The Brexit Thread

[Tubby Isaacs]

norman smithVerified account
@BBCNormanS
Tory Brexiteers up in arms after Theresa May leaves open possibility UK will accept ECJ rules during transition

At this rate, there's going to be no deal at all because a rump of what John Major called "bastards" are going to veto it over the ECJ operating for 2 more years.

Who else can oversee the transition, if nothing changes?

[Lang Spoon]

We really fucked ourselves by not having a Revolution since the Dutch coup. Never mind the wrong people being in charge, the wrong people kept their heads and property. The entire landowning class should have been de-headed a long time ago. Eton used as a stables.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Calculation done by the World Bank.



The EU will have its mind a "Canada-style FTA" that it can whip out at the last minute that only deprives us of about 50% of services trade.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Wow. From Chris Cook of Newsnight.

One of the ideas under consideration is joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership - a putative trade area of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam (the US withdrew earlier this year). Thought has, separately, been given to joining the North American Free Trade Area - the trade area consisting the US, Canada and Mexico.

There are significant problems with both ideas - TPP is still on the operating table after the US's withdrawal. NAFTA is hardly stable either. And the political choices required to make them work would be brave - but that's an intrinsic factor in trade policy that Westminster has yet to grapple with. There are trade-offs everywhere

Malaysia, Peru and Vietnam ought to insist on lots of UK visas.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Remember Liam Fox's "40 trade deals will be ready to go"?

Chris CookVerified account @xtophercook 2h2 hours ago
Less curiously but more pressingly, the DIT officials now pointing ministers to focus on 4 deals of the 40 FTAs that the EU has signed

And perhaps those 4 will involve the other side saying "You need deals, fast. There was just this tiny point in the EU deal we didn't like..."

[Tubby Isaacs]

From an old US Department of Trade paper.

Regional approach to commitments. The TPP facilitates the development of production and supply chains, and seamless trade, enhancing efficiency and supporting our goal of creating and supporting jobs, raising living standards, enhancing conservation efforts, and facilitating cross-border integration, as well as opening domestic markets. .

That doesn't sound like it suits us, somehow.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Good link on the argument over the split of quotas here.

https://tradebetablog.wordpress.com/...tariff-quotas/

Take that example of splitting the 300,000-tonne EU–28 quota into 120,000 tonnes for the UK and 180,000 tonnes for the EU. The combined total is still 300,000 tonnes.

But the seven are arguing that the commercial value to them would be reduced because they have less flexibility to choose where to export their product to. While the UK is still in the EU, they can switch from selling less to the UK and more to Germany or France if the price is better, for example. Under the joint UK-EU approach that freedom would be constrained by the separate quotas.

At the very least, this suggests the seven would want: either, quotas that are larger than 120,000 tonnes (UK) and 180,000 (EU–27), meaning more than 300,000 tonnes in total; or, continued freedom to choose where to sell their products in the 28 countries that are now the EU.

I know the WTO is slow, but won't the "seven" have a decent legal case in time?

If so, aren't we likely to get shaken down by the EU and the seven? Bigger quota into the UK coming?

[Snake Plissken]

Dominic Cummings, director of Vote Leave deleted his Twitter account. Fleeing the sinking ship.

https://jonworth.eu/dominic-cummings...back-together/

[Tubby Isaacs]

"Erudite leaver" Pete North, last year.

Pete North
@PeteNorth303
Immigration that central London professionals experience is not the same as the human detritus dumped on Yorkshire. Needs fixing.
1:19 pm - 5 Oct 2016

Apparently, he reckons we're missing "context".

[Snake Plissken]

Someone elsewhere posted a Pete North twitter thread. It basically was "this is a disaster, run by incompetents, which is going to cause untold harm to the country for a generation.... knowing all this, I would still vote Leave."

There is no hope with some people.

[Ginger Yellow]

North has a pretty remarkable blog post from Monday, which basically amounts to "We're totally fucked, but it'll be good for us because I hate Londoners."

It reminds me of David Frum's piece about how economic insecurity is a good thing because it makes people more conservative.

[Snake Plissken]

Here we are - http://peterjnorth.blogspot.co.uk/20...will-live.html

In the first year or so we are going to lose a lot of manufacturing. Virtually all JIT export manufacturing will fold inside a year. Initially we will see food prices plummet but this won't last. Domestic agriculture won't be able to compete and we'll see a gradual decline of UK production. UK meats will be premium produce and no longer affordable to most.
...

What I do expect to happen is a lot of engineering jobs to be axed since a lot of them are dependent on defence spending. It will kill off a number of parasitic resourcing firms and public sector suppliers. Basically it will wipe out the cosseted lower middle class and remind them that they are just as dispensable as the rest of us.
...
We can the expect to see a major rationalisation of the NHS and what functions it will perform. It will be more of a skeleton service than ever. I expect they will have trouble staffing it. Economic conditions more than any immigration control will bring numbers down to a trickle.

In every areas of policy a lot of zombie projects will be culled and a the things that survive on very slender justifications will fall. We can also expect banks to pull the plug in under-performing businesses. Unemployment will be back to where it was in the 80's.
...

And so with that in mind, as much as I would have had it go a different way, I think, given the opportunity to vote again I would still vote to leave. Eventually it gets to a point where any change will do. I prefer an uncertain future to the certainty I was looking at.

[Moonlight Shadow]

He has gone completely mad today and that old tweet re-surfacing is a nasty piece of comment. One thing you could tell yourself with those kind of leavers was their lack of obsession with immigration...

I think the Year Zero thing is exactly what the likes of Gove and Rees-Mogg are aiming for, complete disruption and the birth of a new society. Khmer Rouge with a blue rosette....

[Tubby Isaacs]

Remainers talking down the Norway option are apparently to blame.

Reckon being in Schengen and having FoM would have been acceptable to the Tories?

Me neither.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Citizens of nowhere!

Joey D'UrsoVerified account
@josephmdurso
In the last four years almost 5,000 people moved from London to Bedford (population 100,000). Which partly explains this!

[Tubby Isaacs]

Rebalancing latest:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/bu...-a7992051.html

The UK racked up a record trade in goods deficit in August, confirming the failure for the slump in sterling to help improve the UK's trade balance.

The Office for National Statistics reported that the UK exported £28.1bn of goods in the month and imported £42.4bn, leaving a deficit of £14.2, the highest on record.

Imports of chemicals, machinery and textiles all jumped, according to the ONS.

[E10 Rifle]

That North blogpiece has unmistakably fascist echoes. No apologies for the hyperbole

[Snake Plissken]

https://twitter.com/LBC/status/917801962829176833

[Tubby Isaacs]

I can't work out why somebody like that would, so he tells us, want to join EFTA. I mean, when you're all "bring on the destruction", why would you think "Let's join Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein!"

[Lang Spoon]

He was the Good Brexiter, yeah?

Fascist autarchy, with a tax haven sideline, no Welfare State, all the big Govt spending on the filth. What a fucking horrible country, fucking old people man. Hope the cunts all get gangrene from bed sores in their understaffed care homes. At least a bloody dago won’t be wiping their arse anymore but.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The left behind "real people" must be licking their lips at the thought of cheaper exports from Mexico as a NAFTA member. But they've served the purpose for Foxy and all, they can be forgotten about.

Are you a fan of If... as well as O Lucky Man", Spoony? It's like the scene where the headmaster gets the chaplain out of the drawer, and puts him straight back in.

[Lang Spoon]

That’s a good un too. Can’t remember that scene though, is the Chaplain the Scots character actor (crowden?) who was the Doctor from O Lucky Man? (The guy making hideous sheep monster things in the hospital)?

Can only really remember the sadism in If, the ending and the “love scene” in the cafe. Dunno what that says about me.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Nah, Crowden is an eccentric old teacher who cycles into class at one point.

[Lang Spoon]

Oh yes! He was in that 80s/90s sitcom with the two codgers shaking things up in an old folk’s home as well. I secretly really liked that. More subversive than The Day Today, I’m about to argue implausibly. Not really, but this was an often brutally honest prime time sitcom long after the glory cynical downbeat years of Steptoe and the Likely Lads. The two leads anyway were fantastic, even if everyone else gave off 80s sitcom Acting! vibes.

[MsD]

Interesting view from a prominent Leaver:
https://twitter.com/petenorth303/sta...=244+281088008