Brexit consequences

[Spinflight]

Can't find the old one, despite a search. Hence a year on...

I started it to compare the doom and gloom predictions from people who should know better, especially the treasury, to actual observable facts.

Thus far the treasury predicted our borrowing costs would soar by over 130 points. In fact they're down about 100.

No trade deals possible before (I forget the date they said, was far in the future though) compared to actual negotiations beginning with the USA later this month with the president firmly behind them. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India, South Korea and several others I've forgotten have shown a great desire for a deal quickly.

Ftse 100 and 250 are well up, just shy of 7500.

Best of all from a macro economic perspective is inflation touching 3%. When you are £1800 billion in debt rating that away with inflation is far preferable to actually paying it off.

Growth has dropped a bit, though nowhere near the instant recession that was predicted. Bit early to say though this is likely due to the referendum.

External investment is actually nicely up, with several major companies announcing various large commitments.

Things could be rosier, though it would be a struggle to describe them generally as bad, quite contrary to 'informed' opinions. Even the oecd recently ate their pre referendum words.

Release I would like to see this research, if you can find it. Even if many workers are happy, it does not mean that others aren't getting royally fucked over. Not just are they often used as a loophole to get around legislation, but it can also be very difficult for come to prove their earnings to landlords and mortgage providers. Working regulations are there to protect those who would otherwise be weak. They should, when designed and enforced properly, rebalance the power dynamic. But the world, technology, and the structure of society changes, and regulations must evolve in order to continue protecting those who need it, and I do not think the laws we currently have are good enough anymore.

The idea of special agreements for higher quality products works in theory but not in reality (except in tiny volumes). If you look at an average British supermarket, consumers make buying decisions based on price. The EU have an excess of agricultural products so I doubt they are going to offer us preferential access to their markets, which leaves UK farmers producing high quality, high cost products in search of export markets. At the same time, the UK's desire to enter in to free trade agreements with third countries ie the USA, will likely to result in cheap imports as we don't have sufficient bargaining powers on our own. And again, the USA are hardly in need of beef from us (except in some tiny niche capacity). Therefore, the risk is that UK farmers won't be able to afford to maintain current EU animal welfare and environmental standards.

Sanscollier That makes sense. So, one farmer may be able to export his organic Aberdeen angus beef to a niche, expensive market in America, but most farmers wont be able to export their regular, "basic" beef at a competitive price, unless regulations are lowered?

Release fair enough to vote to leave for other reasons as long as people are aware that this may have very significant unexpected consequences i.e. leave the EU and we may well find we cannot afford maintain high environmental and high farming welfare standards, as outlined below.

Indeed Squishy the USA is groaning with good quality, and not so good quality (ie stuffed with dodgy growth hormone) beef of its own.

Here's a couple of articles squishy. From a quick search I can't see any thing more recent and it may be that all the articles (there are quite a lot saying this) are talking about the same piece of research, I don't know.

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/zero-hours-workers-are-as-happy-as-other-employees-a6759111.html

www.cipp.org.uk/news-publications/news/zhccipd.html

I'm not trying to argue that all zhc are fine. I'm sure there are plenty of people on them who are being badly exploited. I think it is just the way zhc are often discussed in a detail and context free way which I find unhelpful. The situation is more complex than zhc bad, other contracts good. I'm sure everyone knows that, but it's often shortcircuited in discussions.

GraceGrape

There is no such thing as a 'Soft' Brexit, only a Brexit, if anyone bothers to listen to what senior EU bosses say - if we insist on 'Freedom of Movement' ending and stopping the European Court of Justice riding over our laws, withing the four Single Market conditions.

'Hard Brexit' or 'no Brexit' for Britain – Tusk

'No revenge' in Brexit but market access needs migration – Juncker

And as the EU does far more trade with us, there is no reason EU trade will not still exist under similar conditions to now as mutually beneficial.

AS for the rest of the world, Australia did a trade deal with the U.S. in 15-months, and there is a lot of pre negotiation work that is being done, already.

There is no such thing as a 'Soft' Brexit, only a Brexit, if anyone bothers to listen to what senior EU bosses say - if we insist on 'Freedom of Movement' ending and stopping the European Court of Justice riding over our laws, withing the four Single Market conditions.

Well let's not insist on those things then

Why can't we set/negotiate the standards and restrictions we want on food in the same way as the EU does with imports from USA? Why does having an individual trade deal equal chlorinated chickens?

1- Much smaller market post Brexit
2- US very much a vulture capitalist enterprise
3- Imbalance of power: US very much holding all the cards, knows UK desperate for any deal
4- How would that improve the bottom line of any US company?
5- How would that contribute to the bottom line of Monsanto?

(And it's not just growth hormones in cattle that consumers should be wary of - what animals are eating in US feedlots should be a concern to consumers, and also general conditions in feedlots.)

And of course, the big question remains, what sort of access to the European market would American agribusiness get after Brexit? Very clearly, the EU will be doing all it can to make sure the UK does not become a back door America can use to gain access to EU markets.

And as the EU does far more trade with us, there is no reason EU trade will not still exist under similar conditions to now as mutually beneficial.

Nope.

Not if the UK insists on a trade deal with the US that includes agricultural products or partially finished goods to be assembled in the UK, and many more items the EU would find objectionable.

More than growth hormones and animal welfare the practice which bothers me the most is the over use of antibiotics in livestock for non-therapeutic reasons. I think the US has restricted the use of medically important antibiotics now, at least. But they were much slower than the EU in doing this.

On US and meat imports I am unclear why they would be able to compete successfully with either UK production or current imports? Prompted to ask the question because I was surprised to learn recently that when a Scottish LA couldn't source Scottish chicken for schools due to exclusive supply arrangements between local farmers and supermarkets their import source was Thailand.

I thought brexit was going to cost us jobs? Three million according to many leading remainers.

How do we explain the 324,000 jobs created in the last year, since the referendum, then?

You do realise, Spinflight, that Brexit hasn't happened yet???

In the meantime, the UK can continue to trade.

The collapsed pound as a result of Brexit means that the real value of wages is sinking considerably as wage growth slips further behind inflation.

news.sky.com/story/wage-growth-slips-further-behind-inflation-ons-10945485

I doubt many here are joyful of the fact that the real value of their wages is sinking.

Sadly abi this thread is to look at the predictions made both before and after the referendum and judge them against reality.

The treasury for instance predicted that unemployment would rise considerably, indeed specifically that the rate would rise from 5% to 6.6% one year after the referendum.

One year after the referendum unemployment has actually fallen by 1%.

A simple Google search for brexit unemployment predictions shows many more in the same timescale, some higher, some lower but all expecting unemployment to rise considerably.

All, demonstrably are and were, completely wrong. Not just in scale but in direction too. :)

The reality of brexit has no relation it appears to the scare mongering.

"The reality of brexit has no relation it appears to the scare mongering."

Absolutely Spin. But in true mn fashion, dont let reality get in the way of a good brexit/leave voter bashing. Weve all changed our minds dont ya know.

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/03/29/attitudes-brexit-everything-we-know-so-far/

Err, we haven't left the EU yet.
And according to today's news the negotiations are not going too well. In fact our team don't seem to have a clue as to what they are doing.

GladAllOver

Is that why Labour’s Emily Thornberry, standing in for Jeremy Corbyn, used all her questions on EU negotiations and in so many words, wants to ensure that the UK accepts a 'bad deal', rather than walk away from one?

Because she knows that walking away with no deal would be absolutely catastrophic? (Bad for the EU as well, but even worse for the UK) Despite all the bravado shown on here, and by some politicians.

Can assure you squishy, we're deeply rooted in reality. Happy to leave the dis-information to the europhiles.

"Because she knows that walking away with no deal would be absolutely catastrophic? (Bad for the EU as well, but even worse for the UK) Despite all the bravado shown on here, and by some politicians."

Catastrophic for the EU certainly. Given that Modi is demanding a trade deal before we ever leave, and the USA, Australia and China are all looking for quick deals there is nothing even remotely catastrophic in this for the UK.

The EU you see rather forgets what we bring to the table. Take merely one aspect, Intel and reconnaissance.

As members of the five eyes network we have access to American Intel from the nsa, cia, the massive network of spy satellites as well as our own considerable capabilities and those of the other anglosphere nations.

No EU country on the other hand has any assets of this type.

Just this one capability area, which is vital for any supposed super power, would probably cost more than $100 billion a year. Starting from scratch though I'd guess it would need ten to fifteen years to get anything even slightly comparable. Especially satellites.

If you think the EU will forsake such things after we leave then you are kidding yourself, and it will be existing members who will have to pay for it. Once we leave the EU is deaf, dumb and blind... Unless as May hinted in the article 50 letter some accommodation is reached on security matters.

Course there's other areas too where the EU position is going to be dramatically weakened.

Good luck to them. :)

squishy..... as the large entity representing 27 other members, a deal at all is totally in the EUs hands if also shows willing to 'compromise', which so far with their strict negotiating agenda and so many EU 'chiefs' e.g. Verhofstadt, putting their threats etc in - that is not so far evident - unless someone can show me 'a sign' that they have.

So the UK 'appeasers', especially in Westminster, saying don't say anything to upset them, or pay them what they want, do the UK people/taxpayer no favours whatsoever - in fact, being seen to take away government options, just hardens the EU's position.

Yes, of course the UK has some bargaining positions, just not very many of them. Certainly not enough to prompt a "give us everything we want or we'll take our ball" type negotiation that TM seems to favour!

And can we please stop with this ridiculous "the EU trades more with us than we do with them" nonsense! The percentage of trade the EU stands to lose is considerably smaller than the other way around. Trying to spin this by using absolute terms is lying disingenuity at its most extreme.