Brexit Penny Dropping?

[manxman1980]

1 hour ago, woolley said:

Like all events, it will just fade into the past and people won't be aware of it anymore. 

Ever picked up a history book?  

Brexit will certainly be a part of British History but neither you or I will be around to find out what people think about it when those books are written.  

[P.K.]

4 hours ago, woolley said:

5 minutes? What on earth kept you?

Astonishment at your post...!

[The Voice of Reason]

4 hours ago, manxman1980 said:

Ever picked up a history book?  

Brexit will certainly be a part of British History but neither you or I will be around to find out what people think about it when those books are written.  

Many such books have already been written.

[manxman1980]

1 hour ago, The Voice of Reason said:

Many such books have already been written.

Those are contemporary history books at best.  The real judgement will be in 40 to 50 years. 

[La Colombe]

22 hours ago, woolley said:

Like all events, it will just fade into the past and people won't be aware of it anymore. 

Hmm. Were that so, how did the Brexit referendum ever come about? Wishful thinking there I think. 

[La Colombe]

 

[P.K.]

"Can any leavers tell me which tangible benefit of brexit they will miss the most when we rejoin?"

Firstly I don't think that rejoin will happen. The UK had the best deal in the best trading bloc on the planet. Full member access and keeping the £pound. Now all stupidly pissed away by the brexiteers. To rejoin will mean accepting the Euro which I suspect is a step too far for all the Little Englanders and their delusions...

Secondly with all the lies and false premises of the brexit campaign coming to nought the only card the brexiteers have left to play is the much hackneyed "sovereignty" nonsense. Of course, they all blithely ignore the immutable fact that for over 40 years of EU membership, during which the UK thrived, "sovereignty" was never an issue.

Brexit - the gift etc

Edited February 4 by P.K.
Typo

[La Colombe]

10 minutes ago, P.K. said:

 To rejoin will mean accepting the Euro which I suspect is a step too far for all the Little Englanders and their delusions...

Maybe, but they may be too few in number in future to carry a referendum result. The majority might support accepting the Euro. 

[manxman1980]

As we are becoming an increasingly cashless society I wonder whether it will matter if we have pounds or Euros?

If we become cashless then it will just be a way of counting.  

[The Voice of Reason]

I offer you this opinion piece.

Yes it’s from the Telegraph, so no doubt will be dismissed as worthless, a pack of lies etc. Oh and by a Tory as well so obviously has no value whatsoever.

But if others can offer articles from other journals in support of their argument, I am exercising my right to do the same. 😀
 

COMMENT

Don’t be fooled by the Blob, Brexit is already paying dividends

Controlling our own trade policy means we are able to negotiate the right deals for Britain

PETER LILLEY4 February 2024 • 9:00am

 

 

The clue, as Sherlock Holmes taught us, is “the dog that didn’t bark in the night”. This week was the fourth anniversary of “getting Brexit done” when the UK finally left the EU. Yet from the Government came not a bark, scarcely a growl – except from the Business and Trade Secretary, Kemi Badenoch, who published an excellent 24-page summary of the fruits of Brexit. The rest of the government machine was mysteriously silent.

The consequence of that silence is that the narrative about Brexit is being written by its opponents.

Holmes deduced that the dog didn’t bark because the thief was so familiar that it failed to challenge him. Many in the Government have failed to challenge the familiar narrative that membership of the EU single market was so beneficial to our trade that its loss cannot be offset by trade elsewhere or the ability to make our own laws less burdensome.

I must plead guilty to having helped establish this myth. As trade and industry secretary responsible for implementing the single market programme in the early 1990s I made bullish speeches about how it would boost our exports.

At the same time I helped negotiate the Uruguay Round – which halved tariffs worldwide and set up the World Trade Organisation – and made slightly less bullish speeches about that.

Over the ensuing quarter of a century our goods exports to the EU stagnated – growing less than 1 per cent a year. By contrast, our goods exports to the 100 or so countries with whom we had no trade deal grew by nearly 90 per cent.

Given how little membership of the single market benefitted our exports, it should be no surprise that leaving it has not perceptibly impacted our trade. Since we left, UK goods exports to the EU have actually done slightly better than our exports to the rest of the world.

What lessons can we draw?

We should not exaggerate the importance of trade deals. What really drives trade is businesses producing goods and services others want, alongside a competitive exchange rate. Yet business lobbies agonise about customs checks adding 1 per cent to their costs but endured without a murmur an exchange rate the IMF said was 10 per cent overvalued.

The second lesson is that the most valuable trade deals for the UK are those with fast-growing markets, which reduce previously high barriers, and which cover services. So Kemi and the Prime Minister are right to hail the Pacific trade pact of which we will be the only non-Pacific member and the potential Indian trade deal. Services, which are particularly important for the UK – accounting for half the value added of our exports – rarely featured in trade deals negotiated by the EU.

So now our priority must be to upgrade our deals to incorporate more opportunities for service companies.

The third lesson is that the greatest Brexit dividend is the ability to make our own laws. We can streamline regulations to reduce compliance costs and promote competition.

For example, simplifying the Working Time Directive won’t bring back the 60-hour week, but it will simplify annual leave and holiday pay calculations and recordkeeping. £1 billion of administrative savings are planned across business.

In the 1980s we saw that the cumulative effect of individually modest deregulatory measures is huge – moving Britain from being the slowest-growing major economy in the EU to the fastest. At last we can apply deregulation to inherited EU law.

Although these measures cannot yet have had much impact, the UK economy has been doing better, or less badly, than its competitors, So the Brexit effect – pace the BBC – cannot be negative. The IMF even forecasts Britain will grow faster between now and 2028 than Germany, France, Italy and Japan. It’s time to bark back at those trying to steal the Brexit narrative.

Edited February 4 by The Voice of Reason
Addition of second sentence to second paragraph

[La Colombe]

What I don't understand is how were we able to grow our exports to non EU countries by 90% whilst being a member of the EU? 

 

"our goods exports to the 100 or so countries with whom we had no trade deal grew by nearly 90 per cent."

[La Colombe]

 

[P.K.]

 

On 2/4/2024 at 1:54 PM, The Voice of Reason said:

I offer you this opinion piece.

Yes it’s from the Telegraph, so no doubt will be dismissed as worthless, a pack of lies etc. Oh and by a Tory as well so obviously has no value whatsoever.

But if others can offer articles from other journals in support of their argument, I am exercising my right to do the same. 😀
 

Don’t be fooled by the Blob, Brexit is already paying dividends

Controlling our own trade policy means we are able to negotiate the right deals for Britain

The clue, as Sherlock Holmes taught us, is “the dog that didn’t bark in the night”. This week was the fourth anniversary of “getting Brexit done” when the UK finally left the EU. Yet from the Government came not a bark, scarcely a growl – except from the Business and Trade Secretary, Kemi Badenoch, who published an excellent 24-page summary of the fruits of Brexit. The rest of the government machine was mysteriously silent.

The consequence of that silence is that the narrative about Brexit is being written by its opponents.

Holmes deduced that the dog didn’t bark because the thief was so familiar that it failed to challenge him. Many in the Government have failed to challenge the familiar narrative that membership of the EU single market was so beneficial to our trade that its loss cannot be offset by trade elsewhere or the ability to make our own laws less burdensome.

I must plead guilty to having helped establish this myth. As trade and industry secretary responsible for implementing the single market programme in the early 1990s I made bullish speeches about how it would boost our exports.

At the same time I helped negotiate the Uruguay Round – which halved tariffs worldwide and set up the World Trade Organisation – and made slightly less bullish speeches about that.

Over the ensuing quarter of a century our goods exports to the EU stagnated – growing less than 1 per cent a year. By contrast, our goods exports to the 100 or so countries with whom we had no trade deal grew by nearly 90 per cent.

Given how little membership of the single market benefitted our exports, it should be no surprise that leaving it has not perceptibly impacted our trade. Since we left, UK goods exports to the EU have actually done slightly better than our exports to the rest of the world.

What lessons can we draw?

We should not exaggerate the importance of trade deals. What really drives trade is businesses producing goods and services others want, alongside a competitive exchange rate. Yet business lobbies agonise about customs checks adding 1 per cent to their costs but endured without a murmur an exchange rate the IMF said was 10 per cent overvalued.

The second lesson is that the most valuable trade deals for the UK are those with fast-growing markets, which reduce previously high barriers, and which cover services. So Kemi and the Prime Minister are right to hail the Pacific trade pact of which we will be the only non-Pacific member and the potential Indian trade deal. Services, which are particularly important for the UK – accounting for half the value added of our exports – rarely featured in trade deals negotiated by the EU.

So now our priority must be to upgrade our deals to incorporate more opportunities for service companies.

The third lesson is that the greatest Brexit dividend is the ability to make our own laws. We can streamline regulations to reduce compliance costs and promote competition.

For example, simplifying the Working Time Directive won’t bring back the 60-hour week, but it will simplify annual leave and holiday pay calculations and recordkeeping. £1 billion of administrative savings are planned across business.

In the 1980s we saw that the cumulative effect of individually modest deregulatory measures is huge – moving Britain from being the slowest-growing major economy in the EU to the fastest. At last we can apply deregulation to inherited EU law.

Although these measures cannot yet have had much impact, the UK economy has been doing better, or less badly, than its competitors, So the Brexit effect – pace the BBC – cannot be negative. The IMF even forecasts Britain will grow faster between now and 2028 than Germany, France, Italy and Japan. It’s time to bark back at those trying to steal the Brexit narrative.

Dear me. To be taken in by that load of old flannel Telegraph readers must be very stupid/gullible/delusional (delete where applicable - which is to say don't delete any of them...)

I see they're still plugging the trans-Pacific Partnership. I have to say this from the above "we will be the only non-Pacific member" is a wonderful irony that made me laugh. A lot. You don't suppose the reason for that is it's thousands of miles away on the other side of the planet and the backyard of those two trading rivals the USA and the PRC do you? Basically no other country in the western hemisphere is as desperate for trade deals, any deals in fact, than the UK. It shows as well. A reminder of how the rest of the UK right wing press greeted this "triumph" of negotiation. The Daily Mail:

AT LAST, DEAL TO TURBO CHARGE BREXIT BRITAIN

Minister tells Mail new trade market will be bigger than EU

The Daily Express:

£12TRILLION BREXIT TRADE BOOST

Britain joins top table as we sign lucrative deal with vast bloc

Unfortunately the reality is slightly different. The £12trillion squealed by the Excess includes the GDP of the UK and Japan with whom the UK already has a trade deal. By the governments own calculations this "deal" might add as much as 0.06% of GDP by 2040. In other words it's not going to "Turbo Charge" anything despite how many times the appalling Mail says it will.

It seems to me that the figures showing how many folks think brexit is a complete and utter failure has got the tories running scared. After all, they are the party that "got Brexit Done" with an "Oven Ready Deal" not. So Conservative Central will have stirred up all the various departments and useless politicians like Peter Lilley to get pieces out in the tame right wing press, which is to say pretty much all of it, to claim brexit is a resounding success which it obviously isn't.

The truth from a proper newspaper:

The list of Brexit wins is in. It’s short and feeble.

Department for Business and Trade has cherry-picked statistics to suggest the project has been a success

In the run-up to the 2016 referendum, Conservative campaigners sold Brexit as the answer to all of the country’s problems. Leaving the EU would transform the UK’s economic prospects, making us all richer. It would free up money to spend on the country’s public services, most notably the NHS. It would restore control over the country’s immigration system, helping to reduce migration levels.

Four years after Britain left the EU, and this Brexit manna is still yet to transpire. Little surprise: the campaign for Brexit remains perhaps the most dishonest political movement this country has ever seen. It is true that the referendum result itself did not push the UK into recession as then-chancellor George Osborne predicted. But none of the false promises has materialised. Brexit has left the UK poorer in the long term, and the deal negotiated by Boris Johnson pushed Northern Ireland into a damaging political stasis. Of course that has not stopped the government claiming it has been an unrivalled success. Last week, the Department for Business and Trade published what can only be described as political propaganda, consisting of cherry-picked statistics to create the illusion that four years on, Brexit has delivered nothing but benefits.

This document reflects the depressing reality that today’s Conservative party is very much the political successor of the official campaign to Vote Leave, which lied to voters that Brexit would not involve painful trade-offs, engaged in a “clear misuse of official statistics” for deploying the false claim that leaving the EU would free up £350m a week for the NHS and which implausibly suggested that staying in the EU would mean sharing a border with Syria and Iraq.

We are to believe that the UK’s economy has been re-engineered for the better because of a collection of free trade deals, the vast majority of which simply replace those the UK had access to via the EU anyway: the UK’s accession to the trans-pacific partnership, estimated by the government to be worth only 0.06% of GDP by 2040; and a handful of “global trade wins” that include greater access to the Mexico market for pork producers, and improved access to the Chinese beauty market, which has nothing to do with Brexit according to the British Beauty Council, and is far outweighed by the £850m it says the beauty industry has lost as a result of leaving the EU.

etc etc...

Reality bites at:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/03/observer-view-list-of-brexit-wins-is-in-short-and-feeble

[woolley]

Meanwhile, the barricades are up around EUtopialand, and they're complaining about all the same 2020s problems that the remainiacs are blaming on Brexit.

[woolley]

On 2/3/2024 at 1:31 PM, La Colombe said:

Hmm. Were that so, how did the Brexit referendum ever come about? Wishful thinking there I think. 

Self-interested Tory politics. We have been extremely lucky.