EU’s single market.

Banks and fund managers have relocated £1.2 trillion of assets to the EU from the U.K. following the 2016 Brexit vote, and more than 7,500 jobs have left the country in the same period, according to accounting firm Ernst & Young. … Dublin, Luxembourg, Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam are among the main beneficiaries of jobs and assets moving out of London.

But hey, at least you won’t have any pointless and unhelpful rulings… that was certainly worth losing £1.2 trillion of assets and 7,500 jobs for!

Oh, wait… if institutions want to provide financial services to the EU, they still have to obey those same rulings… :roll_eyes:

1725

You are of course correct. The UK-EU Brexit trade agreement was in essence a foregone conclusion, despite all the posturing. 95% of that agreement could have been written the day after Brexit. The EU is the side that states “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/joint_report.pdf If the UK and the EU had agreed to incremental agreements 4+ years ago, then it would have been obvious that an agreement was forthcoming, and whatever quibbling there might have been over the final details, it would essentially be the same as the final deal that was reached. The UK negotiators ensured that the 95% that was ensured to be enacted was done so despite politicians’ blusters and the pessimistic remarks of commentators and one-side negative-minded Internet critics. The debate then should be on how well that final 5% was negotiated. I’ve got a positive opinion, but it’s admittedly influenced by the fact that I want the damn thing to be finished. But even if you’ve got a negative opinion, you’re going to be hard pressed to identify more than 1% of the agreement that you could argue that the UK negotiators could have done better.

1726

Actually, from 1 January UK firms will no longer have to refer to the pointless (for them) EODR, so that’s one minor benefit already. Most of the UK’s consumer-facing financial services has very little to do with the EU, so for my employer (and many others) Brexit has had little direct effect. If millions of consumers end up better off, then the loss of 7,500 jobs could be worth it.

1727

Exactly. Every Leaver I have spoken to started his argument like this: “I am not a racist, but…” Then came a statement against foreigners.
So they do not want to be part of the Continent. OK, let them be the Incontinent.

1728

I wonder why you assume anybody wants to change their minds on the subject they are so fond of. Well I do not. They want to leave: Good riddance then! I don’t want to discuss with people who say I oppress them. It will hurt them more than me. We will see who has the last laugh.

1729

The UK will now be in a position to make its own stupid rules, but if we want to sell stuff into Europe it will also have to conform to EU stupid rules as well. I guess if we make things to sell internally in the UK then manufacturing will have only one set of rules to follow. Progress indeed for businesses that do not trade in major international markets. Many people fail to understand that the UK is a major trading nation. The economy lives and dies by how we trade with the rest of the world. We are not big enough to retreat into isolation.

The elephant in the room is the market for services rather than goods. Services are by far the biggest part of the UK economy and this follows the trajectory of most developed economies. If anything, the UK leads the way and it needs an international framework that is open to trading is services.

Boris has admitted that this deal does not deliver what the UK needs regarding services. That will be a major obstacle to economic development, we will have no say in the development of this market in the EU and we will see France, Germany, The Netherlands trying to develop services within the EU at the expense of the now excluded UK.

Financial services in the UK generates enough tax for the UK goverment to pay for the NHS, about £129 Billion. That is the golden goose of the UK economy. Did we hear anything about that? No, the tough nut to crack was about not upsetting the Fishing industry which is small fry indeed.

The Brexit debate has always been about appearances, symbols, great principles like sovereignty and securing the borders from unwanted foreigners. The EU has been painted as the target for all of these concerns and the simplistic solution is to simply abandon it suggests that all these existential problems simply go away.

When really EU membership is about trade. You pay £10Billion and get to be a join the largest trading block in the world. This always seemed like a good deal to me, a bit under 1%GDP. Rather than stay and change the EU to be more oriented towards a service economy, build a European electricity super-grid for trading our spare wind power. Create gas grid to move green hydrogen around and create and develop an international trading network. An integrated charging network for EVs, Finish off the Galileo European GPS project that the UK did so much to build. Carbon trading…There is a list of continental scale projects that make a great deal of sense for the economic development of Europe of the long term, the next next decades. We are now outside these emerging trading networks.

Was any this debated during Brexit? No, the issues the politicians debated were trivial in comparison. Populist trigger issues that suggest a simple withdrawal from the EU is the answer to all the absurdities that Boris Johnson wrote so much about when he was based in Brussels as an anti-EU hack journalist with friends in high places.

Both the Conservatives and Labour refused to engage with the EU and seek to win friends and steer the direction of the EU away from petit bureacracy and national interests towards to the development of a internal market and a block to match the bargaining power of the huge economies of the US and China.

They gave up on the EU and were happy to see the Brexit party mop up the protest vote so the UK was represented by an antagonistic bunch of self interested businessmen, supported by tycoons who like to play politics by pulling strings and using their influence over old and new media to persuade the British public that the EU was an expensive absurdity.

It is easy to cancel, break away, abandon or destroy something. It takes rather more effort to build something, especially when it is based on trust. What country will take the UK seriously with regard to trade ideals after this four year debacle?

Very little has been said about the future of the UK outside the EU, except to suggest that it will inevitably be rosy and prosperous despite being deattached from this big trading block on our doorstep.

Where is this plan? The farmers, the fishermen, the tradesmen have all been led to believe that all their complaints about bureacracy can be laid at the door of the EU and as soon as we are out, there will be a laizezz-faire policy and they can do what they want to grow their businesses.

These small guys will not be up against not the EU, but the UK establishment that favours big companies over small traders, big landowners and big fishing quota owners. There will be new rules defined by the vested interests that employ the best lobbists, contribute the most to party funds and are most skilled at regulatory capture. Those who financed Brexit will be looking for their pay-off and the small guy is certainly not going to be a part of that club. They were simply used. The images of the plucky small British guy railing against the Eurocrats was compelling.

That is going to become more apparent in the months to come and we learn just what we have lost and how reluctant the UK government is going to be to replace any finance from the EU from the UK budget.

The UK is hideously in debt because of COVID and now has to desperately restart its economy as soon as possible, if it can get a vaccine rollout done in the next months.

Brexit will tie one arm behind its back as it seeks foriegn investment to develop the economy because we have introduced significant barriers to international trade with our biggest neighbours. This deal is far, far less that what we had.

But at least we can be spared all those silly stories about the EU regulating the shape of bananas and what constitutes a sausage that did so much to paint the EU as an absurd irrelevance in the eyes of the British public.

I want to see an intiative from Boris and the Conservatives about the direction of the UK economy and their plan for developing it so the nation prospers. How they care going to convince the rest of the world the UK is a good prospect for investment and development of new sectors.

For the past four years they have spend most of the time sabotaging the economy, undermining the countries reputation, leaving its integrity open to question and blaming our biggest trading partners for holding the UK back.

So…What will the UK do wrt Brexit?

1730

Your analogy fails to mention that the steel-toothed trap that was clamping down on the foot has also been removed. The removal of that trap is what the Leavers were voting for, if you want to exchange simple metaphors.

If you want to discuss the future expectations of the economic effects of the Leave vote at the time of the resolution, I’ll offer what I’ve said before and then bow out of the discussion. There was plenty of discussion by Leave proponents that there would be a negative economic effect in the short to mid-term. However, most of the world economies are growing at a higher rate than the EU. Should the UK make alliances with the fastest growing economies in the world, or maintain the stagnating alliance on its doorstep, even if the readjustment of alliances will have a cost?

What’s more, the Leave decision wasn’t based on economics, it was based on British nationalism. It was a vote for UK sovereignty, a rejection of EU federalism, and an assertion that British voters have far more affection for the UK government, however much they might gripe about it, than for the EU government. The Remain campaign didn’t even try to sell the benefits of EU government. There was no sales pitch that the goals of the EU were the best goals for Britain. Instead, it was an argument of the benefits that the British people would lose, and that the worst-case economic effects that would happen in the unlikely event that a no-deal Brexit occurred needed to be avoided. Remain had no compelling positive argument and that’s why they lost.

1731

Everyone’s replied to Dead_Cat for me, really.

Being unhappy with some specific regulations and having that be considered a good reason to ruin the country by leaving the EU is just contemptuous.

If there are regulations you dislike, you lobby for the regulations to be changed. You don’t wreck the country just to get back to those regulations - which we’ll almost certainly not change back anyway!

This is a classic case of destroying the village in order to save it.

So I’d say you’re of the category I listed of a bit of c) and a bit of e).

1732

I always thought that the EU should be seen as similar to Bucky Fuller’s Global Energy Grid, meaning that the return to jingoistic nation states would be disastrously expensive. I expect that the UK will prove me right.

1733

Having worked in the Justice sector for decades, one massive problem with the EU has been freedom of movement with absolutely minimal restrictions.

I have no issue with freedom of movement generally, but specifically we should have the right to exclude those who are a concern - this can actually be done but the process is so onerous that the practice simply does not meet the reality.

So who would I not want to see allowed entry to the UK? - those whose criminal record is an issue, I have seen many EU citizens in UK prisons at the most extreme levels of offending, from mulitple murders and rapes through to high end drug dealing.Look on any UK news network, left leaning or right leaning or any other flavour you want and you’ll find very serious offences being committed mainly by Balts and Poles. They always have records of serious offending in their own nations.

The reality is that offenders rarely move from non-offending straight through to major or capital crime in one go - they have a history that is recorded in their own nations. I think we, and all EU nations should have the right to deny entry to thore individuals with criminal reocrds that are deemed unacceptable. I also think that EU nations should have the right to deny entry of UK criminals at a standard of their own choosing.

Yes I have seen lots of UK offenders deciding to move mainly to Holland and Germany because they are too well known and tracked within the UK - I cannot see any advantage to EU nations in having to accept the presence of UK criminals in their midst and I would be willing to bet their law enforcement agencies wish it were not so, and especially the victims of their crimes.

Unlike the vast majority of the EU we have a border that is readily controllable and for the life of me I cannot understand why the EU collectively does not see that advantage and make that one exception. I have no problem at all with freedom of movement of all other EU citizens.

I am also very much against the assisted migrant package - this is a sum that is granted by EU agencies to UK employers if they take on certain EU citizens into their workforce - currently this stands at £12500 per year - seems utterly wrong to me to use this money that has been paid in by the UK to undercut local workers.

I am also against the idea that refugees can be alloted to EU nations by the EU and individual nations cannot disagree with their imposed quota - seems to me that control over your own borders is an absolutely fundamental requirement of being a nation state. Sweden happily took in loads of refugees, far more than their alloted quote - so far so good, but what happened is that they were than granted right to stay in the EU by Swedish authorities, what that meant was those people are then entitled to freedom of movement throughout the whole of the EU. Result is that those refugees then accumulated in the their preferred nations and making a complete nonsense of the EU refugess quota system. Worth noting that unfortunately the large influx of refugees into Sweden has severely tested the kindness and patience of the residents who live in the fairly small areas of housing in Sweden where they have been accommodated.

Our own Justice sector is perfectly capable of deciding if offenders should be deported, I have an issue with EU courts interfering with our legal system which prolongs the system of deportation to thee extent that in most cases it is not practical to remove certain individuals. We are not some third world nation with a poltically controlled or theocracy controlled legal system - we are quite capable of dealing with our own legal issues when it comes to crime.
Of course other legal matters are of concern EU wide and I have no problem with having a legal system that can put those matters into an EU justice context.

So, where in that is the overt racism that Remainers claim this Leaver has? This is why I find the Remainer position offense, levelling cries of RACIST against those who do have legitimate concerns in relation to the movement of people.

When Remainers find it within themselves to be civil without resorting to insults, I am prepared to consider the points they make.

1734

We were told that a ‘Leave’ vote would wreck the country. We were told that triggering Article 50 would wreck the country. We are told actually leaving will wreck the country. So far it has remained resolutely unwrecked. Therefore I reject that premise. I mean, yes the range of ultimate outcomes is still from mildly positive to significantly negative, so wrecking is still on the table, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

As for campaigning to change regulations, that’s what we spent 45 years of membership doing. Usually, especially lately, it hasn’t worked. So trying another way seems reasonable. That’s why I don’t care about the argument that we will no longer be able to influence EU regulation - we had precious little input in the first place. Things will be a little simpler now - we can agree to abide by regulations that will benefit us, and reject those that will not.

1735

I think the trajectory in the EU is likely to result in less direct influence by EU nations on EU laws - or possibly that some nations will be more equal than others.

Reason that I state this is that EU is very mcuh in a difficult position with Poland and Hungary where both nations have elected right wing governments that appear to be making the sorts of moves that tend to restrict rights. Among those changes are the independence of appointments to their nations high courts.

The EU budget is dependent upon all EU nations agreement, and can be vetoed by one vote. The EU grant to Poland in particular is dependent upon certain rights being observed and it seems that Poland has been identified in failing to meet those requirements, hence their share of their EU grant is in jeopardy.

Result is that Poland in particular and Hungary might well join in and veto the EU budget.

Now that will get right up the noses of the rest of the EU since it will cause loads of issues, but no doubt some sort of rule dodging fudge will be developed - the EU seems to be very good at imposing rules and finding ways around them when they collectively suffer the consequencies of not following those same rules.

If this wrangling continues - I cannot see Poland backing down - after all the only reason they have been interested in the EU is because of those EU grants and the benefits of free trade. Take away those grants and Poland will continue the veto.

I expect in the next couple of years, especially following the reduction in EU finance due to the reduction in UK contributions that there will be a lot more wrngling over money, I also expect that the EU will also develop some way to prevent EU budgets being vetoed by single member states - unless those states just happen to be France and Germany.

I think that ultimately individual EU nations are going to have less influence over EU lawmaking directly - certainly there will be a reduction in the ability to have single nation vetoes.

At present the EU is generally centre left politically but when you get such politics imposed on nations that have very different political outlooks there is a huge risk of fracture - and the point is that nations individually move their political centre, I can easily see a situation where more single nations end up with very different political outlooks to the EU - and what happens if the EU tries to impose laws on states that interpret those laws as being drasticallyt out of step?

We have taken over 40 years to get the current situation and no matter what the deal with Brexit, this will be a long ongoing process - certainly the latest Brexit deal will have very many issues that will not please most people - our future relationship will take many more years to develop.

1736

And leaving will wreck the country. We finally have a deal, but every evidence-based assessment shows that the country will be poorer, worse off, than if we stayed in.

And that’s leaving aside the political damage that has been done. The country is polarised like never before, between - like America - the incurious know-nothings who hate experts and the knowledge-oriented aghast that the lunatics now run the asylum.

Scotland will leave, and Ireland will be reunited. Do you think that’s not wrecked?

We’ve spent 45 years successfully campaigning to change regulations. The EU is largely the way it is thanks to British leadership, particularly the Conservatives’ ironically. Their convenient amnesia when it comes to the very stuff that they spent decades championing, as well as the stuff they insisted should not happen and now conveniently condemn for not happening is a symptom of the utter bankruptcy of Brexit.

And it’s not as simple as all that. If we dislike a regulation and divert from it, we could face tariff and non-tariff obstructions to our business. In all likelihood the UK will opt to continue to remain in-line with EU regulations, just with no say in them now.

Well done. Slow clap.

1737

…and yet as previously posted, every single one of those doom laden scenarios have turned out to be more than just wrong, every one has proven to be a lie.

Who knows, your doom laden scenario may even be true - but cry wolf too often and this is what happens.

Our trade relations will certainly change, this is not a zero sum game - there is a whole world out there where we can develop trade relations, relationships that up till now have often been hampered by the dead hand of the EU tarriff wall - which is nothing more than a protectionist barrier. Less EU trade does not equal less trade, in fact leaving the EU itself does not mean necassarily less EU trade either - this is the dependent attitude of the remainers, afraid of change, afraid going out into the world for yourself, afraid of having to develop new relationships, too comfortable with now and fearful of the future.

1738

I love how you wave away how every single Leave claim - every single one has been proven to be a lies.

Meanwhile Remain is being proven right every day. We said the EU would not cave to ‘they need us more than we need them’ nonsense - Remain was right. We warned that world trade is geared around regional trade blocs and small countries have little hope of competing - Remain will be proven right there.

We warned that leaving the EU meant we can’t pick and choose what to keep and what not to. Remain was right.

We warned that we would not save money from leaving. Again, Remain was right.

I wonder if you’ve just been reading what Leave propaganda tells you Remain warned.

For the last, tiring, exhausting time - the EU is not remotely a protectionist racket. As far as things go, the EU is one of the most pro-free-trade blocs out there.

Want protectionism? The US. China.

You’ll learn soon enough. But you’ll blame everyone else but yourselves.

1739

Completely wrong. The EU is center right or downright right. Merkel, Macron, von der Leyen, Orban, Kacinsky… you name them: all right wing. The only “socialist” government in the EU is in Spain. The European People’s Party (conservative) has more seats in the Parliament than S&D (socialists and democrats), and that is not counting the two far right groups (the one where the British Conservatives went to cry and the one with the unqualified fascists). The so called Liberals (Renew) are pretty right wing too, specially on economic matters.
Reading your posts I cannot but notice that you either have a very approximative idea of the EU and its workings or you do have a very good idea but for some reason twist the reality to serve your arguments.

1740

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the EU is generally left of centre, its not about individual governments its about the effect of the policies such as EU grants and subsidies.

Are you seriously trying to convince me that collectively the EU has a similar outlook to the Thatcher administration, hah, yeah thats a great one, fantastic sense of humour, right of centre in the UK means towards the UK Conservative outlook, there is just not a single slight hint of that.

Left of centre in the UK tends toward the UK Labour party - which is also the outlook of the Scots Nats.

Why would UK left of centre parties identify with this darned right wing EU of which you speak? Clearly and demonstrably wrong.

Are you perhaps mistaking politically Conservative with fiscally Conservative? There is no doubt at al that Merkel is fiscally Conservative but that is a far thing from being politically Conservative.

When you look at the EU spending nations, these being the ones who propose more options to increase EU spending into individual states - these are France and Southern EU nations, the fiscally Left leaning nations and they have largely been restrained by the fiscally Conservative States, largely Northern European and UK.

The balance between the spenders and the payers has been such that for the most part financial responsibility has largely been maintained but it has always been a fight - made harder or easier but the political outlook of France which varies between being a spender and being a saver between changes of administration.

Interestingly now the the UK has left the EU, the balance in the EU parliament has decisively changed away from the savers, it means that more spending bills will now get through the EU process - also worth noting that nations who favour more EU spending are those who benefit from EU grants, unsurprisingly the very few who are net contributors tend to be less enamoured with increased EU spending becuase they understand where the money is coming from - one third of that money came from UK.

So what effect will this loss of EU revenue have on EU budgets and grants to the spending nations? One thing is for sure, belts will have to be tightened, I am not entirely sure that Germans in particular are going to be at all happy about being only one of two net contributors to the EU budget whilst all around are happily voting through spending policings whilst collecting EU grants.

Germans were exceptionally unhappy about bailing out Greece which had paid itself a generous state pension at a far lower age than German citizens were recieving - I think you can expect rather more of the same - there will be some serious tensions between the citizens of fiscally conservative EU nations and I can easily see those nations swinging far more to the right than they are now, to such an extent they will become politically right wing.

UK taxpayers are fed up with sending money to the EU, only to see it paid out as grants to companies as an incentive to move their operations from UK to Eastern Europe whilst our own workers find well paid work harder to find - especially in the industrially depresssed Northern towns and cities where the Leave vote was at its highest.

1741

I see now how you came to the conclusion you came to concerning Brexit. Discussion is futile, so be it. I won’t be so verbose, but I will repeat myself: good riddance!

1742

So you’re basically saying that you’re opinion of Brexit is based on your preconceived opinions of Brexit which were held before the referendum and which haven’t changed at all in the last four-plus years. But having lost the 2016 EU referendum and the 2019 general election where the platform was “Get Brexit Done.”, you don’t believe that Brexit voters actually want to leave the EU. Please restate your position, but my interpretation of your current position is that you’re wrong.