The cost of Brexit is now becoming apparent.
Customs clearances are apparently going to cost business £7 billion a year.
50,000 new Customs staff are going to cost at least £3 billion a year in my estimate.
On top of that there is the cost of the Northern Ireland border.
Call it £11 billion, or near enough the amount it was claimed could be given to to NHS as a result of leaving the EU.
And that's before the impact of tariffs - which could be considerable - is taken into account.
Some of us warned of these downsides. We were told it was a price worth paying.
Now we will be paying that price for no net gain to society. All these tasks were previously without direct cost.
And what are we getting in exchange? A reduction in the number of care workers in the UK. Chlorinated chicken, maybe. A shattered country, literally. And economic vulnerability. Can anyone spot anything else?
I wish I could. But I can't. The disaster continues to unfold.
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“nobody knows”. Is an obtuse and misleading headline.
There was a democratic process that decided we leave the EU.
Actually, we left 7 months ago. Grow up with your meaningless messages.
Oh, for the joy of constructive comment
Keep going Richard!
David sidwell seems to think that a referendumb won by fraud and lies, where (unlike in the Scottish referendum) 16 year olds were excluded from the vote as were 3m EU citizens was democratic!
Strange really…..
“Oh, for the joy of constructive comment”
I felt the same reading your blog. In what way is a single word you said in your blog “constructive”?
That’s too crass to be worthy of comment
Some significant policy changes have flowed from this blog
If that’s not constructive I am not sure what is
That would be the democratic process that has led to us leaving the EU on the positive choice of no more than 37.5% of those eligible to vote for it. But like everything else in this country when it comes to politics, all the spoils go to the largest minority. The utter folly of making massive constitutional changes without a proper and significant majority in favour of them will hit the UK in 2021 and the only “tangible” benefit will be a woolly notion of independence from Europe for the UK, which simply translates back to the largest minority (ie. the Tories) imposing its wishes on the whole country, without restriction.
In fact, what it might amount to is Dominic Cummings imposing his notions and prejudices on us all, through his master, sorry no, his puppet.
You are correct Roy. It also demonstrates the truth of the old saying about hypocrisy being ‘Le Vice Anglais’ . We’re now being run by an unelected official who lives in a £2million house in Islington, who has a humanities degree from Oxbridge.
This same individual ran a Leave campaign featuring claims that the EU was run by unelected bureacrats, and that Remainers were all part of an Oxbridge educated metropolitan elite with degrees in the humanities.
Fantastic isn’t it? You talk of the UK, but I suspect, largely due to Brexit and this atrocious ‘Brexit’ government, the UK will be no more in under 5 years when the Scots vote to leave the union. Followed in the next 10 to 15 years by the Welsh and Northern Irish. Who could blame them?
No one
I would
Mr Sidwell,
Here is a simple and polite request. Spell out the special and specific egonomic gains of Brexit. Please, no obtuse or meaningless messages; no generalisations about a “stronger, fairer, more global Britain” (Theresa May); she would say that, wouldn’t she?
I mean the real, hard, concrete, quantifiable benefits; the actual deals, the quantum.
You can do that, can’t you. You must be able to do this by now; after all you have had long enough. Transition is virtually over. The time is up. Tell us about the reward – what precisely is the payback we were promised?
@ John S Warren
Good to see some people trying to re-run the referendum 4+ years after they lost – asking people to outline the benefits etc etc.
There are plenty of benefits and plenty of costs, just like thee are plenty of benefits of costs of staying in the EU. People make a judgement on the balance of those pros and cons.
The majority of those who chose to express an opinion chose to leave – those that have a different opinion have to learn to live with that. It’s surprising that after 4 years they are still struggling to do so.
Democracy continually reappraises past mistakes
Like 2012 NHS reform and parole privatisation to name two that are to be reversed
Why is Brexit subject to different rules?
Or us it you really don’t like democracy and free speech?
Mz Smeath,
I am not interested in re-running the referendum. Remain lost, but Scotland voted Remain, and I am far more interested in what Scotland chooses to do now. Heaven forfend that I would wish to separate the people of rUK (or whatever is left of it when Brexit’s consequences come home to roost), from whatever fantastical notions they wish to pursue. It is your privilege, but I am quite keen that you do it without me, and without Scotland being dragged along on this fruitless, time-wasting journey.
What of course does change is whether or not Brexit was a good idea or a real turkey; I am afraid the exercise of a somewhat louche and shabby, but nevertheless democratic vote does not guarantee that the decision of the people was not a complete dud. This is Britain. People make mistakes. All the time. Sometimes it seems the country is one long mistake.
“There are plenty of benefits and plenty of costs”.
Fine. Tell me what they are. Enumerate them. Provide evidence, not spin. Facts not puff. Telling me there are “benefits and costs” doesn’t cut it. You are using words to say nothing; you are just ’emoting’, to use an old term from logical positivism.
Seconded
There was a gerrymandered election in 2016 but hardly democratic.
The ADVISORY referrendum was won by a the votes of disaffected bunch influenced by lies and without a clear majority. Pretty much should have been dismissed on many accounts. We lost as “Remainers” but so did most of the “Brexiters.” The only few who “won” in this are billionaires.
The lesson of Argentina, from worlds 6th richest Nation and the potential ‘Top Dog’ on the American Continent to basket case is instructive.
I fear we are heading for ‘Failed State’ status
If you want to know most of the reason then watch this clip from Morning Joe, Richard (https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe) Title: ‘New Yorker reporter: Trump helps tycoon exploit the pandemic.’
It starts out about something which we might think is US specific (it isn’t, of course) but the last segment is about the destruction of unions, health and safety protections for workers, food standards and so on – what Steve Bannon referred to as the ‘administrative state’ – by a political party funded by libertarian multi-millionaires/billionaires, and where that ends up.
As the author of the piece points out, this has been going on in the US for close to 40 years – as indeed it has here, though a little lesss effectively. But this is the kind of state and society people like Cummings, Gove, Patel, etc, etc long for, and to which they have been working for years. And now they’re in government they see the opportunity to complete that project.
https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe
Re the cost of the additional bureaucracy – it is OK as it is British bureaucracy – not EU bureaucracy ! ( I am being ironic)
“50,000 new Customs staff are going to cost at least £3 billion a year in my estimate.”
It’s odd how you views on government expenditure change depending on whether you want to criticise government spending or criticise government not spending.
When it suits you, you point out that government employees pay tax and that there is a multiplier effect as employees spend in the economy and so taking on new employees is a good thing and there’s no real cost at all. When it suits you, you say it does cost.
I look forward to you saying that NOT taking on 50,000 new workers in some other department is a terrible thing. By then you’ll have forgotten that you’ve just said that taking on 50,000 new workers is a terrible thing.
It’s pretty boring to note such crass commentary
I have never advocated government spending for the sake of it
I have consistently opposed some government programs e.g. HS2 and nuclear weaponry
What spend is for clearly matters, enormously.
If you cannot raise your game to a sensible level why bother commenting?
It’s not spending for the sake of it. The workers will collect revenue, clamp down on the people-smuggling problem, and protect the public from substandard or illicit goods. All socially useful things. And they will indeed have a multiplier effect.
Hang on – we do all the rest already
And we’re not actually planning tariffs, as far as I heard…
Very poorly. For example, 39 people died last year after they were trafficked across the channel in a refrigerated lorry. I dare say we could do better, but it’s difficult to perform adequate checks when we’re in the Customs Union and Single Market.
I’m glad you do not contest the point that border checks are socially useful, though.
As for tariffs, we will indeed be charging them.
Actually I am disputing they are socially useful
If I thought they were useful I’d be proposing them in the U.K.
Why aren’t you doing that if you think them so good?
Discouraging people trafficking seems useful to me. Clearly you disagree.
I don’t see why someone would smuggle someone in a deadly refrigerated lorry from Gretna Green to Carlisle… It’s not similar.
Neither is the UK similar to the EU. The former is one demos, one market, one currency zone and one government that redistributes vast sums from region to region to alleviate some of the distributional consequences of the lack of internal borders. It is what the EU aspires to becoming, but sadly seems unable to achieve.
I have said we have all the means required to prevent people trafficking
But of course not 100% successfully
As will also be the case after Brexit
But you persist in ignoring facts and spout irrelevcance
Brexit will continue as it won the vote. Naturally there will be initial costs to any change in direction, but to predict only negative outcomes shows a distinct lack of foresight. There are many reasons for leaving the EU and now it has been decided, we need to get on with it and get settled on a path to recovery. There might be an initial lack of care workers, but that disaster would have to be quickly remedied if it happens. Economic vulnerablity? Why? Because we have left the EU, who are likely to be in a much worse state than we are? I really do not think that such predictions make sense. If you feel that some Tories have a master plan, then of course they will lose the next election and it will be Starmer heading the government. What then?
I’m not answerable for Labour
What I do expect is governments who can exercise sound judgment
Nothing about the Brexit process – which need never have been done the way it is being done – indicates that sound judgment has been used
You are presuming that No Deal was the plan when we were told it would never happen
Are w not allowed to point out that the UK has been conned and are not getting the Brexit that they voted for – which h was not this one?
Well Said
“There might be an initial lack of care workers, but that disaster would have to be quickly remedied if it happens.”
It took a while for it to sink in that someone was prepared to write that sentence. No wonder Scotland is considering leaving the Union. It is so easy to sit at a keyboard and abstract from the reality; suffering, death and distress, not least for those who have to watch it or administer the care.
The problem is this is not by exception. This is how Britain is governed; by disaster management. Worse, some of the disasters are self-inflicted in return for nothing of substance: like Brexit. What solution are we offered? Always the same – the Dunkirk spirit. Dunkirk was a disaster, and without the US there would have been no return to the mainland. Notice that we never reflect on all the disasters and failures that took us there, nor do we focus on how solutions are created. We try to make a virtue of “muddling through”. It is now what we are supposed to do, because we cannot rise to a higher standard of application. We actually sanction incompetence and call it the ‘British way’.
It is worth remembering that Dunkirk, eighty years ago was the last time we actually fixed a disaster. Now we just create disaster out of everything Britain touches; muddle on, and never fix it; ever. We didn’t fix the banks after the financial crash, we just propped them up, and smoothed the worst excesses. We didn’t fix the deficit and debt either, as promised – and just as well, as the economy would have been destroyed even before the pandemic struck.
We do nothing, save make bad electoral decisions. We just chhose to elect Conservatives because it is easier to solve problems their way: just claim victory where there is none; pretend the disaster is over, spin the story and move on. Nothing to see here; we had a flypast, waved the flag. We even clapped the NHS and care workers, before some of them pack their bags and leave. What more do you want?
John
You have to remember that some elderly people dying is a price worth paying for Brexit
Tou literally can not make such callousness up
Richard
John
It sounds as though you’ve read Fintan O’ Toole as well. And he makes many valid points!
But did we (and O’Toole) ever consider that there were some in our society and establishment in 1940 who WANTED us to fail and welcome the Nazis over here in the UK and fall in with them? That there were snakes in the grass and it could have gone either way? I wonder how close we were to the Establishment welcoming Hitler into Britain?
With BREXIT, the snakes were still in the grass, and this time the wrong side won because they learnt how to fight dirtier, no doubt helped by the under-taxing of wealth which always seems to find itself put to some nefarious use by some bored millionaire with a political pretensions. (Lesson: we must tax wealth more).
What sticks in my mind now is that we are all being encouraged to go back to work despite a plague being in town – this is what post BREXIT has in store for us – slavery to the economy to keep the money coming in for the rich. And if you get Covid? – Well that’s just too bad old chap and good luck.
Is this really what pro-BREXITers voted for? It seems like it to me. But I’m damn sure they did not vote for this.
They’ve been had – expertly and how. All we can do is offer them a way back when the scales come away from their eyes. Welcome them back because as long as we are divided we don’t have a chance of overthrowing the likes Boris, Cummings and their shady backers.
Hit the nail on the head. English law is a mishmash of such “compromises” where we allowed unfair and unequal treatment of elites to trump sound decision making and principles.
It goes from everything from our head of state (no more to say), to land ownership (leasehold system), justice (no written constitution, plans to replace jury trials in progress) to benefits (universal credit disaster), to education (the constant return of the 11+ and grammar schools to solve every problem).
It’s almost as if we are picking our elites from a very small pool of people that come from one or two schools and universities and have been unable to accept or discuss new ideas for the last 200 years.
PSR,
“But did we (and O’Toole) ever consider that there were some in our society and establishment in 1940 who WANTED us to fail and welcome the Nazis over here in the UK and fall in with them?”
I think I touched on this on another thread some time ago. The toxic past was buried deep and buried quickly. The story is still only leaking slowly to the surface of British history, like a very old, broken, hidden sewer. They key figure is Sir Joseph Ball (1185-1961), senior member of MI5, first Director of Research of the Conservative Party, a close confidant of Neville Chamberlain, who ran a pro-Fascist, anti-semitic Newspaper ‘Truth’, and a foreign policy for Chamberlain independent of the FO, including discussions with the Italians as intermediaries through Mussolini to negotiate British peace with Hitler in the period before Dunkirk. There has, as far as I know, never been a biography of Ball. He burned his correspondence, save for some items in the Bodleian. We have not plumbed that depth, and the Conservative Party, I am confident, hopes we never do.
Churchill represented a minority in the party; many Conservative MPs frankly loathed him (his own constituency Chairman in the 1930s tried to have him not only de-selected, but thrown out the party. He failed, resigned as Chairman and was rewarded with a seat for a Scottish constituency by the Party at the next election), and few even of his supporters considered Churchill a real Tory.
Dunkirk disguises a great deal of what is our history, and what we were. I think that is the “real” message it should leave with us. We came back from the brink, of what we had become.
(1185-1961). By my reckoning that makes him, um, ….. very old indeed when he died. Well he had a very, very long career whose consequences actually outlived him, he was actually born in 1885.
The fascinating vignettes you post here more than outweigh your typos, I can assure you.
One thing that always struck me about WWII was how unprepared we were for it in terms of materiel, yet we just about invented the tank for example but many of the ones we had as of 1939 were pretty crap. Likewise our other armaments – all seemingly to me based on what seemed an undertow of appeasement to Hitler, rather than confrontation. A real lack of commitment to taking him and fascism on was present I feel.
The referendum result was not binding on the government: this is a dogma-driven act without any actual benefit having been put forward and proven.
If the referendum HAD been binding my understanding is that the irregularities in the campaigning would have meant that the result would have been struck down.
You are right
Gove in particular (and the new ad campaign) goes on about ‘seizing the opportunities of brexit’. Can anyone identify a single one of these? As yet I have never heard anyone be specific and identify anything that was going to be better or an opportunity.
Blue passports, albeit not really blue and printed in France anyway
More accurately the passport carcass is made in Poland by a French/Dutch company and then personalised here in the UK. The previous passport was made from components sourced worldwide anyway.
The passport colour thing is a real red-herring:
– It was the UK under Thatcher that argued for a common colour (so that non-member state citizens could be easily spotted if they were in the wrong queue at immigration).
– The colour was a non-binding policy rather than the later Regulation 2252/2004, which we were not part of due to being outside of Schengen). Therefore the colour could have been changed AT ANY TIME, regardless of EU membership. Croatia still has blue 🙂
If you genuinely are not aware of any benefits of Brexit, you must have been living in a bubble and only reading pro-EU propaganda.
Maybe try reading from a wider range of publications
I am genuinely unaware of any benefits
Not one that I can think of
And I read the IEA newsletter and CapX
Go on then – please give us a list of the advantages.
“I am genuinely unaware of any benefits
Not one that I can think of”
Once we leave the EU the UK won’t be bound by EU State Aid rules.
I’m surprised that someone who claims to be an economist and tax expert isn’t aware of the numerous situations where these rules have worked against UK companies and hampered proposed UK tax policy.
I wouldn’t bet on it as yet
And nor would I bet on there being a UK either
Is this really the strongest economic point that can be made in favour of Brexit? That we can now ignore state aid rules, and subsidise our “national champions” to our heart’s content? First, do you really think this Conservative government would do that? Second, who is going to buy the substandard products that need a subsidiary to be made? Is the EU going to let us dump them there? The US? China? India?
🙂
I think he meant ‘sizing’ – sizing up the opportunities him and his Tory cling-ons will make loads of money out of the ensuing chaos, just like they have already with all those dodgy Covid contracts.
This was all sadly predictable. The principal economic purposes of the EU are free movement of goods, services, capital and workers (the principal political purpose is to stop another war across the continent of Europe, as we had two in quick succession in the first half of the last century). If a country leaves the EU, it is going to obstruct those freedoms, and there will be additional costs to sell goods, provide services, seek capital, and engage workers.
The idea that the UK, freed from the shackles of the EU, is going to stand tall again as a free-wheeling buccaneer on the international stage, is a fantasy drawn from the playing fields of Eton and “Our Island Story”. It ignores the fact that the UK is a small island, yes blessed with its people and resources, but without an Empire, off the coast of Europe, and at imminent risk of losing at least two of its constituent nations. The UK has punched above its weight in economic and political terms for decades due to the legacy of empire (slave capital, the City of London, the UN security council seat, the English language, common law, general good relations with the Commonwealth, the somewhat one-sided “special relationship” with the US, a leading position in the EU) but we have been busily burning that soft capital for several years. It seems some people still haven’t got past the Suez crisis.
David Sidwell is wrong on multiple fronts. (1) I don’t see “nobody knows” in the headline, but perhaps that was changed after his comment. (2) But in any event, pointing out uncertainties is not obtuse. Ignoring uncertainly certainly is obtuse. (3) We left the EU at 11pm on 31 January 2020 – five and a half month ago, not seven months. (4) Yes, there was a deeply flawed democratic process, where an advisory referendum without any implementation mechanism, was held to determine a matter of significant constitutional importance, with one side lying consistently about the implications, and forging a coalition of people who wanted very different results, using a simple majority up-or-down vote, followed by a slide towards a “hard” Brexit without a deal, a result which I am sure would never have achieved a majority if presented as the alternative to EU membership. Any matter of constitutional importance should be decided by a supermajority, as it would be in most grown up countries. (5) In any democracy, it is possible to change one’s mind. Opinion has not coalesced around making the most of Brexit: four years after the referendum, the country is still fairly evenly split, and I expect buyer’s remorse will sent in shortly after the adverse ramifications become realities in January 2021.
May I suggest that David considers engaging with the debate rather than throwing slogans around.
I changed nothing after his comment
You seem to assume that businesses won’t cut down on export formalities by consolidating shipments for example.
You ignore the tariff revenues that will accrue to the exchequer rather than the EU.
You ignore the enhanced ability to prevent profits generated in Britain to be booked in a tax haven inside the EU, a practice that costs Britain billions per year.
You can’t consolidate point of origin declarations unless you are shipping to an out of UK distributor – which is a loose of jobs to this country because of Brexit
Funny that….it’s called taking back control, or so I heard
And as for the tax haven issue, we’re amongst the worst, and getting worse (note, freeports)…..maybe you haven’t noticed?
What other spurious claims do you have?
“You can’t consolidate point of origin declarations unless you are shipping to an out of UK distributor”
This cuts both ways. Distribution centres on each side of the Channel would be beneficial due to the ability to expedite deliveries to the end consumer from these centres. People expect increasingly short delivery times these days; trying to serve multiple markets from one distribution point is increasingly unwise as a business strategy.
It seems incontestable that profits generated in the UK are booked elsewhere in the EU, and that this will be more difficult outside of the EU Treaties. We don’t need to go all whataboutery on the UK’s defects as a site of tax, or imagine what arrangements free ports might conceivably be set up under.
How do you think people are better off as a result if barriers to trade?
Has every free market enthusiast now lost their heads?
Ah classic Remainer misjudgement — you seem to think that Brexit was some kind of technocratic free trade project, when actually it was very largely driven by scepticism about hyper-globalisation. How swiftly people forgotten the riots against the WTO in Seattle — and how conveniently people forget the distributional aspects of free trade…
The case for free trade rests on comparative advantage, which in turn rests on comically weird assumptions, and in any case does not apply when there is free movement of capital and labour across borders.
Barriers to trade are in many places and in many ways appropriate. If you were filling a hull with cargo, it would make for slightly more efficient loading and unloading if you were to have just the one compartment. But if something goes wrong and there’s a hole in the hull then the water sloshes from bow to stern from bow to stern — and can sink the entire ship. Best to have a bit of compartmentalisation eh?
Do you do anything but metaphors and glib cliches?
Well clearly I also have a strong line in making points you can’t even begin to counter. Splutter away over Brexit, Richard, the battle has been lost, and won! Adieu!
You’ve not yet made a point
It’s pretty hard to engage with blancmange ad that’s what your comments are like
Are you actually proposing that Brexit was delivered as a a planned blow struck against Globalisation? My jaw just hit the floor. I have just checked my postcode; no, this is Britain.
All Brexit ever wanted was to stop free movement of people. Period. It wants free movement of goods and services to continue, if it can have them for nothing, but the EU are not going to accept that, because that really would undermine the EU.
Britain also wants free movement of capital, because the City of London doesn’t really work quite so well without it, and will not be happy if that is closed off.
Why is it that those who promote Brexit are happiest debating arcane details about documentation when the British Government has done no planning at all for no deal, left Britian ill-prepared and left even the EU with the impression that they want no deal. This is just more British disaster management, after we created the disaster; and now blame everyone else.
I cidentally, fast as immmigration is falling from the EU, it is rising sharply from outside the EU. I am fairly confident that within two years there will be no net diffrecne in immigration to Britain at all, or immigration will actually rise; partly deliberately, partly because there will be inadequate border controls. Nothing ever really chnages in Britain. Government incompetence and fecklessness is endemic.
What they are doing is actually ‘faking back control’.
There is one huge advantage to the 27 states of the Union. Whinger in chief and opt-out king are out and history.
Benefit to the UK? You guys are free?
From a business operational perspective one can see a continuing exclusion of Great Britain from supply chains. Even UK subsidiaries on the mainland are reducing their reliance on their parent companies. As contracts come up for renewal the losses will rise.
If I took some of the pro-Brexit bovver boys on this morning no doubt I’d just be called a TR sycophant.
But they do illustrate that we are still a badly divided country and that raises the question of ethics – how do ethics survive such disparity? Or whose ‘ethics’ will dominate?
Ethics are something culturally we all should share, have in common. Or were, until our rulers started to offer ‘other options’ in order to shift blame from themselves for our problems.
How can a divided people work together in a time of plague?
As for BREXIT – oh, I just can’t help myself – I’ve got to say something.
I remember a documentary about over seas care workers last year. I remember some of the elderly in care saying how much they valued their foreign care workers but also saying that they voted for BREXIT but were unaware of the consequences that they might lose the staff they had grown to trust and rely on.
And I also remember the reporter interviewing Englishman outside this care home about working in the care sector and I’ll always remember this response by one young fella:
‘I’d be OK wiping someone’s bum for £15 an hour or more but not on minimum wage or less, no way’.
So if BREXIT means that Brits join the care sector and get well paid for wiping bottoms and what not, then that might be worth it.
But in a country obsessed with NOT spending money on the really important stuff, and getting everything dirt cheap!!?
Dream on.
BREXIT is a means by which our aristocratic-like politicians will ensure that many of the misled Brits (whom they don’t like, politicians like Raab and Patel who think the English are just lazy and feckless – Brittania Unchained – for example) who voted for it will be employed as under-paid slave labour, rather than the immigrants who are now banned.
Yes – that’s right – you’ve been had: hook, line and sinker.
It might not be some of you who have commented here to day, but it might be your family and friends who get forced to take up those underpaid jobs the immigrants can no longer take.
That’s just what we need more of isn’t in the care sector, with all those vulnerable people – angry, resentful, hard pressed and undervalued people looking after them.
Congratulations – you must be very proud of yourselves.
Immigrants are not banned – is this yet anther thing that you post about but don’t understand?
Yet, I think you did not add
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/13/uk-new-fast-track-immigration-system-to-exclude-care-workers-salary-thresholds
Read that (above) and tell me that that is NOT a ban?!!!
It is a ban in all but name – OK? And it relates to care homes which is what my post is about.
Now – where were we – tell me once again what it is that I don’t understand!?
If this results in highly paid and valued carers in our system I will be overjoyed to be proven wrong. You can shove as much egg on my face as you like.
But I seriously – SERIOUSLY – doubt it.
Both my sons read it as a ban
And were very angry about it
So you are in favour of draining eastern Europe of its young workers so they can work in UK care homes? Eastern Europe’s biggest problem is falling populations as its young leave. In January this year, Andrej Plenkovic, the prime minister of Croatia defined depopulation as Europe’s “existential problem”. Looking back, you criticise the UK for draining the natural resources of its empire. Now, you support draining the human resources of poorer European countries. Who, I wonder, is left to look after the elderly in Croatia.
I guess as long as your relatives are looked after, you don’t care.
Are you saying economic migration is bad?
Why?
What’s the virtue in enslavement? Are you proposing a new Iron Curtain?
There are still all these arguments going backwards and forwards but the basic truth IS that no-one can accurately quantify the effects of Brexit on our economy. It was not done in 2016 and it is still not being done. During the Brexit campaign there was much rhetoric from both sides but few facts and figures apart from those on the big red bus. The appeal to patriotism and make Britain great again won the day but as this blog says no-one can really say how all this expenditure and disruption will benefit us financially. It’s still really a matter of pressing on and seeing what happens and we are already starting to see the costs. We will see what happens in 2021 and following years.
Or we could admit that there is overwhelming evidence that Brexit could, at the very least, be done in a much better way
You probably mean BRINO.
The fact is that ‘better’ mens different things to different people.
We had a vote, you lost the vote, so non-one should be surprised that you aren’t happy with the outcome and will claim there is a ‘better’ way.
I don’t care about a vote
I do care about utterly incompetent government
You apparently don’t
And I genuinely do not understand that
Richard
The EU is pretty much the opposite of a ‘free market’. Does this help you?
I suspect you think Amazon works in a free market
“I am genuinely unaware of any benefits”
This speaks volumes.
It says I have searched for them in all the usual right wing places and there are none
It does not matter how many times we ask different promoters of Brexit on this thread (see the now long list above); back comes the same reply, Remain lost the referendum and things will be better.
Not a single answer tells us what is going to be better, or in what way “better”. Nothing, not a jot, scrap, tittle, iota.
Let me give an example of one problem. Soft fruit picking in Scotland. The summer workers who come over every year from the EU, pick the fruit and return home each year (because they do not actually want to live here permanently) will not be back. Non-EU immigration is not going to replace this gap; people are not going to come from the other side of the world for a few months each year. There are insufficient British people to be found to do this work. Please do not say this is flaw that we will just have to correct; it will never happen. We have relied on immigrant labour for hard manual work in Britain since the late 18th and especially early-mid 19th century; beginning with the immigrant Irish ‘navigators’ who actually dug the canals and built the railways.
Brexit is built on a raft of illusions about the nature of reality.
Richard, you asked “How do you think people are better off as a result if barriers to trade?”
If that is a genuine question, why are the EU proposing to implement barriers to trade with the UK?
Because they have to protect the single market from our dumping and the illicit imports we will seek to send to them that will probably be deeply harmful to the wellbeing of people in the EU
When the UK becomes a 3rd country the EU is obliged to perform the same checks on goods and people as it does on any other 3rd country. The reason for it performing checks on 3rd country goods should seem obvious, since they don’t necessarily conform to EU standards, there might be tariffs to pay, the goods might not be allowed into the market….
So they didn’t actually erect the barriers, they were there already. The UK simply stepped outside on the other side of the barrier.
Quite so
Why are we losing the European health Insurance Card? It has only a loose link with the EU, as it entitles us to care in several non-EU countries too. I’s not a priority of this government to negotiate it to keep it. I suppose they don’t want non-UK citizens using our NHS. But it cuts two ways. Brits living abroad are going to find out, and in due course the rest of us, when we go away.
The main point is that in 2016 Remain had one clear message, but there are (or were) umpteen versions of Leave. And because of T May’s rigid self-invented red lines, we are getting stuck with an extremely poor deal if any at all. (And as for the WTO, it isn’t functioning very well at the moment….)
The EHIC is a firm bit of EU legislation so saying it has only loose connections to the EU is factually incorrect. EHIC is part of the EU social security coordination and it covers “the usual suspects” EU/EEA/CH – the same bunch that enjoy Freedom of Movement, which btw is the connection. EHIC is developed to ensure that people can travel freely throughout the area and receive healthcare if needed. In ye ol’ days one would have to fill in E110 – For international road hauliers, E111 – For tourists, E119 – For unemployed people/job seekers, or E128 – For students and workers in another member state but now one applies for an EHIC in ones country of residence.
But has it drained Eastern Europe of workers?
I don’t think it has. Because the people in our care system are not just Eastern Europeans , they are also from Asia Trev, Africa and elsewhere.
The real problem will be that there will be no extra money for this line of work, and I do not see it being populated with ‘English’ at those rates of pay. It could be plunged into another crisis having born the brunt of Covid. It has to be uprated payment and career wise, but I just do not see it happening. To make life harder for existing workers with stupid, racist rules………………it makes no sense and is unjustifiable.
Oh and before we move on – just what are these East European countries doing for their people in terms or pay and working conditions and opportunities? Because if they were doing enough, their people would not have to leave would they? They could stay and wipe Polish, Hungarian or Croatian bottoms instead couldn’t they?
Or do they leave because too many of the Eastern European Governments are too busy copying crappy Western or US Government ideas?
I think so………………………..
72 responses and still not a single Brexit benefit to be found.
OK I found one – Ashford will get yet another bit of construction on a flood plain.
🙂
Sovereignty is priceless; No Cross no crown. Britain will bounce back; of course there will be immediate and short term setback.
How did people manage before we join the common market. In long term Britain will loose but other EU countries will gain. We are better off as fully sovereign country.
This is it – we’ve got the argument – ‘No Cross no crown’
What Cross?
What crown?
I’m amazed there is no reference to a dark Satanic mill
But that’s it
Fantasy has no price limit
There we have it: it is ideological and the cost does not matter. (“No cross, no crown”? I’m not sure how William Penn comes into it, but perhaps the idea is that suffering makes us more virtuous people. Great.)
How did we manage before we joined the EEC? Poorly. Why do you think we joined in the first place? (And there was a referendum at that time, which yet again demonstrates that a democracy changed its mind once and can do so again.). 1971 was our third attempt to join, after a Gaullist “non” in 1963 and 1967. We really missed a trick in not joining at the beginning, when the ECSC and then the EEC were formed, so we could shape the community’s development from the outset.
Read some history – Britain was known as the ‘sick man of Europe’ before it joined the EU. Now it is sick in every sense.
As a member of the EC, it was one of the most powerful with strong influence over the directions it took. The single market is directly a product of Thtacher’s influence – yes, that Tory PM. Thats sovereignty in practice – being able to influence your destiny and promote your interests in a challenging world.
Now the UK is just a medium sized and weakened economy at the mercy of 3 major power blocks – the USA, China and the EU (which if you check the surveys, is even more popular with its citizens than ever). With India coming up on the rails.
Having stormed out of the EU, waving two fingers at them as we go, do you really think that Trump’s USA and Xi’s China are going to do just what the UK wants, as it exercises its new found ‘sovereignty’?
There was a referendum and leave won.
So now everyone has to commit mass suicide.
Add in something about freedom, sovereignty and the evil EU(all things that aren’t tangible)
and that’s the end of “benefits”. Oh, well and keeping out the bulgarians(now you get nigerians instead).
Meanwhile yellowhammer calculated that a no deal brexit could cost up to 2 billion/week.
Marvelous….
“The EU is pretty much the opposite of a ‘free market’. ”
Ah, the free market. Neoliberalism. Britain is going to have a new future in a free market. I shall pass over the flaw that a free market means free for goods, services, capital and people. We left the EU because they insisted on a free market in people; it isn’t pick-n-mix.
There isn’t a free market anywhere. How does China di it so well. Because almost alone it protects its power as the powerhouse of world production of goods because it does not allow its currency (the renminbi) to fiat. It pegs its currency to the dollar. Something like $10 trillion of trade passes through Hong Kong which is the key middle-man between the US and China. As a Forex hub, Hong Kong ranks 3rd in the world behind New York and London in trading the dollar. There are 163 banks licensed in Hong Kong.
In an article in June, FXStreet (the Forex market economic calendar) reported on the complex intermdiary HKD/dollar peg “…. there is no wonder that both HSBC and Standard Chartered expressed support for China’s security law, trying to calm tensions — yet triggering fury from Pompeo. Unraveling the decades-long peg may, therefore, trigger financial chaos in China, the US, and across the world. And that is why it will likely be defended….. The HKMA has a whopping $440 billion in reserves in foreign reserves, more than double the value of local money supply. The mere existence of this stash of cash is sufficient to deter speculators — at least in normal times.”
Free markets? Neoliberalism is just the biggest exercise in self-hypnotised illusionism carried out by early/mid-20th century economists, who refused to inspect the reality they wrote about, that has probably ever been conducted by any supposedly serious academic discipline. Free markets only operate fully in text book fashion, in a text book.
‘Because almost alone it protects its power as the powerhouse of world production of goods because it does not allow its currency (the renminbi) to float.’
Float, not fiat. Endless typos. Apologies. Too much to do, too little time. Poor excuse.
Must try harder, must try harder, must try harder….
Plenty good enough
Richard,
I really have lost the plot. My correction is there, but I seem to have lost my comment I was correcting?
Give me time….
This morning is not running to schedule
Another apology – I thought I had actually reached the point that I had forgotten to send it!
My problem is that in chaotic mornings – and this has been one of them – with many blogs also in the mix (and much else) I moderate as quickly as I can
Longer comments sometimes have to wait as a result
Sorry!
Sorry – had to add this:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/14/the-guardian-view-on-no-visas-for-care-work-adding-insult-to-injury
Just in case reality has not set in yet with some of you.
Having trawled all 96 responses, looking for an answer Richard’s initially posed question (what do we get in exchange for this estimated £11bn of additional annual expenditure) it seems that the answers, presented distill down to the following:
1. Having 50,000 new customs officials presents a laudable job creation scheme.
2. The government will collect revenue, clamp down on people-smuggling and protect the public from substandard or illicit goods.
3. We get our own colour passports to distinguish us from EU nationals.
4. Ashford will benefit from an additional construction project.
These appear to be the only answers that address the specific issue of departing the Customs Union (with its associated requirement to erect new customs infrastructure).
It is not my intention to comment further on the viability of these ’answers’ to Richard’s question (readers can do that for themselves and many have already offered well argued rebuttals). But before the thread closes, it would be interesting to assess whether the pro-Brexit lobby does indeed consider this to be a comprehensive and compelling summary of their contributions?
Other points that have been raised, that relate primarily to departing the Single Market (which could probably have been negotiated without leaving the Customs Union) are included below for completeness (although arguably they are outside the original brief, as set specifically by Richard’s question):
1. The UK won’t be bound by EU State-Aid rules that have hampered government tax and investment policies.
2. Profits generated in Britain will no longer be booked into EU tax havens.
3. Barriers to trade can be erected which are in many places and in many ways, appropriate.
4. More Brits will join the care-sector and get well paid jobs replacing cheaper EU immigrants.
5. The UK will be prevented from draining the human resources of poorer European countries.
Again, readers can make their own validity assessments of these arguments. But I hope that by now we all fully understand the the difference between the CU and SM components of the EU and the significance of that difference.
Thanks
Thank you for the diligent application of effort Mr Fowler, and deliverd in a balanced way, almost without irony.
I merely wish to observe that almost all the points you raise remain only or principally Government objectives. Objectives with this Government rarely last long; for we know it has the attention span of a gnat, and its one operational function is to panic. How many of theses proposals will ever see the light of day? Almost none, and the few that survive will be half-baked and half-hearted. If they were both planned and sincere, why is there so little concrete sign of any of them, actually to be ssen on the ground, when we are already so late in the day?
We are not ready and not prepared for January, 2021. Let me sketch the real Government solution to the Brexit problem. We do not know what to do. A comprhensive trade deal with the US is fraught, and with China …..? Really? Brexit is a disaster. Fortunately, the Government hopes to swallow it the disaster up, and hide it in the big pandemic economic catastrophe, so that nobody can work out what has happened. Then we can appeal to the Dunkirk spirit. Fly the flag. Again. As for the public, they had better have their own boat, because out there in the real world, we are all at sea, and they are on their own.
Thanks John. I agree with your comments and on current trajectory, I view the start of 2021 with considerable trepidation. But if it turns out that my first list (CU issues) does indeed encapsulate the best shots that the Brexiter’s have in the locker to justify this additional customs expenditure, on a ‘value for money basis’, then it does appear to be a rather ‘thin gruel’.
Even if we take into consideration the second list (SM issues) the only one that seems to potentially punch its weight is the first one (State aid).
In complex debates such as this its very rare to find all the evidence coming down on one side only so I was rather hoping to see some rather more heavyweight responses than the ones that have emerged from ‘the other side’ so far. But there is still an opportunity for them to augment the lists before Richard ‘calls time’ on this thread.
The recent publication from the EC on the changes that will happen post transition to all aspects of the UKs relations with Europe, lays the implications out in brutally frank terms.
https://ec.europa.eu/info/european-union-and-united-kingdom-forging-new-partnership/future-partnership/getting-ready-end-transition-period_en
They are prepared
We aren’t
Which says it all really given that this was our initiative
It goes without saying that the EU is ready. Apart from the EU Commission is a highly skilled and professional body, the EU also has the good fortune of being the same as before Brexit albeit one less country, have the same rules, and have all the processes in place. The only thing the EU commission needs to point out is that the UK is a 3rd country and all the rules that govern the relationship with fx Russia, also governs the relationship with the UK.