4 ms·

So Brexit?

by gherkinnn 3y ago

So Brexit?

pydry 3y ago
It's unfortunately really hard to untangle the side effects of Brexit from covid and the war.
- yawpitch 3y ago
  It’s not all that hard, really… especially when you consider the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid, and Covid in turn only being as bad as it was in the UK as a side effect of the kind of “leadership” that allowed something as stupid as Brexit to happen in the first place. And then you think about Putin’s calculus around attacking UK democratic norms in the lead-up to Brexit and only acting on his plans for Ukraine after seeing Europe / NATO both divided (Brexit) and wounded (Covid). If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it.
  - veave 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - pjc50 3y ago
    > the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid This doesn't make sense since the war has been happening, at some intensity, since about 2014. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9476/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... The decapitation offensive was an escalation in an already existing conflict. If anything triggered it I would say it was the failure of Russian influence ops in the US, and the roll up of their agents e.g. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32252583.html https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32... > If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it. Correct. Unfortunately the rest of us have to unbreak it somehow.
    - andyjohnson0 3y ago
      > > the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid > This doesn't make sense since the war has been happening, at some intensity, since about 2014. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp- https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... > The decapitation offensive was an escalation in an already existing conflict. If anything triggered it I would say it was the failure of Russian influence ops in the US, and the roll up of their agents e.g. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32 https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32... In the end its going to be a bunch of things, perhaps including the ones you noted. For example, I've read credible analysis suggesting that the Russian demographic implosion is a long-term driver: in a decade they may not have enough military age people to operate even their weak military and economy at the same time. That makes them vulnerable to India and China and, in their paranoid fantasies, Europe. But re brexit, the rolling political weakness in the UK, and its severe lack of credibility in Europe, must have looked like it would help their more recent ambitions in Ukraine. I'm fairly confident that brexit will eventually be shown to be at least partly due to organised financing and political disinformation from the Russian state, and I'd be surprised if didn't fit onto some projected timelines in some ministry in Moscow. > > If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it. > Correct. Unfortunately the rest of us have to unbreak it somehow. Yep.
      - clarada 3y ago
        Germany is in recession and so is the Netherlands. Yet the UK hasn't even had one quarter of negative GDP growth recently. France is in political turmoil. Across the EU, far-right political parties are gaining real power. Yet in the UK the far-right (the BNP) has no power at all and no hope of gaining even a single MP. UK politicians are being their usual level of useless, but they're squeeky clean compared to the Qatar corrupted bureaucrats infesting Brussels. So yeah, I'd take Brexit Britain any day over the mess unfolding over the English Channel.
        ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        > UK politicians are being their usual level of useless, but they're squeeky clean You mean like when the UK government gave a no deal Brexit ferry contract to a company that owns no ships, has no staff and copy-pasted terms and conditions from a pizza takeaway? Or when they gave 100's of million in PPE contracts during covid without tender, to companies that were registered yesterday, with links to conservative party? And of that PPE ended up getting burned because it was not functional? Or as this month, they handed over £1.6 billion to an Australian travel firm for a barge to house refugees. This barge is infested with deadly bacteria, and they could have bought the world largest cruise ship with swimming pools and for less! 1 - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/30/no-deal-brexit-ferry-company-owns-no-ships-and-has-never-run-ferry-service https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/30/no-deal-bre.... 2 - https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-21/coronavirus-contracts-worth-37bn-raise-corruption-concerns-report-says https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-21/coronavirus-contracts-wo... 3 - https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1781474/Cost-of-migrant-barges-revealed-contract https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1781474/Cost-of-migr...
- ajb 3y ago
  Because all three only affected the UK... Except the last two didn't. Where I agree with you is that people who only go by media stories are going to find it hard to untangle them. Those who can go on the actual data, not so much.
  - pydry 3y ago
    That untangled data doesn't exist. Sure would be nice if it did but it doesnt.
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  I've heard plenty of people say this. But I don't think it's true. The effects of covid and the Ukraine war are what you see in western Europe. So the difference between that and where the UK is (less growth, more inflation etc) is Brexit. Unless there is some pressing reason to think otherwise? I don't accuse you of this but plenty of brexiteers seem to want to hide in the "we'll never know if it was a good idea because there is no perfect counterfactual" fallacy. It should not be tolerated.
  - throwaway22032 3y ago
    This assumes that the whole is the same as the sum of its parts. I can turn my cold, or hot, tap on 50% and everything is fine. Turn the other one on 50% as well, and the sink overflows and there's a right mess. I don't particularly have an opinion here either way, but it seems obvious to me that e.g. it's harder to rejig an economy that's currently subject to stress from other factors.
    - aunty_helen 3y ago
      True. But when would you like this holiday from global events while rejigging and would it be English breakfast or earl grey with the breakfast?
    - LatteLazy 3y ago
      I don't think it "assumes" that. I think that's how reality works isn't it? If you hadn't turned on the extra tap compared to your neighbour, you'd have been fine. So the extra tap is the problem. Saying "brexit might have worked it it wasn't for the rest of reality" just seems like a long way around of saying "brexit didn't and never would have worked" no? Sorry if I am missing some deeper meaning here?
      - throwaway22032 3y ago
        It's hard for me to explain if you don't see it intuitively, I guess. Imagine that you take up a gym routine. Ordinarily it would go well. You then break your leg. If you keep doing squats then you're going to end up in a pretty bad place. You may need to change course. I'm not saying that I think Brexit was a good or bad idea. I just don't see how it's not intuitively obvious that economic changes aren't just additive. It's a complex system with lots of nonlinearity, mixing, etc.
- seanhunter 3y ago
  Not sure that's true. Firstly a lot of the effects of Brexit hit before covid or the war (eg devaluation of Sterling by about 25%) secondly you can control for covid and the war because those have happened to all the Eurozone countries as well, although each country got its own chance to muck up the covid response which muddies the waters somewhat.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  Brexit hasn't even begun, Uk does not do checks on EU goods entering the country because it would cost too much, they accept all electrical goods from EU and have not made any changes to their regulations of anything from e-bikes to vacuum cleaner power ratings. Because no-one will produce goods specifically for UK, it will be massive extra cost. Recently they announced that the EU CE (Conformité Européenne) mark will be accepted indefinitely. As son as they start changing any of the EU laws on the book, even for maximum allowed power of vacuums, that will cause trade issues.

So Brexit?

pydry 3y ago

It's unfortunately really hard to untangle the side effects of Brexit from covid and the war.

yawpitch 3y ago
It’s not all that hard, really… especially when you consider the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid, and Covid in turn only being as bad as it was in the UK as a side effect of the kind of “leadership” that allowed something as stupid as Brexit to happen in the first place. And then you think about Putin’s calculus around attacking UK democratic norms in the lead-up to Brexit and only acting on his plans for Ukraine after seeing Europe / NATO both divided (Brexit) and wounded (Covid). If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it.
- veave 3y ago
  [flagged]
- pjc50 3y ago
  > the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid This doesn't make sense since the war has been happening, at some intensity, since about 2014. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9476/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... The decapitation offensive was an escalation in an already existing conflict. If anything triggered it I would say it was the failure of Russian influence ops in the US, and the roll up of their agents e.g. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32252583.html https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32... > If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it. Correct. Unfortunately the rest of us have to unbreak it somehow.
  - andyjohnson0 3y ago
    > > the war as a knock-on side effect of Covid > This doesn't make sense since the war has been happening, at some intensity, since about 2014. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp- https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... > The decapitation offensive was an escalation in an already existing conflict. If anything triggered it I would say it was the failure of Russian influence ops in the US, and the roll up of their agents e.g. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32 https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-fbi-deripaska-sanctions/32... In the end its going to be a bunch of things, perhaps including the ones you noted. For example, I've read credible analysis suggesting that the Russian demographic implosion is a long-term driver: in a decade they may not have enough military age people to operate even their weak military and economy at the same time. That makes them vulnerable to India and China and, in their paranoid fantasies, Europe. But re brexit, the rolling political weakness in the UK, and its severe lack of credibility in Europe, must have looked like it would help their more recent ambitions in Ukraine. I'm fairly confident that brexit will eventually be shown to be at least partly due to organised financing and political disinformation from the Russian state, and I'd be surprised if didn't fit onto some projected timelines in some ministry in Moscow. > > If you’re in the UK and you’re hurting and you voted to Leave, you broke it and you bought it. > Correct. Unfortunately the rest of us have to unbreak it somehow. Yep.
    - clarada 3y ago
      Germany is in recession and so is the Netherlands. Yet the UK hasn't even had one quarter of negative GDP growth recently. France is in political turmoil. Across the EU, far-right political parties are gaining real power. Yet in the UK the far-right (the BNP) has no power at all and no hope of gaining even a single MP. UK politicians are being their usual level of useless, but they're squeeky clean compared to the Qatar corrupted bureaucrats infesting Brussels. So yeah, I'd take Brexit Britain any day over the mess unfolding over the English Channel.
      - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        > UK politicians are being their usual level of useless, but they're squeeky clean You mean like when the UK government gave a no deal Brexit ferry contract to a company that owns no ships, has no staff and copy-pasted terms and conditions from a pizza takeaway? Or when they gave 100's of million in PPE contracts during covid without tender, to companies that were registered yesterday, with links to conservative party? And of that PPE ended up getting burned because it was not functional? Or as this month, they handed over £1.6 billion to an Australian travel firm for a barge to house refugees. This barge is infested with deadly bacteria, and they could have bought the world largest cruise ship with swimming pools and for less! 1 - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/30/no-deal-brexit-ferry-company-owns-no-ships-and-has-never-run-ferry-service https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/30/no-deal-bre.... 2 - https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-21/coronavirus-contracts-worth-37bn-raise-corruption-concerns-report-says https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-21/coronavirus-contracts-wo... 3 - https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1781474/Cost-of-migrant-barges-revealed-contract https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1781474/Cost-of-migr...
ajb 3y ago
Because all three only affected the UK... Except the last two didn't. Where I agree with you is that people who only go by media stories are going to find it hard to untangle them. Those who can go on the actual data, not so much.
- pydry 3y ago
  That untangled data doesn't exist. Sure would be nice if it did but it doesnt.
LatteLazy 3y ago
I've heard plenty of people say this. But I don't think it's true. The effects of covid and the Ukraine war are what you see in western Europe. So the difference between that and where the UK is (less growth, more inflation etc) is Brexit. Unless there is some pressing reason to think otherwise? I don't accuse you of this but plenty of brexiteers seem to want to hide in the "we'll never know if it was a good idea because there is no perfect counterfactual" fallacy. It should not be tolerated.
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  This assumes that the whole is the same as the sum of its parts. I can turn my cold, or hot, tap on 50% and everything is fine. Turn the other one on 50% as well, and the sink overflows and there's a right mess. I don't particularly have an opinion here either way, but it seems obvious to me that e.g. it's harder to rejig an economy that's currently subject to stress from other factors.
  - aunty_helen 3y ago
    True. But when would you like this holiday from global events while rejigging and would it be English breakfast or earl grey with the breakfast?
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    I don't think it "assumes" that. I think that's how reality works isn't it? If you hadn't turned on the extra tap compared to your neighbour, you'd have been fine. So the extra tap is the problem. Saying "brexit might have worked it it wasn't for the rest of reality" just seems like a long way around of saying "brexit didn't and never would have worked" no? Sorry if I am missing some deeper meaning here?
    - throwaway22032 3y ago
      It's hard for me to explain if you don't see it intuitively, I guess. Imagine that you take up a gym routine. Ordinarily it would go well. You then break your leg. If you keep doing squats then you're going to end up in a pretty bad place. You may need to change course. I'm not saying that I think Brexit was a good or bad idea. I just don't see how it's not intuitively obvious that economic changes aren't just additive. It's a complex system with lots of nonlinearity, mixing, etc.
seanhunter 3y ago
Not sure that's true. Firstly a lot of the effects of Brexit hit before covid or the war (eg devaluation of Sterling by about 25%) secondly you can control for covid and the war because those have happened to all the Eurozone countries as well, although each country got its own chance to muck up the covid response which muddies the waters somewhat.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
Brexit hasn't even begun, Uk does not do checks on EU goods entering the country because it would cost too much, they accept all electrical goods from EU and have not made any changes to their regulations of anything from e-bikes to vacuum cleaner power ratings. Because no-one will produce goods specifically for UK, it will be massive extra cost. Recently they announced that the EU CE (Conformité Européenne) mark will be accepted indefinitely. As son as they start changing any of the EU laws on the book, even for maximum allowed power of vacuums, that will cause trade issues.