What will the UK do wrt Brexit?

Great Debates
1763

I saw leavers before the vote saying we’d all be better off, the UK economy would grow massively, it would be easy to get a deal and the UK held all the cards. Believing everything they read in the Express… there was plenty of delusion on display. Some would admit there might be small temporary costs, that was all.

I also have a friend who voted Leave because he’s convinced the EU is going to collapse and we should get out while we can, and another who’s from a fishing town and hoped to reverse the economic collapse there. There were lots of reasons.

1764

And your recommendation to Canadians?

Like California in being a big and influential part of a larger whole, or like Canada in being an independent nation that is strongly influenced by a much larger and more powerful neighbour. No other comparison intended.

1765

Or, like Canada in having guaranteed access to a trade block of close to half a billion consumers? Not quite as big as the EU, but essential for a trading nation like Canada.

1766

Not relevant to this analogy, because they aren’t part of the US to start with? Note that I’m not trying to argue that every country in the Americas ought to become part of the US, nor that every country in Eurasia ought to become part of the EU.

ISTM that the analogy is a little misleading because being a state in the USA is really very different from being a member nation of the EU. Despite Brexit-extremist rhetoric, the UK within the EU really did have vastly more independent sovereignty than California within the US.

Yup. Canada unilaterally withdrawing from the CUFTA-NAFTA-CUSMA free trade arrangement would be deleterious for both parties, but more so for Canada.

1767

Yes, I was talking about a possible future where ‘ever closer union’ leads to something similar to a United States of Europe. Which I already noted may never happen.

Currently, EU states are not in either position, they have much more sovereignty than California, but have agreed to give up a lot more than Canada. The EU is far more than a trade deal.

It’s very relevant to whether being a member is better in an absolute sense, vs it being too much trouble to leave.

1768

But you can’t really make the comparison of those two options across two such very different situations as EU membership and USA statehood.

1769

He pointed out that had the EU moved even a little on restricting entry to the UK on the reasonable grounds of previous criminal history or the identification of possible terrorism associates

Wrong. The EU didn’t have to concede this because the EU already allowed Member States to do it.

Leavers are prepared to accept the cost of their choice

Wrong. They deny that there is a cost. It’s all scaremongering, remember? If they’re facing the cost head-on, why are they in such denial? Even now?

Come on. The right answer is, nobody ever likes to admit they’re conned. It’s ok.

You’re even doing it. You’re actively rewriting history about how the referendum was conducted and what was said by both sides. Leavers have never, ever even acknowledged there’d be a cost. Oh, sure, you point to individual Leavers who are saying that, but they’re few and far between.

But look at opinion polls since 2017, which shows a majority consistently think Brexit is a mistake. That’s only going to grow as the damage is made manifest.

So your claim that Leavers are ready for this is 1) false, 2) assuming that only the opinion of a subset of the population matters now and forever and 3) should be dropped, by you, now and forever. Just stop it.

You seem to have zero idea of how cars in the EU are made. There’ll hardly be any British car industry at this rate.

If leaving the EU zone fully is actually the disaster that the doom mongers claim, sterling will fall, and it will fall plenty

It has done.

it will be cheaper to buy goods from the UK becuase of the devaluation.

Only if you think British goods spring up from British earth devoid of any outside work. British food is grown with EU (and other) fertilisers and equipment, for example. An absolutely vast portion of our imports come in via Amsterdam, and that’s not changing any time soon.

This is literally the first time I’ve ever seen anyone try to put a silver lining on a collapse of a currency.

Lots and lots of disruption to be sure, but it really is not in the interests of the EU to watch UK currency to fall due to massive loss of UK markets.

The EU can cope because it retains - and is actively expanding - its existing trade deals with other countries. Meanwhile the UK limps on with a pittance of what it formerly had.

We’re already getting details of the deal’s finer points coming in:

  • Over 250 million customs declarations
  • The need to for parallel chemical registration and product safety testing
  • The need to register trademarks twice, in the UK and in the EU

Which means tons of red tape for British business, and loss of competitiveness.

And from JP Morgan:

The bad news for the UK, in our view, is that the EU appears to have secured a deal which allows it to retain nearly all of the advantages it derives from its trading relationship with the UK, while giving it the ability to use regulatory structures to cherry pick among sectors where the UK had previously enjoyed advantages in the trading relationship. This applies to the services sector in particular, but to parts of the goods sector to.

Doesn’t seem to be much to celebrate, But yeah mate, you keep clutching at those straws.

1770

I’m trying to follow the logic here: why will it be a good thing for British consumers to pay up to 40% more for consumer goods imported from the EU?

Or for British manufacturers to pay up to 40% more for inputs (eg - parts) imported from the EU? And then, since the costs of EU inputs have gone up, the final market price of the British manufactured product will have to go up?

Like I said earlier, I’m just not getting it.

1771

IAN casdave and cannot speak for them, but I think the crux of their argument was a projected silver lining about UK goods costing less for EU buyers:

I don’t get how having your imported consumer goods and your imported manufacturing materials cost 40% more while the selling price of your manufactured goods remains about the same works out in your favor in the long run, but then IANA economist either.

1772

Can you elaborate on this point? Just curiosity on my part.

1773

IAN Malden_Capell and cannot speak for them etc., but based on their response to casdave’s remark,

this seems to relate to the 2017 “Brexit: UK-EU movement of people” report, specifically par. 44 in ch. 2:

IOW, AFAICT, although the pre-Brexit UK was in the EU, it was not in the Schengen zone, and it could and did turn away travelers from elsewhere in the EU at border checks.

So it appears to me that Malden_Capell was right in saying that casdave was wrong in saying that the EU was not allowing the pre-Brexit UK adequate control over its own borders “on the reasonable grounds of previous criminal history or the identification of possible terrorism associates”.

1774

Thanks, Kimstu. Even within Schengen IIRC Member States can declare national interest reasons and block individual cases or shut down their borders in a crisis. We’ve already seen that with COVID.

1775

So, after all the years of fuss about fishing rights… the British fishing industry will be WORSE off due to Brexit.

The UK’s fishing sector will face immediate hardship and long-lasting damage under the new European Union deal, industry leaders and boat owners have claimed.

Mike Park, the chief executive of the Scottish White Fish Producers Association, said his members were “deeply aggrieved” about the immediate future. It was far from clear whether fleets would benefit greatly once the transition period was over.

“The issue of sovereignty and our future ability to negotiate additional shares after the five-and-a-half-year window would seem clouded by so much complexity that it is difficult at this time to see how the UK government can use its newly recovered sovereignty to improve the situation of my members,” he said.

The fishing industry seems surprised for some reason… :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

1776

Thank you for this. That matches my own personal experience last time I was in Europe. When we were leaving the UK for France on the Chunnel, we had to go through passport control. When we flew from France to the Czech republic, no passport controls at all. When we flew from Prague back to London, there were passport controls again.

1777

I think this is the 4th or 5th post I’ve seen from you that does this. The word is bloc, no k.

1778

Another Brexit regretter casdave will probably pretend doesn’t exist.

Peter Wood, director of UK Glass Eels which exports across Europe, told Sky News: "We all produce the documentation but unfortunately our customers have now got a raft of documentation to produce to allow the imports to go ahead.

“So why buy from the UK when you might as well buy from another producer in France who can deliver to the door with no documentation, no problems?”

Mr Wood voted to leave the EU, but said he regrets that decision.

"I thought we were going to get a global market and this was going to be a new opportunity but it hasn’t worked out like this.

“I wouldn’t have voted for Brexit if I knew we were going to lose our jobs,” he added.

1779

He didn’t just vote for Brexit, he appeared in videos for UKIP encouraging others.
Are we still allowed schadenfreude now we’ve left the EU? It’s a shame for his staff, but he got what he voted and campaigned for.

1780

Hmm. It appears that the drafting of final deal was a bit rushed and not proofread. Either that, or Boris has had the draft ready for a couple of decades and forgot to update it.

1781

Well seeing as Brexiters generally wanted to take their country back, I presumed it was to 1897, so 1997 is an improvement I guess

1782

That explains why he posted it to his MySpace page.