Brexit discussion thread III

Water John wrote: »

If TM is going with this 'customs partnership', there will be no big move away from the EU, for the next 10 years.
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/may-plans-customs-partnership-to-unlock-northern-ireland-dilemma-1.3448056

My understanding of that, is that the UK would maintain the current and future EU standards (whilst leaving the table and thus any input into their decisions) and would then become the tax collector for EU in terms of tariffs on goods destined for the EU.

So container arrives from China with toys. 10% tariff into EU (for example) with 0% for the UK. 30% of the container is destined for the UK market, the rest will go onto Dublin.

All this is going to be done by a country which is currently being charged with allowing Chinese products to enter the UK market in the level of billions!

So what have the UK got out of it. They cannot change the regulations, they now take on board the administration, they lose the power to take part in the discussions.

I can't see how any that is better than the position that they currently are in

Lemming wrote: »

The AV referendum wasn't 'strongly rejected' as so much that there was a p1ss poor effort at informing the masses as to what it was, a p1ss poor voter turn out, and general apathy about the whole matter because everybody had a p1ss poor notion on it so a lot of people just voted "no" to retain the status quo - of which they did know about (or in so much as the general UK voting population pays much attention ... ). Voter turn-out was considered higher-than-expected at a whopping 41% which tells a story.

People had a piss poor notion about the EU, but still voted to change things, when the proper response is "if you don't know, vote no".
You basically have an irresponsible electorate.

Charles Babbage wrote: »

People had a piss poor notion about the EU, but still voted to change things, when the proper response is "if you don't know, vote no".
You basically have an irresponsible electorate.

The very solution they were looking for was a very simplistic one. Demanding an in / out EU referendum for years, as if a glorified opinion poll somehow could magically solve all of their problems and transform British society. It looks like an unsophisticated electorate : the difficulties that have emerged post-2016 could have been predicted by anyone.

Sooner than having a mature debate on all the issues surrounding Britain's relationship with Europe, they went with the 'magic wand' solution of thinking a silly referendum could put everything right.

is it not simply democracy?

The question was poor and the campaign was badly handled, but surely no one is advocating that people should have less of a say?

Leroy42 wrote: »

is it not simply democracy?

The question was poor and the campaign was badly handled, but surely no one is advocating that people should have less of a say?

My view is the concept of representative democracy is to elect a government to run the country, and make complex decisions on your behalf, using expert advice, putting highly complex issues like Brexit to a public vote is dereliction of a Governments duty.

There's a big difference between voting on abortion for instance and voting on something as massively complex as Brexit which is incomprehensible to the average voter.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

UK IT systems are just not ready for Brexit.
Details of 600,000 foreign visitors to UK go up in smoke thanks to shonky border database

Aye the UK Border force is a joke, just travelled back from a holiday via Stansted and it took an hour to clear immigration, far worse than any other country and I travel a fair bit with work.

BINO is on the cards. Brexit in name only, but I'm sure you have all figured that one out!

Cannot see an alternative but a crash out.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

And on and on it goes...

https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/notice-stakeholders-withdrawal-united-kingdom-and-eu-rules-eu-domain-names_en

there are just over 317,000 .eu domains registered in the UK

Just when you think you've heard all the possible impacts of brexit an other one turns up and you realise once again it's only the tip of the iceberg.

I think a lot of people are better informed now than at the referendum - I'm one of them. But I wouldn't change my vote, nor do I think the vote is delegitimised.
For all the stereotypes of gammon-faced racists screeching about foreigners, there is a sizeable Eurosceptic population that could not tolerate the loss of sovereignty or the nation state. So the economic impact in the short-to-medium-term doesn't bother them, they think it will sufficiently recover long-term. If it doesn't, they might complain and moan about the drop in living standards, but I doubt they would regret their Leave vote.

Frito wrote: »

I think a lot of people are better informed now than at the referendum - I'm one of them. But I wouldn't change my vote, nor do I think the vote is delegitimised.
For all the stereotypes of gammon-faced racists screeching about foreigners, there is a sizeable Eurosceptic population that could not tolerate the loss of sovereignty or the nation state. So the economic impact in the short-to-medium-term doesn't bother them, they think it will sufficiently recover long-term. If it doesn't, they might complain and moan about the drop in living standards, but I doubt they would regret their Leave vote.

There is, but many are grim faced pensioners who will be financially insulated from their decision. They will also spin off this mortal coil leaving the young with the tab. The same crowd who are up in arms about possibly needing to sell their 300k house, bought for 20, and insist that the same younger generation who are triple locking their pensions also pay for their care whilst they hold on to the assets that the young can only hope to afford one day.
There is also a sizeable swathe of the population who voted in ignorance, and almost a third didn't bother voting at all. Democracy is spelling out the options, and ramifications clearly and then having a vote, not taking a binary referendum, and ramrodding your own "red lines" into it, likely to the financial advantage of you and your coterie, or worse, in a simple venal attempt to cling onto power.

Frito wrote: »

So the economic impact in the short-to-medium-term doesn't bother them, they think it will sufficiently recover long-term.

Why? Where are the economic projections that say the UK will ever make up the 3, 6, 10% (pick whichever projection you like) they will have lost by 2040?

Frito wrote: »

I think a lot of people are better informed now than at the referendum - I'm one of them. But I wouldn't change my vote, nor do I think the vote is delegitimised.
For all the stereotypes of gammon-faced racists screeching about foreigners, there is a sizeable Eurosceptic population that could not tolerate the loss of sovereignty or the nation state. So the economic impact in the short-to-medium-term doesn't bother them, they think it will sufficiently recover long-term. If it doesn't, they might complain and moan about the drop in living standards, but I doubt they would regret their Leave vote.

What are you better informed about?

What were the things that led you to vote the way you did and does the new information not have any impact on that?

It is curious that despite nearly everything that the leave said said during the campaign, including but not limited to the £350m per week, the mis-selling of the extent on EU migration and the power that UK still retained in this regard, the power that the UK would have in the split, the ease of international trade etc, despite all this an more being shown to be at best wishful thinking, that based on the polls the vote would remain pretty much the same as before.

I am better informed about EEA/EFTA, I understand that the Customs Union is not the same as checks at borders.

I understand better the complaints Leave voters had about the European parliament being antidemocratic. I don't mean the unelected part, because it is indirectly elected, more specifically the idea that voting rituals don't equal democracy. That said, those Leave voters consider the UK govt to be in need of reform, because decision-making is centralised and should be devolved.

I voted to remain for economic reasons. If we had the same binary referendum again, I would still vote to remain.
If we had different options, where there was a realistic possibility of EEA/EFTA membership, then I would vote for that. Not because I particularly want to leave, but because the Eurosceptics are never going to go away, and that seems like a good compromise.

Frito wrote: »

There aren't, but that's beside the point for them.
People who voted Leave for sovereignty reasons are prepared to take an economic hit. Some of them who sincerely believe we can recover don't give much credit to economic forecasts...the 'experts' problem. I think they're in cloud cuckoo land, but, economics was the deciding factor for my remain vote.

Sovereignty.


Let's stick with.

Discuss with us what particular sovereignty you will get back and how that will impact you or others in Britain. Specifics please . Because you did indicate you were well versed in the subject matter

The issue I have with the leave side, and the sovereignty claim, is that no-one seems to be able to articulate what that actually is.

So on one hand we have clear costs to leaving. Even the act of leaving itself is already budgeted to cost £4bn, and that doesn't take into account the ongoing costs of additional administration of customs, extra border checks, the economic cost (in terms of the price of good) of the additional customs queue etc etc.

On the other we have this, at least to me, vague notion of 'taking back control'. "Free to make our own laws" etc. Yet even a cursory look will see that this notion that the UK is somehow controlled by Brussels as wrong. How come the UK are not using the Euro? Why are they not in Schengen? Why do they still use miles and lbs? Why is abortion still illegal in NI? Why are tax rates different in different countries? WHy do the UK still drive on the left?

There are so many examples of UK laws not having to align with the EU that one can only consider that the UK do indeed have the ability to make their own laws.

Even the recent argument over fishing rights. In appears that many of the fishing rights have been sold by the UK companies to EU companies. So the ire really belongs to the companies that sold out the UK, not the EU.

So whilst I can appreciate the argument that economic forecasts are just that, they are not proof of anything (although the absence of any positive reports is a telling sign), even if we take the view that over the long term the economy will be roughly the same, I fail to see, beyond some vague notion, of what the outcome of Brexit is supposed to be.

When taking such a serious decision, I would have thought that most people would have considered what it is they are going to get.

I also find it ironic that in country such as the UK, with an electoral system such as FPTP, which is not giving the representation to the people, and which continues on with an unelected Lords as the final sign-off, that they turned their ire towards the EU rather than looking to fix their own house first.