Well, I'm kind of expecting that the no-deal scenario will actually happen. Then a big economic crisis will follow, making it palatable for politicians to actually endorse a new referendum. I'm not saying what the question in such referendum would be, though.
And actually, this is the reason why some remainers are voting no to the brexit deal, and it's not even a secret.
They may be voting no to the Brexit deal purely because they don't agree with it.
But you are painting this as a binary situation of 'The Deal' vs No deal. There is a third option, withdrawing notice to leave.
Parliament can choose to remain without any kind of referendum. In fact there was a case heard by the ECJ today to clarify this very fact. The UK's option to remain was undisputed, and the remaining legal arguments are simply over whether the remaining 27 states have to agree or not. The ruling is due at a later date.
That's a technical possibility. But in reality, MPs just don't have the incentives to do that. They just wouldn't get elected next time. It's unthinkable that the UK would choose to remain without a referendum. And the thing is that as of now, a referendum (and I'm not even saying what should be asked there) is also not a politically viable option.
Again? The UK never joined the EU through a membership process, the EU evolved around it.
The terms would be different if the UK joined the EU by proper mechanism, but perhaps we shouldn't want to be in a club which has different rules for old vs new anyway?
* All our manufacturing exports to Europe would suffer tariffs. 10% on cars for example.
* All our agricultural exports would be hit by tariffs.
* The legal basis for many of our financial services provided to Europe would disappear. Clearing for example.
* Imports and exports would suddenly be subject to customs inspections, introducing delays. No arrangements are in place for this.
* Many goods manufactured in Europe only count if a certain % of value comes from Europe. Parts made in the UK would not count anymore so European manufacturers using our parts would have to find alternatives. Cars are another big example, but there are many more.
* We would lose access to all the trade deals with non EU countries negotiated through the EU, which is (almost) all of them. E.g. the big new trade deal negotiated with Canada would no longer apply. Some minor trade deals through the commonwealth might survive, but it’s not much.
* We would probably end up defaulting on our €38bn obligations to the EU. Not as bad as a sovereign debt default, but not by much.
* Oh, and we’d probably also be in violation of our treaty obligations under the Good Friday Agreement, with unanticipatable consequences in Northern Ireland, except it wouldn’t be good.
So high end manufacturing and agriculture devastated, remaining trade (globally) obstructed, financial services crippled, debt default, political instability in NI. Some of those might be cushioned, but there’s no way it can all be significantly mitigated in a few months.
My hope is some sort of keep-it-as-it-is-for-now deal could be worked out. But that’s basically the May plan anyway.
Adding taxes to almost half of the UK exports virtually over night is not going to be very pleasant. And that’s going to be the least of their worries.
Some Brexiteers favour a radical response: get rid of all tariffs on imports, as Hong Kong, Macao and Singapore have done. Extravagant assumptions about the benefits of this explain why some pro-Brexit economists see no deal as much less damaging than most of their colleagues. But tariff abolition would have huge effects on agriculture and some types of manufacturing. The government has no plans for such an extirpation.
Followed by no examination of the experience of Hong Kong, Macao, and Singapore. Instead bemoans the "huge effects" on protected industries.
One could be forgiven for making the mistake of assuming that a magazine called The Economist would understand the benefits of free trade beyond the EU and the harms of corporate welfare.
Hong Kong, Macao and Singapore have developed under their respective trade regimes. Britain has developed under another and has huge industries employing millions of people dependent on the current trade regime.
Switching to a different model in a controlled way has a reasonable chance to be beneficial in the long run. Switching off the conditions under which the current system operates would be guaranteed to be catastrophic immediately.
Although I'm a remainer I kind of like the HK/Singa no import duties system. From a business point of view a big plus is simplicity - instead of lots of regulations you just import / export stuff. I spent a while in HK aged 19 when it was considered a low wage place (58% of UK GPD) and now they are wealthier than us.
I agree a no deal brexit would be a mess. If you were going to switch to a HK system you'd want to plan it over some years.
Imposing tariffs on imports is classic protectionism - are you actually arguing that that is a net benefit?
Of course the protected industries benefit from protectionism, the argument against protectionism is that everyone else loses.
There is no reason that a transaction with a counterparty in Shanghai should incur any more taxes than an equivalent transaction with a counterparty in Manchester.
> Imposing tariffs on imports is classic protectionism - are you actually arguing that that is a net benefit?
Not sure if it's a net benefit. And neither are you. But there are certainly winners and losers.
Protectionism for European agriculture has made Europe a positively lovely place to live. Have you seen it? I recommend the south of France.
> Of course the protected industries benefit from protectionism, the argument against protectionism is that everyone else loses.
I have a degree in economics, the concept hasn't escaped me.
Noticing that having protections evaporate overnight could have massive negative consequences for many is pretty relevant.
> There is no reason that a transaction with a counterparty in Shanghai should incur any more taxes than an equivalent transaction with a counterparty in Manchester.
If it just happens to turn Manchester into an economic wasteland where the daughters of England are sold into prostitution and working men beg for scraps of food in the street, then those are two reasons.
I get the argument you're making. It's a style of economic conversation where you assume frictionless perfect markets and rational allocations of resources. Those of us that actually understand how economic systems work moved on from that sort of simplistic line of thinking generations ago.
Protecting agriculture can also serve to reduce the impact that the war or large scale crop failures elsewhere in the world might bring. The resulting safety might be worth the market inefficiencies caused by tariffs.
> are you actually arguing that that is a net benefit?
Net benefit to who? Global capital efficiency, people?
Jobs going overeseas to countries with lower wages and less safty/environmental/etc. regulation has been a net loss for humanity... but it has been a major win for capitol!
If the society you live in today decided to expropriate all of the money and resources owned by a randomly selected 5% of the population, so that 5% of the population was instantly destitute, but then distributed those resources evenly to everyone else, would you consider that society better off, worse off, or pretty much the same as the day before that happened?
> Imposing tariffs on imports is classic protectionism
Protectionism is the wrong word when you are talking about food supplies. Tariffs are applied selectively to food imports in most countries, to protect farming for food security. Food matters more to people than watered down Randian ideology, once there is a shortage.
> are you actually arguing that that is a net benefit?
Depends on what you define as net benefit... Self-sufficiency, especially regarding basic supplies like food, is hugely important for any independent nation. Personally, tariffs on/protectionism of food industry are what I support the most.
Broader picture, net benefit doesn't mean just economic benefit. I support Trump's tariffs on China and hope EU would do the same, tax the hell out of all polluting and tax-evading countries - that would definitely be a net benefit for the planet.
Only if the tariffs were clearly linked to polluting and tax-evading. Otherwise they provide no incentive to stop. I don't believe Trump has linked his tariffs to pollution or tax-evasion. He's been talking about China's industrial subsidies, monetary policy and intellectual property theft.
Simply sanctioning bad countries isn't good in itself, unless it forces them to become better.
Indeed, but most nations/governments are so deeply entrenched in "free trade" that they can't just transition directly to "fair trade" (for some definition of "fair"...) without going through the "no free trade" stage first. Anyways, let's hope it continues in this direction and doesn't derail along the way.
There's not much farming there due to not much farmland in those places.
A more useful example would be New Zealand:
> “You had a system dictated by government programs that was thrown out the window overnight,” Hausman adds in a recent interview with The Daily Signal. “But the farmers kind of reinvented themselves and now New Zealand is a powerhouse when it comes to agricultural production on the world stage.” https://www.dailysignal.com/2016/09/22/what-happened-when-ne...
It is sort of ok. Graduate even said it is hard work but earn more than the salary working in office.
But HONG kong is of different scale and no major industry. Part of UK will be ok but other part like car,airbus... may be not. Not sure about clearance but you can be a Euro centre not in Eu as Rmb is very active here. Hence it is a shift not impossible.
May be a total zero tariff is an option. may say the other side is not. But then a lot of tourist will come to shop.
It’s incredible how some people in the UK (a country of 60+ million people) are ready to compare themselves to mere city states like HK or Singapore. I for one view at as border-line criminal.
It would add context but on the other hand they are all very small autonomous Asian cities so I wonder how well the would actually generalize to the UK.
Free trade and corporate welfare are not opposites. By allowing free trade you allow companies to operate wherever the operating cost is lowest, while still selling to the residents of your region. Incentivizing local production (by tarriffing imports) means business operate locally, and importantly, pay taxes locally. You can call that corporate welfare, but for many cases I think that misses the mark.
By allowing free trade you allow companies to operate wherever is most efficient.
This reduces costs, and therefore reduces prices (through competition). Everybody is a winner (apart from the previously-protected businesses who now have to compete on a level playing field).
This is only true when all actors play by the same rules. Without this requirement the most efficient places to operate are where there are the fewest labor and environmental protections. I would 100% be in favor of eliminating tariffs to countries that meet the same standards but its silly to say that we're better off exploiting not-quite-slave labor.
Everyone, that is, except the people who have to live with the externalities that come with chasing efficiency.
Some of those places that are more efficient are more efficient because, hey, they don't regulate emissions. Or they don't have strict safety standards. Or they don't require employers to take care of injured workers.
It's pretty relevant when significant portions of the no vote live in non-London areas and have general hopes (fantasies?) about jobs (such as farming and manufacturing) returning to the UK.
The world is not a first year economics class on comparative advantage.
(There's also a non-orthogonal option of hold a second referendum to let voters decide which option to do, the results of this are likely to depend heavily on what options are actually on the ballot.)
It's not at all clear that a better deal is forthcoming, given more time. Indeed, the current deal on offer is already kicking most of the hard contentious decisions down the road. So the general preference for what should be done amounts to, in decreasing order of desirability, 3, 1, 4, 2 or 1, 3, 4, 2, depending on how people view the EU. But that preference isn't the same preference that's going on for the vocal Brexiteer politician population.
For those people, the EU has been an ideological punching bag for quite some time, which means that admitting that leaving now is not the appropriate action amounts to discrediting their views. So to them, option 3 is the absolute worst option. Similarly, the current deal on offer commits the UK to maintaining a lot of the EU's provisions without a strong say on them, which is still pretty anathema to those who want nothing less than a hard Brexit, making option 1 nearly as bad. This means that the remaining option are to walk away from the current deal and hope that brinkmanship causes the EU to sweeten the deal, or to believe that the worst effects of a no-deal Brexit simply won't happen. So for these politicians, their order of preference is basically the reverse of what it is for everybody.
Essentially, that is the issue. Brexit was sold on a pack of fantasy and lies, and the people in power have the choice of committing to their fantasies are admitting that they've lied. It's rare to find the politician who would admit that the worldview they've committed to for decades is a lie, and you shouldn't be surprised that the Brexiteers are the same way.
In the UK parliament voting system, you vote for the individual, not the party list. Thus MPs won't do anything that makes them lose votes. Voting for a bad deal (even though it's the best deal you'll get) will make you lose votes in the next election, even more so if the deal is actually approved. It's very easy to criticize from the fences when that gets you more votes.
That's basically the reason why Boris Johnson didn't "run" for Prime Minister on the election after the referendum. And he was the main representative of the Brexit campaign that had just won. He knew whoever was going to be PM would only be able to get a bad deal and would be fiercely criticized.
I think that’s why Nigel Farage quit politics immediately. No way that /edit/ guy /end edit/ is going to risk taking any responsibility for the consequences.
The sad take away from this, for me, is that even though politicians may seem stupid, they are mostly acting stupid because that's what gets you elected. They are not stupid, just ruthless.
That's certainly the perjorative view. On the other hand extreme pressure and death threats might cause one to wonder if the game is worth continuing. How many of us would enjoy that? Given that the whole point of UKIP (as far as I can see) was to ignite the Brexit debate leading to the referendum, the job was done and UKIP had zero chance of doing anything else. Farage failed to win a parliamentary seat so why would be subject himself to further non-profitable activities? He was a successful trader prior to his entry into politics.
> So, why do it? Should a razor thin majority in a public vote 2 years ago decide the UK's policy forever?
Why do it? That question ceased being relevant a long time ago, when the process was irreversibly started. The linked article is suggesting a least-bad path forward. People may or may not agree with their assessment.
The real problem is not majoritarianism, or democracy. The problem is that the referendum should have been framed as "Start exit negotiations."
If it's not framed that way, it amounts to buying the outcome of a risky multi-year process with a lot of downside risk and tens of billions in costs sight unseen.
It is not antidemocratic to have a referendum on "Were the negotiations a success?"
Nor does it make sense that if the UK parliament rejects the exit deal that "no deal Brexit" is the only outcome. The UK can withdraw the notification they will exit and remain and continue to negotiate. It adds some lead-time to an eventual exit if that ever makes sense and can be negotiated before the earliest date the UK can leave. But, in no way is it antidemocratic.
>>The problem is that the referendum should have been framed as "Start exit negotiations."
Very true.
Many people thought voting for `leave` meant making the immigrants leave. They were interviewing people on BBC and people on the streets were approaching non-white people and saying `We voted leave, so you guys leave now.`
The vote should have been framed as `UK should remain in the EU`, `UK should exit the EU`.
That would have probably worked better than framing it as `Should the immigrants remain`, `Should the immigrant leave`.
That was my reaction from the get go... none of it was legally binding, why make more if it than it was? The reply I usually got was that politicians would have to do it to not "lose credibility" (the one they don't have in the first place), or to "get re-elected" (which is not actually anything they technically have to do).
To me it seemed like people hypnotizing themselves to sleepwalk into (IMO) pointless, useless harm, and that also came from people who said they were against Brexit. "This really sucks, but there's no going back now". Most of the (online) discussion (I saw) was about whether a Brexit would be good or bad, but that it would happen seemed a foregone conclusion.
How else do you want democracy to work? The people agreed on a system of rules order to decide between two directions and a decision was made. If the government can just decide to not carry out the will of the people (however thin the margins are) then why have a vote at all?
Perhaps more than a simple majority? Perhaps a majority of the eligible voting population? What is called a "razor-thin majority" is actually a plurality. And I don't think democratic decisions should be made by plurality.
I want parliament to do its job we elected them to do. I want it not to use referendums to make major far-reaching decisions on simple majorities. We elect representatives to govern on our behalf not ask us what to do with a referendum at every turn.
I wonder if for things like joining our leaving the EU we should make them get at least 60ish percent of the vote. Simple majorities have a tendency to ping-pong back and forth so it doesn't seem optional for huge systemic changes.
I'm not suggesting moving the goalposts now. I'm just saying the whole thing was misconceived in the first place.
Cameron, when he called the referendum, never beleived it would go Leave. All the polls at that time said Remain would win easily. He believed it would be a clear Remain and we would all move on.
There should never have been a referendum, without a party in power having a policy to leave.
The big problem we have is that Brexit was not the policy of any political party, so who is responsible for implementing it? May is our legal, rightful Prime Minister selected by due process, but she was a remainer.
The only right way to do this would be for the people to elect a party with implementing brexit as policy, and have a referendum to ratify the decision. That’s how we got in and that’s how we should have left. What we got instead was a muddled tangle of lack of responsibility, recrimination and disagreement of what brexit even is.
To this day nobody on the brexit side has ever put forward a clear, comprehensive plan for how to implement brexit. All we get is platitudes about a European Singapore, vague half-ideas like magical goods tracking systems that don’t exist, and red lines of what they won’t accept. No real credible plan of how to actually do it, because it’s never actually been anybody’s policy. May’s is the only plan on the table. Everybody else won’t shut up, but won’t put up either.
Let's agree that if everybody wanted Brexit, we should have Brexit. And if everybody wanted to remain, we should have remain. Then, start with everyone wanting Brexit, and flip opinions towards remain, one by one. At some point the group decision flips. Political decisions are just like that. Majority rule is not to blame.
That's not what my post said. The argument would be the same for any way of making decisions, no matter how complex, so long as individual preferences are the input.
One thing that recently struck me about Brexit was how much it represents a "States Rights" problem.
Apart from the "ever closer union" of the EU (which frankly has to have fiscal union once it has monetary union), Brexit has highlighted the unresolved "states" or kingdoms of the UK - an English majority of voters is driving a decision that every other state chose not to do. We don't have a balancing Senate to defend smaller states (hell we don't have an elected second chamber - in fact we have more unelected members of parliament than we do elected!!)
We do have a need to look at a constitution and upper chamber again - we have a lot of things to sort out whatever happens with brexit
(basically brexit vote was the bit in the awkward family gathering where one person shouts out "i never liked your ex husband" and suddenly all the disagreements come tumbling out.
I expect a no deal brexit would create barriers for trade between Europe and the EU. This would hurt people on both sides of the trade.
It's not like one side benefits - say the EU has a tariff on UK goods, who wins? Neither. People in the EU pay more for UK goods and people in the UK can't sell things to the EU. Same thing for the movement of peopole - Europeans "lose" because they can't visit the UK - the UK "loses" because they don't have people from the EU visiting.
The real action on this to my point of mind isn't economic that, in my view, is simple. The action is political - in terms of how much sovereignty the UK wants to hold on to and how eager the EU is to discourage other members from leaving.
Theresa May has actually found the straight line through this brexit chaos. She knows in her head that the UK Parliament will vote it down and that provides her with the platform to say she got the best deal possible but it was rejected by the UK Parliament. She can then resign with her head held high.
I think this is her exist strategy from the PM role in the UK.
I think at this point we can safely say that the Brexit was a protest vote against immigration that got out of hand (in that it got >50% of the vote) and the UK is now left to pick up the pieces.
Look into this for even a few minutes and you'll come to a conclusion that leaving the EU is a ridiculous idea.
- The Good Friday agreement gives the UK the obligation to maintain an open border with the Republic of Ireland
- An open border with Ireland brings the UK into the EU customs union
- The only compromise solution here is to include Northern Ireland in the EU customs union but not the rest of the UK. In essence this puts a border between the UK and Northern Ireland.
- The DUP, who are now an essential part of the Conservative majority in Westminster will fight tooth and nail any separation from the UK as they see this as leading to an inevitable (and undesired, by the Protestants at least) reunification with Ireland.
- The UK wants to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to freedom of movement in that they want UK citizens to have freedom of movement but not have to allow EU citizens freedom of the movement in the UK. The EU has made it pretty clear that they don't want to set this precedent and that any freedom of movement needs to be reciprocal.
- The UK wants a deal like Norway or Switzerland. The EU, who wants to not encourage further separation, will fight against this. The UK will get a deal but it won't be as good.
- Being a non-voting member of the EU in the Norway/Switzerland model will give the UK all of the negatives (primarily the outflow of money to fund the EU) with none of the benefits (they lose voting rights). This is really a worst of both worlds type scenario.
Honestly I see a hard exit as probably being the best outcome (short of calling this whole thing off, which I don't think will happen).
Sadly, this whole affair has kind of shown just how useless the UK media is as pretty much everything written about this is blatantly opinionated on whatever the editorial position of the paper is. It doesn't even matter if the article that someone like the Guardian or the Economist produces is good in isolation. You just know that the Guardian isn't going to publish anything positive or even neutral on Brexit. As a result you really can't trust anything they say. They aren't alone in this.
There are some positive outcomes that would come out of a hard Brexit:
- Not handing over 50B+ euros to the EU. It's true that when the UK pays into the EU budget they get some of that money back but the net position is a deficit.
- The UK regaining sovereignty over territorial waters for fishing purposes. These waters have been heavily overfished and the tragedy of the commons has definitely applied here. Ironically when the EC was originally formed the UK refused to join. Had they done so they would've maintained sovereignty over territorial waters. When they later joined they didn't.
- The UK is no longer under EU jurisdiction and could go the route of Switzerland and become a financial haven.
- The UK would no longer be on the hook for the bailouts for precarious economies (Greece, Portugal, Italy). It's true that the UK isn't in the eurozone so there's some separation already but this is still more insulation.
Sadly I think efforts like Scotland remaining in or rejoining the EU are doomed as they would present the same border issues that plague Northern Ireland.
> The UK regaining sovereignty over territorial waters for fishing purposes. These waters have been heavily overfished and the tragedy of the commons has definitely applied here. Ironically when the EC was originally formed the UK refused to join. Had they done so they would've maintained sovereignty over territorial waters. When they later joined they didn't.
I don't think this is going to happen at all. Most fish landed in the UK are exported to the EU. Kicking out their fisherman and then selling them the fish sounds like a very unlikely outcome to me. Macron has already flagged this
I believe there have been other examples where the Irish fishing quota was expanded by the exact amount of tonnage as whatever new supertrawler just got built.
It's also true that the British government have had their own issues when it comes to fishing policy but I still believe that the end result in total will be better with a single government (the UK) managing those waters rather than them falling under the EU's fishing policy.
"More than 50% of fish caught by British boats end up elsewhere in the EU". A 47km traffic jam isn't going to help getting fresh fish exported either, that's the least of their worries.
What's most terrifying is the knock on affects of one of the largest economies on the planet going into reverse for 5+ years.
> The UK wants a deal like Norway or Switzerland. The EU, who wants to not encourage further separation, will fight against this
I don't understand that argument. The EU is a voluntary-membership organisation. There should be no consideration of 'punishment' in the face of leaving.
That site has the cookie policy from hell. Go to the site, ctrl-a, ctrl-c, ctrl-v into a pad and close the browser tab.
Then you will have the information without having to deal with their corporate madness.
Is Brexit inevitable or might the upcoming vote in parliament derail it? If so, how would that work? Everything goes back to the way it was some 2 years or so ago?
It is a reality you have to face. We have to face. I read and so far the argument is great and informative. You can exit by closing this tab. But discussion is just text. No reason to stop.
The Economist, The New York Times, SF Chronicle have extracted their full brand value from me and there's nothing left. What I mean by this is that when I see their links, I know that the article will be unreadable, because either they will make me jump through some "created free account" hoops to read it, or there will be so many CPU intensive ads or banners "you have read 2 out of your 3 free articles per month" that they make the content effectively inaccessible, especially on a phone. As a result, these brands started to me associated with "unreadable" and "desperate" as opposed to be "reliable" in my mind, and I don't bother to open these links anymore.
I'm an Economist and NYT (and LATimes, and WaPo...) subscriber, because journalism doesn't come out of happy thoughts and thin air, and that remains true even if I'm unhappy with their coverage of some topics.
I got the article page directly. Clean, readable, no ads all over the place.
You aren't their customer. People who pay for content are their customer. I doubt they (especially the Economist) very much care what nonpaying readers think.
The Economist still has good analysis on the happenings of the world that many people continue to pay for.
The problems is that good journalism is expensive. We all know how annoying ads and paywalls are here but it's hard to get enough people to actually want to pay for the content.
And actually, this is the reason why some remainers are voting no to the brexit deal, and it's not even a secret.