Brexit discussion thread III

In other tangential Brexit news, Facebook won't extend GDPR protections worldwide. Goes to show the value of personal data and that if the UK don't get their equivalent data protection laws in place quickly, companies are going to take advantage if they can.

Sam Russell wrote: »

I do not agree.

It was the SNP who had done all the work on the Scottish Indyref, and had all the economic arguments worked out. It was the 'Stronger Together' who used the emotional arguments like 'You can't use the GB Pound', or 'You will have to leave the EU' or you will not get the BBC, or other such arguments. Most of this type of rhetoric was of uncertin truth and would have been subject to negotiation.

It was emotion what won it.

Those are not emotive arguments. They are quite factual. An independent Scotland would have to leave the EU, just like Catalonia. Scotland is not on the list of members. It might reapply, but the UK could veto it and certainly would be incredibly foolish not to use the threat of a veto as leverage in negotiations on the divorce with Scotland, much as Spain is doing on Gibraltar. An independent Scotland, leaving the UK club would not continue to be able to have full access to the benefits of being a member of the club. Cold hard facts won the day in the Scottish independence vote. It was a lot of risks, with little upside other than the emotive desire for sovereignty.

The key difference with the Brexit vote is not the strategy of the UK government changed from factual to emotive, it was that the desire for sovereignty at any cost won out. To a large degree all the fairly obvious downsides were either dismissed entirely as project fear or viewed as a price worth paying.

Econ_ wrote: »

He claimed that we can't declare that other people have been deceived or misinformed and that only them themselves can decide such a thing.

It was then pointed out that if people are espousing verifiably untrue information, then they are by definition either misinformed/deceived or they are lying.

'Agreeing to disagree' at the junction in the debate is a cop out.

My reading of it was he said that just because people have access to the same data but reach a different conclusion does not make them deceived or misinformed.

People are arguing Leave voters were deceived or misinformed because of the NHS lie etc. Thats an irrelevance. The top three reasons the Ashcroft poll gave for voting Leave was 1. The principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK, 2. Voting leave offered the UK the best chance to regain control over immigration and its own borders, 3. Remaining meant little or no choice about how the EU extended its powers or membership.

Economic rationales/lies peddled by the Leave campaign - 350mn a week to the NHS etc - don't factor. The Leave voters by and large had very different principles and values. The EU by definition does mean a pooling of sovereignty. Some view they economic prosperity that results as worth it, others do not. If GDP and jobs were important, you voted Remain. If you had different priorities you voted Leave.

Now I get why Frito said 'agree to disagree' because there's a fierce refusal to acknowledge or accept that, and its gets tiresome to see people talking past the problem. Many Leave voters simply do not care if London house prices decline, or yuppies find it harder to travel around Europe taking a year out, or rich farmers cant import foreigners to pick their crops, or if the contributions to the EU were 350 mn or 200 mn a week, or if a GDP figure which is increasingly notional to them is a few percent higher or lower. They do not care. They want to feel empowered and in control of their destiny and their country.

This feeling of powerlessness is mainly an UK political problem which Brexit will not solve (and indeed could make much worse), but talking about lies told in Brexit and calling Leave voters deceived/misinformed/stupid is largely irrelevant to addressing it.

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

But of course the impact will not be on yuppies and rich people - it will mainly be on the poor. Unemployment will reappear, food prices will shoot up, jobs will be poorly paid for competitiveness etc. The EU will no longer be helping the regions, and if you think Boris will, you can whistle for it.

Well, I think there has been research done which shows the Leave voters were not necessarily unusually poor. Not certain on that, might be confusing it with Trump voters.

That aside, we're talking about yuppies and rich people who felt so contemptuous of the losers in their society that The Financial Times could publish an opinion piece by Janan Ganesh arguing that 'Rich democracies may have to live with a caucus of permanently aggrieved voters amounting to a quarter or a third of the whole...A seething minority is still a minority'

This goes back to the sense of powerlessness, and Brexit as a revolt against it. If you were one of the 'seething minority' seeing that sort of contempt towards you, the belief you are irrelevant and you can just be managed like background noise to the 'real politics' of the day would you really be thinking about GDP or food prices? Or would you accept some pain to kick back against a view that is in the long run very dangerous to your interests? That Ganesh can voice such reprehensible views, which accurately surmise in my view the issue in British politics that needs to be addressed regardless of how Brexit turns out in the short term. Because 'reclaiming sovereignty' from the EU is meaningless when the real disconnect and abuse is between the British (largely English) and Westminster, not Brussels.

Sand wrote: »

Well, I think there has been research done which shows the Leave voters were not necessarily unusually poor. Not certain on that, might be confusing it with Trump voters.

See this breakdown of the result (specifically figure 17, page 25)

95% of "economically deprived, anti-immigration" voted to leave - those who would typically benefit most from the EU's regional assistance schemes, and who will be hit hardest by rising food prices as a result of restricting EU migrant harvester workers.

Experience_day wrote: »

Is everything in life about economics? The old left vanguard must be turning in their graves!

The political class do their very best to ignore the issue that people thought their communities were changing irrevocably and wanted to do something about it. Was it the most direct action? No. But then again good luck trying for that. Any party outside of the mainstream gets shot down to pieces, aided and abetted by the media.

We have an easy life here in Ireland. I've lived in a few places and we have had next to zero immigration the likes of which the UK has received. Maybe we'll understand in 30-50 years when we have swathes of people who steadfastly do not want to integrate into a community. That is, not because they are not allowed, but because they do not want to....

Nothing was stopping the UK limiting immigration from around the world, outside of EU countries. The UK have always had full control over that but have not made changes in that regard.

The vote only affects EU freedom of movement, which by and large is not the cause of English ghettos.

The UK can't blame the EU for their mismanagement of immigration over the years and the subsequent failure to integrate and support these communties. So - again - that would be a vote based on a misunderstanding/ mistruth and lack of knowledge.

Leroy42 wrote: »

I do understand the desire for the voters to see something done about immigration, and the issues that have developed because of it.

I don't think that leaving the EU is the correct way to channel that though.

However, I do think that it will have the desired effect. Already we can see that immigration has been effected, certainly the UK, anecdotally, would appear to less welcoming than before. In addition, if the economic predictions come to pass then the downturn in the economy will see less people looking to come to the UK.

So from a singular "reduce immigration" POV, leaving the EU may well be considered the right thing to do.

IMO, the cost to achieve that is simply too high and there were plenty of other ways to deal with it. In particular, the very people that championed immigration (big business etc) are still in charge and I don't see how they will simply accept that in stead of paying some Romanian the minimum wage for picking fruit they are now going to have to offer living wage and benefits to UK citizens. So I foresee either the jobs moving abroad or other forms of immigration to cover (replace the Romanians with Indians for example).

Why would they have to offer the living wage? Minimum wage was a well used baseline for a reason. There were enough people willing to work at that level (and realistically well below which I why there is a minimum wage). There is less competition for places now but you have to wonder if it is enough to bring a lot of jobs above minimum wage (keeping in mind in a pure capitalistic society those jobs would be well below the minimum wage).

Christy42 wrote: »

Why would they have to offer the living wage? Minimum wage was a well used baseline for a reason. There were enough people willing to work at that level (and realistically well below which I why there is a minimum wage). There is less competition for places now but you have to wonder if it is enough to bring a lot of jobs above minimum wage (keeping in mind in a pure capitalistic society those jobs would be well below the minimum wage).

Because they won't work for the wages on offer, as they already do ( I don't say that as a negative against it, just a fact). The mere existence of foreign workers shows that there are not sufficient people within the UK to undertake the jobs at the current offering.

With the immigrants gone, why would the remaining now work for the came conditions that they rejected previously?

Now, why won't they to the jobs? Maybe they already have better jobs. The business nows faces a worker shortage. Instead of easy access to the east european market for workers, they will need to go through immigration etc, thus increasing the cost for the business

Maybe they don't see the value in all that work for such little reward (as compared to welfare etc). Nothing will change there so the situation reverts to the above.

Christy42 wrote: »

How do you know that there are no UK people willing to do the jobs at the current price? All we know is that on some occasions foreign workers were favoured.

I am basing it on the premise that it is easier to recruit locally (all things being equal) and only after that is no longer an option do you look elsewhere.

Many of the fruit companies (for example) have claimed that they can't get the local workers and need foreign workers.

Leroy42 wrote: »

I am basing it on the premise that it is easier to recruit locally (all things being equal) and only after that is no longer an option do you look elsewhere.

Many of the fruit companies (for example) have claimed that they can't get the local workers and need foreign workers.

I was more thinking foreign born workers already in the UK but I guess they have to come over at some point and it would generally be for a specific job.

Rain Ascending wrote: »

It looks like Facebook are gradually shifting their position. See this article today from Politico. For me, the key quote from Zuckerberg is this one...

... which makes this very much a Brexit story. Companies really don't like having to customize their products or services for different markets -- it reduces economies of scale. So contrary to some of the speculation here, the UK can deregulate all it likes, many companies won't care. They'll conform to one of the bigger regulatory regimes anyway, usually that of the EU or the US, depending on what markets they target. For example, in some industries South America follows US regulations and Africa, European. So, I'm not surprised at Facebook deciding to go all in on the EU's GDPR.

Of course, the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal has made the decision easier...

That doesn't work, if you voluntarily adhere to someone else's standards it doesn't mean your goods or services can freely cross borders to another regulatory regime.

Companies can stick to the highest regulatory standard, but a country cannot have a lower standard and still freely access the EU market regardless of what those companies do, and nor can companies in that non-EU country do the same.

Inquitus wrote: »

That doesn't work, if you voluntarily adhere to someone else's standards it doesn't mean your goods or services can freely cross borders to another regulatory regime.

Companies can stick to the highest regulatory standard, but a country cannot have a lower standard and still freely access the EU market regardless of what those companies do, and nor can companies in that non-EU country do the same.

Agreed. In a nutshell, if you are exporting, then you conform to the rules of the country to which to you export to, not the country you export from.

The point I'm trying to make, perhaps not very clearly, is that the UK may struggle to create competitive advantage through lower regulation, e.g. by allowing the local economy to use lower cost goods and services. Internationally trading companies providing these goods and services are likely to conform anyway to one of their bigger markets with the strictest standards.

In Facebook's case, this would be the EU with GDPR.

Rain Ascending wrote: »

Agreed. In a nutshell, if you are exporting, then you conform to the rules of the country to which to you export to, not the country you export from.

The point I'm trying to make, perhaps not very clearly, is that the UK may struggle to create competitive advantage through lower regulation, e.g. by allowing the local economy to use lower cost goods and services. Internationally trading companies providing these goods and services are likely to conform anyway to one of their bigger markets with the strictest standards.

In Facebook's case, this would be the EU with GDPR.

Inquitus wrote: »

I agree with your point, I misunderstood what you said. I guess my point is if your regulatory environment is not aligned with the EU you have to undergo all the EU tests, evaluations, border inspections etc. to export, which instead of increasing competitiveness is actually an additional product cost doing the exact opposite. Which means we are probably saying the same thing

It’s a recognised phenomenon. It’s called the “Brussels effect”. Basically, the EU market is so large, and so important, that EU regulatory regimes increasingly become the international norm. Companies located into the EU have to conform, obviously, and so do companies wishing to trade into the EU. Sometimes the scope of EU regulatory regimes is expanded through trade deals, or through the EU regime being accepted as the basis for a global regulatory agreement. Eventually you reach a point where even companies that are not in the EU, don’t sell to the EU, and aren’t affected by trade deals or the like find that they have to produce to EU standard because of competitive pressure from other producers who already do so, and the reputational damage they will suffer if they don’t follow suit. (US-based) Dow Chemicals, for example, conforms to EU regulatory requirements in its global business.

US regulatory regimes can have a similar reach, but EU regimes are increasingly winning the informal competition to become the de facto global standard, simply because EU regimes tend to be tougher, and companies who want to produce to a standard that will qualify them for all major markets mostly find that that is the EU standard. (There are exceptions, like the EU’s relaxed attitude to unpasteurised milk and cheese, but in general EU regulation tends to be tougher.)

The result of this is that Brexiteer fantasises about the UK leaving behind the EU’s regulatory straightjacket and launching itself freely into the world trading system will mostly come to nothing. As regards internationally traded goods, even after the expiry of the transitional period UK producers are going to have to largely comply with EU standards, but (a) the UK will lose the degree of control that it now has through participation in setting and shaping those standards, and (b) UK exporters will lose the benefit of being known to comply; they’ll have to demonstrate compliance, which will add to their cost base.

I wonder what size of the public do the publications like the Express represent.

It is rabidly Anti-EU and pro-brexit. But more than that, everything is painted as either EU punishing the UK or the EU shattering by the threat of Brexit.

ambro25 wrote: »

Far from the furreiner-bashing of the past couple years in the U.K.

Good to hear that your move has worked out well so far!