The Guardian reproduces data on the cost to the UK's regions of Brexit in three different scenarios this morning:
Remember, this is not project fear material, this is from the Department responsible for delivering Brexit.
The distribution is hardly surprising: areas with more trade in goods based income will be hit worst and financial services and services in general will be hit least.
But it's the questions that matter and which people need to answer.
Is a supposed increase in democracy that might actually deliver Rees-Mogg worth this?
Is supposedly controlling migration, which is something we can do anyway but have chosen not to do, even now, worth this?
Are the weaknesses in the EU - and they are real - worth this?
When it comes to Brexit there are, I am well aware, no right and wrong answers, whatever anyone says. There are only better or worse ones. Except the data shows that there are only worse ones.
One day someone is going to ask 'what have we done?' and no one will be able to answer.
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Which one of those scenarios included PQE, an active National Investment Bank, the restriction of non-essential capital flows, wealth taxes, cancellation of student debt, raising of environmental and workplace standards above the rock-bottom EU levels, a job guarantee and all that? Which one most resembles a Courageous State?
Yes those notional losses are worth the chance to have the opportunity – and just as importantly – the impetus to rebuild our economy. If we crawl back in the ‘benefits’ weil continue to be harvested by the owners of capital and the chance for any significant change will be lost for another four decades.
One day someone will ask “What have we done?” and we’ll say “Effoff back to Davos, you’re not in charge anymore.”
I am not sure I follow your logic
I also know isolationism will not work
My logic is that the major advantage of leaving the EU is the opportunity we have now not just to simply tinker with the same (essentially corrupt) system (as implied by each of the scenarios modelled in the Guardian report, but to significantly restructure of economy towards something properly progressive.
The tools for us to do so simply do not exist within the EU — and crucially, the impetus for us to do so will never be sufficient for these changes to be made.
For just a couple of examples, what impetus will there ever be for us to train sufficient medics, engineers, bankers even, when we can simply poach those expensively trained elsewhere? How can we commit to completely de-carbonising our economy within a timescale shorter than the disastrously complacent Paris agreement if in doing so we’re always going to be undercut by competitors who do not?
This would be less of an issue for me if the EU was demonstrably levelling everyone up — but as the IMF have just confirmed, economies in the EU are diverging — which will only serve to exacerbate this problem.
Unless we erect some barriers we will never make progress – you call this isolation, I call it good sense.
I find it amazing that it is thought that the EU cannot change
Staggering, in fact
But he’s right there. I’ve just finished reading The Courageous State and it’s a really radical agenda. To pretend that that could be achieved within the neoliberal EU is burying one’s head in the sand. I voted Remain and would do again but the problems within the EU are serious and at some stage will lead to one big crisis. Whatever happens the shit seems to be on a trajectory towards the fan.
I wrote the CS assuming we were in the EU
I think it could be delivered within that developing framework
“I am not sure I follow your logic”
If I’m not wrong I think Adrian D is suggesting making it all as bad as possible may be the only way to turn the ship round and try some new policy thinking.
Like cutting off your leg would cure a limp.
“I find it amazing that it is thought that the EU cannot change
Staggering, in fact.”
I have to ask where is your evidence for this? The recent Commission Roadmap appears to be continuing in their post-crash direction. DM25 hasn’t produced much of a head of steam. All across Europe Social Democrats are falling behind right-wingers – the chances of it moving rightward are probably higher than it becoming more progressive.
The one place where this appears not to be the case is here in the UK – but we shouldn’t take the opportunity of leaving because of the threat of the ludicrous bogeyman Reece-Mogg.
I do not believe that a road map proves anything
Tipping points happen
“Tipping points happen”.
I fervently hope so – either in or out we need one. Seems that what we’re arguing here is which route will bring us most rapidly to one.
My view is that it’ll be outside – where we’ll have only the one captured Central Bank and Establishment to deal with at a range where political pressure can reasonably be applied. Outside we’d have to construct and steer a pan-European movement to do the same – and still have to deal with the most pernicious of the four freedoms – capital movement.
If we’re out and show progress then the pressure for the EU to follow suit will be immense. Despite the Tories bluster, there is also no reason why all of this necessarily should be conducted in the kind of beggar-thy-neighbour way that the neoliberal basis of the EU demands. There’d be plenty of scope for cooperation and solidarity across borders even if that didn’t involve the travel of grommets from Hungary to Hull and back just to build a toaster.
If, by some chance, a properly progressive Europe develops in our absence (and there’s plenty of evidence that the UK has been one of the major hindrances here) then begging to be let back in on their, by then progressive terms, wouldn’t be too bad a thing would it?
(My toaster example was made up, but I hope you get my point).
The notion that ‘they’ (assuming that is meaning the EU: if you’re meaning the power of private capital, Brexit will leave us more exposed to that) were ever in charge is fantastical, as are all the other foundations of the Brexit project. The influence that the EU has had on our laws and practices is pretty insignificant compared to that of our own executive and legislature: the reasons for our poor productivity, lacklustre export performance and underlying fragility are to do with our own bad decisions, not those imposed on us by the EU. Illuminating conversation on the topic here: http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/the-man-branded-most-knowledgeable-caller/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral
What impositions there have been are indeed the result of making agreements, trade or otherwise, and will be replicated four-fold by all these shiny new trade agreements which are apparently just waiting for us to free ourselves from the repressive shackles of the EU tyranny (sorry, did I get carried away there…?) Why four-fold? Because sovereignty is the currency with which you buy trade agreements, and every one we make will limit our ability to make different ones with other countries with different standards and requirements. Curiously, the weight of the EU is rather handy is gaining advantage in those situations…
“Gegen die Dummheit kämpfen selbst die Götter vergebens ”
“Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain”
However, this can safely be discounted, since it was not written by an Englishman.
I am not a German speaker, but isn’t the Schiller quote from the ‘Maid of Orleans’; and isn’t it (I stand to be corrected)?:
“Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens”.
Did Nietzsche perhaps make an allusion to this Schiller quote in the Twilight of the Idols?
John S Warren says:
“I am not a German speaker, ”
Neither am I, but you might well be right about the source. It certainly doesn’t sound as if it was lifted from the ‘Ode to Joy’.
John,
Genau!/spot on! The precise quote is indeed “Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens” and it is indeed from Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orleans
Thank you. I wondered if Mr Green’s quotation was actually from Nietzsche’s paraphrase (?) of Schiller’s quotation in Twilight of the Idols?
Yesterday, there was a Westminster Hall debate about EFTA/EEA membership, where all its virtues were rehearsed, only for the government to reject the option once again, and continue down its blind alley. A recent EU Consitutional Affairs study suggests that the Irish border problem can be resolved by a combination of international standards, global best practice and state of the art technology. Hence, any notion that the Irish border will force the UK to remain in the single market and customs union, may be misplaced. Jeremy Corbyn seems intent on letting the Tories get away with their destructive policies and breathtakingly stupid approach to leaving the EU. A coup against Theresa May would simply result in the retired colonels and pensioners who are members of the Conservative party proposing only candidates who are more extreme than May.
I fear that unless there is a parliamentary rebellion, we are destined to go down a vassal state transition followed by a free trade agreement agreement which will be anything but comprehensive. The outcome will bear no resemblance to frictionless trade inside the single market. And the damage to the UK economy may well be much worse than anyone anticipates.
Theresa May will go down as the worst PM our nation has ever suffered, closely followed by David Cameron.
What is a vassal state?
Where did this absurd idea come from?
We will have opted for the status we get
It’s arguable that we are all vassal states until we can become functioning democracies that can restore control of global capital and the scourge of monetarism that dominates the EU along with the plundering of public goods for private gain across Europe. It’s the ‘democratic deficit’ that creates the ‘vassal state’, possible an appropriate expression. The vassal, in this case would be financial elites and corporate interests. The ‘vassal’ is not a country as such but a world wide ideology of wealth extraction. The UK has been flogged to global wealth siphoning at an unprecedented rate:
‘George Osborne is on course to sell off more public assets than any Chancellor of the Exchequer for more than 30 years — including all those who served under Margaret Thatcher.’ (Guardian 2015)
Similar stories in Ireland, Greece, Latvia…….the list goes on.
We’re already a vassal state -why the future conditional?
That is an argument I can buy
“What is a vassal state?”
Scotland?
Get an overlord (government) not voted for and not wanted, and pay heavily for the privilege.
🙂
I’d argue that our special relationship with the USA has a very vassal-like dimension to it so this vassal business is not new.
A vassal state is a state that is subordinate to another state. This other state is the real ruler.
Whilst in the EU it could be argued that the UK was less of a vassal state as it was part of a treaty framework that gave each member a level of equality with the other.
I think that what Mr Baskerville is saying is that if/when we leave we will be a vassal (mega vassal?) of many more states as we desperately try to form trading relationships with them because of the perfectly decent one(s) we have chosen (apparently) to throw away. We’ll be on our own.
The BREXITERS on the other hand portray us a vassal of the EU. Yet another lie. Yet another distortion of the truth.
Yet another reason why they and the process they have set us on is wrong.
In today’s FT
“One person briefed on Wednesday’s meeting said: “There was no breakthrough on Northern Ireland, more that they needed to think about it some more.”
What a sorry state we have for a government.
“The pride and vanity of that nation is a disease; it is a deuterium, it has been flattered and inflamed so long by themselves, and others, that it perverts everything”
John Adams. American ambassador to the 1783 peace negotiations with Great Britain.
Anthony Barnett the author of the “Lure of Greatness” http://www.progressivepulse.org/book-of-the-month/bom-october-2017 thinks that Brexit is the worst decision since the war on the American Colonies. International trade apparently dropped by 30% and it took two generations to rebuild relations with the US.
I live in the NE of England and it is depressing but not surprising it comes out badly. The jewel in the crown so to speak is the Sunderland Nissan plant, famously opened by Margaret Thatcher and hailed as proof of the importance of the Single Market. Given that about 80% of the production is exported, nearly all to the EU and the important of “Just in Time” manufacturing, I can’t see it doing well.
Indeed the Japanese car-makers are meeting PM May this afternoon apparently. Let’s hope they can talk some sense into her.
Of course the DUP MP Ian Paisley (Jr) was trying to fire up May with the traditional NI Loyalist NO SURRENDER! slogan in Parliament yesterday so maybe the ERG faction will carry the day. I’m not however sure that the DUP have really thought things through given the likely impact on NI.
“Of course the DUP MP Ian Paisley (Jr) was trying to fire up May with the traditional NI Loyalist NO SURRENDER! slogan in Parliament yesterday ”
I think Mr Speaker might have considered that ‘unparliamentary language’ in more enlightened times.
Just over 70% of the parts are imported…….think about that in the light of tariffs and regulatory barriers
Richard, count out me, you, most contributors to this blog and the ~16.4 million voters who were sane enough to vote to stay in the EU, from this ‘What have we done’ ? epitaph.
Count in the cynical, scheming liars and fanatics behind the Leave campaign. Count in the ~17.4 million voters daft enough to vote for this nonsense, for whatever reason; ignorance, laziness, xenophobia, nostalgia for an imperial Britain that has long gone, or misguided idealism.
When (if?) the UK leaves the EU with all the adverse consequences as noted above, I await an apology from all these Leavers with eager anticipation. I will get one, won’t I?
Keep breathing while you wait
It’ll be a long wait, I bet. Some of the less deluded Leave voters will realise what they’ve done in time, and may (grudgingly) apologise to the rest of us. Kudos to Carol Wilcox for admitting she’d got it wrong on here a few months ago.
But the instigators of the Leave campaign………? No, as Nick Cohen noted in The Observer on Sunday, they’ll be looking to blame everything and everyone but themselves, using the infamous ‘stab in the back’ lie used by the nationalist right in Germany to explain their defeat in WW1.
Of for spell checkers! I meant delirium rather than deuterium – I’m not sure heavy hydrogen was known in 1783
“Oh for spell checkers!”
I know this is not a computer helpline, but does anybody know why my spellchecker might have turned itself off ?
Operator error.
Deuterium is spelled correctly so the spell checker did not flag it and therefor works.
G Hewitt says:
February 8 2018 at 7:30 pm
RE my spell checker having turned itself off: “Operator error.”
Well it’s operated by Google as far as I’m aware, so I guess that’s a fair cop. I’ll blame them.
I’ve managed (somehow)to get it going again, despite the machine having a mind of its own. I’m looking forward to functional Artificial Intelligence. At present we seem to suffer badly from Artificial Stupidity.
I appreciate that it may not be the machine’s fault. It’s possible that it is merely autistic and I should be more understanding.
1. In the event of no deal (and hence no passporting), surely financial services will be hit hardest, so it makes no sense that London is least affected.
2. What assumptions were made regarding trade and tariffs in the no desk scenario?
Ask them, not me
Bill Giles says:
Q. “1. In the event of no deal (and hence no passporting), surely financial services will be hit hardest, so it makes no sense that London is least affected.”
A. Given the way the ‘Magic Money Tree’ works I don’t think the City has much to worry about.
Q. “2. What assumptions were made regarding trade and tariffs in the no desk scenario?”
A. That it will just be fine. Don’t need to think about it.
But they’ve only got to open an office of, say, a dozen people in Frankfurt and tell the regulators that that’s where the EU decisions are made and they can continue exactly as before!
Might also be that London is a lot more than just the City though people tend to assume thats all London is. Id still like to see a bit more detail in the analysis to tease this out
There’s another argument though I’m not sure this report will have touched on it. The dynamism of London and other major cities is arguably a direct function of their cosmopolitan nature. I recall work in the past with organisations, that showed a clear correlation between diversity (in every sense) and innovation and productivity. That suggests the converse – closed, static communities, resistant to ‘outsiders’ are likely to struggle to innovate, change and succeed. Sounds a bit like many of the areas voting for Brexit. (I was brought up in Cumberland…)
Anecdotally, I’ve seen enough examples in rural areas where it’s outsiders who come in and kick-start things, though that may be resented. So money alone will not change these areas.
It doesn’t add much to your credibility if you use a report to support your point of view, where you don’t understand any of the assumptions that have gone into that report.
Bill
You did not come here because you thought I had credibility
You came here to troll
My comment made precise sense in the context
Please do not waste my time again
Richard
I see our epitaph as being something like that wonderful scene in Withnail and I where Richard E Grant’s character pleads with the farmer in his tractor in the pouring rain to get hold of some food:
‘Please stop – are you the farmer? – we’ve gone on holiday by mistake – we’re in this cottage – are you the farmer?’
So one day after 2019 we’ll get some future UK Foreign Secretary or Chancellor banging on the door in Brussels (no doubt in the pouring rain) and it will go something like this:
‘ I say – are you the EU? Look here – sorry to bother you – we’re ever so sorry – we left the EU by mistake. Could we erm……join again? Pleeeeassseee! We won’t cause any trouble this time – we promise not to tell any lies about the EU or pretend that we can’t afford the NHS because we’re a member. And as for Nigel Farage – we’ve deported him to the United States and he’s now Donald Trump’s personal butler. Honest. C’mon – remember the war – oh damn! Sorry, sorry – forgot about the Germans. Look just let us back in – please! – like NOW!’.
You read it here first.
I don’t understand why in the scenario where we keep the single market and the customs union they are still predicting that we will take a hit.
Because, for example, we will lose out on university grant funding
Thank you
I sense a new impetus within the nascent English Nationalist movement (aka the right wing of the Tory Party) for a clean break; for the rejection of a transition period and for the repudiation of vassalage (whatever that means).
However I can’t see that they have thought this through. There is only some 14 months remaining to the departure date and, leaving aside the economic forecasts for the moment, this is an insufficient time period to prepare for a hard Brexit. Trade agreements, borders, tariffs, VAT, product standards and specifiactions, adjudication procedures and all the other issues associated with life on WTO rules would need to in place.
The longer the Cabinet takes to determine which path they intend to follow the less time available for a WTO Brexit. Surely BoJo and Co can see this.
As for the ridiculing of the forecasts this is the ultimate insanity.How can anyone with no numbers at all challenge a numerical forcast apart from attacking the source. In this case the source is a Government Department, it is a clear case of self destruction.
We need to keep saying this to ourselves – the Government has no numerical projections upon which to base it’s decisions apart from the ones it has ridiculed.
If you went to ask a bank for a development loan on this basis you would be quickly shown the door by the accountants, lawyers, surveyors involved in the appraisal. Those same accountants, lawyers, surveyors on the Tory benches are happy to nod through the most important investment decision of our lifetimes without any numbers whatsoever.
Staggering!
But keep reading the Dalily Mail.
“There is only some 14 months remaining to the departure date and, leaving aside the economic forecasts for the moment, this is an insufficient time period to prepare for a hard Brexit. Trade agreements, borders, tariffs, VAT, product standards and specifications, adjudication procedures and all the other issues associated with life on WTO rules would need to be in place.”
I think you raise an arresting idea that has been giving me pause for thought for some time. I recently wrote to my (Conservative) MP, to point out that Britain does not presently have the resources, even to negotiate Brexit adequately. The government is currently hiring civil servants in the hundreds; but not enough, and not with the experience required. This is a very bad sign of readiness. The EU possesses the highly skilled trade negotiating team, with all the experience and the necessary culture — because they have been negotiating FOR BRITAIN for fifty years. They know more about us than we do. They know more about the implications than we do. The EU contains almost all our trade negotiation resources and skills.
If we were going to set out to achieve even a small proportion of what is required if any kind of serious Brexit deal (still less a hasty ‘hard Brexit’), on customs, borders and immigration alone (just for example); given the Government’s time-frame, Britain would already have required to initiate a very, very large commitment in terms of many thousands of personnel, property acquisition, equipment and administration in Customs & Excise alone that is far beyond anything we have yet begun or acknowledged. It is also striking that there is no political or media focus on the build-up of all these resources. That in itself tells you something politically salient. This Brexit is like a Phoney War, but without the expectation of there ever being any “War”. It could be that this means that this Government plans a nominal Brexit only, with no content at all; it is all smoke-and-mirrors. We will be ‘out’, but you will not be able to discern the difference. This clearly worries the right-wing fossils and reactionaries of the Conservative Party lunatic Brexit fringe.
Alternatively, there remains the quite absurd, but only too credible (remember, this eccentric 21st century Conservative Party is frankly, and quite obviously, plain daft) likelihood that the Conservative fossils and reactionaries will run away with the State: that the Government is devising a ‘brick-hard’ Brexit strategy that they know is totally unsustainable or rational, and would be completely unacceptable to the EU under any conceivable circumstances, however willing to find a negotiated settlement; then blame the EU for the negotiation failure and the chaotic resort by Britain to WTO rules, having conducted no serious preparations whatsoever; after all the Conservatives have the Brexit Press and Media in their pocket to spin their story.
There is one other option, and it is beyond ‘daft’. If we follow the logic of what is not being done in terms of preparations (which we can see, because there is so little activity), we are left with the final bizarre prospect that the Conservative Government actually believes that it can leave the EU, Single Market, CU, ECJ, re-assert British immigration controls – and still remain with completely free trade access to the EU at no cost (and with no tariffs or non-tariff regulations) beyond the supposedly “agreed” financial settlement already roughly outlined, and without any means to do anything about controlling immigration either: that, we may be obliged to speculate – is “The Plan”. Nevertheless, I find it hard to believe that even this motley collection of hapless political blunderers who make up the Brexit Conservatives, believe that they could actually “get away with it”.
John, as a civil servant in one of the departments that will have to be heavily involved in the work required to reintroduce border checks and custom controls, I can confirm that you are correct in your assertion that nothing approaching the required degree of preparation has been done to prepare for Britain exiting the EU, especially if this is to revert to WTO rules.
Far from taking on staff, we are still losing them as the endless budget cuts, office moves and other nonsense imposed on the staff leads more and more people to leave. I’ve seen and heard nothing about preparations for Brexit apart from a couple of hastily announced projects to oversee new customs controls at airports or clamp down on import fraud.
Of your 3 suggested possibilities as to why this is, I’m afraid it is either the 2nd or 3rd that is true; in fact, I would say the most absurd one, the craziest, is the most likely explanation. This government really is that deluded and incompetent, not to say arrogant. Given today’s announcement that the EU intends NI to stay within the customs union to avoid a hard border, which will enrage the DUP nutcases, and the fact that all the bluster about a ‘bespoke free trader agreement/deep and special arrangement’ is shortly going to be exposed for the nonsense it is by the EU, sooner or later the tensions and contradictions contained within the government’s ludicrous Brexit position are going to bring it down.
‘Those whom the gods wish to destroy, first they drive mad’
‘sickoftaxdodgers’; thank you for that obviously well informed perspective. I am grateful, because the test is always ‘reality’; and ‘reality’ within Civil Service is difficult to confirm, for obvious reasons.
As any fool knows, a forecast is not a guarantee of the outcome. At best it is an educated guess, and some guesses are better than others. We struggle to work out with any accuracy what the economic output of parts of the UK was yesterday, or last month, or last year, let alone what it will be in a year or two. But it is the best we can do.
It behooves those complaining about mistaken assumptions or intentional bias in these forecasts to create their own economic models and make their own economic forecasts. Where is the Leavers’ economic modeling? What is their prediction of growth in one, two and five years after Brexit? Just because it is hard does not mean that you should not try. Go on, make a prediction, and we can see who is closer to the real outcome.
Or are they just jumping off a cliff, and praying that god will grant them wings?
For once, we agree, entirely
Those of us who want to remain are powerless. We huff and puff, we observe the chaos, the lies, the deceit, the arrogant, mindless stupidity of the politicians, the sheer mind-numbing pointlessness of it all when there are so many more important things to be thinking about and the probability of cherished institutions – like the NHS – human rights, labour protections and so on, slipping away almost incidentally, unnoticed, irretrievably and we can do nothing. There is no one in power, or who might assume power, who is going to do anything any differently. The people have spoken and the politicians have surrendered to the “will of the people”.
‘Sickoftaxdodgers’
“This government really is that deluded and incompetent, not to say arrogant”
Nothing much changes in this regard apparently. From someone who had experience of negotiations with Britain.
“The pride and vanity of that nation is a disease; it is a delirium, it has been flattered and inflamed so long by themselves, and others, that it perverts everything”
John Adams. American ambassador to the 1783 peace negotiations with Great Britain.
“Remember, this is not project fear material, this is from the Department responsible for delivering Brexit.”
So that makes it more reliable than we can normally expect from Govt departments?
It suggests where the bias should be
No, it isn’t “more reliable”. It is all we have. The Government’s Big Idea, its “Plan” is to give you nothing at all. Nothing. You figure out why….