Should the UK leave the European Union?
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
Liam Fox:
"Coming to a free trade agreement with the EU should be one of the easiest in human history."
Michael Gove:
"The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want."
John Redwood:
"Getting out of the EU can be quick and easy – the UK holds most of the cards."
The UK left the EU at the end of January this year and we had until the end of this year to negotiate a post-Brexit trade deal. The most recent empty threat by the UK Prime Minister to walk away from trade negotiations unless he got what he wanted expired last Thursday. The EU said "Fine. Walk away then.".
If we hold all the cards, why does the EU appear to be playing some of their cards? In Kent, where I live, we're preparing for the backlog of stationary lorries that are going to fill the roads after the end of this year due to the extra bureaucracy caused by Brexit. The UK newspaper, the Express, recently ran with this headline:
"Trade deal signed! UK agrees ANOTHER major agreement - are you watching, Brussels?"
The trade agreement being trumpeted here was with the Ivory Coast (you had to read down a bit to find that out). That's a country whose trade with the UK is worth about 0.1% of its trade with the EU, and with which, as members of the EU, we already had a trade deal. (The main task of post-Brexit trade deals is to try to get back to the trade position we were in before leaving.)
Does anybody, despite all of this and despite the immense economic cost of Brexit, piled on top of Covid, still think that Brexit was a good idea?
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
- Sculptor1
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
Yeah. Oven Ready baby!!
Wait - we still in?
- Arjen
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
~Immanuel Kant
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
What power? It doesn't hold any cards. We hold them all. Michael Gove told me so.The EU is using it's power to hurt the UK out of spite.
- Arjen
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
~Immanuel Kant
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
Acting as a conduit for the Chinese Communist Party with the collusion of the Mainstream Media and Joe Biden?You know that what they are doing is unreasonable.
- Arjen
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
~Immanuel Kant
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
Perhaps you're more certain than ever that we were right to declare this economic war on our neighbours? Do you buy into the narrative, peddled by Boris Johnson ever since he was a journalist in Brussels spinning yarns about straight bananas and sausage bans, that anything bad that happens will always automatically be the fault of our EU neighbours? Never the fault of the architects of Brexit who persuaded a slim majority to vote for it on the promise of self-determination, money flowing into the NHS and Rule Britannia?
- LuckyR
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
I hear Putin is pretty much overjoyed.Steve3007 wrote: ↑December 13th, 2020, 7:41 am Now that we've just reached the stage in the Bexit process where armed British ships are going to patrol the coastal water threatening fishing boats, presumably with various reprisals, shops are stocking up ready for the shortages after we leave without a deal in a couple of weeks, the car industry, with its just-in-time delivery systems across previously frictionless borders, is going to be damaged, leaders of various industries are despairing at the chaos and uncertainty on top of existing Covid problems, preparations are having to be made for the armed forces to fly in Covid vaccines to avoid the gridlock at ports, Kent is going to become one huge lorry park, etc, I'm curious to know if there is anybody who still thinks Brexit was a good idea?
Perhaps you're more certain than ever that we were right to declare this economic war on our neighbours? Do you buy into the narrative, peddled by Boris Johnson ever since he was a journalist in Brussels spinning yarns about straight bananas and sausage bans, that anything bad that happens will always automatically be the fault of our EU neighbours? Never the fault of the architects of Brexit who persuaded a slim majority to vote for it on the promise of self-determination, money flowing into the NHS and Rule Britannia?
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
Five years since the vote, the damage and extra bureaucracy caused by Brexit is still rumbling on. The damage it has caused to trade and movement of workers between the UK and the EU now means:
Vegetables are rotting, unpicked, because there are no seasonal workers available to pick them.
Petrol/gas stations had long queues/lines outside them yesterday and now all of those near me are closed. Not enough HGV drivers available to deliver the fuel. The government has been forced to create a temporary visa scheme to re-allow EU workers to work in the UK.
Supermarket shelves are getting emptier due to that same lack of people available to drive heavy goods vehicles.
Students on courses that require them to spend time in mainland European countries now have to apply for visas to do so. This can take months. Many are having their education ruined as a result.
Universities are in financial trouble because the supply of high-fee-paying foreign students has reduced.
Sending mail of any significant value to EU countries now requires paying duty and loads more paperwork.
The post-Brexit bilateral trade deals we were supposedly going to strike are still largely yet to materialize. No trade deal with the US yet. Why would there be? Leaving the EU massively reduces our bargaining power.
etc.
But most of it can be blamed on covid. Thank god for covid!
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
- LuckyR
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
Are these effects widely reported/understood/believed?Steve3007 wrote: ↑September 25th, 2021, 1:21 pm Update on Brexit for anyone who is interested:
Five years since the vote, the damage and extra bureaucracy caused by Brexit is still rumbling on. The damage it has caused to trade and movement of workers between the UK and the EU now means:
Vegetables are rotting, unpicked, because there are no seasonal workers available to pick them.
Petrol/gas stations had long queues/lines outside them yesterday and now all of those near me are closed. Not enough HGV drivers available to deliver the fuel. The government has been forced to create a temporary visa scheme to re-allow EU workers to work in the UK.
Supermarket shelves are getting emptier due to that same lack of people available to drive heavy goods vehicles.
Students on courses that require them to spend time in mainland European countries now have to apply for visas to do so. This can take months. Many are having their education ruined as a result.
Universities are in financial trouble because the supply of high-fee-paying foreign students has reduced.
Sending mail of any significant value to EU countries now requires paying duty and loads more paperwork.
The post-Brexit bilateral trade deals we were supposedly going to strike are still largely yet to materialize. No trade deal with the US yet. Why would there be? Leaving the EU massively reduces our bargaining power.
etc.
But most of it can be blamed on covid. Thank god for covid!
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Re: Should the UK leave the European Union?
Some are widely reported. For example, the fact that I can't get into work right now because I can't put fuel in my car means that it's difficult for that not to be widely reported. But, as with all of these kinds of issues these days, what we believe or understand about it tends to depend on our political views. On that one, it isn't just Brexit that has caused the problem with truck driver shortages. It's just a major contributing factor. So, depending on political taste, different factors can be emphasized.LuckyR wrote:Are these effects widely reported/understood/believed?
My knowledge of some of these issues is more anecdotal. For example, the one about students' education being damaged because they now need visas to visit other European countries for their studies results from my wife working for student support at a UK university. She sees first-hand students who were supposed to be spending time in Spain, for example, facing the wall of bureaucracy that Brexit has erected - the months waiting for a visa to get to countries that we could visit easily previously. The extra bureaucracy and costs involved in sending mail of more than a certain (quite low) value to EU countries is also something I've discussed with people who have experienced it directly. The small company for which I work is having to take on staff to deal with the extra bureaucracy that the trade barriers and removal from European standards organizations has caused.
But if people voted for Brexit, they generally won't accept that these things are a problem or they'll blame them on something else. As I said, covid is a good one. The current Conservative government was purged of non-Brexit-supporting Tories in 2019, meaning that it is effectively a Brexit Party government rather than a Tory government. So they have a strong interest in keeping up the narrative that they created during the referendum - that it's all wonderful and anyone who says it isn't is a "remoaner".
OK. Rant over again for now.
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