Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

salonfire

But the shortage of labour will drive up capital investment and better investment in staff, thus increasing the UK's dire productivity. Well, in theory anyway.

The biggest problem with Brexit is the hatchet Johnson has taken to international relations. They could have been civil about the whole thing and maintained closer ties to the EU for trade while boosting their own productivity.

Leroy42

Or, companies will just move to where the labour is and save the money required for additional investment in the UK.

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117986648#Comment_117986648

There's a flight of capital out of the UK. Where exactly is this capital going to come from and why specifically would it move to the UK when it doesn't have any of the trade agreements that are required.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117986648#Comment_117986648

This makes no sense. Why would you invest capital in a country where the government is creating artificial shortages? Intel's decision not to invest makes sense since you probably can't make chips as efficiently if electricity has to be rationed.

Brexit was always about taking a hatchet to international relations. The problem is that no other European country is interested in leaving the EU after seeing how feeble the UK has shown itself to be.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117986648#Comment_117986648

Mmm. Having to pay more for labour will, at least in the sort term, leave employers less for capital investment, training, etc. Plus, to the extent that it encourages capital investment, this may be e.g. investment in automation or mechanisation so that you need fewer expensive workers. So what you can end up with is the remaining workers in that sector being better paid, but total wages paid in that sector falling, because so many workers have been replaced. That's a net shift in wealth away from labour and towards capital.

The UK could indeed have conducted a less destructive Brexit while taking steps to boost their own labour productivity. But here's the thing; they could have taken steps to boost their own productivity without brexiting at all - and, in fact, should have; Brexit itself has exacerbated the UK's productivity problem.

UK labour productivity growth has been dismal for the past ten years and, far from doing anything about this problem, most analysis suggests that Tory policies have contributed to it - the two biggest contributors to the problem cited by commentators are (a) austerity and (b) Brexit. Answers to this problem that make more sense than brexiting are (a) not brexiting; (b) investment in education and training; (c) infrastructure investment; (d) tax changes to incentivise or reward labour productivity increases; (e) regulatory changes to improve the value of labour (e.g. end zero hours contracts, discourage casualisation; improve collective bargaining).

None of these things required Brexit. France, Germany and Italy all have significantly higher labour productivity than the UK; EU membership has not impeded them from pursuing productivity-friendly policies.

timetogo1

Not sure if this was posted before. James O'Brien made a good point yesterday about Project Fear.

Project Fear was just scaremongering by Remoaners, now that it's reality the UK gov are transitioning to saying it was all part of the plan to become a high wage / high tech economy and the UK population seem OK with that.

James O'Brien: 'Project Fear is reality - now PM claims it's part of the plan' - LBC

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117986864#Comment_117986864

Well, it's early days. It remains to be seen just how OK the UK population will be with this.

There are two issues here. The first is, if the shortages and the disruption and the dislocation etc were all a plan to create a shortage of labour and so drive up wages, then when the Brexit movement denounced predictions of shortages and disruption and dislocation etc as "Project Fear" they were in fact lying. They not only expected shortages etc, but positively intended them. Which means they did in fact secure their victory in the Brexit referendum and/or the 2019 election by outright electoral fraud, which does have implications for the democratic legitimacy of the whole Brexit project. And this provides a route by which people who come to regret their vote to Leave can change their position and preserve their self-respect - "I wasn't mistaken when I voted to Leave; I was lied to." The Tories might be unwise to create such a route.

The other is that it won't really be sustainable to maintain that wage increases as a consequence of the labour shortage can be separated from price increases, product shortages, supply disruptions and animal culls as a consequence of the labour shortage. By claiming credit for the wage increases the Tories are conceding responsibility for the price increases, etc. And, unless you're a HGV driver or a fruit picker or someone in a couple of other fairly select sectors of the labour force, your views of the government are far more likely to be coloured by how you feel about not having petrol or green vegetables than how you feel about other people having higher wages.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117986927#Comment_117986927

The brexit campaign was already found to have broken election laws by breaking funding rules and making false and misleading claims.

The only reason why the courts didn't ask for there to be a remedy, is because the referendum was 'non binding' and 'advisory' so the government could have ignored the results or reversed brexit without court action

It was the kind of ruling that Joseph Heller would proudly have included in Catch 22

In the future, I want to install myself as a dictator, so I put it to a 'non binding referendum' and I break every electoral rule to lie and cheat into winning that referendum, and then use that 'people's vote' to justifying me becoming a dictator.

Isn't that a version of what Putin and all the rest do every time there's an election?

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117986625#Comment_117986625

Starmer could campaign on reversing brexit without ever mentioning the B word

He should campaign on:

Restoring rights

Restoring free travel

Re-Uniting families

Restoring access to the single market

reducing red tape

Fixing the fishing industry

Ending the empty shelves

Saving christmas

etc

Labour can take all of the benefits of rolling back brexit, and campaign on them individually, and then force the opposition to link them to brexit if they dare

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117987101#Comment_117987101

Free travel and the single market are still no go areas despite the current problems

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117986864#Comment_117986864

O'Brien's brilliant. He's the one that pointed out when Dominic Cummings went for the eye test @ Barnard Castle, it was on Cumming's wife's birthday, when all the flowers were in bloom there.

Spot on with this commentary but he usually is.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117987101#Comment_117987101

And people would see through it in an instant. Do you not remember the campaign? People do not want free movement. Corbyn committed to ending it in 2017.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117987265#Comment_117987265

If people didn't see through the 'take back control' nonsense, why would they see through pledges to restore the privileges they had before brexit took them away?

The argument is that brits are bored of brexit, and don't want to talk about it anymore, but they do want to talk about fixing the impacts of brexit that personally affect them, so breaking brexit into it's consequences and campaigning on those individually is a viable strategy

People want to be able to travel and live in their holiday homes in Spain, they want musicians and theatre groups from outside the UK to be able to perform in their local area

They also want to be able to buy petrol and food

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117987201#Comment_117987201

Freedom of travel is something almost all british people want for themselves. They just don't like immigration, so Starmer can focus on restoring British people's ability to travel freely, while using the available protections against immigration (the kinds of protections that were already in place when the UK was in the EU, that they didn't bother to implement)

Starmer, if he was any good, should be able to play both cards at the same time, pledge to protecting their borders, and allowing British people the freedom to travel around the continent of Europe without having to pay fees and get visas and queue at borders and have duration restrictions etc

And if anyone argues against him, he can just say that the UK borders have never been more unprotected since leaving the EU as they've basically given up doing any checks on goods entering the UK from outside

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117987304#Comment_117987304

The problem is that the effects of Brexit aren't hitting enough people yet. Exhuming the debate will only work when it becomes more apparent though that seems guaranteed with the incompetence the government displays daily.

The problem with free movement is that few Brits were actually using it. Plenty of older people aren't going to move to Spain and plenty of younger people simply can't afford to travel. I personally place a very high value on free movement. I'm applying for work in the Benelux region so I'll need it and that's about the best incentive there is. Too many people here see free movement and immigration as burdens and that's the problem. Agitating for restoring it just hands the next election to Johnson with things as they are. There just aren't that many people with holiday homes in Spain and musicians are just woke lefties who need to grow up.

Seth Brundle

Oh, have I been misunderstanding him all this time?

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1446025777108111362

ancapailldorcha

No insults. Post deleted.

rock22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117986625#Comment_117986625

I am not too sure people are sick of it yet.

Johnson repeatedly referred to Brexit in claiming that the effects of Brexit, i.e. labour shortages etc. was all part of the plan. And he is using Brexit as a jumping off .point for his new better 'high wage /high productivity economy".

In the last few days, Andrew Marr, BBC Newsnight, and a Channel 5 program this morning questioned the plan 9 or lack of it ) and referred back to promised Johnson made. the public seem engaged at the real effect of Brexit, 100,000 pigs to be slaughtered and burned is hitting a nerve.

It seems the only people not talking about Brexit is Starmer and the Labour party.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117987338#Comment_117987338

A strange part of Johnson's speech yesterday was about 'uncontrolled immigration' (which went down very well with the faithful). I'm assuming he must be referring to the neighbouring EU and the UK's newfound ability to block it. But is there any evidence that hundreds of thousands of EU citizens want to move to the UK or will do at any point in the next couple of years? How do you 'control' mass EU immigration that isn't even happening?

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117987946#Comment_117987946

You don't because it isn't happening but you bang on about it because why change the habit of a lifetime. Bear in mind that conferences by their nature solely about feeding the base. Ironic as this is the party that's allowed non-EU migration in the magnitude of well over 100,000 to the UK for years now.

I think the media coverage of it in the UK has been abysmal. This notion that the UK is a low wage, low skill economy is being trotted out by Tories now that they have a serious and possibly catastrophic labour shortage in logistics. It was never a point they mentioned before, and it also does not tally with reality either. The UK has relatively higher wages and is typically a fairly high skilled services economy.

Most of the wage inflation they're going to see is in domestic provision of lower skilled services in areas like retail, logistics etc and none of those are really replaceable by high skilled jobs as they are essential to the functioning of any economy.

You also cannot just legislate wages or skills to go up. It's utter nonsense and you're talking about transformations that take decades at best, but again, I am not really seeing where the UK is a low skill / low wage economy in the first place.

Then you've the other massive intellectual incongruity: They're making access to advanced eduction much more expensive and difficult, thus limiting upskilling possibilities and they're dramatically cutting social welfare supports which is forcing people into low wage, low skilled jobs with few opportunities to escape from them.

Igotadose

Dumping milk now, another Brexit benefit. Apparently there are 'milk rescue' services that buy the milk cheap but they can't keep up. Energy hikes are driving up the fertilizer costs, too, much more pain for the farmers.

https://www.rte.ie/news/uk/2021/1006/1251183-milk-dumps/

salonfire

Pity to see the EU starting to fold regarding the Northern Ireland Protocol. Sefcovic to table "far reaching" proposals.

roosterman71

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117990403#Comment_117990403

What? Have you seen what he's tabling or something? Big jump to the EU folding

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117990403#Comment_117990403

The EU aren't folding anything. They have always been available to discuss doing things within the terms of the protocol - but they will not change the protocol and have made this abundantly clear.

rameire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117990403#Comment_117990403

You reading the Express?

They hate the EU so much most of the tripe they write online is about the EU.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117990403#Comment_117990403

You haven't read the full transcript of what Sefcovic said in Dublin today. He stated that the Protocol can NOT be renegotiated under any circumstances, but added that the EU is open to how the Protocol is enforced on the ground - hence the 'far reaching proposals' (i.e. they may be able to show some flexibility on certain types of checks).

salonfire

OK, the EU shows some flexibility. What's in it for the EU? The deal is over the line.

If there's nothing in it for the EU and benefits only internal UK politics, the EU has softened.

Sam Russell

Before Brexit there were SPS inspections in Larne, so why are they protesting about the same checks now? Of course, as the UK (GB) insists on moving from EU standards, then more levels of SPS checks will be needed.

What do they want? Their unicorns to enter the sunny uplands with no veterinary inspections?

I don't think so - we have enough trouble with our own unicorns,

54and56

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117990729#Comment_117990729

What's in it for the EU is they put out a fire which has been smouldering and flaring up for years consuming far too much airtime.

I'd be amazed if the EU proposals aren't contingent on once and for all putting a lid on the NIP ie require both the HoC and Stormont to vote on and approve them.

No more of the UK banking the EU concession and immediately asking for more.