The Consequences of Brexit [part 4]

[Cyclone]

Did you miss my post? I've provided you the facts. Facts that have been established for a long time and which you already knew unless you've been hiding under a rock.

There's a time and a place for asking for evidence for assertions. But that time and place is not page 209 of a thread when those facts have been proven time and time again.

[Gormenghast]

Did you miss my post? I've provided you the facts. Facts that have been established for a long time and which you already knew unless you've been hiding under a rock.

There's a time and a place for asking for evidence for assertions. But that time and place is not page 209 of a thread when those facts have been proven time and time again.

 

No you haven't. You've provided hearsay.

[Lockdoctor]

Any chance of a response?

Look up the word 'patriotism'

 

---------- Post added 30-11-2017 at 09:56 ----------

 

Young people should have got off their backsides and voted

 

Oops too late !

They did in this year's General Election because they hoped their student debt would by wiped off by Corbyn. Yes too late to affect the referendum result.

[SnailyBoy]

All leaving the EU means is the UK is taking a different path. If everyone got behind the democratic decision and embrace the bigger World, then the likelihood of a more prosperous future is much greater. The people who are doing our country the most harm at this moment are those who continue to complain about the decision to leave, who are looking for problems and siding with the EU negotiators. If the UK had united behind the decision to leave then we would be in a much better negotiating position with the EU than the current situation.

 

Here's the thing, no-one has ever been able to explain what 'getting behind the country' means in practical terms.

 

So I'll ask you, in practical terms, how are you getting 'behind the democratic decision and embrace the bigger World', and how do you see that making a more prosperous future?

 

It could be an example for us all to follow.

 

Any chance of a response?

 

Look up the word 'patriotism'

 

Patriotism, can you flesh it out a little?

 

How does patriotism translate into practical steps to getting ''behind the democratic decision and embrace the bigger World', and how do you see that making a more prosperous future?'

 

(you'll notice it's kind of the same question).

[I1L2T3]

No you haven't. You've provided hearsay.

 

How are they hearsay?

 

Mortality statistics, and other demographic data are fully substantiated.

[Car Boot]

I think xenophobia was probably the biggest single reason that people voted Leave. Undoubtedly many of those people are racists. I meet them every day, they seem to assume that we’re on the “ same page “.

 

I think that greed was probably the biggest reason that many people voted to Remain. Undoubtedly many of these people are selfish vultures, lacking in empathy and hating the very idea of society.

 

I meet them every day. They seem to assume that I am like them, lacking a social conscience.

[Cyclone]

No you haven't. You've provided hearsay.

 

You're just being ridiculous.

Government statistics on death rates is not hearsay.

 

And the well established demographics of the voting patterns are not hearsay.

 

I understand that it's inconvenient for you to have to accept these things as facts, but to deny them is delusional.

[Gormenghast]

How are they hearsay?

 

Mortality statistics, and other demographic data are fully substantiated.

 

Yes they are. Agreed.

 

The big gaping hole in your hearsay however is that the way people voted in a secret ballot is not, and can never be, substantiated.

 

Guesswork and assumption about the way people voted is never fact.

[The Joker]

I think that greed was probably the biggest reason that many people voted to Remain. Undoubtedly many of these people are selfish vultures, lacking in empathy and hating the very idea of society.

 

Now you're just trolling.

 

It's the right-whinging Brexiteers led by privately-educated tory-boy and kipper toffs that have sent the UK hurtling over a financial cliff into the unknown, not the remainers.

 

Go wage your class war somewhere else

[L00b]

How does patriotism translate into practical steps to getting ''behind the democratic decision and embrace the bigger World', and how do you see that making a more prosperous future?'

There is no Brexit that makes 'a more prosperous future' for the UK in the short to medium term (5 years at the very least).

 

There is damaging, more damaging, or catastrophically damaging.

 

No amount of 'patriotism', getting 'behind the democratic decision and embracing the bigger World' and otherwise 'getting over it' is ever going to change that.

 

The EU has been holding the cards since 29 March 2017. Which is how and why it hasn't moved from its guidelines, and the UK has done plenty of moving since.

 

Unless you're going to go all Patrick Minford, forget about trade deals entirely and have unilateral free trade with the entire world -and, apart from Patrick Minford, I really don't see anyone signing up for that, least of all the US- then any half-way rational Brexit strategy will recognise that getting a good trade deal and trading relationship with the EU is pretty much a sine qua none condition of any Brexit that might be considered even half-way successful or beneficial for Britain.

 

Which inevitably mean that the UK was always going to have to negotiate with the EU, to advance interests which both sides have in common and, where interests/objectives diverge, to compromise until they reach a mutually-acceptable position.

 

In any negotiation, both sides have to be ready to compromise: if you're not prepared to compromise, then you might as well not bother to start the negotiations, and move straight to the Minford Plan B. But who gets to compromise more, and who gets more of what they aspire to, depends on a number of things, but most of all on the strategic bargaining position of the two parties.

 

And here's the thing that I think many (most?) Brexiters were in denial about (or recognised, but found it politic to pretend to be in denial about): the EU always had the much stronger bargaining position. Vastly more populous, vastly wealthier, vastly better-resourced.

 

And most significantly of all, vastly better able to withstand a "no deal" outcome than the UK was: with a global perspective on trading & economic relationships, the UK is simply much less significant to the EU and others, than the EU is to the UK and others. If it all went completely pear-shaped, both sides would suffer, but the UK would suffer significantly more.

 

In other words, the UK always had more to lose from unsuccessful negotiations, and the EU knew it. That's a very strong bargaining position for the EU, and a very weak one for the UK.

 

So it was always the case that most of the movement, most of the compromise, was likely to be on the UK side, and so it has proved. In the initial discussions about the sequencing of events, there was supposed to be a row that would "last all summer": in fact, the UK accepted the EU position without amendment on day 1. On each of the phase 1 issues identified in that sequencing decision, the UK has found it necessary to move a lot further towards the EU position, than the EU has found it necessary to move to the UK position. And I doubt that this pattern will change very much in the next phase 2 about the relationship framework (the 'trade deal' itself comes later, with negotiations from 2019 onwards, and will take years longer).

 

Possibly in anticipation of this, the UK staked out some very high positions from which to start: no Single Market, no Customs Union, no ECJ jurisdiction, etc. They haven't abandoned any of those positions, but they have compromised significantly on all of them. For example, the UK won't be in the Customs Union, but it's going to accept a lot of the incidents and characteristics of Customs Union membership. Or, as I can't remember who put it, "the European Customs Union is incompatible with Brexit; a customs union isn't".

 

This is a bit galling for people who actually believed the Brexity rhetoric, and we must expect them to be a bit bad-tempered about it. But 48% of the population voted to remain and, of the rest, presumably at least some took a somewhat nuanced view of what they were being told, and never really thought that it would be as easy as they were glibly assured it would be.

 

A year ago people were talking about how the German can manufacturers would press Merkel, and Merkel would press the EU, and the EU would grant the UK full trading rights into the Single Market without any of this free movement/ECJ Jurisdiction nonsense: it's been many months now, since anyone peddled nonsense like that.

 

I'd like to think the British public is a bit more realistic about where they stand, than last year's Brexity rhetoric would indicate.