To feel really positive about leaving the EU

[kitty1976]

I know there has been lots of fear stories but in a few weeks since the vote we have managed to get a new PM who seems more than capable and we are now in control of our destiny without being ruled by an unelected and unaccountable EU. The EU has for a long time been a basket case and has condemned much of the youth of Southern Europe to decades of unemployment, it's a relief to be out. Do remember we are now free to negotiate our own trade deals with the rest of the world and most countries are not in the EU and seem to do well. There have been so many fear stories which have been peddled by self interest. I wonder in 5 years time how many remainers will be asking to rejoin the EU!!

What do we have to export:

Well, good question. We are in trouble here, but that is the case regardless of our position in the EU. We have services and high end goods, but not nearly enough. We need to address this urgently.

However, it seems to me that the remainers case is for us to be a bridgehead into the EU. A lot of this merely involves laundering dirty money and providing financial services to dodgy oligarchs (and their like). In addition we can pay minimum wage to low skilled people to make cars or steel somewhere far away from the action.

This status quo appeals to a lot posting on here (cui bono). However, is it in the best interest of our future? I cannot provide a long term blueprint for our future outside the EU, which will lead to accusations of ignorance. But nor can anyone; futurology is not science. However, we do have negotiating power, as, for instance, Germany recognises. Equally we could develop a proper education system fit for purpose, a meaningful regional policy (not a fig leaf few 10s of millions) and an immigration policy to attract the best.

According to Trading Economics, the Eurozone growth rate is expected to trend at 1% to 2020. Why? The remainers have produced a lot of facts and figures for what the Eirozone is doing well, but surely this should translate into economic growth. If not, why not?

As for those claiming I have not answered their questions, this is not really an academic forum with referenced point/counterpoint, it is a vague (yet still interesting) exchange of views.

The reality is that most of my questions have also gone unanswered. What I see a lot of is politician-like quoting of a question and then answering a completely different one, or ignoring a critical point that I have included in the question. A few examples (from memory):

My question about importing cheap food from Africa being answered with zero reference to the CAP, the most important factor in European agriculture. All I got was mention of Chinese influence in Africa (they are interested in raw materials, not agriculture) and wonderful EU initiatives in Aftica (interesting but irrelevant).

My question about how much the Cith actually contributed to the economy, taking into account the 2008 bailout, was answered Ignoring the 2008 bailout!! The high side estimate I saw of this was 1.5 trillion.

garlic

Just out of interest and genuine question - who are the 5 people you are writing to today?

Have only managed to write to my MP and am wondering what else I should be doing .

This status quo appeals to a lot posting on here (cui bono). However, is it in the best interest of our future?

But isn't maintaining the status quo a better position than saying that "we don't like it, let's smash it", which appeared to be the Gove/Farage position?Johnson, from his Telegraph article, clearly wanted an EEA agreement. As far as I can tell, the only one of the Leave camp who had thought it through was Gisela Stuart. I found myself wondering if she still had a German passport, so had options to live elsewhere which she has closed off for many others.

Equally we could develop a proper education system fit for purpose,.....
We could, but the blame for this does not lie with the EU. The current messing around does little to address the failures and both Labour and Tory Governments can share the blame.

I wasn't answering your question about Africa, Larry. It was a direct response to Maki79, whom I quoted.

But isn't maintaining the status quo a better position than saying that "we don't like it, let's smash it

Not if

1 you are insulated from the effects of smashing it

OR

2 you have nothing to lose

CAP agriculture type question:
I think the argument is that getting rid of CAP would mean more level playing field for African agriculture to sell their food here, which could mean more cold hard cash into their economy. So what are the other positives? Because problems with lots more non-EU food on our shelves, that I see:

1. Lots more freight miles on our food;
2. Loss of food self-sufficiency for us: 2a) So what happens when crops fail in Africa? 2b Who will get to buy the scarcer/higher priced food, then, Not the Africans, I suppose.
3. Driving up demand for African crops: driving up regular local prices for people who live there
4. Putting extra pressure on more fragile environments; less suited to growing food (not enough water, Kenya has bad drought right now, where will they get more water from??)
5. Lower employment/safety standards, lower environmental regulations, maybe use of agrichemicals not allowed in Europe.
6. Habitat destruction in already pressured ecosystem, as more land becomes profitable to clear native vegetation & grow food on, instead
7. Food grown far away is harder to monitor how it is grown & that it is safe; we can try to insist "We'll still have XYZ regulations on food sold here" but that's a lot harder to enforce & ensure when it's produced outside UK/EU.

Ideally the processed foods should be made in Africa, the big profit margins lie with the upgraded product. Make the biscuits & pot noodles there. Will Brexit mean that UK invests in building African food factories?

Larry so you make a simplistic statement that Africa is desperate to send it's agricultural products to the UK and I respond that actually the situation is a lot more complex than that and that there are many more layers in Africa's trade relations now and link to an article that talks about Africa's increasing relations with other economies including India and South America as well as China, and the importance of EU trade relations . It highlights the fact that China is increasingly realising that it cannot just exploit it's need for commodities and agricultural products. (Dietary habits are changing in China, they have an increasing urban population who are eating more meat with the associated increasing need for cereal based products which their largely rice based (albeit cereal based in the north) cannot meet, and the same applies to all the Asian economies. That wasn't in the article but is a driving factor in China's overseas trade relations. Keeping its emerging urban middle classes happy is vital to political stability and maintaining it's growth rates) You respond it was just about China and they are not interested in agricultural products. so you obviously didn't read it I don't think that we are the ones dodging the argument, though I understand this isn't a fully referenced academic discourse what with it being the weekend and Mumsnet, I don't think that is an excuse to try and get away with sweeping generalisations in the face of quite a lot of highlighting of complexity.

Here is 76 pages outlining the African Unions agricultural policies for the UN just to underline the complexities. It is interesting. Agricultural exports have actually fallen by 50% in the face of feeding it's own increasingly urban population and its export markets are far too dependent on the products such as ground nuts, cocoa (which alone counts for 70 % of exports) which are the inheritance of colonial agricultural policies that were aimed at the needs of the colonising countries, and whose markets are subject to huge fluctuations beyond Africa's control, as highlighted by lljkk, Cocoa being an example of that in the year since the report

Indeed the report highlights many of the other issues lljkk mentions. It also mentions that between the countries of the African Union there is huge disparity, Africa is not a country, from South Africa's developed economy to countries where there are issues of starvation and malnutrition. So the African Union, note a geopolitical block, has as easily as many issues to face in terms of feeding it's own people as gearing up to trade with a growing international market increasingly facing east not North and west for it's agricultural goods.

For sure it highlights issues of inequality within the trading relations with both the EU and WTO but do you really think that it will encounter less when dealing with the U.K. alone? Do you think Andrea Leadham at DEFRA won't be walking a tightrope addressing the issues facing UK farmers, well she probably won't realise it on whatever planet she lives on, but her Sir Humphreys will, post Brexit, and advocating protectionism?

www.un.org/en/africa/osaa/pdf/pubs/2013africanagricultures.pdf

It all just underlines the rubbish that was spouted by the leave campaign appealing to people's colonial perspective on the world, why it appealed to the baby boomers who grew up with atlas's reassuringly painted pink... Such a different world now

And whilst we are talking about meaningless simplification do you really think that the basis of London as one of the three main financial centres of the world is simply laundering money and facilitating the business of dodgy oligarchs, as opposed to managing the finances of businesses and investors, large and small, in global markets? It could be said to be true of Switzerland perhaps, and possibly the degregulated London that Davies thinks will work if we lose the passport. The passport is the advantage that enables London to act as Europe's financial services hub in global markets. Lose the passport and companies will have to set up new hubs in Europe but since no city has all the advantages London had as a centre of gravity , they will likely be fragmented between Paris, Frankfurt, Lisbon and Dublin and Europe's place in financial services will be affected as a result. Do you feel another Brexit fudge coming on?

1 you are insulated from the effects of smashing it
So fine for the likes of Gove, Johnson, Farage and Leadsom then.
2 you have nothing to lose
I suspect that these people will find that they have even more to lose.

larry
Sorry I got back here a bit late today. To me the emerging pattern about a BREXIT plan is that no one had any idea it was going to be a win for Leave side and so no one made a plan. There may be other insidious explanations but I don't want to think about them at this stage.
You have replied my points about our precarious situation in terms of exports and mentioned a very good point yourself:education.
Nearly every same person will agree that you should plan BEFORE taking the decision of a life time (any decision really, not just BREXIT).
What you are talking about is a very long term situation. What you are talking about is going to take decades and decades to develop even if everyone including politicians specially Tories and Labour join forces. I just don't see it happening anytime in near future.
In the mean time, we can all enjoy the fresh forecast that actually the doom and gloom people were right and the economy is grinding to a hault as it takes the impact. (I will come back to post the link In a bit)

One more thing i should add about the discussion of investment in education to develop a sustainable national economy. I have no idea where the ever developing science of this world will go from here. We are an island nation unlike USA who have tremendous resources t their disposal. So when you say we should focus on education, you effectively plan to compete the advances in science and technology developed by USA, EU and all of Asia.
That's really looks mental to me.

I am not an economist.so I don't understand all of it. But this article says what every single one of my family members/friends who are educated in economics/finance/business have been saying for a long time now.
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/17/brexit-impact-horrible-uk-economy-richard-buxton?client=safari#

I still don't understand how Cameron asked for this referendum ? I don't think it's as straightforward as him being tremendously stupid? Can anyone please help me understand this? It is nearly a month soon and I can't still get my head around this.
Also, whoever up the thread was planning activism, can you please tell me who you were writing to? I have tried to engage with my MP and he had no idea what the fuck was I talking about so he blocked me career politician of the highest order it seems.

Cameron was being hounded by Eurosceptics and his borderline UKIP membership was getting antsy on the issues that emerged during Brexit. He offered a referendum to keep everyone happy, knowing that never in a million years would UK commit suicide by voting out.

Oops.

I think he must have continued to believe reason would prevail: he broke every other election pledge, so why not this one? Because he thought he was covering his arse.

I sometimes think I'm the only MNer who noticed Euroskepticism in UK brewing & stewing & increasing for the last 25 yrs. The steady rise of UKIP in election results. The broad endorsement from people at all points in the political spectrum. There was genuine demand for the matter to be settled.

Result dismays me but I can't blame Tories for putting it in last manifesto.

Sadly though the government allowed the EU to become a scapegoat for all sorts of ills many of which had their root in Thatcher's Briain, the decline in manufacturing but also the failure to focus the gains of globalisation and immigration on the places who were struggling the most. During the last election living in a marginal seat I was plagued by Conservative researchers who as well as wanting me to endorse the power of the Davcam brand were also obsessed with immigration. He made it the big issue on which he won elections knowing full well that it was a benefit not a curse, that he couldn't resolve the problem even if he wanted to with free movement in the EU and that he had done nothing to manage the consequences. He couldn't divert resources to a few doctors surgeries in Lincolnshire, and I kid you not when I forced my parents' friends down the funnel that was the source of their "Britain's full" rhetoric because it would have lost him the winning hand.

Nobody sold the benefits of EU membership, even for me as a staunch remain voter out of knowledge of the world's geopolitical and economic balance they are slowly emerging as we face losing them.....

By the way valentine your link sums up the issue. The wealthy who can afford to get advice will simply push their money into areas that will give them better returns, either cashing in on the government increasing borrowing (and having to offer good terms) or diverting money to better investments than the UK can offer (Deutschebank for instance is very competitive because it is priced on being seen as loaded with bad southern European debt but would Germany ever let it fail, they have very deep pockets, much deeper than the UKs) They can afford to play those games and may even lose a bit but that is the game. It is the people who lose their jobs, who still can't get doctor's appointments who lose out as a result of this decision.

I agree, no one sold the benefit of the EU. The leaflet the Govt. sent was pathetic; very thin on detail.

Instead of 'EU regulations, red tape, bla, bla, bla, bla', we could have had a discussion about say EU regs on H & S. This could have been of the 'before the EU xxx lives were lost in the Building Trade, now xxx are still alive, thanks to tighter regulation', sort of argument. Or 'do you want to swim in sewage or from a clean beach? EU regs have brought clean beaches'. I can't remember which thread it was, one of this series maybe, about the 110v requirement for equipment on major building sites. The EU was blamed for causing people to have to replace equipment at great expense, but the emphasis on H&S was glossed over.

DB did try to argue this way, but felt he was wasting his breath.

Yes peregrina - do you like x, y and z about your life? Well they are due to the EU. etc etc

The remain campaign was appalling.

I don't really understand this "we have nothing to lose argument" even the poorest of the poor in Britain will lose out, it can and will get worse for them.

even the poorest of the poor in Britain will lose out, it can and will get worse for them.

The poorest of the poor vote in very low numbers.

It remains to be seen how bad things will get for the poorest.

Most of the people immediately affected are very far from the poorest of the poor.

Society's losers are not the ones worrying about whether their chikdren can dodge uni loan fees by studying in Germany.

Osborne's elective austerity is coming to a premature end.

4 years less of that screw turning could really help a lot of people.

DoinItFine You really think that all the initiatives to cap the welfare budget will get shelved, that there isn't more of the same but worse in the pipeline to restrict the access to a living income for those unable to work, especially in the coming months and years with tax revenues reduced. And that it won't all be covered up by more Daily Mail headlines about the scroungers on benefits, instead of all the people who die prematurely after their access to benefits have been cut? Nothing at all to suggest that. Austerity may be aborted in the sense of increasing borrowing in order to pump money into stimulating the economy in the face of the Brexit effects but absolutely no suggestion that the Conservative Party will back off their policies aimed at reducing the welfare state and the public sector. Think about Theresa May's speech, "if you are just managing" - nothing about if you aren't managing........

And I don't see any tax rises on the horizon for those who do work, to fund greater fairness, in fact quite the opposite, especially at the top end. That corporation tax will fall is a certainty.