Britain outside the EU

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Nothing wrong with that except as applied to Boris.
He was/is the ultimate weathervane, who switched positions on Brexit in a calculated vector to the premiership.

exactly what Kier is hoping to do.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Pierre

exactly what Kier is hoping to do.

I think Seph's point is that Truss, Karmer etc have accepted we've left and will make the best of a bad job, whereas Johnson changed horses before the vote and campaigned to leave because he saw that as a way to become PM.

In terms of his faults, I wouldn't put that at the top of the list.

To be honest I think the issue is settled now and almost everybody - bar some fanatics - have moved on. The argument that we shouldn't have left but now that we have we might as well make the best of it is not hypocrisy nor contradictory. I think there are a few people in the press and the Government that want to keep pushing Brexit as a divisive issue because it sells papers and is politically useful but there isn't much juice in that issue.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Damien

To be honest I think the issue is settled now and almost everybody - bar some fanatics - have moved on. The argument that we shouldn't have left but now that we have we might as well make the best of it is not hypocrisy nor contradictory. I think there are a few people in the press and the Government that want to keep pushing Brexit as a divisive issue because it sells papers and is politically useful but there isn't much juice in that issue.

Spot on.

[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Damien

To be honest I think the issue is settled now and almost everybody - bar some fanatics - have moved on. The argument that we shouldn't have left but now that we have we might as well make the best of it is not hypocrisy nor contradictory. I think there are a few people in the press and the Government that want to keep pushing Brexit as a divisive issue because it sells papers and is politically useful but there isn't much juice in that issue.

Do you not think the people who deceived the nation about the financial benefits of Brexit should be held to account? If not, why not? If you accept that national deception should be tolerated and not challenged then you start down the road to a dark place.

As the fog of Covid dissipates, the real world effects of Brexit will start to become more visible to the people who never really cared about the politics and just believed the lies.

---------- Post added at 11:54 ---------- Previous post was at 11:52 ----------

Oh the irony

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Nothing wrong with that except as applied to Boris.
He was/is the ultimate weathervane, who switched positions on Brexit in a calculated vector to the premiership.

He famously wrote two articles - one supporting Brexit and one supporting remain. He then compared the two and recognised that Brexit had more going for it in the longer term than staying in the EU.

So if that was what changed his mind, so what? You should welcome politicians standing back and re-evaluating rather than sticking to their guns simply to avoid losing face.

I know you have a downer on Boris, but come on, play fair.

Originally Posted by ianch99

Do you not think the people who deceived the nation about the financial benefits of Brexit should be held to account? If not, why not? If you accept that national deception should be tolerated and not challenged then you start down the road to a dark place.

As the fog of Covid dissipates, the real world effects of Brexit will start to become more visible to the people who never really cared about the politics and just believed the lies.

---------- Post added at 11:54 ---------- Previous post was at 11:52 ----------

Oh the irony

[img]Download Failed (1)[/img]

A Twitter poll with a leading question thinly disguised as background information … your grasp of irony is as shaky as Alanis Morissette.

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by ianch99

Do you not think the people who deceived the nation about the financial benefits of Brexit should be held to account? If not, why not? If you accept that national deception should be tolerated and not challenged then you start down the road to a dark place.

As the fog of Covid dissipates, the real world effects of Brexit will start to become more visible to the people who never really cared about the politics and just believed the lies.

---------- Post added at 11:54 ---------- Previous post was at 11:52 ----------

Oh the irony

[img]Download Failed (1)[/img]

Of course, there was no deception by remainers, was there? I struggle to think of a single prediction of theirs that has come true so far.

Forget that poll. It is not a true representation of what the people of this country think. Not only that, but some are having understandable doubts owing to the uncertainty about so many things at the moment, most of which are nothing to do with Brexit. When the dust settles, people will regain their confidence.

[GrimUpNorth]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

Of course, there was no deception by remainers, was there? I struggle to think of a single prediction of theirs that has come true so far.

Forget that poll. It is not a true representation of what the people of this country think. Not only that, but some are having understandable doubts owing to the uncertainty about so many things at the moment, most of which are nothing to do with Brexit. When the dust settles, people will regain their confidence.

I suppose King Canute claimed he'd be proved right too if people waited long enough for the tide to go out again.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by ianch99

Oh the irony

Indeed, as I'm the complete opposite. I voted Remain based on what I "didn't know". I just thought the status quo is probably the safest option.

Now, 6 years later, with all that I know now, I'd vote leave, without hesitation.

[Jaymoss]

Originally Posted by GrimUpNorth

I suppose King Canute claimed he'd be proved right too if people waited long enough for the tide to go out again.

just to be pedantic King Canute did the whole tide thing to show his people he was just a man and not a God

[roughbeast]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

Of course, there was no deception by remainers, was there? I struggle to think of a single prediction of theirs that has come true so far.

Forget that poll. It is not a true representation of what the people of this country think. Not only that, but some are having understandable doubts owing to the uncertainty about so many things at the moment, most of which are nothing to do with Brexit. When the dust settles, people will regain their confidence.

Economists at the time of the referendum didn't make predictions. They couldn't because they didn't know what kind of Brexit we would get. Would we get something like an EEA membership, as proposed by Farage at the time, or would we get the No Deal Brexit that he was really after? Few would have anticipated the pig's ear of a Brexit we actually got. Instead of predictions, economists and leading Remainers proposed scenarios. The worst was a No Deal scenario where our economy would suffer the most after we left the EU. An average 8% GDP loss across the country within 10 years of leaving seemed likely. (Some areas such as the NE might get a 16% loss) The best was an EEA Brexit where the loss to GDP might only be 2% over 10 years. Corbyn's proposed customs union Brexit would be slightly worse than that.

The Leave press decided to take those scenarios, spin them as predictions and cherrypicked the worse. This left people like you believing that Remain had predicted 8% GDP as soon as we left the EU. No such claim was made. Given that we have only been out of the EU 2 years, we haven't had time for the effects to embed yet. Until we left at the end of January 2020 our economy benefited all round from business with the EU as usual. The decline of an economy is by a thousand cuts, not overnight.

The signs aren't good though. The effect of the massive increase in red tape, something the leave campaign hid from you, has led to a 2% decline in trade with the EU, factoring out Covid-19. At the moment, no deals come close to replacing that. A deal with India may happen if we accept their demand for increased immigration from India. A deal may happen with the USA if we accept their demand to sell us poor quality meats and GM crops and to get their commercial hands on our valued institutions like the NHS. They tried that with the EU, when we were still members. The EU had the clout to say 'No'.

Meanwhile, Rees-Mogg is trying to find out what the sunny uplands of Brexit might look like by asking Sun readers. Bear in mind that he did say that it might take 50 years for the full benefits of Brexit to be realised. He hasn't made it clear what happens to the economy, and people's livelihoods and businesses in the meantime.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...b0de86f48e3566

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by GrimUpNorth

I suppose King Canute claimed he'd be proved right too if people waited long enough for the tide to go out again.

I don’t think you properly understand the King Canute story.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

He famously wrote two articles - one supporting Brexit and one supporting remain. He then compared the two and recognised that Brexit had more going for it in the longer term than staying in the EU.

So if that was what changed his mind, so what? You should welcome politicians standing back and re-evaluating rather than sticking to their guns simply to avoid losing face.

I know you have a downer on Boris, but come on, play fair.

Boris is a buffoon and a proven liar; a breaker of manifesto promises; an eco-loon, possibly driven by his wife. He got this extravagant wallpaper at the behest of his wife with serious questions around the funding and the influence that the funder now has. He is a disaster.

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

The signs aren't good though. The effect of the massive increase in red tape, something the leave campaign hid from you, has led to a 2% decline in trade with the EU, factoring out Covid-19. At the moment, no deals come close to replacing that. A deal with India may happen if we accept their demand for increased immigration from India. A deal may happen with the USA if we accept their demand to sell us poor quality meats and GM crops and to get their commercial hands on our valued institutions like the NHS. They tried that with the EU, when we were still members. The EU had the clout to say 'No'.

I have picked this paragraph of your post as I really cannot be bothered to repeat yet again all those leaver predictions that didn’t come true. The rest you cannot rely on because the future has not happened.

We all know about the red tape and the costs that come with it. But Brexiteers pointed to the benefits of being released from the rest of the bureaucracy associated with the freedom of being outside the EU.

So far, we have only seen the rollover trade deals that we were busily putting into place to ensure that we would continue to benefit from the EU-negotiated deals in the first year. However, we are forging ahead with the trade deal for India right now, and negotiations commence for the trade deal with Canada in April.

It has been explained previously that the EU refused to include services in the trade deals they negotiated because other EU countries would benefit little from this. However, for us, services are the biggest income earner, and inclusion of services in our future trade deals will open up a very nice income stream indeed.

You are wrong on the US situation. We had a draft trade deal with America all ready to go under the Trump administration, but when Biden got in he was not interested in these big deals, preferring to negotiate in packets. So far we have succeeded in getting deals on beef and lamb, which is a good start.

As far as meat imports are concerned, trade deals can specify the standards required for sale in the UK, a little point that many remainers appear not to understand.

We have yet to benefit from Brexit freedoms firstly because these new trade deals will take a few years to negotiate, and secondly, we have yet to witness the ‘bonfire of regulations’ that Boris has said he intends to bring forward now.

Those economic forecasts you refer to are not worth the paper they are written on because they concentrate on what we already know about the downsides. Very few upsides are in that calculation because it is impossible to make a sensible and reasoned prediction as to how businesses will take advantage of their new freedoms, which will be gradually introduced over the coming years.

We have been outside of the EU for less than three months, and yet remainers claim that we should already be seeing massive benefits from Brexit by now if it was to succeed. This is naive and stupid. The new freedoms are nowhere near completed yet. Any real benefits that push us into credit should be seen as medium, not short-term benefits.