Brexit

[adayatthebeach]

How would you explain to an American how Brexit will be effecting you personally and what your concerns are?

I may have to use the longer queue on my way back home from Provence

My biggest concern would be how it will affect the economy. It's already cost over £2bn (source: JPMorgan and the House of Commons Library) and it hasn't even happened yet.

If I was explaining it to an American I would say, "We will be back in control of our own country in the future rather than contracting it out to a third party".

I would say my concerns are, "that the establishment are trying to stop it from happening".

Remember when you elected Trump?

Well, it’s just as stupid, but what you did was only for a few years, we fucked up our country permanently.

An internal argument in a political party wasn't managed properly and is leading to an expensive situation in which No one wins except politicians.

Remember when you elected Trump?
Yea that's going to work just after he negotiated nuclear disarmament in the Korean peninsula.

Yea that's going to work just after he negotiated nuclear disarmament in the Korean peninsula

No he didn't. What he did was what Kim Jong Un - a petty, relatively insignificant megalomaniac on the world stage but a brutal dictator within his own country - has always wanted: he made him important. He gave him a private audience with the President of the United States of America. He increased his political capital internationally and domestically - not great for the North Korean people.

And both Trump and Kim are so inconsistent and impulsive that it's plainly clear that their "agreement" isn't worth the paper it's written on.

I would say how do you feel about your own history. Go listen to Hamiltom etc.

Well, it’s just as stupid, but what you did was only for a few years, we fucked up our country permanently.

^^ remember how you fought for democracy and sovereignty and the right to vote for who you wanted to rule your nation...

I would say go look at the internet and read reliable sources and make your own mind up.

Well I had to explain to my family in America

To be honest they didn’t understand why we would want freedom of movement but could understand the benefits of the EU trade deals but as for having a an EU parliament that all countries of the EU have a vote that can impact laws here was an alien concept and a little too commie sounding for them

American politics is so different to Europe

It will allow us to spend more money on our NHS rather than sending every spare penny we have to Brussels so we will be healthier as a nation

Brexit will be affecting me as follows:-

1. Sterling has gone down massively relative to other currencies. This is because every other territory thinks that Brexit is a thoroughly stupid idea and is gambling against sterling. So now every time I go abroad, my sterling is worth far less

1. The EU natives in my team have taken one good hard look at Brexit and are voting with their feet. So that means I am 3 people down with no prospect of replacing their incredible skills and abilities. I have read that the Home Office is suggesting that prisoners should be released early to cope with the problem of lack of available workers but since my team all have first degrees from great universities, post graduate work from great universities, are fully fluent in three or more languages and have professional qualifications via their relevant institutes you can understand that releasing car thieves early from prison is not going to help me.

1. Everything imported is more expensive. Not just more expensive because of the currency problem (see I above) but prospectively because of the massive customs duties that are just about to hit us

1. My clients are all apologetically relocating to the EU mainland. This might be because of passporting (financial services) or regulatory issues (chemical companies and life sciences businesses). This means that the clients that I had just are waving goodbye

1. I cannot get a decent plumber any more because the Poles have all gone home (see 1 above)

1. I am full of dread about dirty beaches and foul food because only the EU made the UK comply with regulations to make sure these were clean and healthy

There are more things but that's probably enough for now. Given the state of sterling, exports should be easier. Except we mostly don't manufacture things now. But maybe we could export Boris Johnson and David Davies. Together with Nigel Farage and Aaron Banks. Let's call them the Big Four. For sale at any price.

thesearepearls thank you that’s helpful

@busybarbara are you taking the piss?

I'll be living n a hedge bottom and eating leaves when it happens.

Oh hang on I forgot about the NHS. We as a nation stopped educating doctors and nurses long ago. I mean we do it a bit as a kind of token gesture thing but it was dead expensive so what we decided to do was import them all. Yay.

But now we're stopping them coming from the EU and denying non-EU people visas, guess what? The health service is no more ....

Genius. Simply genius. Only Boris Johnson could have come up with all this.

I work in an insurance brokerage. We’ve just started offering Brexit insurance.

We voted for something so fucking stupid that you have to insure yourself against it.

no I’m not taking the piss I’m an American

Oh sorry I see that wasn’t aimed at me.

I go for,
Imagine you are from Texas and instead of just talking about how great it would be if the state was its own country they held a vote and decided that they would become one. There was a great deal of talk before hand about how you could toughen up the border and prevent immigrants but a lot less about who was now going to do their jobs. Suddenly you couldn't easily travel around the states, you became an international student unless you went to a Texas university, you could only work in Texas unless you got an international work visa for another state. To visit another state you needed a travel visa. You only had to follow state law but no one had worked out what to do with products like cars that were build in parts over several states. How do you check goods going in and out of the state ?
It isn't perfect but it gives them an idea of what we are doing.

In terms of my family personally, it looks like such as mess that we bailed out and are building our future elsewhere for the moment as we cannot rely on any pragmatic sense from our political leaders on either side.

remember how you fought for democracy and sovereignty and the right to vote for who you wanted to rule your nation...

That is not how the American war of independence came about nor the end result for the majority of Americans at that time period (or even now since the electoral college is still a thing). Unless by sovereignty you mean the 'right' to expand territories and continue the tradition of disregarding treaties and not having consequences for doing those things other than getting poorer people to die for you. Like, seriously, the idealized concept of the American War of Independence is best left in US elementary classrooms where even there it is still a lie but it's ~patriotism~.

If you want to use a US history reference, it would probably be better to use South Carolina attempting to secede for 'state rights' from the Union but instead of a war, everyone just squabbled because no one was expecting it or had a firm plan in place and those who convinced people to do it kinda ran away and ignoring other states having people arguing to do the same. Like if the Great Triumvirate had never been so all that had kicked off earlier with little real debate and with no firm plans so it was even more of a mess.

For a better/practical answer, I'd go along the lines of Thesearepearls's post. When asked by Americans how it affects Americans in the UK like me, I say it doesn't directly any more than anyone else but it will likely continue the trends the last decade or so that has made immigrating and working as an immigrant here harder and more expensive and immigration lawyers are likely going to get even more busy with so many people both EU and non-EU who because of Brexit are trying to 'catch-up' with the ever-changing legislation and feel we can't do it ourselves (I've compared it to trying to keep up with the US tax codes) which I worry will catch people out and I'm not sure we'll see any more public support for helping those people than we have for previous recent-ish changes like the raise in age for spousal visas, biometric residency permits and all the stuff with that, raised income requirements, and so on.

fullfact.org/

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