Brexit discussion thread XIII (Please read OP before posting)

View wrote: »

The U.K.’s exports (& services sold) to the the EU are all going to be subject to tariffs from Jan 1st plus the mountain of red tape and tests that go with those. Hence, the U.K. can’t “continue on as it always has”.

Many services (particularly of the financial and legal varieties) cease to be sellable into the EU27 outright from 01.01.21, any tariffs and/or mountains of NTBs (on products and other services) notwithstanding.

In that particular respect, I don't expect the national symphony of millions of tiny violins playing across UK service industries, to manage to out-play the mongo-clanging of pennies dropping the length and breadth of the UK throughout 2021.

View wrote: »

Labour, in their own manifesto, described their policy as “Labour’s plan FOR Brexit”. That was a pro-Brexit position that they stood on, not a neutral one, much less an anti-Brexit one.

And, Labour could easily have stood on an anti-Brexit position given that: a) the referendum was an advisory only one, and, b) by the time the 2019 GE came around, it was abundantly clear that many issues that Brexiters promised during the referendum, either were not going to be resolved the way they promised they would be, or else they were going to be in ways that were the complete opposite of what they promised.

And, sorry, but a person can’t be described as “pro Europe” if they vote to authorise the triggering of art 50 and they stand on a pro-Brexit platform and they still don’t oppose Brexit happening knowing we are all heading into a Coronavirus recession.

You seem to be saying that because Labour didn't spit into the eyes of a lot of people that voted for Brexit in 2016 and 2017 they are not a Remain party. This is a strange position to take. The reality of the situation at the time didn't allow them to take a Remain position. As for Starmer voting for the triggering of article 50, he was a newly elected MP in the shadow cabinet. He was not going to go against the leadership and to expect him to have done so is again not realistic. It is the same reason why he didn't stand to oppose Corbyn in 2016 as he thought he was too inexperienced as an MP to lead the party.

As for the part in bold, I don't know if it is just lazy phrasing but you know they have left the EU already and unless they start the process again as per article 49. There really is nothing left to oppose as it doesn't matter right now. Johnson has flexed his muscles again and again by getting rid of MP's who defies the whip or his instruction so once they decide that a 3-line whip is needed it doesn't matter what it is it will get through. Most of those new MP's they have will not defy the whip and lose out so it is obvious that at the moment they will get their way.

That is why the sentiment is to wait until the reality of Brexit is apparent to people, because then those MPs will be under pressure from their constituents to not just vote with the government if their lives are not better as they thought it would be.

ambro25 wrote: »

In that particular respect, I don't expect the national symphony of millions of tiny violins playing across UK service industries, to manage to out-play the mongo-clanging of pennies dropping the length and breadth of the UK throughout 2021.

Never fear - the pennies may drop, but Brexiteers will be swift to say that this is the work of a spiteful EU trying to punish the UK for having the temerity to stand on its own two feet. Well, up yours, Merkel! Go to hell, you faceless EU bureaucrats! Britain can take it! Rah!

Now, who's for more victory rations?

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Not that consistent, only voted for EU on 53-54% of the time. So up there with Corbyn's 7 out of 10.
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25353/keir_starmer/holborn_and_st_pancras/votes

You're including absences. That invalidates your stats. Excluding absences, when he did vote the ratio is 80% and 73% pro Europe. That's consistently pro Europe voting. Irregardless, the idea that Starmer isn't pro Europe is ridiculous. In June 2020, he said "I voted remain last time. I'd vote remain again.".

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Why exclude them? Especially when they are that high a number, shows they don't really care more than anything imo, if they can't even be bothered to turn up almost 40% of the time

Well, if you're going to go down that road, you have to figure out why exactly an MP abstained. These votes are very nuanced. For instance, the vote could be a slam dunk and they might have more important business. Or there may be a principle behind the vote that causes an MP to vote in a way which appears to be anti European. Or there may be real politik reasons. Let's assume that Starmer is strongly pro European, which he most certainly is. Let's assume that he is a relatively principled politician, which he most certainly is. Why do you think he might sometimes then vote in anti European way? Why do you think he might sometimes then abstain in an anti European way?

ambro25 wrote: »

Many services (particularly of the financial and legal varieties) cease to be sellable into the EU27 outright from 01.01.21, any tariffs and/or mountains of NTBs (on products and other services) notwithstanding.

In that particular respect, I don't expect the national symphony of millions of tiny violins playing across UK service industries, to manage to out-play the mongo-clanging of pennies dropping the length and breadth of the UK throughout 2021.

Services are not tied up in trade deals. The EU will decide (yes, decide) whether or not to grant the UK equivalence in services and this will dictate how the services are treated.

Who holds all the cards again?

McGiver wrote: »

Not that the EU isn't already well served in this matter by Ireland, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland (all which are tax havens and/or OFCs to hide profits and/or assets).

Point of info: Switzerland isn't in the EU, and doesn't benefit from financial passporting, so until now has channelled that business through ... London.

McGiver wrote: »

Switzerland is de facto in the EEA but I didn't know they primarily used London (incl Jersey Guernsey) for their flows.

Given the tax haven nexus in place, where will the Swiss banking (including shadow banking) sector divert the flows now?

There's no sense of "London" which includes Jersey and Guernsey.

In so far as Jersey and Guernsey have a financial services industry, they have it because they are not part of the tax and regulatory regime that applies in the UK (including London). Neither Jersey nor Guernsey are part of the UK.

McGiver wrote: »

UK is a tax haven and offshore financial centre (OFC), to a certain degree. Especially its Crown dependencies Jersey, Guernsey, Virgin Islands etc. Maybe there's some interest in that?

Not that the EU isn't already well served in this matter by Ireland, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland (all which are tax havens and/or OFCs to hide profits and/or assets).

None of Ireland, The Netherlands, Luxembourg or Switzerland classify as tax havens nowadays.

None of them are any use to 'hide' profits and/or assets, either.

They're fiscally more competitive/efficient in certain niche/specialised respects, relative to other 'mainstream' EU jurisdictions, as a result of historical choices and/or governmental development model and/or (increasingly-) acquired excellence of the local set of specialist service providers.

But the days of secret bank accounts and untraceable transfers are long, long behind them all, as peer nation-level (and EU) pressure continually and gradually erodes these niche/specialised advantages.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Blessed are the cheesemakers

The UK Japan trade deal has hit a small snag over a triflingly small sum
Given how much the Japanese value Face this is not good news.

It looks like spin is now more important than substance.

That's the point. That's why it's (from the UK government's point of view) good news.

Face or no face, the Japanese will almost certainly give her what she wants, precisely because UK exports of blue cheese to Japan are so trivial. It will cost the Japanese nothing, nothing at all, to hand her a "win" on this, and she can use the "win" to gratify Brexiters of the Daily Mail persuasion, and therefore to distract from more signficant, and less beneficial, features of the Japanese deal. When people point out that the UK/Japan trade deal is lousier for the UK than the EU/Japan trade deal which the UK loses by Brexiting, Brexit supporters will point to the blue cheese clause and imagine that by doing so they have refuted the claim. Some of them will genuinely imagine this and others will know that it is nonsense but, either way, the distraction is acheived. And that is Truss's object.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

It looks like spin is now more important than substance.

Where Brexit is concerned, when was this ever not the case?

Not content with a world-beating mishandling of the Covid healthcare emergency for the past 5 months, with this morning's news they find themselves with a world-beating recession for the first time in 11 years, after the worst quarterly increase in unemployment ever (blink-and-you'll-miss-it reported yesterday).

And of course, Brexit has yet to really hit, with about 150-odd days to go since they did not see fit to extend the WA...

...so they agitate the populace about some dinghies full of the wrong sorts of people like it's the summer of 2015 all over again, and jump at every other distracting opportunity (see e.g. Prity Patel's Tweet-war with Ben & Jerry's ice cream outfit).

This spin über alles model of governance will get worse -and worser- the closer we get to December.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

At a guess, I would imagine the Japanese refused zero tarrifs with the EU on cheese because they consider it necessary to protect that market.

I think not really. There basically is no market for blue cheese in Japan.

The main fact to bear in mind here is that the Japanese don't consume a lot of dairy products; of the dairy products they do consume cheese forms only a small part; and of they cheese they consume blue cheese forms a tiny fraction. They don't like blue cheese, basically, and struggle to understand why anyone would eat it. Dairy in the Japanese diet is almost entirely the result of the americanisation of Japanese tastes. So it's ice-cream, cheesecake and mozaralla on pizzas. Stinky cheese, not so much.

So the barrier to selling blue cheese to Japan is not the tariffs, and tariff reduction/abolition won't result in much in the way of extra sales. Hence the EU might have asked for tariff reduction as a way of signalling to French farmers that their concerns are not unnoticed, but we wouldn't have spent bargaining credit in pressing for it; we'd have focused on tariff reductions on things that, but for tariffs, we could actually sell in Japan.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Also, i have heard, though I accept that I havent read the full 600 page document, that if either Japan or the EU offers better trade terms to a third country, then it triggers a review for the other i.e. if they give the Uk better trade terms on cheese then they must ultimately give the same terms to the EU.

Yes, there is something to that effect in the EU/Japan deal, though I'm not sure of the precise terms. But (a) I think the provision wouldn't operate unless the EU invoked it, and (b) if the EU did invoke it, Japan would not be greatly bothered; the Japanese have no more appetite for French or Italian blue cheese than they do for British.

brexit seems to be never ending wins, the stats are quite astounding

https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1293427294833463296