What Next?

[Margrethe]

I have moved through the stages of shock and grief and now want to think about what we need to do as a country to succeed. I'd like to hear other people's ideas too. Enough with the doom mongering! It's a time of great risk, but also of opportunity. I'll throw out my nascent thoughts. I know they are far from perfect or "the answer," but I'd like to get a little bit of constructive conversation going. (I know nitpickers will come along and complain and critique, I could do myself; it's easier than being constructive and creative.)

Here are some things I think we need to do:

1. Increase airport capacity in the SE: we can't pivot away from Europe and towards the rest of the world without it

1. Renew Trident: we are more on our own now and we need it to stay a relevant part of NATO, frankly; we should consider moving the subs from Faslane in Scotland (The Scots don't want them!) to Portsmith or perhaps Millhaven in Wales where they really need the jobs after the Port Talbot closure and some of the heavy industry skills might be transferable

1. Pull the plug on the Hinkley Point Nuclear power project. That should now be a project for building up UK capabilities and jobs not a pork barrel for the French. At the very least it should be a bargaining chip going forward.

1. Start rewriting UK public contracts to favour UK based subcontractors and suppliers, eg. we are buying more rolling stock for our railways all the time, we really should favour buying from domestic producers

1. Start some high profile scientific projects with the best universities in Asia (Tsinghua, Peking, Tokyo, Singapore, etc.)

1. Don't start negotiations with the EU from a position of compromise. It's pretty obvious that people voting leave want control over immigration so rocking up and asking for the Norway deal as your starting point is unbelievably stupid. (For this reason, Nicky Morgan is a terrible candidate for leader.) Start asking for what you really want, free trade with control over immigration. You never know how far you will get, if you try. At the moment, it all feels horrible, but we should be doing an inventory of every lever that we have and understanding what the different players in the EU want and need. We also need to baseline the worst case scenario (WTO terms, so we have a reference point.) There are actually an infinite number of possible outcomes. We can help ourselves by being creative. If our banks (a major industry for us) need Euro Passporting how can we bargain? Can we link a certain number of guaranteed visas for EU migrants to the amount of passporting we do in a year?

1. We need a chancellor who will invest heavily in the UK and fund that investment with borrowing. Now is a time for expansionist policies.

Basically, lets start thinking instead of panicking.

(BTW, I voted remain. I just think rowing back isn't practically possible or at this point desirable. We have had the economic shock now.)

Those are my thoughts at the moment. What have you got? Please share!

If people want power projects with UK only jobs, the only expertise that we currently have in terms of skills and experience, is building coal power plants. And even then there are no UK companies who make turbines large enough.

I refer you to my previous point about coal, the environment and stable sources of coal (UK coal currently being too expensive).

The point about the turbines raises another issue no-one really discussed. Not unique to the UK, but which will really hurt is if we try and go it alone. And that is that we probably don't have (not that we ever did) the capacity to undertake massive infrastructure project without components being made outside the UK. The Eurofighter (for example) wasn't made that way for fun. It was because no single EU nation - not even the Germans could manage all the complex individual components. The only way to do that is the old Soviet way. And who wants to live in 1960s Russia ?

Exactly - although on paper, a Commonwealth trade coalition (see what I did there?) with Australia, S Africa etc could be interesting.

Rolls Royce is the only UK company I can think of, but their turbines are too small (according to DH).

I do have to admit though that I have a vested interest in Hinkley going ahead.

LurkingHusband, re Eurofighter (Typhoon), the reason it was built all over the shop was so that there was inclusion across countries.
It massively overran on budget and development/introduction time due to different demands of each country.

We absolutely could build an aircraft on our own, but typhoon was always to be a collaborative project.

I too had noticed that the only institution to have a plan was the Bank of England. Didn't Mark Carney come out to speak before David Cameron? That just about says it all.

The only constructive suggestion I could make would be to have a coalition in Parliament, (like the wartime coalition, not the last Tory lead coalition), so that the best people in the House could be put into office. The behaviour of both the Tories and Labour has been pretty shameful, and the Lib Dems, have been nowhere to be seen, so party politics don't seem particularly relevant at this time.

I like the blue sky-ing.

It's not political, exactly, but my blue sky would be that we each take proper responsibility for thinking about where we spend our money and where we store our money. Avoiding the kinds of big corporations who can afford to give people horrible zero hours contracts, or who pressure farmers to get their prices low enough that the farmers have to. So, buying local and small business wherever we can. Cornershoptastic

I just looked: Tesco is very proud of paying its farmers just under 29p per litre. Our local farmers' co-op pays the farmer 50-80p per litre (the farmer chooses what price to put on the litre of milk and the co-op takes half).

I know this probably seems like chicken feed compared to what Boris earns for his Telegraph column the big issues we are all worrying about. But being truly mindful of what we spend and who we spend it with is something that we can all do to combat the big corporation culture. And the big corporation culture screws over the people at the bottom of the heap. And the people at the bottom of the heap are the ones who screamed so loudly that they simply couldn't bear the current system any more. I've heard lots of people saying "but they are the ones who will be really screwed now" so let's each take some personal responsibility for trying to send some of our money in that direction, through the purchases we make.

I like blue sky too Ommm, completely agree with all of your last post.

Peregrina, that's an interesting idea about a cross party coalition!
I think that would be a good idea too tbh - get the best people for each job from across all parties.
Let them get on with running the country.

For the Brexit strategy, get a good representation from Welsh, NI & Scottish party representatives as well as the 2 main parties and a top civil servant & negotiation team.

Trigger article 50 as soon as possible, then in 2 years when Brexit is complete let the parties regroup, sort out leaders & have a general election.

I love blue sky!!

We absolutely could build an aircraft on our own...

A concrete example of "We could make things and sell them to the rest of the world", a popular answer to the question "What do we do once we've left the EU?"

So let's look at aircraft. We actually probably do have enough aerospace designers, engineers and mechanics in the UK, at least to build small and medium-sized planes, though not the giant passenger and freight aircraft.

But who is going to build the factories and equip them? How much would we have to charge to recoup that investment and cover the ongoing overheads? And would we have any takers at the price we would have to charge, tariffs or no tariffs?

"We could make things and sell them to the rest of the world". If we could, why aren't we already?

Some claim the EU were stopping us. I think that's nonsense. Either way, we seem to be about to find out.

It's a little akin to having your house set on fire against you will. You didn't want it set on fire, but that's how things roll in your street. Now, as the firefighters squabble over who gets to play with the hose turn up, you are being told it's in your best interests to help them put out the fire, and save your house.

That's a very good description of what it's like to have been unwillingly pulled into the EU, to have put up with it for a very long time, and are then told that you're expected to stay and "reform" it.

Love the blue sky thinking so far.

I think we could very productively start talking with other countries about potential trade arrangements. We can't do this with the EU yet, but there's nothing to stop us initiating discussions elsewhere.

I really really really want us to start trade discussions with some of those African and south American and Asian and middle Eastern countries who have not enjoyed the benefits of the single market One Little Bit. I know there are all sorts of marvellous things about the EU for those in it, but it sucks, in trading terms for those who aren't.

One of my blue skies ideas is that (maybe not now, but once we get a nice gentle lefty government in an election or two) we as a country will do a huge amount more than we currently do to engage with the global south in terms of genuinely fair trade (I don't mean FairTrade TM).

The problem here is that the rational response to this type of economic uncertainty, for an individual, is to spend less and save more, to put away some cash in case of hard times ahead. However, from an economic point of view, if everyone does that, you trigger a recession. So what makes sense from an individual point of view is not helpful from an economic point of view.

It is selfish but my instant reaction, and one I'll be following, is that I'll be cutting my spending where possible and stashing the money that's saved. If I make investments the focus is going to be outside the UK.

For me, I'd like to see closer ties with the Commonwealth. If you could establish some sort of working links, freedom of movement type thing with Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc like the current reciprocal agreement between Aus and NZ.

I keep hearing that people want to have closer ties with the Commonwealth. Are they thinking of the whole commonwealth or just Australia, Canada and NZ?

Agreed, nauticant. Not deliberately trying to sabotage the brave new project, but quite simply, we don't know what is coming next.

To do our jobs relies on scientific funding, of which a significant proportion currently comes from the EU. Once that goes, any funding from UK-based organisations is going to be even harder to get than it is now (and I don't want to read any nonsense about science funding continuing uninterrupted from the Magic Money Tree !).

There is every likelihood that we are going to have to leave the country in the next few years, probably losing the hard-earned equity in our home to boot (I say this with resignation, because house prices in this country are ridiculous and if this week's shit doesn't cause a crash, I'll eat my hat). So we are cutting back on spending - for example we had a couple of major home improvement projects lined up but shelved them.

I mean the whole Commonwealth - I live in an African Commonwealth country and have close ties to a couple of others. I can really envisage what a difference can be made here particularly if there are closer ties/agreements made.

I put Aus/NZ as they already have an existing reciprocal agreement that could be extended and Canada because it would be fairly easy to establish an agreement quickly.

Yes, the whole Commonwealth for me too.

But if people are worried about immigration from the EU, surely having free movement within the Commonwealth would send people over the edge, no?

Immigration is not a concern for me, I am merely stating what I would like to see.

I am under no illusion whatsoever that this will happen.

Unfortunately, despite the job opening, I am not PM.

If we want stronger ties to middle income countries and the global South, we will need more airport capacity. I am not an expert on every country, but I know our connections to Latin America are very poor or non-existent.

Fair enough Jamie. I think I'm probably the most pro-immigration person I know, but even I would probably balk at offering freedom of movement to all 2 billion people in the Commonwealth, especially given the huge inequality that persists between the UK and many of the other countries in the Commonwealth. Personally, I think that really would be unsustainable, but I know some people are in favour of opening up our borders to everyone. Perhaps it would all level out in the end, I don't know.

I really really really want us to start trade discussions with some of those African and south American and Asian and middle Eastern countries who have not enjoyed the benefits of the single market One Little Bit.

Yes! I couldn't agree more

I know our connections to Latin America are very poor or non-existent

This has nothing or almost nothing to do with airport capacity though.

I'm sure increasing trade with Canada, Aus, NZ, S Africa etc would be great - but what trade, exactly, and in what volumes? This sounds great in theory - but none of these are especially large markets, they have much nearer neighbours to trade with, and the cost and time involved in shipping would be much more significant than selling to your next-door neighbour.

I wonder if somewhere like NZ would really want to trade with us in any great volume? Didn't they lose most of their export market for lamb and butter when we went into the EEC? They were forced to look elsewhere and have done so. They appear to be becoming increasingly distant from us, so I can't see why they should suddenly want to do an about turn.

Misti, I say we need more airport capacity because if we want to trade, especially if we want to sell professional services, we need to have face to face visits (not to mention the air cargo which almost every commercial airliner has below passengers' feet). Face to face visits are difficult when many capital cities aren't connected to the uk by direct flights, or like Mexico City (pop +20M) only have a couple of flights a week. I presume we would need more landing slots to put more flights in place. That's what makes me think we would need more airport capacity for London.

margarethe BA has in the past offered direct services to a number of countries in Africa and South America that it no longer serves. It's primarily about the economics of particular routes, not capacity. In any case, if the focus of our trade shifted significantly in favour of the Southern Hemisphere, it would only be as a result of a significant dislocation in european relations which would affect demand for european air travel and free up landing slots.

There are other issues of course, like the need for new widebody aircraft (you can't divert narrow body shorthaul aircraft currently flying to Frankfurt or Paris and use them to fly to Santiago or Sydney).

Understand what you are saying, Misti, but surely the airlines cut the routes because with limited capacity, they found other routes more profitable? When there is more capacity it is easier to run routes that had previously seemed more marginal.