I just don't see what the accession countries get out of the UK having freedom of movement light, most of them don't have any appreciable trade with the UK. Ok you can say EU solidarity payments, but most of the money for Eastern Europe comes from Norway so they're largely protected from the main budgetary concerns. If you're Lithuania the only thing you're getting out of the UK being in the EU is the ability of a part of your population to go to work there and send back currency.
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The UK votes to leave the European Union |OUT2| Mayday, Mayday, I've lost an ARM
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I just don't see what the accession countries get out of the UK having freedom of movement light, most of them don't have any appreciable trade with the UK. Ok you can say EU solidarity payments, but most of the money for Eastern Europe comes from Norway so they're largely protected from the main budgetary concerns. If you're Lithuania the only thing you're getting out of the UK being in the EU is the ability of a part of your population to go to work there and send back currency.
Do we?
Pre joining the EEC in 1973 we were listing with a massive hole at the waterline. People forget exactly what a state this country was in the 70's, the sickman of Europe, relying on IMF loans. Now it wasn't just the EEC then the EU which pulled us around, we had North Sea Oil and the selloff of nationalised companies which funded the painful mostly callous reconstruction. But this idea of British exceptionalism is pretty fucking misplaced. The Empire was a long time ago, as was the benefits of having the largest navy afloat in the age of sea and being the first industrial nation. We listed along for quite a while post WW2, sans a couple of blips in the 60's.
We've made a great deal of hay out of being the world's (the US mainly but Asia as well) gateway to Europe. The City of London and our mostly foreign owned manufacturing base have built large parts of their business around that. We've largely manipulate the EU in ways which benefit our strengths particularly in financial regulation. We're a massively unbalance economy propped up by vast amounts of national and consumer debt, with crumbling infrastructure, stubbornly poor productivity and huge pockets of deprivation which successive governments have just ignored. And that's before we even get into the outright stupidity of a nation with an aging population with defined social benefits and a below workforce replacement workrate blaming the failures of the governments they continually elect on immigration instead of looking at the big picture. But hey control has been taken back, mind the iceberg.
Yup 100% agree.
Well said kmag
Me neither but Germany could maybe do something there, especially the Visegrád Group will need a lot of convincing. That will be extra tricky since Germany is losing its influence over them.
Royal_Phalanx
Member
What about the Switzerland problem? They want free movement lite as well. As long as some free movement survives I'm OK with that. I think the biggest failure of the pro-EU camp was convincing Working Man Joe in the Pub that EU migration doesn't reduce his living standards using the facts available to us. Therefore any deal must placate them as a result.
Frankfurter
Member
As far as I know that's off the table. Just the other day, the parliament (?) agreed that they won't press the issue, because... well... I guess they don't wanna lose access to the single market.
Switzerland isn't getting shit. Their referendum is now an accelerant to the real prospect of the EU finally doing something about the large gaping financial parasite right in the middle of the continent.
Gurgelhals
Member
As of today, Switzerland has all but folded on restricting immigration from EU countries. This week, the responsible parliamentary commission presented their proposal on how to implement the demands of that narrowly won popular initiative to unilaterally regulate and restrict immigration. What they've basically done is neutering the entire thing. They even went a step further than the already neutered proposal that the executive branch had separately come up with.
Of course, the rightwing shitheads responsible for that anti-immigration initiative are seething at the moment, but there's not much they can really do about it. They only won that popular initiative on the false promise that restricting immigration would be possible without a violation of our treaties with the EU. People now know that this has been a brazen lie and a sizable majority of the populace doesn't want to revoke or even endanger our bespoke agreements with the EU. So, things will essentially stay as they are. No Swixit or any kind of that shit.
Also, popular initiatives in Switzerland work in a way that the people can only suggest very broad and abstract constitutional changes, but it is then up to the executive and legislative branches of government to come up with how to specifically implement those demands. Popular initiatives, in the fairly rare cases when they actually manage to get past a popular vote in the first place, always get watered down in their subsequent implementation; it happens, it's normal, it's actually a part of our system of government that has been deliberately designed so. In other words, no "Brexit means Brexit" bullshit; in Swiss-style democracy, there's always a certain room to adjust, correct, reconsider, and renegotiate things, especially if shit starts hitting the fan.
tl;dr: Realizing that the EU, especially after the Brexit vote, would not accept any unilateral restriction on the freedom of movement and would probably throw Switzerland out of the common market if it chooses to do so, the Swiss parliament has just folded. Which is good.
jufonuk
not tag worthy
The U.K. Won't die out of the EU we will still function and have a voice . What will be bad is the way the Government will impose austerity and slash the NHS
Brexit is a cover for all of this , they have the perfect excuse .. Banks passporting etc will survive so will EU and UK citizens movement between countries.
Our new Bill of British rights well we might have less freedom of speech now.
As for the EU it will reform and carry on stronger and better.
The U.K. Will be treated like an old relative with Alzheimer's
This is my prediction.
Brexit is a cover for all of this , they have the perfect excuse .. Banks passporting etc will survive so will EU and UK citizens movement between countries.
Our new Bill of British rights well we might have less freedom of speech now.
As for the EU it will reform and carry on stronger and better.
The U.K. Will be treated like an old relative with Alzheimer's
This is my prediction.
Wait, did he really call Obama the most anti British president ever?
More so than Washington or... whoever was president in 1812?
To keep the passport I'm pretty sure they will ask for EU budget contributions much higher than what we pay to date. Plus no rebate.
nature boy
Member
Still blows my mind how a 52-48 result means the UK leaving the EU, no matter what.
Yup, still don't understand how you let such a important decision be made by a simple majority
The Tories have a majority government with a smaller percentage of the vote than that.
It was funny seeing Obama next to May giving his speech, it was a long winded sigh at every moment. US interests and all that but you could imagine 'fucking idiots' was being said under his breath.
May still doesn't have a clue, everything she says is wishful thinking and dragging out the reality until it final hits. She seems to think the EU will blink first and that's our only good outcome. Other countries probably can't wait to beat us over the head with their trade terms.
Andrew Marr made a good point, if May annoys the Chinese over the Nuclear power plants that doesn't put us in a good place for trade deals, not that we would have a leg to stand on. France won't be happy either.
May still doesn't have a clue, everything she says is wishful thinking and dragging out the reality until it final hits. She seems to think the EU will blink first and that's our only good outcome. Other countries probably can't wait to beat us over the head with their trade terms.
Andrew Marr made a good point, if May annoys the Chinese over the Nuclear power plants that doesn't put us in a good place for trade deals, not that we would have a leg to stand on. France won't be happy either.
Silent Chief
Member
James Madison, 1809 to 1817. The Father of the constitution.
He wasn't really anti-British. The UK had issues the Orders in Council which included the stopping of American ships trading with France and its allies.
nature boy
Member
A government isn't the same thing as ending a decades-old relationship by 4 percentage points.
Leave the EU, get Australia:
G20: Theresa May in talks over a free trade deal with Australia after Brexit
War Peaceman
You're a big guy.
Not even 4%!
Audioboxer
Member
Shrimp on the barbies all round boys!
Plus a visit from Kevin the cunt goat.
#BrexitwasworthitforKevin
Remember that many countries already didn't want the United Kingdom to have this right when they were in the European Union.
Somebody needs to suggest this to the British government of 2 years ago. Please.
Gurgelhals
Member
As someone privileged to live in a country whose political system has always had quite extensive direct democratic elements, it is really painful to look at the whole Brexit-clusterfuck. Regardless of the actual outcome of the vote, there have been so many amateurish mistakes both in the way it was set up and in the way the political establishment is now trying to deal with the result that I wouldn't even know where to start.
I sincerely hope that this will go down in history as a textbook example of how not to do direct democratic participation, because I'd hate to see it being used as an argument against direct democratic participation per se.
It has already happened.
At the same time, what could they have done exactly? UK was already a very special case in EU, and that already was annoying plently of people of both sides. they hadn't much room to negociate an even special situation (they actually tried, using the referendum as a scarecrow). I don't really see how they could respond to some requests without leaving EU.
At the end of the day it comes down to Yes or No. Remain or Leave. I don't know what sort of Swiss style compromise you were looking for here, but it wasn't an option because the conditons for UK membership isn't just down to the UK. What is entirely down to the UK is "should we accept the negotiated terms of our membership or should we leave". So that's what they voted on.
Gurgelhals
Member
Maybe not call a referendum at all, if you're not really serious about the whole thing anyway? I mean, we all know that Cameron only promised the referendum to appease the eurosceptic wing of his party and to siphon off UKIP support in the 2015 general election (expecting that he wouldn't have to go through with his campaign promise anyway, because there'd be another Tory/LibDem coalition in which the LibDems would then conveniently block holding a referendum at all).
You don't recklessly play with these things, especially not in a purely representative democracy that isn't really used to having referenda regularly. From my point of view, it's still infuriates me how Cameron did this just to score a few cheap political points (and I would say "Good riddance!", if I didn't know that he's going to be the last person to suffer from the actual consequences). I mean, with a caste of politicians like these, is it really that surprising that a once-in-a-generation referendum would quickly turn into a protest vote against the status quo?
Which makes the finality with which May now constantly declares her "Brexit means Brexit" mantra all the more absurd. The whole thing really is a masterclass in how not to do these things.
The very least they could have done was stipulate a qualified majority as a requirement for changing the status quo (either as a supermajority or as a double majority with, for instance, a popular majority and a majority of the regions or whatever). It's not that this is a particularly extraordinary notion. Having a supermajority requirement for far-reaching changes to the status quo is basically "Democracy 101" (like, for instance, amending the constitution in the United States requiring a two-thirds majority in both chambers of congress). The fact that they didn't even bother to think of that shows that they either weren't really serious about it anyway or were even more amateurish than one might have expected.
Labrynian Rebel
Member
We don't want people from Syria associated with Britain... unless you kill a dragon, then you're okay.
Succinct Verbosity
Member
I just can't believe May can say to other world leaders with a straight face that she is still willing to go ahead with the Brexit. Even outside the EU, how can nations expect investments into the UK would be worth it when our politicians are willing to hit the economic self-destruct button based upon the whims of ill-informed people?
Because it would have been a ridicilous stipulation in a national referendum. Simply no point in holding it if it required a supermajority it would never ever get. It would solve nothing for Cameron who only held the referendum to get the leave camp out of his face for another decade.
There is a difference between doing it properly for the right reasons in the right way, to doing it as a political stunt.
Which it was.
Who gives a shit what Cameron wanted? Somebody is telling you how a nation successfully uses direct representation in a sensible manner, and your answer is who cares what matters is the stunt not the nation.
"Brexit means Brexit", she can't be any clearer (despite how many times remainers chuckle to themselves "but what does that mean?"). That's what the people voted for, so that's what she's going to execute. It's pretty clear now that she's decided that freedom of movement is a red line, so thus we're looking at a hard or semi-hard-Brexit. It doesn't matter whether she thinks it's a good idea or not (like Cameron on the Scottish Independence referendum ... how would that play out if he said "well, it was only a suggestion, we're not actually legally bound to do it"), she's got a mandate from the British electorate to leave the EU, and she's clear that means not re-entering through the back door (EEA).
It's pretty amazing that Japan would publish this publicly, really undiplomatic. It suggests to me that they weren't getting anywhere pushing their agenda behind the scenes. More evidence of a "hard-brexit".
Doesn't surprise me. Much of the jobs from Japanese companies are from Toyota, Honda and Nissan in actual car manufacturing. We simply don't have the resources or the manpower available for that sort of industry. As for the other Japanese companies, again it relies on resources and infrastructure available to them, the latter of which has been badly lacking in investment throughout much of the country outside Dublin for a good few years now, even before the financial crisis back in 2008.
because companies don't want to put actual real companies in ireland, they just want to put their 'european headquarters' in a single-room office above a chip shop and route all their profits through that address.
"Tomorrow is my turn to buy food and I may get arrested for it: UK Edition"
The problem for Japanese motor companies is that they've massively invested in infrastructure in the UK. If they could move that wholesale to Ireland, I could see them doing that, but there's a huge cost to doing that, so they're probably sitting on the fence (and lobbying their government) until they see what form Brexit takes (probably not exactly what they want).
They will simply shift major models to their other factories. Spain for Nissan for instance.
What is the advantage of Ireland in production? It is small so you don't have a huge worker population, there are no other car plants to expand on and all the support would have to move as well. Easier to expand existing factories.
Just to clarify, I'm not cheering this news, just reading it as I see it (in Asian terms this was a massive snub to May, releasing this at the start of the G20 summit). This was calculated and damaging, almost unprecedented for Japan to do that.
To an extent, but there is still the infrastructure cost (along with productivity). They'll want to stay if they can, but I don't think that their vision of the UK's relationship aligns with the government's.
Nissan has a massive plant in Spain and another in Slovakia. They'll simply exit Sunderland when the current models are up for renewal, it might take two product cycles. Their supply chain is pan European, they're not going to put up with conformity and origin inspections on every incoming container of widgets. The costs of Sunderland are largely sunk now and are shared with Renault.
Right, they'll see what form Brexit takes first, as they already have infrastructure elsewhere it's unlikely that Ireland will benefit mid-term, then they'll weigh everything up. Out of all the major companies invested in the UK, I can see Nissan leaving first, but it will depend on several circumstances, including FX rate, so we'll see.
So if these manufacturing jobs go, how many are likely to be replaced by other companies? Who do we have left making vehicles in the UK on any large scale? Jaguar Land Rover (owned by the Indians), Mini (Germany), and Triumph (make most of their stuff in Thailand now anyway)? Anyone else?
That's a lot of potentially ended careers
That's a lot of potentially ended careers
Something something German c- I mean British Leyland.
Also, MG, despite being back in business, is all Chinese made now.
War Peaceman
You're a big guy.
These people directly voted for their own economic suicide.
People often talk about the lower-class voting against their own interests by electing Tories, but this is a more direct form of suicide than that.
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