Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

A cynic might argue that the real Farage / Vote Leave 'plan' was to wreck the relationship with Europe and kick the foreigners out. That was the sum total of Brexit (apart from enriching the Brexit toffs and millionaires as a bonus).

I think you meant they (the currency markets) don't really believe there will be an EU-UK trade dispute just as they didn't believe the UK would finally exit with no trade agreement with the EU? (and were correct of course).

Maybe neither side wants this, but it is very easy to misjudge when following a policy of deliberately being provocative/antagonistic + playing "hardball" (if that is what the UK is doing here as a tactic).

The stories coming out about Sunak falling out of favour for questioning Johnsons massive cash spend in the next budget would certainly point to a PM who doesn't give a FK about anything long term past his own reign.

Kinda reminds me of Ahern vs McReevy

Mmm. Either the markets are calm, or they have already priced in uncertainty. I'm thinking it's more the latter.

Sterling took a steep dive after the 2016 referendum and fell steadily for most of the rest of 2016 as it became increasing evident that the Tory Party/the UK government had no clue about how to go about Brexit, no coherent ideas about why it was Brexiting and no clear non-destructive plan for Brexiting. And it has bobbed up and down a bit since then, but has never really recovered.

Sterling was at €1.30 just before the referendum; it fell to €1.12 by October 2016; in the five years since then it has bobbed around in the €1.10 to €1.20 band; right now it's about €1.18. My reading of that would be that, so far as the markets are concerned, uncertainly about how damaging Brexit will be set in in 2016 and has never really been resolved.

Sterling is traded in vast quantities, and there is no way that the UK government (or anyone else) could covertly make trades of the size required to affect the market price. The scale of activity required would be simply too large to be hidden.

Besides, the UK government doesn't need to do that. No government does, in fact. There's a much simpler way of influencing your currency's price, if that's what you want to do; you adjust interest rates. If sterling interest rates rise relative to other currencies, more people will wish to deposit their funds in sterling so as to get the higher return and, in order to do this, they will go into the market to buy sterling, thereby driving the price up. And vice versa, if you want the price of sterling to fall.

Very little room for the UK? Has he learned nothing from the last few years?

Frost already got his rejection in before the EU even officially announced the details (though Frost would have known about them). The UK will simply make up something else which is the most fundamental thing ever. They have already moved onto the ECJ, now arguing that the EU should give up its 'sovereignty' by agreeing to the UK having equal say in arbitration. And you can bet if the EU agreed to that then the UK would complain that the arbitration is biased agains the UK.

Because that has been their fundamental believe from Day 1. They believe that the EU is out to get the UK, that the UK had no voice, no input into any decisions.

Listening to a market watcher on Morning Ireland this morning and they explained the rise in the value of Sterling purely to the rise in inflation and the likelihood of an interest rate rise. Currently at 0.1% suggesting the BOE will move to 0.25%. All very low but nevertheless a more than doubling.

Exactly, and they will keep banging that drum as loud and as often as possible. Auntie Nora getting stopped at customs will be the next one. The some truck getting stopped because of lack of paperwork, when isn't it obvious that it was just sausages.

And that is before the UK diverge. When that happens the rate of checks will have to increase and then they will be back bleating on that its all a punishment and the EU just hate the UK.

Not sure I would use the term "can't keep pace" it's more that the qualified staff required are in short supply.

Buried in the article . Companies considering moving entirely as they can't get staff. No doubt talent has exited. Also the headcounts open in the big 4 is actually guide small couple of hundred. I think many workers have simply gone back to the EU. And the levels of cash the likes of Amazon are throwing at people to move to them appears to show this is true. Limited number of people.

We're not at the stage yet where people can admit they were openly lied to by Vote Leave and the right wing press - perhaps they feel that such an admission will leave them looking gormless and naive i.e. to be so easily and readily taken in by obvious conmen and shysters is not exactly a badge of honour and doesn't say much for one's judgement.

This raises a question: What is the best way of judging relative wealth? If you go by something like GDP per capita the UK would rank 15th and dropping. But I don't know much about economics and I've heard it said that GDP doesn't work as a metric with the way economies work now. Someone enlighten me.

We fell into this trap ourselves in the 1930s with the Anglo-Irish Trade War. Whilst it could be said that Ireland won the argument 'politically', the country was impoverished, unemployment was high and emigration remained high. Historians have argued that Ireland's poverty and hardship of the 1940s and 1950s were a direct result of the trade war (a twenty year hangover in other words).

Protectionism, trade barriers and trade wars are always bad news.

I don't think we fell into the trap that Yagan points to ("they need us more than we need them") at all. We were perfectly aware of our dependence on exports to the UK.

The root cause of the Economic War was quite different. It was partly political - de Valera was offended at the idea that Irish people should be compelled to pay the UK government for the return of Irish land; refusing to do so was for him an exercise in nation-building. And it was partly the local manifestation of the international debt crisis of the 1930s, which saw many debtor nations defaulting on their obligations - de Valera argued that the financial burden of the land annuity payments, per capita, exceeded the burden of the war reparations imposed on Germany, and that it was an unrealistic in a time of global depression to demand that these should be paid. He also pointed out that, under the 1925 London Agreement, the Free State was supposed to be relieved from its obligation to pay any part of the UK's public debt, and the land bonds issued by the UK government were part of its public debt.

Whether you find these arguments convincing or not is irrelevant. The point is that they have nothing to do with an arrogant belief that the UK could not survive without Irish beef. There was nobody in Ireland in 1932 advancing the equivalent of the arguments that Brexiters offered (and that some still offer) to the effect that no deal would be painless, that trading with the EU on WTO terms would be painless, or that the UK can repudiate the NI Protocol and it will be painless.

No, not of all tax, just of the excess tax - i.e. the excess of tax collected in Ireland over government expenditure in Ireland. Throughout the nineteenth century Ireland, although the poorest part of the UK, was a net contributor to the UK exchequer, subsidising government expenditure in much richer Great Britain.

Dev did demand that back, but the demand is not outstanding. It was rolled up in the agreements that settled the Economic War.

Property prices only ever goes up!

When have I heard that before.

As they say if you can see the bandwagon you're already too late.