I find many people are extremely negative about Brexit.
I didn't recommend Brexit but when I hear people describe it like an unavoidable catastrophe I think it might be good to remind you that this is just what Norwegian politicians told the public before the 1994 EU referendum.
Turns out they were wrong: Norwegians are very happy outside EU.
So are the Swiss. Turns out that they are so successful outside the EU that even Swiss garbage men earn more than most citizens of EU member states could ever dream of.
No, they're talking in nominal terms. Your salary will be twice as high in Zurich as it would be in say Munich, but you will also pay about twice as much for most things, be it groceries or rent.
Try rewriting this as "garbagemen in country X, after taxes and all expenses including rent etc, have 10% of their income left, while white collars from country Z barely manage to save 1% of their earnings over the same period".
Is this still true when X=Switzerland and Z another random country in UE?
I just don't get what point you are trying to make here. Statistics and Polls consistently show again and again that Switzerland is one of the safest, richest, most democratic and yes - even happy countries in the world.
And maybe you can't see it, but stuff that the Swiss import is for them very cheap in comparison to all others. Just imagine how less it'd hurt you financially to pay for an iPhone when you have an income that is much higher than in every surrounding country.
Or how about going on vacations. That's very cheap for Swiss too, because for them basically every country they could go to is insanely cheap.
Edit: And the funny thing is, they are not in the EU, every male has a automatic assault rifle at home, they have free speech, regular referenda on important matters and the majority there is against any kind of Socialism.
In either case there are very specific reasons for their respective success: Oil and foreign money, respectively. None of that is down to them not being part of the EU
The UK isn't even remotely comparable to either of those countries. Besides, both Switzerland and Norway have trade agreements with the EU. If the UK wants similar agreements it'll have to accept similar conditions including freedom of movement, which in turn will make this whole Brexit affair rather pointless: The UK will effectively have to accept the same conditions it has right now without any ability to influence or veto EU regulations anymore.
Please take a look at how the Swiss are doing outside the EU. They have no oil, just their financial industry.
Actually that's quite similar to the UK, just that the UK is much stronger in many other areas too.
I suspect that the UK will do really well outside the EU.
Edit: Has anyone here even considered that it might be the EU that will break up long before the UK? As I see it the next time Turkeys dictator Erdogan decides to unleash millions of refugees (as he has threatened before) the EU will most definitely be finished.
In my country (Austria) the guy that a few weeks ago lost the presidential election (with 49% of the votes) said that he would support a referendum for exiting the EU. So did Le Pen from France and Wilders from the Netherlands. Recent polls show that in Italy and France an absolute majority wants to have a referendum about exiting the EU.
And you believe that the EU can actually punish someone for misbehaving?
Every article written that suggests that the UK should ignore democratic decisions or that all who have voted for Brexit are stupid racist will fasten the process of a collapsing EU. So please continue!
Switzerland has ~10% GDP coming from banking, roughly the same as the UK. Also, Switzerland is part of the single market.
The thing is, most of the "big banking" in the UK is already planning for its own leave to Frankfurt and Paris. And the EU seems pretty clear into not having the UK in the single market.
Not as well as we were already doing within the EU, for a discounted membership fee. A discount that we will now have to concede in a future deal, and that will likely be finalised after a nice recession.
Meanwhile, London will lose its significance as the gateway for passporting to Frankfurt. All the prosperity built up since 2008 has been erased for the sake of what were ostensibly lies.
I implore US citizens: do not be fooled by populism and nonsense just because it runs parallel to your own frustrations with politics and with the established order.
You will regret it, as my country's 52% of Leave voters will regret it when they realise that everything they voted for will not and cannot be delivered as promised.
For the UK to trade with the EU and not become irrelevant to the other nations it seeks to trade with, it must submit to free movement of EU citizens.
Free movement was one of the major reasons why the Leavers voted as they did.
Direct democracy is a farce. Giving executive power to people who do not understand economics and who, a day later, express that they did not know what they were voting for or what the repercussions would be, is frankly absurd.
Of course it's a great failing of the government that, since 2013, they were unable to communicate the benefits of EU membership which have been summed up in single paragraphs and even in tweets since the Brexit result became official. Something that should worry all Britons now is the fact that, since no British government has had to actually negotiate a trade deal for decades, we may struggle to negotiate with post-Brexit EU effectively to get a deal that won't be atrocious for our financial sector.
It was a great failing of David Cameron to disengage from realpolitik and offer the public a voice instead of just honestly telling everybody that our financial stability and indeed prosperity since the financial crisis of 2008 is much thanks to EU membership and 'passporting' through the City of London while the EU paid for the economically weaker, rural regions.
Now we're stuck in limbo. Our Leave campaigners, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, both used the Leave campaign as a power play. I doubt they expected or wanted to win, they just wanted to force even more EU concessions or at least to increase their own standing in a Conservative party that largely disagreed with their ideologies.
Neither of these men have the balls to push the button, because they know that once Brexit's official, the UK will be in for a rough ride, and they won't be able to appease the public when they have to admit that the money saved is minuscule compared to their fabricated figures, and that immigration cannot be curbed due to EU trade law and should not be curbed due to its positive effect on the UK economy.
Cameron also won't push the button, because only his refusal to make the Brexit official can save his legacy and his country. Only inaction can provide time for someone with courage to emerge — courage enough to tell the British public that they had no right to make such a massive decision based on lies and ignorance regarding how our country's economy works.
I am reminded of a scene in a movie called "The Remains of the Day" — I have the book but have yet to find time to read it. In this movie, an American congressman visits England while representatives from pre-WW2 Europe meet and try to preserve peace through lordly dinners and entertainment. The American congressman makes an unpopular but rational speech about how these "gentlemen" and lords are amateurs, and that the time had come for the politics of the real. Professionals being in charge of making decisions that can plunge nations and economies into wars and depressions.
He was warning against WW2, but the same applies today. Politics cannot be informed by emotional or populist sentiments. Politics must be informed by what makes good economic sense. What actually benefits a country and its subjects. Soverei...
So is giving this power to an elite of politicians or technocrats. They are endowed with power but their personal interests are in conflict with the common good.
"honestly telling everybody that our financial stability and indeed prosperity since the financial crisis of 2008 is much thanks to EU membership and 'passporting' through the City of London while the EU paid for the economically weaker, rural regions."
Why should the working class be happy with this? The benefits to EU membership accrued to the connected classes in the big cities. The subsidies provided to these regions by the EU are a small fraction of the economic damage which has been done to these people's lives through a triple punch of increased labor / safety / environmental regulations, free trade (with countries powered by low wage and low labor and environmental standards) and immigration of cheap labor.
Everybody wants to tell these people to just eat cake.That's not a reasonable solution to the economic challenges in the rest of the country. If London is doing so fantastic economically, they should have focused on helping those hurt by these policies.
Like I said, the government failed, not the EU. The Vote Leave campaigners used EU as a scapegoat. The likes of Boris Johnson need to be punished for lying to the electorate and for whatever financial problems are now around the corner.
Brexit is a way for particular individuals to gain influence and power within their lifetimes and to duck the blows of a working-class which, when Labour was strong, would have made them pay for the Tory disregard for the rural and/or low-income electorate.
I don't think Labour under Blair did much more to reinvigorate the rural and former industrial areas. While I very much agree with your general assessment, "blame it all on the tories" is not the right sentiment.
Sorry, I should clarify that I blame Blair's government as well. Absolutely agree.
I actually still remember my penniless, scrounging father telling me how Blair/Labour was going to change everything in 1997. Practically crying about it while Blair celebrated on the CRT screen. How absurd that turned out to be.
I remember the miner/north-eastern side of my family practically disowning me when I praised some of Thatcher's policies and refused to back down. That was a rubbish Christmas – they still regard me as a traitor to my class, even now, especially given my line of work.
I didn't go to university. I just worked my arse off and used my own initiative. Now I find myself rather distant from everybody in my age group and income grade. Most of them cannot cook, repair their jeans, repair their smartphone chargers if the cable is snapped, etc. They've never had to think about such things, and they look at me with dismay when I suggest fixing something instead of replacing it. People worse off just deliberately treat their possessions carelessly because nothing matters to them. I cannot understand either side. Naturally I gravitate to realpolitik.
I feel no animosity or envy toward the privileged or wealthy. It does not make sense. I just want to go my way, maybe invest one day when I can afford the risk.
If no one in the Tory Party has the balls to push the button, the British public will elect politicians who will in October.
Many of the dire warnings about the economy fell on deaf ears with the white working class precisely because they feel like they've got such a poor deal from the present arrangement.
UKIP will reform, re-organize, and probably rename to the UK Nationalists over the summer and stand on a platform of invoking article 50 and rejoining EFTA.
Buoyed by white working class votes they will take a swathe of formerly Labour seats in the north and former industrial heartlands and in the Tory shires. There's very little reason to suppose that working class people who voted Leave at this election will vote Labour at the next.
I hope that you and all the other people that are happy for the referendum outcome will feel the consequences directly on their skin.
If you still don't understand that this is the beginning of a crisis comparable to the 2008 one I don't have much more to say.
Maybe the articles you mentioned are not so wrong if there are people that can't see simple consequences based on facts.
Norway's export of crude oil and gas in 2015 ( 450 billion krone ) is equivalent to about £40 billion. Which puts them somewhere in the teens in terms of export scoreboard, behind the UAE.
The UK would have to agree on free movement like Norway and Switzerland to get the same deal, and that's the main thing they voted against. They never really had it anyways, getting into the UK has always felt more like the US border crossing. Good riddance.
Still, they will end up subject to the same system if they want to maintain free trade and a certain freedom of movement. However, out of the EU they won't have representation and won't have a say in what laws and measures are passed.
My point is mainly that if the UK is even able to get, and agrees to a deal like Norway, they're in the exact same position they were before the brexit, only worse.
Norway has to pay the EU, has accepted free travel and has to adhere to EU regulations.
I don't see how this could be a "win" situation for the UK; it's just a downgrade of their status with the union.
The catastrophe that people are mostly worried about is the impact of Britain leaving on the EU, not just to Britain. It is a key member of the EU and it's exit could be very destabilising for trade and investment throughout the region. On the global scale, not too many people will benefit in the next 5-10 years, maybe Britain will though (who knows for sure).
The FTSE lost 3.15% in a single day while it triggered a massive destruction of European stock markets. The pound arrived to 1.33$, it was never at that level since 1985. 2000 people are being relocated from Morgan Stankey to Dublin or Frankfurt. Pretty much all the other banks are following the same plans. The financial services sector contributes for around 11% of the whole government tax income. Car industry is heading in the same direction. Even worse the uk won't secure any trade deal with Europe because they will want to discourage other nations to follow the same path. The damage to the uk and global economy will be huge, comparable to the 2008 crisis if not even worse. And finally UK has nothing to do with Norway, a country extremely small (only London has double of Norway population) that exports oil.
And it has free access to the European market. Uk, as I said before, very likely won't have it.
> The damage to the UK and global economy will be huge
I agree - the short term damage to the UK and global economy has been significant. That's confidence being shot down overnight, and the markets reacting accordingly.
> Even worse the uk won't secure any trade deal with Europe because they will want to discourage other nations to follow the same path.
Really? Come on now. You're telling me that European countries will stop selling to the UK?
Nobody really knows how this is going to unfold but it's not going to be doom any more than it's going to be a huge success. In the meantime please stop spreading hyperbole about how the sky is falling.
>>Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, there are a lot of people in the UK that feel that ‘the foreigners took their jobs’, or that refugees are the kind of people that there simply isn’t room for. It’s a tough problem, but I highly doubt that this problem is large enough to isolate a country over from its main trade partners.
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter whether immigration has a net positive effect on employment, GDP or pretty much any other measure of wellbeing...
The reality is simple - there aren't enough jobs in the traditional industries for poorly educated people (especially in the North & Wales) to continue 'as normal' on a liveable wage. This has been the case for at least 30 years.
All solutions cost money - whether it is retraining, increasing the minimum wage/benefits or investing in forward thinking industry in affected areas, Politicians and the wealthier middle & upper classes decided it would be 'easier' as well as cheaper to perpetuate the lie that immigrants are to blame.
And after a few decades of continued job loss and struggles, there are now enough people who are affected and believe that immigrants are to blame, that our lies have finally caught up with us.
So it doesn't matter whether immigration is good or not - we've dug ourselves into a hole, and I can't see any politicians admitting the truth anytime soon.
I wonder if Britain's exit is really as big a deal as everyone is making it out to be. My pretty much working class family in Germany has made frequent use of open borders in the Eurozone, traveling to Spain and France several times in their lives. I wonder how much that would be true for generally working class British people. Do they go to Disneyland in Paris? Do they travel to music festivals in other European countries? My siblings do this in a car for cheap in the way that a young person in the US might travel to another state to go to a concert.
On top of that is that the UK has had a different currency whereas in the rest of the Eurozone everyone uses the same currency. It's so easy to go to Belgium and just use whatever's already in your wallet. Like a country like France or Germany or Sweden leaving the Euro would be a much much bigger deal than Britain, which I don't think really integrated as well with everyday people as they do on the continent.
I'm not saying it is not a step back, but I doubt it will be the end of the west as global leaders some people are portraying this.
Ryanair and other low cost flights are cheap. And gas is expensive in Europe
Some do travel, but I guess they enjoy it less. Because they, for the most part, only speak English
> On top of that is that the UK has had a different currency
Which they chose not to change when the Euro came (and I'm actually with them here, and it's really not a big deal, especially with debit and credit cards of today)
> I wonder if Britain's exit is really as big a deal as everyone is making it out to be.
Y2K, bird flu, Swine flu, SARS, Heterosexual AIDS, the hole in the ozone, over population, acid rain, mad cow, global cooling, global warming, Ebola, Zika virus...
Vacation travel (Disney Paris) is generally subject to a much more relaxed set of regulations, EU or no EU. Permanent (or semi-permanent) relocation for work is what's potentially at risk with the Brexit.
Surely, you could vacation easily in other countries also before the EU? I know we Swedes could. Btw, Great Britain is not the only country in the EU that does not use Euros. Sweden doesn't, for example.
As a yank, this issue is none of my business. As long as the people are voting, there is a feedback and correction system in place, I try not to worry about the internal affairs of allies.
Having said that, I am quite taken back by all the drama I'm hearing on my social feeds. It looks completely beyond the normal angst you would see in a nation changing its treaty status. I didn't hear this kind of emotion when decisions were made to go to war. That's really quite strange and somewhat disturbing.
Weirder still, much of this emotion is being brought out by my friends who aren't even part of the vote! Saudi Arabia is busy beheading people, and my friends from the U.S. are concerned about a possible recession in Britain due to a change in their trade policies. I do not understand this and it makes me think the conversation is being prodded/changed/guided somehow. But that's just a guess.
Whatever they do -- and I hear now that maybe they'll vote to go back, or the first vote doesn't mean much -- as long as there is a system in place for feedback and course correction, and the governing system has the consent of the governed, I wish them the best.
Friday I finally asked some friends on FB to explain it to me.
The answer I got was that this was a symbol that is related to a lot of other issues people care about, both overseas and at home. So the thing itself is not as important as what it might symbolize or portend.
I think this agrees with what you list.
Still, my interest is in free countries peacefully deciding how they want to govern themselves. Much more than their actual policy changes or what it might portend.
If I had to have an opinion, simply from watching the monetary policy sausage-making, I think the EU is a beta. And like many betas, it's structurally broken. That doesn't mean stay or leave. I really have no idea how you would go about fixing these structural issues. I imagine that no matter what some folks might think, there are no easy answers. Anything you do is going to suck in one way or another.
I like your view of it as a beta. I've talked about this brexit as a "refactoring".
The EU is a code base that grew quickly and accrued a great deal of cruft in a short amount of time. The UK is simply taking their module of functions and breaking them out of the spaghetti EU behemoth. Rather than tight coupling to the rest of the EU code base, they'll be creating new and specific interfaces.
>As a yank, this issue is none of my business. As long as the people are voting, there is a feedback and correction system in place, I try not to worry about the internal affairs of allies.
You've no idea how nice it is to read somebody talking about this situation with a level head.
> Having said that, I am quite taken back by all the drama I'm hearing on my social feeds.
The media have stirred up the general public in the UK to levels of crazy I've not witnessed since Tony Blair and the weapons of mass destruction.
I'm not on Facebook but my partner is, and the amount of emotion and spats she's witnessed on there have forced her to seriously consider closing her account. She's a self confessed Facebook addict, and just can't handle the amount of noise and vitriol. People are genuinely losing their minds over here.
It's impossible to have a meaningful discussion with pretty much anybody about the situation. Everyone has a very emotional stance, hardly anybody has facts to reference their arguments by.
> Whatever they do -- and I hear now that maybe they'll vote to go back
Despite the 2m people who have signed a meaningless petition, there's no going back. I hope people here now invest their time and efforts in making this work and coming together as a nation, rather than continuing to bitch and moan at one another - all the while freaking out about the fall of GB.
The UK has been through much worse than this. Like most things in life, the outcome won't be as good (or as bad) as those on either side would have us believe.
I'd like to think one thing we have learned is not to trust the media - but I doubt it.
>The world is a much more connected place today than it was 50 years ago and next to a unified EU with the UK as an outsider (and, if we are to believe the latest developments with England as an outsider) it is not a very important country economically.
The sad thing is that if the UK were more invested in the EU (for example, with the Schengen zone), then people might have ended up feeling more attached to it. The constant opt-outs made the UK an outsider, I think.
This does bring up Junker's reaction though("Please leave immediately, close the door behind you"), which is a depressing reality of how most EU politics end up happening.
Especially with the handling of Greece, there's this whole moral grandstanding that ends up becoming super antagonistic, when actual pragmatism would solve problems much better.
"They need to suffer for their sins" seems to be a leading political thought process in Brussels(+Paris+Berlin), that makes the union seem less like a partnership and more like the Troika, flying in and making things worse for the hosts.
Your read on the EU's reaction seems weird. (Probably a result of the demonization of Juncker. I mean, I don't like juncker, too, but he is no monster. He is a bog-standard terribly unexciting politician.) You seem to see aggressiveness where there is concern.
If the UK indeed wants to leave (and the responsible and democratic thing to assume, given the vote, is that they do) then its best if they make that clear immediately and set negotiations in progress. That's best for the UK, best for the EU. It creates certainty where now there is none.
If the UK doesn't want to respect the will of its people then they should say so as quickly as possible, too! This is all common sense. We have to all know what to expect from the future to plan for it.
I mean, what the hell do you expect Juncker to do? Beg for the UK to remain?! The EU has, I think, always made it clear that they would respect the UK's sovereignty! Isn't this what this is all about?
I think the point was that in the UK, politicians are now intending to take their time with the actual Brexit process. Boris Johnson said "there was no need for haste about severing the UK's ties". Cameron said they wouldn't begin negotiations until there is a new prime minister (in October) and that they have 2 years to negotiate from when they invoke Article 50 [1]. That would put the final Brexit at October 2018 or so.
The EU seems to be angry that now the UK has made its decision, instead of acting swiftly, the UK are trying to remain in the EU as long as possible before Brexit. The EU would rather the UK finish negotiations & leave as soon as possible, so that everyone has certainty again.
Maybe I read to much into this but until the UK invokes article 50 I would expect the EU to remain neutral.
My impression is that the EU wants this to happen fast to stop the market turmoil as well but I'd bet it'll just get an extra boost once Article 50 gets invoked
I wonder how much of this regrexit sentiment is actually present and how much of it is just isolated incidents being held up as if they are representative. By the same media that predicted the outcome entirely wrong.
> Amidst claims of regret and being duped the UK population is rocked by the impact of what they’ve done, but even if everybody that wanted to would be allowed to ‘switch sides’ and vote again the ‘leave’ camp would still win, but by a smaller margin.
I could well imagine that many "remain" non-voters would actually vote at a second referendum, tipping the scales.
But of course that is pretty much speculation, as seems to be Jacques' point. (or is there any data to back up that claim?)
There's a certain cognitive dissonance effect that wasn't covered in the list of reasons to leave:
"If we leave, the public will have to suffer under 3.14 boondoggles worth of economic punishment" where boondoggle is an imaginary but comparable measurement of economic mismanagement and suffering.
and then in the next story on the nightly news
"The general public in the EU member country of Greece are suffering under an permanent and unimprovable EU enforced burden of 14152 boondoggles worth of economic punishment and the response from Brussels to the Greek people is F you, you suck and should suffer even more"
Given those two parallel news stories, the best bet to minimize suffering is to get out while you can. Basically the scaremongering about brexit doesn't reach the level of the journalist reports out of Greece and whats happening there today is coming to the UK unless they start running now.
I mean whats happening in Greece right now is awesome if you're a rich shareholder in a German bank. But a majority of UK people know who's going to get screwed and who's going to do the screwing when its time to squeeze the blood from the UK rock once they're done with Greece.
If the EU is so great, why aren't those UK citizens in support of it, emigrating en masse into Greece?
> If the EU is so great, why aren't those UK citizens in support of it, emigrating en masse into Greece?
Now that's a straw man and I'm sure you know it. Let's turn the snark to 11:
If you were planning to emigrate to the Mediterranean climate and were short on funds, why wouldn't you aim for the cheap places - such as Egypt or Syria?
My prediction: politicians and bureaucrats will spend 2 years producing tens of thousands of pages of new laws and new trade agreements and very little will actually change. Except for the tens of thousands of pages of new laws and trade agreements.
EU laws are basically incomprehensible currently, and the U.K. already has special relationships with the rest of the EU, like the separate currency, not being part of Schengen, etc.
"The EU is a very large economic entity and to negotiate with 27 countries individually the UK of the past had formidable clout but today the situation has changed very much and turning back the clock like this simply isn’t going to work."
Assuming other members of the EU don't follow the UK's example, the UK only has to negotiate with one - the EU. Tragedy of the commons might be at work here.
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time... It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
Even if Cameron figured that remain would win, he surely knew that the results would be close, that nothing would be actually be settled definitively. OTOH, a narrow win for leave may actually be definitive unless they manage to avoid brexiting somehow.
There's one interesting detail regarding tradesman that I only learned of yesterday by our boiler engineer who paid us a visit. In Northern Ireland (and maybe Scotland) many of the trades jobs have higher requirements for being licensed. The trades industry here is more insulated. In England however, licensing comes more easily and has fewer requirements for maintaining status. Immigration has had a very big effect in England that many people were ignoring, because the barrier to entry in these trades jobs was very low.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 151 ms ] threadI didn't recommend Brexit but when I hear people describe it like an unavoidable catastrophe I think it might be good to remind you that this is just what Norwegian politicians told the public before the 1994 EU referendum.
Turns out they were wrong: Norwegians are very happy outside EU.
How does that invalidate what I wrote? Are you proposing that the Swiss would be better off with a Somali income and cost of living?
Is this still true when X=Switzerland and Z another random country in UE?
And maybe you can't see it, but stuff that the Swiss import is for them very cheap in comparison to all others. Just imagine how less it'd hurt you financially to pay for an iPhone when you have an income that is much higher than in every surrounding country.
Or how about going on vacations. That's very cheap for Swiss too, because for them basically every country they could go to is insanely cheap.
Edit: And the funny thing is, they are not in the EU, every male has a automatic assault rifle at home, they have free speech, regular referenda on important matters and the majority there is against any kind of Socialism.
The UK isn't even remotely comparable to either of those countries. Besides, both Switzerland and Norway have trade agreements with the EU. If the UK wants similar agreements it'll have to accept similar conditions including freedom of movement, which in turn will make this whole Brexit affair rather pointless: The UK will effectively have to accept the same conditions it has right now without any ability to influence or veto EU regulations anymore.
Actually that's quite similar to the UK, just that the UK is much stronger in many other areas too.
I suspect that the UK will do really well outside the EU.
Edit: Has anyone here even considered that it might be the EU that will break up long before the UK? As I see it the next time Turkeys dictator Erdogan decides to unleash millions of refugees (as he has threatened before) the EU will most definitely be finished.
In my country (Austria) the guy that a few weeks ago lost the presidential election (with 49% of the votes) said that he would support a referendum for exiting the EU. So did Le Pen from France and Wilders from the Netherlands. Recent polls show that in Italy and France an absolute majority wants to have a referendum about exiting the EU.
And you believe that the EU can actually punish someone for misbehaving?
Every article written that suggests that the UK should ignore democratic decisions or that all who have voted for Brexit are stupid racist will fasten the process of a collapsing EU. So please continue!
Can you give me some specific insight into how Northern Ireland, Wales or Cornwall are going to benefit from being outside the EU?
Will UK's farmers, for whom it is estimated that 55% of all income comes directly from EU subsidies, also benefit from an exit?
The thing is, most of the "big banking" in the UK is already planning for its own leave to Frankfurt and Paris. And the EU seems pretty clear into not having the UK in the single market.
Meanwhile, London will lose its significance as the gateway for passporting to Frankfurt. All the prosperity built up since 2008 has been erased for the sake of what were ostensibly lies.
I implore US citizens: do not be fooled by populism and nonsense just because it runs parallel to your own frustrations with politics and with the established order.
You will regret it, as my country's 52% of Leave voters will regret it when they realise that everything they voted for will not and cannot be delivered as promised.
For the UK to trade with the EU and not become irrelevant to the other nations it seeks to trade with, it must submit to free movement of EU citizens.
Free movement was one of the major reasons why the Leavers voted as they did.
Direct democracy is a farce. Giving executive power to people who do not understand economics and who, a day later, express that they did not know what they were voting for or what the repercussions would be, is frankly absurd.
Of course it's a great failing of the government that, since 2013, they were unable to communicate the benefits of EU membership which have been summed up in single paragraphs and even in tweets since the Brexit result became official. Something that should worry all Britons now is the fact that, since no British government has had to actually negotiate a trade deal for decades, we may struggle to negotiate with post-Brexit EU effectively to get a deal that won't be atrocious for our financial sector.
It was a great failing of David Cameron to disengage from realpolitik and offer the public a voice instead of just honestly telling everybody that our financial stability and indeed prosperity since the financial crisis of 2008 is much thanks to EU membership and 'passporting' through the City of London while the EU paid for the economically weaker, rural regions.
Now we're stuck in limbo. Our Leave campaigners, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, both used the Leave campaign as a power play. I doubt they expected or wanted to win, they just wanted to force even more EU concessions or at least to increase their own standing in a Conservative party that largely disagreed with their ideologies.
Neither of these men have the balls to push the button, because they know that once Brexit's official, the UK will be in for a rough ride, and they won't be able to appease the public when they have to admit that the money saved is minuscule compared to their fabricated figures, and that immigration cannot be curbed due to EU trade law and should not be curbed due to its positive effect on the UK economy.
Cameron also won't push the button, because only his refusal to make the Brexit official can save his legacy and his country. Only inaction can provide time for someone with courage to emerge — courage enough to tell the British public that they had no right to make such a massive decision based on lies and ignorance regarding how our country's economy works.
I am reminded of a scene in a movie called "The Remains of the Day" — I have the book but have yet to find time to read it. In this movie, an American congressman visits England while representatives from pre-WW2 Europe meet and try to preserve peace through lordly dinners and entertainment. The American congressman makes an unpopular but rational speech about how these "gentlemen" and lords are amateurs, and that the time had come for the politics of the real. Professionals being in charge of making decisions that can plunge nations and economies into wars and depressions.
He was warning against WW2, but the same applies today. Politics cannot be informed by emotional or populist sentiments. Politics must be informed by what makes good economic sense. What actually benefits a country and its subjects. Soverei...
Why should the working class be happy with this? The benefits to EU membership accrued to the connected classes in the big cities. The subsidies provided to these regions by the EU are a small fraction of the economic damage which has been done to these people's lives through a triple punch of increased labor / safety / environmental regulations, free trade (with countries powered by low wage and low labor and environmental standards) and immigration of cheap labor.
Everybody wants to tell these people to just eat cake.That's not a reasonable solution to the economic challenges in the rest of the country. If London is doing so fantastic economically, they should have focused on helping those hurt by these policies.
Brexit is a way for particular individuals to gain influence and power within their lifetimes and to duck the blows of a working-class which, when Labour was strong, would have made them pay for the Tory disregard for the rural and/or low-income electorate.
I don't think Labour under Blair did much more to reinvigorate the rural and former industrial areas. While I very much agree with your general assessment, "blame it all on the tories" is not the right sentiment.
I actually still remember my penniless, scrounging father telling me how Blair/Labour was going to change everything in 1997. Practically crying about it while Blair celebrated on the CRT screen. How absurd that turned out to be.
I remember the miner/north-eastern side of my family practically disowning me when I praised some of Thatcher's policies and refused to back down. That was a rubbish Christmas – they still regard me as a traitor to my class, even now, especially given my line of work.
I didn't go to university. I just worked my arse off and used my own initiative. Now I find myself rather distant from everybody in my age group and income grade. Most of them cannot cook, repair their jeans, repair their smartphone chargers if the cable is snapped, etc. They've never had to think about such things, and they look at me with dismay when I suggest fixing something instead of replacing it. People worse off just deliberately treat their possessions carelessly because nothing matters to them. I cannot understand either side. Naturally I gravitate to realpolitik.
I feel no animosity or envy toward the privileged or wealthy. It does not make sense. I just want to go my way, maybe invest one day when I can afford the risk.
Many of the dire warnings about the economy fell on deaf ears with the white working class precisely because they feel like they've got such a poor deal from the present arrangement.
UKIP will reform, re-organize, and probably rename to the UK Nationalists over the summer and stand on a platform of invoking article 50 and rejoining EFTA.
Buoyed by white working class votes they will take a swathe of formerly Labour seats in the north and former industrial heartlands and in the Tory shires. There's very little reason to suppose that working class people who voted Leave at this election will vote Labour at the next.
> They have no oil, just their financial industry.
So, better? Oh and their watches. And pharmaceutical industry.
Not all, but apparently the majority of them... Google stats are the proof.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/24...
https://twitter.com/GoogleTrends/status/746303118820937728?r...
Huge?
Norway's export of crude oil and gas in 2015 ( 450 billion krone ) is equivalent to about £40 billion. Which puts them somewhere in the teens in terms of export scoreboard, behind the UAE.
http://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/production-and-exports/expor...
That's less than four month's worth of the UK's exports to non-EU countries alone ( £25 billion per month, about 52% to non-EU ).
https://www.uktradeinfo.com/Statistics/OverseasTradeStatisti...
And UK oil and gas extraction is about half of that of Norway, so they're not too sluggish there either.
It's easier to run a more isolated economy when so much of what you offer to others is a commodity.
I don't think that's the main thing they voted against rather than a percieved opaque, wasteful and possibly corrupt system.
(I'm not sure but I'm afraid media cherry picked a bit to present the image of dumb xenophobic Leave supporters.)
Norway has to pay the EU, has accepted free travel and has to adhere to EU regulations.
I don't see how this could be a "win" situation for the UK; it's just a downgrade of their status with the union.
I agree - the short term damage to the UK and global economy has been significant. That's confidence being shot down overnight, and the markets reacting accordingly.
> Even worse the uk won't secure any trade deal with Europe because they will want to discourage other nations to follow the same path.
Really? Come on now. You're telling me that European countries will stop selling to the UK?
Nobody really knows how this is going to unfold but it's not going to be doom any more than it's going to be a huge success. In the meantime please stop spreading hyperbole about how the sky is falling.
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter whether immigration has a net positive effect on employment, GDP or pretty much any other measure of wellbeing...
The reality is simple - there aren't enough jobs in the traditional industries for poorly educated people (especially in the North & Wales) to continue 'as normal' on a liveable wage. This has been the case for at least 30 years.
All solutions cost money - whether it is retraining, increasing the minimum wage/benefits or investing in forward thinking industry in affected areas, Politicians and the wealthier middle & upper classes decided it would be 'easier' as well as cheaper to perpetuate the lie that immigrants are to blame.
And after a few decades of continued job loss and struggles, there are now enough people who are affected and believe that immigrants are to blame, that our lies have finally caught up with us.
So it doesn't matter whether immigration is good or not - we've dug ourselves into a hole, and I can't see any politicians admitting the truth anytime soon.
On top of that is that the UK has had a different currency whereas in the rest of the Eurozone everyone uses the same currency. It's so easy to go to Belgium and just use whatever's already in your wallet. Like a country like France or Germany or Sweden leaving the Euro would be a much much bigger deal than Britain, which I don't think really integrated as well with everyday people as they do on the continent.
I'm not saying it is not a step back, but I doubt it will be the end of the west as global leaders some people are portraying this.
Ryanair and other low cost flights are cheap. And gas is expensive in Europe
Some do travel, but I guess they enjoy it less. Because they, for the most part, only speak English
> On top of that is that the UK has had a different currency
Which they chose not to change when the Euro came (and I'm actually with them here, and it's really not a big deal, especially with debit and credit cards of today)
Y2K, bird flu, Swine flu, SARS, Heterosexual AIDS, the hole in the ozone, over population, acid rain, mad cow, global cooling, global warming, Ebola, Zika virus...
Probably not.
Having said that, I am quite taken back by all the drama I'm hearing on my social feeds. It looks completely beyond the normal angst you would see in a nation changing its treaty status. I didn't hear this kind of emotion when decisions were made to go to war. That's really quite strange and somewhat disturbing.
Weirder still, much of this emotion is being brought out by my friends who aren't even part of the vote! Saudi Arabia is busy beheading people, and my friends from the U.S. are concerned about a possible recession in Britain due to a change in their trade policies. I do not understand this and it makes me think the conversation is being prodded/changed/guided somehow. But that's just a guess.
Whatever they do -- and I hear now that maybe they'll vote to go back, or the first vote doesn't mean much -- as long as there is a system in place for feedback and course correction, and the governing system has the consent of the governed, I wish them the best.
* The end of the UK (not all parts voted to leave)
* The end of the EU (starts a domino effect for other withdrawals)
* The rise of the political right in Europe, and what that means for upcoming elections
* The rise of populism worldwide, and what that means for the US election
* Instability in financial markets due to uncertainty
The answer I got was that this was a symbol that is related to a lot of other issues people care about, both overseas and at home. So the thing itself is not as important as what it might symbolize or portend.
I think this agrees with what you list.
Still, my interest is in free countries peacefully deciding how they want to govern themselves. Much more than their actual policy changes or what it might portend.
If I had to have an opinion, simply from watching the monetary policy sausage-making, I think the EU is a beta. And like many betas, it's structurally broken. That doesn't mean stay or leave. I really have no idea how you would go about fixing these structural issues. I imagine that no matter what some folks might think, there are no easy answers. Anything you do is going to suck in one way or another.
The EU is a code base that grew quickly and accrued a great deal of cruft in a short amount of time. The UK is simply taking their module of functions and breaking them out of the spaghetti EU behemoth. Rather than tight coupling to the rest of the EU code base, they'll be creating new and specific interfaces.
You've no idea how nice it is to read somebody talking about this situation with a level head.
> Having said that, I am quite taken back by all the drama I'm hearing on my social feeds.
The media have stirred up the general public in the UK to levels of crazy I've not witnessed since Tony Blair and the weapons of mass destruction.
I'm not on Facebook but my partner is, and the amount of emotion and spats she's witnessed on there have forced her to seriously consider closing her account. She's a self confessed Facebook addict, and just can't handle the amount of noise and vitriol. People are genuinely losing their minds over here.
It's impossible to have a meaningful discussion with pretty much anybody about the situation. Everyone has a very emotional stance, hardly anybody has facts to reference their arguments by.
> Whatever they do -- and I hear now that maybe they'll vote to go back
Despite the 2m people who have signed a meaningless petition, there's no going back. I hope people here now invest their time and efforts in making this work and coming together as a nation, rather than continuing to bitch and moan at one another - all the while freaking out about the fall of GB.
The UK has been through much worse than this. Like most things in life, the outcome won't be as good (or as bad) as those on either side would have us believe.
I'd like to think one thing we have learned is not to trust the media - but I doubt it.
The sad thing is that if the UK were more invested in the EU (for example, with the Schengen zone), then people might have ended up feeling more attached to it. The constant opt-outs made the UK an outsider, I think.
This does bring up Junker's reaction though("Please leave immediately, close the door behind you"), which is a depressing reality of how most EU politics end up happening.
Especially with the handling of Greece, there's this whole moral grandstanding that ends up becoming super antagonistic, when actual pragmatism would solve problems much better.
"They need to suffer for their sins" seems to be a leading political thought process in Brussels(+Paris+Berlin), that makes the union seem less like a partnership and more like the Troika, flying in and making things worse for the hosts.
If the UK indeed wants to leave (and the responsible and democratic thing to assume, given the vote, is that they do) then its best if they make that clear immediately and set negotiations in progress. That's best for the UK, best for the EU. It creates certainty where now there is none.
If the UK doesn't want to respect the will of its people then they should say so as quickly as possible, too! This is all common sense. We have to all know what to expect from the future to plan for it.
I mean, what the hell do you expect Juncker to do? Beg for the UK to remain?! The EU has, I think, always made it clear that they would respect the UK's sovereignty! Isn't this what this is all about?
The EU seems to be angry that now the UK has made its decision, instead of acting swiftly, the UK are trying to remain in the EU as long as possible before Brexit. The EU would rather the UK finish negotiations & leave as soon as possible, so that everyone has certainty again.
[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36615028
My impression is that the EU wants this to happen fast to stop the market turmoil as well but I'd bet it'll just get an extra boost once Article 50 gets invoked
The vast majority votes came from old people. And they really do want to leave.
I could well imagine that many "remain" non-voters would actually vote at a second referendum, tipping the scales.
But of course that is pretty much speculation, as seems to be Jacques' point. (or is there any data to back up that claim?)
...but I don't know what the primary source of that is.
Edit: Sorry about multiple broken links, I was klutz-editing this on my phone.
"If we leave, the public will have to suffer under 3.14 boondoggles worth of economic punishment" where boondoggle is an imaginary but comparable measurement of economic mismanagement and suffering.
and then in the next story on the nightly news
"The general public in the EU member country of Greece are suffering under an permanent and unimprovable EU enforced burden of 14152 boondoggles worth of economic punishment and the response from Brussels to the Greek people is F you, you suck and should suffer even more"
Given those two parallel news stories, the best bet to minimize suffering is to get out while you can. Basically the scaremongering about brexit doesn't reach the level of the journalist reports out of Greece and whats happening there today is coming to the UK unless they start running now.
I mean whats happening in Greece right now is awesome if you're a rich shareholder in a German bank. But a majority of UK people know who's going to get screwed and who's going to do the screwing when its time to squeeze the blood from the UK rock once they're done with Greece.
If the EU is so great, why aren't those UK citizens in support of it, emigrating en masse into Greece?
Now that's a straw man and I'm sure you know it. Let's turn the snark to 11:
If you were planning to emigrate to the Mediterranean climate and were short on funds, why wouldn't you aim for the cheap places - such as Egypt or Syria?
EU laws are basically incomprehensible currently, and the U.K. already has special relationships with the rest of the EU, like the separate currency, not being part of Schengen, etc.
Assuming other members of the EU don't follow the UK's example, the UK only has to negotiate with one - the EU. Tragedy of the commons might be at work here.
Even if Cameron figured that remain would win, he surely knew that the results would be close, that nothing would be actually be settled definitively. OTOH, a narrow win for leave may actually be definitive unless they manage to avoid brexiting somehow.