why Brexit now???

[Figmentofmyimagination]

As the chancellor has said today, we are in huge trouble thanks to this pandemic - worst downturn in 300 years. Surely now is the time to revisit Brexit, especially as there is no longer any requirement to honour manifesto commitments?

Brexit is to cost 4% of national income each year long term, even with a deal, or at least 6% without a deal.

Can we not at least agree to stay in the single market?

Why are we still doing this?

Will our children forgive us?

Plus every single member of the current Cabinet was chosen not for their expertise or competence in their current ministry, but because they promised Boris loyalty in Brexit. That is why they are Teflon-coated over all their screw-ups in their jobs.

A majority of those that voted Brexit said that it was so important to them to leave the EU that they would happily see their children lose their livelihoods and have the return of IRA bombs in mainland Britain.

I don't think the economy tanking due to the pandemic will make them change their minds either.

Kent get Tier 3 and traffic jams

The trouble is Brexit is like a modern day religion. Brexiteers are absolutely willing to suffer "for the greater good".

They're not really interested if the country gets poorer. All they care about is keeping those pesky immigrants out. The country being impoverished is a price they're willing to pay.

@hotpotlover

The trouble is Brexit is like a modern day religion. Brexiteers are absolutely willing to suffer "for the greater good".

They're not really interested if the country gets poorer. All they care about is keeping those pesky immigrants out. The country being impoverished is a price they're willing to pay.

Plus for some reason, it has become associated with patriotism. So you are unpatriotic if you want to remain in the EU, but patriotic to want to leave, which is total BS. Why is it patriotic to cause harm to your country and deprive your citizens of rights and freedoms?

Add in the idiots who think the right thing to say to a Remainer is to suggest they leave and go and live in the EU. I want to live in the UK, I am British, but I also feel European and have spent my entire life as a European citizen. I want to live in the UK and if I am patriotic to anything it is to the UK, but like 48% I want the UK to continue to be associated with its closest geographical neighbours and not just cut off and reliant on countries on the other side of the world for food and trade.

The patriotism side of it is confusing less intelligent people into thinking it is basically OK to tell people to 'go back where you came from' in an EU context.

As PPs have said. We've already left.

Yes, we already left, but we're in the transition period , where rules stay the same.

This is why we haven't felt the real impact yet

I wonder if those who say “we’ve already left” actually understand that there has been a transition period, or what that means (in real terms) when it ends in a few weeks time. I’m beginning to think they think everything is done and dusted and we just carry on as we are right now

No, LonelyCrab, me personalky know that we are about to end the transition period indeed, but UK has already left the EU. There is no stop bottom to leaving the EU anymore.
But I do wonder, does Boris and company know that the transition is ending? That they do have some docs to sign or not to sign? Imay be wrong on this one, but once they do actually decide to sign they still have an admin period to make it happen, so they should have done it by now or it will not get through? At least they extend it? Which they cannot?

@ListeningQuietly

Kent get Tier 3 and traffic jams

And according to the government itself, food shortages so likely and serious that schools should be stockpiling long-life food now, and Kent schools should anticipate pupils not being able to get into school due to traffic chaos.

@MushMonster

No, LonelyCrab, me personalky know that we are about to end the transition period indeed, but UK has already left the EU. There is no stop bottom to leaving the EU anymore. But I do wonder, does Boris and company know that the transition is ending? That they do have some docs to sign or not to sign? Imay be wrong on this one, but once they do actually decide to sign they still have an admin period to make it happen, so they should have done it by now or it will not get through? At least they extend it? Which they cannot?

It is a very dangerous negotiating tactic, obviously the EU is in a much stronger position than us, if we are anticipating needing to get our food from the USA and Canada - hardly a position of strength for the UK to be playing chicken with the traffic/EU.

Plus in a pandemic, all of our PPE coming via road through Folkestone - that should be fun after January 1st, already it is so congested in the warehouses that other freight is stuck.

I also suspect that the EU can't be doing with this sh*t in a pandemic, and would be happy to extend the transition period so they can focus on their own business. I do think that if a legal change were possible, we should pursue it.

Unfortunately that also means the EU would be ready to say, stuff it, no deal it is then. Easier for us, off you go UK, no deal.

I do think that there are some very thick people (eg the one upthread who called me ‘dear’ for not understanding that we have already left etc etc yawn) who have no idea what the EU withdrawal act says - how nothing has actually changed as yet and more importantly how we actually had the freedom - at least until the moronic Johnson was elected with a 60 seat majority - to agree something sensible instead of committing an act of economic self-sabotage.

Of course I’m not meant to call them thick but I think we are beyond all that now. There are a lot worse things you could call them.

I am tired of the extensions, so I can imagine them!
There are so many issues to deal with due to covid, that I think they would say no deal and turn to other matters.
But they will have to get to some agreement and model for future relationships, we are neighbours. So it will then be for the UK to knock on the door and start negotiations?
One thing that I hope happens after this is that UK will create more manufacturing, and we will actually make our own things in UK, including PPE. Generating more employment and supporting the economy. No way we could afford to ship all the clothes and shoes? But making them sounds good to me.

Mushmonster
The UK has had 4 1/2 years to get its arse in gear
it HAD a PPE stockpile but got rid of it in 2018
if the UK was really going to invest in manufacturing, the time was 2016 and 2017
not 39 days before our supplies of everything dry up

I am tired of the extensions, so I can imagine them!

The thing is that no extension=huge price hikes and shortages of food and other goods. Is anyone going to be relieved when they arrive? I don’t think so.

It was our governments job to secure a path for a future outside the Eu. That hasn’t been done has it? (save a few minor deals that amount to sweet fa.)

Our strategy is to play chicken with a far larger, more powerful group and it hasn’t worked. It’s like approaching the future of a country like a game of poker but we’ve actually got a really shit hand.

One thing that I hope happens after this is that UK will create more manufacturing

Well it’s all well and good saying that but manufacturing tends to involve both importing raw materials and exporting the products you make. So we now have the dead weight of operating on wto terms to add into the equation- it’s going to get much much harder imo to manufacture anything with a no deal outcome, and no amount of wishful thinking changes that.

I understand you, I just hope! I do hope someone somewhere do have a plan!
I am in the manufacturing side of things, so I think that influences me quite a bit as it is the economy sector that I am in direct contact. I really hope we get making our own things as I cannot longer hope to just stay the very same! That ship has sailed.
And next ship, the deal, is about to leave the port!

The trouble is Brexit is like a modern day religion. Brexiteers are absolutely willing to suffer "for the greater good".

In the mind of many Brexiters, the financial service sector and London in general need to be torn down so the rest of the country can finally have a chance to thrive.

If we get headlines of 100k city workers laid off by next summer I suspect many across the UK will quietly celebrate it.

What they won't be so thrilled about maybe is the chaos in medicines. The EU medicines authority used to be based in London, the UK was in a prime position to run clinical trials with access to the huge market of the EU, meaning a pharma company only needed to get authorisation from one country for the whole EU to get access to the medicine (oversimplistic explanation sorry). Now the UK will be a little island on it's own, neither in a prime position for trials nor a particularly big market.
Plus we are reliant on drugs coming from/via the EU.

Not to mention food, trade, international policing, freedom to travel/study/ work.
All gone or jeopardised.

That is what people mean by economic self-harm.

@sally067

The trouble is Brexit is like a modern day religion. Brexiteers are absolutely willing to suffer "for the greater good".

In the mind of many Brexiters, the financial service sector and London in general need to be torn down so the rest of the country can finally have a chance to thrive.

If we get headlines of 100k city workers laid off by next summer I suspect many across the UK will quietly celebrate it.

There is an element of Brexiteers up north who blame the EU for destroying the north rather than Thatcher and neo liberalism which was continued by Blair and Cameron.

It's UK governments for 40 years that pandered to London and put all the investment in the south east. The upshot of that was the financial service sector, the downside was swathes of the country left to the rot. The result - Brexit.

@Figmentofmyimagination

But we could still opt to stay in the single market - that would be the sane choice.

I agree with this completely. It's such a obvious compromise.