11 ms·

Does Brexit end not with a bang but a whimper?

78 points by deafcalculus 9y ago

adwhit 9y ago
A real shame that Oxford decided to name their department after an oligarch who expropriated huge wealth out of Russia [1]. Sad to admit I consider any position associated with the Blavatnik name tainted. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/03/oxford-university-accused-over-oligarch-len-blavatnik-75m-donation https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/03/oxford-uni...
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Could you please explain how this relates to Brexit? (genuinely curious).
  - thedaniel 9y ago
    The author of the article is a professor in said department.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
forinti 9y ago
I can't decide if Brexit is good or bad for the UK. On the one hand, there's the common market and freedom of movement. On the other there's Germany's dominance and lots of fragile banks. What would be worse, losing access to the free market or being around if the banks fail? Or would being outside the market make a difference if Deutsche Bank failed?
- isostatic 9y ago
  The UK isn't part of the euro, it will be just as badly affected by a collapse in european banks as our trade will still remain with europe
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  Bad. If anything because they'll have to rewrite thousands of laws and procedures that came from the EU times, and deal with the caos that that will cause. That only will cost so much money (and pain) that it would justify staying in the EU. Then, of course there are companies that have left and that will leave, highly-skilled workflow for London that will be harder to get, etc. They have to negotiate with the EU so that they're not completely cut out of commerce, with nothing to offer in exchange and therefore no negotiating power. It's old people in the country that have decided this, based on their ignorance on the matter and lies spread before the vote. Funny enough, it's them who mainly benefit from European aid. Pretty sad, really (I'm Italian, just talking based on what I've read and a handful of friends who live in London).
  - spiralx 9y ago
    > If anything because they'll have to rewrite thousands of laws and procedures that came from the EU times, and deal with the caos that that will cause. That only would justify stay in the EU. No, we'll keep most of those laws, because in order to trade with the EU we'd have to comply with them anyway. We just lose any ability to control them.
  - cmdkeen 9y ago
    While I appreciate Brexit hasn't happened yet there's little to no evidence yet of any exodus of highly skilled workforces. London remains an incredibly attractive destination for inflows of both investment, workers and tourists. Will some companies leave, no doubt, however the high profile mass departure of European HQs and banks has yet to bear out. To the OP, and going back to the article, a major issue is that of services, our major export. The EU does not have a single market in services, and has shown little interest in progressing it. It isn't so much Deutsche Bank as the mittelstand that demonstrates that the EU as a whole favours particular economic systems. Italy is a prime example of a sclerotic services sector that their own government has failed to reform, despite the EU being willing and able to influence the appointment of Mario Monti it isn't willing to impose a free market in service in the same way it has for goods - and stand up to blatant protectionism.
    - 9y ago
- the_mitsuhiko 9y ago
  Not sure how being outside the EU would help the UK against "Germany's dominance" Surely out of the EU means by definition that the UK has less control over Germany?
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    Sure, but Germany will have less control over the UK. From what I can tell and have read Germany has huge influence on pretty much every country besides Poland and--perhaps--Hungary (I live in Poland, not sure about Hungary actually). Poland definitely thinks about its own citizens _first_, and _then_ at what's good for the EU, which is after all what politicians have been elected to do. I'm Italian and Italy is a mess in part because of having no balls to stand up for what Italians would need. Totally different story in Poland, from what I can tell from living here.
    - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      Germany doesn't have much influence over the UK, largely because the UK isn't in the Euro.
    - romland 9y ago
      Are you suggesting that Poland and Hungary are leechers?
      - nkkollaw 9y ago
        > Are you suggesting that Poland and Hungary are leechers? No, are you? I'm suggesting what I wrote in my comment.
      - Tomte 9y ago
        No, they are autocratic regimes, well on their way to full dictatorship within a few generations of "presidents".
        nkkollaw 9y ago
- pjc50 9y ago
  There are few "firewalls" between financial markets, there's one market and it's global. If there's another bank crisis, it's going to happen everywhere. Iceland was particularly badly hit and is not actually in the EU. Let's not forget that the last crisis started in the "Anglosphere" (Lehman, RBS, Northern Rock, Anglo-Irish etc) and spread elsewhere!
- ben_w 9y ago
  I thought London was supposed to be one of the major banking centres of Europe? So if the banks are fragile, the UK is just as exposed in that regards, or perhaps more exposed as it will no longer be (as?) able to ask the ECB for assistance?
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    The UK isn't in the Euro so the ECB doesn't really matter to the UK.
    - ben_w 9y ago
      Noted. I kinda assumed ECB was for all EU states, not just for all Eurozone states.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  I thnk Brexit is a good thing .. for the EU. The UK has refused to adopt the Euro. The GBP is totally overvalued. The UK/Ireland have no plans to join the Shengen zone (which is a good thing for American backpackers I'll admit, as when you're 90 days in the EU run out, you can stay in the UK for 120, until the reset period). Politically, the UK is more closely aligned to US foreign policy (that of war mongering) than the EU. With such a long transition period, I'm guess most UK citizens living/working in Europe have hopefully started work visa application processes, in case the EU parliament decides to not allow a bi-lateral work agreement.
  - JohnStrange 9y ago
    I believe Brexit is a loose-loose deal. It's bad for the UK because it causes a lot of complications without producing real benefits. Basically, the UK will loose lot of political influence and control while having to abide to the EU's trade rules anyway. It's bad for the EU, because the union may loose cohesion, as it may turn out that the UK is doing not so bad after all and local anti-European socialist and nationalist movements will capitalize on that a bit, because the EU looses influence on the US without the UK, and because the UK provided a counter-balance to the axis France-Germany and now smaller countries fear that the EU will move forward faster than they wish for. My prediction is that the net result will make everyone a little worse off in 10-20 years from now than if the UK had stayed in the EU, but the effect will not be very noticeable and overall hard to quantify.
- marrs 9y ago
  Losing access to the free market would be fine if we gain access to the global market, at least in the medium to long term. The ability to drop tariffs on imports would be a big deal even in the short term. In reality, though, I don't see us leaving the trappings of the EU with this current govt: we'll just lose our seat at the table (to coin a phrase). This was never going to be quick, though: the Brexit issue will be at the centre of politics for at least a generation. I'm actually more interested in how this has shone a light on the issue of the slow erosion of our sovereignty and our traditional British liberal values. On this point I agree with the author that the younger generation seem to be far more ambivalent about freedom of speech, democracy, et al. to the point that they seem to be actively suspicious of it. The severity of this division has been a bit of a shock, but I'd rather we deal with it now than not at all, especially when Trump shows us that the alternative could have been to vote in a radical populist party instead, which would have had far more power than Trump has.
  - Angostura 9y ago
    > the younger generation seem to be far more ambivalent about freedom of speech, democracy, et al. to the point that they seem to be actively suspicious of it. Oddly enough, I suspect that the younger generation probably think that about the Daily Mail reading older generation.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > the ability to drop tariffs on imports would be a big deal even in the short term That is, the benefit is the ability to replace British-made goods with cheaper foreign imports? I'm just saying because normally people make the argument the other way round.
    - marrs 9y ago
      Exactly so. Well, British and European goods.
  - ddalex 9y ago
    > slow erosion of our sovereignty What exactly are changes in the UK's sovereignity?
- Symmetry 9y ago
  Germany's dominance mostly just hurts countries that have to depend on the Euro, so not the UK. They experienced a little bit of the Eurozone's double dip recession brought on by premature tightening in 2011 but that was mostly a matter of trade exposure which isn't something that can change just by leaving the EU. And since the whole reason for the UK's trouble then was getting less trade from Europe then abandoning that trade altogether would be strictly worse.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  I live in Sweden and never even thought about how Germany "dominates". Is it just because I come from a much smaller country with much smaller population and therefore much smaller expectations about what we can accomplish on the world stage? Or is it because our views align much better with those of Germany, so we are part of the same "bloc" in EU politics whereas the UK would want to pull in another direction but can't?
  - adventured 9y ago
    If you go back a few years, there was a large hysteria across much of the Eurozone about German domination of the bloc. Magazine cover after magazine cover painting them in terrible light, including some going so far as to reference back to Nazi times. That coincided with the post effects of the great recession, when Germany essentially refused to allow more liberal central bank posturing and action to try to follow the more aggressive US Fed lead on how to properly respond to the terrible recession and the financial system consequences. Germany wanted a very restrictive, conservative approach. There was a split at that point between the members that were suffering and Germany which was in mostly solid shape (the peak of the Greek disaster was also near a peak of the anti-German sentiment). The US recovery took root relatively quickly, after about a year, thanks in part to the Fed taking aggressive action to stabilize the banks and financial system (the US would have seen Citi, Bank of America, etc. all collapse otherwise; those banks are now extremely healthy and printing massive profits again). It was only when the ECB finally copied the Fed's approach that the broad EU and Eurozone economies began to rapidly recover (and for those already in good shape, it has pushed them into something closer to economic boom). You can look at a chart of EU or Eurozone economic growth, you'll see a nasty double recessionary dip around 2011-2012. After that, the ECB finally began to shift its behavior and do what they should have done years prior, which has led to a sustained recovery in most parts of the EU since then (you see it in meaningfully increased growth rates, from Finland finally recovering after a disastrous 8-10 years, to Spain and Portugal finally seeing serious improvement, to German growth picking up, to French unemployment finally declining significantly, etc).
    - alkonaut 9y ago
      > there was a large hysteria across much of the Eurozone about German domination of the bloc. Magazine cover after magazine cover painting them in terrible light, including some going so far as to reference back to Nazi times. I try to keep up with politics and news and saw none of this (I watch foreign TV but don't read foreign newspapers a lot). So I don't think there has been a lot of painting germany as a bad guy in Swedish media, no. Why that is, I can only speculate. Would be interesting to hear if the same is true in e.g. Denmark, Finland. > That coincided with the post effects of the great recession, when Germany essentially refused to allow more liberal central bank posturing and action to try to follow the Fed lead on how to properly respond to the terrible recession and the financial system consequences If the 2008 recession was behind it, Sweden recovered very quickly and wasn't as hard hit (Partly because we weren't as influenced by ECB interest rate politics). Perhaps that is also a reason.
Nursie 9y ago
This seems speculative and it effectively posits a worst-of-all-worlds situation resulting - one if which the UK is half inside the single market. Half inside such that it allows the flow of goods (the UK is a net importer) but not services (which we net export). This would be untenable, worse than a no-deal situation. And the basis of this speculation is that the EU is holding all the cards. I'm really not convinced this is true. The article reads a little bit like a remain fantasy - Brexit will be a disaster and then people must come around to my way of thinking! The problem with that analysis is that in your way of thinking it was likely unimaginable that the Brexit vote would go through in the first place. And then we heard that no PM would ever actually action it, and then that no Parliament would allow it. None of which has really panned out. --edit-- I'd love to reply to more of the comments below, but I appear to be rate-limited. Never mind then...
- Xylakant 9y ago
  So far negotiations have shown the EU holds most of the important cards. The UK caved in on any negotiation demand. It’s a fascinating view from Germany: The UK threatens “No Deal”, the EU informs companies that “No Deal” is a possible outcome and plans contingencies, informs companies that they should too, UK now complains that EU threatens companies. UK says “Out means out”, EU prepares to move EU institutions abroad, UK complains about EU moving institutions abroad. I’m also puzzled what’s supposed to happen with such important stuff as rules and agreements for importing nuclear materials for powerplants (currently regulated via Euratom), regulations regarding medicine/medical treatment (currently also handled on a european level) and all of that stuff. Which other option does the UK realistically have for those things other than just accept the EU rules? Any producer for anything that wants to export to the EU will have to abide by EU rules anyways. Will there be a UK and a EU edition of things? All of this could be solved with sufficient time, but triggering article 50 was akin to holding a loaded gun to your head and saying “if you don’t do what I want at the end of the next two years, I’ll pull the trigger.”
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    >Which other option does the UK realistically have for those things other than just accept the EU rules? // I'm not sure if it was a main driver but the powers that are pushing this whole thing behind the scenes clearly have realised the opportunity to subtely rewrite a lot of regulations/legislation to prefer their interests. The "sovereignty" part of Brexit is playing out as taking power from a more socialist and green EU and giving it to the hidden capitalist interests behind the Tories. The incredible sleight-of-hand has been getting the working classes to vote for something that could then be twisted to be so highly detrimental to them. Anyway, to your question about industry regulations: safety, food standards, and environmentalism costs money. Companies within the EU trading block will sell the stuff that meets the regulations, UK will get to have cheap stuff that breaks easily and no longer have the 2 year 'warranty', or the restrictions on unfair business practices - UK companies will try and foist our lower standards on whoever we can fool in to it, eg with promises of "foreign aid" that end up in developing world officials bank accounts. Bonus, the workers making the stuff will get paid less, have less job security, less rights. Double bonus, UK environment will be open for capitalists to fuck up if they want to make a quick buck.
scandox 9y ago
Amazing how small errors in a text start to degrade your confidence in the content. At the outset the sentences are clear and mostly correct. As it goes on small errors start to appear and occasionally the entire meaning of a sentence becomes unclear. By the end, reading his slightly dramatic flourish, you get the feeling that he wrote with some emotion and wasn't tending to the language very carefully. On the one hand you can say these are merely typos. On the other you could say they reflect a lack of clarity, a lack of care. I know I find it hard to ignore.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  Meh. It's full of articles with "it's" instead of "its". It's the internet. You're (oh, yes--and "your" instead of "you're") not going to have a good time if you stop at typos or grammatical errors instead of just trying to see if what you read is interesting or not.
- tomcooks 9y ago
  As a non English speaker some passages were difficult do understand and I had to re-read them several time; I can now attribute that to typos and feel smarter~
- Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
  You're not the only one to feel this way. I think this is a very valid position, there is nothing superstitious about it. Any user of (the English in this case) language is able to (easily learn to) write without major mistakes, make their sentences proper, make their thoughts clear. If they haven't done so, it definitely hints at a lack of care, or being in a rush, or simply not respecting the language and/or their readers. Not respecting them in a sense that the author tries to overlay a part of their own work as a writer (the work of forming coherent and correct language structure) onto the reader, making them decipher author's thoughts which were not formed into a commonly accepted standard. Are there published documents out there with a lot of mistakes that definitely have high quality information and research? Yes of course there are. But the odds are not in their favor.
StanAngeloff 9y ago
As a EU resident who is a partner in several UK based businesses, the uncertainty over what's coming next is frightening. When I approached different colleagues, friends & family in the UK, they all had different views on what should happen. To an outsider, it looks like opinions have been polarised. If you are managing a business that has ties to the UK there are very many unknowns right now. It's a lot easier to plan for the worst than it is to take risks IMHO. Brexit must ultimately hurt the UK economy in some way – jobs lost, money flowing out of the country, talented people leaving?
- moomin 9y ago
  You're right about the polarisation. The same forces in play in America are in play in Britain right now. It's no accident that Trump described himself as "Mr Brexit". Authoritarian voters support Brexit, liberal ones don't. The major parties split right/left not authoritarian/liberal and are terrified of losing their voting base. I know a die hard leaver, she's one of the few people I'd trust my children with. She's also an authoritarian leftist who can't understand why we're not out already and wants to get rid of immigrants. The London Tech scene (which skews left/liberal) seems to be hemorrhaging talented people to Berlin and other places. All of these people are what I think of as natural Londoners, but they're deciding for their own reasons that Britain isn't the place they thought it was. (Me, I've got a wife and kids, it's harder to up sticks. That and I love this country.) Meanwhile, inflation is so bad the supermarkets are quietly reducing the quantity in boxes to avoid giving shoppers a heart attack at the prices, and Brexit _hasn't even happened yet_.
  - xienze 9y ago
    > It's no accident that Trump described himself as "Mr Brexit". No he didn’t. That’s how he introduced Nigel Farage at a rally.
    - chrisoverzero 9y ago
      > They will soon be calling me MR. BREXIT! https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/766246213079498752 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/76624621307949875...
maxehmookau 9y ago
He's got a point. It's surprised me how many small day-to-day decisions made by management are because of Brexit.
te_chris 9y ago
Now Nigel (fucking) Farage is calling for a 2nd referendum. You can't make this shit up. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/11/nigel-farage-backs-fresh-brexit-referendum-to-kill-off-issue https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/11/nigel-farag...
- mrgordon 9y ago
  Cameron lost his snap vote. May lost her snap vote. Sounds like Farage wants to lose a poorly thought out vote now too.
- Havoc 9y ago
  Ideal. That dodgy first vote is no good basis to make such changes on. Think that's going to bite Nigel in a arse though.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    > Think that's going to bite Nige Disagree. He said before the referendum that 48%-52% would be unfinished business, but didn’t seem to lose credibility amongst his supporters from it. Something may eventually tarnish his Teflon, but he’d probably be able to turn defeat in a second referendum into a rallying cry for a literal attempted revolution. (I place odds of UK civil war in the next 6 years at about 10%).
    - Havoc 9y ago
      Thing is everyone is starting to recognise the whole brexit story is a rather miserable one that has little shot at a happy end. So I'd imagine that a second vote would end in favour of remain by a more conclusive margin than the first.
      - ben_w 9y ago
        I see little evidence of voters changing their mind, only of non-voters leaning (in recent months) towards Remain. As a Remain voter I am obviously biased to see mainly the flaws in Leavers, so please synthesise opposite equivalents for the following: If Leave voters agregate around the identity that “Brexit is expensive but worth it”, I think this decreases the risk of them starting the sort of riots that would lead to a civil war; if they instead are surprised by massive economic damage (or by 10% of the doctors leaving at once), that increases the risk they will decide to blame Remainers for “talking the country down” or whatever. I have seen comments from YouGov users suggesting that people like me should be executed. I do not yet take such comments as a serious threat (they have also suggested nukes, apparently oblivious to France having any of their own), but such comments are part of why I estimate 10% chance of civil war in this timeframe — the other major component of my belief being an assumption that the basic rate of civil wars is 1/(years since last one) per year.
0942v8653 9y ago
Will the UK still participate in the GDPR after Brexit? Are there plans to write up something similar?
- Angostura 9y ago
  The simple answer is 'yes' - the government and opposition parties are committed to implementing GDPR in full.
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    Until the second we leave, and then you can _guarantee_ it will be watered down.
rusk 9y ago
I kind of feel the whimper came before Christmas, in the talks discussing Northern Ireland and the status of the border there between the UK and Europe. I can't remember the details exactly but the Good Friday Agreement [0] provided a constitutional footing whereby the UK effectively gave an undertaking to abide by the rules of the EU trade area, while not being a member of the EU trade area. This to prevent the erection of a "hard border" (i.e. one you couldn't freely traverse without a Visa) which would be required as a customs barrier, rather than for security. This agreement completely undermines a lot of the wackier ideas around free trade that have been floating around and defangs some of the nastier aspects of brexit. The UK is still free to set her own internal monetary and social policy but she's effectively bound to EU trade rules, and the EU of course must consult her in setting these. It's an epic compromise on both sides that basically allows for a continuation of business as usual without undermining the "brexit means brexit" doctrine. A lovely example of how peace once established can be the gift that keeps giving. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement
- moomin 9y ago
  The Good Friday Agreement basically makes the UK (or Ireland) the single worst country to attempt to leave the EU. The biggest problem with the December declaration being that it's hard to trust the government to make good on it. (The consequences for being seen to be negotiating in bad faith are too awful to contemplate, but the government seems to be post-rational a lot of the time.)
  - emptyfile 9y ago
    Within a week Davis said something to the effect of, "this deal is not really legally binding".
    - rusk 9y ago
      Yeah Davis says lots of things ... But what's important is that all the UK cabinet got behind it, including Johnson. It's a "get out of jail" card for the whole mess. It solves loads of problems for everybody. The only person actually grumbling was Farage, which can only be a good thing.
tom_mellior 9y ago
> the EU is calling the shots in these negotiations Yes. > a deal that kept the UK in the Customs Union and Single Market for goods, but not for services. The EU (which is calling the shots) has repeatedly said that the Four Freedoms are inseparable. So such a deal seems unlikely.
hammon 9y ago
this euro currency is set to die. The only question is WHEN. Unfortunately, economists are not the ones to decide, but the only politicians are. And people vote ignorant politicians and talk about macro-economy like they do on football matches. In the long run, Brexit will be a GOOD thing for the British but for the wrong reason (xenophobia).
- switch007 9y ago
  This is an article about Brexit. What's your point about the Euro? (For those who don't know, the UK has never adopted the Euro)
matthewmacleod 9y ago
Yes, that's a fair assessment. It's hard to imagine how this whole situation could have been fucked-up to a greater extent. I'm a solid supporter of remaining in the EU, but I'm open-minded to the idea that an orderly Brexit could have been planned and executed, with the public being aware of the various trade-offs. A single market on one hand, balanced against free movement and regulatory harmonisation on the other. But that discussion didn't happen. There was literally no coherent concept in the public sphere about what the goals of Brexit where, or what the desired end state was – and there still isn't. Obviously to some extent because the outcome was unexpected, but that doesn't excuse the ongoing incompetence and failure to be realistic on the behalf of the UK government. Various government ministers continue to be frankly fucking deluded about what they are trying to achieve – in a way that I have to assume that they are deliberately lying. There is still no coherent government policy on what Brexit actually is, and no corresponding public idea of that either. This is in stark contrast to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 – though I was on the 'yes' side then. I have a book published by the Scottish government sitting on my bookshelf, which outlines in decent detail the plans and desired outcomes if independence was chosen. Not that all of that would come to pass, or would even be possible, but even to have a stated government plan is light-years ahead of what is happening at the UK level. It's almost criminally irresponsible. Worse, there is no obvious out – either a reversal of this policy, or any sign of a government that can realistically set out what it wants to achieve. The main opposition party is weak and equally committed to Brexit, and with the leader of the opposition being the only realistic figure around which support could coalesce, there is limited room for manoeuvre. Now we see the fallout – not in the short term, but taking a longer view. I've had people explicitly tell my startup that they are no longer funding in the UK because they "have no idea what's going to happen". It's become much harder to hire EU-based workers, because of course they have no idea what their position will be in a couple of years. I have watched a number of talented friends and contacts move away from the UK, because they can't really be bothered with this nonsense. In the long-term, this cack-handed mismanagement is going to be another bullet point in the long and slow decline of the UK. It's not like the world is going to end – it's just that everything is going to be a bit shittier. I know that's a bit of a rant, but it's utterly frustrating to deal with from inside the UK when so many are currently banging on about how good it's great to be to have a different fucking colour of passport.

78 points by deafcalculus 9y ago

A real shame that Oxford decided to name their department after an oligarch who expropriated huge wealth out of Russia [1]. Sad to admit I consider any position associated with the Blavatnik name tainted. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/03/oxford-university-accused-over-oligarch-len-blavatnik-75m-donation https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/03/oxford-uni...

djsumdog 9y ago
Could you please explain how this relates to Brexit? (genuinely curious).
- thedaniel 9y ago
  The author of the article is a professor in said department.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

forinti 9y ago

I can't decide if Brexit is good or bad for the UK. On the one hand, there's the common market and freedom of movement. On the other there's Germany's dominance and lots of fragile banks. What would be worse, losing access to the free market or being around if the banks fail? Or would being outside the market make a difference if Deutsche Bank failed?

isostatic 9y ago
The UK isn't part of the euro, it will be just as badly affected by a collapse in european banks as our trade will still remain with europe
nkkollaw 9y ago
Bad. If anything because they'll have to rewrite thousands of laws and procedures that came from the EU times, and deal with the caos that that will cause. That only will cost so much money (and pain) that it would justify staying in the EU. Then, of course there are companies that have left and that will leave, highly-skilled workflow for London that will be harder to get, etc. They have to negotiate with the EU so that they're not completely cut out of commerce, with nothing to offer in exchange and therefore no negotiating power. It's old people in the country that have decided this, based on their ignorance on the matter and lies spread before the vote. Funny enough, it's them who mainly benefit from European aid. Pretty sad, really (I'm Italian, just talking based on what I've read and a handful of friends who live in London).
- spiralx 9y ago
  > If anything because they'll have to rewrite thousands of laws and procedures that came from the EU times, and deal with the caos that that will cause. That only would justify stay in the EU. No, we'll keep most of those laws, because in order to trade with the EU we'd have to comply with them anyway. We just lose any ability to control them.
- cmdkeen 9y ago
  While I appreciate Brexit hasn't happened yet there's little to no evidence yet of any exodus of highly skilled workforces. London remains an incredibly attractive destination for inflows of both investment, workers and tourists. Will some companies leave, no doubt, however the high profile mass departure of European HQs and banks has yet to bear out. To the OP, and going back to the article, a major issue is that of services, our major export. The EU does not have a single market in services, and has shown little interest in progressing it. It isn't so much Deutsche Bank as the mittelstand that demonstrates that the EU as a whole favours particular economic systems. Italy is a prime example of a sclerotic services sector that their own government has failed to reform, despite the EU being willing and able to influence the appointment of Mario Monti it isn't willing to impose a free market in service in the same way it has for goods - and stand up to blatant protectionism.
  - 9y ago
the_mitsuhiko 9y ago
Not sure how being outside the EU would help the UK against "Germany's dominance" Surely out of the EU means by definition that the UK has less control over Germany?
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  Sure, but Germany will have less control over the UK. From what I can tell and have read Germany has huge influence on pretty much every country besides Poland and--perhaps--Hungary (I live in Poland, not sure about Hungary actually). Poland definitely thinks about its own citizens _first_, and _then_ at what's good for the EU, which is after all what politicians have been elected to do. I'm Italian and Italy is a mess in part because of having no balls to stand up for what Italians would need. Totally different story in Poland, from what I can tell from living here.
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    Germany doesn't have much influence over the UK, largely because the UK isn't in the Euro.
  - romland 9y ago
    Are you suggesting that Poland and Hungary are leechers?
    - nkkollaw 9y ago
      > Are you suggesting that Poland and Hungary are leechers? No, are you? I'm suggesting what I wrote in my comment.
    - Tomte 9y ago
      No, they are autocratic regimes, well on their way to full dictatorship within a few generations of "presidents".
      - nkkollaw 9y ago
pjc50 9y ago
There are few "firewalls" between financial markets, there's one market and it's global. If there's another bank crisis, it's going to happen everywhere. Iceland was particularly badly hit and is not actually in the EU. Let's not forget that the last crisis started in the "Anglosphere" (Lehman, RBS, Northern Rock, Anglo-Irish etc) and spread elsewhere!
ben_w 9y ago
I thought London was supposed to be one of the major banking centres of Europe? So if the banks are fragile, the UK is just as exposed in that regards, or perhaps more exposed as it will no longer be (as?) able to ask the ECB for assistance?
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  The UK isn't in the Euro so the ECB doesn't really matter to the UK.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    Noted. I kinda assumed ECB was for all EU states, not just for all Eurozone states.
djsumdog 9y ago
I thnk Brexit is a good thing .. for the EU. The UK has refused to adopt the Euro. The GBP is totally overvalued. The UK/Ireland have no plans to join the Shengen zone (which is a good thing for American backpackers I'll admit, as when you're 90 days in the EU run out, you can stay in the UK for 120, until the reset period). Politically, the UK is more closely aligned to US foreign policy (that of war mongering) than the EU. With such a long transition period, I'm guess most UK citizens living/working in Europe have hopefully started work visa application processes, in case the EU parliament decides to not allow a bi-lateral work agreement.
- JohnStrange 9y ago
  I believe Brexit is a loose-loose deal. It's bad for the UK because it causes a lot of complications without producing real benefits. Basically, the UK will loose lot of political influence and control while having to abide to the EU's trade rules anyway. It's bad for the EU, because the union may loose cohesion, as it may turn out that the UK is doing not so bad after all and local anti-European socialist and nationalist movements will capitalize on that a bit, because the EU looses influence on the US without the UK, and because the UK provided a counter-balance to the axis France-Germany and now smaller countries fear that the EU will move forward faster than they wish for. My prediction is that the net result will make everyone a little worse off in 10-20 years from now than if the UK had stayed in the EU, but the effect will not be very noticeable and overall hard to quantify.
marrs 9y ago
Losing access to the free market would be fine if we gain access to the global market, at least in the medium to long term. The ability to drop tariffs on imports would be a big deal even in the short term. In reality, though, I don't see us leaving the trappings of the EU with this current govt: we'll just lose our seat at the table (to coin a phrase). This was never going to be quick, though: the Brexit issue will be at the centre of politics for at least a generation. I'm actually more interested in how this has shone a light on the issue of the slow erosion of our sovereignty and our traditional British liberal values. On this point I agree with the author that the younger generation seem to be far more ambivalent about freedom of speech, democracy, et al. to the point that they seem to be actively suspicious of it. The severity of this division has been a bit of a shock, but I'd rather we deal with it now than not at all, especially when Trump shows us that the alternative could have been to vote in a radical populist party instead, which would have had far more power than Trump has.
- Angostura 9y ago
  > the younger generation seem to be far more ambivalent about freedom of speech, democracy, et al. to the point that they seem to be actively suspicious of it. Oddly enough, I suspect that the younger generation probably think that about the Daily Mail reading older generation.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > the ability to drop tariffs on imports would be a big deal even in the short term That is, the benefit is the ability to replace British-made goods with cheaper foreign imports? I'm just saying because normally people make the argument the other way round.
  - marrs 9y ago
    Exactly so. Well, British and European goods.
- ddalex 9y ago
  > slow erosion of our sovereignty What exactly are changes in the UK's sovereignity?
Symmetry 9y ago
Germany's dominance mostly just hurts countries that have to depend on the Euro, so not the UK. They experienced a little bit of the Eurozone's double dip recession brought on by premature tightening in 2011 but that was mostly a matter of trade exposure which isn't something that can change just by leaving the EU. And since the whole reason for the UK's trouble then was getting less trade from Europe then abandoning that trade altogether would be strictly worse.
alkonaut 9y ago
I live in Sweden and never even thought about how Germany "dominates". Is it just because I come from a much smaller country with much smaller population and therefore much smaller expectations about what we can accomplish on the world stage? Or is it because our views align much better with those of Germany, so we are part of the same "bloc" in EU politics whereas the UK would want to pull in another direction but can't?
- adventured 9y ago
  If you go back a few years, there was a large hysteria across much of the Eurozone about German domination of the bloc. Magazine cover after magazine cover painting them in terrible light, including some going so far as to reference back to Nazi times. That coincided with the post effects of the great recession, when Germany essentially refused to allow more liberal central bank posturing and action to try to follow the more aggressive US Fed lead on how to properly respond to the terrible recession and the financial system consequences. Germany wanted a very restrictive, conservative approach. There was a split at that point between the members that were suffering and Germany which was in mostly solid shape (the peak of the Greek disaster was also near a peak of the anti-German sentiment). The US recovery took root relatively quickly, after about a year, thanks in part to the Fed taking aggressive action to stabilize the banks and financial system (the US would have seen Citi, Bank of America, etc. all collapse otherwise; those banks are now extremely healthy and printing massive profits again). It was only when the ECB finally copied the Fed's approach that the broad EU and Eurozone economies began to rapidly recover (and for those already in good shape, it has pushed them into something closer to economic boom). You can look at a chart of EU or Eurozone economic growth, you'll see a nasty double recessionary dip around 2011-2012. After that, the ECB finally began to shift its behavior and do what they should have done years prior, which has led to a sustained recovery in most parts of the EU since then (you see it in meaningfully increased growth rates, from Finland finally recovering after a disastrous 8-10 years, to Spain and Portugal finally seeing serious improvement, to German growth picking up, to French unemployment finally declining significantly, etc).
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    > there was a large hysteria across much of the Eurozone about German domination of the bloc. Magazine cover after magazine cover painting them in terrible light, including some going so far as to reference back to Nazi times. I try to keep up with politics and news and saw none of this (I watch foreign TV but don't read foreign newspapers a lot). So I don't think there has been a lot of painting germany as a bad guy in Swedish media, no. Why that is, I can only speculate. Would be interesting to hear if the same is true in e.g. Denmark, Finland. > That coincided with the post effects of the great recession, when Germany essentially refused to allow more liberal central bank posturing and action to try to follow the Fed lead on how to properly respond to the terrible recession and the financial system consequences If the 2008 recession was behind it, Sweden recovered very quickly and wasn't as hard hit (Partly because we weren't as influenced by ECB interest rate politics). Perhaps that is also a reason.

Nursie 9y ago

This seems speculative and it effectively posits a worst-of-all-worlds situation resulting - one if which the UK is half inside the single market. Half inside such that it allows the flow of goods (the UK is a net importer) but not services (which we net export). This would be untenable, worse than a no-deal situation. And the basis of this speculation is that the EU is holding all the cards. I'm really not convinced this is true. The article reads a little bit like a remain fantasy - Brexit will be a disaster and then people must come around to my way of thinking! The problem with that analysis is that in your way of thinking it was likely unimaginable that the Brexit vote would go through in the first place. And then we heard that no PM would ever actually action it, and then that no Parliament would allow it. None of which has really panned out. --edit-- I'd love to reply to more of the comments below, but I appear to be rate-limited. Never mind then...

Xylakant 9y ago
So far negotiations have shown the EU holds most of the important cards. The UK caved in on any negotiation demand. It’s a fascinating view from Germany: The UK threatens “No Deal”, the EU informs companies that “No Deal” is a possible outcome and plans contingencies, informs companies that they should too, UK now complains that EU threatens companies. UK says “Out means out”, EU prepares to move EU institutions abroad, UK complains about EU moving institutions abroad. I’m also puzzled what’s supposed to happen with such important stuff as rules and agreements for importing nuclear materials for powerplants (currently regulated via Euratom), regulations regarding medicine/medical treatment (currently also handled on a european level) and all of that stuff. Which other option does the UK realistically have for those things other than just accept the EU rules? Any producer for anything that wants to export to the EU will have to abide by EU rules anyways. Will there be a UK and a EU edition of things? All of this could be solved with sufficient time, but triggering article 50 was akin to holding a loaded gun to your head and saying “if you don’t do what I want at the end of the next two years, I’ll pull the trigger.”
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  >Which other option does the UK realistically have for those things other than just accept the EU rules? // I'm not sure if it was a main driver but the powers that are pushing this whole thing behind the scenes clearly have realised the opportunity to subtely rewrite a lot of regulations/legislation to prefer their interests. The "sovereignty" part of Brexit is playing out as taking power from a more socialist and green EU and giving it to the hidden capitalist interests behind the Tories. The incredible sleight-of-hand has been getting the working classes to vote for something that could then be twisted to be so highly detrimental to them. Anyway, to your question about industry regulations: safety, food standards, and environmentalism costs money. Companies within the EU trading block will sell the stuff that meets the regulations, UK will get to have cheap stuff that breaks easily and no longer have the 2 year 'warranty', or the restrictions on unfair business practices - UK companies will try and foist our lower standards on whoever we can fool in to it, eg with promises of "foreign aid" that end up in developing world officials bank accounts. Bonus, the workers making the stuff will get paid less, have less job security, less rights. Double bonus, UK environment will be open for capitalists to fuck up if they want to make a quick buck.

scandox 9y ago

Amazing how small errors in a text start to degrade your confidence in the content. At the outset the sentences are clear and mostly correct. As it goes on small errors start to appear and occasionally the entire meaning of a sentence becomes unclear. By the end, reading his slightly dramatic flourish, you get the feeling that he wrote with some emotion and wasn't tending to the language very carefully. On the one hand you can say these are merely typos. On the other you could say they reflect a lack of clarity, a lack of care. I know I find it hard to ignore.

nkkollaw 9y ago
Meh. It's full of articles with "it's" instead of "its". It's the internet. You're (oh, yes--and "your" instead of "you're") not going to have a good time if you stop at typos or grammatical errors instead of just trying to see if what you read is interesting or not.
tomcooks 9y ago
As a non English speaker some passages were difficult do understand and I had to re-read them several time; I can now attribute that to typos and feel smarter~
Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
You're not the only one to feel this way. I think this is a very valid position, there is nothing superstitious about it. Any user of (the English in this case) language is able to (easily learn to) write without major mistakes, make their sentences proper, make their thoughts clear. If they haven't done so, it definitely hints at a lack of care, or being in a rush, or simply not respecting the language and/or their readers. Not respecting them in a sense that the author tries to overlay a part of their own work as a writer (the work of forming coherent and correct language structure) onto the reader, making them decipher author's thoughts which were not formed into a commonly accepted standard. Are there published documents out there with a lot of mistakes that definitely have high quality information and research? Yes of course there are. But the odds are not in their favor.

StanAngeloff 9y ago

As a EU resident who is a partner in several UK based businesses, the uncertainty over what's coming next is frightening. When I approached different colleagues, friends & family in the UK, they all had different views on what should happen. To an outsider, it looks like opinions have been polarised. If you are managing a business that has ties to the UK there are very many unknowns right now. It's a lot easier to plan for the worst than it is to take risks IMHO. Brexit must ultimately hurt the UK economy in some way – jobs lost, money flowing out of the country, talented people leaving?

moomin 9y ago
You're right about the polarisation. The same forces in play in America are in play in Britain right now. It's no accident that Trump described himself as "Mr Brexit". Authoritarian voters support Brexit, liberal ones don't. The major parties split right/left not authoritarian/liberal and are terrified of losing their voting base. I know a die hard leaver, she's one of the few people I'd trust my children with. She's also an authoritarian leftist who can't understand why we're not out already and wants to get rid of immigrants. The London Tech scene (which skews left/liberal) seems to be hemorrhaging talented people to Berlin and other places. All of these people are what I think of as natural Londoners, but they're deciding for their own reasons that Britain isn't the place they thought it was. (Me, I've got a wife and kids, it's harder to up sticks. That and I love this country.) Meanwhile, inflation is so bad the supermarkets are quietly reducing the quantity in boxes to avoid giving shoppers a heart attack at the prices, and Brexit _hasn't even happened yet_.
- xienze 9y ago
  > It's no accident that Trump described himself as "Mr Brexit". No he didn’t. That’s how he introduced Nigel Farage at a rally.
  - chrisoverzero 9y ago
    > They will soon be calling me MR. BREXIT! https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/766246213079498752 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/76624621307949875...

maxehmookau 9y ago

He's got a point. It's surprised me how many small day-to-day decisions made by management are because of Brexit.

te_chris 9y ago

Now Nigel (fucking) Farage is calling for a 2nd referendum. You can't make this shit up. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/11/nigel-farage-backs-fresh-brexit-referendum-to-kill-off-issue https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/11/nigel-farag...

mrgordon 9y ago
Cameron lost his snap vote. May lost her snap vote. Sounds like Farage wants to lose a poorly thought out vote now too.
Havoc 9y ago
Ideal. That dodgy first vote is no good basis to make such changes on. Think that's going to bite Nigel in a arse though.
- ben_w 9y ago
  > Think that's going to bite Nige Disagree. He said before the referendum that 48%-52% would be unfinished business, but didn’t seem to lose credibility amongst his supporters from it. Something may eventually tarnish his Teflon, but he’d probably be able to turn defeat in a second referendum into a rallying cry for a literal attempted revolution. (I place odds of UK civil war in the next 6 years at about 10%).
  - Havoc 9y ago
    Thing is everyone is starting to recognise the whole brexit story is a rather miserable one that has little shot at a happy end. So I'd imagine that a second vote would end in favour of remain by a more conclusive margin than the first.
    - ben_w 9y ago
      I see little evidence of voters changing their mind, only of non-voters leaning (in recent months) towards Remain. As a Remain voter I am obviously biased to see mainly the flaws in Leavers, so please synthesise opposite equivalents for the following: If Leave voters agregate around the identity that “Brexit is expensive but worth it”, I think this decreases the risk of them starting the sort of riots that would lead to a civil war; if they instead are surprised by massive economic damage (or by 10% of the doctors leaving at once), that increases the risk they will decide to blame Remainers for “talking the country down” or whatever. I have seen comments from YouGov users suggesting that people like me should be executed. I do not yet take such comments as a serious threat (they have also suggested nukes, apparently oblivious to France having any of their own), but such comments are part of why I estimate 10% chance of civil war in this timeframe — the other major component of my belief being an assumption that the basic rate of civil wars is 1/(years since last one) per year.

0942v8653 9y ago

Will the UK still participate in the GDPR after Brexit? Are there plans to write up something similar?

Angostura 9y ago
The simple answer is 'yes' - the government and opposition parties are committed to implementing GDPR in full.
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  Until the second we leave, and then you can _guarantee_ it will be watered down.

rusk 9y ago

I kind of feel the whimper came before Christmas, in the talks discussing Northern Ireland and the status of the border there between the UK and Europe. I can't remember the details exactly but the Good Friday Agreement [0] provided a constitutional footing whereby the UK effectively gave an undertaking to abide by the rules of the EU trade area, while not being a member of the EU trade area. This to prevent the erection of a "hard border" (i.e. one you couldn't freely traverse without a Visa) which would be required as a customs barrier, rather than for security. This agreement completely undermines a lot of the wackier ideas around free trade that have been floating around and defangs some of the nastier aspects of brexit. The UK is still free to set her own internal monetary and social policy but she's effectively bound to EU trade rules, and the EU of course must consult her in setting these. It's an epic compromise on both sides that basically allows for a continuation of business as usual without undermining the "brexit means brexit" doctrine. A lovely example of how peace once established can be the gift that keeps giving. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement

moomin 9y ago
The Good Friday Agreement basically makes the UK (or Ireland) the single worst country to attempt to leave the EU. The biggest problem with the December declaration being that it's hard to trust the government to make good on it. (The consequences for being seen to be negotiating in bad faith are too awful to contemplate, but the government seems to be post-rational a lot of the time.)
- emptyfile 9y ago
  Within a week Davis said something to the effect of, "this deal is not really legally binding".
  - rusk 9y ago
    Yeah Davis says lots of things ... But what's important is that all the UK cabinet got behind it, including Johnson. It's a "get out of jail" card for the whole mess. It solves loads of problems for everybody. The only person actually grumbling was Farage, which can only be a good thing.

tom_mellior 9y ago

> the EU is calling the shots in these negotiations Yes. > a deal that kept the UK in the Customs Union and Single Market for goods, but not for services. The EU (which is calling the shots) has repeatedly said that the Four Freedoms are inseparable. So such a deal seems unlikely.

hammon 9y ago

this euro currency is set to die. The only question is WHEN. Unfortunately, economists are not the ones to decide, but the only politicians are. And people vote ignorant politicians and talk about macro-economy like they do on football matches. In the long run, Brexit will be a GOOD thing for the British but for the wrong reason (xenophobia).

switch007 9y ago
This is an article about Brexit. What's your point about the Euro? (For those who don't know, the UK has never adopted the Euro)

matthewmacleod 9y ago

Yes, that's a fair assessment. It's hard to imagine how this whole situation could have been fucked-up to a greater extent. I'm a solid supporter of remaining in the EU, but I'm open-minded to the idea that an orderly Brexit could have been planned and executed, with the public being aware of the various trade-offs. A single market on one hand, balanced against free movement and regulatory harmonisation on the other. But that discussion didn't happen. There was literally no coherent concept in the public sphere about what the goals of Brexit where, or what the desired end state was – and there still isn't. Obviously to some extent because the outcome was unexpected, but that doesn't excuse the ongoing incompetence and failure to be realistic on the behalf of the UK government. Various government ministers continue to be frankly fucking deluded about what they are trying to achieve – in a way that I have to assume that they are deliberately lying. There is still no coherent government policy on what Brexit actually is, and no corresponding public idea of that either. This is in stark contrast to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 – though I was on the 'yes' side then. I have a book published by the Scottish government sitting on my bookshelf, which outlines in decent detail the plans and desired outcomes if independence was chosen. Not that all of that would come to pass, or would even be possible, but even to have a stated government plan is light-years ahead of what is happening at the UK level. It's almost criminally irresponsible. Worse, there is no obvious out – either a reversal of this policy, or any sign of a government that can realistically set out what it wants to achieve. The main opposition party is weak and equally committed to Brexit, and with the leader of the opposition being the only realistic figure around which support could coalesce, there is limited room for manoeuvre. Now we see the fallout – not in the short term, but taking a longer view. I've had people explicitly tell my startup that they are no longer funding in the UK because they "have no idea what's going to happen". It's become much harder to hire EU-based workers, because of course they have no idea what their position will be in a couple of years. I have watched a number of talented friends and contacts move away from the UK, because they can't really be bothered with this nonsense. In the long-term, this cack-handed mismanagement is going to be another bullet point in the long and slow decline of the UK. It's not like the world is going to end – it's just that everything is going to be a bit shittier. I know that's a bit of a rant, but it's utterly frustrating to deal with from inside the UK when so many are currently banging on about how good it's great to be to have a different fucking colour of passport.