Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117742123#Comment_117742123

To a degree, they can certainly solve short term logistical crises by throwing cash at them but ultimately, the taxpayer fits the bill for this. If the Tories continue their process of making the word "conservative" capacious by raising income taxes, it begins to beg the question of what they're for if they're not guaranteeing economic stability, the union or even low taxes. There has already been signs of low level instability in their southeastern strongholds over the alleged plans to spend money on feckless northerners who'll only spend it on ale and whippets.

A significantly bigger problem is the political and economic illiteracy of much of the population. I had one person put it to me that the 50,000 jobs in customs were good only for me to offer a rejoinder that the taxpayer would be the one paying the salaries. The problem the Tories have is that once Brexit has tangibly negative effects for their base, then they're done. Anyone on the continent or in Ireland doesn't have to worry about who they'll blame but since they've so desperately claimed Brexit as "theirs" to the point of painting anyone and everyone else as being closet remainers and worse means that that ire is only going one way. Better men than Johnson have opened political pythoses only to be hoisted on their own petards.

I live with a HGV driver and by all accounts, it's dreadfully brutal work for sod all compensation. By all means, they can raise the wages and throw more money at them but that only solves the problem to a degree. Even if this problem gets solved, there'll only be another. Waving the British vaccine wrapped in the Union flag for so long means that covid isn't really an excuse any more. Once more, Boris Johnson's strategy of kicking the can and marking it as future Boris' problem has failed.

I think that it's unlikely the government is going to permit mass starvation through incompetence as you say. That said, it's appalling to see that both the PM and the advisor he outsourced himself to have been quoted as being happy to see mass deaths from covid if that's what was necessary to avoid lockdown. Don't even start me on the Home Secretary of Bengali descent's comments on using food as leverage on Ireland (which unlike the UK is self sufficient for food).

I'm not really worried but that's because I'm an EU citizen with a niche skillset that can get me a sideways move into employment in the continent if need be and I wouldn't even have to learn the language. The great British public has paid an awfully high price to spite people they don't like. An awfully high price indeed.

ambro25

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117741722#Comment_117741722

Re. HGV drivers shuffling from one opportunity to another:

https://twitter.com/es_ska_pade/status/1425791136313053185?s=20

Oh.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117741635#Comment_117741635

The absence of a free press is a big factor. Much of this crazy post-truth stuff is happening because British "newspapers" are instructed what to report by offshore right wing billionaires. If they had a normal press, Tory corruption and incompetence would be the only story on the front pages.

Retr0gamer

I can only see raising the wages going so far. I mean they can make it more lucrative to do haulage to the UK but if you are sitting for days at a time or have the threat of being turned back because of paperwork it pretty much negates the extra money they are paying HGV drivers.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117742896#Comment_117742896

What I find amazing about the whole "Brexit experiment" is that a first world western democracy has voluntarily chosen to do this to itself. It's as if their electorate began to take liberal democracy and the 50 year status quo for granted and thought it would be a bit of a whizz to chuck it all in the bin and give Farage and his mates a go.

Even more weirdly, some of them seem quite aware their experiment might leave the country poorer and worse off but don't even appear to care.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117742896#Comment_117742896

I've been to Russia. When you're in one of the posh establishments, you might as well be in London, Paris or New York but most of Moscow and St. Petersburg are quite run down and parts look like the Nazis were just shortly given the boot. It's a second world country with an economy smaller than that of Spain.

One way or another, the Tory party is going to end the UK as we know it.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117742136#Comment_117742136

Track and Trace has spaffed £22bn up the wall for little measurable effect.

The 3% pay 'rise' for the NHS will cost just £1.5Bn by comparison ie. one month at £350 per week.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117745492#Comment_117745492

The 22bn track and trace wasn’t spaffed up a wall, it was spaffed directly into designated bank accounts. It’s really not much worse than the post Soviet kleptocracy, and possibly deliberately given that the Russian Oligarchs are doing great these days while Putin is one of the richest people on the planet

Capt'n Midnight

Two Brexit news items.

- More than half a million EU citizens are still awaiting a decision over UK settled status Lawyers have warned that delays can last weeks, leaving some EU nationals unable to work or rent. That's close enough to 1% of the population and more than the population of non-republicans in NI

KFC suffers supply shortage for food and packaging - because of disruptions in the supply chain. Because driver shortage ?

Cookie_Monster

There must be coming a point where supermarket supply chains will have to be priotitised over other industries from a trucking point of view? How, not sure but it's clear other options like the army are far far short of covering.

Can the govt ban/restrict non food deliveries via artics in the immediate term perhaps?

RobMc59

The UK economy appears to be bouncing back and compares well against other G7 nations following last years loses according to this link,but still has considerable ground to make up.

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/uk-on-course-for-record-economic-growth-of-7-as-international-monetary-fund-upgrades-forecast-1123486

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117745878#Comment_117745878

Meh. The IMF report (https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WEO/2021/Update/July/English/text.ashx) pretty much confirms what we already knew from the OECD report about two months ago. They are projecting that the UK's growth in 2021 (7% projected) will be among the strongest, but that's the flip side of the fact that the UK's contraction in 2020 was one of the most severe (-9.8%). You need to net the two out to work out to get a picture of the UK's overall performance through the pandemic . Where will the UK end up, relative to where it was before the pandemic hit?

The IMF's projection is that, taking the 2020 slump and the 2021 recovery together, cumulative growth for the two-year period for each G7 country will be:

Canada: 0.6%

France: 1.4%

Germany: -1.3%

Italy: -4.4%

Japan: -2%

UK: -3.5%

US: 3.3%

So, far from comparing well against other G7 nations, the UK is actually second from the bottom.

The IMF also gives predictions for 2022. Add those into the mix, and growth for the 3-year period is projected to be:

Canada: 5.2%

France: 1.4%

Germany: 2.7%

Italy: -0.4%

Japan: 0.9%

UK: 1.1%

US: 8.3%

Slightly better; the UK is just third from the bottom here.

(For the record, the UK also underperforms the Euro area overall in both the two-year and three-year projections.)

The IMF report doesn't go into why the UK's performance is so (relatively) poor. The OECD report touched on it; according to them, it's Brexit. Their prescription was that, if the UK wanted to improve its performance in recovery, it would need to reduce trade barriers with the EU/EEA. That's very much contrary to the current UK government's policy so, unless that policy is reversed, the UK's relative underperformance seems set to continue.

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117741844#Comment_117741844

Judging by the previous disruption to KFC's supply chain and the public's reaction to it, I think it officially starts now?

KFC warns of shortages of some menu items and different packaging due to supply issue - LBC

Seamus Ó Dubhghaill

SNIP. No insults please.

ancapailldorcha

Seamus, insulting language is not permitted here. Please read the charter before posting again.

RobMc59

According to the Times UK exports to the EU have surpassed pre brexit levels,although trade between Ireland and the UK has diminished.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117747489#Comment_117747489

Some people have questioned the methodology being used. Are they including exports passing through the EU to onward destinations? The idea that the trade barriers caused by Brexit could somehow have boosted the volume of exports to the union seems far fetched.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117746076#Comment_117746076

Incidentally, that one also impacts KFC Ireland which is run by the same franchisee in the U.K. https://twitter.com/kfc_ie/status/1425751339947155460?s=21

I’m not a fan, but it does illustrate how some chains aren’t adapting and still operate in U.K. & Ireland mode.

schmoo2k

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117747489#Comment_117747489

Ireland is the EU?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117747669#Comment_117747669

The issue is that the kinds of products the U.K. exports to Ireland are the most likely to be disrupted. We are their largest food export market, due to proximity and most of those exports are processed food and would normally have travelled in mixed loads.

That trade has been profoundly complicated by Brexit.

A large percentage of what was being classified as exports may not have been U.K. originated products too, so they’re just bypassing U.K. logistics centres.

For example, I ordered a shirt online from ASOS and it came overnight from Berlin, not the U.K., where it would have come from in the past. Direct freight flight from Leipzig to Cork.

The product is actually made in the Far East, so in reality it never would have been a true U.K. export nor is it really a German export, but a it would have been retail sale from the U.K. in the past, now it’s an intra EU German one.

That kind of change is obviously impacting Irish - U.K. trade figures, as Irish purchasing moves effectively towards what is its domestic market: into the EU and Eurozone.

Trade will keep flowing, but it will move around barriers.

The slide in U.K. imports here isn’t a slowing in economic here, nor is it because of some dislike of U.K. products, it’s consumers and retailers finding lower costs EU supplies of goods. It’s being reflected in shifts of trade flows.

Take a look at this report from the IMDO (Irish Maritime Development Office) on changes in port traffic.

https://www.imdo.ie/Home/sites/default/files/IMDOFiles/Q2%202021%20IMDO%20Unitised%20Traffic%20Report%20%284%29.pdf

There’s more flow to/from the continent, reflected in a move towards unaccompanied Ro-Ro and Lo-Lo freight.

NI traffic to / from GB is also not going through Dublin Port as much anymore, which is driving traffic up in NI ports, but the connections from the Republic to the continent have absolutely boomed (and NI traffic can very easily use those btw, avoiding all the GB-EU mess at Dover etc)

PokeHerKing

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117747489#Comment_117747489

Very interesting. Do you have a link to that article please?

As per usual, it depends on how you spin the figures:

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/eu-exports-britain-rise-they-fall-with-rest-world-2021-08-13/

“The figures were at odds with data released on Thursday by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) which showed British exports to the European Union in May and June exceeded their levels immediately before it left the single market at the start of this year, excluding volatile trade in precious metals.

The discrepancy is partly due to a change in the way Eurostat calculates trade with Britain after Brexit.

When Britain was still part of the EU's single market, all goods which moved from Britain to an EU member state were treated as British exports.

But since the start of the year, goods which had an origin outside Britain - for example, goods made in China which are shipped into Britain and then on to the Netherlands - are now treated as imports from China rather than from Britain.”

and the Eurozone is rebounding quite nicely:

”… recorded a nearly 22% increase of exports and a rise of almost 17% in imports on the month which resulted in a 18.1 billion euros surplus in June from 7.5 billion euros in May. In June 2020, the euro zone surplus was 20 billion euros.”

Strazdas

^^ I saw a few people disputing the figures yesterday, saying the EU's own numbers (Eurostat I think) for UK imports don't match these figures at all.

It’s down to what gets included in exports. One figure to watch for, which to be fair isn’t included in these, is precious metals. Various spun figures in the past have included these as goods exports, and one I saw even as manufactured goods, because they were stamped in London.

In reality, they’re a financial instrument just moving money between vaults in Manhattan, London and Switzerland.

You have to dig beyond the headline figures and into the methodology or only take data from known indices that have a standardised methodology. Otherwise you could be comparing apples and oranges.

It’s equally true of Irish figures. You need to avoid grabbing figures that might include say movement of intellectual property assets and transfer pricing, driven by MNC activity. Similar applies to London, Amsterdam and Luxembourg where MNC HQs and activity of oversized (relative to economy) financial institutions can distort stats.

The one to watch in the U.K. isn’t goods exports / imports, in terms of economic impacts, rather it’s services. Those figures are often skirted around, while the focus is put on something totally irrelevant to the big picture of the British economy, like fish and chips, because that’s the kind of tangible the Daily Express likes and Boris loves - cue photo with Boris clumsily frying fish in a big apron in a carefully chosen North of England seaside resort.

Strazdas

In any event, it seems extremely unlikely that the UK leaving the Single Market could somehow have boosted trade between it and the SM. How could that be the net result?

Chosen dates. You’re looking at a very erratic period of trade which is compounded by Brexit stockpiling and start/stop activity due to COVID which is creating odd stats.

"Compared with Q2 2018, the last stable period before EU exit, total exports, including the EU, were down by 4.4% and imports by 2%," he said. "Comparing June 2021 with June 2018, total UK exports (including to the EU) were down by 7.4% and imports by 2%.”

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/uk-eu-exports-brexit-ons-q2-2021-june-may-082440989.html

That, to my mind, is a far more reasonable reflection of reality. It isn’t reasonable that introducing complex trade barriers, which is what Brexit is in reality, could have increased trade. That just simply doesn’t stack up at all.

We are getting a lot of figures plucked from chaos at the moment that aren’t really indicative of very much other than that the economic situation in a state of turmoil.

I mean for example, publishing record growth figures after lockdown (and the worst recession in 300 years) is somewhat risible.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57008220

If you didn’t see record growth figures after that lockdown, it would equate to their having been a complete economic collapse rather than pause and a reopening.

Sam Russell

I think there are products that would be expected to be redirected, and which may not yet be redirected.

For example - cars and car spare parts. Historically, EU RHD cars are routed through the UK wherever they are built. They are then distributed from the UK ti Ireland, and NI. Following Brexit, that no longer makes sense, and EU (say German) cars destined for the island of Ireland should be sent direct to Rosslare, and forwarded on from there.

This will impact figures for GB, NI, and Ireland - without impact the basics of trade. How much of GB-> NI trade is of this type? And ow long will this redirection take to be fully reflected in the figures?

RobMc59

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117747853#Comment_117747853

I saw this on the Times website which is paywalled unfortunately.

rock22

Similar article on Reuters here UK exports to EU recover from initial post-Brexit slump | Reuters

It does say that the Eurostat figures show a 27% fall in EU imports from UK.

So presumably these goods are still in a queue in Dover

reslfj

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117748096#Comment_117748096

It's important to note that the export volume is only a placeholder for "value added in the UK" which is the true figure benefitting the UK economy. As value added can be impossible to determine from the goods counted at border crossings, export figures are used instead.

Value added at farms and fishing is closer to 100% UK, while UK assembled cars the UK value added can be as low as 25%.

With the TCA the UK can't import from the EU and re-export to the EU without tariffs. This includes EU-imported - repacking - EU-exported e.g. import from France to a 'GB supermarket distribution warehouse' and re-distribution the French goods to Ireland. There must be substantial value added in the UK for this.

The NIP should fully implemented should allow this.

A new UK build Astra car with a Bosh generator from Germany should, however, be OK.

Lars :)