Britain outside the EU

Originally Posted by Mad Max

ah, the master of the Gifs..

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

And while we were paying our WWII debt back to the Americans we became the ‘poor man of Europe’. Remember that?

High debt levels are the speciality of the Labour Party - please don’t go there.

The tax burden will reduce by the next election. The debt burden goes on seemingly forever.

---------- Post added at 20:32 ---------- Previous post was at 20:31 ----------



He speaks a strange language, Max. Listen, but don’t touch!

Never let facts get in the way of your posts….

[Carth]

As a leave voter, I must admit that I'm quite surprised that the World hasn't stopped turning after a year or two reading about all the horrible and nasty ways my life would be affected.

Covid has had a large impact, and the gas/electric debacle will have one too, but Brexit has hardly made a difference

I'm even wondering if the Russia v Ukraine war will cause me any hardship at all

[roughbeast]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

I am able to address Roughie's post honestly - it's just that on this occasion there's so much there to deal with. If you strip the Remainer sentiment away from Roughie's observations, most of his words are statements of fact - pretty much.

Roughie has made some inconsistencies, though. For example the "carbon-emitting miles" statement; they are the same with our own trade deals as with the EU's. Roughie criticises the notion of a US trade deal where we would be rule takers; he doesn't mind being rule taker from the EU because we had a hand in making those rules.

Brexit will work because Business will see to it (it's what they do). But the Remainers' viewpoint is rooted in the dire warnings they issued during Project Fear - something they did believe in. The Leavers' viewpoint is rooted in sovereignty. Little did the Leavers know that we now have such a useless government.

Thanks Sephi, for your acknowledgement of my factual approach to the subject. I need to pick up on some of your perceptions regarding my 'inconsistencies'. From where I am sitting they aren't inconsistencies at all.

My reference to carbon-emitting miles was only to address the replacement of trade with our nearest neighbour, the EU, with trade across the wider world. Unless we do something to deal with increased friction across our border with the EU, then the traffic between us will reduce over time. It will need replacing. Why would a German car manufacturer or car component manufacturer put up with multiple disrupted short journeys for an engine, for example, when they can send and receive items, JIT, to customer in Clermont-Ferrand or Prague. Why would a small soft cheese manufacturer in Shropshire send their perishable produce to Almeria, with an uncertain arrival time, when they can fly it more quickly to Winnipeg?

Were we rule takers from the EU? I think not. You have hit upon the major difference between Remainers like me and Leavers like those in the Tory Party, Awkward Squad. For such Eurosceptics it was all about 'us and them' . It was all about thinly veiled xenophobia. To Remainers, emotionally being part of the EU was all about 'us and us'. Economically, if not culturally or politically, we were the same country. For those manufacturers in Germany and Shropshire we were logistically the same country. Sending stuff to Almeria or Clermont was no different qualitatively than send stuff to Dundee or Modena. As 'us and us' we facilitated that flow of goods by pre-agreeing, in fine detail, rules pertaining to product quality, price and specification. Natural distrust between businesses was transcended by trust in the agreed terms, therefore no checks were required at borders. The borders were effectively not there. We made those rules as if we were in the same country in the same sense that the Senate makes rules, where relevant, for the whole of the USA. Rules that were not to do with mutual interest, were not made in Brussels. They were made in the parliaments of the sovereign nations of the EU.

You are right to say that businesses do what they do and that they will find ways to make Brexit work for them, as best they can. Those that trade in bulk will make a better fist of this, because they can send, for example, a whole truckload of the same known gearbox. They can limit the paperwork and also easily absorb the additional cost and/or pass it on to the customer. All they have to worry about is negotiating the massive jams on the A20.

For a small business, sending a couple of palettes a week, the problems are sometimes insurmountable. Their palette, for efficiency's sake, always needed to be sent in a mixed load, and will continue to be sent that way. A mixed load, usually from different producers, will now, since Brexit, generate an enormous pile of paperwork, additional inspections and the attendant fees. These are the trucks causing the queues. Because there are thousands of small businesses trying to continue to trade we can't dismiss this as a small part of our economy. SMEs matter! They are our lifeblood. Even if we identify and burn a whole bunch of 'non-essential', rolled over EU regulations to do with product quality, price and specification, the EU won't be reciprocating. The EU, necessarily, to protect the single market, will always be generating more friction for us, than we will find in trade with the rest of the world. Unless we take the step of nudging nearer to the single market by coming to a Corbyn-style customs union agreement, our trade with the EU will whittle down. EU businesses will increasingly find most of what they wanted from us, within the EU itself - Breton cream will replace Devon cream - Car door panels for Renault, from Liberty Pressings in Coventry, will be replaced by some new plant in Bucharest built with regional development fund support. We will, increasingly replace such EU trade with carbon-emitting long-haul journeys. Our cream may have to go to Tacoma and our car door panels to Lake Orion, Michigan, if, given zero-carbon targets, they want us from so far away. It's what businesses do!

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

Thank you. I try my best, because it is still such an important issue.

Get a room.

---------- Post added at 10:12 ---------- Previous post was at 10:07 ----------

Originally Posted by roughbeast

Thanks Sephi, ………………

Kier’s managed to move on, it’s been six years, I suggest you do to.

[roughbeast]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Get a room.

---------- Post added at 10:12 ---------- Previous post was at 10:07 ----------



Kier’s managed to move on, it’s been six years, I suggest you do to.

I was prepared to move on if we hadn't done such a terrible deal with the EU. Even though the referendum was the opposite of how democracy should work, I respected the result. I cannot stand aside and watch the country go down like this. No Deal would have been even more of a disaster.

I was one of those who supported Corbyn's proposals for a customs union Brexit with a confirmatory referendum.(No Remain option.) Sadly, Starmer had his way and so lost Labour the Red Wall. He is pretending to move on because he wrecked Labour's support in Leave-voting Labour strongholds. He needs to regain their vote, so never discusses Brexit. He is an even worse lying sh** than Johnson, so don't go by anything he says.

Originally Posted by roughbeast

I was prepared to move on if we hadn't done such a terrible deal with the EU. Even though the referendum was the opposite of how democracy should work, I respected the result. I cannot stand aside and watch the country go down like this. No Deal would have been even more of a disaster.

I was one of those who supported Corbyn's proposals for a customs union Brexit with a confirmatory referendum.(No Remain option.) Sadly, Starmer had his way and so lost Labour the Red Wall. He is pretending to move on because he wrecked Labour's support in Leave-voting Labour strongholds. He needs to regain their vote, so never discusses Brexit. He is an even worse lying sh** than Johnson, so don't go by anything he says.

Wow … we’re doing all the greatest hits this morning

I’m curious how the referendum was the ‘opposite’ of how democracy should work. Perhaps you could fill in some facts here? As far as I can see it was a simple binary vote with a clear proposition, argued over by well-regulated campaigns on both sides leading to a free and fair vote, tallied in process that was both transparent and well run. A summary of international observers’ responses is here:

https://www.electoralcommission.org....mme-Report.pdf

The fact that you supported the concept of a confirmatory referendum, despite this not forming part of any proposal prior to the referendum being held, suggests to me that you were less likely to ‘move on’ than you have suggested.

[roughbeast]

Originally Posted by Chris

Wow … we’re doing all the greatest hits this morning

I’m curious how the referendum was the ‘opposite’ of how democracy should work. Perhaps you could fill in some facts here? As far as I can see it was a simple binary vote with a clear proposition, argued over by well-regulated campaigns on both sides leading to a free and fair vote, tallied in process that was both transparent and well run. A summary of international observers’ responses is here:

https://www.electoralcommission.org....mme-Report.pdf

The fact that you supported the concept of a confirmatory referendum, despite this not forming part of any proposal prior to the referendum being held, suggests to me that you were less likely to ‘move on’ than you have suggested.

The binary vote was the key problem and the campaigns weren't sufficiently regulated! We were warned about the path we were taking by Austria, the referendum experts. They warned us that to reduce such an important and complex issue into a binary vote would invite all kinds of confusions and abuses. They warned us that the a Leave campaign could present Leave as all kinds of outcomes. anything between No Deal at one end to EEA membership at the other. People might vote for a Leave that kept us close to the single market, or they might vote Leave because they wanted as much distance from the EU as possible. This is exactly what happened. Many voted Leave because they thought, as Farage had proposed, that we would have a soft Brexit.

Farage famously told us how happy and prosperous the people of Norway were as members of the EEA, with no need to contribute to the EU regional development fund or the CAP and with a say over the rules that affected them. He lulled waverers, who feared for the economy, into believing that Brexit could be that benign. The Remain campaign could not carry out such a deception because everyone felt that they knew what Remain meant, given that we were already in the EU. It meant the status quo.

That is something else that Austria warned is about with a binary vote on such a complex and generationally important issue. They warned that a disgruntled population suffering the consequences of austerity would be looking for someone or something to blame. They warned that a Leave campaign might characterise the difficulties people were having in their lives as a the fault of the EU rather than the result of a dogmatic Tory government and the 2008 global crash. We all know that that is exactly what the Leave campaign did. They even encouraged the population to believe that immigration was causing the stress on services and that high immigration was the fault of the EU's addiction to the mobility of labour. (free movement). Stress on services was caused by austerity and failing to fund towns like Boston that had had particularly large immigration surges.

Austrian advisors suggested a different way to manage a referendum. They recommended that the run up to a referendum should be a at least a two-year process of education about what the EU really was and what various versions of Brexit might offer. The referendum itself would have needed to be non-binary. It would at least include Remain, No Deal, EEA membership and some form of customs union as options. The vote would have needed to give people the ability to put their preferences in order One , Two, Three. To avoid Remain coming out on top automatically, because Remain only has one form, the Leave options would have needed to be counted and ranked first, transferring people's second a third choices to bulk out the number of votes for the preferred Leave option. At that point the votes cast for Remain would be brought in.

Another fault with the Referendum was that it was not binding. We were warned that an advisory referendum would allow those who wanted to conduct a corrupt campaign would be inhibited by the strict rules that accompany binding votes. If one side or other in a binding vote commits significant fraud then the vote can be legally declared void. It is a matter of history what happened with the advisory vote. The Leave campaign committed industrial scale fraud, misappropriating funds so that they effectively spent far more on their campaign than allowed. . They were convicted of this and had to pay very large fines, but there was no power to scrub the result because it was only advisory.

Heard enough? I know that you will retort that Cameron and Osborne used public funds to spout Remain propaganda. This accusation could only be levelled at them because we didn't take the time to used public funds to systematically informed the electorate about the merits of Remain and Leave from at least two years before the vote. Cameron and co were compensating for the fact that this education process had not been built in.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

They recommended that the run up to a referendum should be a at least a two-year process of education about what the EU really was

That would have just delivered a bigger Leave majority.

I voted Remain without really paying much interest in the EU, the last 6 years has shone a very bright light on the EU and I would vote Leave now without hesitation.

[Mad Max]

Copy & Paste?

Originally Posted by roughbeast

The binary vote was the key problem and the campaigns weren't sufficiently regulated! We were warned about the path we were taking by Austria, the referendum experts. They warned us that to reduce such an important and complex issue into a binary vote would invite all kinds of confusions and abuses. They warned us that the a Leave campaign could present Leave as all kinds of outcomes. anything between No Deal at one end to EEA membership at the other. People might vote for a Leave that kept us close to the single market, or they might vote Leave because they wanted as much distance from the EU as possible. This is exactly what happened. Many voted Leave because they thought, as Farage had proposed, that we would have a soft Brexit.

Farage famously told us how happy and prosperous the people of Norway were as members of the EEA, with no need to contribute to the EU regional development fund or the CAP and with a say over the rules that affected them. He lulled waverers, who feared for the economy, into believing that Brexit could be that benign. The Remain campaign could not carry out such a deception because everyone felt that they knew what Remain meant, given that we were already in the EU. It meant the status quo.

That is something else that Austria warned is about with a binary vote on such a complex and generationally important issue. They warned that a disgruntled population suffering the consequences of austerity would be looking for someone or something to blame. They warned that a Leave campaign might characterise the difficulties people were having in their lives as a the fault of the EU rather than the result of a dogmatic Tory government and the 2008 global crash. We all know that that is exactly what the Leave campaign did. They even encouraged the population to believe that immigration was causing the stress on services and that high immigration was the fault of the EU's addiction to the mobility of labour. (free movement). Stress on services was caused by austerity and failing to fund towns like Boston that had had particularly large immigration surges.

Austrian advisors suggested a different way to manage a referendum. They recommended that the run up to a referendum should be a at least a two-year process of education about what the EU really was and what various versions of Brexit might offer. The referendum itself would have needed to be non-binary. It would at least include Remain, No Deal, EEA membership and some form of customs union as options. The vote would have needed to give people the ability to put their preferences in order One , Two, Three. To avoid Remain coming out on top automatically, because Remain only has one form, the Leave options would have needed to be counted and ranked first, transferring people's second a third choices to bulk out the number of votes for the preferred Leave option. At that point the votes cast for Remain would be brought in.

Another fault with the Referendum was that it was not binding. We were warned that an advisory referendum would allow those who wanted to conduct a corrupt campaign would be inhibited by the strict rules that accompany binding votes. If one side or other in a binding vote commits significant fraud then the vote can be legally declared void. It is a matter of history what happened with the advisory vote. The Leave campaign committed industrial scale fraud, misappropriating funds so that they effectively spent far more on their campaign than allowed. . They were convicted of this and had to pay very large fines, but there was no power to scrub the result because it was only advisory.

Heard enough? I know that you will retort that Cameron and Osborne used public funds to spout Remain propaganda. This accusation could only be levelled at them because we didn't take the time to used public funds to systematically informed the electorate about the merits of Remain and Leave from at least two years before the vote. Cameron and co were compensating for the fact that this education process had not been built in.

So … to summarise … the electorate was too stupid to deal with nuance? Or was the remain campaign simply too complacent, or dare I say too smug, to engage seriously with the arguments being raised by their opponents?

Incidentally, I have some experience of complex issues in binary referendums, living in Scotland and having participated in the 2014 referendum. Here, the “leave” campaign put forward a similarly broad and optimistic menu of potential scenarios for an independent Scotland. Yet here, the “remain” campaign won the status quo position convincingly, if not crushingly. So I have no need of the Austrians to warn me of what can happen, and actually neither do you. Simply ask those who are (thankfully, still) your countrymen.

It was a free, open and fair debate, and the remain campaign had the advantage of status quo and broad political consensus amongst the senior members of all major parties across Britain.

Incidentally, all politics is compromise and coalition. The idea that one single, concrete leave model required backing prior to changing the status quo is simply one of many fallacies raised by the continuity leavers inside and outside parliament as they attempted to unpick their defeat via the so-called confirmatory referendum.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by roughbeast

<SNIP>

Farage famously told us how happy and prosperous the people of Norway were as members of the EEA, with no need to contribute to the EU regional development fund or the CAP and with a say over the rules that affected them. He lulled waverers, who feared for the economy, into believing that Brexit could be that benign. The Remain campaign could not carry out such a deception because everyone felt that they knew what Remain meant, given that we were already in the EU. It meant the status quo.

<SNIP>

Before giving my opinion (for what it's worth) on the un-snipped part of your post, I'd just like to take you up on the selected paragraph and sentence.

The so-called "status quo" was the big issue. With the EU, there is no "status quo". Each successive Commission President has vowed to extend the Commission's competences (or at least try to do that). In the case of VdL, she set her sights on competence over foreign policy. Bit by bit, the EU is trying to federalise - and where would that have left the EU? Sure, they'd want our money, so we'd be on the outside, perhaps with a few other nations. Obviously I can see a path where the UK's veto could prevent all this, but could I guarantee that our PM would exercise such a veto? Indeed, I'm convinced that Cameron was pro-Remain because he wanted to stay at the European top table - the big man. Add to that the supremacy of the ECR, the supporters of Leave had no doubt as to how they should vote.

The EEA possibility had merit in trade terms though less so in terms taking rules from the EU. You're right, this and other Leave alternatives were not proposed in the Referendum. But the complexity of such a referendum, and the series of referendums that the method would spawn could only lead to a Remain decision, imo.

Has Cameron & co been smart enough, the might have been able to engineer this. But public opinion could have erupted, egged on by an ever more popular Farage (a great man, btw) - so a binary referendum it was.

It now falls to business to forge ahead.

[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

The 52% of voters did not buy the Remain campaign. They did not want to retain the "existing world".

The Leave campaign were selling the doable possible and then Boris (and possibly Covid - but mainly Boris) started screwing things up. That is no reason to have stayed under the EU thumb. The Leave campaign did not lie; the Government are not capable of implementing what the campaign suggested.

It doesn't mean that we should have remained in the EU.

The difference between me and OB is that I've never viewed Brexit as a matter of the "sunlit uplands".

You mean 37% of the electorate did not buy the Remain campaign? And there is lies the only point that matters here: yes, Leave lied on an industrial scale, yes, they broke the law, yes, they had the majority of the MSM behind them pumping out decades of false propaganda as a backdrop to the voting decision, but here lies the rub: any decision that changes the macro economic & political destiny of a country for generations to come can not be made on the basis on a vote of just over a 1/3 of the electorate.

Just because it was legal does not make it democratic. No-one on the political right side of this forum except you are willing to address & discuss the mistakes that led us to this debacle.

Again just to be clear here: the Leave campaign made promises that could never be kept and history has and will demonstrate this. This is now a case of damage limitation. It was not Boris that betrayed the magic Brexit fantasy, it was never there in the first place.

Gravity is everything in world trade and we have chosen to establish a punitive trade barrier with the EU, as was forecast, and so all else follows from this. We are a trading nation, it's obvious. The snake oil salemen who sell the sunlit uplands based on deals on the other side of the world are fantasists. With climate change, transport costs will sky rocket and so closer deals made more economic sense.

[roughbeast]

Originally Posted by Pierre

That would have just delivered a bigger Leave majority.

I voted Remain without really paying much interest in the EU, the last 6 years has shone a very bright light on the EU and I would vote Leave now without hesitation.

Maybe or maybe not. At ;least the outcome would have been based upon fuller knowledge, which the 2016 referendum was not.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by ianch99

You mean 37% of the electorate did not buy the Remain campaign? And there is lies the only point that matters here: yes, Leave lied on an industrial scale, yes, they broke the law, yes, they had the majority of the MSM behind them pumping out decades of false propaganda as a backdrop to the voting decision, but here lies the rub: any decision that changes the macro economic & political destiny of a country for generations to come can not be made on the basis on a vote of just over a 1/3 of the electorate.

Just because it was legal does not make it democratic. No-one on the political right side of this forum except you are willing to address & discuss the mistakes that led us to this debacle.

Again just to be clear here: the Leave campaign made promises that could never be kept and history has and will demonstrate this. This is now a case of damage limitation. It was not Boris that betrayed the magic Brexit fantasy, it was never there in the first place.

Gravity is everything in world trade and we have chosen to establish a punitive trade barrier with the EU, as was forecast, and so all else follows from this. We are a trading nation, it's obvious. The snake oil salemen who sell the sunlit uplands based on deals on the other side of the world are fantasists. With climate change, transport costs will sky rocket and so closer deals made more economic sense.

No - you are wrong to play that card. For a start an even smaller percentage of the electorate voted for Remain. The non-voters expressed their indifference. So it was a valid result.

Nor is Brexit a case of "damage limitation". As I've said before, it is now for Business to take us forward (possibly despite government).

As to "economic sense" - yes, closer deals do make economic sense in regard to transportation costs. But the Leave voters accept this as a price worth paying for not being under the EU's thumb.