Brexit: Hard or Soft - Poll

[danny la rouge]

If there was an option for "whatever they do will be about fucking us over anyway" I'd vote for that. That was my first instinct about the referendum and I should have stuck with it.

If there's a scenario where May gets burned, the EU gets burned, and the people rise up and hang everyone who has anything to do with the Sun, I'll go for that one.

 

[NoXion]

Whatever Brussels says, we should not pay them a single corroded penny for leaving the EU.

 

[mather]

Whatever Brussels says, we should not pay them a single corroded penny for leaving the EU.

Agreed. One figure I have seen is a whopping £88 billion with the more conservative figures being around £50 billion, fuck that! It just shows the EU up to be the rotten, corrupt protection racket that it is. We would be better of dealing with Al Capone were he still alive.

 

[mather]

To think of all the better things that money could be spent on such as assisting the Grenfell residents or dealing once and for all with the housing crisis, instead of wasting it on German bankers and Eurocrats.

 

[Brainaddict]

Agreed. One figure I have seen is a whopping £88 billion with the more conservative figures being around £50 billion, fuck that! It just shows the EU up to be the rotten, corrupt protection racket that it is. We would be better of dealing with Al Capone were he still alive.

I don't want to get into the rights and wrongs of the UK having to pay to leave on good terms, but £50bn is the yearly budget of a single government department. In government budget terms it's not small, but as a one-off payment it's not that large. It's comparable to the (realistic rather than claimed) cost of buying a single defence system we'll never use (Trident). On that topic, who is to say the EU would spend the money any worse than a Tory government? The EU at least believes in spending money in poor areas in order to create jobs - not something the Tories would ever willingly do: The budget explained - Where does the money go? - Budget

I guess I'm just saying, if you want to get indignant about how government money is spent, the EU divorce bill is here today and gone tomorrow - it seems a shame that it will attract much more fuss than the shite governments spunk money on every day of the week (their friends' private companies for instance).

 

[SpookyFrank]

Whatever Brussels says, we should not pay them a single corroded penny for leaving the EU.

Tell Merkel she can have the money just as soon as she pays all those war reparations to Greece.

 

[NoXion]

I don't want to get into the rights and wrongs of the UK having to pay to leave on good terms, but £50bn is the yearly budget of a single government department. In government budget terms it's not small, but as a one-off payment it's not that large. It's comparable to the (realistic rather than claimed) cost of buying a single defence system we'll never use (Trident). On that topic, who is to say the EU would spend the money any worse than a Tory government? The EU at least believes in spending money in poor areas in order to create jobs - not something the Tories would ever willingly do: The budget explained - Where does the money go? - Budget

I guess I'm just saying, if you want to get indignant about how government money is spent, the EU divorce bill is here today and gone tomorrow - it seems a shame that it will attract much more fuss than the shite governments spunk money on every day of the week (their friends' private companies for instance).

It's not about the money per se, it's about the principle of not even acknowledging the EU protection racket, and it's about not setting a nasty precedent for any other country following the United Kingdom out of the EU after Brexit. Making even the most token of symbolic payments would be conceding too much, the EU will take the piss as much as they think they can get away with, out of spite for us leaving, and as a warning to other EU countries that might make a similar jump.

So no, not a single brass farthing should be paid to the EU for leaving.

 

[Yossarian]

Whatever Brussels says, we should not pay them a single corroded penny for leaving the EU.

Should Brussels pay 100% of the pensions of British civil servants who worked for the EU for decades?

The European Union isn't something separate from Britain right now, it's an enterprise that is around 10% British, so of course there's going to be some kind of bill to pay to disentangle Britain from the many contracts it is involved in.

 

[NoXion]

Should Brussels pay 100% of the pensions of British civil servants who worked for the EU for decades?

The European Union is partially a British enterprise, and it's something Britain's deeply entangled in with all kinds of commitments and contracts it can't just walk away from without consequences - there's going to be an exit bill of some kind, and it sounds like it will go up with every day that Theresa May's highly skilled negotiators are talking.

Why can't we pay for our civil servants' pensions, and let the other EU countries do likewise with their own? As far as I'm concerned that would not be paying to leave the EU, but paying to ensure that people get a worthwhile retirement. Assuming of course that the current arrangement needs to change, I don't know much about pensions but I'm pretty sure that unless EU and UK pension laws are significantly revised all prior obligations would remain.

I'm talking about extra charges incurred as a result of leaving. The EU saying that the UK should pay for a full five years' membership when the UK will be gone in two years, kind of thing.

 

[Raheem]

Why can't we pay for our civil servants' pensions, and let the other EU countries do likewise with their own?

Because the civil servants are employed by the EU and they're not attached to specific governments. It's the employer that is liable for the pensions, and the individual states that are then responsible for a share of that. I suppose we could take on the pensions of EU employees who happen to be British, but that would be a bit odd, and my guess is that would probably work out more expensive for us.

I'm talking about extra charges incurred as a result of leaving. The EU saying that the UK should pay for a full five years' membership when the UK will be gone in two years, kind of thing.

The EU hasn't asked for anything specific yet, but what you're suggesting is extremely unlikely. It's likely we will be asked to continue to contribute something to the EU budget up to 2020, because that's when the current EU budget cycle ends. But a lot are all kinds of cases where that will actually be perfectly reasonable. In some cases, the UK will have signed contracts that are valid regardless of our EU membership or non-membership. Then there are programmes that we will either want to continue to be part of, or else we need to be making a decision nowish (otherwise, for example, ERASMUS students will be suddenly be getting letters telling them to make their way back home). And there will be things that need to be finished once they have started (you can't build half a sports centre).

It's all a bit academic anyway, because even if we didn't pay for these things as part of the divorce bill, we're likely to be in some form of interim arrangement or extended time until at least 2020, so we will still end up paying one way or another.

 

[Sea Star]

I voted remain and I still want remain

 

[A380]

think about all the innocent fun young scamps could have hurling penny buns at them.

Fuck that, I'd poke them with a stick with a horse's head handle.

 

[tim]

whatever people may want is unlikely to be achieved owing to the utter incompetence of the british negotiators.

But we to have GCHQ which mean we intercept all the communications of the European elites and we own most of the tax havens and know what those elites have stashed away for a rainy day, so we should be able to blackmail our way to a decent deal

 

[bi0boy]

Should Brussels pay 100% of the pensions of British civil servants who worked for the EU for decades?

The European Union isn't something separate from Britain right now, it's an enterprise that is around 10% British, so of course there's going to be some kind of bill to pay to disentangle Britain from the many contracts it is involved in.

The EU agreed that any member may leave with two years notice without automatically paying for any of these things. They could have written a divorce payment into the treaty, but they chose not to.

 

[Pickman's model]

But we to have GCHQ which mean we intercept all the communications of the European elites and we own most of the tax havens and know what those elites have stashed away for a rainy day, so we should be able to blackmail our way to a decent deal

No they'll still bugger it up

 

[redsquirrel]

I voted remain and I still want remain

You still personally think the UK should remain or you want the UK to remain regardless of the result of the referendum?

 

[HoratioCuthbert]

As ever I can't add to the great responses but I offer this song for the end credits after the wrecking ball has destroyed the lot

 

[Andrew Hertford]

Well if your powers of divination politics wise are anything to go by, the EU itself will not exist in 2019.

That's something worth thinking about, how about a post-EU union once we start getting some left-wing govs elected in Europe?

That’s some pretty bold divination yourself. When will these new left wing governments start being elected in Europe?

 

[J Ed]

That’s some pretty bold divination yourself. When will these new left wing governments start being elected in Europe?

Syriza already exists, the current Portuguese government is reliant on votes from Greens, Trotskyists and the Portuguese Communist Party.

 

[Andrew Hertford]

Syriza already exists, the current Portuguese government is reliant on votes from Greens, Trotskyists and the Portuguese Communist Party.

So a union with Greece and Portugal instead of with France, Germany, Italy, Spain etc etc.....

Do Greece and Portugal even want that?

 

[J Ed]

So a union with Greece and Portugal instead of with France, Germany, Italy, Spain etc etc.....

Do Greece and Portugal even want that?

Well it's a good thing that we know that politics is always going to stay the same and there is no room to transform the future into what we actually want rather than resign ourselves to misery.

 

[Andrew Hertford]

(((J Ed)))

 

[J Ed]

(((J Ed)))

No, I'm saying that is what you are doing, or trying to do. You are trying to police the borders of what is politically possible, which is an incredible thing to do at a time when you have just been shown how porous they are and how none of your assumptions hold up to reality.

 

[ska invita]

I'm curious what precisely people think will happen if no deal is reached? (a real possibility)...

I've read a lot of pieces on this and its hard to find agreement on what it really means, but i think at the very least its true that No Deal doesn't actually mean No Deals, rather it means instead of an orderly transition there'll be a default to WTO rules and a generally more punitive, heavily bureaucratised state from which there will slowly be a rewriting and renegotiating. The complexity of those deals means that process could take many years.

In practice it seems likely lots of businesses and institutions go the the wall... I gather some universities are in a panic about this, for example. Recession would be almost inevitable. It would hurt the UK far more than it would hurt anyone else.

The consequences seem so bad that I cant believe the Tories would really consider it...their reputation would be shot for decades. And from what I hear the government aren't particularly preparing for this eventuality - it requires a massive amount of work from the civil service, and that work isn't happening, and its not work that can be knocked up quickly.

Therefore I expect the Crash Out threat is purely there as a bargaining position. Most commentators seem to believe the EU negotiators don't believe the UK will follow through with it, so they are treating it as an empty threat.

Thats the view from the vast majority of commentators ... curious what urban thinks

 

[Raheem]

I'm curious what precisely people think will happen if no deal is reached? (a real possibility)...

I've read a lot of pieces on this and its hard to find agreement on what it really means, but i think at the very least its true that No Deal doesn't actually mean No Deals, rather it means instead of an orderly transition there'll be a default to WTO rules and a generally more punitive, heavily bureaucratised state from which there will slowly be a rewriting and renegotiating. The complexity of those deals means that process could take many years.

In practice it seems likely lots of businesses and institutions go the the wall... I gather some universities are in a panic about this, for example. Recession would be almost inevitable. It would hurt the UK far more than it would hurt anyone else.

The consequences seem so bad that I cant believe the Tories would really consider it...their reputation would be shot for decades. And from what I hear the government aren't particularly preparing for this eventuality - it requires a massive amount of work from the civil service, and that work isn't happening, and its not work that can be knocked up quickly.

Therefore I expect the Crash Out threat is purely there as a bargaining position. Most commentators seem to believe the EU negotiators don't believe the UK will follow through with it, so they are treating it as an empty threat.

Thats the view from the vast majority of commentators ... curious what urban thinks

Hmg would never willingly opt to crash out, but there's still a risk of that happening if our brightest and best mistake the negotiations for a poker game, which it looks reasonably likely they will.

 

[Rob Ray]

Therefore I expect the Crash Out threat is purely there as a bargaining position. Most commentators seem to believe the EU negotiators don't believe the UK will follow through with it, so they are treating it as an empty threat.

Thats the view from the vast majority of commentators ... curious what urban thinks

Basically that. Sabre rattling to keep the headbangers quiet while they get through the unedifying process of being bullied to fuck by an economic entity five times larger than Britain (in GDP terms). Followed most likely by being bullied to fuck by the US and China. The next few years are going to be very painful viewing for the John Bull mob.

 

[campanula]

Leave/Crash out.
I am not usually such a black/white, either/or sort but in this case, I can think of no other honourable course of action...especially since I have been opposed to the EU since forever. Obviously, I would have preferred the UK to have been better placed than being under the heel of a bunch of Tory Twats but the choice had to be made and I think anything else, particularly the mealy-mouthed 'soft' option is just pumping in needless transfusions to a dying patient and prolonging the neoliberal death throes into a firesale, looting and pillage mode.

 

[Rob Ray]

Lol, honour.

 

[campanula]

Lol, honour.

Yeah, fair enough. I did wonder if I should say that...but I did vote with a degree of principle (at least in my small world) and I can't really see how it would be possible to engage with an EU which has been so devoid of principles of fairness and social justice, even with the highminded international, anti war aspect)...so yeah, it honestly feels like the best option - to start anew, from a position which is not utterly defiled by the troika and a rapacious political stance where everything is monetised and profit, at any expense, rules overall.

 

[Rob Ray]

Fresh starts always sound good, but politics and economics don't really work like that. Everything's always built on or continuing something else, goods can't just stop flowing, industries can't tear down and rejig their production lines on a dime, countries remember the old deals and what's owing. "Crashing out" isn't really "crashing out," it's just a mess of poorly-understood compromises and unknowns which'll eventually get mashed together using mostly the old systems.