The Brexit referendum thread: potential consequences for GB, EU and the Brits in CH

[Aeneas]

	Quote:	TonyClifton
	With hindsight now, it's easy to see the reasons for Brexit. The economic model within the EU that the UK had chosen under Margaret Thatcher had simply stopped working for most people around the early 2000s. Productivity fell, inequality rose, particularly wage inequality.

Thatcherism didn't really have much to do with it. It was really all down to globalization. The Elephant curve demonstrates this quite well, in that as much of the developing world benefited from the effects of globalization, in the West generally only the top 10% benefited. If you were working or lower-middle class, your income effectively stagnated at best, or even dropped in real terms, as your job got outsourced to Asia or, to a lesser extent, Latin America.

Both Trump and Brexit were direct results of this, with the situation in the UK further exacerbated by how the UK government is set up, focusing on London to the detriment of the rest of the country.

Thatcherism predated globalization, so it's not so much that it stopped working, but it was never designed to work with it in mind, in the first place.

	Quote:	bowlie
	The UK could be the leader, with support from 15-20 Member States, if it only decided it prefers to lead.

Yeah... about that... The UK could be the leader, if anyone trusted its commitment to Europe. After all, were the UK to rejoin, what is to stop it leaving again?

An Irish diplomat once lamented to me that following Ireland's initial rejection of the Lisbon treaty how they'd been relegated, at EU events, to "sitting at the children's table with Britain". The UK, during its membership, had always punched way below it's weight in the EU because no one felt they were in there for the right reasons. They spent over forty years with one foot in the exit. Rejoining isn't going to change that overnight.

No doubt the EU would love to see the UK return, but if you're looking for a counter-balance to the Paris-Berlin axis, you're more likely to find it in Warsaw.

[greenmount]

	Quote:	Aeneas
	No doubt the EU would love to see the UK return, but if you're looking for a counter-balance to the Paris-Berlin axis, you're more likely to find it in Warsaw.

I would like to see that, but Warsaw will need to be supported by the whole Eastern flank and we're not very good at supporting each other. The attitude used to be that as a new member you have to keep your head down and go with the flaw and basically do whatever Germany, France and the likes think it's best.
Though lately I have seen a movement into this direction because the war In Ukraine has made people realise we're literally in the same shit.

[Ato]

	Quote:	greenmount
	The attitude used to be that as a new member you have to keep your head down and go with the flaw and basically do whatever Germany, France and the likes think it's best.

I don't know if this is a subtle criticism of the EU, or a typo, but I like it.

[marton]

	Quote:	Aeneas
	Thatcherism didn't really have much to do with it. It was really all down to globalization. The Elephant curve demonstrates this quite well, in that as much of the developing world benefited from the effects of globalization, in the West generally only the top 10% benefited. If you were working or lower-middle class, your income effectively stagnated at best, or even dropped in real terms, as your job got outsourced to Asia or, to a lesser extent, Latin America. Both Trump and Brexit were direct results of this, with the situation in the UK further exacerbated by how the UK government is set up, focusing on London to the detriment of the rest of the country. Thatcherism predated globalization, so it's not so much that it stopped working, but it was never designed to work with it in mind, in the first place. Yeah... about that... The UK could be the leader, if anyone trusted its commitment to Europe. After all, were the UK to rejoin, what is to stop it leaving again? An Irish diplomat once lamented to me that following Ireland's initial rejection of the Lisbon treaty how they'd been relegated, at EU events, to "sitting at the children's table with Britain". The UK, during its membership, had always punched way below it's weight in the EU because no one felt they were in there for the right reasons. They spent over forty years with one foot in the exit. Rejoining isn't going to change that overnight. No doubt the EU would love to see the UK return, but if you're looking for a counter-balance to the Paris-Berlin axis, you're more likely to find it in Warsaw.

Very true that "The UK, during its membership, had always punched way below its weight in the EU" I believe that was rooted in arrogance epitomised in an old Times headline "Fog in the Channel, Europe cut off".

Being successful in EU innovation and leadership by the UK Mission to the EU was not seen as a golden path to Civil Service leadership.
While politicians just used the EU as an easy excuse for their own failings "It is those people over there who cause the problems and we are powerless"!

[Biro]

	Quote:	marton
	Very true that "The UK, during its membership, had always punched way below its weight in the EU" I believe that was rooted in arrogance epitomised in an old Times headline "Fog in the Channel, Europe cut off". Being successful in EU innovation and leadership by the UK Mission to the EU was not seen as a golden path to Civil Service leadership. While politicians just used the EU as an easy excuse for their own failings "It is those people over there who cause the problems and we are powerless"!

The UK was never willing or ready to be subservient to somebody else interfering in their affairs.


They still, today, believe they live in the times of the Empire and rule the world !

[greenmount]

	Quote:	Ato
	I don't know if this is a subtle criticism of the EU, or a typo, but I like it.

Both!!
I am definitely pro-EU but I don't believe everything that comes from Bruxelles is extraordinary and good for all.
Anyway...back to Brexit: it's done!

[Aeneas]

	Quote:	marton
	Very true that "The UK, during its membership, had always punched way below its weight in the EU" I believe that was rooted in arrogance epitomised in an old Times headline "Fog in the Channel, Europe cut off".

How does this work?

[TonyClifton]

	Quote:	Aeneas
	Thatcherism didn't really have much to do with it. It was really all down to globalization. The Elephant curve demonstrates this quite well, in that as much of the developing world benefited from the effects of globalization, in the West generally only the top 10% benefited. If you were working or lower-middle class, your income effectively stagnated at best, or even dropped in real terms, as your job got outsourced to Asia or, to a lesser extent, Latin America. Both Trump and Brexit were direct results of this, with the situation in the UK further exacerbated by how the UK government is set up, focusing on London to the detriment of the rest of the country. Thatcherism predated globalization, so it's not so much that it stopped working, but it was never designed to work with it in mind, in the first place.

Isn't the EU just another branch of globalism though? I wasn't referring to Thatcherism per se, however under Margaret Thatcher the UK found a very successful economic model (to begin with) that began with the Big Bang of 1986 and further exploited in the Blair years, yet had stopped working for most people by the early noughties which was exacerbated by EU expansion.

The Elephant Curve is just a symptom of the economic choices made by successive governments. Also why GDP and GDP growth are taken far too seriously as a measurement of success when it clouds many other issues.

[Aeneas]

	Quote:	TonyClifton
	Isn't the EU just another branch of globalism though?

Not really. Globalization is only interested in removing barriers to the transport of goods, labour and services. The only place you hear otherwise is from the tin-foil-hat brigade.

The EU is an attempt at a political union, and one limited to Europe - for example Morocco applied to join in 1987 and was rejected on the basis that no part of the kingdom is actually in Europe. Indeed, try coming from a non-EU/EEA/CH country a try to move to the EU and see how 'globalist' they are.

At present it's not dissimilar in structure to the Old Swiss Confederation, but the point it's no different to any other European nation prior to unification. Whether it'll ever be unified, stay as it is or fall apart is another discussion.

Now the EU does follow a globalist agenda, in terms of trade, but that's because every country, unless you're North Korea, has been doing so. Globalization has been, up until very recently, been considered a win-win and it's shortcomings have only become apparent since the financial crisis.

	Quote:
	I wasn't referring to Thatcherism per se, however under Margaret Thatcher the UK found a very successful economic model (to begin with) that began with the Big Bang of 1986 and further exploited in the Blair years, yet had stopped working for most people by the early noughties which was exacerbated by EU expansion.

That's because, in Capitalism there are huge profits to me made when a market (such as happened with all that rapid privatization) opens up, but once the market fills up competition will start to squeeze the profit margins.

	Quote:
	The Elephant Curve is just a symptom of the economic choices made by successive governments. Also why GDP and GDP growth are taken far too seriously as a measurement of success when it clouds many other issues.

On what basis do you say the elephant curve is just a symptom of the economic choices made by successive governments? What does that even mean? I think you'll find that pretty much every credible source has pointed to that curve as an example of the change in income distributions as a result of increased open international trade.

[JackieH]

Many Tories now openly say that it is a disaster for the UK. No investment, no international cooperation on innovation, no market, cut out of supply chains, and almost impossible to import or export.

Listen to William Hague. Yes, he does say rejoining is not on the cards, but offers no other solutions. Certainly any new elected Government will do everything they can to re-negotiate and get much closer commercial ties with the EU, to solve the Irish situation and making supply chains and imprt/exports flow easier, and allow EU staff to return to fill the massive gaps in employment, be it NHS, care sector, agriculture and animal slaughter/vetting/testing, Hôtels and restaurants, etc, etc.

Starmer certainly would. Greens and Lib Dems are the only ones currently advocating re-joining. We all know this would be hugely difficult- and would never be at the same generous previous terms for the UK. Which is why this should have never ever happened. But yes, too late, we all know. And what a mess.

William Hague on the car battery firm closure.

https://youtu.be/XNctoXO95KQ

[Necromancer]

	Quote:	Biro
	The UK was never willing or ready to be subservient to somebody else interfering in their affairs. They still, today, believe they live in the times of the Empire and rule the world !

1. Correct… and rightly so.
2. Wrong…. gross over simplification.

[Aeneas]

	Quote:	Necromancer
	1. Correct… and rightly so.

Not always 'rightly so'. With the NI protocol being a case in point. There the UK signed an international treaty, that it is legally obliged to follow. Certainly, that may now be inconvenient now and as a result there were a few threats that they might unilaterally amend said treaty (i.e. break it), so you couldn't really apply the term 'rightly so' in that scenario.

	Quote:
	2. Wrong…. gross over simplification.

It is a gross over simplification. But it does frighteningly exist, albeit concentrated in a very specific socioeconomic demographic:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=349654695796306

[TonyClifton]

	Quote:	Aeneas
	On what basis do you say the elephant curve is just a symptom of the economic choices made by successive governments? What does that even mean? I think you'll find that pretty much every credible source has pointed to that curve as an example of the change in income distributions as a result of increased open international trade.

The elephant curve and its consequences are seen in most starkly in the Anglosphere. Switzerland for example hasn't seen this enormous inequality gap, Germany has also managed it much better.

The UK under Margaret Thatcher aped the economics of the US right, both in their amour Friedrich von Heyek. It worked well and successive governments did nothing to change direction of the economic model, first through the digital revolution of the nineties and then with with Gordon Brown's "light touch" regulation of the city.

External factors meant this model was unsustainable long term, firstly the the Soviet Union collapsed, and then China was allowed to join the TWO. These were a shot in the arm for gloablisation, however the effects of them were down to the choices of national leadership.

[Aeneas]

	Quote:	TonyClifton
	The elephant curve and its consequences are seen in most starkly in the Anglosphere. Switzerland for example hasn't seen this enormous inequality gap, Germany has also managed it much better.

Hardly a surprise, given that amongst Western countries Anglophone ones tend to have the least progressive tax systems. Nonetheless this is a trend that has affected all Western countries to one degree or other, regardless of whether they're Anglophone or not.

Another factor that has affected this is the manufacturing emphasis of nations. Those countries that specialized in high tech manufacturing, such as engineering and pharma were far less effected than those who specialized in lower tech manufacturing - to date. Italy is a good example of this and saw export of textiles decline dramatically over the last thirty years - significantly more than most or any country in the Anglosphere. Switzerland, on the other hand, has conversely been far less effected.

	Quote:
	The UK under Margaret Thatcher aped the economics of the US right, both in their amour Friedrich von Heyek. It worked well and successive governments did nothing to change direction of the economic model, first through the digital revolution of the nineties and then with with Gordon Brown's "light touch" regulation of the city.

Yes, but as we have established, economic choices made by successive governments simply reduced or exasperated the effects of globalization, ultimately those effects were felt by all wealthy nations as manufacturing relocated to the developing world.

	Quote:
	External factors meant this model was unsustainable long term, firstly the the Soviet Union collapsed, and then China was allowed to join the TWO. These were a shot in the arm for gloablisation, however the effects of them were down to the choices of national leadership.

We seem to be saying the same thing here. You're saying that economic choices made by successive governments promoted greater globalization, which in turn created the greater decline in income for many in the West, which is ultimately all I said. In the UK another factor was economic centralization, all money flows into London and is redistributed, and this has seen the growth of wealth in London far outstrip the rest of the UK.

Ultimately that decline, however, was not uniform. It affected lower tech industries as these were the one's that could be more easily entered by developing nations. Given this, those developing nations have evolved over time, where once they only produced simple manufactured goods, they began to produce more complex, high tech goods - remember when Motorola, Siemens and Nokia ruled the mobile market or Dell and IBM ruled the PC market?

Now they are increasingly developing services, which will before long begin to exert downward pressure on the income of that top 10% of earners who have, up until now, avoided the ill effects of globalization.

Anyhow, the point to this, in relation to Brexit, is that this was the primary cause of it. Working and middle class, particularly north of London, found themselves increasingly under pressure from imports produced at a fraction of the cost from abroad. UK industry sought to lower costs by hiring the greater pool of workers that came from EU freedom of movement and in the end those working and middle class workers saw wages stagnate, while being largely ignored by the political class who were less effected.

Unfortunately for that working and middle class, the toothpaste appears to be out of the tube and it doesn't look like it's going to go back in.

[Biro]

	Quote:	Necromancer
	1. Correct… and rightly so. 2. Wrong…. gross over simplification.

Sure it is over simplification and a large generalisation, but what do you expect here, a 500 page explanation ?

(Oh, we got that already )

[JackieH]

It will need a lot more than 500 pages to solve this mess!

[JackieH]

Here is another aspect that is raising its ugly head, especially in the current context:

The report into Russian influence in the UK produced by the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee? The report that was all ready to be made public in November 2019 (prior to the December 2019 GE) once given the go-ahead by the PM? PM Johnson sat on this report until finally forced to publish it in July 2020.

Peter Stefanovic explains the background in a video. I suggest that anyone intending to comment on this thread actually watches the video.:

twitter.com/PeterStefanovi2/status/1616488367423619074

So many references to this have been just dismissed, about interference by Russia in UK politics, particularly in the 2016 EU Referendum.

The report's findings were disturbing enough for concerned parliamentarians to take it further:

a group of parliamentarians took the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last March, with the support of campaigning journalism organisation The Citizens. The cross-party group of MPs – including Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, Labour’s Ben Bradshaw and the SNP’s Alyn Smith – claim the Government is infringing our “right to free and fair elections” by failing to act on the findings of the Russia Report.

The court in Strasbourg has now asked for this to be re-investigated as an impact case. It has written to the Government inviting it to respond in detail to the allegations by 26 April.

bylinetimes.com/2023/01/19/landmark-ruling-in-strasbourg-as-mps-challenge-uk-government-over-failure-to-investigate-russian-interference-in-brexit/

The European Court of Human rights has absolutely nothing to do with the EU btw. It is an entirely separate body.


From the London Economic : '“We know that his long-term strategy has been to destabilise and divide western democracies and nothing that’s happened in recent British history has done more to destabilise Europe, and Britain’s relationship with it, than Brexit.'

It has caused massive harm to the UK, but has strengthened the EU beyond all expectations, and Putin is not amused!

[3Wishes]

	Quote:	Biro
	Sure it is over simplification and a large generalisation, but what do you expect here, a 500 page explanation ? (Oh, we got that already )

3x over. my page viewing is set such that this thread is 1,546 pages and counting.

[Urs Max]

	Quote:	TonyClifton
	Switzerland for example hasn't seen this enormous inequality gap, Germany has also managed it much better.

Swiss tax data don't consider capital gains, that makes international comparisons useless at best, and its use dubious in general.

[JackieH]

	Quote:	3Wishes
	3x over. my page viewing is set such that this thread is 1,546 pages and counting.

Back to the title of this thread. When the consequences of Brexit are solved, it will stop! And it will take quite a few more pages!

The truth, in the House of Commons, 2019 - and it is getting clearer and truer by the day

https://www.facebook.com/groups/camp...6883602521566/

a con, a trick and a fraud.