Britain outside the EU

[Sephiroth]

I can’t rule out that the UK will rejoin the EU in twenty years. They won’t have us because of all the funds they’ll need to send us!

All we need is a competent government that is investment led on new technologies etc. Sunak needs to solve the crisis caused by Truss and then whatever government needs to have an economic strategy. A tall order.

Who knows what anyone will be doing in 20 years, the EU may not even exist.

[ianch99]

Originally Posted by mrmistoffelees

I dont need to point the costs out, they're being repeatedly being pointed out by various media outlets

---------- Post added at 13:59 ---------- Previous post was at 13:57 ----------



I think you've just made my point, rhetorical statement delivered but with zero benefit to the average member of the public.

The issues for business with regards to Brexit have long proceeded Truss and her shambolic tenure. Don't try and scapegoat her, you're better than that.

I'd bet that ultimately we will rejoin the EU, it may take twenty years possibly even longer but I'll wager that what happens.

We will not join the EU first, we'll start with EFTA I am guessing and much sooner than in 20 yrs. Within 5 to 10 years I am thinking ..

[mrmistoffelees]

Originally Posted by Paul

Who knows what anyone will be doing in 20 years, the EU may not even exist.

Quite, but I would of thought it was fairly obvious that the point was made with the assumption that the EU would still be in existence.....

---------- Post added at 14:48 ---------- Previous post was at 14:39 ----------

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

I can’t rule out that the UK will rejoin the EU in twenty years. They won’t have us because of all the funds they’ll need to send us!

All we need is a competent government that is investment led on new technologies etc. Sunak needs to solve the crisis caused by Truss and then whatever government needs to have an economic strategy. A tall order.

Ah like BritishVolt? The company that went into administration yesterday?

The current lot aren't interested in investment led on new technologies, they're preparing for a probable spell in the wilderness. I don't hold out much hope for the alternatives.

The implementation of Brexit can probably be best described as King Arthur vs The Black Knight

[ianch99]

I came across this analysis on Reddit and thought it does a really good job of capturing the reality of our recent experience:

I think it's more complex than that.

Bear with me as this might get in the weeds a bit but there's a coherent point to this.

So immigration is good for the economy, most people understand that, but does that economic boost translate into improvements for normal people?

There was a significant increase in economic migration from eastern europe after the mid 2000's when Poland, Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU.

UK population Growth
You can see on that graph the effect of Poland joining the UK in 2003.

This was good for UK business, it was good for the exchequer too as it meant more tax was being collected. However we can't shy away from the fact that more people in a community means more competition for resources. It means more people needing housing, more people using public transport, more people looking for jobs and more kids in schools. Central government did nothing to invest in infrastructure to accommodate a sharply rising population, in fact they did the exact opposite.

What happened in 2008/9? A financial crisis that led to a Tory government and never ending austerity budgets.

So for local people across the country they experienced 2 distinct changes happening in their communities, they saw a rise in immigration with the accompanying demographic shift. And they saw the slow degradation of their public services. Housing costs kept going up, wages stagnated, schools hospitals and public transport deteriorated. So suddenly there is less to go around and more people to share it with.

What is really going on is that the economic benefits of migration aren't translating into better schools and hospitals or new infrastructure or an increase in affordable housing or any of the things that ordinary people need.

Instead the economic benefits of migration are being used to boost profit margins and to offset the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy. Because when the Tories designed a plan to address the economic impact of the 2008 financial crisis they wanted to shield business and the asset rich, at the expense of the general public.

When people in deprived parts of the country voted for Brexit, it was because they weren't seeing the tangible benefits of the EU, instead they were seeing their lives becoming measurably worse year on year due to austerity and instead of placing the blame on government policy, they were told that it was because that foreigner over there is taking something that belongs to you.

It isn't so simple as saying "people wanted the dossers and scroungers out", instead it's people not being able to square the circle of "migration is good for the economy" with "my living standards are dropping".

The underlying cause of Brexit was that ever since 2008 we've just been papering over the cracks of a broken economic model that has utterly failed a massive portion of the country, and unscrupulous politicians and media have been able to deflect the blame onto the EU.

A good analysis, up to a point. Sadly however the author clearly comes from the left-leaning school that thinks chanting Tory! Tory! Tory! is a handy way of summoning a bogeyman, a suitably ill-defined thing that is generally agreed to be not very nice and therefore a suitable target to blame for whatever.

However, there are two obvious weaknesses, the first being that the infrastructure required to deliver state services has long lead-times and really ought to have been in the planning years before it was needed, or at the very least right from when the need became apparent. And that wasn’t at the point of the financial crash, it was when free movement was first extended to Eastern Europe and the *Labour* government then in charge took an active decision not to invoke any of the temporary limitations allowable under EU law.

The second obvious weakness is to blame failure in domestic government policy while taking it as given that uncontrolled migration across a bloc with wildly different living standards is itself an unimpeachably good thing. The author hasn’t made that case and shouldn’t assume it to be so.

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

[COLOR="black"][COLOR="Blue"]
I can’t rule out that the UK will rejoin the EU in twenty years. They won’t have us because of all the funds they’ll need to send us!

I think the more immediate risk if you're a Brexiter is the prospect of a customs union. I don't think we're long from a Government working out that solves far more issues right now in terms of NI, Calais and imports than it will cause them trouble with voters.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Damien

I think the more immediate risk if you're a Brexiter is the prospect of a customs union. I don't think we're long from a Government working out that solves far more issues right now in terms of NI, Calais and imports than it will cause them trouble with voters.

I think all but the most zealous of Brexiters acknowledge that Johnson's deal was not an oven-ready one but a half-baked one, and and a closer relationship with our main trading partner to reduce trade friction and raise GDP and tax revenues is needed.

The trade-offs are becoming clearer now the fog of Covid has lifted but this issue is one for the next government and not the embers of the current one given the divisive influence of the ERG on the current government.

In a joint interview with the FT in the Labour leader’s Westminster office, Starmer and Reeves berated Rishi Sunak, prime minister, for not going to Davos this year and said they would be touting for investment.

Key for Starmer is revamping Britain’s post-Brexit EU relationship. The government’s own forecasters say that Johnson’s “bare bones” trade deal with the EU would cost the UK 4 per cent of gross domestic product in the medium term.

“The damage to our economy is obvious as every day passes,” he said. “We have to be clear that we want a closer trading relationship with the EU.”

Labour has already said it wants a veterinary deal with the EU to ease the most strenuous border checks on food.

The Labour leader said he would not take Britain back into the EU or the single market; he fears alienating the 30 per cent of his party’s supporters who backed Leave in 2016 and reopening old arguments.

https://www.ft.com/content/a13f684f-...e-55bb3ce55712

[1andrew1]

I think the economic realities of a UK outside the EU are starting to bite.

[1andrew1]

Not just trade, also growth


See full story at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64450882

[TheDaddy]

Was listening to Barnier on the Andrew Marr show earlier and he said Guy Verhofstadt said without Brexit he didn't think Russia would have invaded Ukraine last year, interesting that everything we were warned about is coming true and none of the things we were promised are coming to fruition and no one is being held accountable for their promises

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

Was listening to Barnier on the Andrew Marr show earlier and he said Guy Verhofstadt said without Brexit he didn't think Russia would have invaded Ukraine last year

Yeah right, I'm sure that was top of Putins reasons.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

Was listening to Barnier on the Andrew Marr show earlier and he said Guy Verhofstadt said without Brexit he didn't think Russia would have invaded Ukraine last year

I also heard that without Brexit China wouldn’t have released COVID from a lab in Wuhan.

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

Was listening to Barnier on the Andrew Marr show earlier and he said Guy Verhofstadt said without Brexit he didn't think Russia would have invaded Ukraine last year, interesting that everything we were warned about is coming true and none of the things we were promised are coming to fruition and no one is being held accountable for their promises

Guy Verhostadt holds a special loathing for all things British, and has done for a great many years. He was infamous in his speeches in the European Parliament long before Brexit was a thing. I wouldn’t raise anything he says in support of any argument you might want to make. It doesn’t strengthen your position.

With particular regard to Ukraine, it takes a special sort of strategic idiocy (which to be fair Verhostadt appears to have in spades) to still be obsessed with the idea that 2022 was the inflection point in this crisis. Putin invaded Crimea and the Donbas in 2014. That in turn was preceded by similar adventurism in Georgia, with similar justifications, in 2008. Meanwhile the West gave every indication that it no longer had any interest in intervention in other people’s wars by refusing to back rebels against the Assad regime in Syria in 2011. The Western response has been tardy in the extreme but for Putin this is a continuity of planning that has been ongoing for a long time.

Yes, Russia’s geopolitical strategy is to divide western democracies because it calculated it was stronger, in its will to succeed and in its military ability to do so, than any of them acting alone. But Putin is informed by a vision of a renewed imperial Russia and has been playing an exceedingly long game. Ukraine is the jewel in the crown because many of Russia’s cultural and religious origins are actually in Kyiv, not St Petersburg and certainly not Moscow. It was always going to end here (and in fact, if Russia is not resoundingly beaten in Ukraine and kept under sanction for a very long time, it *will* flare up again).

In the 18th century, Russia invaded Crimea repeatedly and took 80 years to finally secure it and forcibly incorporate it into its empire. That’s the portion of Russian history that informs Putin’s motives and his timescales. The invasion of *more of* Ukraine in 2022 has absolutely, literally feck-all to do with Brexit and you oughtn’t to make yourself sound as much a chump as Verhostadt does on a daily basis by claiming otherwise.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Paul

Yeah right, I'm sure that was top of Putins reasons.

You don't think a weakened EU played into puti's hands, interesting

Yes, Russia’s geopolitical strategy is to divide western democracies because it calculated it was stronger, in its will to succeed and in its military ability to do so, than any of them acting alone

You might find that helpful

Originally Posted by Chris

Guy Verhostadt holds a special loathing for all things British, and has done for a great many years. He was infamous in his speeches in the European Parliament long before Brexit was a thing.

I'd have thought if he loathed us that much he'd have kept his mouth shut, don't you think it's complimentary to say we were stronger with you than without

With particular regard to Ukraine, it takes a special sort of strategic idiocy (which to be fair Verhostadt appears to have in spades) to still be obsessed with the idea that 2022 was the inflection point in this crisis.

Barny was quite clear that he said the full invasion last year wouldn't have happened