Brexit Penny Dropping?

[jackwhite]

Remember what happened the last time we imported something from Wuhan? 

[P.K.]

On 7/23/2022 at 3:13 PM, The Voice of Reason said:

Liz Truss is quite correct.

The chaos in Dover is the fault of the French by not providing adequate numbers of border control staff. Less than half that should have been were on duty according to just about all reports.
Their claim that this was due to some earlier incident in the tunnel has been well and truly shown to be nonsense.
At worst this is some sort of “Brexit revenge” and at best incompetence.

This is irony at it's most amusing.

An avid brexiteer admitting that brexit actually gave control of our borders - 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to France....

ETA: I still find it surprising that brexiteers seemed to be blissfully unaware that there is, in fact, two sides to every border.

But then they did vote for brexit, so....

Edited August 31, 2022 by P.K.

[The Phantom]

So Farage sent some of his red, white and blue Gin to his EU adversaries Verhofstadt and Juncker in Luxembourg.

Post-Brexit, those parcels will now incur VAT, customs duty and a clearance/handling fee when they arrive in Luxembourg. All of which Verhofstadt and Juncker will have to pay themselves before they can collect the parcels, open them, find out what they are, and who has sent them.

Think what you will of Farage, but he obviously has a sense of humour.

[John Wright]

1 hour ago, The Phantom said:

So Farage sent some of his red, white and blue Gin to his EU adversaries Verhofstadt and Juncker in Luxembourg.

Post-Brexit, those parcels will now incur VAT, customs duty and a clearance/handling fee when they arrive in Luxembourg. All of which Verhofstadt and Juncker will have to pay themselves before they can collect the parcels, open them, find out what they are, and who has sent them.

Think what you will of Farage, but he obviously has a sense of humour.

They only have to pay if the accept delivery. If they don’t, then eventually the carrier will return them to NF and charge him a return carriage fee.

[prism10]

On 9/9/2022 at 11:54 AM, John Wright said:

They only have to pay if the accept delivery. If they don’t, then eventually the carrier will return them to NF and charge him a return carriage fee.

I'll drink to that!

[code99]

And I thought our politicos were incompetent when they sunk millions into daft capital projects. It appears that the much anticipated 'Festival of Brexit' that is going to cost UK taxpayers north of £100m has been a "flop" according to the organisers. That worked well...not. 

[P.K.]

38 minutes ago, code99 said:

And I thought our politicos were incompetent when they sunk millions into daft capital projects. It appears that the much anticipated 'Festival of Brexit' that is going to cost UK taxpayers north of £100m has been a "flop" according to the organisers. That worked well...not. 

They simply wanted it to accurately portray the realities of brexit.

So yes, it's been a disaster:

The head of the £120m Unboxed, an ongoing project aimed at celebrating UK creativity, has said the scheme has been dogged by being nicknamed the “Festival of Brexit” after it attracted a fraction of the target visitor numbers.

Ministers had hoped that the festival would attract 66 million people, but with just over two more months to go, four of the events have so far only drawn 238,000 visitors, according to official figures.

Earlier this year a report by the Commons’ digital, culture, media and sport committee said the £120m project had been “an irresponsible use of public money” and said it was “vague and ripe for misinterpretation”.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/aug/31/unboxed-project-festival-of-brexit-label-visitors-target

[P.K.]

So that's how you get duplicate posts.

I have wondered from time to time what caused it....

Edited September 12, 2022 by P.K.
Duplicate post.

[Zarley]

15 hours ago, code99 said:

And I thought our politicos were incompetent when they sunk millions into daft capital projects. It appears that the much anticipated 'Festival of Brexit' that is going to cost UK taxpayers north of £100m has been a "flop" according to the organisers. That worked well...not. 

Our politicos can only dream of being as incompetent as the last few, and current, UK administrations. 

[P.K.]

In my lifetime I never thought I would see:

A lethal pandemic engulfing the entire planet

Russian tanks rolling West intent on invasion and subjugation

A British Prime Minister who would lie to the House of Commons and The Sovereign without fear or conscience

But this beats all - had to check it wasn't April 1st. The Torygraph admitting that their precious Brexit is a massive clusterfuck that we will all have to pay for.

But then they have been trying to sell the title (what's left of it) since 2019. 

Project Fear was right all along

Six years of policy confusion and ineptitude has brought a calamitous loss of standing  

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/10/15/project-fear-right-along/

 

Call it revenge of the Remainer Establishment, if you like. The revolution in the British economy promised by Leave campaigners six years ago finally seemed to go the way of all revolutionary movements this week: it ended up eating itself.

Downbeat predictions by the Treasury and others on the economic consequences of leaving the EU, contemptuously dismissed at the time by Brexit campaigners as "Project Fear", have been on a long fuse, but they have turned out to be overwhelmingly correct, and if anything have underestimated both the calamitous loss of international standing and the scale of the damage that six years of policy confusion and ineptitude has imposed on the country.

A serious house price correction, substantially higher interest rates and a permanently impaired exchange rate may be the least of it. 

Credibility is all in politics, finance and economics; this week was the point at which the UK Government finally managed to lose all last remaining vestiges of it. Britain's trusted institutional framework, together with its hard won reputation for sound money and certainty in policy, all went down the pan. 

Perhaps I exaggerate, but not since the humiliation of the International Monetary Fund bailout in 1976 have we seen an unravelling quite as spectacular. This too from a Tory Government with a substantial overall majority. It is scarcely believable.

These are dark days for Tory MPs, who will be acutely aware that loss of reputation for economic competence is electoral poison for their party. As the former Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has already observed, that reputation has been comprehensively trashed by what's just occurred.

I feel sorry for Kwasi Kwarteng. He now bears the dubious distinction of being Britain's second shortest serving Chancellor ever after Ian Macleod, who died in office almost immediately after being appointed. 

Others have been chasing the silver medal hard in the turmoil of the last several years; Sajid Javid lasted just six months, and Nadhim Zahawi only eight weeks. Anyone would think we had become Italy or Greece, such is the turnover in key government positions and the growing sense of political, economic and fiscal instability. 

Nor is the storm by any means yet over. Stripped of all authority and credibility, it is hard to see how Liz Truss, the Prime Minister, can survive the traumas of the past several weeks. As Norman Lamont said of John Major, she's in office but not in power. 

The U-turn on corporation tax, the scapegoating of Kwarteng, and his replacement with the supposedly steadying hand of Jeremy Hunt is unlikely to save her. The cut in spending plans that she implied on Friday may be what the markets demand, but politically it threatens finally to destroy her.

Kwarteng was a likeable Chancellor with many of the right intentions. He is not wrong about the need for radical action to correct multiple long term weaknesses and deficiencies in the UK economy. Many of the supply side measures announced in the mini-Budget were more than welcome, and might in time have made a significant difference to the UK's long term growth trajectory.

Yet the unfunded tax cuts were always going to be a bridge too far. Fiscal policy 101: you do not attempt to do a permanent fiscal giveaway against the backdrop of sharply rising inflation and interest rates, a punishing energy crisis, a current account deficit swollen to an unprecedented 8 percent of GDP, and a seemingly intractable black hole at the heart of the public finances. 

To have rejected independent assessment of the plans by the Office for Budget Responsibility only further added to the sense of alarm in financial markets.

When we talk about "financial markets", it is important to note that they are not some god-like arbiter of policy whose judgement on matters is beyond challenge, but essentially just a lot of excitable children who, with herd-like conformity, are merely chasing the money. 

The idea that the £18bn a year of corporation tax revenues that seemed to be at the centre of  this week's rout would make the difference between national solvency and insolvency is almost beyond ridiculous. It would not have done. Yet sadly it became totemic in a wider loss of political and economic credibility, which has been cumulative now over a number of years.

It is perhaps not so surprising that the passionate Remainer who became a passionate Brexiteer should choose to throw her Chancellor to the wolves in order to save her own skin. 

Yet the fact is that Truss was in lockstep with Kwarteng in challenging "economic orthodoxy" and the institutions that were its standard bearers. On the campaign trail she was, if anything, even more of a zealot for economic radicalism than Kwarteng. 

In any case, she plainly didn't understand the sometimes destructive way markets interact with policy. It's been a rude awakening.

In the end, it was Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, who brought matters to a head, by insisting that there would be no extension to the bond buying programme he had initiated to counter forced selling by UK pension funds.

This has been widely portrayed as another foot in mouth episode by a Governor with something of a reputation for gaffes. Having failed, despite all the warning signs, to see the surge in inflation coming, the Bank fully deserves whatever criticism is thrown at it. The Bank has failed to conduct itself well in recent times.

Even so, the Governor had little option but to say what he did.  It makes no sense at all for a central bank, which is supposed to be tightening policy to fight inflation, to be simultaneously loosening it through resumed asset purchases. 

To do so would be seen by "Mr Market" as monetary financing, or what is sometimes referred to as "fiscal dominance", where monetary policy is used to support the government's fiscal needs.

By making the programme time-limited, the Bank was able just about to pass its intervention off as justified on financial stability grounds. It would have been game over had Bailey made the programme open ended. 

Already, acute loss of credibility in monetary policy would have spiralled out of control, and the rout in bond markets would have gotten even worse.

Once the Bank had made clear that it would be ending the programme as scheduled, the Government had no option but to reverse its fiscal plans. It would have been mayhem in the markets on Monday had it not done so.

"Economic orthodoxy" is back in the saddle. But then it never really went away. Instead we had a brief aberration in which the Government, having dispensed with all sensible advice, thought bizarrely that it could defy gravity. 

If it had been done differently it might have succeeded, but it was not. We'll be paying the consequences in reduced standing and prosperity for years, if not decades, to come.

[Passing Time]

5 hours ago, P.K. said:

In my lifetime I never thought I would see:

A lethal pandemic engulfing the entire planet

Russian tanks rolling West intent on invasion and subjugation

A British Prime Minister who would lie to the House of Commons and The Sovereign without fear or conscience

But this beats all - had to check it wasn't April 1st. The Torygraph admitting that their precious Brexit is a massive clusterfuck that we will all have to pay for.

But then they have been trying to sell the title (what's left of it) since 2019. 

Project Fear was right all along

Six years of policy confusion and ineptitude has brought a calamitous loss of standing  

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/10/15/project-fear-right-along/

 

Call it revenge of the Remainer Establishment, if you like. The revolution in the British economy promised by Leave campaigners six years ago finally seemed to go the way of all revolutionary movements this week: it ended up eating itself.

Downbeat predictions by the Treasury and others on the economic consequences of leaving the EU, contemptuously dismissed at the time by Brexit campaigners as "Project Fear", have been on a long fuse, but they have turned out to be overwhelmingly correct, and if anything have underestimated both the calamitous loss of international standing and the scale of the damage that six years of policy confusion and ineptitude has imposed on the country.

A serious house price correction, substantially higher interest rates and a permanently impaired exchange rate may be the least of it. 

Credibility is all in politics, finance and economics; this week was the point at which the UK Government finally managed to lose all last remaining vestiges of it. Britain's trusted institutional framework, together with its hard won reputation for sound money and certainty in policy, all went down the pan. 

Perhaps I exaggerate, but not since the humiliation of the International Monetary Fund bailout in 1976 have we seen an unravelling quite as spectacular. This too from a Tory Government with a substantial overall majority. It is scarcely believable.

These are dark days for Tory MPs, who will be acutely aware that loss of reputation for economic competence is electoral poison for their party. As the former Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has already observed, that reputation has been comprehensively trashed by what's just occurred.

I feel sorry for Kwasi Kwarteng. He now bears the dubious distinction of being Britain's second shortest serving Chancellor ever after Ian Macleod, who died in office almost immediately after being appointed. 

Others have been chasing the silver medal hard in the turmoil of the last several years; Sajid Javid lasted just six months, and Nadhim Zahawi only eight weeks. Anyone would think we had become Italy or Greece, such is the turnover in key government positions and the growing sense of political, economic and fiscal instability. 

Nor is the storm by any means yet over. Stripped of all authority and credibility, it is hard to see how Liz Truss, the Prime Minister, can survive the traumas of the past several weeks. As Norman Lamont said of John Major, she's in office but not in power. 

The U-turn on corporation tax, the scapegoating of Kwarteng, and his replacement with the supposedly steadying hand of Jeremy Hunt is unlikely to save her. The cut in spending plans that she implied on Friday may be what the markets demand, but politically it threatens finally to destroy her.

Kwarteng was a likeable Chancellor with many of the right intentions. He is not wrong about the need for radical action to correct multiple long term weaknesses and deficiencies in the UK economy. Many of the supply side measures announced in the mini-Budget were more than welcome, and might in time have made a significant difference to the UK's long term growth trajectory.

Yet the unfunded tax cuts were always going to be a bridge too far. Fiscal policy 101: you do not attempt to do a permanent fiscal giveaway against the backdrop of sharply rising inflation and interest rates, a punishing energy crisis, a current account deficit swollen to an unprecedented 8 percent of GDP, and a seemingly intractable black hole at the heart of the public finances. 

To have rejected independent assessment of the plans by the Office for Budget Responsibility only further added to the sense of alarm in financial markets.

When we talk about "financial markets", it is important to note that they are not some god-like arbiter of policy whose judgement on matters is beyond challenge, but essentially just a lot of excitable children who, with herd-like conformity, are merely chasing the money. 

The idea that the £18bn a year of corporation tax revenues that seemed to be at the centre of  this week's rout would make the difference between national solvency and insolvency is almost beyond ridiculous. It would not have done. Yet sadly it became totemic in a wider loss of political and economic credibility, which has been cumulative now over a number of years.

It is perhaps not so surprising that the passionate Remainer who became a passionate Brexiteer should choose to throw her Chancellor to the wolves in order to save her own skin. 

Yet the fact is that Truss was in lockstep with Kwarteng in challenging "economic orthodoxy" and the institutions that were its standard bearers. On the campaign trail she was, if anything, even more of a zealot for economic radicalism than Kwarteng. 

In any case, she plainly didn't understand the sometimes destructive way markets interact with policy. It's been a rude awakening.

In the end, it was Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, who brought matters to a head, by insisting that there would be no extension to the bond buying programme he had initiated to counter forced selling by UK pension funds.

This has been widely portrayed as another foot in mouth episode by a Governor with something of a reputation for gaffes. Having failed, despite all the warning signs, to see the surge in inflation coming, the Bank fully deserves whatever criticism is thrown at it. The Bank has failed to conduct itself well in recent times.

Even so, the Governor had little option but to say what he did.  It makes no sense at all for a central bank, which is supposed to be tightening policy to fight inflation, to be simultaneously loosening it through resumed asset purchases. 

To do so would be seen by "Mr Market" as monetary financing, or what is sometimes referred to as "fiscal dominance", where monetary policy is used to support the government's fiscal needs.

By making the programme time-limited, the Bank was able just about to pass its intervention off as justified on financial stability grounds. It would have been game over had Bailey made the programme open ended. 

Already, acute loss of credibility in monetary policy would have spiralled out of control, and the rout in bond markets would have gotten even worse.

Once the Bank had made clear that it would be ending the programme as scheduled, the Government had no option but to reverse its fiscal plans. It would have been mayhem in the markets on Monday had it not done so.

"Economic orthodoxy" is back in the saddle. But then it never really went away. Instead we had a brief aberration in which the Government, having dispensed with all sensible advice, thought bizarrely that it could defy gravity. 

If it had been done differently it might have succeeded, but it was not. We'll be paying the consequences in reduced standing and prosperity for years, if not decades, to come.

Put a cold flannel on your forehead and go lie down in a dark room...

[P.K.]

1 hour ago, Passing Time said:

Put a cold flannel on your forehead and go lie down in a dark room...

No way, too busy celebrating....

Interesting piece, among many, in the Grauniad:

Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks, even if we struggle to name that cause out loud right now. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.

They will point to the obvious impact of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, and the role that played in upending a country once renowned for its stability. They might begin with the basics. Exit, they will write, shrank the UK economy thanks to a 5.2% fall in GDP, a 13.7% fall in investment and a similar drop in the trade in goods. That self-inflicted contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most. If your economy is smaller, you either have to tax people more to pay for the services they expect, or you cut those services, or you borrow. There are no other ways out.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/14/markets-take-back-control-brexit-humiliation-britain-suez

[Apple]

On 10/16/2022 at 2:12 PM, P.K. said:

In my lifetime I never thought I would see:

 

This analysis is one of the best I have read. UK is stuffed now.

Events in English Parliament today were pure farce. Liz not turning up on time because, as reported in one of this morning's papers, she was seeing the head of 1922 Committee. 

She is now insisting she will lead Tories in next General Election. Presumably Boris has declined a return to the front bench. What next one owners, and when.

[P.K.]

The BBC's Chris Mason interviews Thick Lizzy after yesterday's farrago in the House of Commons. A must watch via BBC iPlayer

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0d7mmk8

 

[P.K.]

4 hours ago, Apple said:

Events in English Parliament today were pure farce. Liz not turning up on time because, as reported in one of this morning's papers, she was seeing the head of 1922 Committee. 

During the UQ Ian Brady was sitting in the HoC on the far left of the tory benches. Wearing a poor taste bright yellow tie....