The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

But what, actually, is the way to avoid the hard border? I'm not trying to be dense, or argumentative, I just don't get it. 

There's an easy way to avoid a hard border... if on;y someone other than Vince Cable had the balls to stand up and say it. Amongst MPs of all parties, they are actually in the majority too

What needs to happen is all the remainers in :Labour and the Tories need to talk to each other, they'll damage their parties in equal measure

[Chindie]

30 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

But what, actually, is the way to avoid the hard border? I'm not trying to be dense, or argumentative, I just don't get it. 

Norway deal or someone with the bollocks to say the whole thing is **** stupid.

[tonyh29]

5 hours ago, snowychap said:

I've just been listening to a few politicians on 5 live talking about it.

It appears that there are going to be 'extra measures' taken and 'more technology' used to keep it the same way as it is now. When asked what these entail, no one seemed to know. It'll just happen.

One thing Nigel Evans spoke about was 'when people fly from Belfast to somewhere else in the UK and show their passports' (may not be precisely verbatim). Why would you need to show a passport to travel within the UK?

best I know  it's the airlines validation method rather than any govt policy etc ...

but , I flew from Belfast to LHR the other month and showed no ID what so ever  ... my mates did have to show their passports / ID  to get their boarding passes from the BA desk  , where as I'd checked in online and already got mine on my phone , so it could be a flaw or a one off

When I've done domestic from LHR they take your photo as you go through the initial gate and scan your boarding pass   and then they match the photo up before you board the plane , but there wasn't any evidence of this at Belfast 

 

[Chindie]

Some of the reporting and commentary on the Irish border is hilarious. You can already smell the switch in 'tact' coming - it's the EU's fault they want a border, not ours!

[magnkarl]

In other news my daughter's employer has signed a lease for an office just outside the Eurostar terminal in Calais today after considering it for a while. I'm guessing they'll ask their British employees to come there once a week or so if we do a hard exit. If you're a citizen of one country working in another a lot of rules will change. She should be able to drive on her UK plates in France for more than 6 months and so on. They sent out a whole pamphlet on how they expect the cross border work rules to end up.

[ml1dch]

3 hours ago, Chindie said:

Some of the reporting and commentary on the Irish border is hilarious. You can already smell the switch in 'tact' coming - it's the EU's fault they want a border, not ours!

"We want to have control of our borders"

"Like the one land border that the UK has with the EU?"

"Oh no, not that one. We'd like to keep that one exactly as it is, please"

Still, it's not a complete incoherent mess like the Future Customs Arrangements paper. The Ireland one is completely unrealistic, but at least they clearly understand all the words that they're using.

Edited August 17, 2017 by ml1dch

[magnkarl]

On 8/16/2017 at 13:50, Chindie said:

Norway deal or someone with the bollocks to say the whole thing is **** stupid.

I'm quite confused by this Norway deal thing. To me it looks exactly the same when I enter Norway as it has to enter Britain since we joined. You have to show your passport at the border. Is the argument that we now want what we had with the EU? Is it going to be in any way different to what we've had since joining in reference to border control?

The last time I spoke to a Norwegian about the EU he seemed quite content to say that they are the one country in Europe that follows most of the EU directives even though they are not a member.

[ml1dch]

14 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

I'm quite confused by this Norway deal thing. To me it looks exactly the same when I enter Norway as it has to enter Britain since we joined. You have to show your passport at the border. Is the argument that we now want what we had with the EU? Is it going to be in any way different to what we've had since joining in reference to border control?

Probably not, in reference to that.

Where it does differ, is that as an EFTA member they can negotiate their own trade deals, decide on their own tariffs and are not under the jurisdiction of the ECJ (although the EFTA Court is unlikely to deviate much from what the ECJ would say).

However they do have to accept freedom of movement. So if you're a free-marketeer-at-all-costs like Hannan or DFDS Liam Fox then it should be ideal. Most of those silly "red lines" that the Prime Minister announced unnecessarily are sorted.

However if you're a shouty bell-end like Farage who says that immigration is what it's all about then it doesn't. And whichever route they take is going to piss off a majority of people. Because when loads of people are promised different things, some of them don't get what they thought they were voting for.

Edited August 17, 2017 by ml1dch

[limpid]

On 17/08/2017 at 15:28, magnkarl said:

In other news my daughter's employer has signed a lease for an office just outside the Eurostar terminal in Calais today after considering it for a while. I'm guessing they'll ask their British employees to come there once a week or so if we do a hard exit. If you're a citizen of one country working in another a lot of rules will change. She should be able to drive on her UK plates in France for more than 6 months and so on. They sent out a whole pamphlet on how they expect the cross border work rules to end up.

She'll probably need a work visa to work in the EU. I don't see why she'd get one though - why would France/the EU let brits come over there stealing their jobs?

[magnkarl]

48 minutes ago, limpid said:

She'll probably need a work visa to work in the EU. I don't see why she'd get one though - why would France/the EU let brits come over there stealing their jobs?

[Chindie]

David Allen Green reporting that some kind of news is coming out of the Dept for Exiting the EU at midnight tonight, to the press. No doubt this will be excellent news. There needs to be movement on the bill to be paid so perhaps that. Might explain getting the press to get the spin engines online and in full swing.

DAG has been making a few noises this week about the government's regime of making position announcements versus how the EU does it. The EU just puts them online. We do press management with the media given the inside line. He makes the argument that this is because we are more interested in winning over/pleasing the domestic media and backbenches than engaging in open negotiation.

[Chindie]

11 hours ago, Chindie said:

David Allen Green reporting that some kind of news is coming out of the Dept for Exiting the EU at midnight tonight, to the press. No doubt this will be excellent news. There needs to be movement on the bill to be paid so perhaps that. Might explain getting the press to get the spin engines online and in full swing.

DAG has been making a few noises this week about the government's regime of making position announcements versus how the EU does it. The EU just puts them online. We do press management with the media given the inside line. He makes the argument that this is because we are more interested in winning over/pleasing the domestic media and backbenches than engaging in open negotiation.

...

They embargoed the announcement of position outline papers coming in a few weeks.

...

They seem to have done this in an attempt to play it as some kind of brilliant 'strategic move' in the negotiations as the papers have spun it as the UK putting pressure on the EU. But... The EU basically asked for something confirming where we stand on key issues months ago. And everyone and his dog has been waiting for us to do so. I don't know how you can pressure someone by giving them exactly what they asked for, if months late.

Yet more evidence this is being run by a parade of clowns.

And, for the more cynical... They embargoed, for the press' benefit, a none story for them to spin. When the real shit hits the fan, imagine the tricks they're going to play. Like when the bill comes in. Or the no deal outcome they've been laying foundations for for months happens.

Utter words removed.

Also, these position papers... There's only going to be 2 options on them really, isn't there? Something that makes Brexiteers have a shit fit, or some inane fantasy cake having and eating. I don't think the odds on the latter would be very long. In fact the fantasy is necessary for the no deal justification. Spin and spin and spin the great deal we're proposing and the evil nasty EU told us no out of sheer foreign hatred so we took our ball home, mummy. Diddums.

words removed.

Edited August 20, 2017 by Chindie

[Chindie]

 The hardest of hard Brexits will benefit the UK economy to the tune of £135bn, up from £80bn earlier this week in a story that got absolutely no traction. How? By going completely, unilaterally, free trade with the entire planet we will thrive, threatening the EU by killing us as market to them. How that overcomes the idea that would knacker our own businesses, I dunno. In fact the main voice behind this idea basically admitted it would kill some industries in the UK. Also, it would take years, during which time the entire economy goes to ****.

This plan also relies on a massive deregulation campaign, which is problematic on many levels, not least of which is the problem that deregulation would preclude the deal with the EU that the plan aims to achieve, and also deregulation is not always a good thing for the consumer (not that the lobbyists will tell you that).

Also turns out the same economist behind this report believed the poll tax was brilliant for the economy. So yeah.

[Chindie]

The same economists predictions of the effect of a Leave for last year are hilarious. Hilarious in a 'I'm not an economist, but are you sure about that?' kinda way.

No sterling price change?

No inflation rise?

No slowdown?

This man's a fool.

[Dr_Pangloss]

Patrick Minford really is a silly little word removed. If Economics were a real profession he ought to be 'struck off'. 

[bickster]

16 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

Patrick Minford really is a silly little word removed. If Economics were a real profession he ought to be 'struck off'. 

Minford must be in his 80's now surely. He was one of Thatcher's stormtroopers and Professor of Economics at the University of Liverpool when I was there in the mid 80's. He was proved wrong on most things even back then. 

[Enda]

19 hours ago, Chindie said:

The same economists predictions of the effect of a Leave for last year are hilarious. Hilarious in a 'I'm not an economist, but are you sure about that?' kinda way.

This report thinks seems to think Ireland is in Schengen, and that there are passport controls on the border. 

http://imgur.com/a/ndeFI

That's not true.

[Enda]

I saw this on Twitter. The other day the UK government released an official policy document on Northern Ireland - link here. It claims the Good Friday Agreement says "Northern Ireland's constitutional status is a matter for the people of Northern Ireland alone to determine."

.

Only problem is that's completely false. The whole point of the Good Friday Agreement (what got the IRA to put the guns away) was that the Republic was given a say in the constitutional status of NI.

Absolutely hopeless. Your government is hopeless, folks. You're being led by the blind.

[peterms]

Minford's position was previously critiqued, here.  It sounds like he hasn't addressed the criticism of his view.  (Footnotes and references in linked article).

Quote

Economists for Free Trade’s Patrick Minford recently suggested that the UK should

simply eliminate our tariffs on them [the EU], and by implication – under WTO rules – on everyone else. By doing so, we would achieve free trade for our consumers with one quick move [and increase consumer welfare by 4%] Minford (2017).

This, he explains in a fuller exposition, is achievable ‘via Unilateral Free Trade’ – see page 8 of Minford and Miller (2017), henceforth referred to as M&M.

But this claim is misleading or worse:

• It is based on a very particular view of the world economy,
• Even in M&M’s own analysis, the benefits of 4% of welfare (or GDP) depend on far more than ‘simply eliminating tariffs’; they also require deeper integration with the EU and a race to the bottom on standards;
• M&M assume that the devaluation of sterling will have no effect on the prices of UK imports!

The Minford Model[1]

Patrick Minford’s model of the world economy divides the economy into four sectors: ‘non-traded and three traded ones, viz. primary, basic (unskilled-labour-intensive) manufacturing and services and other (skilled-labour-intensive) manufacturing.’ (M&M, p.28, although on p.20 they refer to ‘three traded goods, agriculture, manufactures and services’)  Within each sector UK production and all world trade are presumed to be indistinguishable – buying health services from, say, the USA is the same as buying education from, say, Sri Lanka. Of course, all models make approximations and assumptions (they are models, not reality), but it is important to ask whether the assumptions represent behaviour reasonably well.

In Minford’s case, this high level of aggregation is critical because he also assumes that each country purchases these aggregate goods only from the lowest cost supplier, which, in turn, results in even small changes in trade costs having huge effects on the direction of international trade. But in reality, we do not simply buy from the cheapest supplier. Products are different when made in different countries – e.g. the differences in quality between Indonesian and Italian shoes – and this is compounded when we recognise that one country’s bundle of, say, skilled-labour-intensive manufacturing is different from another’s.

Moreover, trade is affected by the distance between countries, their size, history and wealth (the ‘gravity relationship’). Trade costs are not just government-created trade barriers but include things such as time in transit, exchange rate risk, redress in case of error, etc. Product differentiation and gravity are incorporated into modern trade models, and these predict that after Brexit the UK will continue to trade more with the EU than other countries because it remains geographically close, large, rich and of a similar cultural background. Consequently, we cannot just avoid higher trade costs with the EU by increasing trade with, say, China.

Single Market rules have two purposes: first, because they apply across the whole EU, they facilitate trade between members by eliminating duplicate testing and certification and increasing competition between suppliers. Second, many of them provide reassurance about the quality of goods and services – e.g that paint on toys is lead-free, that food-stuffs are traceable back to their origin, that airlines compensate for delays. Minford’s assumption that the Single Market merely diverts trade from non-EU countries is simply contradicted by the empirical evidence.

Getting 4 percent gains requires more than unilateral liberalisation

M&M’s headline result is that UK ‘unilateral free trade’ will increase UK GDP by 4% relative to the status quo. But a careful reading of their technical Appendix B shows that there is far more to it than this – indeed, that gaining 4% requires more integration with Europe than the UK has at present!

Modelling exercises proceed by postulating a ‘base-line’ outcome for the economy and then changing policies and seeing how much the economy changes from the base. Once the model is defined, the key input is the estimate of how much policies change. In M&M UK trade restrictions are assumed to add 10% to the cost of imports. This estimate reflects the assertion that EU protection is currently equivalent to a tariff of 20% and that international pressure will reduce this to 10% within a decade! But the estimate of 20% arises by attributing all the differences in producer prices between the EU and low-cost countries to EU trade barriers, ignoring the obvious differences in safety, quality, product mix etc.[2] The elimination of the remaining 10% amounts to abolishing all such differences.

It is impossible to know exactly what causes prices to differ, but the extra costs of meeting the (often beneficial) high standards needed to sell in the EU must be part of it – for example, not using leaded paint on toys, not using hormones in beef, or fitting emission controls on cars. M&M’s ‘unilateral free trade’ implies eliminating these price differences and so explicitly includes the removal of all such standards imposed on imported goods.[3] See Note 1 to the table on p. 25 which says that under ‘unilateral free trade’ the ‘UK eliminates its non-tariff-barriers (NTBs) with all countries. But Note 1 then goes on to say that the estimate also assumes ‘Broad free trade agreements to be pursued (on investment, agriculture services, property rights, etc) with ROW [rest of the world]. EU agrees zero tariff FTA with UK without conditions; imposes no NTBs on UK (cannot anyway).’

The term ‘unilateral free trade’ is thus doubly misleading: first, it presumes agreements with reciprocal liberalisations with (all?) the UK’s trading partners, including the EU, and second, on the EU, it is just plain wrong. Unless the UK and EU sign an FTA that explicitly removes all EU non-tariff barriers to exports from the UK, WTO rules prevent the EU from eliminating barriers on the UK alone. If achieved, eliminating all tariffs and non-tariff barriers between the UK and the EU would imply deeper integration than the EU Customs Union and Single Market currently deliver, but coupled with a race to the bottom on standards!

In summary, it does matter (a lot) if the EU will not play ball. There is no rosy alternative, even in ‘Economists for Free Trade’s peculiar model.

The effect of devaluation

Having previously been criticised for predicting that unilateral liberalisation will more or less eliminate UK agriculture and manufacturing, M&M assure us now that manufacturing will be just fine: short run (five years) profits will increase by around £23 billion per year! (p.26) The saviour is the devaluation of sterling. The table on p.26 assumes that the devaluation of 15% relative to pre-referendum days will add 15% to the prices that UK manufacturers can earn in each of their home, EU and rest of the world markets. No evidence suggests that exchange rate changes pass through so completely to the export prices of manufactures – precisely because, unlike M&M’s assumption, goods are not homogeneous. Moreover, M&M make no allowance for the way in which devaluation will increase the input costs of manufacturers and, before long, their wage bills as real wages start to make up some of the losses that devaluation imposes on them.

 

[Chindie]

Government tying itself in knots today over the ECJ. Promising to end the 'direct jurisdiction' of the ECJ, which is a completely meaningless phrase and some half arsed political weaseling at best.

Idiots.