Is Brexit actually going to happen?

[MightyTibberton]

Back on whether or not it'll happen and in what form.

From the Guardian:

"ITV’s Robert Peston has written an interesting post on his Facebook page about Brexit. Picking up on the FT story (see 11.44am), he says Michael Gove, the environment secretary, is now backing a “blind Brexit”. Here’s an extract.
"My understanding is that one of the Brexit campaign’s two big beasts, the environment secretary Michael Gove, has arrived at the perhaps startling view that the least worst option now is what some are styling “a blind Brexit”.
"This would be to recognise that parliament is too divided and too much time has already been wasted for a detailed plan for our future relationship with the EU to be negotiated and agreed in time for the summits in October or December.
"Instead the withdrawal agreement - which formalises a default plan to keep open the Northern Ireland border and around £40bn of divorce payments by the UK - would be ratified by EU leaders, together with the highest level guiding principles for the UK’s future relationship with the EU.
"In other words, we would leave the EU not having a clue whether Brexit would ultimately involve membership of the single market like Norway, or the customs union like Turkey, or associate status like Ukraine or having a Canadian style free trade agreement.
"To repeat, Brexit on 29 March 2019 would be blind."

I don't really understand what "highest level guiding principles for the UK's future relationship with the EU" quite means, and exactly how this differs from agreeing a Withdrawal Agreement and Transition Period and then going on to negotiate some sort of trading arrangement during that time. Or how "big" a "beast" - yoiks! - Michael Gove actually is when it comes to deciding this sort of stuff.

 

[Santino]

Back on whether or not it'll happen and in what form.

From the Guardian:

"ITV’s Robert Peston has written an interesting post on his Facebook page about Brexit. Picking up on the FT story (see 11.44am), he says Michael Gove, the environment secretary, is now backing a “blind Brexit”. Here’s an extract.
"My understanding is that one of the Brexit campaign’s two big beasts, the environment secretary Michael Gove, has arrived at the perhaps startling view that the least worst option now is what some are styling “a blind Brexit”.
"This would be to recognise that parliament is too divided and too much time has already been wasted for a detailed plan for our future relationship with the EU to be negotiated and agreed in time for the summits in October or December.
"Instead the withdrawal agreement - which formalises a default plan to keep open the Northern Ireland border and around £40bn of divorce payments by the UK - would be ratified by EU leaders, together with the highest level guiding principles for the UK’s future relationship with the EU.
"In other words, we would leave the EU not having a clue whether Brexit would ultimately involve membership of the single market like Norway, or the customs union like Turkey, or associate status like Ukraine or having a Canadian style free trade agreement.
"To repeat, Brexit on 29 March 2019 would be blind."

I don't really understand what "highest level guiding principles for the UK's future relationship with the EU" quite means, and exactly how this differs from agreeing a Withdrawal Agreement and Transition Period and then going on to negotiate some sort of trading arrangement during that time. Or how "big" a "beast" - yoiks! - Michael Gove actually is when it comes to deciding this sort of stuff.

Surrender and declare victory.

 

[free spirit]

nationalisation of an industry and wealth redistribution via high taxation would also undoubtedly harm “the economy” because of the way “the economy” is defined and measured. So, he wants to know, are you against all things that harm “the economy” or only this specific thing that harms “the economy”?

Nationalisation reduces corporate income with no compensatory increase in private income and so appears in the figures as a contraction in GDP and hence damage to “the economy”.

Well I hope that I have now convinced you, since it comes from the ONS themselves. When they say that nationalised industries account for 10%, they are talking about the cost of wages and the spend on materials. This is true whichever method you use to calculate GDP. It’s right there in the ONS document.

The ONS quotes in this latest post are unsurprisingly saying the same thing as I was given that I was referencing them in my previous post.

What I think you're now saying is that nationalisation removes corporate profit from the GDP, which is a very different thing to corporate income - income being turnover in business terms.

In which case, yes at a very simplistic level nationalised industry may be viewed as resulting in a very minor reduction in GDP due to the loss of the profit element of the calculation, but with the proviso that nationalised industries tend to pay higher wages at least in part because they don't have to distribute part of their revenue into corporate profits, and those wages mostly go to people who then spend them in the real economy much faster than shareholders tend to do with their dividend payments - ie the velocity of the circulation of that money is likely to be significantly higher and therefore have a greater impact on GDP than the corporate profits they've replaced.

Basically I disagree with your original statement as well as your later revised explanation of what you meant, because it's another false simplification of what's actually a relatively complex economic situation with multiple variables meaning that it won't necessarily have the impact you're assigning to it.

I also disagree with your point about wealth redistribution via higher taxation harming the economy / reducing GDP for similar reasons.

I appreciate that you were merely attempting to illustrate a point about how the economy is defined, but these simplistic statements have a very bad recent history of ending up becoming the basis for policy / these and similar misunderstandings underpin much of neoliberal thinking from the last 40 years despite being demonstrably wrong.

 

[hot air baboon]

seems sensible if it can be pulled off bearing in mind "leaving" was always going to be a process rather than an event & the whole Article 50 procedure / timetable was in no way designed to be advantageous to the leaving country ( or even ever used come to that ) or took much account of any of the actual practicalities - to that extent its a contrived cliff-edge.

and exactly how this differs from agreeing a Withdrawal Agreement and Transition Period

I presume it was initially envisaged that the end point towards which we are "transitioing" would actually be known when we embarked on it

 

[SpackleFrog]

What it means to me? My main interest here is whether Brexit really opens a possibility for political change in the UK - which seems one of the main Lexit arguments. An indicator of the plausibility of that happening would be evidence that people voted for Brexit as a conscious first step towards unwinding many years of neoliberal policy. Because that would make it seem realistic to hope that the second step would be voting for an administration that did that unwinding. Anyone who thinks those two (potentially but not necessarily contradictory) things, by definition, is someone who believes that neoliberal policy is at the root of the problems they face, and if there are a lot of those people then there would be hope that a government could be elected on a manifesto of doing the unwinding.

Evidence that the Brexit vote is linked directly to consequences of austerity is not the same thing. I don't doubt that link. But it doesn't tell us much about what those same voters are going to vote for post-Brexit. Because that entirely depends on what they see the causes as. Not what some internet forum eggheads say the causes are.

I think you want something that is complicated to be simple

 

[Poi E]

I just came sprinting to the thread to post it

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econo.../cage/manage/publications/381-2018_fetzer.pdf

Pity the author did not put any time into regional analysis. The UKIP vote at the last GE being ten times higher per capita in E&W than in Scotland surely should have shown a risk of analysis on a UK-wide basis (despite certain adjustments for local conditions.)

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

Back on whether or not it'll happen and in what form.

From the Guardian:

"ITV’s Robert Peston has written an interesting post on his Facebook page about Brexit. Picking up on the FT story (see 11.44am), he says Michael Gove, the environment secretary, is now backing a “blind Brexit”. Here’s an extract.
"My understanding is that one of the Brexit campaign’s two big beasts, the environment secretary Michael Gove, has arrived at the perhaps startling view that the least worst option now is what some are styling “a blind Brexit”.
"This would be to recognise that parliament is too divided and too much time has already been wasted for a detailed plan for our future relationship with the EU to be negotiated and agreed in time for the summits in October or December.
"Instead the withdrawal agreement - which formalises a default plan to keep open the Northern Ireland border and around £40bn of divorce payments by the UK - would be ratified by EU leaders, together with the highest level guiding principles for the UK’s future relationship with the EU.
"In other words, we would leave the EU not having a clue whether Brexit would ultimately involve membership of the single market like Norway, or the customs union like Turkey, or associate status like Ukraine or having a Canadian style free trade agreement.
"To repeat, Brexit on 29 March 2019 would be blind."

I don't really understand what "highest level guiding principles for the UK's future relationship with the EU" quite means, and exactly how this differs from agreeing a Withdrawal Agreement and Transition Period and then going on to negotiate some sort of trading arrangement during that time. Or how "big" a "beast" - yoiks! - Michael Gove actually is when it comes to deciding this sort of stuff.

 

[Poi E]

Michael Gove, a "big beast." Jesus, Peston, stop doffing the cap. Gove has no more clue or ability than any of them.

 

[agricola]

Michael Gove, a "big beast." Jesus, Peston, stop doffing the cap. Gove has no more clue or ability than any of them.

I think he does, though admittedly it is a very low bar to get over.

 

[kabbes]

Maybe he meant “big breast”, ie a tit.

 

[mod]

If we have another referendum, which we might, the result will be virtually the same. Perhaps with a slight increase in the Leave vote, say from 52% to 53 or 54%. Any idea that Remain would get a huge swing is just magical thinking. Large numbers of people have not changed their mind on the issue and some remain voters will see it as an attempt to reverse a democratic decision.

Couldn't disagree more. remain would win easily. Many of the people who voted leave are dead for a start. Many who 'wanted' to vote remain are now eligible to vote. I know several leave voters who regret their decision.

 

[Supine]

So work at the European Medicines Agency slows down as staff leave rather than move from London to Amsterdam.

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/brexit-forces-ema-to-suspend-tasks-as-job-loss-forecast-jumps

 

[kebabking]

Couldn't disagree more. remain would win easily. Many of the people who voted leave are dead for a start. Many who 'wanted' to vote remain are now eligible to vote. I know several leave voters who regret their decision.

likewise I know several - quite a few actually, including me - remain voters who would now vote leave. there are different reasons for their change of vote, but all of them would include the democratic issue. the political class asked for an instruction, it was given very clearly, they don't get to just keep on asking until they get an answer they find more acceptable or easier to implement.

in management terms - and they do work for us, not we for them - its JFDI (Just Fucking Do It).

 

[JimW]

they don't get to just keep on asking until they get an answer they find more acceptable or easier to implement

Unless it's Ireland and the Lisbon Treaty

 

[butchersapron]

Couldn't disagree more. remain would win easily. Many of the people who voted leave are dead for a start. Many who 'wanted' to vote remain are now eligible to vote. I know several leave voters who regret their decision.

Life in the bubble is getting crazier by the day. Each morning a new horror.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

likewise I know several - quite a few actually, including me - remain voters who would now vote leave. there are different reasons for their change of vote, but all of them would include the democratic issue. the political class asked for an instruction, it was given very clearly, they don't get to just keep on asking until they get an answer they find more acceptable or easier to implement.

in management terms - and they do work for us, not we for them - its JFDI (Just Fucking Do It).

In my close of ten houses I have spoken with four neighbours who all voted remain. All four have said they would now vote leave. This was a remain area, but even the MP has moved from remain to leave now.
So not sure what world mod is living in, but it’s far removed from round ‘ere.

 

[DexterTCN]

It must be all that good news that keeps coming out about brexit.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

It must be all that good news that keeps coming out about brexit.

Yeah, it’s almost as if people are bored shitless with the never ending whinging and they just want to get on with it. Weird, huh.

 

[JimW]

It's like the attacks on Corbyn, put any song on repeat and eventually everyone stops listening.

 

[redsquirrel]

Two nations eh. I think this last little exchange has been very very revealing.

Indeed. You =can have politics you want so long as it's Remain or Leave.

 

[DexterTCN]

Yeah, it’s almost as if people are bored shitless with the never ending whinging and they just want to get on with it. Weird, huh.

Yeah...that's not happening.

Anymore than swathes of people across the land are turning from remain to leave.

Does anyone have any data on that one?

 

[kebabking]

It must be all that good news that keeps coming out about brexit.

if you wish to know why you just don't grasp this, the only bad news about brexit for a leave voter is that it doesn't happen - the rest is just fluff and the price they are willing to pay to get what they want.

its very much like getting divorced - no one decides to not get divorced because their solicitor tells them its going to be a nightmare and cost them an arm and a leg, they accept it as the temporary price of getting out of an otherwise lifelong relationship that makes them fundamentally unhappy and that they no longer wish to be in.

that's it. begining, middle, end.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Yeah...that's not happening.

Anymore than swathes of people across the land are turning from remain to leave.

Does anyone have any data on that one?

My MP has switched, many people here have said they’d switch. Why do you doubt that?

 

[redsquirrel]

My MP has switched, many people here have said they’d switch. Why do you doubt that?

The polls are lying (like they did during the Scottish independence referendum)

 

[Yogibear]

The british people voted for it so of course it has to happen. Unless of course you want to suspend your democracy when all bets are off!

 

[sealion]

Many of the people who voted leave are dead for a start.

Do old remainers not die? That posh wine must be good.

 

[Yossarian]

If I'd had a crystal ball to see how things would turn out I would have voted Remain instead of abstaining.

I won't qualify to vote in another one because I'll have been out of Britain for more than 10 years, and I don't think it'd be a good idea before about 2026 anyway, but I think the outcome would depend on getting some of the 28% who abstained to vote, not on getting many who voted on either side to change their minds.

 

[MickiQ]

If I'd had a crystal ball to see how things would turn out I would have voted Remain instead of abstaining.

I won't qualify to vote in another one because I'll have been out of Britain for more than 10 years, and I don't think it'd be a good idea before about 2026 anyway, but I think the outcome would depend on getting some of the 28% who abstained to vote, not on getting many who voted on either side to change their minds.

I voted Remain but not for anything to do with the EU but because I believed Chuckles only cared about uniting the Tory backbenches and hadn't thought it through, I pretty much feared what has actually happened.
I would vote Remain again for much the same reason to try and contain the damage, it's too late to avoid any at all but maybe it can be minimised, don't think there will be another public vote though both the Leave and Remain camps would fear the outcome.

 

[Hollis]

I'm fairly confident that remain would win a vote now. Interesting radio show with Giesla Stewart who chaired Vote Leave. She said she was angry with Cameron in the first place for calling a referundum, given that it was cynically offered for internal party politics, and this wasn't really the way to decide big issues in a representative democracy.

 

[mod]

Do old remainers not die? That posh wine must be good.

The vast majority of remainers were younger people.

Source. How did different demographic groups vote in the EU referendum?



What a lovely fucking legacy they have left us with.