Brexit discussion thread IV

trellheim

The transition agreement is ready to go apart from that pesky 20% of issues ( unfortunately they are the difficult ones like NI )

Leroy42

Graph from the Economist of the likely effects on GDP over 5 years form a no deal scenario

https://twitter.com/RobertAlanWard/status/1026355342492557312

Jebus, its really annoying that Ireland are going to have to pay such a high price for this.

Silent Running

Leroy42 wrote: »

I am starting to believe (maybe hope more than anything) that this is in fact the only real outcome.

They simply cannot go with no deal. The UK, at the very least, need a transition period. They have 'prepared' on that basis. There is simply not enough time left to be close to ready for 29th March crash out. The UK know it, the EU know it.

And that is before you get into the fact that a no deal, even if prepared for, would be terrible for the UK. Article in the UKIndo today about Australian beef industry looking to flood the UK market with Australian beef. The US would be looking to do the same. IN the short term the Brexiteers will applaud a drop in prices as proof that Brexit worked, but will be quite when a year or two later all the UK farms are sold off.

At every step in the process May has moved to the EU position. I was seen as a holding strategy but crunch time is coming. She would need to show previously unseen levels of determination, strength and leadership to change now.

On the other side, of course, is the fact that the likes of ERG need to nothing at this stage to prevent a crash out. But if it comes to a vote on the deal, or no deal, will MPs really vote for the latter? Will they really vote for something that, at least in the short-term, is going to cause such problems and probably a recession? Sure the people want Brexit, but we all know that what people really care about is food on the table, money for going out, and healthcare etc etc. Ideology tends to take a back seat when you are on the dole and hungry.

Leroy42 wrote: »

Whilst I applaud you for the knowledge of the sections, I fear that it was a waste of time.

The headline is nothing but that. A go at trying to blame the EU for the massive, monumental mess that they have created with BRexit. Whether it has any basis in truth is irrelevant. Once the headline is out there other media will feel obliged to talk about it, and that means bringing balance, as to simply bring on some EU expert to point out what you just have would be claimed as bias and lack of time for the Brexit "position".

If it was even remotely true, surely the question is why the feck did they bother with the Chequers position? Why did May adopt a position where she lost two senior cabinet ministers? Why are they only finding this little nugget out now? Was HMG not aware of this before. Have they just spend 18 months negotiating when in reality (their reality!) the EU have no choice to do a deal?

I agree with all of the above, but can't help but wonder what the result of the vote would have been if this picture had been painted ahead of polling booths opening.

Zubeneschamali

Leroy42 wrote: »

Jebus, its really annoying that Ireland are going to have to pay such a high price for this.

If they seriously think that no-deal is only costing the UK 4% they are off their rockers. They haven't even left yet and brexit has cost 2% already.


If Ireland pays 4%, I'd guess the UK will be 8-12.

EdgeCase

I think people are overestimating how much the Tories and urban England cares about agriculture. They've some wooly, fluffy nostalgic notion about it but that's all they have.

I'm not meaning to slag people off but many of them seem to be very unaware of where food comes from and will be unable to make the connection between the exit from the EU, removing all the cushions that protected rural life and when turmoil, damage and destruction of rural life in Britian and probably Northern Ireland happens, they won't make that connection either. A few lovely preserved museum like estates will keep the upper class Tories happy and the rest of British agriculture will be thrown to the wolves of the global markets.

In reality, British rural dwellers were being protected by politics that was probably reflective of the activism of French, Irish and other EU farmers fad more than it was of their own governments and in general rural life is poorly represented in the UK (cough: English) system.

It's a terribly worrying future ahead for British agriculture and it's sad to see. Rural Britian is remarkably like rural Ireland and those communities have been screwed over and utterly mislead and missold a pack of lies that will utterly undermine them.

Rhineshark

Silent Running wrote: »

I agree with all of the above, but can't help but wonder what the result of the vote would have been if this picture had been painted ahead of polling booths opening.

I suspect there would have been a lot more requests for the hardliners to get their heads checked.

I agree that this does seem to be the intent though, and it's not like we didn't know the likes of Legatum were getting their boots under the table. Hard Brexit benefits them and the other disastor capitalists, who are surely the lowest forms of human life since they proliferate on misery.

An Ciarraioch

There will be more Brexit talks in Brussels on Thursday and Friday week:

https://twitter.com/adamfleming/status/1026413059831676928

Infini

Leroy42 wrote: »

Graph from the Economist of the likely effects on GDP over 5 years form a no deal scenario

https://twitter.com/RobertAlanWard/status/1026355342492557312

Jebus, its really annoying that Ireland are going to have to pay such a high price for this.

It's possible we'll be able to offset this in the long term of course but for us to suffer that kind of damage will come back to haunt the English down the line as neither we or the EU will easily forget something like that.

zapitastas

EdgeCase wrote: »

I think people are overestimating how much the Tories and urban England cares about agriculture. They've some wooly, fluffy nostalgic notion about it but that's all they have.

I'm not meaning to slag people off but many of them seem to be very unaware of where food comes from and will be unable to make the connection between the exit from the EU, removing all the cushions that protected rural life and when turmoil, damage and destruction of rural life in Britian and probably Northern Ireland happens, they won't make that connection either. A few lovely preserved museum like estates will keep the upper class Tories happy and the rest of British agriculture will be thrown to the wolves of the global markets.

In reality, British rural dwellers were being protected by politics that was probably reflective of the activism of French, Irish and other EU farmers fad more than it was of their own governments and in general rural life is poorly represented in the UK (cough: English) system.

It's a terribly worrying future ahead for British agriculture and it's sad to see. Rural Britian is remarkably like rural Ireland and those communities have been screwed over and utterly mislead and missold a pack of lies that will utterly undermine them.

Rural England bares little resemblance to rural parts of France or Ireland.

Nody

EdgeCase wrote: »

I think people are overestimating how much the Tories and urban England cares about agriculture. They've some wooly, fluffy nostalgic notion about it but that's all they have.

Only need to read the comments below the Indy article on Austrian beef import to see that; in regards to Australia shipping in cheap hormone treated beef etc. The response?

• I'm a vegetarian; I don't care, next!
• Just put the origin of the food and let people decide
• I've tried Austrian beef and it's far superior to EU beef!
• There's no proof hormone treated beef is bad anyway
• Etc.

badtoro

EdgeCase wrote: »

I think people are overestimating how much the Tories and urban England cares about agriculture. They've some wooly, fluffy nostalgic notion about it but that's all they have.

I'm not meaning to slag people off but many of them seem to be very unaware of where food comes from and will be unable to make the connection between the exit from the EU, removing all the cushions that protected rural life and when turmoil, damage and destruction of rural life in Britian and probably Northern Ireland happens, they won't make that connection either. A few lovely preserved museum like estates will keep the upper class Tories happy and the rest of British agriculture will be thrown to the wolves of the global markets.

In reality, British rural dwellers were being protected by politics that was probably reflective of the activism of French, Irish and other EU farmers fad more than it was of their own governments and in general rural life is poorly represented in the UK (cough: English) system.

It's a terribly worrying future ahead for British agriculture and it's sad to see. Rural Britian is remarkably like rural Ireland and those communities have been screwed over and utterly mislead and missold a pack of lies that will utterly undermine them.

Check out the Brexit section of a forum called The Farming Forum, come back after reading the vitriol on there, I'd be interested if you still feel sorry for British agriculture.

flatty

badtoro wrote: »

EdgeCase wrote: »

I think people are overestimating how much the Tories and urban England cares about agriculture. They've some wooly, fluffy nostalgic notion about it but that's all they have.

I'm not meaning to slag people off but many of them seem to be very unaware of where food comes from and will be unable to make the connection between the exit from the EU, removing all the cushions that protected rural life and when turmoil, damage and destruction of rural life in Britian and probably Northern Ireland happens, they won't make that connection either. A few lovely preserved museum like estates will keep the upper class Tories happy and the rest of British agriculture will be thrown to the wolves of the global markets.

In reality, British rural dwellers were being protected by politics that was probably reflective of the activism of French, Irish and other EU farmers fad more than it was of their own governments and in general rural life is poorly represented in the UK (cough: English) system.

It's a terribly worrying future ahead for British agriculture and it's sad to see. Rural Britian is remarkably like rural Ireland and those communities have been screwed over and utterly mislead and missold a pack of lies that will utterly undermine them.

Check out the Brexit section of a forum called The Farming Forum, come back after reading the vitriol on there, I'd be interested if you still feel sorry for British agriculture.

I have dealings with many British farmers. Most are quiet unassuming types, and are utterly appalled by brexit. One said to me last week "I just don't know what's even right or wrong anymore". They are lovely people who, by and large, farm as it is their heritage, and through duty or love of it, and they scrape by.

EdgeCase

badtoro wrote: »

Check out the Brexit section of a forum called The Farming Forum, come back after reading the vitriol on there, I'd be interested if you still feel sorry for British agriculture.

You're getting that across all sorts of forums, some people are even seeking out articles and just going on a rant in the comments. I'm not even sure all of them are necessarily even from British agriculture.

You've vitriolic types everywhere and you've farmers who've swallowed the toxic nonsense they're being fed. You'll always get that in any % of a population and I don't take a few ranters on an online forum as representative of British agriculture.

Of course there are hard-line Brexiteers in agriculture like there are in all sorts of other sectors. It doesn't mean they're necessarily representative of the whole group.

The farmers that I know in England and Scotland are *very* like their Irish and French counterparts but they're far less politically influential than either of those groups. There are differences because of how land ownership sometimes works, but the similarities are enormous, especially in smaller scale farms.

They're being very badly represented and sold a total lie by hardcore economic libertarians who've simply got a documatic objection to any form or regulation and seem to want to move back to a type of raw capitalism that hasn't been seen (even in the US) since before the Wall Street crash.

I personally know some English farmers and they realise they'll be ruined by this and didn't vote for it. They're being dragged out by populism.

There'll be a very hard reality check in the British countryside after 2019 if we end up going too far off the cliff.

An Ciarraioch

An interesting phenomenon this summer has been two Irish soccer players signing for European clubs - one for Bayern Munich, and the other for Inter Milan:

https://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/transfer-window/irish-teenager-ryan-nolan-19-signs-for-italian-giants-inter-milan-37182753.html

Still seems unlikely that it would become a more regular occurrence post-Brexit, but Irish players could well see more Europa League football by signing for mid-table European teams, than is currently the case in the EPL.

McGiver

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Leroy42 wrote: »

Jebus, its really annoying that Ireland are going to have to pay such a high price for this.

If they seriously think that no-deal is only costing the UK 4% they are off their rockers. They haven't even left yet and brexit has cost 2% already.


If Ireland pays 4%, I'd guess the UK will be 8-12.

Indeed, 4% is the lowest end of the estimations, the higher end is about 12%. It would likely be at least 6% in my opinion.

Leroy42

McGiver wrote: »

Indeed, 4% is the lowest end of the estimations, the higher end is about 12%. It would likely be at least 6% in my opinion.

And would Ireland suffer to the same ratio, so perhaps 5 or 11%?

Jebus! All because the UK don't like the world changing

McGiver

Apparently some Brexiteers think that the EU (who is that exactly?) want to keep the UK in the EU out of the fear of missing UK's EU budget contribution. That the EU needs desperately the UK's money.
And when presented with facts i.e. that those missing 20b will be redistributed amongst the EU27 and that the Euro budget is only about 1% of the EU GDP and that Germany’s net EU contribution would raise from about 4% to 5% of its national budget and that Irish contribution would increase only marginall, their response is:

Oh I am well aware that the over-riding issue is an ideological, socialist one towards One World Government. That is why so much of the talk by the eurocrats has been of “punishing” Britain for daring to want to leave. We are now hearing from natonal leaders, primarily the ones who have actually lived under Communism, to the effect that the EU should ot seek to hurt Britain. That seems to be cutting little ice with Barnier, Juncker and that nasty German piece of work, Selmayr.

In the short term, however, Ireland’s specific beef is that it knows it will be hurt badly when the UK leaves. Given some of the nastier and wilder comments coming out of the Irish Taoiseach’s mouth, I don’t think he even understands international treaties anyway. He is an intellectual pygmy amongst pygmies. And a prat. The little man is being operated from Brussels and it shows.

I’m not the one who is worrying about the EU’s budget by the way. I wish the project nothing but ill. The concerns about where the money will come from emanate from EU leaders, not me.

Tin-foil hats and racist insults to the Irish. How many % of the Brexiteers have opinions like these? 10%? That's 1.7m of insane people...

McGiver

Leroy42 wrote: »

McGiver wrote: »

Indeed, 4% is the lowest end of the estimations, the higher end is about 12%. It would likely be at least 6% in my opinion.

And would Ireland suffer to the same ratio, so perhaps 5 or 11%?

Jebus! All because the UK don't like the world changing

As per the EU paper on Brexit (page 35), it would be 0.75 to 4% for both the UK and Ireland actually. But the two studies cited are from 2016.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2017/595374/IPOL_STU(2017)595374_EN.pdf

BonnieSituation

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

An interesting phenomenon this summer has been two Irish soccer players signing for European clubs - one for Bayern Munich, and the other for Inter Milan:

https://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/transfer-window/irish-teenager-ryan-nolan-19-signs-for-italian-giants-inter-milan-37182753.html

Still seems unlikely that it would become a more regular occurrence post-Brexit, but Irish players could well see more Europa League football by signing for mid-table European teams, than is currently the case in the EPL.

In fairness Nolan is a class above and has sought this out. Brexit notwithstanding it would be a welcome fillip to Irish soccer for the players to go abroad to anywhere else but Britain. The difficulty though is that we may see from our POV is that weith it becoming harder for non-EU and EU players to play in England that CTA players aka Irish players will start to fill those gaps. Which imo brings us backwards.

BonnieSituation

And in case you weren't worried already about going hungry:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/06/police-leaders-warn-home-secretary-public-safety-threat-from-no-deal-brexit

The Guardian wrote:

No-deal Brexit poses major risk to public safety, say police leaders

A no-deal Brexit poses a major risk to public safety, with police officers instantly losing vital access to cross-border investigative powers and databases, the home secretary has been warned in a damning letter from the national body of police and crime commissioners.

In the leaked document – marked “official sensitive” – the police leaders urge Sajid Javid to immediately draft contingency plans, warning that officers faced “a significant loss of operational capacity” should the UK crash out of the EU in March.

They say that they are becoming “increasingly concerned that such a loss of capacity could pose significant risks to our local communities”, and urge the home secretary to act swiftly to address their fears.

Sam Russell

McGiver wrote: »

Apparently some Brexiteers think that the EU (who is that exactly?) want to keep the UK in the EU out of the fear of missing UK's EU budget contribution. That the EU needs desperately the UK's money.
And when presented with facts i.e. that those missing 20b will be redistributed amongst the EU27 and that the Euro budget is only about 1% of the EU GDP and that Germany’s net EU contribution would raise from about 4% to 5% of its national budget and that Irish contribution would increase only marginall, their response is:

Tin-foil hats and racist insults to the Irish. How many % of the Brexiteers have opinions like these? 10%? That's 1.7m of insane people...

I think that anyone who considers the UK contribution to the EU is too much will quickly realise that the UK contribution to NI is about the same and may look to reconsider whether that is worth it to keep NI within the UK. If only they could get some oher country to take it over and bear the cost!

The oft heard complaint about EU buraucrats being unelected, and undemocratic sound a bit hollow when NI has no assembly for over 18 months and none likely in the foreseeable future - now we have unelected buraucrats running NI with no democratic oversight at all.

I wonder how pst-Brexit will fare with the Henry VIII powers allowing UK Ministers to ride rough-shod over the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies, with no proper democratic oversight.

ambro25

BonnieSituation wrote: »

(...)

The Guardian wrote:

No-deal Brexit poses major risk to public safety, say police leaders
(...)

They say that they are becoming “increasingly concerned that such a loss of capacity could pose significant risks to our local communities”, and urge the home secretary to act swiftly to address their fears.

The elephant in the room is not so much curtailed multi-jurisdictional cooperation I fear, but that this “loss of capacity” refers to domestic loss of capacity after years of taking the axe to constabularies’ budgets, leaving them ill-equipped to police and prevent xenophobic excesses prompted by the mass experiencing of no-deal hardships by a sizeable contingent of disenfranchised the length and breadth of the country. A risk, which no police type or politician could ever voice out loud, because politics.

Obviously, I wouldn’t expect pogroms, or mass instances of Jo Cox repeats...but we’ve seen the sheer volume of anecdotes relayed by EU migrants on social media, and the official stats to verify the phenomenon as more than just happenstance. That was ‘just’ on the back of the referendum, when things in the country were still fairly good at the time.

There’s places in South Yorkshire I certainly wouldn’t go back to visit, before a great many years after a ‘no deal’, put it that way. Even though my spoken English has a northern accent (according to most; it’s a 2nd language to me).

flatty

ambro25 wrote: »

BonnieSituation wrote: »

(...)

The Guardian wrote:

No-deal Brexit poses major risk to public safety, say police leaders
(...)

They say that they are becoming “increasingly concerned that such a loss of capacity could pose significant risks to our local communities”, and urge the home secretary to act swiftly to address their fears.

The elephant in the room is not so much curtailed multi-jurisdictional cooperation I fear, but that this “loss of capacity” refers to domestic loss of capacity after years of taking the axe to constabularies’ budgets, leaving them ill-equipped to police and prevent xenophobic excesses prompted by the mass experiencing of no-deal hardships by a sizeable contingent of disenfranchised the length and breadth of the country. A risk, which no police type or politician could ever voice out loud, because politics.

Obviously, I wouldn’t expect pogroms, or mass instances of Jo Cox repeats...but we’ve seen the sheer volume of anecdotes relayed by EU migrants on social media, and the official stats to verify the phenomenon as more than just happenstance. That was ‘just’ on the back of the referendum, when things in the country were still fairly good at the time.

There’s places in South Yorkshire I certainly wouldn’t go back to visit, before a great many years after a ‘no deal’, put it that way. Even though my spoken English has a northern accent (according to most; it’s a 2nd language to me).

I sadly agree. I also expect the UK economy to take a double digit hit with a hard brexit. The brexiteers can clearly be seen to be cowards, however, and will show the belly, and I fully expect a deal of sorts will be done (likely an extended transition, carrying with it an increased likelihood of a change of govt and demographic, and some form of rethink by the UK), with the brexiteers braying their vitriol from the safety of the ditch.

Just out of interest, while I'm pretty sure the majority of posters here know the £350 million a week number was hilariously misleading does anyone have a handy link to what the figure is once the rebates, farm subsidies and other EU funding into the UK is taken off?

Came across this in the Independent comments, good stuff.

Spook_ie

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Just out of interest, while I'm pretty sure the majority of posters here know the £350 million a week number was hilariously misleading does anyone have a handy link to what the figure is once the rebates, farm subsidies and other EU funding into the UK is taken off?

Some facts n figures under this link

https://www.statista.com/statistics/316691/european-union-eu-budget-share-of-contributions/

Spook_ie

Spook_ie wrote: »

Some facts n figures under this link

https://www.statista.com/statistics/316691/european-union-eu-budget-share-of-contributions/

Sources are hidden without paying so I don't know what they mean by "net".

EdgeCase

McGiver wrote: »

Apparently some Brexiteers think that the EU (who is that exactly?) want to keep the UK in the EU out of the fear of missing UK's EU budget contribution. That the EU needs desperately the UK's money.
And when presented with facts i.e. that those missing 20b will be redistributed amongst the EU27 and that the Euro budget is only about 1% of the EU GDP and that Germany’s net EU contribution would raise from about 4% to 5% of its national budget and that Irish contribution would increase only marginall, their response is:

Tin-foil hats and racist insults to the Irish. How many % of the Brexiteers have opinions like these? 10%? That's 1.7m of insane people...

When they resort to nasty name calling and nasty insults, you can tell they really have no logical argument.

Rhineshark

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Sources are hidden without paying so I don't know what they mean by "net".

By their GDP (2016) it should be 17b/yr. They get a rebate of 3.9b, so paying 13.1b. Then there is about 4.5b reinvested into the UK so was working out at 8.6b/yr over the last budgetary period.

Money also gets invested into the private sector but isn't counted in the above. Then there's what the UK actually get out of it in terms of economies of scale in trade and what they need to do to facilitate it (I.e. that they don't mess around with needing 12,000 customs staff as pre-SM, savings on all the rules of origin and phyto checks and paperwork.)

Then there's the benefit of having a 450m market open to them...


Including all the benefits etc, as immeasurable as they are in some ways, I strongly suspect the UK was well in the black in terms of how much money they actually ended up with from being in the CU/SM.

Ref for above numbers; https://fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-membership-fee-55-million/

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/external/html/budgetataglance/default_en.html#united_kingdom

This is quite interesting. Europarl needs more attention as an interesting and user-friendly resource. That voting tool linked somewhere upthread was from Europe too. (And it clears up a lot of the wild red herrings that the anti-EU brigade hurl, the annoying technical ones where you're pretty damn sure they're wrong and have read why they are but can't currently remember enough of the minutiae to argue it. )

McGiver

Sam Russell wrote: »

The oft heard complaint about EU buraucrats being unelected, and undemocratic sound a bit hollow when NI has no assembly for over 18 months and none likely in the foreseeable future - now we have unelected buraucrats running NI with no democratic oversight at all.

I can just speculate but I think the key thing in English flag waving Brexiteer lunatic's mind is as follows:

unelected = England doesn't have full control over it and cannot force others to do what England wants at will; therefore the EU is bad, it doesn't jump as per England's whistling like a trained dog.

And as we know the British "constitutional" arrangement in terms of "countries" is probably the least democratic in the EU where different constituent areas/regions claim different ethnicity and/or language and/or history and hence demand high degree of self-governance. Compare with federal and quasi-federal arrangements in Austria, Germany, Belgium, but even Italy and Spain.