For now it is going mostly as predicted by the 'remain' camp, the 'leave' camp have a bit of a problem maintaining their credibility. I know quite a few people that moved out of the UK when this happened, including a number of Britons. It will be quite a ways downhill, there is a good chance that when the dust settles the UK itself will no longer exist.
This will likely go into history as the biggest own goal there ever was, the UK had a pretty good deal compared to other countries in the EU and it wasn't enough. But no matter how strong your country is you can't compete with the negotiation power of a block of several hundred million people. Whether it will make the EU stronger or weaker in the long run is still up for grabs, there is plenty of force trying to fragment the EU, some of it financed from outside and so very hard to control.
There are no easy solutions for all this, and COVID has made it all a lot worse than what it probably would have been without.
> For now it is going mostly as predicted by the 'remain' camp, the 'leave' camp have a bit of a problem maintaining their credibility.
Let me know some specifics. If you look at banking, the EU has failed to make any major dent in London as a financial centre. Bank headquarters have not moved. Bankers have not moved. London still rules the financial world.
Also interesting to see is the other side, what the EU has progressed to since then. The new German government is saying they want full federalisation. Exactly what the leave camp was saying. Things certainly seem to be going that way. Moves to establish EU army. Strong arming of Hungary and Poland, overstepping the legal mandates of the EU some argue. So what exactly in this case did leave get wrong?
That's irrelevant. What happens to the city is not going to keep the UK afloat in the long term.
The attempt to reposition the UK as a tax shelter is going to make a very small group of people extremely rich but for the average UK citizen it won't matter one bit.
The UK has no choice but to go the low tax/low regulation route, not only for finance but to attract any sort of business.
Why would a business decide to move the UK instead of the EU? They have to offer something that makes being outside of the single market worth it.
The UK is already much more business friendly than most EU countries (I haven't many companies rushing to move from the UK to France if they did not really, really have too, for instance) but not being in the EU/single market can be a serious drawback.
The EU also knows this and that's a reason the negotiations on single market access have been tense as too good an access without being bound to EU control would mean letting the wolf in.
Agreed they have no choice. But this race to the bottom has only losers, in the end companies should just pay their taxes and the UK facilitating this is not going to make any friends. The channel islands was bad enough.
Financial services is 6.9% of UK GDP, probably more now as covid has affected things like tourism.
Irrelevant?
Please back up your argument with more than just claiming that the state of financial services is irrelevant to the UK, and that it's about tax sheltering. I think you've been reading one side of a political argument for a long time.
Yes, it is irrelevant. Financial services are not enough to keep the UK running. The UK is a large net exporter, and all of its sectors are hurting.
The financial services arm of the UK is the major moving force behind Brexit in the first place, they did that knowing full well that the rest of the country would suffer. It won't take forever for people to realize this.
Plenty of money was spent to try to convince the more gullible segment of the UK populace that their future would be rosy if the UK could go it alone, and a lot of that came from the wealthiest segments of the country. The financial services industry was worried that Frankfurt or even Amsterdam or Paris might take the crown, which for the most part hasn't happened.
And with multi-nationals such as Shell moving to the UK the balance is shifting further away from where it should be, now the UK will act as a de-facto tax shelter in all but name because it can afford to offer these companies great terms, after all, they have nothing to lose.
As for the tax game, that is something that has not happened. In my view, and in the view of a large section of the party in government, it will not. The government rhetoric to address regional inequality and to address long term issues with health and old age provision that have not been addressed. These are things that could have an affect on whether they get re-elected. That and government office parties during covid lockdown
> If you look at banking, the EU has failed to make any major dent in London as a financial centre
The EU is in no rush, but it's clear that EU banking is going to move to EU centres in the long run of a decade or so. They have said as much (1) This is no act of charity to London bankers, it's in the EU's best interest to move, but move gradually to sites in the EU.
They are not being strong armed, they are being treated with way to lot consideration, given that they are ignoring the treaties they signed.
Especially Orban in Hungary is basically a robber Baron, and if the EU doesn't move against his BS strongly, they will lose support in the other countries.
Fyi, the eu has bent over backwards not to force anyone to move. Esma and bafin have basically handed licenses to anyone arriving at Frankfurt airport and required minimal staffing locally.
How long they keep doing that is another matter. They're already moving euro clearing out of London. The sensible, European, approach is just that: don't force people to move en mass on some crappy time line. Make people move 5% a year for 20 years.
I have no clue how you got strong-arming of Hungary and Poland, two countries that signed treaties they refuse to honor. If they want to be in the EU they don't get to pick and choose which laws and regulations apply to them
> there is a good chance that when the dust settles the UK itself will no longer exist
I've heard this proposed as a possibility, but is this generally accepted as an actual, probable outcome? By both sides?
From my perspective (American with no ties to the UK who thought Brexit sounded like a terrible idea), it sounded like it might have been a scare tactic from remainers.
Well, that all depends on what the SNP does, they hold the cards at the moment. If they go for a referendum then all bets are quite literally off.
> From my perspective (American with no ties to the UK who thought Brexit sounded like a terrible idea), it sounded like it might have been a scare tactic from remainers.
Not really. The Scots held a referendum on staying in the UK prior to Brexit and the general feeling seems to be that if the UK had been clear on wanting to exit the EU that Scotland may well have seceded the union prior to that.
So now the question is whether or not the SNP will hold a new referendum given that the situation has materially changed, and the outcome of that referendum (which, if the vote leans to 'leave' will be heavily contested) will cause a large amount of headache.
Even just threatening with a referendum could have major impact on the future of the UK.
SNP even just threatening. Haha - you really need to pay more attention to the SNP. You think they been coy on the subject? Perhaps keeping their powder dry?
Scottish nationalism is key to the platform of the SNP, the "Scottish National party"; it's right there in the name. And it's popular in Scotland.
They are always in favour of it, it's just the tactics and timing that changes. They will move for another independence referendum when they think the time is right to hold and win it
I think you misunderstood me. The SNP has been going on about a referendum almost continually. Whatever might change by “just threatening” a referendum has changed and lost its impact by repetition.
Ok, but it starts to get serious once a date has been set. Until then it is just posturing, and the UK has already announced their intention to block such a referendum from happening.
There are not two entities called "London" and "Scotland" playing a referendum and will game.
If the SNP government, for example, goes ahead with a referendum that is not sanctioned, there is a strong risk that people who don't think it is justified, or are unionists, will not take part, which would be a bad result. So leverage on that side is limited also.
I take your point that it's not that simple, please excuse my not-entirely sober summary.
It is true that "Scottish Nationalism" via means such as a referendum, is the primary policy of the SNP - the "Scottish National party"; it's in the name. They are always in favour of it, it's just the tactics and timing that changes.
it's true that the SNP is the most popular party in Scotland, holds the most seats and has the most influence. But does not have a free hand to call and win a referendum in Scotland at will. If that was true, it would have happened already.
It's true that the 2014 Scotland independence referendum was billed as "once in a generation" event.
And yet, 2014 looks increasingly like a time from a different generation: before Brexit, when the campaign to keep Scotland in the Union was also pitched as the way to keep Scotland in the EU. The irony is palpable.
The SNP say that "Scots are being dragged out of the EU against their will". And this is somewhat true.
I do not think that it will be easy to avoid another Scottish independence referendum indefinitely. The SNP will wait until the time is right for them, and then press the point.
I tend to agree with that! The main thing I wish to convey is that this is not a slamdunk for either side. But there are issues of timing and pressures to make the wrong decision whether you support the union or independence. And a small flavour of that is what i was trying to convey.
Precisely, and I don't think the UK would like to really be seen flexing its muscle to stop a democratically reached decision, that would open up an entirely different can of worms.
They'll either have to give extreme economic incentives or let Scotland go if that is what Scotland decides it wants.
Other replies mention Scotland and the SNP, and lest we forget, Scotland is more pro-EU than England, and the last Scottish independence referendum was won on a promise of "stay in the UK and stay in the EU" - yes, really, the threat that an independent Scotland would not be an EU member on day one. (1)
But it's not just about Scotland. Do not forget the question of Northern Ireland, which is now increasingly aligned with the Republic of Ireland. When UK and ROI were both in the EU it was less of a hard choice, but that has changed.
Brexit, while also honouring the integrity of the UK and also the Good Friday agreement is basically about squaring the circle - something has to give. Right now NI is aligned with the Republic of Ireland, not with England, and the Brexiters are not happy about it because NI gets a better Brexit deal by having less Brexit, which doesn't make them look good. But they need to face up to the fact that due to brexit, there has to be a border somewhere between Dublin and London and every position has serious drawbacks. (2)
if NI gets to like the current dispensation well then they might feel like re-joining the republic.
Two fault-lines, not one. It means that the UK needs not one but two wins on throws of the dice in order to remain intact. And a break at one fault-line would trigger restlessness at the other. So the odds of the UK remaining intact go down.
I forgot to mention, the way that a) having a Brexit, b) honouring the Good Friday agreement and c) territorial integrity of the UK (no border between NI and GB) all at once is called the "Brexit Trilemma"
As in, pick any 2, we can't have all 3 at once as that's logically inconsistent - these are not compatible things.
The decision to add "brexit" to the mix was _not_ a responsible act by rational actors.
Exactly. The degree to which the Scottish and the Northern Irish situation challenge the integrity of the UK has not been seen since the Good Friday Agreement. Risking the stability of the UK to such a degree was highly irresponsible.
Brexit was really all about EU migration. The economic & democratic argument was really just a pretext. I believe everyone knew this perhaps with few exceptions. Britons felt that citizens from poor EU countries shouldn't have equal rights.
As a European living in UK that's the saddest thing, that feeling of 52% of the British people saying "we don't like you coming here for our jobs" but then you have people that have voted for Brexit to, and I quote, "keep the pakis out", so I bet the Brexit vote was less about not liking foreigners but just putting all your anger at the system into the Brexit vote, resulting in shooting yourself in the foot big time.
It's the same kind of frustration that drove the Maga movement in the United States, a wish to go back to days past and some convenient scapegoats. But denying reality usually doesn't work, the past won't come back and shooting yourself in the foot simply hurts.
But it sucks for all those people that worked so hard to lift the UK out of the mess they were in in the 80's, going down is usually a lot faster than going up.
> But denying reality usually doesn't work, the past won't come back and shooting yourself in the foot simply hurts.
When you look at it in that context you may be correct, but I think that’s also strawmanning to a degree. It was common to hear people attack the movement as being just a bunch of people who wanted things “exactly like the 50s” but that’s not really true.
Furthermore when you look at the data, under Trump illegal immigration was at an all time low, and Americans’ personal satisfaction with their lives were at an all time high [0], among other metrics that showed that despite constant negative media portrayals, the “MAGA policies” were actually working and making Americans lives better.
> the “MAGA policies” were actually working and making Americans lives better
This is not a position that has a lot - if any - of support.
The MAGA policies (tradewars, build the wall and so on) as far as I can see materially degraded the lives of Americans. It was for the most part bluff and bluster and if anything it caused the outflow of people that had illegally immigrated to the United States to halt because those that were in the process of doing so perceived that even if it didn't improve things in the United States it would almost certainly make things worse in the countries that those immigrants were originally from.
The way to stop immigration is to raise the standard of life in the countries that people come from, not to build walls and to enact all kinds of idiotic measures to make it harder for other countries to import their goods. That just works towards the opposite. But Maga and logic never went hand in hand anyway.
OK, yet they went lower-yet under Trump, including by other metrics (border apprehensions), and now under the opposite non-MAGA policies, they are at their highest levels in decades.
Democrats used to take a harder stance on immigration until Trump came around, in fact Schumer et. al. had videos passionately stumping for more money for border walls and fencing in the 00's.
No it really was about immigration. A lot of people, and that includes British Black and Asian people,ironically, didnt like the feeling that they were being swamped by people who spoke a different langauge, that were crowding their schools and health service. I knew a lot of people at all different levels of British society that voted to leave because of this, form all races and economic classes.
I voted to leave because I found the EU undemocratic, inflexible and overegulated, I also didnt like the strong strain of xenophobia and racism present in continental European politics that could infect the UK through EU legislation. But I also knew that was the reason Leave won the vote in the UK.
> A lot of people, and that includes British Black and Asian people,ironically, didnt like the feeling that they were being swamped by people who spoke a different langauge, that were crowding their schools and health service
The English school system is an undefinable classist mess, where you either spend a fortune in housing or in school fees or you surrender to your child being practically illiterate. The NHS is a burning barrel of crap, compared to its continental homologues. They are sources of complaints among expats and of morbid curiosity for those living in the continent (I went to the GP with a broken arm, and all they gave me was paracetamol, do you know an Italian doctor in the UK? - random Italian on the NHS). Nobody moves to the UK for its public services and nobody swamps anything.
Anybody suggesting that Germans or Frenchmen or Spaniards are flooding the UK (read London zone 1 to 3, for the rest is closer to Ukraine than to Germany) is either ignorant or racist or a combination of the two.
To be honest, I’m kind of fed up with the normalisation of hate against Europeans and, in particular, Eastern Europeans. As if the Britons were some kind of a master race with a God-given prerogative re: ranking nationalities or races.
If you have a theory re: why Poles are inferior to Brits, you don’t have to share it with me.
I dont have any particular axe to grind against foreigners, and there is no normalisation of hate against any particular group in the UK. They have some of the strictest anti discrimination laws in Europe. Im sure if you were say gay or black and living in say Poland or Romania you'd have a much harder time and be discriminated far more against than if you lived in the UK, so the idea that the British alone think they're better than others is wrong isnt it. The racism, homophobia, anti-semitism and islamophobia in Eastern Europe is far worse that the UK, so what does that say about them?
>> The racism, homophobia, anti-semitism and islamophobia in Eastern Europe is far worse that the UK, so what does that say about them?
I think it says that socially(i.e discrimination wise)EE is still a developing region while the UK is degrading. UK was seen as a model for many european countries. I don't think it'a the case anymore and I don't think the anti-immigration story is over in the UK.
That being said I can't wait for the UK to lecture Eastern European countries on immigration...imagine that hypocrisy
> It wasnt Germans, French or Spanish though was it, it was Romanians, Polish and Bulgarians.
as if this weren’t the result of normalisation of hate against Eastern Europeans. Not that I care much, I’m not Eastern European, but I’d try not to contradict myself in the space of one and a half sentence.
> so what does that say about them?
That there isn’t any “them”. Your neighbour is your neighbour and doesn’t bear the sins of his fellow countrymen.
> like the feeling that they were being swamped by people who spoke a different langauge, that were crowding their schools and health service
That's the most ignorant of excuses. Do these people think we come to UK to get benefits and because we're weak and sick? People immigrate when they're young and healthy and of working age. They don't crowd the health service and are net positive taxpayers and contributors to the economy.
But of course the average "immigrants are stealing our jobs" voter isn't capable of deep concepts like this. Sorry, but as a son of immigrants and an immigrant myself I have no patience for ignorance and small-mindedness.
Now we've left the EU, BoJo offered temporary visas to drive lorries during the fuel crisis this summer and there's no one to pick the potatoes and parsnips out of the British fields. Where the queue of Brits to replace the Eastern European immigrant farmers that have gotten the boot thanks to Brexit?
We all know why no one's doing those jobs, its because they were low paid. Shouldnt farmers have been paying more or was low paid labour from Eastern Europe a good thing?
Fyi, that's not really true. Areas with actual immigrants were the least likely to vote out. Areas with basically no immigration on the other hand voted out.
I don't know. In my experience the people hating foreigners are those that live as far away from immigrants as possible. If you live in the big city and see that Europeans, Chinese and Arabs eat, shit and look exactly like you, you'll tend to moderate any tribalistic views.
The vast majority of EU haters has never crossed the Channel nor met any European in their whole life. That's how racism work.
There’s also the “misery loves company” aspect that I think drives a lot of city dwellers.
Furthermore it’s not just the non-immigrants who can vote in cities. The immigrants will tend to vote for the more liberal policies. So of course high-immigration areas will have more pro-immigration voting.
Finally there’s the factor that, if your city is already inundated with immigrants, then it’s not like they’re going to be going anywhere even if anti immigration policies are put in place, so even if people were against them, they may just be resigned to the fact that they’re there to stay. There’s nothing to protect against, they’re already there.
Those living outside of big cities see all the crime and problems that go along with living in a city and want nothing to do with it. You can call this behavior any name you want, but I think it just comes down to wanting to live a nice peaceful life with your family and not having to deal with all that city BS.
I see this in Texas: most of the Texans I know (not recent imports) are "meh" about immigration; and, illegal immigration? Eyeroll! My relatives in the Midwest where there's hardly any immigrants? - they're the ones complaining of an immigration apocalypse.
Scapegoats are only easy when you don't have to look them in the eyes. I worked with enough ... poorly documented ... guys in the 1990s. They all made good with the Feds: made enough to lawyer up, strike a deal, pay some fines, sometimes go back 'home' for a few years, then go Green Card & become citizens.
Anecdotal but... I've heard so many pensioners complain about Polish people taking their jobs. But they're pensioners and haven't worked in years. Meanwhile people I know in construction where a lot of migrants actually work don't care.
I think this whole thing was fueled by a sort of boredom mixed with fear of changes that have already happened. In all my discussions with brexiteers they claim it's about X but when you ask or point out the lack of logic suddenly it's about Y. Then Z. It's like how you can't really explain why your favourite colour is your favourite colour. Only with massive consequences for other people.
I think the truth is people did it for no actual reason and then attached reasons to make it sound less crazy after the fact.
I had a wierd conversation that backs this up, talking to a 70 to 80yo guy, he seemed extremely fit and mental young, but as we got talking about the brexit vote he suddenly got angry/ passionate!! about how the polish are coming in and talking all the jobs, he went on and on for what seemed like ages (about 2 to 3 minutes)
I asked him in a calm but intrigued way to explain more, has he lost his job or has is family been affected? He suddenly changed his demeanor from angry to very calm and passive then said there's been no immigrants to his village and he's retired, but that they might come though - I thought wtf
I asked him does he read the daily express? he shrugged like, whats that got to do with anything and he said yes, the conversation moved on
That's actually not a contradiction but a well-known phenomenon. In any given country, the area with the least immigration is often times the most vocally xenophobic.
> Britons felt that citizens from poor EU countries shouldn't have equal rights.
Let's see how that line holds up a while from now. The UK had substantial benefits from being in the EU, without those the wealth disparity could become significant in a very short time.
There are plenty of stress fractures running through the UK, both on the Southern and the Northern side of it. If England and Wales (and maybe Northern Ireland) want to continue to call themselves the UK I don't think anybody would object. But make no mistake, this could easily cause significant damage well beyond the intended damage caused by Brexit alone.
I suspect by the above what the OP means is that in the next round of elections, Scotland is probably going to split out from the UK and rejoin the EU, and then the shit will really hit the fan.
The UK government will do what they can to stop it, but the SNP holds the cards as far as I can see. They will be able to extract major concessions or they can hold a referendum which the UK will undoubtedly contest.
The UK can prevent a legal referendum, as that is where the constitutional power lies. An SNP referendum can have no legal sanction, but then supporters of the current arrangements are in no need to actually partake. That is ine complication.
Then there is the problem that the SNP has been in power for a long time and it’s record is rather mediocre, with some long running issues coming to fester.
Finally, because the decsion on what actually to do is not as straightforward as you seem to think, there is a small and rather unpopular party set up with the intention of chivvying the SNP leadership into an unsanctioned referendum. I think at this point, most of the received opinion is that this would be a bad idea.
Time will tell. I think at some point that referendum ('illegal' or not) will be held, and then what happens with respect to the outcome is going to be an interesting lesson in power politics.
After pushing through Brexit and involuntarily causing Scotland to drop out of the EU that won't go down well, I guarantee it.
Calling it illegal is already pushing it, and will likely result in more votes to secede rather than less. A couple of hundred years of Scottish history are testimony to that being a country that you don't want to push around too much or it will surely backfire.
Unless you want to suggest that UK would go to war or try to economically strong-arm Scotland into staying in the Union but I don't think even Johnson and his merry band of robbers is going to go that far and without enforcement the term 'illegal' holds no power.
I have yet to hear one financial benefit from Brexit or any other benefits really, unless you want a united Ireland or Scotish independance.
fair few negatives. to name a few
- increase friction in trade to business (extra paper work/ costs/ taxes/ delays at border)
- loss of talent from EU
- lack of miltary access to Galileo GPS, screwing up the latest weapons
- fragmented internal UK market, NI under different rules
- lack of influence and veto to new EU rules / regulations, so UK has no influence or say to the regulations to a part of its country (ie Northern Ireland)
Shell has only moved because they didn't want to pay dividend tax, and post Brexit the UK has decided that being a tax shelter for multi-nationals may not be the worst move. Whether that is true in the long term remains to be seen, the fact that Shell moves their head office may not be worth as much as losing the rest of the Euro clearing that is happening in London over the next decade or so.
3) Do you mean migrants? Of course there aren't fewer of them, the EU is sending them to the UK as fast as they can. You need a better government, not membership in the EU.
This just moving goalposts, before it was supposed to be funded better, now keeping it as it was before is seen as a success? Does it mean you admit that it achieved nothing?
> 2) Did the country get less poor? Yes.
Highly debatable, especially regarding the economic damage, some people lost their jobs, some businesses permanently closed (including some I knew). I admit the economic damage is a bit hard to separate from covid now but it's clearly real.
Edit: Actually now that I think about it, the sole reason my current company is so well funded is that a lot of investors tried to move to continental europe to diversify following brexit. I'm sure this will have some long term consequences.
> 3) Do you mean migrants? Of course there aren't fewer of them, the EU is sending them to the UK as fast as they can. You need a better government, not membership in the EU.
Look, if you want to argue that the UK is wealthier post Brexit then that's fine with me but you are simply out of touch with reality, besides that if the Union fractures - and there is a fair chance that it will - then none of this is more than noise, the end result of that will be a massive financial loss.
So you're welcome to your worldview but the reality is that the UK has just had one of the worst years in living memory and that the only dispute you might have is over how much of it is due to COVID-19 and how much due to Brexit. Since we have the rest of Europe as a baseline I don't think that that is undoable, and it doesn't look particularly good for the UK.
I think you are trolling me now. I originally said we are not poorer and that government figures support me. The increase I thought I recalled is not there, but my thesis is supported. And the recovery is from a dip that has nothing to do with Brexit.
Why the rage and rhetoric? I have corrected a few of your mistakes in your haste to rubbish everything on this island post-brexit. and that only sparks anger from you. It is your privilege to hate every aspect of Brexit, but if you are plotting its doom, surely better to equip yourself better with facts and to make some of your assertions less wild.
Wrong. Before covid the NHS got an extra £10bn in funding which is almost exactly 350m per week. Since covid its even more. So actually the NHS has gotten more funding since brexit.
To be perfectly frank, how well or bad brexit is going is pretty impossible to tell because Covid smashed through the middle of it and has probably had a more profound effect on day to day life than brexit would have had on most people.
There's an awful lot of people looking from the outside of the UK in telling people that brexit is going terribly when honest to god nearly all focus in the UK has been on covid for 2 years with a short blip during when we actually left. Few people really talk about brexit anymore in the way we did in the years prior.
It happened, the world didn't end, economic armageddon didn't occur, mostly people are over it and more concerned by covid as I said.
Yes, COVID has served as a nice distraction and scapegoat. It couldn't have been timed better from that perspective, but the end result is that the UK now has two major challenges to deal with.
Instant economic armageddon was just a rare possibility, but the impact on the economy is going to be felt over the next 2 decades, and it will be, in the Remainers' point of view, armageddon-sized but diluted over many years.
It might well have made Europe stronger. UK was always the awkward odd man out that vetoed decisions left and right.
I suspect that the UK will be back in the Single Market in all but name by the end of the decade, once there is a change of regime, the core Brexit demographic has passed away, and economic realities come home to roost.
Before it went insane, the UK played a positive antagonistic (to Germany) role, that I believe helped shaping some European institutions.
The EU is in some way weaker, because it lost a very important state, in some way stronger because everybody can see the shitshow that Brexit is and nobody dares to propose Italy or France leave the Union.
American: by Federalization, do you mean a single pan-EU govt? Is there a sunmary if the structure & power-sharing arrangement between the constituent states?
Some things are shared already: The Euro is common currency for key states, and borders are light-to-non-existent. Thea means that a lot of governance has to be shared. The lesson is that a single market isn't just about opening borders, it's about shared standards and practices that prevent a race to the bottom. A market is fundamentally a shared set of ground-rules. I'm sure that there are lessons to be learned from 2008 about making a shared currency and financial arrangement that works for both e.g. Germany and for Greece.
Without the UK, "the awkward odd man out that consistently vetoed further integration" this trend is bound to continue and more things will become shared, in an "ever closer union".
They didn’t though. Nobody forced them to leave without a reasonable deal, or a reasonable bureaucracy set up to handle it.
They did that all by themselves.
I think they could have gone for a deal similar to the other non-EU but still kind of EU countries like Norway if they wanted. Because of pragmatism, but that’s not what the Brexiteers wanted.
Britain couldn't get a deal then vote for it, as the EU would then hold all the cards negotiating. I.e it will be have offered Britain nothing in order to stop Brexit.
Likewise if Britain had set up a bureaucracy to deal with Brexit before it was voted for there would have been a massive backlash about the waste of tax payer money on an uncertain event.
As someone from a country still in the EU the Brexit outcome makes me uncomfortable. It is clear now that the EU is a set of golden handcuffs for those on the inside. As the EU grows in power it dictates more and more rules. I’ve heard numbers as high as 80% of national legislation being determined by EU directives. Mostly I think the EU directives turn out better than the national legislation would have (we would never get such strong privacy rights for example), but this might not always be the case. When those golden handcuffs start to chafe, what is a member country to do?
The EU has a real challenge ahead in leaving a place for regional and national self-determination, and ironically an EU constitution might be the best path to limiting its power, just like the US constitution somewhat acts to protect the states from the federal government.
>The EU has a real challenge ahead in leaving a place for regional and national self-determination, and ironically an EU constitution might be the best path to limiting its power, just like the US constitution somewhat acts to protect the states from the federal government.
This would be really neat to see. As an American I very much want a strong EU to act as a check on the US and help push back against China's influence. A fractured europe will not be able to withstand the pull between the US and China
That's not at stake here. What is at stake is whether a country can join the EU and the later change in such a way that it is no longer compatible with the basic criteria for joining in the first place. This includes adherence to democratic principles, a free press and so on, and by dropping these the country is essentially de-ratifying their original accession.
The UK demonstrated that EU membership is worse than worthless.
Many members are hooked on ECB bailouts and EU budget handouts. As soon as either of those stops, the EU goes down in two quarters. It's going to be fun!
It also reminds me how many people were incapable of understanding, that some people are fine with being poorer if they aren't controlled by a central unelected bureaucracy far way. National sovereignty actually means something to many people, as does having locally elected representatives.
Many many people seem fine giving up democracy for no roaming charges, no passport checks, and being a bit richer. It's a bit sad.
I've been watching Brexit as an outside observer. Curious thing that I noticed: after the Brexit referendum was won by the "leave" side and first months of political confusion in the UK followed, elsewhere in Europe anti-EU parties dropped in popularity among public.
It's like Brexit served the EU by uniting its members.
Oh, the sheer unadulterated Hubris of the Brexiteers.
When I woke up the morning after the Vote in the UK, I fully expected the result to be 'Remain'. I was dumbfounded to hear that the result was to 'Leave'. I simply could not believe that people would be so dumb as to destroy their own futures.
But for a lower-rank country where people still sing that horribly outdated "Rule Britannia, Britannia Rules the Waves" with no sense of incongruousness, what else would you expect?
As both the economic and political gaps widen between the UK and Europe, I have to wonder whether the Brits would even be able to re-enter if they wanted to. Can any continental Europeans share their perspective on that prospect?
Of course they could. If the UK falls apart Scotland will be welcome (likely over the protests of Spain but nothing that can't be bought off).
The remainder will then follow bit by bit with England likely last.
If the UK manages to hold together then it will be welcome to return but without the special exceptions that were made for it in the past. The good deal they had was squandered and the negotiation position of the EU has strengthened accordingly.
Alternatively, the UK could conceivably try to get closer to the USA (not physically, obviously), but I doubt that would fly given the distance involved.
Scotland is a sovereign nation which is currently in a long term "marriage" with England through the Treaty of Union. It's not trying secede from the United Kingdom in as much as it's trying to get a divorce - not unlike Brexit. As a result while many people draw parallels with the situation in Catalonia it's not the same. The Spanish government has little to fear from the breakup of the United Kingdom and likely has much to gain. As member of the European Union Scotland has a lot of natural resources from fish to energy which would benefit other EU members.
Yes, but politicians aren't always rational and the Spanish have already voiced their concerns about this.
The funny thing (well, not really funny, but given the situation there is something that borders on humor) to me is that England is absolutely adamant that Scotland can't secede from the Union when that is exactly what they just forced Scotland to be a part of with the EU. It boggles the mind how they twist themselves into the weirdest illogical pretzels arguing that when Scotland voted to stay in the Union that vote was binding even post Brexit, as if the circumstances haven't materially changed.
We'll see how that one ends.
But eventually the only thing that matters is the economy and for now that doesn't look all that good for the UK, the sooner they turn around the better for everybody. But Europe is not going to push for this, it will have to come from inside for it to work.
how is that different that the Scots voting to leave the UK rather than remain part of the union? None of this is, or has to be logical. When I lived in Scotland I knew people who voted both for and against independence from the UK. Now, all of those people are pro-independence; and strongly in favor of an independent Scotland joining the EU. That might perhaps be optimistic - I don't know if the rest of the EU can convince a right-wing Spanish government to let a separatist Scotland in.
Also, I think the idea that all that matters is the economy is glib nonsense. Whether people should vote with their emotions matters little, when they in fact do vote with their hearts. My own feelings on Scottish independence aside, I wonder if the Scottish Nationalists would have had more success in the last referendum if instead of making an (IMO rather weak) economic argument, they had stuck with the more emotional case for independence. "Yes, voting for separation from the UK will make us poorer for a time, but it'll be worth it to <sound of trumpets> be free."
I am from a place that impoverished itself for most of a century via independence, but I don't think many of us would vote to back with our old imperial masters now.
I think joining the EU or not for a candidate country is first an economic advantage and second about freedom of movement.
Nationalist sentiments ('free') are obviously going to have to take a backseat to those. So I don't see how a referendum on that using the dual theme of being 'free' and then immediately joining the EU would work in practice, that sounds like arguing both sides at the same time.
The most important resource Scottland brings to the EU is destabilizing the UK, and setting an example for what happens when a country democracy decays down to the point of them making very poor political decisions “at the EU level”.
In the EU nobody cares if you make bad political decisions at the local level, like in Poland or Hungary, but once you create 4 years of painful Brexit negotiations for all other countries involved, then people care about you wasting their time.
Oh please. This whole setting an example business really has no connection to reality. The UK is in the driving seat here, destabilizing the UK benefits nobody but the financial powers in the UK figured that they'd rather be bigger fish in a much smaller pond that they control. The end result always was predictable.
But Scotland and Ireland don't really benefit from 'The City' and as such lost a lot more than they gained. These side effects, conveniently ignored by the 'leave' camp come with a major cost attached, which will likely negate all of the gains.
That's what Catalonia was, originally joining under Aragon crown with the Castille crown in a marriage. It was just a long time ago and multiple political and government (r)evolutions ( a few civil wars, revolutions, monarchy, republic, dictatorship) and it's now merely an autonomous region.
I doubt Scotland would be allowed into the EU with its current budget deficit. From what I understand, it would need some serious austerity to be bought in line with EU accession laws.
Compared to other countries already in the EU I don't see that as a huge problem, the Copenhagen criteria could be met. But regardless, it would always be a slow process, first a referendum, then a (heavily contested) formal secession from the Union, then a period to get their house in order and apply for formal EU membership which would then take another two to three years to hash out. I don't see this happening on a total timescale less than five years.
And then there are still the questions of internal borders, Schengen and the Euro.
> If the UK falls apart Scotland will be welcome (likely over the protests of Spain but nothing that can't be bought off)
I don't have a cite for this, but I think I read somewhere that Spain has said they will have no objection to Scotland joining the EU as long as the separation of Scotland from the UK is done legally under UK law.
And that will likely never happen. The UK has said that a second referendum will be 'illegal'. How they intend to square that with the first (which they liked the outcome of) being legal I do not know.
Northern european here. I would welcome the UK back without hesitation (but not without negotiations, naturally). Of course, I also expect all exceptions originally given to the UK to be lost forever.
That would be horrendous. As an Indonesian, losing a major country for left side driving would be a huge loss. No more used cars from Britain, just Japan.
Scientifically, the majority of drivers drive better on the left too, due to dominant right eye.
The EU does indeed have all the issues with democratic legiticamcy that the leavers claimed, and this is the reason why the UK could easily re-enter at any point. There is no rational argument against it and the EU bureaucrats won't care about the hurt ego arguments that many people would bring up. The UK would lose all the beneficial deals they had tough.
As a EU citizen who likes the EU, I think the EU has a lot to fix and I hoped that Brexit would be a wakeup call for the elites to get started. But it doesn't look that way. The fact that von der Leyen is President of the EU commission is a clear indicator for what is currently wrong with the EU.
Everything is a one off in this respect. I can’t see why the U.K. would not be allowed back in. It is just a matter of negociations. I also cannot see how it would re-achieve the sweet deal it used to have, however.
Overall, I would say that some form of participation in the EEA is more likely. Something that a government could sell to the Brexit voters with a reasonable amount of fudge.
> I can’t see why the U.K. would not be allowed back in.
I don't see the UK being "welcomed back in" any time soon. I see the UK being allowed to align rules with the EU, i.e. economic openness, enjoying the benefits of alignment, but not full membership and a vote on on serious matters with the core EU members. Maybe a decade or two later that would happen.
The Guardian is considered significantly politically slanted, right? I don't know how Brexit is going but I'd like to look at several sources with several different world views before I come to a conclusion.
But for Brexit specifically, you'd be hard pressed to find good news about Brexit even on Boris' side, given how it's turned out and what an absolute shit show the government has been the past two years. The Brexit minister just resigned, and he's replaced it with a muppet, mostly for political reasons than competence.
Boris has become very unpopular for many reasons, Brexit one of them, and I bet he's not gonna be the head honcho of the Tory party for much longer. I hope Brexit becomes politically toxic it will become fashionable to rejoin the EU again but let me put down the hopium pipe first.
I've read a few of his articles, they remind me of Fox News. Britain sailing on to renewed glory after shedding the shackles of the EU that only served to slow it down from its rightful ambitious path forward.
Just one example:
"It will take time, but with regulatory divergence the UK will steadily pull ahead of rivals such as France and Germany which you would normally expect to perform as well as, if not slightly better, than the UK. We will be more innovative, attract more capital, and our companies will seize markets more quickly, than they otherwise would have done. We have seen the United States do that in technology, and now Britain will be able to match it. That is a prize worth having, and it has been secured."
The type of nonsensical Brexit that Boris negotiated can only be supported by Conservative politicians who ignore reality and are comfortable with lying as their basis for engaging with the rest of the country.
The traditional, sensible Conservative MPs (Dominic Grieve etc) were forced out two years ago.
The reason why Boris is unpopular now are exactly the reasons why Brexit is in a hole: lies, rules don't apply to us, mindless boosterism, no plans for governing just gaining power, incompetent delivery.
To the left, right :)
But if you are following unbiased analyses, say from foreign financial publications, they do agree on economic downside of Brexit.
The Guardian is left-wing although the champagne socialists branch where the Daily Mirror is more the working class socialist paper. Check out the Tortoise or Byline Times articles on the subject if you want something more nuanced.
As an outsider, I didn't really expect to see any 'improvement' without simultaneous economic and political reform. Simply pulling out of the EU without any other major changes didn't seem like enough to bring what supporters wanted.
To be honest the biggest problems have been labour shortages caused by the end of free movement. Certain sectors such as farming and hospitality have been hardest hit because of their reliance on cheap european labour. But really they'd known for 5 years that it was going to happen and they didnt do anything to mitigate it. Covid has made the situation worse with the limitations on movement, but they know the solution, pay more for staff, invest in machinery or go out of business. We had turned into a modern day version of Rome, with cheap EU labour being the equivalent of slave labour which made Rome work. Any recent unpopularity the government has experienced is more to do with having parties they had during lockdown than issues with Brexit.
I dont think the current government has really done much to take advantage of the new freedoms we have so far. In terms of cheaper food for instance, we've just struck a free trade deal with Australia, from where we could have expected to buy a lot of cheap food, but to protect farmers the lower prices are being phased in over 15 years. As the EU are reluctant to strike a deal on Financial services the City is in a position to get rid of a lot of the more onerous financial regulations that had been introduced such as MFID for example. We can lower taxes and deregulate markets more quickly and aggresively than we currently have. I think Covid has had a lot to do with the slower pace though. The debt aquired from the various employment subsidy and industry support schemes had made the government more reluctant to go hard on the tax cutting.
The problem with Brexit was that the leaders of the Campaign, Boris and Michael Gove werent really in favour of it, they just did it to bolster their support within the Conservative party, of which a majority was very hostile to the EU. They fully expected to lose, but they'd come out of it looking like they were the true defenders of the Eurosceptic faith.A the post referendum victory press conferenc, the pair of them looked absolutely devastated, like they'd accidently killed the family pet. They clearly didnt want to be there.
I dont think we'll ever go back though, I think knowing that we'd have to accept schengen and free movement of people, a single currency, any further centralisation of power, and the rulings of European Court would put too many people off. I think a few years from now the idea of going back in will become unthinkable. The only reason most people wanted to stay was the visa free travel, but if the cost was uncontrolled immigration then no.
Interestingly the EU seems to have become more unstable. The problems with Poland and Hungary their lack of respect for EU laws have shown how impotent the EU actually is in disciplining its own memebers. If they keep getting away with flouting the rules then other member states with dubious governments will try their luck. The finances are also become more contentious, the last budget barely got through. I cant see anyone leaving though whatever stories we may hear about a Polexit. The poorer countries have way to much to lose, in subsidies and trade to even think about it. The idea of free movement of people, which was what lost it for the remain camp, is now something that coming up for debate amongst the political classes. Michel Barnier in his failed run for candidacy for the French Presidential elections for the right made a freeze on free movement of Labour into France for 5 years one of his key pledges. So the sacred cows are starting to be questioned.
Im honestly just glad we're out of it now. We dont have to worry about anything daft they might come up with over there. Our destiny is now ours again, we can be as flexible as we need to be to get things done. Time to start looking out again.
Not anywhere nearly as bad as the remaining crowd made it out to be. At least according to economic and social data, things are actually going pretty well.
You should definitely give us your sources for economic and social data then, everything I've seen so far indicates a slow trainwreck, not as bad as it could have been but certainly not 'actually going pretty well'.
There is a fair estimate in there, it doesn't need to be precisely for it to be usable. The consensus seems to be ~4% due to Brexit and ~2% due to COVID-19. You can dispute that if you want.
> The extent of economic damage from Brexit has been made clear by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which predicts that leaving the EU will reduce our long-term GDP by around 4%, compared to a fall of around 1.5% that will be caused by the pandemic.
Okay a prediction from a budget office, many times these are far off, many times they are political. That's not a statistic, it's a prediction from one group based on conjecture.
So let me ask you this, what _FACT_ (statistic), not _OPINION_ (prediction) have you seen that leads you to believe Brexit resulted in economic loss?
The pandemic clearly caused a drop in the GDP when it hit, Brexit did not. You have to PROVE why you think Brexit caused this dip in 2021 all of a sudden.
You can't just say, oh look a dip finally happened, these things take time to kick in, it must be that thing I think was going to do it.
All the way until the pandemic Brexit GDP was steady, not following the doomsday forecasts, only when the pandemic hit did the GDP drop.
You can directly attribute shutting down the economy to a drop in GDP. You have not attributed anything to Brexit.
- edit because I'm at my limit -
First off, the point was the GDP was stead in 2018, post-Brexit, pre-pandemic.
The reason you can't use 2021 GDP numbers directly is because we shut down economies due to covid.
You linked two articles with the same "prediction", they did not have any facts linking Brexit to anything.
Feel free to get angry and give up, but do note that nothing you have linked proves Brexit caused the dip in GDP at all.
I'm not claiming anything, I can't prove a negative. You have the burden of proof if you are trying to say X caused Y.
Are you seriously going to post a speculative article from 2018 to support your position but at the same time claim that not one but two articles from 2021 are not acceptable because there 'is no fact' in those articles? I'm done here, this isn't a debate.
So far, things are happening almost exactly as people told back before the referendum, when some muppets called it “project fear”. Brexit has not brought any of the economic benefits it was supposed to, so I am not sure where you get your economic data. The NHS is still on the verge of collapse, for a start. I guess the upside is that now a lot of smaller British businesses have opened a subsidiary on the continent.
If your social data is the number of continentals in Britain then, sure, it is delivering. Shame it’s tanking the whole country in the process. Otherwise, poverty and inequality haven’t exactly improved.
before brexit, things also werent nearly as bad as the leave crowd made them out to be, considering they were worried about a nonexistent migration apocalypse. Kind of a moot point to say "well the other guy was being crazy"
This will likely go into history as the biggest own goal there ever was, the UK had a pretty good deal compared to other countries in the EU and it wasn't enough. But no matter how strong your country is you can't compete with the negotiation power of a block of several hundred million people. Whether it will make the EU stronger or weaker in the long run is still up for grabs, there is plenty of force trying to fragment the EU, some of it financed from outside and so very hard to control.
There are no easy solutions for all this, and COVID has made it all a lot worse than what it probably would have been without.