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

[PompeyVillan]

13 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

The point was the doomsday scenarios may have more substance now than they did back then.

As it turned out they were all wrong back then but now they may be closer to the truth. 

The difference is that then financial  experts were were speculating, now trade experts are telling us what will actually happen based on international trade law. It's not doomsday predictions, it's highlighting the reality of a no deal Brexit. 

Edited August 5, 2018 by PompeyVillan
Toned down anti Brexiteer rhetoric.

[blandy]

14 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Whilst I appriecate the situation is different now to what it was  in 2016.  Many experts and economists also predicted back then that there would be a financial crisis and a deep recession after the vote. 

Instead the growth rate continued to rise. 

That’s right. And such negative consequences were avoided. However, the vote result has had an adverse impact. The U.K. went from best performing G7 economy, to worst performing. The pound plunged in value etc.  You’re quite right to point to some experts getting it wrong in terms of being alarmist. Equally while they may have overplayed it, they got the direction right. The vote has hit the economy. Also we have to wonder if their prediction might actually still come broadly true, just take a bit longer than they expected. We should also ask whether things will, alternatively, quickly recover and those particular experts were just well wrong. Looking at data suggests it more likely that they overshot, but are on the right lines.

[meregreen]

Generally, the effects of walking off a cliff are more apparent after you step off the cliff, not before. We haven’t left the EU yet. In March, when we do.......that’s when the shit hits the fan. 

[bickster]

Be interesting to see what the FTSE does tomorrow after Liam Fox's 60/40 prediction today

[WhatAboutTheFinish]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

The U.K. went from best performing G7 economy, to worst performing. 

Whilst in agreement at the disappointing numbers on growth, this claim, just for the record, is simply untrue. The U.K. came last in a contrived list comparing one year against the previous but still ‘outperformed’ Japan and Italy in hard numbers.

It’s a bit like trying to claim that if Man City finished this season on 80points that they were the worst team in premier league for having 20 fewer than the year before.

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

Be interesting to see what the FTSE does tomorrow after regularly disgraced former and reinstated minister Liam Fox's 60/40 prediction today

I particularly enjoy that he's frustrated by the EU letting their ideology get in the way of his ideology.

The total lack of self awareness in these people. We really do need some sort of psychological screening before someone can be promoted to positions of such power and impact on our lives. He said a new and better trade deal would be 'the easiest in history'. Yet he couldn't achieve it. So obviously, it's everyone else's fault for not being like the dream he had in his little head.

 

[bickster]

37 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I particularly enjoy that he's frustrated by the EU letting their ideology get in the way of his ideology.

The total lack of self awareness in these people. We really do need some sort of psychological screening before someone can be promoted to positions of such power and impact on our lives. He said a new and better trade deal would be 'the easiest in history'. Yet he couldn't achieve it. So obviously, it's everyone else's fault for not being like the dream he had in his little head.

 

I'm not sure he has an ideology. Conservatism is supposed to be all about small government and FREE TRADE. He appears to want and has done all along, no free trade and increasing the size of our civil service as a result of the implementation of borders and all the other associated work that goes alongside operating under WTO rules

Somebody should tell him he should be on Corbyn's side

That's actually the huge baffling thing here, "The Eurosceptic Wing" of the Tory Party aren't actually Tories at all, they seem to be throwing all their principals out of the window in order to get what they want, it's like they've forgotten why they are supposed to exist.

(Actually, I'm not baffled at all, deep down I know its because they all stand to profit from it)

This could be yet another of those posts of mine and a good few others on VT that should be filed under "Questions journalists aren't asking but should be"

[bickster]

2 hours ago, WhatAboutTheFinish said:

Whilst in agreement at the disappointing numbers on growth, this claim, just for the record, is simply untrue. The U.K. came last in a contrived list comparing one year against the previous but still ‘outperformed’ Japan and Italy in hard numbers.

It’s a bit like trying to claim that if Man City finished this season on 80points that they were the worst team in premier league for having 20 fewer than the year before.

So growth figures are contrived? Even though they show growth? (or not in our case)

And your analogy doesn't work because a football league has a finite number of points and is purely judged on finishing position after a year where everyone started at zero. That really isn't how global economies work

Perhaps if Blandy had said, we were the only country in the G7 whose economy shrank, all the others showed decent rates of growth...

[WhatAboutTheFinish]

3 hours ago, bickster said:

Perhaps if Blandy had said, we were the only country in the G7 whose economy shrank, all the others showed decent rates of growth...

Well that wouldn’t have been true either. The economy grew, not shrank. It grew at a slower rate than the previous year but still grew.

If the analogy didn’t work because economies don’t  reset to zero, maybe you want to list combined economic growth over the last 2 years? (Or maybe not because the U.K. wouldn’t be last on that list either, would they?)

Edited August 5, 2018 by WhatAboutTheFinish

[snowychap]

 

[PompeyVillan]

16 hours ago, snowychap said:

 

The frightening thing is these people having been negotiating Brexit on our behalf for the last two years. 

[bickster]

Quote

By Lewis Goodall, political correspondent

Liam Fox's assertion that the UK sports a 60% chance of falling out of the European Union without a deal got all the headlines.

But no less remarkable was another statement, also detailed in the Sunday Times, where the international trade secretary remarked: "If [no deal] is causing some anxiety in Britain - think what it's causing in Brussels."

The implication was clear - the EU has more to lose from no deal than us.

The problem for Mr Fox is no one in the British government or civil service, in Brussels or across the chancelleries of Europe really believes that.

Mr Fox's comments, however, are illuminating in another (unintended) way.

They reveal something not just about his own thinking but about the Leavers he represents too.

It is connected to the oft-repeated mantra that "they need us just as much as we need them".

It is one of the phrases of our Brexit-infused age, one which the public has adopted and repeats themselves.

That they do is because it speaks to their own conception of British statecraft - the public views the EU/UK battle as one of two equal powers.

As painful as it might be for us to accept, it is not.

Yes the UK is the EU's second-largest economy. Yes it is its largest military player. Yes we are a cultural powerhouse. Yes we are their biggest individual market. Britain is powerful - but the EU is more powerful than we are.

On paper - this should not be surprising, yet no politician, of any stripe, would ever dare say it.

But the facts speak for themselves: We are 65 million of a bloc of 450 million. Ours is a $2.9trn (£2.2trn) economy, they are $19trn (£14.6trn) They represent 44% of our exports. We, just 9% of theirs. They are 27 - we are one.

The impact of a no deal (as all the studies show) would be considerable but they have a crucial advantage: they are able to spread the risk and burden. For that reason, the same studies show, it would hurt us far more. We have nowhere else to turn.

This should not be surprising.

Imagine another country taking Britain's place - that we had 'Frexit' or 'Nexit' or 'Spexit' or even 'Deutschexit', ask yourself where the power would lie. It would be with the remaining states of the union.

That we struggle to come to terms with that is, I think, deeply revealing of the British psyche.

It adverts to the last vestiges of an imperial mindset, a sense too that we have, as a people, never really accepted our status as a diminished power, incapable of acting purely alone.

I doubt, for various historical reasons, that any other country in the EU, even those comparable in power or economic might to Britain (with the possible exception of France, who would have similar post imperial issues) would have trouble perceiving the power dynamics as they truly are.

Indeed, it was this post-imperialism which was a crucial component of the underlying psychology of British entry to the EEC in 1973.

We entered as a new means of projecting British power. Sharing sovereignty- but with the prize of new clout.

The Sun newspaper - then proudly europhile - said that EEC membership was "an opportunity for a nation that lost an empire to gain a continent".

But it was a smokescreen, comforting words obscuring the truth that we joined the Common Market as a means of national salvation, as the sick man of Europe, buffeted by years of industrial and economic turmoil. A cold industrial and economic reality buttered with a layer of British pomp.

This imbalance was obscured through years of membership - we had no need to confront our own relative weakness as a member of the club - but now we are outside, that asymmetry of power is exposed for all to see.

That is why we have accepted concession after concession, not because of Theresa May's pusillanimity but because of the hard truths of realpolitik.

That is why Mrs May and her ministers have been conducting a grand tour of Europe. Not because they want yet more sea bass and asparagus in yet another state dinner, but because they recognise how powerful they are as a bloc and how isolated we are in their face.

They want to tear them asunder, to divide and conquer - this is what David Davis said would happen during the referendum. Yet, they have remained, in 18 months a united set of two, while our own house, our own government, has been fatally divided.

Time and again throughout our history, Britain has acted to prevent the emergence of a hegemonic power which controlled all of Europe, aware that Britain, even with an empire, could not resist a united continent's gravitational pull. Today's crop of politicians, seem to have forgotten that lesson.

Looked at through the psychology of the British public's collective psyche, we can see Mrs May as the Wizard of Oz - less powerful than her people think, or than our population would like others to believe.

That is what is invidious about Brexit for British politicians - for the British public to accept Chequers, or something like it, would essentially be to ask the British people to accept a downgrade of their own view of British power, a downgrade of the sort of country we think we should be and that we think we are.

We are not an especially jingoistic nation, but that is much to stomach. It is a view which, however unfair, would be repeated and churned by the exact Brexiteers who, from Mrs May's point of view, forced us to accept the downgrade in the first place.

9

Sky News

When Sky are calling you out...

[ml1dch]

16 minutes ago, bickster said:

Sky News

When Sky are calling you out...

To fair, Sky have been very good through this whole thing.

They are the ones asking the questions that the BBC are refusing to, and have been doing for a long time.

[Chindie]

The 'they need us more than we need them' line has always been spurious and, particularly bizarrely imo for this whole subject, you don't even need any knowledge of the EU or politics to understand why.

27 is a bigger number than 1. Even if, as it is, that 1 is a big number, and the 27 are smaller numbers, we know that a large chunk of that 27 is still fairly similar to us (i.e. they mostly aren't tiny backwoods countries and we aren't an economic powerhouse that dwarfs them entirely), so they mostly won't be that much smaller, and together they're obviously larger. And they share the impact of losing that 1.

Us having more to lose is undeniable. It's just maths.

[blandy]

16 minutes ago, Chindie said:

27 is a bigger number than 1.

No, no it isn't. French wine

Quote

Even if, as it is, that 1 is a big number, and the 27 are smaller numbers, we know that a large chunk of that 27 is still fairly similar to us

No, no they're not. BMWs.

Quote

they mostly won't be that much smaller, and together they're obviously larger.

No, no - they are smaller. Brexit means Brexit.

Quote

And they share the impact of losing that 1. Us having more to lose is undeniable. It's just maths.

No, no it isn't. Sovereignty.

[Xann]

Quote

 

The composer Howard Goodall was passing through a London airport in March en route to a conducting gig in Houston. Idling at the currency exchange desk, he got into a conversation with an employee about whether Britain’s departure from the European Union, known as Brexit, would be good for his industry. When Mr. Goodall said no and suggested that the consequences would be “disastrous,” the clerk replied that everyone he asked that question “gives the same answer.”

Mr. Goodall posted the exchange on Twitter and soon found he had touched a nerve: his message got at least 1.6 million views, about 8,500 retweets, and nearly 19,000 likes. When a Brexit-supporting member of Parliament, Nadine Dorries, asked him to explain why, exactly, the impact would be so negative, Mr. Goodall responded on his blog, in a passionate, closely argued piece, 3,400 words long.

“Well, I needed to say something,” Mr. Goodall said in a recent interview.

As Britain lives through the psychodrama of Brexit — a deal negotiated by Prime Minister Theresa May in July quickly led to the resignation of some senior lawmakers from her cabinet, and the power struggles within the governing Conservative party seem to be multiplying — business leaders have become increasingly spooked.

Carmakers and financial institutions, airplane manufacturers and the energy industry: All have voiced anxiety about how much negotiation remains to be done. Last month, Amazon weighed in: Doug Gurr, the company’s most senior executive in Britain, warned that if the country left the European Union without negotiating a new arrangement with the bloc (the “no-deal” scenario), there could be civil unrest.

In comparison, the cause of classical music perhaps seems trivial. But plenty in the sector are unsettled. Musicians, including the pianist-conductors Vladimir Ashkenazy and Daniel Barenboim have expressed grave doubts. In December, the Association of British Orchestras produced a detailed study, pointing out how many ensembles relied on multinational touring and numerous other benefits that flowed from European Union membership.

In July, the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the British Parliament, released a report warning that the government’s plans for life outside the bloc were worryingly vague, particularly when it came to immigration. There could be grave repercussions for the cultural sector if it became harder for performers and creative artists to enter Britain, it said.

The European Youth Orchestra performing in Ferrara. The ensemble’s chief executive, Marshall Marcus, said he saw the move as an opportunity rather than a retreat. “You can’t ask for E.U. funding and then not be in the E.U.,” he pointed out.

By then, the European Union Youth Orchestra had long since announced that its administrative team would be leaving London for a new home in Ferrara, Italy. “You can’t ask for E.U. funding and then not be in the E.U.,” its chief executive, Marshall Marcus, pointed out.

Months after his encounter at the airport, Mr. Goodall still seems incensed. He is a realist, he said: Classical music was never going to be top of the priority list. But he felt that the arguments were being drowned out by bigger, better-funded lobbying groups.

Mr. Goodall said that while many of Britain’s traditional industries had withered, culture was one area where it still produced world-class exports. According to the government’s own Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the creative industry created around 92 billion pounds, or about $126 billion at current exchange rates, for the British economy in 2016.

“The music business is international, and in this country we have an international reputation,” Mr. Goodall said. “We’re at risk of losing it.”

 

New York Times

[bickster]

1 hour ago, ml1dch said:

To fair, Sky have been very good through this whole thing.

They are the ones asking the questions that the BBC are refusing to, and have been doing for a long time.

Tbh, I never watch it, I'll take your word for it. Rarely watch any actual TV these days

[Chindie]

It's ok everyone, the EU's own laws insist they must make a deal with us.

Except they don't.

[snowychap]

Been seeing more stuff about the issue of not enough seasonal workers to pick soft fruit (amongst other things) and it being labeled as 'soft fruit armageddon'.

Farmageddon, no?

[bickster]

12 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Been seeing more stuff about the issue of not enough seasonal workers to pick soft fruit (amongst other things) and it being labeled as 'soft fruit armageddon'.

Farmageddon, no?

Means something different around these parts