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After seven years of Brexit talks, Europe has emerged as the clear winner
- nonethewiser 4y agoVery light on details. Reads like a puff piece.
- rippercushions 4y agoIt's an opinion piece, signed by the Economist's pseudonymous Europe columnist Charlemagne. https://www.economist.com/charlemagne https://www.economist.com/charlemagne
- MoSattler 4y agohttps://archive.ph/BBH9k https://archive.ph/BBH9k
- rgve 4y ago[flagged]
- simlevesque 4y ago> Hacker News Guidelines > What to Submit > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- davidktr 4y agoThe Brits tryed to hack the world order but failed miserably thanks to Brussel's strong firewall.
- mrtksn 4y agoI don't think that there are any winners in Brexit. It corrupted the British politics and EU lost UK, besides the economical impact. Barriers on trade and travel were raised without purpose other than having barriers. Even the brexiteers lost their mojo as their purpose of existence disappeared and a particularly incompetent and toxic breed of politicians dominated the political discussions. Those too lost by getting exposed for what they are, destroying the support for legitimate position which those were pretending to stand for. Absolutely no winners. Any perceived winners are temporary simply because you don't have anything to win by destroying your tight and fruitful relationship with your closest neighbours and you can't move somewhere else.
- Sebguer 4y agoYeah, the article despite its title, doesn't really paint 'EU' as winning, except insofar as they've likely succeeded in discouraging anyone else from exiting the union.
- rich_sasha 4y agoIn the UK, there was a bit of a "we're abandoning a sinking ship, now EU gonna suffer" mood. In that sense, EU kind of prevailed. But yes, not really better off.
- ttul 4y agoIt’s small beer by comparison, but I’m similar fashion, British Columbians booted out an efficient and wonderful value added tax called the HST because an aging provincial politician engaged his base of mostly conservative low-information voters against it, claiming baselessly that it killed jobs. Democracies for some reason seem to shoot themselves in the foot periodically when a popular idea takes hold despite rational arguments against it. If you can come up with a good sounding idea that is devoid of facts, dumb citizens will gleefully support it.
- deepsun 4y agoDemocracy is a bad form of government, especially for more complex questions as you presented. Unfortunately, that's still the best form of government we've discovered that far (besides theoretical naive ones like communism or libertarianism).
- bagels 4y agoI think Europe's adversaries are the real winners.
- ortusdux 4y agoIt's disturbing how cheap it is to destabilize another country these days.
- cjbgkagh 4y agoIt is always cheaper to damage something than to build it.
- red-iron-pine 4y agopropaganda doesn't work if you create new, BS reasons from scratch. you gotta have an actual lever or two, something that you can latch on and hype up. you amplify real issues, not spawn fake ones. this is very effective, esp. in the US, because we've ignored huge systemic problems across multiple demographics for decades. there are a lot of issues to hammer. less so in Europe, but there are still real issues to hammer. social media made it far easier to track and chart these issues and how people respond to them -- in real-time. and since most are publicly traded companies, they have no incentive to actually make things better -- they gotta keep that stock price up.
- ttul 4y agoOn the other hand, I think Brexit taught all the other euro countries that leaving is perilous and best avoided. Putin may have scored a Pyrrhic victory here.
- tialaramex 4y agoYes, Several other EU countries had right (in some cases very far right) nationalist political groups which worked with Nigel Farage's UKIP in the EU's parliament, on and off, and saw Brexit as a great way to show their people what was possible... right up until it became apparent that "what was possible" was economically destructive and suddenly that wasn't on their agenda any more.
- nness 4y agoThe poor timing of Covid will probably forever obscure just how much self-inflicted economic damage the UK did to itself, but seeing it unfold for the last 5 years, its obvious as layman that the UK's global stagnation has only really started.
- 6510 4y agonah it is easy to see actually. The empire started out like this: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_empire.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_empire.png It took a lot of political insanity to turn that into what it is now. Not sure what it means but all of those countries wanted independence from the empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_that_have_gained_independence_from_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:List_of_countries_gained_independance_from_the_UK_Flag_version_3.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_that_have_ga... oh they missed Scotland(1320) ha-ha
- wahern 4y agoWhat's good for the goose is good for the gander, is it not? Alternatively, perhaps many of those countries would have been better off remaining part of the UK, at least in terms of trade and commercial regulation?
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- hawk_ 4y agoA body got its arm severed. Yes the body will do better than the severed arm but not exactly a "clear winner".
- worksonmine 4y agoThere is for those who want to scare others from following. If the EU was fine without GB there wouldn't be so much gloating.
- gigel82 4y agoEh, more like an inflamed appendix being removed; sure, you'll be in the hospital for a couple of days (and medicate for pain for a few weeks) but then you'll be fine with just a scar to remind you.
- roundandround 4y agoThe drama was really the 4 years talking to some kind of patient in convalescence, and for what? Now the Cheddar is Irish, oh my.
- bagels 4y agoNot being familiar with origins of British cheddar, where did it come from before?
- roundandround 4y agoCheddar is English in terms of name origin so British Cheddar was more popular to import, but there's not much reason to bother sending your average cheddar over a border that requires paperwork.. So Irish Cheddar is the only effect of Brexit that I've noticed for the European side.
- epistasis 4y agoI don't think the EU is nearly as bad off as having lost an arm... and in the situations where there's a zero sum choice, for example a corporation choosing a single EU headquarters, the remaining countries are slightly better off. And for that matter, the UK is slightly better off than a severed limb. Still, I love the vividness of this analogy and will probably steal it from you...
- steve76 4y ago[dead]
- julienchastang 4y agoWithout even knowing much about trade or economics, this conclusion seemed inevitable from the start. The primary trading partner of the UK is obviously going to be the EU due to geographic proximity. Yet, the UK no longer has a seat at the table and thus must negotiate from a much weaker position being outside the EU block. How could this history have played out otherwise?
- Deukhoofd 4y agoNot just that, but a country divided against itself was set against a group of countries completely determined to protect their own interests. Britain couldn't win, as Britain didn't have any idea what it actually wanted, and was constantly fighting itself to figure that out.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThere could in theory have been a sane outcome where the UK "left" the EU, respecting the vote, but remained as close as Switzerland and Norway, and still had access to the single market. But any politician sensible and capable enough of achieving that would have been against Brexit in the first place, and would have to deal with the sniping of idiots that were for Brexit and promising the moon on a stick.
- borissk 4y agoNope. The main reason for the leave vote was hate towards immigrants. And EU is very clear that access to the single market comes only with free movement of people.
- lmm 4y agoI guess the EU's free trade agreement with Turkey is impossible and doesn't exist then?
- throw0101c 4y agoSee the four options laid out: > 1. Norway option: Staying in the EU Single Market and leaving the Customs Union would mean full access to the Single Market for both goods and services, but the UK would have to continue to abide by the EU’s four freedoms, including freedom of movement. […] > 2. Turkey option: Leaving the EU Single Market and EU Customs Union, but creating a new customs union with the EU. This would ensure tariff-free trade for goods covered by new customs union, but mean applying the EU’s common external tariff for trade to those goods imported from other countries. […] > 3. Leaving the Single Market and Customs Union, but negotiating a new bespoke bilateral free trade and customs agreement. […] Swiss, Ukraine, Canada as examples > 4. World Trade Organization (WTO) option: Leaving the Single Market and Customs Union without a deal. […] * https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/explainer/options-uks-trading-relationship-eu https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/explainer/...
- aborsy 4y agoEU is clearly worse off as well. Sure, damage to the UK is notable, but that doesn’t imply that EU has won.
- denton-scratch 4y agoThe UK has always, from the beginning, been a thorn in the side of the EU. De Gaulle was against us joining, and although I think his reasons were xenophobic, I think he was right. We'll be better as neighbours than as blood relations. There's a lot of history; and we're not trusted, for fairly good reasons. I think all of us, the UK and the EU, will benefit in the long run.
- pc_edwin 4y agoIt's premature to declare a victor, and typically in such cases, it's not a matter of winning or losing but rather of losing more or less. Additionally, COVID and Ukraine have caused significant disruptions that put a stop to the entire process. In my view, we'll need to wait until the end of the decade, at a minimum, to determine whether remaining in the EU or striking out on one's own was the correct decision.
- nonethewiser 4y agoWhy a decade? I would say at least 30 years. Never mind the fact that not all goals were economic and some were achieved instantly.
- denton-scratch 4y agoBrexit was always going to be economically harmful to both the UK and the EU. I voted Brexit because I objected to the EU on political and economic grounds. Boris's lot were the last people I wanted to take us out; but I didn't think we'd ever be given another chance to get out, and I figured we could recover, in about a decade, economically. If we stayed in, we'd never recover politically. I didn't know it would coincide with two other economic challenges: COVID, and Ukraine. Disentangling the effects of those three events is like trying to decode entrails; and anyway, I think "it's too early to say" (Chou Enlai). I have no Bregret.
- borissk 4y agoSure, leaver's favorite excuse "Things got worse, but it's not because of Brexit". What positive things do you think came out of Brexit?
- skippyboxedhero 4y agoThe "name positive things" argument is so abysmally weak. It almost always comes from people who didn't care about economics until Brexit, and now won't shut up about it...whilst being completely unaware of the lack of substance of their argument...they just read something on the BBC website written by a 21-year old politics grad (btw, this is the real issue with the UK, the Cabinet is one of the only places in British society where you actually have people who are up to the job...and I am not a Tory or Leave voter). The positive things are the things you see happening: financial deregulation, enterprise zones/freeports, greater political agency over economic decisions (this sounds soft, but the difference in spirit is huge...dirigiste corporatism is popular with the civil servant elite as in Brussels...voters here just don't like it), reorienting trade towards growing economies, can choose not to move closer to China/Russia, the list goes on and on. I will say this another way: if the UK didn't leave, would GDP have been higher? No. It wouldn't have been lower either. Brexit offers more opportunities in the future, it is up to govt to take them but by itself it has very little economic significance.
- landoftheice 4y ago
- phone8675309 4y agoNobody wins when The Troubles start again
- dave333 4y agoSpeaking as an expat Brit living in the USA, England, Scotland Wales, and Northern Ireland should apply to join the USA as 4 new states. Now that would be an economic powerhouse. Drop the monarchy now that Queen Elizabeth is gone. There would be a huge fuss over GMO foods and chlorine on chicken etc but not a big deal. Brits know what an influx of Americans is like since it already happened in WW2. Boris could run for President (he can now I believe since he was born in NYC).
- justinclift 4y agoIt's very, very doubtful the UK population would want anything to do with the free-for-all gun ownership bullshit that would entail. Nor the US "health care" system, or US "food standards".
- oliwarner 4y agoThe UK is losing out doubly. Not only have we lost huge swathes of close-quarters financial industry to Berlin et al, suffer shortages thanks —in part— to producers and consumers being unwilling to swallow import duties, massive interruptions to what's left of local manufacturing, and all the other rubbish that's distracting us daily… … All of that and we still have to suffer the idiots who pushed this. In 2019 the party in power distilled itself into Brexit loyalists and it wasn't a good crop that year. The few with an IQ over 100, are cartoon evil. "Eat the poor" grade stuff. They've ennobled a lot of the people who made Brexit happen to lifetime positions in power. And 20% of the electorate still thinks this —and all the other rubbish they've been doing— is okay. It's well beyond nationalism.