4 ms·

Whatever the opposite of an elephant in the room is, that's Brexit. It was talked about to death. It was the cause and reason for everything. It was talked up

by pydry 4y ago

Whatever the opposite of an elephant in the room is, that's Brexit. It was talked about to death. It was the cause and reason for everything. It was talked up by as either a glorious thing or a monumentally cataclysmic event when it hit in 2020 and in the end it was... mildly negative. It was skilfully played up as a wedge issue for 5 years. The elephant in this room isnt Brexit it is war. (and idiotic energy policy)

atoav 4y ago
> The elephant in this room isnt Brexit it is war. Confirmation bias is dangerous. As a continental European following UK media a lot Brexit is talked to "death" by some singular media personalities, it is not discussed at all in a broad sense. It is fascinating for me to watch how a society decided collectively to "get on with it". And by that I mean: move forward pretending brexit did not happen and the present is not influenced by it. It feels like a sketch from monty python or fawlty towers where everybody pretends a clearly obvious thing does not exist. I live in Germany and the war and energy politics have a much bigger impact here than in the UK. Sure not all of what you have going on there is attributable to Brexit and a lot of it has to do with the questionable quality of your political leadership — but pretending worse trading terms with the majority of your trading partners will somehow not inpact the economy of a nation takes a special kind of mental gymnastics. The truth is that the UK was in a very priviledged spot within the EU before it left and it made good use of that position, both in a political and economic sense.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  Agreed that confirmation bias is dangerous. Exports to the EU declined briefly after Brexit took effect but are now back to where they were before, presumably since companies adjusted to the new bureaucracy and found it's not that big of a deal. So this "special kind of mental gymnastics" doesn't seem to be gymnastics at all but rather an accurate assessment of the situation. One may wonder how people got this so wrong? "The truth is that the UK was in a very priviledged spot within the EU before it left and it made good use of that position, both in a political and economic sense" Well, it's not really the case unfortunately. The UK was in a seriously under-privileged position inside the EU because its services based economy hardly benefited from the single market, which focused primarily on free movement of goods (benefiting Germany) and people (primarily benefiting eastern Europeans), but not on free provision of services (which would have benefited UK business). Instead services provisioning remained a patchwork of local regulations and barriers to entry. As a consequence, leaving the EU single market didn't impact most British businesses to the extent predicted (by pro-EU economists, see my other comment), as they either weren't massive exporters to Europe to begin with, or were having to deal with local red tape and varying rules anyway. There's a discussion of this problem here: https://euagenda.eu/upload/publications/untitled-46447-ea.pdf https://euagenda.eu/upload/publications/untitled-46447-ea.pd... This situation remained in place for decades because despite what the media may have claimed to people elsewhere in Europe the UK had essentially no influence, no ability to change anything and its "privileges" such as they were primarily consisted of opt outs of EU policies. But those opt outs were negotiated long ago, no more were in the offering and the ones that existed were under more or less permanent attack even when written into apparently watertight treaties. For example the EU was constantly attempting to force financial services out of London and the UK had to go to court, I think several times, to get these attempts blocked. Regulations were often interpreted in overtly political ways, again, specifically to damage the UK (see how "equivalence" rules aren't actually about equivalence, by universal agreement). It was often an antagonistic relationship despite being a member. So the reason people don't talk about Brexit much in the UK is because the process was so drawn out and the eventual impact so minimal compared to COVID that there's really just not much to actually say.
rhaway84773 4y ago
So how is UK which is far less exposed to the war, and Russian gas and oil, doing so much worse than its continental neighbors which are way more exposed to all Of those? The answer is Brexit. Brexit wasn’t mildly negative. Brexit has been catastrophic. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2019/the-impact-of-brexit-on-uk-firms https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2019/the-impac... The Bank of England estimates that Brexit has knocked off 2-5% of UK’s productivity across the board and that’s only one of the 3 impacts they’ve discovered (including an 11% drop in investment).

by pydry 4y ago

atoav 4y ago

> The elephant in this room isnt Brexit it is war. Confirmation bias is dangerous. As a continental European following UK media a lot Brexit is talked to "death" by some singular media personalities, it is not discussed at all in a broad sense. It is fascinating for me to watch how a society decided collectively to "get on with it". And by that I mean: move forward pretending brexit did not happen and the present is not influenced by it. It feels like a sketch from monty python or fawlty towers where everybody pretends a clearly obvious thing does not exist. I live in Germany and the war and energy politics have a much bigger impact here than in the UK. Sure not all of what you have going on there is attributable to Brexit and a lot of it has to do with the questionable quality of your political leadership — but pretending worse trading terms with the majority of your trading partners will somehow not inpact the economy of a nation takes a special kind of mental gymnastics. The truth is that the UK was in a very priviledged spot within the EU before it left and it made good use of that position, both in a political and economic sense.

mike_hearn 4y ago
Agreed that confirmation bias is dangerous. Exports to the EU declined briefly after Brexit took effect but are now back to where they were before, presumably since companies adjusted to the new bureaucracy and found it's not that big of a deal. So this "special kind of mental gymnastics" doesn't seem to be gymnastics at all but rather an accurate assessment of the situation. One may wonder how people got this so wrong? "The truth is that the UK was in a very priviledged spot within the EU before it left and it made good use of that position, both in a political and economic sense" Well, it's not really the case unfortunately. The UK was in a seriously under-privileged position inside the EU because its services based economy hardly benefited from the single market, which focused primarily on free movement of goods (benefiting Germany) and people (primarily benefiting eastern Europeans), but not on free provision of services (which would have benefited UK business). Instead services provisioning remained a patchwork of local regulations and barriers to entry. As a consequence, leaving the EU single market didn't impact most British businesses to the extent predicted (by pro-EU economists, see my other comment), as they either weren't massive exporters to Europe to begin with, or were having to deal with local red tape and varying rules anyway. There's a discussion of this problem here: https://euagenda.eu/upload/publications/untitled-46447-ea.pdf https://euagenda.eu/upload/publications/untitled-46447-ea.pd... This situation remained in place for decades because despite what the media may have claimed to people elsewhere in Europe the UK had essentially no influence, no ability to change anything and its "privileges" such as they were primarily consisted of opt outs of EU policies. But those opt outs were negotiated long ago, no more were in the offering and the ones that existed were under more or less permanent attack even when written into apparently watertight treaties. For example the EU was constantly attempting to force financial services out of London and the UK had to go to court, I think several times, to get these attempts blocked. Regulations were often interpreted in overtly political ways, again, specifically to damage the UK (see how "equivalence" rules aren't actually about equivalence, by universal agreement). It was often an antagonistic relationship despite being a member. So the reason people don't talk about Brexit much in the UK is because the process was so drawn out and the eventual impact so minimal compared to COVID that there's really just not much to actually say.

rhaway84773 4y ago

So how is UK which is far less exposed to the war, and Russian gas and oil, doing so much worse than its continental neighbors which are way more exposed to all Of those? The answer is Brexit. Brexit wasn’t mildly negative. Brexit has been catastrophic. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2019/the-impact-of-brexit-on-uk-firms https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2019/the-impac... The Bank of England estimates that Brexit has knocked off 2-5% of UK’s productivity across the board and that’s only one of the 3 impacts they’ve discovered (including an 11% drop in investment).