:brexit: Brexit - The Ramifications

Reasonably serious discussion
5456

I’m in agreement.

Where I think we differ are results. I listened to the likes of Tony Benn, Barbara Castle, Peter Shore, Ted Heath, Jeremy Thorpe and Roy Jenkins.

The benefit of listening to their projections was that over forty years, you can see which of them actually came true.

Those seeking to end our involvement with the then EEC were proven to be right.

That graph is almost mostly accurate. A couple of things though. GDP isn’t a great measure of an economy because it’s not really a measure of production. It’s actually a measure of the value derived from what is termed production. That’s a different thing. It’s more along the lines of how much cash is being made.

Private healthcare? GDP. Sudden death in the family, leading to loads of transport costs, funeral costs. GDP. Road traffic accidents. GDP. Ambulance chasing solicitors. GDP. Wonga. GDP.

Fair enough, that gets factored in with a load of stuff that we do like doing, or making, but a better measure of how well we’re doing is how much we export. Unlike GDP as it stands, there is a direct tie to some kind of production if we’re shipping something out.

There are plenty of small countries that are excellent exporters; Ireland is one example. Switzerland, famously not in the EU, might be the world champ. It has one of the highest rates of employment in the world, and one of the lower income inequality metrics. The Swiss benefit from a few world-spanning corporations and a lot of high end exports which they’ve developed a reputation for doing it well.

The Economist piece your graph comes from misses the point. It is predicated on acrimony that will stop nations trading with us after a no-deal Brexit. Is that likely? Really?

Take a look at the Audis and Bimmers on your roads. German motors constitute about 30% of our private owned fleet. The Germans exported 22.7Bn Euro’s worth of cars into the UK in 2017. Do you really think their car companies are going to abandon that market? At a time when it really can’t afford to lose any more business after the VW diesel scandal?

German politicians will get lobbied to fuck by business folk that clearly care more about the bottom line than the EU’s rules, and we’ll end up trading nice with the Germans. Once we’re trading with them nice, every other EU country is going to ask “Why can’t we?”

I agree that Ireland is fucked though. Not really a great opening centenary for them, is it? Called the Second World War an emergency and persecuted anyone that volunteered (hundreds of thousands) on their return from war. Spent the next 40 years allowing themselves to be run by the Vatican, leading to some of the most vile peacetime deaths I’ve ever heard about. Under control of an unelected foreign power with plenty of time to spare for their centenary of sovereignty, soon unable to trade with their near and affluent neighbour.

5457

Something in here for everyone to agree with, whilst also supplying something for everyone to disagree with :wink:

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5458

Blimey…

5459

…O’Reilly.

Really powerful article. Full of dramatic predictions that can’t come true. Can they?

As George Monbiot put it: “ When corporations free themselves from trade unions, they curtail the freedoms of their workers. When the very rich free themselves from tax, other people suffer through failing public services. When financiers are free to design exotic financial instruments, the rest of us pay for the crises they cause .”

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5460

But isn’t this the new normal?

Are you telling me that it is going to get worse? (Rhetorical question)

And the sheeple allowed themselves to be suckered and walk right into it.

5461

Yeah, but to be fair the article starts the laying of blame all the way back with Thatcher.

It’s been a low, long crawl to oblivion culminating in a vote to leave the EU. If the article is to be believed.

5462

And didn’t it start with her selling off the council housing to the tenants for peanuts, crushing the unions and flogging off the utilities?

It seemed to go downhill from there - but everyone was going to be a millionaire weren’t they, so who needed the unions for instance and who ultimately owned all the shares in BT and British Gas once the proles sold off their shares after making one-off small returns on selling them?

Biggest con trick by the Conservatives ever.

Shameful.

2 Likes
5463

Remember what you said there, the next time you hear, public spending is just a bribe to the voters from Labour.
It’s the perfect reply.

5464

To be fair @Saint-or-sinner I’m sick of the lot of them whatever way they lean politically-

Give me a party that is genuinely there for all of the people and they’ll get my vote.or give us a “none of the above” option on our ballot papers.

I’m getting good at drawing knobs on my ballot papers…

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5465

You should’ve voted for Russell brand

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5466

I think that’s who I try to draw on my ballot papers tbf

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5467

I think you over-estimate the longevity of US economic hegemony, if it even still exists. While it is true that it is home to some massive corporations, it is also true that they’ve made their money by outsourcing their work to places with little to no workers’ rights, and low rates of pay.

China is already realising that this relationship is not tenable. The pollutants that their industrial miracle has produced have led to situations where entire communities get the same type of cancer. What is corporate malfeasance on US soil is standard corporate practice in China. Apple’s big supplier Foxconn has fucking suicide nets installed on its high buildings, FFS.

With a growing middle class, China is already at the point where it needs to change its modus operandi.

At the same time, Trump’s trade war is causing input costs to rise for manufacturers in the US. He’s done the steel industry a world of good while causing others a world of pain.

I’ve said this since forever, but as someone that lives on a small island, I know that the US has everything it needs within its borders. As an observer of its international relations, I know it’s not tenable for the world for it to get everything it wants.

5468

That’s all very nice and if you want to talk about China’s* problems, start a new thread.
None of what you have said changes the fact the the deals are, or already have been done.

  • Maybe corporate America knows they need new ground?

P. S My last sentence in the op wasn’t a dig, just a potential reality.
What’s Fox been up to?

5469

What deals? I haven’t heard anything concrete, apart from TTIP is dead. Moreover, we already trade with loads of countries outside the EU without a formal trade deal. We and the US are each other’s biggest foreign investors, and while we benefit from things such as the visa waiver system, no overall trade deal exists.

Answer me one question. If trade deals are so necessary, how comes we have a trade deficit with the EU, and a trade surplus with the Rest of the World, where we have few formal trade deals?

The government’s own figures.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/internationaltrade/articles/whodoestheuktradewith/2017-02-21

5470

Only the one question?
Ok, our “few formal trade deals” come under the deals done by the big powerful group called the EU*
Once we leave the EU**, we’re potentially*** fucked, as WTO agreements where also done as part of a powerful group.

*you know, like when you can get all the workers to act together. Bit a like a trade union.
**I share many of your issues about corporate unelected EU and their policies.
***yes only potentially, but if you look at how corporate America does things, this is it.

Don’t forget your true objectives for society, just because you’ve had everyone on your back for a while. The way this is being done serves no one but the very richest.

5471

Sorry, you’re wrong.

We’ve no overall trade deal with the US. Neither does the EU. Despite all that, we’re each other’s biggest inward investors.

The WTO exists precisely to govern trade where no formal trade deal exists, or doesn’t cover all things. There are only a handful of countries that don’t have it, and the EU is a big separate space where its rules are not the main ones.

Why would the WTO have problems with us using their system in those circumstances?

Sorry, @Saint-or-sinner, your post just doesn’t make any sense unless you start casting an international facilitator of trade as a blocker.

5472

I’ll try to dig out the link I posted previously, but being able to simply fall back to WTO trade rules is not certain.

As I understand it, and I recognise that the expert I saw may have an agenda, and it was in a very friendly interview with James O’Brien, the UK has applied to join the WTO and wants to be bound by WTO conditions based on its previous relationship as a part of the EU.

I’m sketchy but it means that the UK is trying to join as a separate entity and enjoy the same import / export quotas and tariffs with the rest of the world that it currently enjoys as a member of the EU. There have been objections to this from a number of countries - I remember Australia being one.

I also believe that the WTO is a glacially slow organisation, has a massive number of individual members (150+) and I THINK they all have to agree to approve a deal. EDIT Thinking about this I’m not sure that is the case.

It’s not cut and dry that we will just fall back to WTO trading. I’m sure we could, but we would not enjoy the weight of the benefit we have enjoyed (tariffs and quotas) when were negotiating as one twenty-eighth of a bloc.

EDIT: Here’s an interview with Bloomberg’s correspondent who writes about the WTO.

And here’s an article with a bit more detail on the problems we have at the moment. Incidentally the 4 countries that have flagged objects are the US, Argentina, New Zealand and Brazil (NOT Australia as I previously suggested).

5473

So is it your contention that we won’t be able to join?

Even though the likes of Liberia, Afghanistan, etc are let in?

5474

I was thinking of this @pap.

Roberto Azevêdo, head of the WTO.

“Britain is a member of the WTO and will continue to be a member of the WTO. But it will be a member with no country-specific commitments. We have had no other situation like that,” he said.

“It is very difficult to predict. Russia’s accession to the WTO took 20 years. Other negotiations happened faster. It will be a very high risk bet to hope that negotiations would be quickly completed and that negotiations would be uneventful,” he said.

Trade will still be done, but we’re bent over a barrel and the rest of the world know it.

Edit. No idea how i done that to the quote.

5475

No. Not at all.

I was just adding background to your dismissal out of hand of @Saint-or-sinner’s position.

My assertion is that we can’t fall back to WTO terms at the same level we currently enjoy. Which I think was @Saint-or-sinner’s point.

Falling back to WTO terms without the EU bloc-negotiated quotas and tariffs is really punitive and really ugly and if we want anything like the terms we already ‘enjoy’ as one twenty-eighth of the EU then those will be challenged and will need to be negotiated and that can take 90 days plus one year to even be heard.

Or put another way, we will be able to fall back to trading with the rest of the world on the terms enjoyed by Libya and Afghanistan. Anything more will take time and diplomacy.