Brexit: A New Era for the UK?

[Stavros]

You claim your facts as facts but denounce others as lies. And do you think the PM ever really said 'fuck business' as you think he did?

There is zero evidence as yet either way as to whether Brexit will cost net jobs. Some people will lose jobs but other, new jobs will also be created.

Not my facts, and not my lies.

Claim A, by the Road Haulage Associaton-
The Cabinet Office run by Michael Gove has been officially reprimanded by the UK Statistics Authority for using unpublished and unverifiable data in an attempt to deny that Brexit had caused a massive fall in volumes of trade through British ports.
The criticism follows a story in the Observer on 7 February that cited a survey by the Road Haulage Association (RHA) of its international members showing export volumes had dropped by a staggering 68% in January through British ports and the Channel Tunnel.
The RHA wrote to Gove at the time saying: “Intelligence that we are collecting on an ongoing basis from international hauliers suggests that loads to the EU have reduced by as much as 68%, which can also be evidenced by the increased number of empty trailers which are not currently considered in the statistics.”
The RHA also accused Gove of failing to heed its warnings that trade would be damaged unless there was a dramatic increase in the number of customs officials.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...07q2pNz0LWe60k

Claim B, Response from HMG as reported in Claim A above-
Thanks to the hard work put in by hauliers and traders to get ready for the end of the Brexit transition period, there are no queues at the Short Straits, disruption at the border has so far been minimal and freight movements are now close to normal levels, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/r...y-of-lancaster

And Now for Something Completely Different-

"Asked about corporate concerns over a so-called hard Brexit, at an event for EU diplomats in London last week, Mr Johnson is reported to have replied: "Fuck business."
Mr Johnson, who was reportedly speaking at the time to Rudolf Huygelen, Belgium's ambassador to the EU, was also overheard saying he and others would fight Theresa May's soft Brexit "and win".
The foreign secretary, who was a key figure in the Leave campaign, was pressed on the issue in Parliament by Labour MP Owen Smith, who asked him if the comments were correct and, if so, whether they could be "remotely justified".
"I don't think anybody could doubt the passionate support of this government for business," Mr Johnson said.
"It may be that I have, from time to time, expressed scepticism about some of the views of those who profess to speak up for business."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44618154

I quite agree that some people will lose their jobs, and that new jobs will be created. It has happened in the past, and it will happen again. But when? And how many jobs?

And what about the fact that freedom has been taken away from those citizens in the UK who enjoyed free movement throughout the EU, a right that has been taken away?

Maybe this is The Truth? The insight into Brexit of John Redwood in his FT article of 2017-

"In his FT piece Redwood encourages investors to take their money out of Britain and put it elsewhere. You read that right. The same man who will not let one day pass without emphasising how well Britain is going to do out of Brexit is at the same time talking down the markets and encouraging capital flight. To call this bizarre might be too generous. Still, that’s what disaster capitalists do."
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ney-britain-eu

Remember Edward Heath's campaign 'I'm Backing Britain'? -or not, as in the case of Redwood.

Or Jacob Rees-Mogg, whose Somerset Capital has been in the vanguard of brokers moving their money out of the UK and into the EU, specifically, the Republic of Ireland-

"A leading Brexiteer has suggested it could take 50 years to judge whether Brexit has been an economic success amid fears quitting the European Union will lead to a downturn."
The influential Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who chairs the European Research Group of backbench Tories, was pressed by Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News about whether he would quit if the “economy does take a hit next year” when Brexit happens.
Rees-Mogg insisted the full impact will not be known for “years to come” as he hailed leaving the EU as the “greatest opportunity, economically, for this country”.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...b0de86f48e3566

Are you willing to wait 50 years? What happens in between now and 2070?

[filghy2]

You claim your facts as facts but denounce others as lies. And do you think the PM ever really said 'fuck business' as you think he did?

There is zero evidence as yet either way as to whether Brexit will cost net jobs. Some people will lose jobs but other, new jobs will also be created.

This is the analysis done a few months ago by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies. The logic is pretty simple - if you increase barriers to trade with your predominant trading partner there must be a negative impact on the economy. https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/15079

[Stavros]

This is the analysis done a few months ago by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies. The logic is pretty simple - if you increase barriers to trade with your predominant trading partner there must be a negative impact on the economy. https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/15079

To which I would add that a key problem with the EU-UK Trade Agreement is 'divergence'. Here, for example, is what Boris Johnson said over a year ago, before the very problems we have in Northern ireland emerged in the wake of our more formal exit this year-

"Prime Minister Boris Johnson has indicated he wants the UK to be able to diverge from the European Union rules and regulations after Brexit, with Number 10 saying the future partnership, “must not involve any kind of alignment.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has responded by spelling out the EU’s principle that access to the EU’s market is intrinsically linked to acceptance of the bloc’s rules, institutions and legal obligations. “The more divergence there is, the more distant the partnership has to be,” she said. But in practice the EU’s approach is likely to be even tougher: the moment the UK obtains the right to diverge from EU rules, it will – in most areas – be treated by the EU as if it has already done so. The flexibility to diverge does not come for free, as I explain in my latest analysis for the CER. The UK government claims to have accepted that gaining the freedom to regulate as it sees fit will mean new trade friction. But it is not clear that businesses and the public understand what this means in practice."
https://encompass-europe.com/comment...t-will-cost-uk

Though the author of the above is -or was- more positive about the effects, we now see how in reality divergence can create friction and costs, with Lord Frost as usual blaming the EU for the problems he created in the text of the Agreement he negotiated on behalf of Boris Johnson's govt. Note also, that Divergence may be at its most critical in Financial Services, rather than scallops and sauasages, as these two additional notes from a law firm suggest-

https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-la...-cost-benefits
https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-la...gital-services

Simon Jenkins has written a bracing article on Northern Ireland, and I recommend some of the readers posts too-
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ment-147926201

None of this needed to happen, we were doing fine in the EU and its Single Market before Leave Saboteurs insisted on smashing all the crockery just as dinner was being served.

[Stavros]

A powerful editorial from today's Observer on Brexit. Right now it is a mess, will it ever deliver? First few paragraphs the rest in the link.

"When the British people narrowly voted to leave the EU in 2016, they did not give the government a mandate to wreck our economic and political relationship with Europe. When Boris Johnson won the general election in 2019, he was expected to forge workable new arrangements with the UK’s largest trading partner, not allow exporters to be strangled by red tape and ruinous extra costs. Nor was he given a green light to break legally binding promises.

When Johnson and his rightwing Leave campaign pals claimed to have “got Brexit done” on 31 January last year, they failed to say the patchwork agreement they signed had more holes in it than a Cumbrian coal mine. Johnson did not admit he had fudged crucial issues such as Northern Ireland’s borders, and sold out Britain’s fisheries, in order to claim a bogus victory.
Yet truth will out. Day by bleak day, the epic damage caused by this execrable deception, this shameful Conservative con, becomes ever more evident. No amount of Michael Gove spin can hide the facts. No amount of distortion of official statistics can conceal the harm. Feeble claims by David Frost, Brexit booster-in-chief, that Covid and EU hostility are to blame will not wash. It’s clear where responsibility lies. And “lies” is the operative word.
Johnson and his team cannot dissemble away alarming figures showing UK exports of goods to the EU plunged by 40.7% in January, caused in large part by Brexit bureaucracy, incompetence and delays. That’s a £5.6bn loss when the economy can least afford it. Exports of food and live animals were particularly badly hit, down by 63.6%. Producers of fish and shellfish, who Johnson personally pledged to protect, saw their exports collapse by 83% year on year."
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ssible-to-hide

[obslam]

Just because a pro-left, pro-labour, anti-conservative journal writes shit, that doesn't mean it's true, nor does it mean you should be repeating it.

You can tell the narrative right from the get go - "narrowly voted" my arse. Personally, I support the reduction in food miles, as I think it one of the worst things that harms the environment for no good reason at all.

[Stavros]

Just because a pro-left, pro-labour, anti-conservative journal writes shit, that doesn't mean it's true, nor does it mean you should be repeating it.

You can tell the narrative right from the get go - "narrowly voted" my arse. Personally, I support the reduction in food miles, as I think it one of the worst things that harms the environment for no good reason at all.

The Guardian is not a left-wing newsaper, and since 2015 Labour has been a Brexit party, while 'the left' has been opposed to every version of the EU since the Treaty of Rome of 1957. My own argument, in case you missed it, is that while there are genuine arguments to engage with the fundamental concept of 'Ever Closer Union' that even pre-dates 1957, the pragmatic concern is with trade, for the obvious reason that the EU is the nearest and largest market we have. To support a reduction in 'food miles' for the food industry that has been based on them since 1066 and before, would be comical if it were not so destructive. Better focus on why there are Cherries in winter from Chile, King Prawns from Madagascar or Mange Tout from Kenya.

The result of the Referendum stands, I can't do much about that, and while I support it, I doubt enough UK citizens beieve in 'Ever Closer Union' to want it, just as I am not sure if an Independent Scotland can join the EU on that basis, as well as adopting the Euro as its currency. The bottom line remains, that so far, Brexit has been a damaging experience for trade, and probably shall remain so for this year, maybe more. And that the Leave supporters don't really care, because they never cared about trade anyway, as for them Brexit has always been a political, anti-immigrant, anti-Federalist project.

The only thing one can say about The Guardian -and also The Independent, assuming anyone reads it- is that they print more articles critical of Brexit than any other outlet. That's as good as it gets.

[obslam]

The Guardian is not a left-wing newsaper

Unfortunately you've lost a lot of credibility with that bizarre claim.

[Jericho]

Unfortunately you've lost a lot of credibility with that bizarre claim.

Whilst it's not quite as right-wing as most of the British press, the Guardian is in no way, shape, or form, left wing.

[obslam]

Whilst it's not quite as right-wing as most of the British press, the Guardian is in no way, shape, or form, left wing.

LOL! You can't be serious.

You Gov: ... the Guardian is seen as Britain’s most left-wing newspaper, closely followed by the Mirror...

Wiki: The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion, and its reputation as a platform for social liberal and left-wing editorial has led to the use of the "Guardian reader" and "Guardianista" as often-pejorative epithets for those of left-leaning or "politically correct" tendencies.

I recognise Wikipedia is not always a reliable indicator but I would say only the Morning Star has been more left wing than The Grauniad.

[Stavros]

Unfortunately you've lost a lot of credibility with that bizarre claim.

It all depends on how you define left-wing. Just as the awfully unfunny Mash Report has been axed by the BBC because it was deemed too 'left wing' without ever promoting left-wing policies (it was critical of the Conservative Govt, which is not the same thing), so the issue with The Guardian is not so much the views of its most well-known columnists -Polly Toynbee is the Aunt Sally for Telegraph readers, for example- but that being critical of the Conservative Party and Brexit makes it left wing. Simon Jenkins, William Keegan, Will Hutton, Jonathan Freedland are all Liberals rather than Socialists, and other than the occasional article by Tariq Ali, Trotskyists and Marxists are notable by their absence, though in the past Richard Gott was a regular commentator on Latin American affairs.

Brexit is a Nationalist project, but it means to be opposed to it does not by definition make such a person 'left wing' because Nationalism is thought of as a 'Right wing' position. Both major parties have been divided over the EEC/EU since 1970, and as I have stated above, for many Socialists in Britain, membership of the EU was not something they wanted, just as it was Labour policy in 1981 to leave the EU, a policy position that Jeremy Corbyn supported at the time and as far as I am aware, on most issues, until yesterday, the clinging to the Social Chapter of the Single Market Act and its commitment to 'Worker's Rights' being as much as he could give voice to.

The Guardian is not a Socialist, but a liberal humanist newspaper, critical of the Royal Family, but not decisively opposed to it; probably sceptical of rather than opposed to organized religion; critical of the armed forces, but not pacifist; supportive of the Judiciary when its rulings are favourable to humanist issues, critical when they are not; and reporting on Parliament rather than calling for its abolition or woolly on reform. Thus the pillars of the Establishment -Monarchy-Church-Military-Judiciary-Parliament are secure in the pages of the Guardian.

So I am not bothered about my reputation, if I even have one on HungAngels.

More interesting is the recent news on Tech Start-ups as a signal that Growth is possible even in Brexit Britain, indeed that it is and looks set to remain a world leader. The link below does present a positive profile of the Tech Sector, part of that 'Big Tech' beast slouching toward DC in the demonic language of the Trump Party in the US. Yes, it does look good, but

a) these trends were established before Brexit, and are probably best placed to function regardless of Brexit, unless the financials change, and with over £1 trillion having left the UK since 2016 -some of it shipped out by the most fanatical Brexiteers, such as Jacob Ress-Mogg and Somerset Capital- the investment profile could change.

And thus b) New Tech or whatever you call it, may supply thousands of jobs, but we need millions. It is a niche sector, and one that I doubt school-leavers can get into, indeed, if the past year has damaged education, a class of schooleavers may not get the College/University eduation they need to enter the tech sector, so over the next 5 years this growth sector could face a recruitment problem because we haven't prepared the generation capable of doing such jobs.

Given that Brexit has been all about the politics and not the trade and the economics -to paraphrase another movement, 'Jobs Don't Matter'- the same way that no impact assessment was ever made of either Brexit in general, or the EU-UK Trade Agreement in particular, means we have a Brexit Government that has not prepared for the very policy by which it wishes to be defined -hence the crisis of trade owing to the divergence from EU rules and regulations. Similarly, if one were to ask Gavin Williamson what his department is doing to ensure Technology is fundamental to the Curriculum and schoolchildren being given the opportunity to learn what it is, he might well look utterly confused and issue some platitude about 'doing all we can to maximise opportunities'. Whatever.

This is the positive review of the technology sector in the UK-
https://technation.io/report2021/#investment