The Positive Brexit Thread

[How I Wrote Elastic Man 1,187]

2 hours ago, Herman said:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8280077/Theyre-deluded-Farmer-took-50-English-workers-pick-crops-just-7-left.html?ito=amp_twitter_share-top

so some of those unskilled jobs actually require some skills?

[Aggy 755]

5 hours ago, How I Wrote Elastic Man said:

so some of those unskilled jobs actually require some skills?

Looks like the Brits were so bad at it, he managed to lose another between the headline and the first paragraph...

[How I Wrote Elastic Man 1,187]

4 minutes ago, Aggy said:

Looks like the Brits were so bad at it, he managed to lose another between the headline and the first paragraph...

It looks like the article has been updated, maybe they are dropping like flies 😀

[nevermind, neoliberalism has had it 159]

On 30/04/2020 at 12:03, Rock The Boat said:

The problem with wind is that it still requires subsidies to make it economical to produce, so if Scotland is going to export wind-produced electricity to England it could prove to be a very expensive product. It could even be that the more Scotland sells, the more Scottish taxes have to rise to subsidise the electric generation. But I'll admit I haven't done the costing so can't comment on the details.

Scotland does have an excellent fishing fleet. Unfortunately, it is an industry which it will have to share with all the other EU countries, who have been pushed out of English fishing waters, so that's a lot of boats looking for fewer fish.

England may well have a bad time of it outside the EU but that doesn't help Scotland very much. In fact, it will be bad for Scotland as England will probably still be Scotland's biggest trading partner after Independence,  so a poor England will not be buying Scottish products. The natives might enjoy the schadenfreude of a crippled England but they won't much enjoy the economic repercussions.

And what has the EU promised Scotland? Actually, not very much at all. Scotland thought for a time that they would just walk straight in to the EU without much difficulty. That was before the EU told them they would have to apply and go through the joining process just like  any other nation wishing to join the EU. Given the glacial pace that joining takes, it could be years and years in which Scotland is frozen in some political and fiscal limbo. The English have made it clear that they won't support Scotland using the pound, so they'll be left without a hard currency. However you wish to view it,  the good ship Scottish Independence would be unwise to leave the safety of the harbour.

 

poppycock, this Government is supporting and subsidisng the fossil fuel industry with hundreds of millions. Your vision of an English versus Scottisch economy will not happen, they are and will be dependent on each other for a wee while. The EU will value Scotland as they have already mentioned and they will not have to re apply as you said, but then you are coming from a different viewpoint. You want to run away, whilst I want us to stay in and force reform of the EU, so states, regions or cities can become Independent entities within. Englands propaganda unit in Scotland is working hard on keeping the nation divided, but their sad, bumbling use of the law to smear Independence politicians and denigrate the Indy movement is at best galvanising Scottisch people.

[Herman 9,768]

Michael Gove's bookshelf. Certainly explains a lot. 😯😀

[Herman 9,768]

Haha. Nigel is not happy. Nigel got a visit from the cops. Nigel had his freedom of movement curtailed. 😂

[SwindonCanary 455]

I see we are starting trade talks with the USA on Wednesday, with Trump having an election in November, I should think he'd want the bases of a deal by then, long before our deal with the EU !

[Hoola Han Solo 448]

18 minutes ago, SwindonCanary said:

I see we are starting trade talks with the USA on Wednesday, with Trump having an election in November, I should think he'd want the bases of a deal by then, long before our deal with the EU !

So in other words, we got back control from the EU but now we’re giving it to the USA 🤣😂

[Herman 9,768]

Mmm, can't wait for Toxic Fried Chicken. Made from a secret special blend of herbs, spices and bacteria. 

[Herman 9,768]

In all seriousness the way the government has handled the pandemic and Brexit I am sure they will do a sterling job in getting us a brilliant trade deal with the world superpower. And with Truss leading the charge we are in safe hands. 

[BigFish 1,987]

3 hours ago, SwindonCanary said:

I see we are starting trade talks with the USA on Wednesday, with Trump having an election in November, I should think he'd want the bases of a deal by then, long before our deal with the EU !

The UK government has estimated that eliminating tariffs and reducing other trade barriers with the US could boost the economy by between 0.07% and 0.16% over the next 15 years, depending on the exact terms.

Oh wow, that really is worth while @SwindonCanary, if we get a deal it might be worth nearly one fifth of one per cent.

 

Edited May 5, 2020 by BigFish

[SwindonCanary 455]

6 hours ago, BigFish said:

The UK government has estimated that eliminating tariffs and reducing other trade barriers with the US could boost the economy by between 0.07% and 0.16% over the next 15 years, depending on the exact terms.

Oh wow, that really is worth while @SwindonCanary, if we get a deal it might be worth nearly one fifth of one per cent.

 

But in greater things it may get the EU moving 👍

Edited May 5, 2020 by SwindonCanary
s

[BigFish 1,987]

47 minutes ago, SwindonCanary said:

But in greater things it may get the EU moving 👍

No, not going to happen. The UK's government don't want to negotiate, that is why the EU have published a version of the draft legal text and the UK has published nothing. End of June is the time after which ratification of the treaty becomes problematic. Looks like zero chance of a deal by 31 December and with the virus zero chance the UK will be ready for no deal either.

[SwindonCanary 455]

Either the EU get off their high horse, or we leave with no deal, that's the EU's choice !

[Herman 9,768]

No it's your choice and always has been. 

[Bagster 101]

Oh dear that doesn't bode well

https://www.ft.com/content/79484c01-b66b-4f81-bdc6-fd4def940821

 

[Bagster 101]

Free movement has not been stopped, it has been changed.

You will still be able to work in the EU and people from the EU will still come to blighty

You do realise that Brexit isn't going to result in us towing Britain to the middle of the Atlantic where we live in perfect isolation, don't you ?

Bleating like sheep every time we do something with the EU or not just shows that you really have no idea what you're talking about.

Brexit is not a cure all, it's a choice to have more flexibility and to do things a bit differently, that is it. FULL STOP.

We will still follow the UN agendas, much like the EU will.

This drives our climate policy, it drives our economic aid policies, it drives our gender policies and our migration policies.

The EU is fundamentally flawed, the Euro is fundamentally broken.

How do you fix something that doesn't want to be fixed.FUDGE, FUDGE AND MORE FUDGE.

Stop acting like we are the third Reich, Boris is not Hitler and Dominic Cummings is not Satan

Let's see how the Eurozone does this time.

As for for sharing debt and the formation of the Superstate, Mrs Merkel says NO.

Oh dear it seems like the Germans and French like cherry picking as much as we do 😂

 

 

[Rock The Boat 1,332]

Great article in the Telegraph today on why the EU is a meaningless entity and will surely collapse:

 

North and South are today pursuing radically different policies, according to their economic means, and this will lead to radically different outcomes when Europe emerges from the Covid-19 depression.

“It destroys the argument that the EU is rule-compliant. It hits that narrative on the head,” says Prof Lorand Bartels, an expert on trade law and Brexit at Cambridge University.

It is also poisonous for the EU project itself. As matters stand, Barnier’s negotiating demand is that Britain must swallow the whole acquis of competition and state aid law – and future acquis through “dynamic alignment” clauses – as a condition for a normal free trade agreement (FTA) with normal global access to EU markets.

It must also swallow “level playing field” clauses on the environment, labour, and taxation. This extra-territorial demand over how we run our society as an independent state is extraordinary.

Level playing field clauses are of course normal in FTA deals. They are an assertion of general principle. They are nothing like the Barnier variant.

The FTA agreements with Canada, Korea, Japan, or Singapore obviously did not include such conditions (those countries would have walked away) and nor did the EU dare to utter such notions in its TTIP talks with the US (the Americans would have laughed).

“The EU knows that it is an impossible ask but since Theresa May was willing to give away everything, they think they can keep trying with Boris Johnson,” says Shanker Singham, head of Global Vision and a Brexit trade advisor.

It was and is a pure power play, an attempt by a larger economic bloc to pressure Britain into giving up normal sovereign prerogatives. It is speciously justified by the claim that this island economy is too big and too close to the EU to allow for any other settlement.

It is also irritatingly dishonest. Germany is the biggest abuser of the existing state aid and competition system, censured 67 times over the last two decades for breaches of state aid law. France has had 29 infractions. Britain has been the shining example with just four. The British have historically deployed subsidies on a far smaller scale than the Franco-German core even where permitted.

Eight weeks of economic implosion have now rendered the Barnier demarche almost surreal. The issue is not that the EU has suspended state rules to prevent systemic bankruptcies. It would have been a policy crime to do otherwise.

The relevant point is the way in which the national, sauve qui peut, free-for-all approach – without a joint fiscal support mechanism to offset it – has shattered equity within the EU itself. The level playing refrain has become a sick joke.

Germany is drawing on its AAA-rating and deep fiscal pockets to bail out Deutschland Inc with €1 trillion of credits, guarantees, and emergency spending. It accounts for 52pc of the €1.9 trillion of the EU’s state aid approvals since Covid-19 hit.

Those of us who covered the eurozone austerity crisis from 2010-16 note with weary cynicism how rigidly EU budget law was enforced during that episode (when it suited the northern creditor bloc) and how quickly state aid law is being waived this time because it suits Berlin.

The Club Med bloc can only dream of German largesse. The Spanish are spending hardly anything. Italy’s direct fiscal support – as opposed to theoretical guarantees – barely covers two weeks of actual economic damage. The result is that southern Europe will suffer a flood of avoidable insolvencies.

Viable firms and industries will collapse. There will be lasting structural damage and hysteresis. Club Med recovery will take longer. The shrinkage of nominal GDP – and lack of a V-shaped rebound – will cause debt dynamics to turn toxic.

UBS says Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio could blow through 175pc in a protracted downturn with failed containment and second lockdowns (more than a remote tail-risk). Jefferies estimates that even France’s debt could top 140pc.

Monetary union as currently constructed will not be viable if this happens. Hence Emmanuel Macron’s furious outburst against the northern bloc in an interview with the Financial Times, and hence the near daily warnings by finance minister Bruno Le Maire that the euro project is in existential peril and risks disintegration without fiscal union, i.e the perennial French agenda, l’Allemagne paiera.

Specifically, their gripe is with the German state development bank KfW. Berlin is using this giant lender to funnel €100bn of free money to German companies. This keeps private business intact through the downturn. It also means that these companies will be able to pick through the corporate ruins of the South, acquire productive plant on the cheap, and entrench northern dominance of the EMU system. It repeats the austerity episode.

Who bought up Greece’s airports when the Troika forced Athens to sell off state assets for a pittance? Just guess.

This alleged plundering of countries in distress is the eurosceptic refrain of Italy’s Lega strongman Matteo Salvini. His rallying cry is that monetary union is a conspiracy by mercantilist corporate Germany to subjugate vulnerable corporate Italy. (He is wrong, but not entirely wrong).

It has been a sorry saga. First the EU single market buckled when Germany imposed an export ban on medical kit, and in doing so severed the internal supply lines that everybody took for granted. Now the EU competition regime is disintegrating under pressure.

The antitrust commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, is trying to play herself back into the game. She has begun to make a symbolic stand, balking at German attempts to water down EU state aid rules yet further to save the Mittelstand. This is shadow boxing. Germany will not let its family firms go to the wall whatever EU law and doctrine says. Nor should it.

But then what remains of Barnier’s demarche? The EU is fully justified in asking that the UK does not pursue a predatory Chinese-style subsidy policy to undercut European companies and gain market share (very different from the supposed “Singapore-on-the-Thames” model).

The UK is happy to oblige since it has no intention of going down that route. It has agreed to set up its own anti-subsidy regime. “That ought to be the end of conversation,” said Mr Singham.

I can’t resist noting the parallel spectacle in EU environmental policy. The new guidelines for ESG sustainable disclosure exempts oil and gas from the definition of fossil fuels. Does one detect the hand of the German Gazprom lobby and the diesel fraternity in that farce?

The German BDI industry federation wants to roll back the EU’s CO2 targets. Armin Laschet, the front runner to succeed Angela Merkel as Chancellor, is a closet climate denialist who opened a new lignite coal plant in January. The UK has essentially stopped burning coal.

Britain’s environmental, labour and competition standards are on balance higher than EU standards, although one should be wary of such illusory hierarchies, often invoked as a screen for protectionism.

The Labour party erred gravely last year in demanding that the UK submit fully to the EU’s legal regime. In doing so it was stating that the EU should have the power to set future British laws without any democratic consent from British voters.

It is beyond me how anybody in the Labour Party could conclude that an EU system run in the interest of the commercial exporting elites is the apostolic defender of worker rights. Nor can I think of a lower moment in the history of the great patriotic Labour movement.

What would Keir Hardie have thought of a party that wished to strip itself of powers to exercise government for ever? The political weather has changed profoundly since that sorry episode. Britain is less divided.

The EU is in another of its endless crises – the result of its internal contradictions as a constitutional confederacy trying to run a federal monetary union. You have to be a true believer these days to take either its supremacy or moral claims at face value.

[A Load of Squit 5,170]

2 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

Great article in the Telegraph today

🤣🤣🤣

 

[Jools 584]

Blimey! The Daily Express with its Lefty editor, Gary Jones, has published reports from Brexit Facts4EU.Org:

“EU on brink: How bloc’s sales to UK have plummeted after Brexit”

Daily Express publishes reports from Brexit Facts4EU.Org

Brexit Facts4EU.Org’s work DOES get out there, thanks to some diligent journalists

Yesterday Clive Hammond of the Daily Express did a great write-up of one of our latest research reports. You can read his article here. It made the front page of the Express – a newspaper which in recent years has been so important in publishing material that some others would not.

Our Brexit Facts4EU.Org report contained the latest official EU data released by the EU’s own statistics agency, regarding the EU’s foreign trade this year and last – even before the effects of the Coronavirus measures could show up.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

What the Daily Express reported on

• We showed how the EU's exports to the UK fell by more than to any other country
• EU27 exports to the UK fell by -11.4% so far this year, compared to the same period in 2019
• This is more than three times the drop for any other major country

We also showed just how important the UK market is for the EU27 countries:-

• Total EU27 goods exports to UK : €319bn
• This is 15% of global EU27 goods exports in 2019
• It’s 61% more than the EU27 sold to China - the second-largest economy in the world

Here’s the Express coverage, edited only to make things fit into this page

This entire article yesterday referred to our research and we think it's a good read. Readers can decide for themselves here.

 

👍

[Herman 9,768]

Haha. Does the lefty editor explain what happened at roughly the same time as us leaving the EU? 

[SwindonCanary 455]

1 hour ago, A Load of Squit said:

🤣🤣🤣

 

One of the comments on that Telegraph piece was " Individual eurozone countries are being painfully reminded of the inflexibility of the 'one size fits all' currency. The warnings were there in the late 1990s and the failure of the Euro has been demonstrated over and over again but ignored by the unelected bureaucrats."

[Hoola Han Solo 448]

5 minutes ago, SwindonCanary said:

One of the comments on that Telegraph piece was " Individual eurozone countries are being painfully reminded of the inflexibility of the 'one size fits all' currency. The warnings were there in the late 1990s and the failure of the Euro has been demonstrated over and over again but ignored by the unelected bureaucrats."

Was that your comment Swindo?

[A Load of Squit 5,170]

When the Trinity Mirror bought the titles from Richard Desmond they said that the political leanings of the papers wouldn't change, the deal was all about saving money.

A right wing newspaper quoting a right wing web site isn't news.

 

[Surfer 1,547]

Facts: the Governments own figures show that the potential upside to GDP of an FTA with the USA is LOWER than the potential downside of no agreement with the EU. 

Gove is now saying the UK would accept tariffs on British exports to the EU (which economics tells you leads to higher retail prices and hence lower demand) so the UK can be free to change its employment and environmental regulations. 

So it’s clear as day, the government wants to cut business taxes, let wages fall, cut environmental protections and cut the social safety net. Just like Republicans in the US. We should just apply to become the 51st State and be done with it...and all this chaos for the benefit of whom?

p.s. reference back to the “inequality” thread - anyone think these trade policies will fix that? 

p.p.s. it’s all gone quite on the Russia report -where is it? 

Edited May 6, 2020 by Surfer

[Rock The Boat 1,332]

1 hour ago, Surfer said:

Facts: the Governments own figures show that the potential upside to GDP of an FTA with the USA is LOWER than the potential downside of no agreement with the EU. 

Gove is now saying the UK would accept tariffs on British exports to the EU (which economics tells you leads to higher retail prices and hence lower demand) so the UK can be free to change its employment and environmental regulations. 

So it’s clear as day, the government wants to cut business taxes, let wages fall, cut environmental protections and cut the social safety net. Just like Republicans in the US. We should just apply to become the 51st State and be done with it...and all this chaos for the benefit of whom?

p.s. reference back to the “inequality” thread - anyone think these trade policies will fix that? 

p.p.s. it’s all gone quite on the Russia report -where is it? 

Is the US free to change its employment and environmental regulations while it trades with the EU?

Why would the UK expect to be treated differently from the US? Or Canada, Australia, Singapore, Japan, China?

[Surfer 1,547]

2 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

Is the US free to change its employment and environmental regulations while it trades with the EU?

Why would the UK expect to be treated differently from the US? Or Canada, Australia, Singapore, Japan, China?

Of course the US can. Does to mean that we should emulate them though.

If UK doesn't want "free and frictionless trade" with the EU it can do the same. But that was not the promise made to the British electorate. 

[Jools 584]

1 hour ago, Surfer said:

Of course the US can. Does to mean that we should emulate them though.

If UK doesn't want "free and frictionless trade" with the EU it can do the same. But that was not the promise made to the British electorate. 

Given the article in the Express via Facts4EU.Org I supplied above it doesn't look like the British electorate give a stuff about promises of free and frictionless trade with the EU -- What with the British electorate boycotting EU goods and all.

[Surfer 1,547]

1 hour ago, Jools said:

Given the article in the Express via Facts4EU.Org I supplied above it doesn't look like the British electorate give a stuff about promises of free and frictionless trade with the EU -- What with the British electorate boycotting EU goods and all.

Nice try. The Prime Minister promised free and frictionless trade to win the election. So you are saying he lied and that is O.K?

https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-michael-gove-admits-brexit-border-checks-are-inevitable-2020-2

[Bagster 101]

No he promised free and frictionless trade but not at all costs.

What are you suggesting, agree to all the EU's demands to gain what? A trade deficit!

We see the Germans and the French have again broken rules on state aid!!! One rule for them and another for the rest

These two countries, the currency manipulator and the protectionist.

No thanks

Edited May 7, 2020 by Bagster