Especially because it never was about “sovereignty” or “taking back control”. It was about dodging taxes.
You might notice that that part is the only thing about Brexit that actually works. The likes of Rees-Mogg still can’t believe that they are getting away with it.
I’m not disputing your claim. But it’s a bit telegraphic for an ignorant Yank to follow.
May I ask which taxes are being dodged by who via what means? What’s specifically different pre- vs. post-Brexit?
And he thinks the fish are happy.
So that’s all right.
There are some EU tax rules, forbidding routing income through tax havens. Leading figures in the “leave” movement stood to gain a fortune. That is the motivation of one part of the leave movement the other driver was Russia that stood to weaken the EU. The people that voted for Brexit were spun a web of transparent lies. Last I checked every bullshit “argument” of the Leave movement has been debunked over and over. The people that are now running the British government do not give a shit about the rubes that voted for them. Hence the total lack of preparation and utter chaos at the borders. (Haulage firms are avoiding the Channel like the plague; volume is at one fifth of pre-Brexit and they still have to wait ridiculously long)
Thank you. The nexus of fat cats, politicians, and tax havens can fill volumes. Funny how little came of the
Want to understand the terrifying philosophical background to Rees-Mogg’s and the Brexiters’ politics?
“The Sovereign Individual details strategies necessary for adapting financially to the next phase of Western civilization”.
Short version:
The nimble elite will run happily roughshod across the heads and shoulders of the teeming masses of useless loser humanity. And rightly so. It’s good to be one of that elite. Mind your balance; they’re a wobbly surface to run on.
See also:
In particular, Brexit has forced Europe to develop its financial autonomy, de Galhau said.
The EU will allow London clearinghouses to operate across the continent for 18 months, because the union does not have comparable institutions of its own.
Once that deadline has expired, however, financial transactions in euros are in theory going to have to be settled within the EU.
One area where Britain has genuinely been a world leader is banking.
Forcing the EU to upgrade its own systems instead of relying on London is not just shooting yourself in the foot, it’s chopping off your foot.
Brexit will be - and has already begun to be - devastating for musicians (pop and classical alike) who relied on being able to tour and perform to a wide range of audiences. Now travel to Europe involves arranging costly and time-consuming work visas, which erase what were already very thin profit margins for touring. And the exceptionally stupid part is that the EU offered to allow visa-free tours and Boris said no, for no good reason whatsoever.
Yet another way in which Brits will suffer thanks to Brexit. (And don’t get me started on the hot mess around Erasmus…)
I expect that those 2,500 finance jobs that moved out of the UK are high-paying ones, with salaries in six or seven figures. So the UK will lose the income tax revenue from these people, along with their spending on real estate, dining, entertainment and so forth. So, good job.
Not necessarily, but certainly high five-figures at least, and well above the average salary.
The bigger issue, as already indicated above, is that London’s dominance as a financial centre was to a large degree a matter of inertia. Once companies had a compelling reason to move elsewhere, that inertia - which was the work of centuries - was gone for good.
Yes, within a few years London will no longer be the financial hub of Europe, and it never will be again.
You may think you’re being hyperbolic. But the fact remains that London’s status as a financial hub is greatly diminished and will be for the foreseeable future, and that there is now an impetus for there not to even be a “financial hub of Europe”. In a global market, why do firms even have to have their headquarters all in the same place? They did it because that’s the way it was always done. And now it will be done differently. Firms have scattered to Paris, Dublin, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Berlin and so forth and are doing business differently now (and that’s before the pandemic demonstrated how remote working for entire organisations was practicable). London will still be a strong financial centre but it will be weaker than it was, and with it the amount of influence Britain has in setting the standards for the European and global financial sectors is also weakened.
So while I enjoy the Leavers’ “If there aren’t roving cannibal gangs raping and pillaging through the countryside, Brexit was fine” argument as much as the next guy, the fact remains that London’s financial sector has taken a serious hit, just as its cultural, educational, healthcare, manufacturing, agricultural and various other sectors have. And if you don’t understand why the concept of London as the indisputable financial hub of Europe was important, I can’t really help you.
But at least we got some blue passports out of it.
I was actually being completely serious, not sarcastic or hyperbolic. Sorry if it came across that way.
Ah. My apologies for the misinterpretation.
Not strictly true!
New blue British passport rollout to begin in March - BBC News
Some important quotes:
“The UK was never formally compelled to change the colour of its passport in the 1980s but did so with other member states.”
“The blue passports will be made by Gemalto, owned by French firm Thales. However, they will be personalised with the holder’s details in the UK.”
“In Europe, people from Iceland, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina carry blue passports, while it is a popular colour in central and south America - including in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Uruguay and Venezuela.”
So ‘blue passports’ was another Brexit lie: we could have had them all along, but chose to change to burgundy!
Had there been a semblance of an industrial policy aiming to rebalance the economy so that finance isn’t the biggest egg in the basket, it might not have been so bad. But that would take time, as well as more imagination and forward thinking than this lot can muster.
I am curious about what is at stake here. How much is the UK will lose if the EU builds up the same capability.
It says here that the UK Financial Services contributes £75Billion in Tax revenue. I thought it was more. Nonetheless, it is a golden egg.
For comparision the NHS costs about £130Billion
So my question is how much of this financial services can the EU capture from the UK over the next few years?
It is fairly ironic that the EU should start building this capability. It has long been a bone of contention between the UK and the EU, during its membership, that there were proposals by some EU states to introduce a financial transaction tax to help pay for the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. That would unfairly affect the UK financial services sector and the UK would use its veto.
Maybe the EU is going to take financial services seriously.
It says here that 25% of the Financal Services business in the UK is with the EU.
I hope the UK government has a cunning plan to mitigate that potential loss of business and tax revenue. Quite apart from the tax revenue, the sector employs a million people in the UK.
However, nothing is going to happen overnight. It will be a slow puncture. The big threat to the UK ecomomy is the lockdown and massive debt pile the country has accumulated in the last year. The only way out of that is to go for growth once we come out of lockdown.
The EU threat to the UK Financial Services sector requires a cunning plan to mitigate its effects.
This slow puncture is a popular idea here.
I stick to my prediction that Boris will not last January.
“Industry policy”?
Are you sure you are talking about the UK? That shit sounds more like the USSR.