'...diversifying away from the se and finance...'
Yes. Without the shackles of EU work and environment regs the sky's the limit for manufacturing. Maybe James Dyson will find it cheaper to set up shop back in Blighty again. British labour could end up cheaper than labour in Malaysia, Mexico, Colombia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh and other places where people don't need to make enough to heat their homes in the winter.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, a Nissan factory that exports most of its products to Europe may pack it in.
The heyday of British invention and manufacturing was the heyday of the British Empire. Conditions have changed a lot since then. If Britain is to return to manufacturing - and this would mean ordinary consumer goods - then Britain is going to have to figure out how to turn out products cheaper than it can be done in SE Asia.
People interested in buying Aston Martins are probably not concerned about tariffs. Aston Martin and other luxury item manufacturers are relatively well buffered. Nissan not so much. The whole country cannot be employed turning out Aston Martins however. There is s limit to the market, and it is not a brand that prides itself on being seen in everybody's drive.
- 'I was and am a big fan of capitalism, but what we have is an entrenched elite enriching themsrlves at others' expense'.
- 'capitalism is meant to efficiently allocate capital'
You can't simultaneously love capitalism and at the same time rail against how it works, decry the perversion of physics in service of greed while also ignoring the fact that capitalism is at bottom about greed, and naked self interest. How those ugly qualities are encouraged, tempered, and/or used for the greater good is what the political discourse that has developed since the end of the age of autocracy and the industrialisation of the west is all about.
Different approaches have all featured efforts to direct or channel the systematised expression of greed - within the capitalist west to put it very directly to the service of the common good in various degrees, or to go the other way and explain to people that there is a trickle down effect when an elite is enriched. The naked self interest element has been used strategically in the political sense as a means of turning former warring enemies into trading partners and shoring up the whole political system against an alternative form of materialism proposed by Karl Marx, via the Marshall Plan and then the EEC and the EU.
Instead of engaging with the promise of the EU to allocate capital efficiently for social engineering and geopolitical purposes as well as for wealth creation (they are all associated) Britain has decided to try to answer the question, 'How low can you go?' in terms of costs - this means primarily labour costs - and the associated question, 'How high can it get?' in terms of profit for those willing to invest, because without the motivation of greed why would anyone bother getting involved - we are talking about businesses here, not charities. Not even the US brand of capitalism, the least Socialist system in the west, has thrown off all semblance of commitment to the welfare of those on the lowest rung the way the Leave vote effectively has.
- 'Brilliant to blame the regulators as if, without being told not to, it is inevitable to act immorally.'
The existence of regulations and regulators (and laws in general, and prisons, and crime statistics) should make you suspect that there is a huge temptation to act immorally. It only takes a few immoral actors and a few loopholes, and disaster can ensue.