The problem with Brexit is we didn't Brexit hard enough

[Middlelanehogger]

The EU itself was just the start.

But there are still more institutions which still influence our laws and make it impossible to actually achieve "taking back control".

If anything, we've left the trading bloc (which had economic benefits) but stayed in many of the legal institutions (which retain control over us).

So which body do we leave next - the ECHR? The ECJ? Keenly awaiting responses 😘

@TheThinkingGoblin you summed it up very well- it really isn't all about 'well we pay in xyz and then get xyz out of it for projects/rebates. ' it's about the fact that being part of it massively eases legitimate trade, particularly those business with exports in goods or/and services and encourages multi nationals to invest here in jobs and businesses for access to the EU market. The only UK market simply isn't large enough for certain businesses to make it pay to remain with all the hoops and additional costs they now have to jump through -

The Tesla factory was destined for the UK- they have now gone to Germany I believe. So not Romania or Poland etc-.it's a business that wanted to come here. The UK car manufacturers are very much still assessing the situation and others like Nissan no doubt are being incentivised (not for free) not to leave .

What we needed to do was play an active and dominant role something the Tory's did very well for a lot of years, as did Blair but sadly it went down the tubes since the rise of the very right wing ERG who had an agenda to appeal to UKIP voters to shore up the Tory's voting base .

At this rate we will end up with towns and cities with retail and hospitality and public service jobs - but remarkably few higher paid manufacturing jobs and these jobs do benefit the aforementioned working class, as well as others, plus industries servicing and supplying. The UK market on its own with export being a pain in the arse is not a tempting prospect anymore for those kinds of businesses.

Good grief. I paid €120 a few weeks ago for a lock to be changed , aluminium front door. I thought that was a bit steep tbh but it had to be done. But £415 is monstrous.

If only 3 people could do it, and they all quoted the same price, surely that is the going rate?

@Florenz yes it may well be the going rate - but as I had something similar done in 2019 and the cost was £210 that's a hell of a lot of an 'uplift' for a similar priced part- and in my opinion a total rip off. Are we just expected to accept massive 'rip offs then' these days?? How do working class people (as you Tory's constantly mention them) who aren't in these trades afford to have any work done, ever!!

So basically the main benefit of Brexit is that rip-off Britain is now on steroids and 'the going rate' is price gouging. Nice.

Are doctors price gouging? Are architects price gouging? Are top footballers price gouging? Is anyone that doesn't work for minimum wage price gouging?

The problem is that people got used to tradespeople working for a pittance because of free movement, now they are charging the going rate, they feel ripped off. Maybe people should learn to fit their own locks.

@Florenz a doubling in price over 4 years is price gouging. And in an economy where the majority of people aren't getting pay rises, and where any pay rises are being outstripped by massive inflation, this kind of behaviour is a recipe for economic crisis.

Are you OK with people on minimum wage not being able to afford to keep their houses secure?

And if we all did our own locksmithing, electricianing, building, carpentry, car maintenance - how many people would end up out of work and not earning at all?

There has to be a balance.

@Florenz absolutely not the case. I have paid out for various things over the last 10 years for trades and I can assure you none were for a pittance!!

People are entitled to charge what they want for their skills and labour. Let the market sort itself out. If locksmithing is a lucrative trade, more people will train to be locksmiths and prices will come down.

What is the alternative? The government setting fixed rates that locksmiths can charge?

@Florenz unfettered free market capitalism tends to make the majority of working class people poorer.

Ah yeah ; the ould 'hidden hand of the market ' will fix everything shtick we've been hearing since the early 80s.

Yet the market is like electricity - a good servant but a bad master. There does have to be some regulation of course as @Florenz says you can't expect trades people to work for poverty wages.

On the other hand , you've just left the richest market in the world. And it does seem to many people that leaving was sold on a false prospectus. There was much talk about untold billions for the NHS. Surprisingly little about learning how to unblock drains and fit doors.

Not that there's anything wrong with such pursuits I hasten to add. Perhaps that's what Levelling Up meant. Boris was going to enrol everyone in vocational schemes to learn useful stuff. But then the ungrateful sods knifed him so we'll never find out! Unless he sobers up and writes the book....

More people will enter trades if lucrative.

An owner was annoyed he had to lift hospitality staff wages the other day. Would prefer a two year visa to keep them lower

Is that a good idea?

I’m not committed either way but I can’t see either party going with it for the GE

An owner was annoyed he had to lift hospitality staff wages the other day. Would prefer a two year visa to keep them lower

Well, that isn't so vague as to be meaningless at all.

🙄 just ask for more info if you don’t get it.

Itsu owner on R4 asking for two year visa to keep staff wages lower in hospitality.

Good idea or not?

@SunnyEgg whether it's good or not depends on many things.

• Owner's costs are likely to be very much higher - food and energy gone through the roof.
• However, that also applies to owner's staff, so yes, they need a higher wage
• Which will drive up the prices the owner can charge customers, who are also in a CoL crisis and will spend less, and do so less frequently than before

And you'd have to be a blinkered Brexiteer to deny that Brexit has been a contributing factor to all of the above - see previous post setting out total cost to the UK according to that well known lefty organisation, Bloomberg.

So basically there are no good options for anyone. I very much doubt that many people would now come here for a two year hospitality visa when that means they have to pay the NHS charge anyway.

What’s the NHS charge? Is it new post Brexit?

He had a compelling argument in terms of pre Brexit you’d get many young people coming from EU for a short time to brush up on English and often take casual jobs for something like two years

This was a way to emulate same conditions. I know other countries do it for young people

We do now for post graduates actually from top universities but maybe not reaching what he had before in terms of casual skills

I’m not sure either way, I could be convinced but it’s not looking likely for either party at GE, looking at their lines on immigration

Although as I posted earlier my preference would be for SM / CU to be a GE issue

With polls as they are I’m not sure why not

@SunnyEgg it's the NHS surcharge. It isn't new, but because of Brexit people from the EU would now have to pay it, whereas they didn't before. It's a lot of money for someone on low pay (and it was a very bad idea because it actually deterred skilled migrants that the UK needed from coming here, but Tories...)

I'm all in favour of people earning what they are worth (and footballers are paid far too much but that is a global issue) but these are entrenched problems. The UK has very many fields where there is a shortage of people, and that cannot be fixed immediately through higher pay - the people aren't there and the funding isn't there (thinking of care homes here, where pay comes out of council funding, and guess who has been starving councils of funding?).

As I said, there isn't an easy fix - but Brexit has not made anything better, and won't.

The EU is all about unfettered free market capitalism. What other purpose does freedom of movement serve other than to allow the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer?

If that were so, all EU countries would have levels of economic inequality greater than the UK. They don't - because countries in the EU have this thing called sovereignty, which means that they can set policies which prevent this from happening. The UK has one of the highest levels of inequality in Europe (note data is not just for the EU). Your argument doesn't hold water.

We were had far less inequality before we entered the EU before we did after we'd been in it for 40+ years. Free movement breeds inequality as employers can employ the cheapest workers on the continent whereas wealthy, highly skilled people can sell their services to the highest payers on the continent. Plus there's the issue of "the professions" not being open to EU workers with equivalent qualifications from their home country whereas "the trades" were.

Sigh.

Everyone had less inequality before anyone entered the EU. Pay multiples 40 years ago in the developed world were much, much smaller than they are now. The problem is not and was not the EU - it's globalisation. That's why you need brakes on untrammelled capitalism to mitigate that - in the way that many EU countries do, because they have sovereignty and are able to do this in the EU, and in the way that the UK is choosing not to do.

While we were in the EU, there absolutely was cross border recognition of professional qualifications. Where did you get the idea that there was not?

Doctors couldn't rock up from Poland on a Friday and start work as a doctor in the UK on Monday. Bricklayers could.

If being in the EU helps fight against Globalisation and inequality, why didn't it work in the UK? What is the point of it if it doesn't work?

@Florenz doctors couldn't rock up from Scotland on Friday and start work on Monday in England either, not even as locums. Because some professions have tight HR requirements. Nothing to do with FOM, everything to do with different jobs having different HR requirements.

If being in the EU helps fight against Globalisation and inequality, why didn't it work in the UK?

It didn't work because for the majority of the time that the UK was in the EU, we had governments that didn't want to fight inequality. Because they were Conservative governments. And because the UK had sovereignty while in the EU, that could happen and did happen. So really, the people to blame are and were Tory voters. In the case of the working classes, turkeys voting for Christmas.

I must be the only person who has benefitted from Brexit. As a truck driver the increase in demand/wages in the past few years has been staggering.

Caught up with an old workmate the other day and he's earning £65k driving the arctics and has a three day weekend every week. Another guy I know is earning a grand a week driving a small curtainsider delivering booze. This would've been a low end driving job in years past. I remember an agency offering me £10.50 an hour to do it about five years ago. No thanks!

I'm also seeing a lot more women driving trucks in the last year or two and I speculate it's the prospect of a half decent salary and also the fact that companies are desperate for any driver they can get their hands on lately, which has lowered the bar for entry. The driver who came to deliver sand to our plant the other day was a 20yo girl. Next time I thought it was her again but was another young woman. Apparently there are three that regularly visit from that company alone.

I know there are plenty of negatives but for me personally it's massively improved my life. I'm making at least £15k more a year and could make another £10k if I wanted to go and work for one of the big construction outfits. And I don't need to take shit from any employer because I guarantee I could get on the phone and find another job in a day or two.