Anyone else really worried now?

[MrsBlackthorn]

My work has started quietly drawing up contingency plans for if Brexit happens. Same at DH's work. Could mean lots of jobs moving to Germany and Ireland at both our firms. We're already seeing far fewer people investing or spending money.

I'm bloody terrified. Could lose my job. House could end up in negative equity. And for what?

I don't even think it's "project fear" from the government anymore... News today showed investors are taking money out of the UK faster than anytime since the crash. People with "skin in the game" voting with their money.

I understand that for lots of people the EU referendum isn't about money. however, because of a lot of it leaving, stopping coming in, or just simply being worth less... Well that leaves us screwed for a very long time. Fewer jobs. Less tax money coming in - so less money for the NHS and so on. So even if we 'take back control', of what exactly. what will we be 'in control' of?

I'm really worried about "Leave" happening and me and my family being utterly f*ed in a few months time as a result. Has the country lost its mind?

Anyone else worried about where this leaves us?

If the pound falls as predicted, surely that is good for our exporters. If interest rates rise as predicted, then that will attract investment.

I hope you don't think its that simple :-/

It's true that a weak pound is generally good in the short term for some exporters. But it also means more expensive imports, which means inflation, which means that manufacturers pay more for raw materials bought from abroad.

Re interest rates, the BoE will have to make some difficult decisions: do they raise interest rates to protect the pound, at the risk of pushing the economy into a recession? Or do they keep interest rates low to protect consumption, and let sterling fall, which will cause inflation?

Wow, bitter much? I haven't lived a life of luxury. I grew up in a council house. I have worked very, very hard. I have battled with a disability. But I am lucky that I to do reasonably well these days. This has not always been the case.

But, as I've pointed out, if my company and those like it leave, not only will I lose my job, but thousands of others will - including very many on average and incomes. I have also pointed out that this affects other people's livelihoods too. That you have chosen to jump on this as me being obsessed with protecting a silver spoon life that you have decided to project on me - well that says a lot more about you than it does me.

And in any case, you second point doesn't even follow - there's no logical reason leaving the EU would lead to higher wages, and indeed a lot of analysis to suggest it will just mean fewer jobs all round.

"But no body knows. But we do know the projections if we stay which are not good"

But equally all projections are "we don't knows". As a rough (very, very rough) rule of thumb the shorter term projections are less prone to error and unforeseen events. Whose projections are you talking about?

The expectation (not definite but widely accepted) is that there will be a short term sharp negative impact to our economy and the European economy. Longer term we will get back on track to the current projections for our economy in somewhere between 5 and 10 years time.

So, a likely but not certain outcome is that our economy will be weaker for ten years. How will that help the NHS etc.?

I was a firm 'leave' until this past couple of weeks. I even had a 'Vote Leave' poster in my window. But I got so fed up of the two campaigns trying to score points off each other with cheap sound-bites that I decided to really read up and educate myself on the issues and the likely outcome for the two options. And since doing that I've become more confused than ever! Why? The main two reasons are:

1. Because if we vote for 'leave', but want to remain in the single market (the EU trading bloc), then we will still have to abide by the four central tenets of the EU i.e. the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital within the Union. Yes PERSONS. Which means even if we vote to leave we'll still have to allow free movement of people, and reducing immigration from the EU is a huge reason why many people want to leave. So basically a Brexit won't solve the number one issue that voters wishing to leave think it will.

2. The 'leave' campaign have completely failed to convince me that our economy will be better if we leave. Capital is already flooding out of the UK, merely in anticipation of the in/out vote. The pound has already fallen. UK house prices have already fallen. And I believe the banks and financial institutions when they say they'll relocate staff out of the UK and into the EU. My DH works for a German company here in the UK. If we leave the EU he's 100% certain that there will be massive job losses in this country. Plus, we've then got the 2-year divorce process from the EU. Two years of uncertainty. And what do financial markets hate more than anything else? Uncertainly! Our economy will tank in that two years and plunge us back into recession. I have no doubt about that. And will it be better after two years? Who the fuck knows? But do we want to take that gamble? I'm not sure I do. So now I'm thinking that I might just tick that box saying 'remain'.

I think the whole issue of whether the EU is a net benefit to us or not is far more complex than 'the man on the street' grasps. So yes OP, I agree with you that the potential outcome is very worrying. I'm a nerd so I wanted to grasp the whole story, and tbh, unless you've done your homework you really can't make a proper, informed decision. So most people will make a knee-jerk one (like I might have done if the two campaigns hadn't pissed me off so much!). Hardly the best way to make such a huge, far-reaching decision about the future of our country.

Juneau I would like to become more informed too. Where did you do your research? Everything I read is just scaremongering and I don't know what or who to trust.

For it's about our democracy, UK-created laws, rights, accountable leaders, and sovereignty offered by an independent UK. Once those are given away it would be extremely hard to reclaim them. I do not trust the leaders and those in prominent positions in the EU, and don't wish to endorse a move to a federal Europe. We can collaborate with other countries without being politically unified with them, and be more open to the rest of the world. Many people have sacrificed a good deal more for democracy than we're being asked to do in leaving the EU.

I think some people argue that wages in some industries are kept low by migrant workers prepared to do the work for low pay.

I think this is definitely a problem in some areas.

However, since there is no firm plan to make migrants who are already here leave, then how will that be solved?

Ditto stretched public services. Is there any firm commitment from BJ et al to spend tax money on this? Aren't they more likely to want to cut public spending for ideological reasons? Especially if there's a recession?

I mean I understand that people are fed up of the problems caused in done areas by EU immigration but I don't see how Brexit intends to solve them.

lottielo I 've seen this which is pitched as being an impartial analysis:

www.centreonconstitutionalchange.ac.uk/publications/e-books/britains-decision
The Hunter Foundation has teamed up with some of the UK’s leading European scholars to produce a free ebook to answer voters’ questions before the EU referendum on June 23rd. The ebook, Britain’s Decision – Facts and Impartial Analysis, involves scholars from the Centre on Constitutional Change and the David Hume Institute. They have identified 19 key questions that underpin the debate and they offer objective, independent analysis of these issues.

Thanks nearlyhellokitty - just what I have been trying to find!

Sorry, I do employ a nanny full time but the cleaner and gardener work for others too. The builder is doing a project for me. All of these people are British apart from the cleaner who is Malay.

All will be affected if I lose my job. My nanny won't have a job.

If there aren't any jobs then wage deflation becomes a bit of a moot point.

Ditto stretched public services. Is there any firm commitment from BJ et al to spend tax money on this?

I don't know, but I certainly don't think the EU is going to help us with them.

At the next general election we'll have the chance to vote for a party we think will be best able to help better our public services, and we do vote for our local councillors also.

winter if we get Brexit, it isn't conceivable that the country will vote for Corbyn.

BJ will hold a very quick election while the the Brexiteers are still feeling warm and fuzzy. Why wouldn't he?

So realistically we'll be stuck with an extremely right wing Tory government until 2021.

Getahaircut- if we get Brexit, it isn't conceivable that the country will vote for Corbyn

Very presumptive- thanks for telling me who I'll be voting for

Don't be ridiculous jellied BJ will win hands down.

I did start ploughing through the e-book but turned off as it seemed to be mostly from a Scotland perspective (not surprising as most of the contributers were from that country) and a bit unbalanced as a result - given Scotland has a small population and differant issues from the rest of the UK
but then I only got to page 66

Class have an interesting paper - here - classonline.org.uk/pubs/item/does-the-eu-work-for-working-class-people

We don't know who the next Tory leader will be. There will be plenty from each side of the party voting in a leadership election and there will most likely be several candidates. It's by no means a foregone conclusion that most of the party would pick BoJo/Osborne.

So realistically we'll be stuck with an extremely right wing Tory government until 2021.

If the next referendum on Europe isn't held until another 41 years time, we'll be stuck with the failing EU until at least 2057, even if it changes enormously for the worse.

In the event of a successful Brexit vote, who do you see as being a real viable contender to BJ?

This idea that wages will rise after a Brexit is incredibly misleading. There are many factors behind the stagnation of wages since 2010, and many reasons to think that the future for low skilled jobs doesn't look great - digitalisation is the most obvious one - posing a massive structural threat to the jobs of low skilled workers. The ETUI have some statistics below, but there are lots of others:

www.etui.org/Publications2/Working-Papers/Digitalisation-of-the-economy-and-its-impact-on-labour-markets

National responses are just not adequate to face these sorts of global challenges.

DC was correct that the only way forward is to invest so that young workers have the skills they need and can operate in an open and connected market.

To the mum who thought the best answer was to vote Leave because her DCs don't have the language skills to enable them to compete on a level playing field with other European workers, the answer must surely be to encourage them to develop other transferable skills. It's not easy, but it will be far harder if they leave university and enter a market of economic stagnation. Every year of stagnation will blight the lives of those young graduates.

I was in the 'remain' camp until I watched Brexit - the Movie

By all means research the subject and draw your own conclusions, but please don't base your vote on this! It's completely subjective, factually incorrect and farcically stereotypical ( Europe represented by a Frenchman in a beret with a string of onions round his neck...). It bases much of its claim that the UK will be better off on the fact that there will be fewer "bureaucratic" trade deals. Actually, leaving the EU would mean swapping a set of pretty straightforward and well- established trade regulations with a lot of complex and highly bureaucratic trade restrictions with a host of countries that will take years to negotiate.

Also, quite frankly, even if you didn't watch it with a huge pinch of salt, its post-Brexit vision of a UK where businesses are all-powerful and unfettered by regulation was my idea of a nightmare.

Lottielo a really good book that is unbiased and just delivers the facts is 'Europe In or Out' by David Charter www.amazon.co.uk/Europe-Out-Everything-Need-Know/dp/1785900412/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1465489253&sr=8-1&keywords=europe+in+or+out.

Then I would just read widely around the web. I've read articles in the New York Times, Der Spiegel (international edition), The Economist, and a range of things from British newspapers (but beware of the bias in these). There are also debates and programs on telly all the time now. I'm not so interested in hearing politicians banging on as we've heard their simplistic messages and I don't find them helpful, but economists or serious broadcasters asking the difficult questions can be enlightening. The more you read and understand the easier it is to sort the interesting stuff from the boring and/or ill-informed/inflammatory.