The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
How do we manage import substitution for steel, cars and white goods without a degree of protectionism, whether by tariff or government suport? How does this fit with WTO rules?
A great piece- history is always instructive, especially in a climate where when idiots decry "experts" and facts.
It's seems crystal clear why we are here. The Tories have been bitterly divided on Europe for decades, and having seen an existential threat to their perceived primacy decided they should put the question to the people and let them decide.
And so here we are. All the experts, business, industry, diplomats and the government's own assessments show how calamitous and insane a no-deal would be. Yet they pursue it anyway to try and placate their internal loons and thus keep the party together. Because maintaining the perceived primacy of the Conservative Party has been confused with the national interest.
Hubris. It will destroy them.
We're here, due to public unhappiness with the consequences of EU membership. We might not be here had Gordon Brown not reneged on his promise of a vote on the EU Treaty.
We would have voted "No" to the Lisbon Treaty, and eventually obtained a form of associate membership, or additional opt-outs, in order to allow the rest of the EU to proceed.
It would have lanced the boil.
Looking the other way, one should consider the consequences if successive UK Governments - of whatever stripe - had continued to deny the electorate any form of a vote on the EU.
We had thirty years of posturing, surrendering and deceit from British governments about the EU.
And it was a process matched by a simultaneous fawning to the USA.
Even the increase in Overseas Aid (which no other country has chosen to emulate) is part of the same pattern of desperate insecurity that British governments have to other countries.
All of the back of Suez, and post-WWII/Cold War politics.
It might have been a model that worked for us 30 years ago, but it isn't today.
Brexit is the model that works for today. Really?
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Our economic model served well enough until some point after 2000, when consumption became detached from production.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
Genuinely interested to know what kind of mid-tech manufacturing businesses you see emerging in the UK post-Brexit given our market size and the fact we’ll still be competing with low-cost manufacturers in other markets.
I read it because of my interest in old motorcycles, but as a tale of industrial incompetence it is staggering. In the 1960's Britains motorcycle industry was the third biggest export earner. Within a decade it was nearly extinct.
Triumph (a Leicestershire based firm now) have had a significant revival, but the bikes are substantially made of imported parts from a Thai factory. If my midlife crisis worsens then I could see myself on a 2017 T100 Bonneville.
The dealer gave me a 'modern' Boneville while they were doing warranty work on my bike. pleasant enough but really heavy & underbraked. However if having drooling men of a certain age striking up conversations with you is your bag, a Bonny outperforms all sorts of Italian exotica.
Like Harleys, the Triumph market is really a retro one for men having midlife crises.
I am a bit old for a Yamaha RD nowadays. I had the RD 200 with the coffin shaped tank. Happy days!
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
It isn't Britain open for business, certainly. To the extent there is any intellectual underpinning it seems to be a British Sakoku, or the "closed country" policy that Japan promoted during the Shogun period. It wasn't a total disaster economically, but ultimately unsustainable.
On topic, blistering good piece David, one of your best.
I've been saying this for a while (and that Brexit could do to the Tories what WW1 did to the Liberals)
In the unlikely event it does, a new centre-right party would emerge to fill the vacuum as Labour supplanted the Liberals on the left.
I heard Blair on Radio 4 this morning, trying to drop heavy hints about a new party. At the moment, I don't think one would take off. Firstly, much as it upsets the PBTories here, there is an alternative in waiting, and as the main players in the Conservative administration tear their party to pieces, all Corbyn has to do is wait, and give the occasional nudge to keep them going over the cliff. The UK traditionally will give Corbyn a try, if it works out, fine. If it doesn't, well, we tried, and now for something completely different.
Secondly, and probably most importantly, who would lead it? It is painfully obvious that Blair would love to be "The One" who goes back into Westminster to save the country from all the raving Trots and incompetent Neo-Liberals, but it is also obvious, even to Blair that that little piggie ain't gonna fly, no matter how much lipstick is applied.
There are of course others waiting their chance, but, mostly their respective reputations have taken a very bad hit with the public. Clegg, er, No!, Conservative front bench, Nope!, CCPer's from Labour, pretty much committed Hari Kiri, vague possibilty but, would anyone trust them? David Miliband, comes across as smarmy, and didn't have the cojones to try to finish off Brown back in 2007 or even to be crowned at his own coronation.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
Genuinely interested to know what kind of mid-tech manufacturing businesses you see emerging in the UK post-Brexit given our market size and the fact we’ll still be competing with low-cost manufacturers in other markets.
none will unless there is a government programme to support and encourage them which is part of my beef with Osbornes export nonsenese when on shoring work would have been better and quicker and had the same effect
But the kind of areas I could see and which we need are on shoring more automotive components, enouraging domestic automotive manufacturers to increase and vary their production, anything electronic white goods food.
These are the poducts which make huge dents in our BoP and which do not come from so called low cost countries for a variety of reasons. Much of the throw our industries away nonsense of the 90s onwards was driven by people who worked on consultants latest crazes and ignored the basics of what the country needed. We were all going to work in high valued financial services right up to 2008 then suddenly we werent.
The fact remains the UK needs a balanced economy and currently we dont have one
If we are going to get one we need to work harder to get t.
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Nevertheless you haven't answered my question. Is Brexit the model that will work for us? (You don't have to - it's impertinent to demand you do) If it isn't the model that works, maybe we should find one that does.
nobody can tell yet
for a start off we dont yet know the shape of leaving wto, soft etc
all we can say is that a slim majority voted to change a system that didnt work for them, in the hope that we'll find a better way of doing things
as an optimist on this countries abilities I believe we will
Thanks. Are the kind of compromises David mentions in his header acceptable to you as the price for getting a better way of doing things? For example a payment of €60 billion to the EU against the clearing off of obligations, a two year transition arrangement and the outline of a permanent arrangement to be negotiated after we leave.
It isn't a trick question. Genuinely interested.
It would be acceptable to me.
For the good of the country we need Tory Brexiteers who live in the real world to start speaking out. The majority of the country could unite around a soft Brexit that recognises there is some cost to leaving in the least damaging way. And it is a cost that is far less expensive than the alternative.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
You're assuming we can do a one-for-one substitution at the same cost. I'm assuming we can't do that (because if we could do that, we would already be doing it). There is also the fact that the UK is lacking in many resources for which we do not have any internal replacements.
Replacing existing goods and services with ones that are more expensive, more difficult to source, and/or less useful is better known as "wealth destruction". The UK future you outline will be poorer and with less choice. Your comments (and @another_richard 's) indicate that the UK is forgetting all the hard-won lessons from the seventies and eighties.
A great piece- history is always instructive, especially in a climate where when idiots decry "experts" and facts.
It's seems crystal clear why we are here. The Tories have been bitterly divided on Europe for decades, and having seen an existential threat to their perceived primacy decided they should put the question to the people and let them decide.
And so here we are. All the experts, business, industry, diplomats and the government's own assessments show how calamitous and insane a no-deal would be. Yet they pursue it anyway to try and placate their internal loons and thus keep the party together. Because maintaining the perceived primacy of the Conservative Party has been confused with the national interest.
Hubris. It will destroy them.
We're here, due to public unhappiness with the consequences of EU membership. We might not be here had Gordon Brown not reneged on his promise of a vote on the EU Treaty.
We would have voted "No" to the Lisbon Treaty, and eventually obtained a form of associate membership, or additional opt-outs, in order to allow the rest of the EU to proceed.
It would have lanced the boil.
Looking the other way, one should consider the consequences if successive UK Governments - of whatever stripe - had continued to deny the electorate any form of a vote on the EU.
We had thirty years of posturing, surrendering and deceit from British governments about the EU.
And it was a process matched by a simultaneous fawning to the USA.
Even the increase in Overseas Aid (which no other country has chosen to emulate) is part of the same pattern of desperate insecurity that British governments have to other countries.
All of the back of Suez, and post-WWII/Cold War politics.
It might have been a model that worked for us 30 years ago, but it isn't today.
Brexit is the model that works for today. Really?
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Our economic model served well enough until some point after 2000, when consumption became detached from production.
actually I put it to 1989 when communism collapsed
after that the advantages the UK enjoyed began to erode and with no european social model to decelrate industrial decline our industries suffered most
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
How do we manage import substitution for steel, cars and white goods without a degree of protectionism, whether by tariff or government suport? How does this fit with WTO rules?
we ignore the rules like everybody else does when it suits them
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
You're assuming we can do a one-for-one substitution at the same cost. I'm assuming we can't do that (because if we could do that, we would already be doing it). There is also the fact that the UK is lacking in many resources for which we do not have any internal replacements.
Replacing existing goods and services with ones that are more expensive, more difficult to source, and/or less useful is better known as "wealth destruction". The UK future you outline will be poorer and with less choice. Your comments (and @another_richard 's) indicate that the UK is forgetting all the hard-won lessons from the seventies and eighties.
youve defined the outcome before youve even looked at the problem
A great piece- history is always instructive, especially in a climate where when idiots decry "experts" and facts.
It's seems crystal clear why we are here. The Tories have been bitterly divided on Europe for decades, and having seen an existential threat to their perceived primacy decided they should put the question to the people and let them decide.
And so here we are. All the experts, business, industry, diplomats and the government's own assessments show how calamitous and insane a no-deal would be. Yet they pursue it anyway to try and placate their internal loons and thus keep the party together. Because maintaining the perceived primacy of the Conservative Party has been confused with the national interest.
Hubris. It will destroy them.
We're here, due to public unhappiness with the consequences of EU membership. We might not be here had Gordon Brown not reneged on his promise of a vote on the EU Treaty.
We would have voted "No" to the Lisbon Treaty, and eventually obtained a form of associate membership, or additional opt-outs, in order to allow the rest of the EU to proceed.
It would have lanced the boil.
Looking the other way, one should consider the consequences if successive UK Governments - of whatever stripe - had continued to deny the electorate any form of a vote on the EU.
We had thirty years of posturing, surrendering and deceit from British governments about the EU.
And it was a process matched by a simultaneous fawning to the USA.
Even the increase in Overseas Aid (which no other country has chosen to emulate) is part of the same pattern of desperate insecurity that British governments have to other countries.
All of the back of Suez, and post-WWII/Cold War politics.
It might have been a model that worked for us 30 years ago, but it isn't today.
Brexit is the model that works for today. Really?
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Our economic model served well enough until some point after 2000, when consumption became detached from production.
actually I put it to 1989 when communism collapsed
after that the advantages the UK enjoyed began to erode and with no european social model to decelrate industrial decline our industries suffered most
Manufacturing continued to grow throughout the 1990's.
Thank you for the read. I think it was an insight into a specific German (Markus Kroll) instead of Germans generally or the German governing parties specifically, and a resolutely Eurosceptic German at that. He narrated Eurosceptic opinion as fact without offering proof, so it was more an insight into his mentality than objective reality. However, thank you for posting.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
It isn't Britain open for business, certainly. To the extent there is any intellectual underpinning it seems to be a British Sakoku, or the "closed country" policy that Japan promoted during the Shogun period. It wasn't a total disaster economically, but ultimately unsustainable.
As I pointed out earlier, Britain's fervour for Free Trade arose in the 19th Century because of the combination of first mover status in the industrial revolution and complete worldwide naval dominance after 1805.
Gunboat diplomacy was the Free Traders best friend. The enthusiasm for free trade of those on the receiving end has always been less marked.
I read it because of my interest in old motorcycles, but as a tale of industrial incompetence it is staggering. In the 1960's Britains motorcycle industry was the third biggest export earner. Within a decade it was nearly extinct.
Triumph (a Leicestershire based firm now) have had a significant revival, but the bikes are substantially made of imported parts from a Thai factory. If my midlife crisis worsens then I could see myself on a 2017 T100 Bonneville.
The dealer gave me a 'modern' Boneville while they were doing warranty work on my bike. pleasant enough but really heavy & underbraked. However if having drooling men of a certain age striking up conversations with you is your bag, a Bonny outperforms all sorts of Italian exotica.
Like Harleys, the Triumph market is really a retro one for men having midlife crises.
I am a bit old for a Yamaha RD nowadays. I had the RD 200 with the coffin shaped tank. Happy days!
I read it because of my interest in old motorcycles, but as a tale of industrial incompetence it is staggering. In the 1960's Britains motorcycle industry was the third biggest export earner. Within a decade it was nearly extinct.
Triumph (a Leicestershire based firm now) have had a significant revival, but the bikes are substantially made of imported parts from a Thai factory. If my midlife crisis worsens then I could see myself on a 2017 T100 Bonneville.
The dealer gave me a 'modern' Boneville while they were doing warranty work on my bike. pleasant enough but really heavy & underbraked. However if having drooling men of a certain age striking up conversations with you is your bag, a Bonny outperforms all sorts of Italian exotica.
Like Harleys, the Triumph market is really a retro one for men having midlife crises.
I am a bit old for a Yamaha RD nowadays. I had the RD 200 with the coffin shaped tank. Happy days!
A great piece- history is always instructive, especially in a climate where when idiots decry "experts" and facts.
It's seems crystal clear why we are here. The Tories have beenational interest.
Hubris. It will destroy them.
We're here, due to public unhappiness with the consequenc of the EU to proceed.
It would have lanced the boil.
Looking the other way, one should consider the consequences if successive UK Governments - of whatever stripe - had continued to deny the electorate any form of a vote on the EU.
We had thirty years of posturing, surrendering and deceit from British governments about the EU.
And it was a process matched by a simultaneous fawning to the USA.
Even the increase in Overseas Aid (which no other country has chosen to emulate) is part of the same pattern of desperate insecurity that British governments have to other countries.
All of the back of Suez, and post-WWII/Cold War politics.
It might have been a model that worked for us 30 years ago, but it isn't today.
Brexit is the model that works for today. Really?
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Our economic model served well enough until some point after 2000, when consumption became detached from production.
actually I put it to 1989 when communism collapsed
after that the advantages the UK enjoyed began to erode and with no european social model to decelrate industrial decline our industries suffered most
Manufacturing continued to grow throughout the 1990's.
unsurprisingly since manufacturing investment works on long leadtimes, so the carry over effect worked imo up to 1995 and then investments stopped and factories began to be moved overseas
I made my first investment in E Europe in 1997, a components factory in the Czech republic
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
You're assuming we can do a one-for-one substitution at the same cost. I'm assuming we can't do that (because if we could do that, we would already be doing it). There is also the fact that the UK is lacking in many resources for which we do not have any internal replacements.
Replacing existing goods and services with ones that are more expensive, more difficult to source, and/or less useful is better known as "wealth destruction". The UK future you outline will be poorer and with less choice. Your comments (and @another_richard 's) indicate that the UK is forgetting all the hard-won lessons from the seventies and eighties.
youve defined the outcome before youve even looked at the problem
you criticised the process without addressing the conclusion
I read it because of my interest in old motorcycles, but as a tale of industrial incompetence it is staggering. In the 1960's Britains motorcycle industry was the third biggest export earner. Within a decade it was nearly extinct.
Triumph (a Leicestershire based firm now) have had a significant revival, but the bikes are substantially made of imported parts from a Thai factory. If my midlife crisis worsens then I could see myself on a 2017 T100 Bonneville.
The dealer gave me a 'modern' Boneville while they were doing warranty work on my bike. pleasant enough but really heavy & underbraked. However if having drooling men of a certain age striking up conversations with you is your bag, a Bonny outperforms all sorts of Italian exotica.
Like Harleys, the Triumph market is really a retro one for men having midlife crises.
I am a bit old for a Yamaha RD nowadays. I had the RD 200 with the coffin shaped tank. Happy days!
'I love the smell of 2 stroke in the morning..'
The place I usually hire a van from also hires out bikes, mostly Chinese or Indian. I'm seriously tempted to take this up for a Hebridean tour next year.
As I said yesterday the fact that we have not achieved 6 consecutive months growth in industrial production for 23 years is truly shocking and condemns the whole of the Blair/Brown government as well as the Coalition. It is also the clearest indication that we could have that the growth of the Brown years was completely unsustainable.
We have been and are a major source of demand for the EU throughout that period creating industrial employment elsewhere.
This raises a broader point relevant to David's article. In the 18th -20th centuries free trade was very good for us. It was good because we had significant competitive advantages and we were able to enforce our rules on our customers. .
How does disconnecting from the world help us do better within it? Surely we should try to make globalisation work for us rather than reject it? Those that do worst are those that are most cut off from globalisation. There are European countries that do better than us. Germany for example has more trade and less unemployment. We don't have to reject and accept mediocrity. We can aspire to be good.
Nevertheless your point gets to the nub of the issue in a most elegant way. Brexit is a failure of liberalism and the global outlook. That failure is rooted in real shortcomings, even if the reaction to it, in the form of leaving the EU, vastly compounds those problems and does nothing at all to help.
Yep, leaving the EU is not going to improve the chronic deficiencies in British business and investment. And it certainly will not facilitate the creation of new mid-tech manufacturing. The UK market just isn’t big enough on its own to justify the outlay.
While labour is cheap, to maintain the fiction of a fully employed work force, then there is no means of encouraging manufacturers and other businesses to invest in training, R&D and improvements in systems to grow the economy. Unfortunately, the taxpayer subsidises the employers by paying extra money to the employees to maintain a sustainable standard of living.... On the other hand, improving and mechanising systems will lead to unemployment which the taxpayer will end up footing the bill for. Someone, in the near future is going to have to sort out the mess we have got ourselves into. It ain't going to be pretty, but it is necessary.
Re Dan Hannan: he showed his true colours when we went on American television to criticise the NHS. I agree with all the criticisms of him laid out by PBers.
Buzzfeed have today published an interview style piece with Tony Blair. I think that very few people on the Left will actually entertain much of what’s he said. Which I don’t think is exactly the wrong decision.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
You're assuming we can do a one-for-one substitution at the same cost. I'm assuming we can't do that (because if we could do that, we would already be doing it). There is also the fact that the UK is lacking in many resources for which we do not have any internal replacements.
Replacing existing goods and services with ones that are more expensive, more difficult to source, and/or less useful is better known as "wealth destruction". The UK future you outline will be poorer and with less choice. Your comments (and @another_richard 's) indicate that the UK is forgetting all the hard-won lessons from the seventies and eighties.
Yet over the last decade the government has borrowed over a trillion quid and in 2016 the UK had its highest current account deficit on record.
And we have have a decade of stagnant productivity and wages and 15 years of falling home ownership.
Borrowing ourselves into future poverty in order to pay for excess consumption in the present indicates that the UK has forgotten all the hard won lessons of reality.
Project Management 101: find out who owns your primary constraint, e.g. deadline, and work them to get it lifted. Avoid any temptation to encapsulate the constraint in primary legislation.
And if the primary constraint is a core of Ultra Remainers trying to suggest that the solution to Brexit is remaining, removing that constraint in primary legislation makes total sense.
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Nevertheless you haven't answered my question. Is Brexit the model that will work for us? (You don't have to - it's impertinent to demand you do) If it isn't the model that works, maybe we should find one that does.
nobody can tell yet
for a start off we dont yet know the shape of leaving wto, soft etc
all we can say is that a slim majority voted to change a system that didnt work for them, in the hope that we'll find a better way of doing things
as an optimist on this countries abilities I believe we will
Thanks. Are the kind of compromises David mentions in his header acceptable to you as the price for getting a better way of doing things? For example a payment of €60 billion to the EU against the clearing off of obligations, a two year transition arrangement and the outline of a permanent arrangement to be negotiated after we leave.
It isn't a trick question. Genuinely interested.
It would be acceptable to me.
For the good of the country we need Tory Brexiteers who live in the real world to start speaking out. The majority of the country could unite around a soft Brexit that recognises there is some cost to leaving in the least damaging way. And it is a cost that is far less expensive than the alternative.
For the good of the country we also need democrats to decry each and every attempt to Remain by the back door. From the williamglenns upwards.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
Protectionism is clearly not the solution. The UK market is not big enough. If we are to succeed we need to export.
We also need to import materials, tools and equipment, to make the things that we need to export. Or do we dig up our green and pleasant land in search of the ores, to go into the furnaces, to be machined and tooled - I am sure that there aren't any Nimby's around who would complain, even in the slightest....
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
You're assuming we can do a one-for-one substitution at the same cost. I'm assuming we can't do that (because if we could do that, we would already be doing it). There is also the fact that the UK is lacking in many resources for which we do not have any internal replacements.
Replacing existing goods and services with ones that are more expensive, more difficult to source, and/or less useful is better known as "wealth destruction". The UK future you outline will be poorer and with less choice. Your comments (and @another_richard 's) indicate that the UK is forgetting all the hard-won lessons from the seventies and eighties.
youve defined the outcome before youve even looked at the problem
you criticised the process without addressing the conclusion
Ive lived the process for the last 25 years as a work in manufacturing,
my conclusion is the UK is as good as anywhere to manufacture and one of the advantages in currently having a smaller industrial base is that if we make upskilling and investing profitable we can win back markets. Like China today if youre putting up a factory and equipping it with the latest technology you have a competitive advantage over people with less modern kit and practices.
Increasingly with modern robotics labour becomes a much smaller part of the production cost. A robot costs the same in China as it does in the UK , there is a levelling out where labour costs advantages will get over come by other factors - transport costs, time to market, product flexibility.
The UK has a strong back drop in good universities for research, a stable government and a developed funding sector. If we set it as a priority we are as good a place to manufature as anywhere else and in many instances better.
In fairness we still build the two most important bits - the wings and the engines - where the technology and value (well over half) are......
That's "comparative advantage": each country does the bits that it's good at and (via free trade) imports the bits that other countries are good at. It makes things cheaper all round and creates wealth for both parties. The one-to-one substitution advocated by the antifree-trade Brexiteers involves replacing existing goods and services with ones that are more expensive, more difficult to source, and/or less useful, which destroys wealth.
It saddens me that in our zeal to leave the EU we are adopting or advocating policies which are known to make people poorer and less free.
Re Dan Hannan: he showed his true colours when we went on American television to criticise the NHS. I agree with all the criticisms of him laid out by PBers.
Buzzfeed have today published an interview style piece with Tony Blair. I think that very few people on the Left will actually entertain much of what’s he said. Which I don’t think is exactly the wrong decision.
Yes an extraordinary interview in praise of the enlightened Saudi Arabia. I used to be a big fan of Blair but after spending years as 'Special Middle East envoy' I now just wonder who was pulling his strings and how much did it cost them.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
It isn't Britain open for business, certainly. To the extent there is any intellectual underpinning it seems to be a British Sakoku, or the "closed country" policy that Japan promoted during the Shogun period. It wasn't a total disaster economically, but ultimately unsustainable.
As I pointed out earlier, Britain's fervour for Free Trade arose in the 19th Century because of the combination of first mover status in the industrial revolution and complete worldwide naval dominance after 1805.
Gunboat diplomacy was the Free Traders best friend. The enthusiasm for free trade of those on the receiving end has always been less marked.
There is another even more important point, which is that the West (and to some extent China in that part of the world) had the trading system and Japan didn't. It meant Japan had to try to replicate parts of that system, barter for access, or do without. We will be in exactly the same situation vis a vis the EU. It's what will do for Brexit, and possibly quite quickly. Trading systems are a lot more sophisticated and necessary these days.
you criticised the process without addressing the conclusion
Ive lived the process for the last 25 years as a work in manufacturing,
my conclusion is the UK is as good as anywhere to manufacture and one of the advantages in currently having a smaller industrial base is that if we make upskilling and investing profitable we can win back markets. Like China today if youre putting up a factory and equipping it with the latest technology you have a competitive advantage over people with less modern kit and practices.
Increasingly with modern robotics labour becomes a much smaller part of the production cost. A robot costs the same in China as it does in the UK , there is a levelling out where labour costs advantages will get over come by other factors - transport costs, time to market, product flexibility.
The UK has a strong back drop in good universities for research, a stable government and a developed funding sector. If we set it as a priority we are as good a place to manufature as anywhere else and in many instances better.
Point 1: "as good a place to manufacture as anywhere else and in many instances better" is not good enough: you have to be better at all instances for a non-trade solution to work. Otherwise there will always be a hole within which it is cheaper to buy an import than employ a local to build or mine or synthesise. I outlined "comparative advantage" below to CarlottaVance.
Point 2: how will you address an issue where the UK person, after considering all the options, still wishes to buy a non-UK import? Will you wish to prevent that person and, if so, how? Social disapproval ("Buying French? Brave choice!")? Import tariffs? Banning?
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
You're replacements.
Replacing eighties.
youve defined the outcome before youve even looked at the problem
you criticised the process without addressing the conclusion
Ive lived the process for the last 25 years as a work in manufacturing,
my conclusion is the UK is as good as anywhere to manufacture and one of the advantages in currently having a smaller industrial base is that if we make upskilling and investing profitable we can win back markets. Like China today if youre putting up a factory and equipping it with the latest technology you have a competitive advantage over people with less modern kit and practices.
Increasingly with modern robotics labour becomes a much smaller part of the production cost. A robot costs the same in China as it does in the UK , there is a levelling out where labour costs advantages will get over come by other factors - transport costs, time to market, product flexibility.
The UK has a strong back drop in good universities for research, a stable government and a developed funding sector. If we set it as a priority we are as good a place to manufature as anywhere else and in many instances better.
But how do you make investing profitable by shrinking the size of your market? There is an incentive to invest in the building of a white goods or smartphone or whatever manufacturing business in China because the domestic market is huge and there are significant barriers to entry. The UK market is not huge, so the only weapon we have is to create barriers to entry - but these will make imports more expensive and exports far more difficult. Which takes us back to the size of the UK market and why anyone would invest in building a manufacturing business here to service it. The only reason, surely, is if there were no or very little competition.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
You're assuming we can do a one-for-one substitution at the same cost. I'm assuming we can't do that (because if we could do that, we would already be doing it). There is also the fact that the UK is lacking in many resources for which we do not have any internal replacements.
Replacing existing goods and services with ones that are more expensive, more difficult to source, and/or less useful is better known as "wealth destruction". The UK future you outline will be poorer and with less choice. Your comments (and @another_richard 's) indicate that the UK is forgetting all the hard-won lessons from the seventies and eighties.
youve defined the outcome before youve even looked at the problem
you criticised the process without addressing the conclusion
Ive lived the process for the last 25 years as a work in manufacturing,
my conclusion is the UK is as good as anywhere to manufacture and one of the advantages in currently having a smaller industrial base is that if we make upskilling and investing profitable we can win back markets. Like China today if youre putting up a factory and equipping it with the latest technology you have a competitive advantage over people with less modern kit and practices.
Increasingly with modern robotics labour becomes a much smaller part of the production cost. A robot costs the same in China as it does in the UK , there is a levelling out where labour costs advantages will get over come by other factors - transport costs, time to market, product flexibility.
The UK has a strong back drop in good universities for research, a stable government and a developed funding sector. If we set it as a priority we are as good a place to manufature as anywhere else and in many instances better.
Perhaps we are going round in circles,but none of what you set out requires, or is even helped by, Brexit. Meanwhile the advantages you claim for Britain are damaged by it, starting with stable government, university research that is internationally scoped and carried out substantially by foreigners, and sources of investment that are already drying up.
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Nevertheless you haven't answered my question. Is Brexit the model that will work for us? (You don't have to - it's impertinent to demand you do) If it isn't the model that works, maybe we should find one that does.
nobody can tell yet
for a start off we dont yet know the shape of leaving wto, soft etc
all we can say is that a slim majority voted to change a system that didnt work for them, in the hope that we'll find a better way of doing things
as an optimist on this countries abilities I believe we will
Thanks. Are the kind of compromises David mentions in his header acceptable to you as the price for getting a better way of doing things? For example a payment of €60 billion to the EU against the clearing off of obligations, a two year transition arrangement and the outline of a permanent arrangement to be negotiated after we leave.
It isn't a trick question. Genuinely interested.
It would be acceptable to me.
For the good of the country we need Tory Brexiteers who live in the real world to start speaking out. The majority of the country could unite around a soft Brexit that recognises there is some cost to leaving in the least damaging way. And it is a cost that is far less expensive than the alternative.
For the good of the country we also need democrats to decry each and every attempt to Remain by the back door. From the williamglenns upwards.
I don't see how we can stay in the EU via the back door. It can only happen if the government cannot get its legislation through parliament. And if that happens we get a general election and the people can vote for what they want.
So the free trading buccaneering Brexiteers have come over all protectionist now they've decided that free trade isn't on offer. It's not just Jeremy Corbyn who wants us to buy Austin Allegros.
They really do have no principles other than blind Europhobia.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
You're assuming we can do a one-for-one substitution at the same cost. I'm assuming we can't do that (because if we could do that, we would already be doing it). There is also the fact that the UK is lacking in many resources for which we do not have any internal replacements.
Replacing existing goods and services with ones that are more expensive, more difficult to source, and/or less useful is better known as "wealth destruction". The UK future you outline will be poorer and with less choice. Your comments (and @another_richard 's) indicate that the UK is forgetting all the hard-won lessons from the seventies and eighties.
Yet over the last decade the government has borrowed over a trillion quid and in 2016 the UK had its highest current account deficit on record.
And we have have a decade of stagnant productivity and wages and 15 years of falling home ownership.
Borrowing ourselves into future poverty in order to pay for excess consumption in the present indicates that the UK has forgotten all the hard won lessons of reality.
I agree with you, and would date the problem back to when Labour abandoned shadowing Conservative spending plans in ~2001, and spent out of a incipient recession in ~2004 (and when CDO's started to be used as collateral for mortgages in the early Noughties, but that's another conversation). But Brexit will not cure these problems, and the fact we at focussing our efforts on it, rather than that, gives me pause.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
You're replacements.
Replacing eighties.
youve defined the outcome before youve even looked at the problem
you criticised the process without addressing the conclusion
Ive lived the process for the last 25 years as a work in manufacturing,
my conclusion is the UK is as good as anywhere to manufacture and one of the advantages in currently having a smaller industrial base is that if we make upskilling and investing profitable we can win back markets. Like China today if youre putting up a factory and equipping it with the latest technology you have a competitive advantage over people with less modern kit and practices.
Increasingly with modern robotics labour becomes a much smaller part of the production cost. A robot costs the same in China as it does in the UK , there is a levelling out where labour costs advantages will get over come by other factors - transport costs, time to market, product flexibility.
The UK has a strong back drop in good universities for research, a stable government and a developed funding sector. If we set it as a priority we are as good a place to manufature as anywhere else and in many instances better.
But how do you make investing profitable by shrinking the size of your market? There is an incentive to invest in the building of a white goods or smartphone or whatever manufacturing business in China because the domestic market is huge and there are significant barriers to entry. The UK market is not huge, so the only weapon we have is to create barriers to entry - but these will make imports more expensive and exports far more difficult. Which takes us back to the size of the UK market and why anyone would invest in building a manufacturing business here to service it. The only reason, surely, is if there were no or very little competition.
the way manufacturing is going all markets will be local
batch sizes of one may become the norm
market size is becoming increasingly unimportant
supply chains, decent research, skilled machinist and machine making capability will be more important
So the free trading buccaneering Brexiteers have come over all protectionist now they've decided that free trade isn't on offer. It's not just Jeremy Corbyn who wants us to buy Austin Allegros.
They really do have no principles other than blind Europhobia.
This is an interesting video of Tony Benn and Roy Jenkins talking about a free trade area as an alternative to membership of the European Community. The arguments haven't changed a jot since 1975, including the chestnut about Germans selling us their cars and the Italians their wine.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
You're assuming we can do a one-for-one substitution as and eighties.
youve defined the outcome before youve even looked at the problem
you criticised the process without addressing the conclusion
Ive lived the process for the last 25 years as a work in manufacturing,
my conclusion is the UK is as good as anywhere to manufacture and one of the advantages in currently having a smaller industrial base is that if we make upskilling and investing profitable we can win back markets. Like China today if youre putting up a factory and equipping it with the latest technology you have a competitive advantage over people with less modern kit and practices.
Increasingly with modern robotics labour becomes a much smaller part of the production cost. A robot costs the same in China as it does in the UK , there is a levelling out where labour costs advantages will get over come by other factors - transport costs, time to market, product flexibility.
The UK has a strong back drop in good universities for research, a stable government and a developed funding sector. If we set it as a priority we are as good a place to manufature as anywhere else and in many instances better.
Perhaps we are going round in circles,but none of what you set out requires, or is even helped by, Brexit. Meanwhile the advantages you claim for Britain are damaged by it, starting with stable government, university research that is internationally scoped and carried out substantially by foreigners, and sources of investment that are already drying up.
perhaps yes perhaps no, Brexit is a risk
all we can say is that the model we have worked within has hollowed our factories, killed off skilled jobs, given us an unsustainable trade deficit, made a handful of people rich and pissed off the majority of our citizens.
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Nevertheless you haven't answered my question. Is Brexit the model that will work for us? (You don't have to - it's impertinent to demand you do) If it isn't the model that works, maybe we should find one that does.
nobody can tell yet
for a start off we dont yet know the shape of leaving wto, soft etc
all we can say is that a slim majority voted to change a system that didnt work for them, in the hope that we'll find a better way of doing things
as an optimist on this countries abilities I believe we will
Thanks. Are the kind of compromises David mentions in his header acceptable to you as the price for getting a better way of doing things? For example a payment of €60 billion to the EU against the clearing off of obligations, a two year transition arrangement and the outline of a permanent arrangement to be negotiated after we leave.
It isn't a trick question. Genuinely interested.
It would be acceptable to me.
For the good of the country we need Tory Brexiteers who live in the real world to start speaking out. The majority of the country could unite around a soft Brexit that recognises there is some cost to leaving in the least damaging way. And it is a cost that is far less expensive than the alternative.
For the good of the country we also need democrats to decry each and every attempt to Remain by the back door. From the williamglenns upwards.
I don't see how we can stay in the EU via the back door. It can only happen if the government cannot get its legislation through parliament . And if that happens we get a general election and the people can vote for what they want.
So, I repeat, for the good of the country we need democrats to decry each and every attempt to Remain by the back door.
David Herdson's excellent article might have mentioned the second Tory split of 1905, again over free trade. That also seems apposite to the Conservatives' current state.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
You're replacements.
Replacing eighties.
youve defined the outcome before youve even looked at the problem
you criticised the process without addressing the conclusion
Ive lived the process for the last 25 years as a work in manufacturing,
my over people with less modern kit and practices.
Increasingly with modern robotics labour becomes a much smaller part of the production cost. flexibility.
The better.
But how do you make investing profitable by shrinking the size of your market? There is an incentive to invest in the building of a white goods or smartphone or whatever manufacturing business in China because the domestic market is huge and there are significant barriers to entry. The UK market is not huge, so the only weapon we have is to create barriers to entry - but these will make imports more expensive and exports far more difficult. Which takes us back to the size of the UK market and why anyone would invest in building a manufacturing business here to service it. The only reason, surely, is if there were no or very little competition.
the way manufacturing is going all markets will be local
batch sizes of one may become the norm
market size is becoming increasingly unimportant
supply chains, decent research, skilled machinist and machine making capability will be more important
Market size will always matter, surely. If you don't have demand you don't have a sellable product. I can see how manufacturing might become more localised - ie, much more specifically tailored to individual customer needs - but you still need customers in the first place. Without them, the AI you invest in will be money down the drain.
Soft Brexit is just a term to describe how parliament could ignore the referendum and keep us under the control of the EU. The UK would leave in name only. It would cause a lot of anger in the country and leave a lot of people believing that democracy does not work. It will drive a lot of people into the hands of extremists.
Robert Peel's Tories were not faced by the 1840s equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn. His greatest service to the Tories may well be to keep them united despite Brexit to keep him out. His greatest service to the UK may well be not only to bring about the Leave result in the referendum (as he did), but to secure Brexit afterwards.
you criticised the process without addressing the conclusion
Ive lived the process for the last 25 years as a work in manufacturing,
my conclusion is the UK is as good as anywhere to manufacture and one of the advantages in currently having a smaller industrial base is that if we make upskilling and investing profitable we can win back markets. Like China today if youre putting up a factory and equipping it with the latest technology you have a competitive advantage over people with less modern kit and practices.
Increasingly with modern robotics labour becomes a much smaller part of the production cost. A robot costs the same in China as it does in the UK , there is a levelling out where labour costs advantages will get over come by other factors - transport costs, time to market, product flexibility.
The UK has a strong back drop in good universities for research, a stable government and a developed funding sector. If we set it as a priority we are as good a place to manufature as anywhere else and in many instances better.
Point 1: "as good a place to manufacture as anywhere else and in many instances better" is not good enough: you have to be better at all instances for a non-trade solution to work. Otherwise there will always be a hole within which it is cheaper to buy an import than employ a local to build or mine or synthesise. I outlined "comparative advantage" below to CarlottaVance.
Point 2: how will you address an issue where the UK person, after considering all the options, still wishes to buy a non-UK import? Will you wish to prevent that person and, if so, how? Social disapproval ("Buying French? Brave choice!")? Import tariffs? Banning?
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt, todays competitve advantage can be tomorrows millstone. Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a large extent we have abandoned the goal of a high skill highly paid workforce and fallen back on cheap labour. We see it in productivity figures.
Why you have jumped from encouraging import substitution to autarky you will have to expalin
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Nevertheless you haven't answered my question. Is Brexit the model that will work for us? (You don't have to - it's impertinent to demand you do) If it isn't the model that works, maybe we should find one that does.
nobody can tell yet
for a start off we dont yet know the shape of leaving wto, soft etc
all we can say is that a slim majority voted to change a system that didnt work for them, in the hope that we'll find a better way of doing things
as an optimist on this countries abilities I believe we will
Thanks. Are the kind of compromises David mentions in his header acceptable to you as the price for getting a better way of doing things? For example a payment of €60 billion to the EU against the clearing off of obligations, a two year transition arrangement and the outline of a permanent arrangement to be negotiated after we leave.
It isn't a trick question. Genuinely interested.
It would be acceptable to me.
For the good of the country we need Tory Brexiteers who live in the real world to start speaking out. The majority of the country could unite around a soft Brexit that recognises there is some cost to leaving in the least damaging way. And it is a cost that is far less expensive than the alternative.
For the good of the country we also need democrats to decry each and every attempt to Remain by the back door. From the williamglenns upwards.
I don't see how we can stay in the EU via the back door. It can only happen if the government cannot get its legislation through parliament . And if that happens we get a general election and the people can vote for what they want.
So, I repeat, for the good of the country we need democrats to decry each and every attempt to Remain by the back door.
Including from MPs.
That makes absolutely no sense. The only way we can remain in the EU via the back door is if elections are banned. And if that were to happen we would be expelled from the EU anyway.
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Nevertheless you haven't answered my question. Is Brexit the model that will work for us? (You don't have to - it's impertinent to demand you do) If it isn't the model that works, maybe we should find one that does.
nobody can tell yet
for a start off we dont yet know the shape of leaving wto, soft etc
all we can say is that a slim majority voted to change a system that didnt work for them, in the hope that we'll find a better way of doing things
as an optimist on this countries abilities I believe we will
Thanks. Are the kind of compromises David mentions in his header acceptable to you as the price for getting a better way of doing things? For example a payment of €60 billion to the EU against the clearing off of obligations, a two year transition arrangement and the outline of a permanent arrangement to be negotiated after we leave.
It isn't a trick question. Genuinely interested.
It would be acceptable to me.
For the good of the country we need Tory Brexiteers who live in the real world to start speaking out. The majority of the country could unite around a soft Brexit that recognises there is some cost to leaving in the least damaging way. And it is a cost that is far less expensive than the alternative.
For the good of the country we also need democrats to decry each and every attempt to Remain by the back door. From the williamglenns upwards.
I don't see how we can stay in the EU via the back door. It can only happen if the government cannot get its legislation through parliament . And if that happens we get a general election and the people can vote for what they want.
So, I repeat, for the good of the country we need democrats to decry each and every attempt to Remain by the back door.
Including from MPs.
That makes absolutely no sense. The only way we can remain in the EU via the back door is if elections are banned. And if that were to happen we would be expelled from the EU anyway.
Rubbish.
The decision to leave the EU has been made by the people; all is that left to debate is the manner of the departure.
It is why putting the date of leaving on the statute books is an immensely good decision.
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Nevertheless you haven't answered my question. Is Brexit the model that will work for us? (You don't have to - it's impertinent to demand you do) If it isn't the model that works, maybe we should find one that does.
nobody can tell yet
for a start off we dont yet know the shape of leaving wto, soft etc
all we can say is that a slim majority voted to change a system that didnt work for them, in the hope that we'll find a better way of doing things
as an optimist on this countries abilities I believe we will
Thanks. Are the kind of compromises David mentions in his header acceptable to you as the price for getting a better way of doing things? For example a payment of €60 billion to the EU against the clearing off of obligations, a two year transition arrangement and the outline of a permanent arrangement to be negotiated after we leave.
It isn't a trick question. Genuinely interested.
It would be acceptable to me.
For alternative.
For the good of the country we also need democrats to decry each and every attempt to Remain by the back door. From the williamglenns upwards.
I don't they want.
So, I repeat, for the good of the country we need democrats to decry each and every attempt to Remain by the back door.
Including from MPs.
That makes absolutely no sense. The only way we can remain in the EU via the back door is if elections are banned. And if that were to happen we would be expelled from the EU anyway.
Rubbish.
The decision to leave the EU has been made by the people; all is that left to debate is the manner of the departure.
It is why putting the date of leaving on the statute books is an immensely good decision.
It's entirely pointless as Parliament can very easily change the time and date if it wishes.
The people have every right to change their minds. I don't think they will, but if Parliament were to reject the deal the government does (or does not) do with the EU27, the government will call an election and hand the decision over to the voters.
Here in deepest Leaverstan and one of the whitest corners of the country I've just spent 3 + hours in the town centre. Armistice Day and the day before Remembrance Sunday and perhaps 1 in 25 wearing a poppy to be generous. And of those 1 in 25 a huge number were at least 70 +. It does put the public Poppy fascism where every public figure has to wear a poppy at all times for the best part of a month into context.
I popped to the short 10 minute Armistice Day service at our local Normandy Veterans Memorial. ( I'm not wearing a Poppy myself during the Brexit process as the country voted to betray post war reconciliation though I have bought one. ) It had been padded out this year with lots of Cadet Corps I suspect because it fell on a Saturday. There was a jarring but fascinating moment at the end. As usual attendees moved towards the plaque as soon as the formal service ended yo lay their own poppies. But this year the hyper and giggling Cadets pounced in order to pose for copious numbers of photos. All entirely well meaning but oblivious yo the fact they had blocked private laying and the usual attendees didn't know what to do. I couldn't make my mind up whether this was a welcome adaption to our new conflict free demographics or a sign it's time to wind most of these things down.
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Nevertheless you haven't answered my question. Is Brexit the model that will work for us? (You don't have to - it's impertinent to demand you do) If it isn't the model that works, maybe we should find one that does.
nobody can tell yet
for a start off we dont yet know the shape of leaving wto, soft etc
all we can say is that a slim majority voted to change a system that didnt work for them, in the hope that we'll find a better way of doing things
...
It isn't a trick question. Genuinely interested.
It would be acceptable to me.
For alternative.
For the good of the country we also need democrats to decry each and every attempt to Remain by the back door. From the williamglenns upwards.
I don't they want.
So, I repeat, for the good of the country we need democrats to decry each and every attempt to Remain by the back door.
Including from MPs.
That makes absolutely no sense. The only way we can remain in the EU via the back door is if elections are banned. And if that were to happen we would be expelled from the EU anyway.
Rubbish.
The decision to leave the EU has been made by the people; all is that left to debate is the manner of the departure.
It is why putting the date of leaving on the statute books is an immensely good decision.
It's entirely pointless as Parliament can very easily change the time and date if it wishes.
The people have every right to change their minds. I don't think they will, but if Parliament were to reject the deal the government does (or does not) do with the EU27, the government will call an election and hand the decision over to the voters.
No. Parliament would need to timetable, schedule and vote on changing the time and date. It couldn't feasibly be achieved by a small group of Remain Ultras,
It is eminently sensible; giving power and momentum to the majority, and taking it away from the anti-democrats who want to remain by the back door.
a resignation is a statement of culpability, an admission of wrongdoing. It says, “I accept my error and the price that must be paid.”
The contrast with the behaviour of Boris Johnson couldn’t be more stark. The Foreign Secretary has been a bum appointment from day one – an unserious man for whom personal advancement, profit and fame are the alpha and omega. It is heartbreaking, as Brexit unfolds and Britannia sinks (and Phil Collins nails it absolutely in The Times today) that we send as our tribune to the rest of the world a proven liar, a man of low moral character, a narcissistic hog who flaunts his flaming ambition like a nasty STD.
Protectionism is clearly not the solution. The UK market is not big enough. If we are to succeed we need to export.
Simple rule:
If England is good at financial-services and Germany at engineering then there is a compromise: It is called the 'Theory of Comparative-Advantage'.* We just need someone to explain this to the EU-elite.**
* The maximum-wealth for the maximum-number of people. ** Do not bother trying to explain economics to the French.
OT on Armistice Day, it is worth remarking on these figures from Six Minutes in May (an account of the disastrous Norway Campaign and how Churchill became Prime Minister).
At the time of the debate, in May 1940, 62 government backbenchers were on active service in the army, 16 in the RAF and seven in the navy.
Point 1: "as good a place to manufacture as anywhere else and in many instances better" is not good enough: you have to be better at all instances for a non-trade solution to work. Otherwise there will always be a hole within which it is cheaper to buy an import than employ a local to build or mine or synthesise. I outlined "comparative advantage" below to CarlottaVance.
Point 2: how will you address an issue where the UK person, after considering all the options, still wishes to buy a non-UK import? Will you wish to prevent that person and, if so, how? Social disapproval ("Buying French? Brave choice!")? Import tariffs? Banning?
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt,
todays competitve advantage can be tomorrows millstone. Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a large extent we have abandoned the goal of a high skill highly paid workforce and fallen back on cheap labour. We see it in productivity figures.
Why you have jumped from encouraging import substitution to autarky you will have to expalin
Addressing your points as follows:
* "thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt,".
I wasn't saying that business could not adapt. I was explaining why the one-to-one substitution you advocate wouldn't work
* "Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a large extent we have abandoned the goal of a high skill highly paid workforce and fallen back on cheap labour. We see it in productivity figures."
I agree with you. But Brexit will not cure this problem, which is a function of UK short-termism rather than EU membership.
Am I correct in thinking (one of) the reasons why you voted Leave was to encourage the growth of UK manufacturing? If so I hope it works out in the way you hoped, but my thoughts are that the focus on Brexit and the costs it entails in terms of more expensive imports and the opportunity cost of spending so much time on it, will discourage the investment and innovation you seek, not encourage it.
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Nevertheless you haven't answered my question. Is Brexit the model that will work for us? (You don't have to - it's impertinent to demand you do) If it isn't the model that works, maybe we should find one that does.
nobody can tell yet
for a start off we dont yet know the shape of leaving wto, soft etc
all we can say is that a slim majority voted to change a system that didnt work for them, in the hope that we'll find a better way of doing things
...
It isn't a trick question. Genuinely interested.
It would be acceptable to me.
For alternative.
For upwards.
I don't they want.
So,door.
Including from MPs.
That EU anyway.
Rubbish.
The decision to leave the EU has been made by the people; all is that left to debate is the manner of the departure.
It is why putting the date of leaving on the statute books is an immensely good decision.
It's entirely pointless as Parliament can very easily change the time and date if it wishes.
The people have every right to change their minds. I don't think they will, but if Parliament were to reject the deal the government does (or does not) do with the EU27, the government will call an election and hand the decision over to the voters.
No. Parliament would need to timetable, schedule and vote on changing the time and date. It couldn't feasibly be achieved by a small group of Remain Ultras,
It is eminently sensible; giving power and momentum to the majority, and taking it away from the anti-democrats who want to remain by the back door.
A vote to change the time and date could be an amendment to any piece of Brexit-related legislation tabled at any time before Brexit day. But a small minority in Parliament could not derail Brexit under any circumstances. The only way Brexit does not happen on 29th March 2019 is if a majority in Parliament opposes it. And then the decision gets handed back to the people. The bottom line is that it is impossible for the UK to remain in the EU without the permission of the electorate.
Here in deepest Leaverstan and one of the whitest corners of the country I've just spent 3 + hours in the town centre. Armistice Day and the day before Remembrance Sunday and perhaps 1 in 25 wearing a poppy to be generous. And of those 1 in 25 a huge number were at least 70 +. It does put the public Poppy fascism where every public figure has to wear a poppy at all times for the best part of a month into context.
I popped to the short 10 minute Armistice Day service at our local Normandy Veterans Memorial. ( I'm not wearing a Poppy myself during the Brexit process as the country voted to betray post war reconciliation though I have bought one. ) It had been padded out this year with lots of Cadet Corps I suspect because it fell on a Saturday. There was a jarring but fascinating moment at the end. As usual attendees moved towards the plaque as soon as the formal service ended yo lay their own poppies. But this year the hyper and giggling Cadets pounced in order to pose for copious numbers of photos. All entirely well meaning but oblivious yo the fact they had blocked private laying and the usual attendees didn't know what to do. I couldn't make my mind up whether this was a welcome adaption to our new conflict free demographics or a sign it's time to wind most of these things down.
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Nevertheless you haven't answered my question. Is Brexit the model that will work for us? (You don't have to - it's impertinent to demand you do) If it isn't the model that works, maybe we should find one that does.
nobody can tell yet
for a start off we dont yet know the shape of leaving wto, soft etc
all we can say is that a slim majority voted to change a system that didnt work for them, in the hope that we'll find a better way of doing things
...
It isn't a trick question. Genuinely interested.
It would be acceptable to me.
For alternative.
For upwards.
I don't they want.
So,door.
Including from MPs.
That EU anyway.
Rubbish.
The decision to leave the EU has been made by the people; all is that left to debate is the manner of the departure.
It is why putting the date of leaving on the statute books is an immensely good decision.
It's entirely pointless as Parliament can very easily change the time and date if it wishes.
The people have every right to change their minds. I don't think they will, but if Parliament were to reject the deal the government does (or does not) do with the EU27, the government will call an election and hand the decision over to the voters.
No. Parliament would need to timetable, schedule and vote on changing the time and date. It couldn't feasibly be achieved by a small group of Remain Ultras,
It is eminently sensible; giving power and momentum to the majority, and taking it away from the anti-democrats who want to remain by the back door.
SNIP
The bottom line is that it is impossible for the UK to remain in the EU without the permission of the electorate.
So you have no problem with my suggestion that any attempt by Ultra Remainers to keep us in, without that permission of the electorate, should be decried?
Here in deepest Leaverstan and one of the whitest corners of the country I've just spent 3 + hours in the town centre. Armistice Day and the day before Remembrance Sunday and perhaps 1 in 25 wearing a poppy to be generous. And of those 1 in 25 a huge number were at least 70 +. It does put the public Poppy fascism where every public figure has to wear a poppy at all times for the best part of a month into context.
I popped to the short 10 minute Armistice Day service at our local Normandy Veterans Memorial. ( I'm not wearing a Poppy myself during the Brexit process as the country voted to betray post war reconciliation though I have bought one. ) It had been padded out this year with lots of Cadet Corps I suspect because it fell on a Saturday. There was a jarring but fascinating moment at the end. As usual attendees moved towards the plaque as soon as the formal service ended yo lay their own poppies. But this year the hyper and giggling Cadets pounced in order to pose for copious numbers of photos. All entirely well meaning but oblivious yo the fact they had blocked private laying and the usual attendees didn't know what to do. I couldn't make my mind up whether this was a welcome adaption to our new conflict free demographics or a sign it's time to wind most of these things down.
You really are Eyeore.
Indeed. Although there are a few competitors for that title presently...
Looking at the last 40 years the EU model hasnt exactly served us well
Nevertheless you haven't answered my question. Is Brexit the model that will work for us? (You don't have to - it's impertinent to demand you do) If it isn't the model that works, maybe we should find one that does.
nobody can tell yet
for a start off we dont yet know the shape of leaving wto, soft etc
all we can say is that a slim majority voted to change a system that didnt work for them, in the hope that we'll find a better way of doing things
...
It isn't a trick question. Genuinely interested.
It would be acceptable to me.
For alternative.
For upwards.
I don't they want.
So,door.
Including from MPs.
That EU anyway.
Rubbish.
The decision to leave the EU has been made by the people; all is that left to debate is the manner of the departure.
It is why putting the date of leaving on the statute books is an immensely good decision.
It's entirely pointless as Parliament can very easily change the time and date if it wishes.
The people have every right to change their minds. I don't think they will, but if Parliament were to reject the deal the government does (or does not) do with the EU27, the government will call an election and hand the decision over to the voters.
No. Parliament would need to timetable, schedule and vote on changing the time and date. It couldn't feasibly be achieved by a small group of Remain Ultras,
It is eminently sensible; giving power and momentum to the majority, and taking it away from the anti-democrats who want to remain by the back door.
SNIP
The bottom line is that it is impossible for the UK to remain in the EU without the permission of the electorate.
So you have no problem with my suggestion that any attempt by Ultra Remainers to keep us in, without that permission of the electorate, should be decried?
Of course. It's also entirely pointless as the electorate will just reject it.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
You're replacements.
Replacing eighties.
youve defined the outcome before youve even looked at the problem
you criticised the process without addressing the conclusion
Ive lived the process for the last 25 years as a work in manufacturing,
my over people with less modern kit and practices.
Increasingly with modern robotics labour becomes a much smaller part of the production cost. flexibility.
The better.
But how do you make investing profitable by shrinking the size of your market? There is an incentive to invest in the building of a white goods or smartphone or whatever manufacturing business in China because the domestic market is huge and there are significant barriers to entry. The UK market is not huge, so the only weapon we have is to create barriers to entry - but these will make imports more expensive and exports far more difficult. Which takes us back to the size of the UK market and why anyone would invest in building a manufacturing business here to service it. The only reason, surely, is if there were no or very little competition.
the way manufacturing is going all markets will be local
batch sizes of one may become the norm
market size is becoming increasingly unimportant
supply chains, decent research, skilled machinist and machine making capability will be more important
Market size will always matter, surely. If you don't have demand you don't have a sellable product. I can see how manufacturing might become more localised - ie, much more specifically tailored to individual customer needs - but you still need customers in the first place. Without them, the AI you invest in will be money down the drain.
Indeed. To take 3D printing significant parts of a product like a bike as an example - you may end up making individually tailored products to customer designs - but you'll still be dependent on market size as to how many you can sell. Even if you're the only firm capable of providing that level of personalised service, your prospects are still going to be hit by tariff and non-tariff barriers.
Interesting thread David. Going back to the Corn Laws gives me a thought....
I don't believe Corbyn's trysts with terrorists will lose him a single vote. His problem is that there is no appetite to move backwards. Too many people remember the nationalised industries and the closed shop and don't want to see them again.
The next election will be fought on whether we want to return to the 70's. The Lynton Crosby campaign almost writes itself. They could with minor adjustments run my PPB for Paddy's Lib Dems "Maggies Broken Britain". A dystopian view of Thatcher's Britain........
But the extraordinary thing is that the Tory alternative is almost exactly the same. A party united in a desire to turn the clock back to 1973 and so idologically driven they're content to destroy our childrens future to achieve it.
So which past is the least attractive? That I suspect will be the battle ground for the next election and if either party want a director with experience they'll find my rates remarkably competitive!
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changi
Why you have jumped from encouraging import substitution to autarky you will have to expalin
Addressing your points as follows:
* "thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt,".
I wasn't saying that business could not adapt. I was explaining why the one-to-one substitution you advocate wouldn't work
* "Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a large extent we have abandoned the goal of a high skill highly paid workforce and fallen back on cheap labour. We see it in productivity figures."
I agree with you. But Brexit will not cure this problem, which is a function of UK short-termism rather than EU membership.
Am I correct in thinking (one of) the reasons why you voted Leave was to encourage the growth of UK manufacturing? If so I hope it works out in the way you hoped, but my thoughts are that the focus on Brexit and the costs it entails in terms of more expensive imports and the opportunity cost of spending so much time on it, will discourage the investment and innovation you seek, not encourage it.
I'm not advocating one to one substitution, Im saying if we change aspects of our tax and investment and have the the dept of biz encouraging onshoring rather than exporting we'll fix our problems faster.
As for enourging growth the political and managerial class has received a hard shock to the policies they have followed for the last 50 years. They have been sent back to the drawing board and told to try again.
As for voting leave I voted Leave as I didnt want to be part of an EU supertstate and was fed up with UK politicians lying to me that that wasnt where were headed, when every european politician is saying that it is.
I decided to jump out of the pot rather than be a boiled frog
So the free trading buccaneering Brexiteers have come over all protectionist now they've decided that free trade isn't on offer. It's not just Jeremy Corbyn who wants us to buy Austin Allegros.
They really do have no principles other than blind Europhobia.
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changi
Why you have jumped from encouraging import substitution to autarky you will have to expalin
Addressing your points as follows:
* "thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt,".
I wasn't saying that business could not adapt. I was explaining why the one-to-one substitution you advocate wouldn't work
* "Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a large extent we have abandoned the goal of a high skill highly paid workforce and fallen back on cheap labour. We see it in productivity figures."
I agree with you. But Brexit will not cure this problem, which is a function of UK short-termism rather than EU membership.
Am I correct in thinking (one of) the reasons why you voted Leave was to encourage the growth of UK manufacturing? If so I hope it works out in the way you hoped, but my thoughts are that the focus on Brexit and the costs it entails in terms of more expensive imports and the opportunity cost of spending so much time on it, will discourage the investment and innovation you seek, not encourage it.
I'm not advocating one to one substitution, Im saying if we change aspects of our tax and investment and have the the dept of biz encouraging onshoring rather than exporting we'll fix our problems faster.
As for enourging growth the political and managerial class has received a hard shock to the policies they have followed for the last 50 years. They have been sent back to the drawing board and told to try again.
As for voting leave I voted Leave as I didnt want to be part of an EU supertstate and was fed up with UK politicians lying to me that that wasnt where were headed, when every european politician is saying that it is.
I decided to jump out of the pot rather than be a boiled frog
But you will continue to be an EU citizen and so part of the superstate when all of us cease to be. Go figure.
The PB Brexiteer mood seems to be swinging against Free Trade and towards protectionism and import substitution.
Free Trade is very much a two edged sword, and tends to be best used by those with the muscle to use it. In the 19th century we had that muscle, but now?
import substitution isnt protectionism
it's simply building things at home instead of importing them
You're replacements.
Replacing eighties.
youve defined the outcome before youve even looked at the problem
you criticised the process without addressing the conclusion
Ive lived the process for the last 25 years as a work in manufacturing,
my over people with less modern kit and practices.
Increasingly with modern robotics labour becomes a much smaller part of the production cost. flexibility.
The better.
But how do you make investing profitable by shrinking the size of your market? There is an incentive to invest in the building of a white goods or smartphone or whatever manufacturing business in China because the domestic market is huge and there are significant barriers to entry. The UK market is not huge, so the only weapon we have is to create barriers to entry - but these will make imports more expensive and exports far more difficult. Which takes us back to the size of the UK market and why anyone would invest in building a manufacturing business here to service it. The only reason, surely, is if there were no or very little competition.
the way manufacturing is going all markets will be local
batch sizes of one may become the norm
market size is becoming increasingly unimportant
supply chains, decent research, skilled machinist and machine making capability will be more important
Market size will always matter, surely. If you don't have demand you don't have a sellable product. I can see how manufacturing might become more localised - ie, much more specifically tailored to individual customer needs - but you still need customers in the first place. Without them, the AI you invest in will be money down the drain.
The idea of ”a [standardized] product” will turn out to have been a passing phase beginning with branded Sunlight Soap and ending when there is a 3d printer in every household making bespoke one offs for that household. Probably Alphabet will have a monopoly on the 3d printers.
I don't believe Corbyn's trysts with terrorists will lose him a single vote. His problem is that there is no appetite to move backwards. Too many people remember the nationalised industries and the closed shop and don't want to see them again.
The next election will be fought on whether we want to return to the 70's. The Lynton Crosby campaign almost writes itself. They could with minor adjustments run my PPB for Paddy's Lib Dems "Maggies Broken Britain". A dystopian view of Thatcher's Britain........
But the extraordinary thing is that the Tory alternative is almost exactly the same. A party united in a desire to turn the clock back to 1973 and so idologically driven they're content to destroy our childrens future to achieve it.
So which past is the least attractive? That I suspect will be the battle ground for the next election and if either party want a director with experience they'll find my rates remarkably competitive!
Corbyn's trysts with terrorists have lost him all the votes they are going to lose him and probably explain to a large extent why the Tories still have every chance of winning most seats at the next general election.
supply chains, decent research, skilled machinist and machine making capability will be more important
So let's break the supply chains, pull out of shared research, and make it harder to hire skilled machinists.
Oh, wait...
Brexit makes everything you say harder.
Only in your head
But we do know the track record of our time in the EU has hollowed out our industrial base and given us a huge BoP deficit
How are you going to change that by staying in ?
How has the EU done this to us and not to other EU member states?
Blame ourselves, rather than the EU, for not doing better, but it does not seem to be case that the Single Market has worked to our advantage. Our trade is massively in deficit with members of the Single Market, but in balance with the rest of the world. It could be because it is far easier to achieve a single Market in goods than in services, and we do much better with the latter than the former. Perhaps we should have pressed much harder to achieve a single Market in services, but that would also require a level of integration that we, and probably other member States, would find unacceptable.
supply chains, decent research, skilled machinist and machine making capability will be more important
So let's break the supply chains, pull out of shared research, and make it harder to hire skilled machinists.
Oh, wait...
Brexit makes everything you say harder.
Only in your head
But we do know the track record of our time in the EU has hollowed out our industrial base and given us a huge BoP deficit
How are you going to change that by staying in ?
How has the EU done this to us and not to other EU member states?
we.ve done it to ourselves whilst in the EU
the UK has tried to follow an anglo saxon model whilst working in a Franco\German social structure.
If we had adopted the Franco German social economic model ourselves it may have turned out better, but we didnt and bar some TUs Ive never seen an appetitie for it among british management
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changi
Why you have jumped from encouraging import substitution to autarky you will have to expalin
Addressing your points as follows:
* "thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt,".
I wasn't saying that business could not adapt. I was explaining why the one-to-one substitution you advocate wouldn't work
* "Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a large extent we have abandoned the goal of a high skill highly paid workforce and fallen back on cheap labour. We see it in productivity figures."
I agree with you. But Brexit will not cure this problem, which is a function of UK short-termism rather than EU membership.
Am I correct in thinking (one of) the reasons why you voted Leave was to encourage the growth of UK manufacturing? If so I hope it works out in the way you hoped, but my thoughts are that the focus on Brexit and the costs it entails in terms of more expensive imports and the opportunity cost of spending so much time on it, will discourage the investment and innovation you seek, not encourage it.
I'm not advocating one to one substitution, Im saying if we change aspects of our tax and investment and have the the dept of biz encouraging onshoring rather than exporting we'll fix our problems faster.
As for enourging growth the political and managerial class has received a hard shock to the policies they have followed for the last 50 years. They have been sent back to the drawing board and told to try again.
As for voting leave I voted Leave as I didnt want to be part of an EU supertstate and was fed up with UK politicians lying to me that that wasnt where were headed, when every european politician is saying that it is.
I decided to jump out of the pot rather than be a boiled frog
But you will continue to be an EU citizen and so part of the superstate when all of us cease to be. Go figure.
chortle
I've had my Irish passport for over 20 years, and for totally different reasons than Brexit
Interesting thread David. Going back to the Corn Laws gives me a thought....
...yawn...
But the extraordinary thing is that the Tory alternative is almost exactly the same. A party united in a desire to turn the clock back to 1973 and so idologically driven they're content to destroy our childrens future to achieve it.
Hello again Wodger:
You are aware that 'Fatcher' shut down the coal-mines that Labour had slaughtered before? Or were you still in your Welch prep-school...?
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changi
Why you have jumped from encouraging import substitution to autarky you will have to expalin
Addressing your points as follows:
* "thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt,".
I wasn't saying that business could not adapt. I was explaining why the one-to-one substitution you advocate wouldn't work
* "Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a large extent we have abandoned the goal of a high skill highly paid workforce and fallen back on cheap labour. We see it in productivity figures."
I agree with you. But Brexit will not cure this problem, which is a function of UK short-termism rather than EU membership.
Am I correct in thinking (one of) the reasons why you voted Leave was to encourage the growth of UK manufacturing? If so I hope it works out in the way you hoped, but my thoughts are that the focus on Brexit and the costs it entails in terms of more expensive imports and the opportunity cost of spending so much time on it, will discourage the investment and innovation you seek, not encourage it.
I'm not advocating one to one substitution, Im saying if we change aspects of our tax and investment and have the the dept of biz encouraging onshoring rather than exporting we'll fix our problems faster.
As for enourging growth the political and managerial class has received a hard shock to the policies they have followed for the last 50 years. They have been sent back to the drawing board and told to try again.
As for voting leave I voted Leave as I didnt want to be part of an EU supertstate and was fed up with UK politicians lying to me that that wasnt where were headed, when every european politician is saying that it is.
I decided to jump out of the pot rather than be a boiled frog
But you will continue to be an EU citizen and so part of the superstate when all of us cease to be. Go figure.
chortle
I've had my Irish passport for over 20 years, and for totally different reasons than Brexit
Sure, but that makes you a part of the superstate that so repels you. On the upside, though, there is no downside to Brexit for you. So that's good.
supply chains, decent research, skilled machinist and machine making capability will be more important
So let's break the supply chains, pull out of shared research, and make it harder to hire skilled machinists.
Oh, wait...
Brexit makes everything you say harder.
Only in your head
But we do know the track record of our time in the EU has hollowed out our industrial base and given us a huge BoP deficit
How are you going to change that by staying in ?
How has the EU done this to us and not to other EU member states?
Blame ourselves, rather than the EU, for not doing better, but it does not seem to be case that the Single Market has worked to our advantage. Our trade is massively in deficit with members of the Single Market, but in balance with the rest of the world. It could be because it is far easier to achieve a single Market in goods than in services, and we do much better with the latter than the former. Perhaps we should have pressed much harder to achieve a single Market in services, but that would also require a level of integration that we, and probably other member States, would find unacceptable.
the single market in goods is a myth too
when MD in France and Germany Ive sat in enough meetings to know a sourcing decision is always going to go to the national company rather than an outside
Interesting thread David. Going back to the Corn Laws gives me a thought....
...yawn...
But the extraordinary thing is that the Tory alternative is almost exactly the same. A party united in a desire to turn the clock back to 1973 and so idologically driven they're content to destroy our childrens future to achieve it.
Hello again Wodger:
You are aware that 'Fatcher' shut down the coal-mines that Labour had slaughtered before? Or were you still in your Welch prep-school...?
Sorry Fluffy. I put it into google translate but just like like time you were here it's still untranslatable
supply chains, decent research, skilled machinist and machine making capability will be more important
So let's break the supply chains, pull out of shared research, and make it harder to hire skilled machinists.
Oh, wait...
Brexit makes everything you say harder.
Only in your head
But we do know the track record of our time in the EU has hollowed out our industrial base and given us a huge BoP deficit
How are you going to change that by staying in ?
How has the EU done this to us and not to other EU member states?
we.ve done it to ourselves whilst in the EU
the UK has tried to follow an anglo saxon model whilst working in a Franco\German social structure.
If we had adopted the Franco German social economic model ourselves it may have turned out better, but we didnt and bar some TUs Ive never seen an appetitie for it among british management
British management was failing a long time before we joined the EU, but I agree that things have not got any better. I just struggle to see how they are now going to improve. We'll still fail to invest in R&D, investors will still insist on the sell-off and break-up of successful start-ups, the dividend will still rule and cutting corners to cut costs will still be the favoured option. And we'll still be competing with others who do it all differently. Only now our home market will be a whole lot smaller.
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changi
Why you have jumped from encouraging import substitution to autarky you will have to expalin
Addressing your points as follows:
* "thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt,".
I wasn't saying that business could not adapt. I was explaining why the one-to-one substitution you advocate wouldn't work
* "Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a large extent we have abandoned the goal of a high skill highly paid workforce and fallen back on cheap labour. We see it in productivity figures."
I agree with you. But Brexit will not cure this problem, which is a function of UK short-termism rather than EU membership.
Am I correct in thinking (one of) the reasons why you voted Leave was to encourage the growth of UK manufacturing? If so I hope it works out in the way you hoped, but my thoughts are that the focus on Brexit and the costs it entails in terms of more expensive imports and the opportunity cost of spending so much time on it, will discourage the investment and innovation you seek, not encourage it.
I'm not advocating one to one subs.
I decided to jump out of the pot rather than be a boiled frog
But you will continue to be an EU citizen and so part of the superstate when all of us cease to be. Go figure.
chortle
I've had my Irish passport for over 20 years, and for totally different reasons than Brexit
Sure, but that makes you a part of the superstate that so repels you. On the upside, though, there is no downside to Brexit for you. So that's good.
SO since this so clearly annoys you Ill make you an offer
Interesting thread David. Going back to the Corn Laws gives me a thought....
I don't believe Corbyn's trysts with terrorists will lose him a single vote. His problem is that there is no appetite to move backwards. Too many people remember the nationalised industries and the closed shop and don't want to see them again.
The next election will be fought on whether we want to return to the 70's. The Lynton Crosby campaign almost writes itself. They could with minor adjustments run my PPB for Paddy's Lib Dems "Maggies Broken Britain". A dystopian view of Thatcher's Britain........
But the extraordinary thing is that the Tory alternative is almost exactly the same. A party united in a desire to turn the clock back to 1973 and so idologically driven they're content to destroy our childrens future to achieve it.
So which past is the least attractive? That I suspect will be the battle ground for the next election and if either party want a director with experience they'll find my rates remarkably competitive!
If that is to be the battleground in 2022, the vast majority of the Electorate will wonder what on Earth is the relevance of events 50 years ago?
I don't believe Corbyn's trysts with terrorists will lose him a single vote. His problem is that there is no appetite to move backwards. Too many people remember the nationalised industries and the closed shop and don't want to see them again.
The next election will be fought on whether we want to return to the 70's. The Lynton Crosby campaign almost writes itself. They could with minor adjustments run my PPB for Paddy's Lib Dems "Maggies Broken Britain". A dystopian view of Thatcher's Britain........
But the extraordinary thing is that the Tory alternative is almost exactly the same. A party united in a desire to turn the clock back to 1973 and so idologically driven they're content to destroy our childrens future to achieve it.
So which past is the least attractive? That I suspect will be the battle ground for the next election and if either party want a director with experience they'll find my rates remarkably competitive!
Corbyn's trysts with terrorists have lost him all the votes they are going to lose him and probably explain to a large extent why the Tories still have every chance of winning most seats at the next general election.
I think you're right. I should have said any more votes that it already has....
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changi
Why you have jumped from encouraging import substitution to autarky you will have to expalin
Addressing your points as follows:
* "thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt,".
I wasn't saying that business could not adapt. I was explaining why the one-to-one substitution you advocate wouldn't work
* "Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a large extent we have abandoned the goal of a high skill highly paid workforce and fallen back on cheap labour. We see it in productivity figures."
I agree with you. But Brexit will not cure this problem, which is a function of UK short-termism rather than EU membership.
Am I correct in thinking (one of) the reasons why you voted Leave was to encourage the growth of UK manufacturing? If so I hope it works out in the way you hoped, but my thoughts are that the focus on Brexit and the costs it entails in terms of more expensive imports and the opportunity cost of spending so much time on it, will discourage the investment and innovation you seek, not encourage it.
I'm not advocating one to one subs.
I decided to jump out of the pot rather than be a boiled frog
But you will continue to be an EU citizen and so part of the superstate when all of us cease to be. Go figure.
chortle
I've had my Irish passport for over 20 years, and for totally different reasons than Brexit
Sure, but that makes you a part of the superstate that so repels you. On the upside, though, there is no downside to Brexit for you. So that's good.
SO since this so clearly annoys you Ill make you an offer
divorce your wife, Ill ditch mine too
we can have a gay wedding In Dubln
then you can get a passport too
March is looking good calendar wise
Mate, for better or worse I am British and that's how I will remain until the day I die. And my wife is better looking than you ;-)
All piss-taking aside - I understand why you hold two passports and I would do exactly the same in your position. There's no hard feelings, just a pang of jealousy.
supply chains, decent research, skilled machinist and machine making capability will be more important
So let's break the supply chains, pull out of shared research, and make it harder to hire skilled machinists.
Oh, wait...
Brexit makes everything you say harder.
Only in your head
But we do know the track record of our time in the EU has hollowed out our industrial base and given us a huge BoP deficit
How are you going to change that by staying in ?
How has the EU done this to us and not to other EU member states?
we.ve done it to ourselves whilst in the EU
the UK has tried to follow an anglo saxon model whilst working in a Franco\German social structure.
If we had adopted the Franco German social economic model ourselves it may have turned out better, but we didnt and bar some TUs Ive never seen an appetitie for it among british management
British management was failing a long time before we joined the EU, but I agree that things have not got any better. I just struggle to see how they are now going to improve. We'll still fail to invest in R&D, investors will still insist on the sell-off and break-up of successful start-ups, the dividend will still rule and cutting corners to cut costs will still be the favoured option. And we'll still be competing with others who do it all differently. Only now our home market will be a whole lot smaller.
it's where a shock to the system may pay off
Germany has 10 times more robots than the UK The UK has 10 times more accountants than Germany
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changi
Why you have jumped from encouraging import substitution to autarky you will have to expalin
Addressing your points as follows:
* "thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt,".
I wasn't saying that business could not adapt. I was explaining why the one-to-one substitution you advocate wouldn't work
* "Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a largme on it, will discourage the investment and innovation you seek, not encourage it.
I'm not advocating one to one subs.
I decided to jump out of the pot rather than be a boiled frog
But you will continue to be an EU citizen and so part of the superstate when all of us cease to be. Go figure.
chortle
I've had my Irish passport for over 20 years, and for totally different reasons than Brexit
Sure, but that makes you a part of the superstate that so repels you. On the upside, though, there is no downside to Brexit for you. So that's good.
SO since this so clearly annoys you Ill make you an offer
divorce your wife, Ill ditch mine too
we can have a gay wedding In Dubln
then you can get a passport too
March is looking good calendar wise
Mate, for better or worse I am British and that's how I will remain until the day I die. And my wife is better looking than you ;-)
All piss-taking aside - I understand why you hold two passports and I would do exactly the same in your position. There's no hard feelings, just a pang of jealousy.
I've had my Irish passport for over 20 years, and for totally different reasons than Brexit
Sure, but that makes you a part of the superstate that so repels you. On the upside, though, there is no downside to Brexit for you. So that's good.
Not really Mr Observer. Having the Irish passport means that you have your EU rights, but if your friends, family, property, etc are all within the UK then Brexit will still hit you. All that happens is that you retain your EU citizenship.
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changi
Why you have jumped from encouraging import substitution to autarky you will have to expalin
Addressing your points as follows:
* "thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt,".
I wasn't saying that business could not adapt. I was explaining why the one-to-one substitution you advocate wouldn't work
* "Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a large extent we have abandoned the goal of a high skill highly paid workforce and fallen back on cheap labour. We see it in productivity figures."
I agree with you. But Brexit will not cure this problem, which is a function of UK short-termism rather than EU membership.
Am I correct in thinking (one of) the reasons why you voted Leave was to encourage the growth of UK manufacturing? If so I hope it works out in the way you hoped, but my thoughts are that the focus on Brexit and the costs it entails in terms of more expensive imports and the opportunity cost of spending so much time on it, will discourage the investment and innovation you seek, not encourage it.
I'm not advocating one to one subs.
I decided to jump out of the pot rather than be a boiled frog
But you will continue to be an EU citizen and so part of the superstate when all of us cease to be. Go figure.
chortle
I've had my Irish passport for over 20 years, and for totally different reasons than Brexit
Sure, but that makes you a part of the superstate that so repels you. On the upside, though, there is no downside to Brexit for you. So that's good.
SO since this so clearly annoys you Ill make you an offer
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changi
Why you have jumped from encouraging import substitution to autarky you will have to expalin
Addressing your points as follows:
* "thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt,".
I wasn't saying that business could not adapt. I was explaining why the one-to-one substitution you advocate wouldn't work
* "Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a largme on it, will discourage the investment and innovation you seek, not encourage it.
I'm not advocating one to one subs.
I decided to jump out of the pot rather than be a boiled frog
But you will continue to be an EU citizen and so part of the superstate when all of us cease to be. Go figure.
chortle
I've had my Irish passport for over 20 years, and for totally different reasons than Brexit
Sure, but that makes you a part of the superstate that so repels you. On the upside, though, there is no downside to Brexit for you. So that's good.
SO since this so clearly annoys you Ill make you an offer
divorce your wife, Ill ditch mine too
we can have a gay wedding In Dubln
then you can get a passport too
March is looking good calendar wise
Mate, for better or worse I am British and that's how I will remain until the day I die. And my wife is better looking than you ;-)
All piss-taking aside - I understand why you hold two passports and I would do exactly the same in your position. There's no hard feelings, just a pang of jealousy.
LOL
and I so wanted Meeks as my bridesmaid
I imagine he will be disappointed, but will live with it. Enjoy the pub - sláinte mhaith!
I don't believe Corbyn's trysts with terrorists will lose him a single vote. His problem is that there is no appetite to move backwards. Too many people remember the nationalised industries and the closed shop and don't want to see them again.
The next election will be fought on whether we want to return to the 70's. The Lynton Crosby campaign almost writes itself. They could with minor adjustments run my PPB for Paddy's Lib Dems "Maggies Broken Britain". A dystopian view of Thatcher's Britain........
But the extraordinary thing is that the Tory alternative is almost exactly the same. A party united in a desire to turn the clock back to 1973 and so idologically driven they're content to destroy our childrens future to achieve it.
So which past is the least attractive? That I suspect will be the battle ground for the next election and if either party want a director with experience they'll find my rates remarkably competitive!
Corbyn's trysts with terrorists have lost him all the votes they are going to lose him and probably explain to a large extent why the Tories still have every chance of winning most seats at the next general election.
A collapse of the Venezeulan economy before our next election is likely to do him more damage than those past links to the IRA. The notion of the dead going unburied sank late-seventies Labour - because it was such a visceral, easy-to-grasp representation of an economy that was dysfunctional. Corbyn holding up Venezeula as a model for praise, while its basic elements of society break down, will bring home to people just how bonkers it would be to let him get anywhere near power.
Comments
Ruth Davidson in the lead with 25%
Can't choose in second place with 20%
I am a bit old for a Yamaha RD nowadays. I had the RD 200 with the coffin shaped tank. Happy days!
George Takei Accused of Sexually Assaulting Former Model in 1981
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/george-takei-accused-sexually-assaulting-model-1981-1056698
Interesting Wilipedia article. There are a lot of parallels.
Secondly, and probably most importantly, who would lead it? It is painfully obvious that Blair would love to be "The One" who goes back into Westminster to save the country from all the raving Trots and incompetent Neo-Liberals, but it is also obvious, even to Blair that that little piggie ain't gonna fly, no matter how much lipstick is applied.
There are of course others waiting their chance, but, mostly their respective reputations have taken a very bad hit with the public. Clegg, er, No!, Conservative front bench, Nope!, CCPer's from Labour, pretty much committed Hari Kiri, vague possibilty but, would anyone trust them? David Miliband, comes across as smarmy, and didn't have the cojones to try to finish off Brown back in 2007 or even to be crowned at his own coronation.
But the kind of areas I could see and which we need are on shoring more automotive components, enouraging domestic automotive manufacturers to increase and vary their production, anything electronic white goods food.
These are the poducts which make huge dents in our BoP and which do not come from so called low cost countries for a variety of reasons. Much of the throw our industries away nonsense of the 90s onwards was driven by people who worked on consultants latest crazes and ignored the basics of what the country needed. We were all going to work in high valued financial services right up to 2008 then suddenly we werent.
The fact remains the UK needs a balanced economy and currently we dont have one
If we are going to get one we need to work harder to get t.
Replacing existing goods and services with ones that are more expensive, more difficult to source, and/or less useful is better known as "wealth destruction". The UK future you outline will be poorer and with less choice. Your comments (and @another_richard 's) indicate that the UK is forgetting all the hard-won lessons from the seventies and eighties.
after that the advantages the UK enjoyed began to erode and with no european social model to decelrate industrial decline our industries suffered most
Gunboat diplomacy was the Free Traders best friend. The enthusiasm for free trade of those on the receiving end has always been less marked.
The place I usually hire a van from also hires out bikes, mostly Chinese or Indian. I'm seriously tempted to take this up for a Hebridean tour next year.
http://royalenfield.com/continentalgt/the-bike
On the other hand, improving and mechanising systems will lead to unemployment which the taxpayer will end up footing the bill for.
Someone, in the near future is going to have to sort out the mess we have got ourselves into. It ain't going to be pretty, but it is necessary.
Buzzfeed have today published an interview style piece with Tony Blair. I think that very few people on the Left will actually entertain much of what’s he said. Which I don’t think is exactly the wrong decision.
Loved this tweet by Julia Macfarlane:
https://twitter.com/juliamacfarlane/status/929265565801369600
And we have have a decade of stagnant productivity and wages and 15 years of falling home ownership.
Borrowing ourselves into future poverty in order to pay for excess consumption in the present indicates that the UK has forgotten all the hard won lessons of reality.
my conclusion is the UK is as good as anywhere to manufacture and one of the advantages in currently having a smaller industrial base is that if we make upskilling and investing profitable we can win back markets. Like China today if youre putting up a factory and equipping it with the latest technology you have a competitive advantage over people with less modern kit and practices.
Increasingly with modern robotics labour becomes a much smaller part of the production cost. A robot costs the same in China as it does in the UK , there is a levelling out where labour costs advantages will get over come by other factors - transport costs, time to market, product flexibility.
The UK has a strong back drop in good universities for research, a stable government and a developed funding sector. If we set it as a priority we are as good a place to manufature as anywhere else and in many instances better.
It saddens me that in our zeal to leave the EU we are adopting or advocating policies which are known to make people poorer and less free.
Interesting article by Anne Applebaum about why these systems matter and shouldn't be taken for granted (as they are by Brexiteers largely)
Point 2: how will you address an issue where the UK person, after considering all the options, still wishes to buy a non-UK import? Will you wish to prevent that person and, if so, how? Social disapproval ("Buying French? Brave choice!")? Import tariffs? Banning?
Point 3: as I pointed out, there are some things we just can't do in the UK: we have no uranium nor cobalt, for example.
They really do have no principles other than blind Europhobia.
batch sizes of one may become the norm
market size is becoming increasingly unimportant
supply chains, decent research, skilled machinist and machine making capability will be more important
Conservatives are unreconstructed Bennites now.
(start at 33 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zBFh6bpcMo&t=2550s
all we can say is that the model we have worked within has hollowed our factories, killed off skilled jobs, given us an unsustainable trade deficit, made a handful of people rich and pissed off the majority of our citizens.
So why stick with it ?
Including from MPs.
Don't see how Hammond gets changing the VAT threshold downwards through parliament. Am I missing something?
It would be monumentally bad politics, and would surely cause actual economic harm rather than raising the VAT take.
Robert Peel's Tories were not faced by the 1840s equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn. His greatest service to the Tories may well be to keep them united despite Brexit to keep him out. His greatest service to the UK may well be not only to bring about the Leave result in the referendum (as he did), but to secure Brexit afterwards.
Why you have jumped from encouraging import substitution to autarky you will have to expalin
The decision to leave the EU has been made by the people; all is that left to debate is the manner of the departure.
It is why putting the date of leaving on the statute books is an immensely good decision.
https://twitter.com/historylvrsclub/status/929162515749195778
The people have every right to change their minds. I don't think they will, but if Parliament were to reject the deal the government does (or does not) do with the EU27, the government will call an election and hand the decision over to the voters.
I popped to the short 10 minute Armistice Day service at our local Normandy Veterans Memorial. ( I'm not wearing a Poppy myself during the Brexit process as the country voted to betray post war reconciliation though I have bought one. ) It had been padded out this year with lots of Cadet Corps I suspect because it fell on a Saturday. There was a jarring but fascinating moment at the end. As usual attendees moved towards the plaque as soon as the formal service ended yo lay their own poppies. But this year the hyper and giggling Cadets pounced in order to pose for copious numbers of photos. All entirely well meaning but oblivious yo the fact they had blocked private laying and the usual attendees didn't know what to do. I couldn't make my mind up whether this was a welcome adaption to our new conflict free demographics or a sign it's time to wind most of these things down.
It is eminently sensible; giving power and momentum to the majority, and taking it away from the anti-democrats who want to remain by the back door.
Oh, wait...
Brexit makes everything you say harder.
The contrast with the behaviour of Boris Johnson couldn’t be more stark. The Foreign Secretary has been a bum appointment from day one – an unserious man for whom personal advancement, profit and fame are the alpha and omega. It is heartbreaking, as Brexit unfolds and Britannia sinks (and Phil Collins nails it absolutely in The Times today) that we send as our tribune to the rest of the world a proven liar, a man of low moral character, a narcissistic hog who flaunts his flaming ambition like a nasty STD.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2017/11/shamelessness-johnson-salmond-and-rest-signal-decay-our-public-realm
But we do know the track record of our time in the EU has hollowed out our industrial base and given us a huge BoP deficit
How are you going to change that by staying in ?
If England is good at financial-services and Germany at engineering then there is a compromise: It is called the 'Theory of Comparative-Advantage'.* We just need someone to explain this to the EU-elite.**
* The maximum-wealth for the maximum-number of people.
** Do not bother trying to explain economics to the French.
At the time of the debate, in May 1940, 62 government backbenchers were on active service in the army, 16 in the RAF and seven in the navy.
* "thats just nonsense businesses deal with a changing environemt every day and adapt,".
I wasn't saying that business could not adapt. I was explaining why the one-to-one substitution you advocate wouldn't work
* "Manufacturing production costs are falling the world over, The UK just isnt encouraging investment in up to date technology. To a large extent we have abandoned the goal of a high skill highly paid workforce and fallen back on cheap labour. We see it in productivity figures."
I agree with you. But Brexit will not cure this problem, which is a function of UK short-termism rather than EU membership.
Am I correct in thinking (one of) the reasons why you voted Leave was to encourage the growth of UK manufacturing? If so I hope it works out in the way you hoped, but my thoughts are that the focus on Brexit and the costs it entails in terms of more expensive imports and the opportunity cost of spending so much time on it, will discourage the investment and innovation you seek, not encourage it.
I don't believe Corbyn's trysts with terrorists will lose him a single vote. His problem is that there is no appetite to move backwards. Too many people remember the nationalised industries and the closed shop and don't want to see them again.
The next election will be fought on whether we want to return to the 70's. The Lynton Crosby campaign almost writes itself. They could with minor adjustments run my PPB for Paddy's Lib Dems "Maggies Broken Britain". A dystopian view of Thatcher's Britain........
But the extraordinary thing is that the Tory alternative is almost exactly the same. A party united in a desire to turn the clock back to 1973 and so idologically driven they're content to destroy our childrens future to achieve it.
So which past is the least attractive? That I suspect will be the battle ground for the next election and if either party want a director with experience they'll find my rates remarkably competitive!
As for enourging growth the political and managerial class has received a hard shock to the policies they have followed for the last 50 years. They have been sent back to the drawing board and told to try again.
As for voting leave I voted Leave as I didnt want to be part of an EU supertstate and was fed up with UK politicians lying to me that that wasnt where were headed, when every european politician is saying that it is.
I decided to jump out of the pot rather than be a boiled frog
the UK has tried to follow an anglo saxon model whilst working in a Franco\German social structure.
If we had adopted the Franco German social economic model ourselves it may have turned out better, but we didnt and bar some TUs Ive never seen an appetitie for it among british management
I've had my Irish passport for over 20 years, and for totally different reasons than Brexit
You are aware that 'Fatcher' shut down the coal-mines that Labour had slaughtered before? Or were you still in your Welch prep-school...?
when MD in France and Germany Ive sat in enough meetings to know a sourcing decision is always going to go to the national company rather than an outside
"social reasons"
;;;;***/??tumbleweed%%^^
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/11/how-dup-could-save-union-and-brexit-talks-too
divorce your wife, Ill ditch mine too
we can have a gay wedding In Dubln
then you can get a passport too
March is looking good calendar wise
All piss-taking aside - I understand why you hold two passports and I would do exactly the same in your position. There's no hard feelings, just a pang of jealousy.
Germany has 10 times more robots than the UK
The UK has 10 times more accountants than Germany
and we wonder about productivity
and I so wanted Meeks as my bridesmaid
pub beckons
have fun folks