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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It appears Brexiteers are finding out they can’t have their ca
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It appears Brexiteers are finding out they can’t have their cake and eat it
I've been amazed by how pessimistic Brexiteers have now become. Most ardent Leaver I know texted today: "We've (they've) blown it". https://t.co/4ANiqlat1x
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*I appreciate that the concept of "the modern world" does not sit happily with many Brexiters.
The best solution for Britain should be that it sells on the open market annual fish quotas for its territorial waters. This would allow it to mitigate the worst of over-fishing and maximise revenue for the country. Obviously, anyone from any country should be allowed to bid for the quotas.
There is no equation between sovereignty and prosperity. Leaving the EU results in less UK influence, which means we have less, not more, say over our own affairs.
Better late then never.
I don't think we can claim the fall off and the increase had nothing to do with the respective policies.
Seriously? I expected better. At least some foolish (mis)comparison to NATO....
Last I heard, it was a wee bit more successful and long-lasting than the EU...
Nobody here wants it
It is a doomed currency union unlikely to survive the economic failure of a mid-rate EUZ economy
We have one of the most important currencies in the world.
Depending on how long Theresa May stays in office, Michael Gove might be an interesting one to watch.
"Ballance has scored more (1st class) hundreds this year than Buttler in his career..."
In any event, capitalism and the EU are hardly mutually exclusive!
In short, in the absence of a dramatic shift in public opinion in the not very distant future, Brexit is happening. It's going to be disastrous but the correct response is not to try to avoid it, but to go through it in accordance with the spirit of the vote and seek to pick up the pieces from the car crash after it has happened.
Fancy explaining why we should be part of a system that is so schlerotic it has to legislate against American tech, rather than being able to compete?
Average EU tariff by product type (%)
Animal products 15.0
Dairy products 33.5
Fruit, vegetables and plants 10.3
Coffee, tea 6.0
Cereals and preparations 12.4
Oilseeds, fats and oils 6.0
Sugars and confectionery 20.2
Beverages and tobacco 19.4
Cotton 0.0
Other agricultural products 3.2
Fish and fish products 12.0
Minerals and metals 2.0
Petroleum 2.5
Chemicals 4.5
Wood, paper etc 0.9
Textiles 6.5
Clothing 11.4
Leather, footwear etc 4.1
Non-electrical machinery 1.9
Electrical machinery 2.8
Transport equipment 4.3
Other manufactures 2.6
Statistics on UK-EU trade - Parliament UK
Fudge it accordingly. Add clauses requiring a job offer from an employer who will put you on the books (PAYE). So it's 'sorry, but no' to the self-employed.
Restrict freedom of movement of *people*, i.e. to retire and live elsewhere in Europe, to those that take up EU citizenship as offered by Guy Verhofstadt. Presumably this would have a small cost and a full EU passport would be £50 or more.
It's just an idea ... but clearly no-one in the govt. has any, so PB could probably come up with a coherent and workable policy before this shower do ...
https://twitter.com/HistoryatNmpton/status/881799430445436928
We are members which involves
giving uppooling sovereignty. You are saying that within that framework, there are elements which are not binding on the member countries. So a bit like the EU and the Euro, or Schengen, or the fiscal compact, then.Plus do you really think that if the sh*t hits the fan and NATO asks us to join the defence of a fellow member, we will say, er no thanks we prefer not to.
You bonkers sovereigners really like to cherry-pick which bits of sovereignty you are happy to give up and which bits you want to reclaim.
You may disagree but that's my view!
Leaving the EU increases our influence by giving us a voice and a vote again.
My point though was that history can't be used to predict the future. For the first 30 years of my life most people (including me) believed that the only way the Soviet empire would collapse is through a nuclear armageddon that would have been the end of us all... Then in the space of 5 years in the late 80s everything changed. You never know what the future will bring!
In, ahem, financial services we have huge influence in the EU. Huge.
Wedding permitting, I hope to publish that thread by Saturday, if not, next week.
It will trigger a few people.
Regulating markets is something all governments do.
Daft rhetorical questions don't really advance the Brexiteer argument.
Whether third countries will be more interested in us separately rather than as an influence within the EU isn't quite straightforward. It's a comparison say between the influence Japan has as a standalone country and the UK has had up to now as a member of the EU.
I'm sorry to say (for I'm sure we agree on many things) but the idea that sterling is anywhere near as important as the Euro is laughable. Just because sterling is still included in the IMF's SDRs does not mean it plays a meaningful international role like the US dollar or Euro.
Sterling is like the Japanese yen; a national currency which will decline in proportionate usage like its corresponding economy.
They seem to be the CNN of UK.
I get very tired of having to explain this to people who ought to know better bit if we were to move to EEA membership via EFTA then we would retake our seats at all those international organisations where we are currently unable to speak because of our membership.of the EU. We would retain the four freedoms as part of the Single Market but being outside the Customs Union would also be able to strike our own trade deals.
It is the bleedingly obvious answer that should appeal to the moderates on both sides.
I have a fair amount of my savings in Euros and CHF, because I expect them to retain their value against a falling Sterling.
We have either always had it throughout our membership of the EU, or we lost it over the 20th century regardless of membership of the EU.
Every Treaty we've signed has eroded our freedom to enact legislation and/or actions (Parliament can't pass a law that we will test one nuclear weapon per year from our stockpile to ensure they work, for example, the Test Ban Treaty prohibits that. We can't choose to sell nukes to an ally; the Non-Proliferation Treaty prohibits that. There are tons of things we can't do because they're prohibited by Treaty). Including the Lisbon Treaty.
"Ah, but we can always choose to break a Treaty; Parliament is sovereign"
Yes. The same with the Lisbon Treaty. We chose to abide by the rules of the EU, with the knowledge that we could leave whenever Parliament said so. In short - our adherence to EU regulations, laws, the pronouncements of the ECJ were always at the sufferance of the UK Parliament. As demonstrated by the Miller case, Parliament retained the right, at any time, to vote to enact Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and remove the obligations placed by EU membership.
Combined standards, collective bargaining for trade deals, mutual recognition of regulations, shared regulatory institutions, etc - were all done because we benefited from it, and Parliament judged that the restriction on actions given by doing so was outweighed by the benefits. Now we've chosen to exercise our sovereign right to leave those restrictions and obligations, we're going to find out whether Parliament's judgement there was accurate. Thanks to the complexity and massive number of issues arising from disentangling us from those combined standards, collective bargaining, shared institutions and so on that have become apparent, it does look like that's accurate. So far, anyway.
But no - the sovereignty argument didn't really hold water for me; it was like arguing we're locked in a cell when the door was unlocked and there were instructions to operate the handle printed on the door. We were in the room because we chose to be in the room; we were never incarcerated.
In exactly which areas of the world other than Europe are you seeing us project our power and influence?
And I like the analogy of the cell.
BUT, and it is significant, what cannot be ignored is the role immigration played in the EU Referendum as witnessed by all the surveys before and since.
It doesn't matter how wonderful it is made to seem - if the A50 Treaty doesn't meet the concerns many people have about migration and immigration it won't get any traction.
Any proposal which maintains Freedom of Movement is going to hit problems - the truth is for many people the deciding factor toward voting LEAVE was the argument that outside the EU we could control who entered this country and who could reside here.
That's NOT to say (more capitals, sorry) that beyond a minority there is a strong vein of anti-immigration sentiment (but let's not imagine it doesn't exist). There is, I believe, a strong feeling that the uncontrolled (as it seems) migration of people from EU countries since 2004 has had a deleterious effect on some areas. That's not to say there hasn't been an economic benefit but that isn't obvious to those whose communities have changed beyond all recognition and where public services have failed patently to keep pace with demand (including significantly the provision of housing).
The Tories advertised that they could get tariff free access to the single market from outside the single market. Our chief civil servants laughed and got the sack for suggesting this was absurd. Now David Dangerman Davis has gone to Bruxelles and been told to swivel, and suddenly the mouth foamers act surprised.
Meanwhile Labour looked at needing to square the circle of satisfying voters in the most pro-remain and pro-leave seats and decided to cheer on the Tories. "They promised us the moon on a stick and we're going to hold them to it" knowing fully well no moon will be forthcoming.
We have four options.
1. Stay in the EU. Would take a significant opinion swing OR exit clearly meaning disaster to make this politically viable
2. Join EFTA. "people voted to leave the single market" they say to a question that mentioned the EU and only the EU. The nutjob press would have a stroke it would be that worked up
3. A transitional deal into a CETA style deal in 2025 - because thats how long it will take. I suspect the EU won't offer a lengthy enough transition making that impossible
4. Hard Brexit. And then food shortages and then riots. All by the end of the first week.
Surely it won't take many more "negotiations" before its clear that our options are 1 or 2. 4 has been threatened and laughed at. 3 is impossible. Which leaves EFTA and bollocks to the immigration arguments or staying in and bollocks to the whole thing.
I just want some press person to visit Boston, find a foaming "get them out" leaver and ask "will you replace them picking vegetables"...
* I say 'probably' because the exact legal position is as clear as mud, and partly depends on what exactly is in the agreement.
1. It takes longer than 18 months to negotiate such deals. More like 5 years plus
2. The EU have no desire or political will to offer a lengthy "out but still in" transition whilst a CETA style deal is negotiated. Which is what our sacked negotiator said to get himself the sack
On the second point, maybe not, but they do have a very powerful wish to extract dosh from us to cover their humongous budget shortfall, and they also have a powerful interest in not disrupting trade, since any disruption harms them a lot (it may well harm us more, but that's hardly much of a consolation to them).