The economy held up pretty well, all things considered, and apparently much to the chagrin of the prophets of doom (not saying you are one or anything).
Remember when we were told by George Osborne there would be an immediate recession the day after a Leave vote?
Edit:
'Brexit could plunge Britain into an instant recession, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have said in the starkest economic warning yet of the consequences of Britain leaving the European Union.'
'he Treasury said unemployment would be 520,000 higher, wages 2.8 per cent lower and house prices 10 per cent down. In a severe shock joblessness would be 820,000 higher, wages down by 4 per cent and house prices 18 per cent lower.'
As I said in my original comment: wouldn't you expect the majority of the economic effects to hit after the economic situation changes? i.e. when British companies are suddenly subject to tariffs when exporting to Europe at the end of the year.
The fact that George Osbourne said that they would happen immediately is neither here nor there really.
I'm not sure we can come to any real conclusions about the economic impacts of it until we get well into 2021, even if many businesses have been preparing for it.
I don't disagree that it's _been happening_, i.e. some of its effects have happened already and continue to do so, but I wouldn't want to say "done and dusted, economy's fine" until it's properly happened and we're into 2021.
Companies have been making decisions based on the potential future changes to their economic position. But their economic position hasn't actually changed yet.
For many smaller companies there's not actually much they can do to prepare. They're just going to have to deal with the fallout when it happens. It seems to me that a lot of companies have gone with a "let's just carry on with business as usual while we still can" approach, and that they are going to get hit really badly when their product suddenly costs 20% more for a large proportiom of their customers.
That's pretty much been our position exactly. Preparing is even more difficult because the final terms of Brexit are still undecided so we don't know what to prepare for.
Preparing for the worst possible outcome for me would mean relocating everything (both business and family) to the EU except for staff, whom would no longer have jobs. This is obviously an ass-ache so I'm not going to do that unless I have to.
On the other hand living somewhere with better weather could be nice so I'll take things as they come.
Hmm...that "all things considered" is doing a lot of work here.
Although the UK officially left in January of this year, we're still in the transition period, so none of the actual Brexit effects have happened yet, only anticipatory ones. So this is kinda like saying the fall off the cliff hasn't really been bad "so far" while still standing on top of said cliff.
And yet, the £ is at all time lows and the cost so far has already been $170 billion, with another $70 billion by the end of the year.
Ah come on - the general consensus was that the performance of the UK economy was far better than the prophets of doom (of which there were plenty) had forecasted. Don't change the goalposts now.
"Three years on: the UK is paying a high economic price for its decision to leave the EU"
"While the UK started with a steeper growth trajectory, it has fallen behind other G7 countries since the referendum "
"Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose dramatically from 0.4 percent in June 2016 to 3 percent in January 2018. "
"Real wages dropped from a pre-referendum annual growth rate of 1.1% to less than 0.1% after the referendum"
--
And not sure what you mean by "changing goalposts". Surely you agree that the effects of Brexit will primarily come into effect after Brexit has happened?
The prophets of doom may yet have their moment in the sun considering that no laws have changed yet. And no one knows what the actual rules are going to be come 1/1/2021.
In my personal circumstances my business makes most of it's sales to the EU and if things happen like they look like might happen I'm going to be contractually forced to lower prices to compensate for any customs duty my customers will have to pay. Additionally I'll have to spend several more hours per week just to make customs documents, or hire someone to do it for me.
So I'm still really hoping the customs union will remain intact.
And no one knows what the actual rules are going to be come 1/1/2021.
Right. There's still no deal between the UK and the EU. The UK still wants many of the benefits of being in the EU without submitting to the EU's trade rules.[1]
One of the reasons this is important is that it's quite hard to get a visa for many EU Countries. If Germany opened a skilled\tech\finance visa program, you'd easily see double the current number. I'm not sure whether they've held off because they don't want to do it or as a show of goodwill for the "negotiations" but they would be doing themselves and many decent people a favour if they pulled the trigger. Brexiteers won't be reasoned with and being reasonable is seen as weakness by them.
> Brexiteers won't be reasoned with and being reasonable is seen as weakness by them.
This “reasonableness is weakness” thing seems to be a more and more clear trend in western culture... It’s quite disturbing and seems very dangerous to me.
Or is it something that’s been circulating for a long time, just that I haven’t noticed?
It's the 'movie' version of negotiating that plays to a populist crowd.
It intersects with other 'tough guy' identity tropes that are being (successfully) used in domestic political battles to gain power, and then are repositioned to be used in foreign relations with predictably terrible outcomes.
The problem is the audience of the negotiating stance isn't the counterparty, it's the domestic base who elected you because they were fed up with nuance and are suspicious of the counterparty.
This isn't just a Brexit problem, but is much more widespread.
I don't know how you'd be able to align incentives any worse.
> It's the 'movie' version of negotiating that plays to a populist crowd.
See also: "the art of the deal"
> The problem is the audience of the negotiating stance isn't the counterparty, it's the domestic base who elected you because they were fed up with nuance and are suspicious of the counterparty.
Not just the nuance, but the lack of dramatic change, a handful of examples of bad behavior by the party of nuance being equally corrupt or useless, and a constant stream of propaganda highlighting that.
I don’t think people disagree more than they ever used to. I do think however that people are much more likely to judge those who disagree with them as simply being bad people, and are therefor willing to just dismiss their point of view entirely. Which is pretty much what the parent comment is doing. For anybody who’s legitimately curious about why Brexiteers so firmly won’t be reasoned with, I’d suggest you take a look at this survey that shows how much less likely remain voters are to understand the motives of leave voters, than leave voters are to understand the motives of remain voters.
Really I think most people generally agree on what they want from society. Outside of the fringes, the primary points of contention revolve around how to prioritize issues over other issues, and the specifics of the approach to solving them.
Respectfully, I have talked to hundreds of brexiteers and looked at everything they claim. Then dismissed it. It's exposure, not a lack of exposure that makes me dismiss them. As far as I can tell (I am no social scientist) they'd be flat-earthers or anti-vaxers but they got got caught up in brexit first...
I think this whole thing has really taught me a lot.
One aspect of that is that people are not rational by nature. Another is that we cannot change that about them and actually it's as much a force of nature as a hurricane or an earthquake. You cannot argue or reason with any of these forces.
Our mistake has been failing to build quake proof cities, not failing to appreciate the earthquakes point of view...
I think that's a view that a fair number of people have. Of course the error in it is that you're confusing "different rationale to mine" with "lack of rationale". It's very easy to look at people who disagree with you and presume that they're uninformed or irrational. When the truth is most certainly that you and the person you disagree with are both misinformed and irrational, only about different stuff. By refusing to acknowledge the possibility that people may in-fact engage in well reasoned consideration about a topic, and come to a different conclusion than you did, you're just perpetuating the very thing you're complaining about. You can disagree with me, and I may in-fact be completely wrong, but I do think I've presented a rational position, and made some effort to substantiate it. Something I can't really see here in your comments.
Of course, you're correct that there could be a rationale for brexit. But that begs the question: what is it? After 100s of discussions with 100s of brexiteers, none has been forthcoming. They've made weird claims about soverignty\trade\immigration\fishing\passport-colour-schemes etc, but those all fall down when you introduce facts and yet brexiteers don't change their position. So the real rationale must be something else.
So we're presented with 2 possible realities:
* EITHER, there is no rationale for brexit beyond the "It's what I want and I don't know why but I do" rationale (weak right?). I might not agree with this, but I would respect it if that was what brexiteers said. I can't justify my love of chocolate but I still love it.
* OR, There is a rationale for brexit, but it is secret and cannot be shared with me, and people insist they will share it for unknown reasons, but then don't also for other unknown reasons.
This second position seems a little crazy, but I will admit it is technically possible. Perhaps 17million people have all been initiated into the secrets of brexit and my small remainer mind cannot fathoms such great matters...
OR you could take a look at the article you were linked to about various surveys, and see what they had to say about the self-reported motivations of the voters. Might be enlightening.
How have you managed hundreds of conversations with hundreds of different "brexiteers"? Do you have exact figures? Is it part of your job? Is a "brexiteer" the same as someone who voted to leave the EU, or do you mean something more specific?
The linked article supports my position: people claim to have voted for brexit because of X, but when facts come in and disprove X, they claim it was Y. Rinse, repeat.
People need to stop pretending they had a viable reason for their vote. If they admitted it was just personal preference I'd accept that. But pretending it was logical when it wasn't is frankly insulting.
My reading of it was that it compared peoples motivations for voting against what other people thought were their motivations, and showed a difference. I saw no section there that said "and when they were proved wrong ..."
Honestly I think your attitude here is terrible
One of the major reasons given there in the surveys is that leave voters wanted UK law to be made by the UK. How has that been "disproven"?
It may not be something you care about, but that's very different.
This is a really useful site, I looked at it when the Brexit vote happened but I was told I couldn't apply until the UK actually exited. Since we have now technically left the EU, but we haven't actually left it for any legal, economic or trade purposes, do you know if I can start applying?
"Blue Card" is a directive. That means that the EU legislates the high-level principles, but implementation is up to each member state. So each member state's government and immigration authorities gets to fill in the missing details in the rules for themselves. Hence, the answer to your question is likely going to depend on which member state you are applying to.
Not all EU member states have implemented Blue Card. Ireland and Denmark have an opt-out of EU immigration policy under the EU treaties. (So did the United Kingdom prior to Brexit.) All other member states are supposed to implement it, but the issue with directives is that member states often fail to do so at all, or fail to do so properly. The European Commission can prosecute them in the European Court of Justice for those failures, which can result in them being fined by the EU.
Under the withdrawal agreement you don't need a visa to move to or work in an EU country until the end of the withdrawal agreement. If you do so, get a job there, and register that you have done so (details depend on country), then you can stay there after the end of December. What you won't then be able to do is move freely to another EU country, and it does potentially get tricky if you lose your job.
So if you seriously plan to move, now is a very good time to do it.
> Brexiteers won't be reasoned with and being reasonable is seen as weakness by them.
Theresa May's deal was remain in all but name and there was multiple opportunities to vote in favour of it over a period of years. The only compromise willing to be accepted by the remain camp was complete capitulation.
This is the problem for Brits looking to leave: We weren't eligible for many visas because we were part of the EU so we didn't need them. Now we are leaving but no one has setup visas on either side since there is ongoing negotiations and other issues to contend with. So now we've "fallen between two stools".
In the worst case scenario British citizens will have to apply for work visas like non-EU citizens?
Ie skilled workers will apply for skilled workers visa and compete against non-EU citizens?
It's an amazing way to move to the EU, and in Germany it's a really easy way to get Permanent Residence (you can do it in 21 months, if you learn German up to B1, or 36 otherwise). It also guarantees a high enough salary (55k minimum).
Blue cards are extremely hard to get and most EU member states don’t issue them (they haven’t passed the legislation to support it).
There are far far easier way and often under much better terms to get a work visa in virtually any EU member state as both skilled and unskilled workers.
Working for a mid-sized Berlin startup, most of my coworkers who are not EU citizens and don't yet have permanent residency are working here on a Blue card. Especially for folks from the US, Canada and Australia it seems really easy to get - you can even apply for it in-country.
You could only apply in country from a specific set of countries, it's easy to get if you have a recognized higher education degree and a job offer of over 55K (45K in Tech).
They are really not hard to get, especially in Germany. Obtaining the visa to enter the country and starting the work, took only a day (plus another day for the consulate to ship my passport) and the card was issued within 6 weeks after my appointment with foreigners office.
Although, getting the appointment with foreigners office took 5 months (after my first entry to the country), because of the high number of applicants, but they have a legislation that automatically extends your visa if you have an appointment for a long term residence permit.
It has higher requirements than a Tier 2 General Work Visa in the UK for example, both in terms of salary and education.
For Germany specifically if you are over 45 years old getting a work visa would hard to impossible, you need to provide proof of substantial existing retirement funds such as a private pension.
The regular Work visa is hard to get yes if you are older, but Blue Card does not have any age requirements or savings, as far as I know (otherwise, I would not be able to get it in the first place).
I assume most of the readers here would be able to get a job that is above Blue Card minimum salary, since the median pay for software developers here are above the requirement.
Last I checked, Brits couldn't apply yet as we were still technically part of the EU. Has that changed since we "left but not really" a few months back?
Brexiteers won't be reasoned with and being reasonable is seen as weakness by them.
But that's not true at all. If you asked a Brexiteer, they would say Article 50 could have been invoked the day after the referendum, and instead they spent 2 whole years trying to find an accommodation that would satisfy Remainers too, you can't ask for any more "reasoning with" than that. But Remainers wouldn't budge from the position of ignoring the referendum result completely, they had no regard whatsoever for the wishes of Brexiteers. None at all. We could have had such a soft Brexit that it would have been indistinguishable from remaining, but hardline Remainers made that all but impossible with their intransigence.
Eventually the entire country grew tired of those antics and delivered Boris an 80-seat majority on his single mantra of "get Brexit done". I know this is off-narrative but the Brexiteers bent over backwards to be reasonable.
No, it was the insistence on avoiding ECJ jurisdiction and ending free movement that caused hard Brexit. Nothing more. There was no support from conservatives for the softer "indicative votes".
From the outside, Leavers ran the government. Leavers insisted that May was a great negotiator by holding her cards close to her chest (and then fired her ASAP when they saw her cards).
From the outside, Leavers openly told Remainers that Leavers had no reason to compromise with anyone — not the EU, not Remainers, and not each other.
Every time I discussed anything with a Leaver, my concerns were always and without fail dismissed as “Project Fear” — the other party would even say that about the possibility of no deal while saying no deal was their negotiating tactic.
Now, I don’t doubt that you’ve seen some idiots promoting Remain just as I’ve seen idiots promoting Leave — but can you give any example of Leave trying to compromise with Remain?
Not with each other (basically everyone hates what May came up with, Remain and Leave alike), not with the EU, but with Remain?
According to some very weird methodology which looks like they decided beforehand which cities they want to have on top and then build a methodology to ensure it happens.
I'd read somewhere else that start-up costs in Germany are prohibitive vs. just about anywhere else in Europe, but I can't find that article. Personal experience trumps that of a journalist though.
It's probably a matter of personal opinion and choice and opportunity.
Berlin has a tech startup sector (supposedly) almost as big as London. So whether it's a good place to start a company may not matter: if it is where all the jobs are, and I need a job then I'm there.
I do Fintech, so I'm looking at a niche of startups. That pushes me to Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris and Zurich as those are the (non London) finance hubs in the EU. But if I saw a job where I could work remotely or where they were based elsewhere, I'd go elsewhere.
I actually just started working remotely for a company technically incorporated in London. So once I pass probation etc, I may go to Germany to master my German. But as you indicate, I'd find a place with good work life balance and low costs and opportunities that suit me. Not just blindly walk to Berlin. :)
> Brexiteers won't be reasoned with and being reasonable is seen as weakness by them.
Respectfully, neither will many 'remainers'. There are many who refuse to even consider reasons people may have had for wanting to leave, and insist on viewing everything through a lens of presumed racism.
I voted to remain, but not through any great conviction. I don't believe that any sort of responsive democracy is really possible at the scale of the EU, and I do believe that the democratic institutions of the EU are lacking. We know that comparatively not all that many British people make much use of freedom of movement. I also don't believe that all concerns about the volume and speed of immigration to the UK should be brushed off as mere xenophobia or racism, in light of housing shortages. That's not to say that these necessarily add up to a leave vote, they didn't in my case, nor that leaving the EU will fix anything.
But to view the entirety of 17 million leave voters as unreasonable by definition, well that's pretty unreasonable itself.
The vote was a close one; it should have been taken into account to come up with a compromise. I think remainers were ready to accept a soft Brexit and everyone would have moved on. It would have represented a loss of influence for the UK (it's going to happen anyway), but it would not have been the shit show that we have seen since then. The soft Brexit proposition exploded right after the vote, and Brexiters started pushing for a very hard Brexit.
I disagree with your statement on the democracy not working at the scale of the EU. The EU is a democratic institution, with limited responsibilities (the UK famously fought back against tighter integration). Recent history in the EU has shown that people are ready for more integration now that the UK is (unfortunately) gone (as seen 2 weeks ago with the common debt).
> I think remainers were ready to accept a soft Brexit and everyone would have moved on.
> The soft Brexit proposition exploded right after the vote,
I've not seen much evidence of this particularly, our parliament spent a long time arguing over exactly what flavour of soft brexit might be acceptable while both hard brexiter and hard remainer minorities postured and shouted and in some cases started legal proceedings. Eventually the different groups blocked and barracked each other so much the whole thing fell apart.
Outside of parliament there were plenty of cheerleaders for just leaving, absent any ongoing agreement, but also plenty for finding methods to overturn the entire thing.
> I disagree with your statement on the democracy not working at the scale of the EU.
But you understand that I have an opinion based on looking at the EU and at other large democracies (like the US), observing how their political classes are remote from the public and relatively unaccountable, and how hard it seems to be for citizens to affect change? As compared to somewhere like Iceland, where a small movement can have a big effect? And you grant that it is a reasonable opinion to hold even if you yourself don't hold it and disagree with it being important?
That's my point here really, we don't have to agree, but casting everyone that disagrees you as unreasonable and unwilling to listen to reason is not a good thing. Though it does seem to happen in a lot of public discourse these days.
Where exactly did I cast anyone who disagrees with me as unreasonable and/or unwilling to listen to reason?
The problem with a referendum and abstract propositions is that people all put something different behind the Brexit vote and it was then impossible to reconcile all the positions (plus all the empty promises like the 350m for the NHS). Brexit became something very different than what was originally sold and some people asked for a second referendum to clarify the situation now that things were getting clearer. This act can be criticized or misunderstood, but I don't think anyone can argue that Brexit is a very different animal 4 years later (the unicorn honestly looks more like a donkey up close).
Brexit has shown that the disconnection between the political class and the people had nothing to do with the EU. Dominic Cumming refused to quit despite being caught in clear breach of the lockdown is the perfect example of it.
The EU parliament is elected directly by the voters, and representative are nominated by governments that are also elected. The US has a completely different electoral system, where (like in the UK), candidates with fewer national votes can become leaders (I find these systems undemocratic, a voice is a voice, its geographical location should not matter).
> Where exactly did I cast anyone who disagrees with me as unreasonable and/or unwilling to listen to reason?
You didn't, that's not an accusation I'm making against you, it was the point I tried to get across in the first post of mine that you replied to. I was hoping you'd agree that it was unhelpful to cast all disagreement as necessarily unreasonable, something the top poster seemed to be doing.
> Brexit has shown that the disconnection between the political class and the people had nothing to do with the EU
I don't disagree with this either (well, maybe I'd modify it slightly, and say it has more to do with Westminster than the EU, but I don't absolve the EU entirely). In fact I think we need much more devolved and locally empowered democracy within the UK. And this isn't incompatible with EU membership. (I mentioned I voted 'remain', right?)
However, as the EU drives towards closer union I fear that we'll see the problems that are present in other large democracies, and which I think are already present in the EU structures to various extents, exaggerate.
> The EU parliament is elected directly by the voters, and representative are nominated by governments that are also elected.
That second part there is an issue, IMHO, because I vote for a local candidate for the UK parliament, they then (if part of the ruling party) put their mandate behind a prime minister, and (s)he effectively chooses our representative on the Commission, which has a lot of power. This is several steps removed from any vote. Is it the fault of the EU? I'm unsure, perhaps we could have a system of directly electing a commissioner, but perhaps that's a bad idea as a technocrat is what's wanted there. Either way the UK seat on the commission has been held by people like Lord Mandelson - twice disgraced out of cabinet, an electoral liability who got promoted to the lords and then the commission. I'd prefer to see the commission de-emphasised (which I know has been happening to some extent, slowly).
I think the whole edifice needs a rework, local, national and supra-national.
It's not that hard for Germany. The problem is more that there are multiple competing schemes, and it's kind of a mess. Make-it-in-germany.com should be a good guide
The article is however quite bad at distinguishing between:
- British nationals moving their place of residence from the UK to the EU
- British nationals already resident in the EU changing their nationality so they can stay there after free movement is taken away from them
And doesn't mention the third category: EU nationals normally resident in the UK deciding to return, and whether being deemed ineligable for "settled status" or indefinite leave to remain is a factor in that.
People who I have spoken to about this tend to be pragmatic; even a damaged UK provides more economic and social freedom than many parts of eastern Europe. Especially compared to rapidly de-liberalising Poland. However, we've yet to see how badly the government copes with the end of the transition period.
It also appears to omit that a lot of skilled workers from EU countries are doing the exact same but in reverse. I always liked the Guardian, but their stories on brexit have been terrible, to the point that you can't trust them at all.
That's not my experience; a lot of friends and colleagues have left the UK to go back to the EU since the referendum vote.
Also, in terms of recruitment, very few people are now interested in coming over to the UK for engineering positions. We used to have a lot of talented candidates from EU countries (especially Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, etc.); we have not had a single applicant from these countries since the vote.
FTA: “the study found huge changes in migration patterns of UK citizens since the 2016 referendum, which contrast with largely stable ones among nationals from the 27 EU states remaining in the bloc.”
By "naturalization" I was referring to the fact the article is talking about people getting passports. You can't get a passport unless you've lived there for a substantial amount of years.
Banks kind of had to move their headquarters out of London, to avoid the risk of being cut off from most of their customers.
But now if your employer changes from being an UK to a German company, then suddenly that means that they might not be able to keep employing you, thanks to "your" British politicians trying to keep a hard stance against cross border employment.
So then suddenly your choices are:
- keep your passport, but you'll likely lose your job and be forced to move out of your house
- change your passport and keep your job and your house
To me, that explains why now so many Britons choose option B.
The article doesn't really explain it, but many of those asking for a passport now are already living in Germany, so they merely want to stay where they are.
And as someone living in Germany, I'd like to add that the government handling of Covid, unemployment support, and free access to healthcare will really sweeten the deal. Would you want to move from Berlin (almost no restrictions apart from wearing face masks) to London at this time?
> Banks kind of had to move their headquarters out of London
Which ones have done this?
IIRC JPMC have increased their office capacity in Ireland, but I haven't heard of multiple banks moving headquarters (though I heard lots of rumours that they would)
> In the coming months alone, Barclays may ditch its investment bank's headquarters in the capital; Credit Suisse is offloading nine floors of office space; and Morgan Stanley is reviewing its entire London footprint.
Seems a mixture of speculation, downsizing of workforce and office space due to coronavirus, and all sorts of other things. I don't think that supports the idea that "Banks kind of had to move their headquarters out of London"
Yes it’s too soon to say what the outcome will be. The plans we hear about are either not yet realized, or just one option of many. I don’t doubt that many will shrink their presence because they need to expand in Dublin or Frankfurt, but it remains to be seen just by how much.
"Goldman Sachs is pushing ahead with making Frankfurt, Germany, its key European base. This week, the Wall Street giant agreed to lease multiple floors for offices in a 38-storey building, as part of its Brexit contingency plans."
"The US investment bank, Goldman Sachs is to trial its Brexit contingency plans by making senior position transfers to Frankfurt, following concerns that the UK will lose it’s ‘passporting rights’."
"Last month, Credit Suisse revealed it was planning to move about 250 of its 5,500 London banking jobs in the first phase its Brexit contingency plans. Bloomberg reported employees in areas such as trading and mergers and acquisitions were likely to be relocated to Frankfurt or Madrid, ..."
So GS haven't moved headquarters, even though they have moved a small number of personnel.
Some others appear to be increasing capacity in Frankfurt and other European centres, or at least they were two years ago. All very predictable and sensible given what may happen.
But this still doesn't add up to "Banks kind of had to move their headquarters out of London". In fact so far there hasn't been a single example (here, in the thread) of a bank that has actually done that. Just a lot of speculation.
(I'm not making any strong claims that it won't happen, by the way, I just wanted to challenge the trope that it already has happened)
Yup, and as far as I know, the people who used to work there are now in Frankfurt. With that in mind, it would make a lot of sense for them to now try to switch passports so that they can remain there.
Banks haven't moved HQs out of London, and likely never will when #1 and #2 in the world are New York and London, and share the same language, and want to be as time-zone close as possible.
My grandmother was born at around the peak of the British Empire, and in her funeral there was a story of her childhood in a military base in the British Raj.
The pound was the world reserve currency, India was the jewel in the largest empire the world has ever seen and upon which the sun would never set, and Westminster ruled directly and indirectly over more than a third of the world GDP — roughly equivalent to $30 trillion/year against the world of 2018.
When my brother was a child, that same great empire had been so reduced that it found itself forced to make a series of humiliating fishing rights concessions to Iceland, total population ~350,000.
The world can become unrecognisable in even just a few years; that just gets more likely when you assume nothing can ever change.
Back in the early 00's when it looked like Frankfurt might compete with London, Gordon Brown introduced 'light touch regulation', and aligned us strongly with the US which made Frankfurt unattractive to US banks. Of course that fanned the winds of the credit crunch.
Let's hope history doesn't repeat itself post-2020, and Rishi Sunak doesn't do anything like that. But who knows?
> In the four years since the Brexit referendum, 31,600 Brits have been granted dual British/German citizenship: 2019 saw 14,600 naturalisations compared to 622 in 2015.
While I agree there's cause for concern in general, a fair portion of these are people's citizenship catching up with where they've built their lives.
After all, pre-Brexit you could have lived in Germany since childhood, been educated there, got a job, got married to a German and started a family of German kids - all while holding a UK passport yourself. For someone in that situation, Brexit makes getting that German citizenship a lot more urgent.
Precisely. Until they begin moving for purely economic reasons rather than personal/political, it’ll continue resembling the USA -> CAN trickle, not the deluge the other way around.
Well, the numbers for Western Europeans should decline because a lot of people won't bother anymore, considering the harsher residence requirements and the numbers for Eastern Europeans will go down because in many cases they won't even qualify for visas at all (just like they don't qualify for US visas now, in many cases).
The real question is: will blocking this immigration also make the powers that be redistribute wealth more to the poor natives? Time will tell :-)
Nobody's getting chucked out if they decide to stay on British citizenship and permanent residence. People are taking citizenship now because if they wait they'll be required to renounce their British citizenship to naturalize.
That, and they want the ability to travel to other EU countries a German passport would guarantee them - rather than waiting for the uncertain results of negotiations by the pro-brexit UK government.
You only need a long-stay visa to get visa free entry into the other Schengen states for 90 days. No need to get a German passport for that! You also don't need one to get the right to work in another EU state.
Wouldn't it make sense, as a part of the same study, to answer the question of how many EU citizens are getting the _UK_ citizenship? The fact that this is not even discussed suggests that the study is designed to confirm an underlying agenda.
Surely this is nothing to worry about, given that (according to the Guardian's worldview) we have hundreds of doctors, engineers and scientists arriving at the coast of Kent by dinghy every day. You wonder why the French let them leave!
They're saying there are a small number of healthcare professionals arriving as asylum seekers, and that it makes no sense to prevent those people from working especially during the worst pandemic the world has seen for many years.
Come on now - the howls of outrage from the Guardian et al would be incessant were the UK to introduce policies that were properly deterrent to illegal immigration. The left is desperate for immigration of all kinds, legal and illegal, because it thinks it can get immigrants hooked on benefits and push politics left for ever. That's the plan, no?
What is shortsighted is importing millions of people to a small, already overcrowded island and thereby reducing quality of life and further destroying the environment. But somehow I'm not allowed to have an opinion on controlling our borders etc. else I'm a bad person.
You are ofcourse entitled to your own opinions. But that does not mean others can't ridicule those opinions. Nor do you have a right to be listened to.
The left does not want people hooked on benefits. Paying benefits is expensive in a socialist society. The left wants workers who are properly compensated in line with the value they provide, and a social safety net for when they are unable to work.
You could say that the leadership of the right is desperate for immigration and to get people on benefits. Immigration gives nativists someone to look down on, making them easier to exploit. Paying sub-poverty-level benefits is cheap and makes the workforce desperate to accept just-about-poverty-level wages. The working class exists in order to frighten the middle class. The underclass exists to frighten the working class.
Also bear in mind that illegal immigrants do not get "hooked on benefits", they get deported or exploited by "economic libertarians".
Asylum seekers are not allowed to work. I don’t like that they’re not allowed to work, but that’s really the fault of the British government for passing laws that say they’re not allowed to work.
They’re also not allowed to vote. That part at least make sense to me.
Asylum seekers who can even get as far as the UK are necessarily richer and more resourceful than most — because the average monthly salary in e.g. Syria is 149,000 SYP [0] (~= 222 GBP) which means most of those who could even leave Syria in the first place had no real choice and had to flee to much closer places to Syria such as Turkey or Iraq [1], and those who can reach the UK will overwhelmingly be either be high-skilled, rich by dumb luck, or minors sent by their families.
This argument applies to basically all asylum seekers, not just those from the Syrian civil war.
That aside, how many unskilled jobs that don’t require idiomatic grasp of English in local accents (which would include cashiers, baristas, and other customer-facing roles) aren’t being replaced by robots and offshoring?
An amazing obsession for all the Daily Mail commenters : the dinghies. In France this question raises perplexity : why do you think we should enforce your border control instead of your administration ? You pay us for having your border in France at Calais, but you do not pay us to make the job of your border officers. Recruit agents and give France a break please. We have other concerns than your Brexit or your migration policies.
France: 'Pah! We have other concerns than your Brexit'
Also France: 'Don't you dare block our fishing boats from British waters after Brexit OR ELSE!!!!!!'
Personally I suspect this is about the poor migrants being used as a bargaining chip in Brexit negotiations by the French, i.e., the French saying 'this is a taste of what we will do if you dare give us a bad deal'.
What I don't understand is why they think the UK is so much better than France! I don't think the two countries are that different and France has plenty of opportunities of its own, plus it's much bigger whereas the UK is overcrowded, expensive and competitive. In their position I think I'd rather stay in France :)
You do not get it : this is your own country. Check your own borders by yourself. You Brexited to restore your sovereignty that was stolen by the EUSSR (Copyright Daily Mail)... Well exercise this sovereignty now.
And I do not think that there is a bargaining strategy anymore in the EU negociation team : the no-deal is on going. And the main reason is that your government has not the required level to manage the divorce. From the outside it seems that they could not manage anything anyway.
> From the outside it seems that they could not manage anything anyway.
Do you honestly think the media would report it if the UK government were doing a good job? Along with Brussels, the media are all still seething with anger that the common people dared stand up to their masters.
Did you have a look to your death toll ? Do you have a big picture of the trajectory of the brexit negociations since 2016 ? The tories arte killing you literally and economically, just like republicans are killing the US. You are even on the verge of a secession in your kingdom. your government is inept and inapt.
The stats should be treated with extreme suspicion at this stage - I've read that the only way to get a decent handle on deaths will be via comparison to normal trends. There is zero chance that deaths are being recorded via the same standards and processes in every country.
Regarding the Brexit negotiations, it hardly helped having a Parliament composed of MPs intent of subverting the result of the referendum, and a civil service, media etc. that chose to go to war with the people. Things look a lot better for the UK now that we have a government that actually intends to stand up for the country instead of delivering it gift-wrapped into the hands of foreign powers to do with as they please.
I always think it's funny when the topic of the break up of the UK is brought up as something British people should be really upset about. Anti-English racism is common in Wales and Scotland (I recall being on the receiving end on several occasions at University - the ridiculous thing being that although I was brought up in England I am more than 50% Welsh by blood!). And England - where I live - will be better off, and more likely to have right wing politics, which is always a good thing. Scotland has a whole range of deep, entrenched problems, and is effectively bankrupt without massive transfers of tax money from England. So enjoy paying for that if/when you let them back in the EU. At least then they won't be able to constantly moan about England any more (though I note their hatred of all things English doesn't extend to English money, quelle surprise!), and will likely start to moan about Brussels instead. And anyway, aren't Europhiles always telling us the nation state is obsolete etc?
> "Things look a lot better for the UK now that we have a government that actually intends to stand up for the country instead of delivering it gift-wrapped into the hands of foreign powers to do with as they please."
Well it sounds like the UK was not an active EU member when I listen to Brexiters. Just like if you had no power and influence on the system. What a joke. The matter is your leaders never read the manual to integrate Europe. Their mouth were always full of "I want my money back", "There cannot be a politic project, EU has to be a trade block" or "Let's have a cake and eat it". They never wanted to make the integration of UK a success. And moreover, the most moronic press in the UK has sold you guys that all your issues these last decades came from the EU, while most of the time, they came from your own gov.
About the death toll, if you have any doubts about the NHS numbers, just read others : how many people died this year during the pandemic compared to last year on the same period. Numbers might be worse than those of the NHS. Guys, your own PM is so stupid he caught it because he didn't want to respect social distancing... He is as smart and relevant as Bolsonaro. Imagine the consequences if he died...
And about the future secession in your own Union: many English express the idea they would be better off without the Scots. Any many Scots are fed up with England. Your future looks like a divorce. For, us French, this not only a mistake, this is a sin. The integrity of a country is sacred. If you give up your own land and destroy your union, it means that you do not deserve to be an important nation anymore. You are just weak and senseless. Soon, you are a prey.
I moved to Portugal in 2017, mainly because of Brexit, though sun, sea, surf & lifestyle also played a part.
In this area Cascais-Lisbon, I’ve met umpteeen very wealthy entrepreneurs and professionals who have moved from the UK including many South Africans and Australians who were in London but had enough of the miserable weather.
I don’t miss the UK lifestyle is so much better here.
What's the language barrier and job market like there? Portugal seems more appealing to myself than Spain for some reason, perhaps because I've never been to Portugal...
Not a terrible deal if you're working for an international firm remotely and can be anywhere. Some job security issues -- e.g. lining up a new one if you get fired or something -- but that can be worked around.
You can easily get by without Portuguese, most locals have excellent English as does the large friendly expat community (many Scandanavians Brazilians and Americans).
Economy was booming (prior to Covid) wages are quite low if income originates locally - but most of people that I know (who have a great lifestyle) work for international companies or have their own business.
I think almost everyone involved would have already been resident, if they are measuring it by passport issuance. I am moving (officially in the next few months, in practice already) to an EU country but won't qualify for a passport for 5 years. The deadline for most people to make a move like this is the end of this year, and in fact some countries (e.g. France) haven't even made the official process for changing residency available yet.
I'm a British software developer and SaaS business owner
I left the UK in 2017 because of Brexit. My company generates about GBP150k per employee. Prior to leaving this was 100% UK workforce. Following my relocation this is <50% and falling as we move to contract-based + remote. That's my n=1 experience with the "brain drain"
When I left the UK, there was a large & growing political/economic divide, unaffordable housing and poor/declining public services. It gave me a lot of stress and anxiety. Having left, I feel more disinvested from how things are turning out in the UK and it's helped greatly with my wellbeing
I've met other brits in my host country that share my n=1 experience. We're all just trying to quietly get along with it really - stay working and raising families
Piggybacking here because you stated a sentiment that really resonates with me.
I left the UK in 2014 for a “1-2yr Max!” Period as my girlfriend was getting her masters degree in Sweden.
The echoes of the Ivestigatory Powers Act and the threat of a looming referendum gave me a little pause on my desire to return, but we both thought it was political posturing so we put aside our worries and continued the plans to return, albeit more apprehensively.
After the result was announced I was upset, a whole bloc was going to close to me, the ruling party (whom I fundamentally disagree with) was going to remove a lot of the checks which kept it accountable, lots of uncertainty- my family suddenly became openly racist (that’s just anecdotal though, certainly not all those who chose leave are racist but my family apparently was) — which is ironic as my mother and I have polish surnames from my great-grandfather who fought in the war and was exiled from Poland for it.
The longer I stayed away the more “detached” I became, the more coldly I looked at the situation and dispassionately assessed statistics and debates. You can’t know from the inside how farcical this whole thing looks.
I naturalised to become a Swedish citizen as soon as the option was available to me, I have no personal stake in the future of my home country anymore.
I’m still “pro-remain” but only because I still think it’s best for the country. I don’t really care that much any longer.
>When I left the UK, there was a large & growing political/economic divide, unaffordable housing and poor/declining public services.
None of those are particular to Brexit. House prices have been unaffordable to many in Britain since the 80s, and even more so, in the 90s. Houses prices are also supply and demand. Since Britain's population has increased by almost 10 million since 1997, demand vastly outstrips supply, especially in the south-east. This affects public services too.
Political divide is an interesting one. Given the two party politics in the UK, plus fringes, and the rise of social media (and Warhol's prophecy), this would also be a problem. Brexit made it worse, but without a crystal ball, it's impossible to say how much worse.
In my experience knowing and working with foreign people in the UK, most of them long to go home. I'm not sure if that's the case for Brits working abroad, but I'm sure it is. I remember after the first time I went abroad it was little things like the font on the road signs that made me feel glad to be back in Britain. The only places I've felt even remotely "at home" while abroad are colonies, like South Africa, even though on paper it would seem much more "foreign" than anywhere in Europe.
So I don't think Brexit will fuel anything here. If anything it will make Britain seem more like home and make people less likely to leave. Uncontrolled immigration means your home is less like your home every day. That's what will force people to leave. And unless those people find themselves in a colony, they're doomed to be forever foreign.
As a Brit who has been living and working abroad for ten years I don’t agree with your take. I love the country I’m living in and feel totally at home here.
I don't know the current numbers but prior to Brexit, more British people expatriated to countries like Australia, Canada and America than the EU combined (with the exception of Spain, which is high on the list due to retirees moving to the English enclaves in the Costa del Sol).
Leaving the European Union is going to allow the UK to make the kinds of trade and visa arrangements with these countries that reflect the interests of the majority of expats, the kind that it should already have had.
It seems clear from noises in the government that the UK's also likely to create a low tax, deregulated environment for technology companies while the EU seems more interested in passing regulations that stifle them. As for public services and infrastructure, there's an eye-watering spending plan for this parliament to rebuild the UK.
Fair enough to anyone that had enough and left for the EU, I understand that completely. But I think long term, some of those same people are going to be quite surprised by how this plays out. I don't think that the UK is circling the drain as per the non-stop media assessment over recent years.
> Leaving the European Union is going to allow the UK to make the kinds of trade and visa arrangements with these countries that reflect the interests of the majority of expats, the kind that it should already have had.
If you're talking strictly about immigrants, UK could have made visa arrangements in the EU. A bunch of EU members have such agreements with non EU members, already.
The regions of the UK that voted for Brexit will probably be hit the hardest because a deregulated environment for technology companies will not benefit them. The loss of the single market and JIT manufacturing will, most certainly, lead to the closures of manufacturing sites. We could also imagine the downfall of some industries in the UK (aeronautics for example).
The eye-watering spending plan will require cash, a lot of it, and the COVID + Hard Brexit that's currently looming could very well prevent it from happening. The government has not been great so far at following up on their promises.
The EU was scapegoat that the government and tabloids used for a lot of issues that were mostly national (including the infamous immigration laws). Even after leaving the EU, the blame game is still in full play; never is anyone taking responsibilities for their actions, it's always the others' fault.
That’s a fantasy that the UK will end up a low tax deregulated economy - the Gov is spending money like water and somebody will have to pay for this, also the PC Nanny-state culture is well engrained and won’t be disappearing any time soon.
Another n=1 anecdote here: I am a relatively junior academic in one of the UK's formerly-excellent universities, and I will be moving my lab and leaving the country ahead of Brexit in 2021, starting a new professorship on the last day of December.
This is for many different reasons – but the loss of EU citizenship brings with it loss to EURATOM, significantly affecting the availability of medical isotopes; the loss of access to Erasmus exchange-student funding; the loss of access to the ERC; and the loss of regulatory oversight of the European medicines agency, the EMA. All of these things could be retained with political will, but no will is forthcoming.
Why does this matter? Well, I am a medical physicist / engineer, and I make things for quantifying biology. The US FDA requirements and the EU EMA requirements define what is feasible. They are often at odds. The EMA is, as a rule, stricter, and in my experience in trying to conduct multinational clinical trials, the EU regulations are the "it must be sterile" counterpart to the FDA "it must be clean". Our QPs have large arguments with US FDA pharmacists about no evidence of harm vs no evidence of safety (the "precautionary principle"). Without getting into specifics, when it comes to dealing with cancer patients, who have compromised immunity and often die of infection, I think it is only acceptable to be utterly paranoid.
Some US sites that I will not name explicitly think that "we", the European sites, are paranoid. They think that by having regulations that require an estimated probability of infection as being ≤1e-6 or ≤1e-9 in a clinical trial with ~1k people in it is "overkill", and their "reasonable approach" that is far cheaper, quicker, and easier, is appropriate. I think, and our QPs think, that their approach is quantitatively worse -- but it is very hard to estimate these probabilities; perhaps using a laminar flow hood as opposed to a cleanroom & isolator reduces that probability from 1e-6 to 1e-5 -- but it could well be 1e-3 and we don't know. Yet.
At any rate, the only reason that "we are listened to" as a bloc against the huge, multinational factors at play, is because of EMA rules, as implemented in the UK by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority, the MHRA, which publishes a many-thousand-page guide to EU EMA rules. Although frustrated by them, I am very glad that these rules exist. They protect patients, and my backside. They are written in blood, from Thalidomide to deaths that have arisen as a result of industrial autoclaves in Britain owned by the pharmaceutical industry being loaded unevenly, leading to "sterile" saline not being sterile. Post-Brexit, I am sure that they are exactly an example of "Brussels red tape" that is to be "streamlined". Similar examples exist in food standards, consumer electronics, and many other areas. Freedom and deregulation come with a very real cost. Can you drink the water in Flint, Michigan yet?
The removal of other agencies hamper my ability to recruit students, get grant funding, actually buy isotopes to order -- particularly important as a lot of them come from nuclear reactors on the continent that we do not have equivalents for -- and otherwise function as an academic.
The UK's spending on scientific research is, as a function of GDP, far lower than other equivalent nations, particularly Germany and the US. Much of it comes from the charitable sector. In the post-covid world, this has taken a huge hit. Cancer Research UK is down £300m, for example [1], leading to, say, The University of Oxford cutting 40% of its oncology research staff [2] including professors and PIs who have faced the double-whammy of falling ERC funding and CRUK funding. Before you ask, UK governmental funding rules prohibit applications for specific diseases if an equivalent charitable organisation exists, meaning, for example, that you cannot easily apply to the ...
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[ 964 ms ] story [ 548 ms ] threadEdit:
'Brexit could plunge Britain into an instant recession, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have said in the starkest economic warning yet of the consequences of Britain leaving the European Union.'
'he Treasury said unemployment would be 520,000 higher, wages 2.8 per cent lower and house prices 10 per cent down. In a severe shock joblessness would be 820,000 higher, wages down by 4 per cent and house prices 18 per cent lower.'
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-to-c...
Edit: downvoting facts now? ok HN.
The fact that George Osbourne said that they would happen immediately is neither here nor there really.
But I don't see how one asshole being wrong is evidence that Brexit is going to be a good thing.
> Whilst technically true Brexit has been happening since 2016, and people and companies have been making decisions based on it.
For many smaller companies there's not actually much they can do to prepare. They're just going to have to deal with the fallout when it happens. It seems to me that a lot of companies have gone with a "let's just carry on with business as usual while we still can" approach, and that they are going to get hit really badly when their product suddenly costs 20% more for a large proportiom of their customers.
Preparing for the worst possible outcome for me would mean relocating everything (both business and family) to the EU except for staff, whom would no longer have jobs. This is obviously an ass-ache so I'm not going to do that unless I have to.
On the other hand living somewhere with better weather could be nice so I'll take things as they come.
Although the UK officially left in January of this year, we're still in the transition period, so none of the actual Brexit effects have happened yet, only anticipatory ones. So this is kinda like saying the fall off the cliff hasn't really been bad "so far" while still standing on top of said cliff.
And yet, the £ is at all time lows and the cost so far has already been $170 billion, with another $70 billion by the end of the year.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-10/-170-bill...
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2019/03/22/uk-economy-sin...
"Relative to G7 countries, however, the UK has slipped from having the highest growth rate in the G7 before the vote, to the lowest now (OBR 2018)"
"Productivity has also suffered. "
"The sterling has depreciated and increased costs."
"Purchasing power has gone down."
"Finally, both inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) have dropped since the referendum."
---
https://www.businessinsider.com/brexit-will-cost-uk-more-tha...
"Brexit will have soon cost the UK more than all its payments to the EU over the past 47 years put together"
---
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/12/02/three-years-on-the...
"Three years on: the UK is paying a high economic price for its decision to leave the EU"
"While the UK started with a steeper growth trajectory, it has fallen behind other G7 countries since the referendum "
"Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose dramatically from 0.4 percent in June 2016 to 3 percent in January 2018. "
"Real wages dropped from a pre-referendum annual growth rate of 1.1% to less than 0.1% after the referendum"
--
And not sure what you mean by "changing goalposts". Surely you agree that the effects of Brexit will primarily come into effect after Brexit has happened?
https://fullfact.org/economy/how-accurate-have-brexit-foreca...
In my personal circumstances my business makes most of it's sales to the EU and if things happen like they look like might happen I'm going to be contractually forced to lower prices to compensate for any customs duty my customers will have to pay. Additionally I'll have to spend several more hours per week just to make customs documents, or hire someone to do it for me.
So I'm still really hoping the customs union will remain intact.
Right. There's still no deal between the UK and the EU. The UK still wants many of the benefits of being in the EU without submitting to the EU's trade rules.[1]
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/23/brexit-uk-trade-deal-unlikel...
This “reasonableness is weakness” thing seems to be a more and more clear trend in western culture... It’s quite disturbing and seems very dangerous to me.
Or is it something that’s been circulating for a long time, just that I haven’t noticed?
It intersects with other 'tough guy' identity tropes that are being (successfully) used in domestic political battles to gain power, and then are repositioned to be used in foreign relations with predictably terrible outcomes.
The problem is the audience of the negotiating stance isn't the counterparty, it's the domestic base who elected you because they were fed up with nuance and are suspicious of the counterparty.
This isn't just a Brexit problem, but is much more widespread.
I don't know how you'd be able to align incentives any worse.
See also: "the art of the deal"
> The problem is the audience of the negotiating stance isn't the counterparty, it's the domestic base who elected you because they were fed up with nuance and are suspicious of the counterparty.
Not just the nuance, but the lack of dramatic change, a handful of examples of bad behavior by the party of nuance being equally corrupt or useless, and a constant stream of propaganda highlighting that.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/05/04/leavers-have-a-bet...
Really I think most people generally agree on what they want from society. Outside of the fringes, the primary points of contention revolve around how to prioritize issues over other issues, and the specifics of the approach to solving them.
One aspect of that is that people are not rational by nature. Another is that we cannot change that about them and actually it's as much a force of nature as a hurricane or an earthquake. You cannot argue or reason with any of these forces.
Our mistake has been failing to build quake proof cities, not failing to appreciate the earthquakes point of view...
So we're presented with 2 possible realities:
* EITHER, there is no rationale for brexit beyond the "It's what I want and I don't know why but I do" rationale (weak right?). I might not agree with this, but I would respect it if that was what brexiteers said. I can't justify my love of chocolate but I still love it.
* OR, There is a rationale for brexit, but it is secret and cannot be shared with me, and people insist they will share it for unknown reasons, but then don't also for other unknown reasons.
This second position seems a little crazy, but I will admit it is technically possible. Perhaps 17million people have all been initiated into the secrets of brexit and my small remainer mind cannot fathoms such great matters...
How have you managed hundreds of conversations with hundreds of different "brexiteers"? Do you have exact figures? Is it part of your job? Is a "brexiteer" the same as someone who voted to leave the EU, or do you mean something more specific?
People need to stop pretending they had a viable reason for their vote. If they admitted it was just personal preference I'd accept that. But pretending it was logical when it wasn't is frankly insulting.
Honestly I think your attitude here is terrible
One of the major reasons given there in the surveys is that leave voters wanted UK law to be made by the UK. How has that been "disproven"?
It may not be something you care about, but that's very different.
God this whole thing is a huge mess...
Edit: if you live in Berlin: https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/328595/
Not all EU member states have implemented Blue Card. Ireland and Denmark have an opt-out of EU immigration policy under the EU treaties. (So did the United Kingdom prior to Brexit.) All other member states are supposed to implement it, but the issue with directives is that member states often fail to do so at all, or fail to do so properly. The European Commission can prosecute them in the European Court of Justice for those failures, which can result in them being fined by the EU.
So if you seriously plan to move, now is a very good time to do it.
Lots of info here: https://britishineurope.org/
It’s much easier to illegally immigrate.
I don’t get it - why would a Brit want to go to the EU. Those who are already stuck in there, fine.
I bet in 1-2 years net balance will be in favor of the UK.
Even now, if we accounted for those EU people who will attempt to stay in the U.K., I doubt there will be any brain drain.
The EU is done.
Theresa May's deal was remain in all but name and there was multiple opportunities to vote in favour of it over a period of years. The only compromise willing to be accepted by the remain camp was complete capitulation.
>It's also quite hard to get a work visa for UK
The UK has had enough of experts...
> The UK has had enough of experts...
What do you mean?
It's an amazing way to move to the EU, and in Germany it's a really easy way to get Permanent Residence (you can do it in 21 months, if you learn German up to B1, or 36 otherwise). It also guarantees a high enough salary (55k minimum).
There are far far easier way and often under much better terms to get a work visa in virtually any EU member state as both skilled and unskilled workers.
Although, getting the appointment with foreigners office took 5 months (after my first entry to the country), because of the high number of applicants, but they have a legislation that automatically extends your visa if you have an appointment for a long term residence permit.
https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/visa/kinds-of-visa/eu-...
It has higher requirements than a Tier 2 General Work Visa in the UK for example, both in terms of salary and education.
For Germany specifically if you are over 45 years old getting a work visa would hard to impossible, you need to provide proof of substantial existing retirement funds such as a private pension.
I assume most of the readers here would be able to get a job that is above Blue Card minimum salary, since the median pay for software developers here are above the requirement.
But that's not true at all. If you asked a Brexiteer, they would say Article 50 could have been invoked the day after the referendum, and instead they spent 2 whole years trying to find an accommodation that would satisfy Remainers too, you can't ask for any more "reasoning with" than that. But Remainers wouldn't budge from the position of ignoring the referendum result completely, they had no regard whatsoever for the wishes of Brexiteers. None at all. We could have had such a soft Brexit that it would have been indistinguishable from remaining, but hardline Remainers made that all but impossible with their intransigence.
Eventually the entire country grew tired of those antics and delivered Boris an 80-seat majority on his single mantra of "get Brexit done". I know this is off-narrative but the Brexiteers bent over backwards to be reasonable.
From the outside, Leavers ran the government. Leavers insisted that May was a great negotiator by holding her cards close to her chest (and then fired her ASAP when they saw her cards).
From the outside, Leavers openly told Remainers that Leavers had no reason to compromise with anyone — not the EU, not Remainers, and not each other.
Every time I discussed anything with a Leaver, my concerns were always and without fail dismissed as “Project Fear” — the other party would even say that about the possibility of no deal while saying no deal was their negotiating tactic.
Now, I don’t doubt that you’ve seen some idiots promoting Remain just as I’ve seen idiots promoting Leave — but can you give any example of Leave trying to compromise with Remain?
Not with each other (basically everyone hates what May came up with, Remain and Leave alike), not with the EU, but with Remain?
It would have been about as good as Brexit could have been, conditional on reducing immigration bring the primary goal.
https://startups.co.uk/best-european-cities-for-startups/
Berlin has a tech startup sector (supposedly) almost as big as London. So whether it's a good place to start a company may not matter: if it is where all the jobs are, and I need a job then I'm there.
I do Fintech, so I'm looking at a niche of startups. That pushes me to Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris and Zurich as those are the (non London) finance hubs in the EU. But if I saw a job where I could work remotely or where they were based elsewhere, I'd go elsewhere.
I actually just started working remotely for a company technically incorporated in London. So once I pass probation etc, I may go to Germany to master my German. But as you indicate, I'd find a place with good work life balance and low costs and opportunities that suit me. Not just blindly walk to Berlin. :)
Respectfully, neither will many 'remainers'. There are many who refuse to even consider reasons people may have had for wanting to leave, and insist on viewing everything through a lens of presumed racism.
I voted to remain, but not through any great conviction. I don't believe that any sort of responsive democracy is really possible at the scale of the EU, and I do believe that the democratic institutions of the EU are lacking. We know that comparatively not all that many British people make much use of freedom of movement. I also don't believe that all concerns about the volume and speed of immigration to the UK should be brushed off as mere xenophobia or racism, in light of housing shortages. That's not to say that these necessarily add up to a leave vote, they didn't in my case, nor that leaving the EU will fix anything.
But to view the entirety of 17 million leave voters as unreasonable by definition, well that's pretty unreasonable itself.
I disagree with your statement on the democracy not working at the scale of the EU. The EU is a democratic institution, with limited responsibilities (the UK famously fought back against tighter integration). Recent history in the EU has shown that people are ready for more integration now that the UK is (unfortunately) gone (as seen 2 weeks ago with the common debt).
> The soft Brexit proposition exploded right after the vote,
I've not seen much evidence of this particularly, our parliament spent a long time arguing over exactly what flavour of soft brexit might be acceptable while both hard brexiter and hard remainer minorities postured and shouted and in some cases started legal proceedings. Eventually the different groups blocked and barracked each other so much the whole thing fell apart.
Outside of parliament there were plenty of cheerleaders for just leaving, absent any ongoing agreement, but also plenty for finding methods to overturn the entire thing.
> I disagree with your statement on the democracy not working at the scale of the EU.
But you understand that I have an opinion based on looking at the EU and at other large democracies (like the US), observing how their political classes are remote from the public and relatively unaccountable, and how hard it seems to be for citizens to affect change? As compared to somewhere like Iceland, where a small movement can have a big effect? And you grant that it is a reasonable opinion to hold even if you yourself don't hold it and disagree with it being important?
That's my point here really, we don't have to agree, but casting everyone that disagrees you as unreasonable and unwilling to listen to reason is not a good thing. Though it does seem to happen in a lot of public discourse these days.
The problem with a referendum and abstract propositions is that people all put something different behind the Brexit vote and it was then impossible to reconcile all the positions (plus all the empty promises like the 350m for the NHS). Brexit became something very different than what was originally sold and some people asked for a second referendum to clarify the situation now that things were getting clearer. This act can be criticized or misunderstood, but I don't think anyone can argue that Brexit is a very different animal 4 years later (the unicorn honestly looks more like a donkey up close).
Brexit has shown that the disconnection between the political class and the people had nothing to do with the EU. Dominic Cumming refused to quit despite being caught in clear breach of the lockdown is the perfect example of it.
The EU parliament is elected directly by the voters, and representative are nominated by governments that are also elected. The US has a completely different electoral system, where (like in the UK), candidates with fewer national votes can become leaders (I find these systems undemocratic, a voice is a voice, its geographical location should not matter).
You didn't, that's not an accusation I'm making against you, it was the point I tried to get across in the first post of mine that you replied to. I was hoping you'd agree that it was unhelpful to cast all disagreement as necessarily unreasonable, something the top poster seemed to be doing.
> Brexit has shown that the disconnection between the political class and the people had nothing to do with the EU
I don't disagree with this either (well, maybe I'd modify it slightly, and say it has more to do with Westminster than the EU, but I don't absolve the EU entirely). In fact I think we need much more devolved and locally empowered democracy within the UK. And this isn't incompatible with EU membership. (I mentioned I voted 'remain', right?)
However, as the EU drives towards closer union I fear that we'll see the problems that are present in other large democracies, and which I think are already present in the EU structures to various extents, exaggerate.
> The EU parliament is elected directly by the voters, and representative are nominated by governments that are also elected.
That second part there is an issue, IMHO, because I vote for a local candidate for the UK parliament, they then (if part of the ruling party) put their mandate behind a prime minister, and (s)he effectively chooses our representative on the Commission, which has a lot of power. This is several steps removed from any vote. Is it the fault of the EU? I'm unsure, perhaps we could have a system of directly electing a commissioner, but perhaps that's a bad idea as a technocrat is what's wanted there. Either way the UK seat on the commission has been held by people like Lord Mandelson - twice disgraced out of cabinet, an electoral liability who got promoted to the lords and then the commission. I'd prefer to see the commission de-emphasised (which I know has been happening to some extent, slowly).
I think the whole edifice needs a rework, local, national and supra-national.
The article is however quite bad at distinguishing between:
- British nationals moving their place of residence from the UK to the EU
- British nationals already resident in the EU changing their nationality so they can stay there after free movement is taken away from them
And doesn't mention the third category: EU nationals normally resident in the UK deciding to return, and whether being deemed ineligable for "settled status" or indefinite leave to remain is a factor in that.
People who I have spoken to about this tend to be pragmatic; even a damaged UK provides more economic and social freedom than many parts of eastern Europe. Especially compared to rapidly de-liberalising Poland. However, we've yet to see how badly the government copes with the end of the transition period.
Also, in terms of recruitment, very few people are now interested in coming over to the UK for engineering positions. We used to have a lot of talented candidates from EU countries (especially Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, etc.); we have not had a single applicant from these countries since the vote.
On the other hand, https://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/2019/brexit-uncertainty-motivate... shows a (smaller, and, eye-balling it, not with a break in the trend at time of Brexit) uptick in EU naturalizations in the UK, too.
As you say, I think way more significant will be the numbers of EU citizens resident in the UK deciding to leave.
Hence does this detail really change the brain drain discussion?
But now if your employer changes from being an UK to a German company, then suddenly that means that they might not be able to keep employing you, thanks to "your" British politicians trying to keep a hard stance against cross border employment.
So then suddenly your choices are:
- keep your passport, but you'll likely lose your job and be forced to move out of your house
- change your passport and keep your job and your house
To me, that explains why now so many Britons choose option B.
The article doesn't really explain it, but many of those asking for a passport now are already living in Germany, so they merely want to stay where they are.
And as someone living in Germany, I'd like to add that the government handling of Covid, unemployment support, and free access to healthcare will really sweeten the deal. Would you want to move from Berlin (almost no restrictions apart from wearing face masks) to London at this time?
Which ones have done this?
IIRC JPMC have increased their office capacity in Ireland, but I haven't heard of multiple banks moving headquarters (though I heard lots of rumours that they would)
https://www.americanbanker.com/articles/banks-are-ditching-l...
> In the coming months alone, Barclays may ditch its investment bank's headquarters in the capital; Credit Suisse is offloading nine floors of office space; and Morgan Stanley is reviewing its entire London footprint.
"The US investment bank, Goldman Sachs is to trial its Brexit contingency plans by making senior position transfers to Frankfurt, following concerns that the UK will lose it’s ‘passporting rights’."
"Last month, Credit Suisse revealed it was planning to move about 250 of its 5,500 London banking jobs in the first phase its Brexit contingency plans. Bloomberg reported employees in areas such as trading and mergers and acquisitions were likely to be relocated to Frankfurt or Madrid, ..."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/brexit-latest-ba...
https://qz.com/1095155/brexit-contingency-plan-goldman-sachs...
https://www.relocatemagazine.com/news/brexit-goldman-sachs-t...
So GS haven't moved headquarters, even though they have moved a small number of personnel.
Some others appear to be increasing capacity in Frankfurt and other European centres, or at least they were two years ago. All very predictable and sensible given what may happen.
But this still doesn't add up to "Banks kind of had to move their headquarters out of London". In fact so far there hasn't been a single example (here, in the thread) of a bank that has actually done that. Just a lot of speculation.
(I'm not making any strong claims that it won't happen, by the way, I just wanted to challenge the trope that it already has happened)
Seems unlikely they'll have vacated. The stories about people moving to Frankfurt all mention a tiny handful of people.
The pound was the world reserve currency, India was the jewel in the largest empire the world has ever seen and upon which the sun would never set, and Westminster ruled directly and indirectly over more than a third of the world GDP — roughly equivalent to $30 trillion/year against the world of 2018.
When my brother was a child, that same great empire had been so reduced that it found itself forced to make a series of humiliating fishing rights concessions to Iceland, total population ~350,000.
The world can become unrecognisable in even just a few years; that just gets more likely when you assume nothing can ever change.
Back in the early 00's when it looked like Frankfurt might compete with London, Gordon Brown introduced 'light touch regulation', and aligned us strongly with the US which made Frankfurt unattractive to US banks. Of course that fanned the winds of the credit crunch.
Let's hope history doesn't repeat itself post-2020, and Rishi Sunak doesn't do anything like that. But who knows?
When the British took over India it was 31% of global GDP. When they left India's share of global GDP was 2%.
Well, they didn't. If anything they're flying with joy on the prospect of not being as tied to EU regulations and making the UK more of a tax-haven...
While I agree there's cause for concern in general, a fair portion of these are people's citizenship catching up with where they've built their lives.
After all, pre-Brexit you could have lived in Germany since childhood, been educated there, got a job, got married to a German and started a family of German kids - all while holding a UK passport yourself. For someone in that situation, Brexit makes getting that German citizenship a lot more urgent.
EU -> UK numbers should prove interesting.
The real question is: will blocking this immigration also make the powers that be redistribute wealth more to the poor natives? Time will tell :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_resident_(European_U...
They're saying there are a small number of healthcare professionals arriving as asylum seekers, and that it makes no sense to prevent those people from working especially during the worst pandemic the world has seen for many years.
You could say that the leadership of the right is desperate for immigration and to get people on benefits. Immigration gives nativists someone to look down on, making them easier to exploit. Paying sub-poverty-level benefits is cheap and makes the workforce desperate to accept just-about-poverty-level wages. The working class exists in order to frighten the middle class. The underclass exists to frighten the working class.
Also bear in mind that illegal immigrants do not get "hooked on benefits", they get deported or exploited by "economic libertarians".
That was the point.
They’re also not allowed to vote. That part at least make sense to me.
This argument applies to basically all asylum seekers, not just those from the Syrian civil war.
That aside, how many unskilled jobs that don’t require idiomatic grasp of English in local accents (which would include cashiers, baristas, and other customer-facing roles) aren’t being replaced by robots and offshoring?
[0] http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=211&loct...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_W...
I don't know how you'd describe doctors as low-skilled.
Also France: 'Don't you dare block our fishing boats from British waters after Brexit OR ELSE!!!!!!'
Personally I suspect this is about the poor migrants being used as a bargaining chip in Brexit negotiations by the French, i.e., the French saying 'this is a taste of what we will do if you dare give us a bad deal'.
What I don't understand is why they think the UK is so much better than France! I don't think the two countries are that different and France has plenty of opportunities of its own, plus it's much bigger whereas the UK is overcrowded, expensive and competitive. In their position I think I'd rather stay in France :)
Do you honestly think the media would report it if the UK government were doing a good job? Along with Brussels, the media are all still seething with anger that the common people dared stand up to their masters.
Regarding the Brexit negotiations, it hardly helped having a Parliament composed of MPs intent of subverting the result of the referendum, and a civil service, media etc. that chose to go to war with the people. Things look a lot better for the UK now that we have a government that actually intends to stand up for the country instead of delivering it gift-wrapped into the hands of foreign powers to do with as they please.
I always think it's funny when the topic of the break up of the UK is brought up as something British people should be really upset about. Anti-English racism is common in Wales and Scotland (I recall being on the receiving end on several occasions at University - the ridiculous thing being that although I was brought up in England I am more than 50% Welsh by blood!). And England - where I live - will be better off, and more likely to have right wing politics, which is always a good thing. Scotland has a whole range of deep, entrenched problems, and is effectively bankrupt without massive transfers of tax money from England. So enjoy paying for that if/when you let them back in the EU. At least then they won't be able to constantly moan about England any more (though I note their hatred of all things English doesn't extend to English money, quelle surprise!), and will likely start to moan about Brussels instead. And anyway, aren't Europhiles always telling us the nation state is obsolete etc?
Well it sounds like the UK was not an active EU member when I listen to Brexiters. Just like if you had no power and influence on the system. What a joke. The matter is your leaders never read the manual to integrate Europe. Their mouth were always full of "I want my money back", "There cannot be a politic project, EU has to be a trade block" or "Let's have a cake and eat it". They never wanted to make the integration of UK a success. And moreover, the most moronic press in the UK has sold you guys that all your issues these last decades came from the EU, while most of the time, they came from your own gov.
About the death toll, if you have any doubts about the NHS numbers, just read others : how many people died this year during the pandemic compared to last year on the same period. Numbers might be worse than those of the NHS. Guys, your own PM is so stupid he caught it because he didn't want to respect social distancing... He is as smart and relevant as Bolsonaro. Imagine the consequences if he died...
And about the future secession in your own Union: many English express the idea they would be better off without the Scots. Any many Scots are fed up with England. Your future looks like a divorce. For, us French, this not only a mistake, this is a sin. The integrity of a country is sacred. If you give up your own land and destroy your union, it means that you do not deserve to be an important nation anymore. You are just weak and senseless. Soon, you are a prey.
I left the UK in 2017 because of Brexit. My company generates about GBP150k per employee. Prior to leaving this was 100% UK workforce. Following my relocation this is <50% and falling as we move to contract-based + remote. That's my n=1 experience with the "brain drain"
When I left the UK, there was a large & growing political/economic divide, unaffordable housing and poor/declining public services. It gave me a lot of stress and anxiety. Having left, I feel more disinvested from how things are turning out in the UK and it's helped greatly with my wellbeing
I've met other brits in my host country that share my n=1 experience. We're all just trying to quietly get along with it really - stay working and raising families
I left the UK in 2014 for a “1-2yr Max!” Period as my girlfriend was getting her masters degree in Sweden.
The echoes of the Ivestigatory Powers Act and the threat of a looming referendum gave me a little pause on my desire to return, but we both thought it was political posturing so we put aside our worries and continued the plans to return, albeit more apprehensively.
After the result was announced I was upset, a whole bloc was going to close to me, the ruling party (whom I fundamentally disagree with) was going to remove a lot of the checks which kept it accountable, lots of uncertainty- my family suddenly became openly racist (that’s just anecdotal though, certainly not all those who chose leave are racist but my family apparently was) — which is ironic as my mother and I have polish surnames from my great-grandfather who fought in the war and was exiled from Poland for it.
The longer I stayed away the more “detached” I became, the more coldly I looked at the situation and dispassionately assessed statistics and debates. You can’t know from the inside how farcical this whole thing looks.
I naturalised to become a Swedish citizen as soon as the option was available to me, I have no personal stake in the future of my home country anymore.
I’m still “pro-remain” but only because I still think it’s best for the country. I don’t really care that much any longer.
None of those are particular to Brexit. House prices have been unaffordable to many in Britain since the 80s, and even more so, in the 90s. Houses prices are also supply and demand. Since Britain's population has increased by almost 10 million since 1997, demand vastly outstrips supply, especially in the south-east. This affects public services too.
Political divide is an interesting one. Given the two party politics in the UK, plus fringes, and the rise of social media (and Warhol's prophecy), this would also be a problem. Brexit made it worse, but without a crystal ball, it's impossible to say how much worse.
Where in Europe public services are noticeably better than in the UK?
So I don't think Brexit will fuel anything here. If anything it will make Britain seem more like home and make people less likely to leave. Uncontrolled immigration means your home is less like your home every day. That's what will force people to leave. And unless those people find themselves in a colony, they're doomed to be forever foreign.
https://www.qropsspecialists.com/the-top-100-british-expat-d...
Leaving the European Union is going to allow the UK to make the kinds of trade and visa arrangements with these countries that reflect the interests of the majority of expats, the kind that it should already have had.
It seems clear from noises in the government that the UK's also likely to create a low tax, deregulated environment for technology companies while the EU seems more interested in passing regulations that stifle them. As for public services and infrastructure, there's an eye-watering spending plan for this parliament to rebuild the UK.
Fair enough to anyone that had enough and left for the EU, I understand that completely. But I think long term, some of those same people are going to be quite surprised by how this plays out. I don't think that the UK is circling the drain as per the non-stop media assessment over recent years.
If you're talking strictly about immigrants, UK could have made visa arrangements in the EU. A bunch of EU members have such agreements with non EU members, already.
The eye-watering spending plan will require cash, a lot of it, and the COVID + Hard Brexit that's currently looming could very well prevent it from happening. The government has not been great so far at following up on their promises.
The EU was scapegoat that the government and tabloids used for a lot of issues that were mostly national (including the infamous immigration laws). Even after leaving the EU, the blame game is still in full play; never is anyone taking responsibilities for their actions, it's always the others' fault.
This is for many different reasons – but the loss of EU citizenship brings with it loss to EURATOM, significantly affecting the availability of medical isotopes; the loss of access to Erasmus exchange-student funding; the loss of access to the ERC; and the loss of regulatory oversight of the European medicines agency, the EMA. All of these things could be retained with political will, but no will is forthcoming.
Why does this matter? Well, I am a medical physicist / engineer, and I make things for quantifying biology. The US FDA requirements and the EU EMA requirements define what is feasible. They are often at odds. The EMA is, as a rule, stricter, and in my experience in trying to conduct multinational clinical trials, the EU regulations are the "it must be sterile" counterpart to the FDA "it must be clean". Our QPs have large arguments with US FDA pharmacists about no evidence of harm vs no evidence of safety (the "precautionary principle"). Without getting into specifics, when it comes to dealing with cancer patients, who have compromised immunity and often die of infection, I think it is only acceptable to be utterly paranoid.
Some US sites that I will not name explicitly think that "we", the European sites, are paranoid. They think that by having regulations that require an estimated probability of infection as being ≤1e-6 or ≤1e-9 in a clinical trial with ~1k people in it is "overkill", and their "reasonable approach" that is far cheaper, quicker, and easier, is appropriate. I think, and our QPs think, that their approach is quantitatively worse -- but it is very hard to estimate these probabilities; perhaps using a laminar flow hood as opposed to a cleanroom & isolator reduces that probability from 1e-6 to 1e-5 -- but it could well be 1e-3 and we don't know. Yet.
At any rate, the only reason that "we are listened to" as a bloc against the huge, multinational factors at play, is because of EMA rules, as implemented in the UK by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority, the MHRA, which publishes a many-thousand-page guide to EU EMA rules. Although frustrated by them, I am very glad that these rules exist. They protect patients, and my backside. They are written in blood, from Thalidomide to deaths that have arisen as a result of industrial autoclaves in Britain owned by the pharmaceutical industry being loaded unevenly, leading to "sterile" saline not being sterile. Post-Brexit, I am sure that they are exactly an example of "Brussels red tape" that is to be "streamlined". Similar examples exist in food standards, consumer electronics, and many other areas. Freedom and deregulation come with a very real cost. Can you drink the water in Flint, Michigan yet?
The removal of other agencies hamper my ability to recruit students, get grant funding, actually buy isotopes to order -- particularly important as a lot of them come from nuclear reactors on the continent that we do not have equivalents for -- and otherwise function as an academic.
The UK's spending on scientific research is, as a function of GDP, far lower than other equivalent nations, particularly Germany and the US. Much of it comes from the charitable sector. In the post-covid world, this has taken a huge hit. Cancer Research UK is down £300m, for example [1], leading to, say, The University of Oxford cutting 40% of its oncology research staff [2] including professors and PIs who have faced the double-whammy of falling ERC funding and CRUK funding. Before you ask, UK governmental funding rules prohibit applications for specific diseases if an equivalent charitable organisation exists, meaning, for example, that you cannot easily apply to the ...