Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

I see people on here saying that there will be no excuses when more problems kick in and that the Conservatives have given up pretending there are any Brexit benefits. Kwasi Kwarteng gave an interview yesterday where he spelled out the governments new line for any disruption -

From conservativehome (I can't post links)

Interviewer: “Brexit was a vote for many things. It was in part a vote for lower migration of a sort, higher wages, a different economic model.

“Isn’t what’s going on with this difficulty with the petrol fundamentally about the sort of economy we want. The road haulage people, like some of the fruit pickers, like some meat processors, basically want to go back to the old ways.

“They want Government to issue hundreds of thousands of visas, and they’re trying to use public pressure to get you to change course.”

Kwarteng: “That’s absolutely right, and I’ve said this a number of times, certainly privately. The reason why constituencies like mine [Spelthorne] voted decisively for Brexit, 60 per cent to 40 per cent, was precisely this issue.

“I remember three weeks before the referendum in 2016, I came out of Staines station and someone came up to me and said ‘I’m voting for Brexit.’

“And I said, ‘Oh, why are you doing that?’

“And he said, ‘Well I haven’t had a wage increase in 15 years,’ and he was someone who worked in the building trade, lots of people do work, certainly in my constituency, in that kind of self-employed, small business, logistics, construction world.

“And that was in his mind what this was all about. And so, having rejected the low-wage, high-immigration model, we were always going to try to transition to something else.

“What we’re seeing now is part of that transition. You’re quite right to say people are resisting that, particularly employers that were benefiting from an influx of labour that could keep wages low.”

Interviewer: “Aren’t you therefore in a very difficult political position, because they have a kind of weapon, which is the queue, the shortage.

“All you can do, other than take various emergency measures, is tough it out.”

Kwarteng: “I think this is a transition period. As economists would describe, between Equilibrium A and Equilibrium B there’s always going to be a transition period.

So they're going to sell the rotten fruit, no petrol and chickens instead of turkeys for Christmas, as a transition from a low skilled immigration based economy to a high wage high tech economy. Johnson will start talking about growing pains and stiff upper lips soon enough, you can count on it.

Because 'high skill high wage' is a fatuous political slogan that ignores reality? Kind of like 'get brexit done' and 'brexit means brexit?' And, neither party if in Government has a clue as to how to transition their economy - seems like the Tory's think the first round is 'drive everyone out of a job.'

Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul comes to mind

Its a story because it shows the desperation and complete lack of any plan.

The UK government have been reduced to a mailshot company, sending out junk mail in the hope that a few of them might turn up something.

Embarrassing is not adequate to sum it up. This, let's remember, is 5 years since the vote. This is after they refused a transition as it would not help confidence. And this after they were repeatedly warned of these type of issues.

And yet we are supposed to believe that they know the consequences of triggering Art 16?

Apparently they have also written to Germans having gotten their driver's license in Germany before 1999 as that entitles them to drive smaller lorries.

You know this, I know this. But Boris Johnson is literally the guy that propagated the idea the EU wanted to ban bendy bananas.

They've looked at the probable outcomes and think they can get away with telling people that their wages rising by 5% is great news, even though cost of living goes up by 10%.

That would be my guess.

Brexit is an ideololgy and those who fell for it refuse to look at it objectively. The problem now is that the UK is actually out of the EU and will need to sort itself out on its own (as it wanted) or to seek proper accommodation with the EU to nullify some of the impacts. The evidence is that the Tories will not seek any accommodation with the EU

What the Tories are now doing is trying to spin Brexit as some sort of altruistic crusade to stop the race to the bottom and that by voting for Brexit the people were not voting to get rid of Johnny foreigner, but rather doing Johnny foreigner a favour by preventing him being taken advantage of in the UK.

Such bollix.

You could add the same about Leave / Tory voters. The idea that they are concerned about low paid British workers or the rights of EU citizens is quite laughable.

But companies also operate supply and demand, in that they can relocate if the supply of labour isn't available.

Many companies are not going to simply wait around while wages go up while labour supply reduces due to lack of training.

Take the example of turkeys now coming from Poland rather than the UK. No increase in wages, people will actually lose jobs.

For it to work the country needs to be prepared to operate some form of protectionism, to control imports based on standards to enable the newly increaded costs of domestic production to compete with imports. But currently the UK have little to no controls, and we in fact are looking to be Global Britain and so will be looking to trade directly with less regulated economies.

Again, I do not disagree. But there is not going to be a positive end to Brexit in the short or midterm (or probably long term either). So what can be spun from reality is important for the two battles Boris Johnson has:

1. The election. Come the turn of the year there will be be two and a half years left until the next election. They already have an advantage in the media's presentation of Sir Keir, which will negatively ramp up as the election draws closer. The fact that Sir Keir isn't likeable, is alienating various sections of the remaining support, isn't helping him either. They are constantly trying to gerrymander, whether boundaries, the judiciary or electoral oversight. This taking place in a system which is already FPTP. So the chances are the Tories will win the next election. The biggest threat is that Brexit starts to look like a disaster. However, there is a ready made tried and tested solution to that problem, which is Boris Johnson's bigger, more pressing, problem number 2.
2. The conservative party. As Brexit goes tits up, the conservatives, ruthless as they are, stick a knife deep into the back of the leader and jettison him into outer space to show the electorate that they've dealt with the problem. The billionaire-heiress-husband (dishy Rishi), if they went with him for e.g., cannot be presented as a man of the people but he can be the more usual tory incarnation of a steady hand on the tiller.

So we, Strazdas, do not disagree on what is the reality of brexit. We do not disagree on how much the government cares about low paid workers (lol). Maybe we disagree on just how big an excrement Johnson is prepared to roll in glitter and present to the British people as a toy?

It is an intentional plan. If you think about insisting you cathedrals or insisting you didn't insult the Netherlands while being shown a tape of you insulting the Netherlands (US ambassador to Netherlands for that one).