Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Zanza]

Free movement will end, I am sure, after the transition period. They are just too cowardly to admit this to the public. Throughout the negotiation so far, nothing has been accepted that wasn't entirely how the EU wanted it. All of this is just dangerous muddling of waters to try and hide from their voters just how powerless they are when it comes to setting terms with the EU. It is highly counterproductive of course an will bite our collective arses on the island in due time, but this is how it is.

No. In the end, it will be simpler for them to just blame the EU for "no deal" instead of owning up to their own lies.


Another headline today:

Brexit: Up to 20 new agencies to be launched outside London to take over tasks previously done in Brussels

I predict those will cost about 350 million GBP per week.


But that's fine:

Brexit: Majority of older Leave voters say significant economic damage is 'price worth paying', finds YouGov
71 per cent of over-65s would accept a big economic hit – and half are willing for family members to lose their jobs

[Jacob]

I like how half of them are willing to accept significant costs to the economy as along as it's not them or their family members paying the price.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It is consistent with a general inwardly-looking model for seeing the world.

[Josquius]

I like how half of them are willing to accept significant costs to the economy as along as it's not them or their family members paying the price.

Exactly.

Leave voters = scum.

[Valmy]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/opinion/dunkirk-christopher-nolan-brexit.html?mc=aud_dev&mcid=keywee&mccr=domdesk&kwp_0=482167&kwp_4=1745964&kwp_1=746013

British business is starting to panic about the imminent damage. Already, banks are starting to move their staff out of London and into Europe, foreign investment is falling, real wages are dropping below inflation again and are forecast to fall further, the Bank of England is warning that household debt is rising to dangerous levels as people borrow to keep up living standards, and British growth in the first two quarters of this year has slumped to just 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent respectively, even as Europe's growth has risen to more than double that.

A senior ex-diplomat, a man who has spent a professional lifetime building up Britain's trade and its credibility with investors, is aghast at what the Brexit chaos is doing to our reputation. "The core narrative of the country for the past 40 years has been that we're stable and politically predictable; the ideal platform for investing into the single market," he told me. "And now we're rudderless and in a mess."

These are the dismal facts that should puncture the ridiculous fantasy that Britain's Brexiteers have sold the nation. They are why Britain's chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, is fighting a political battle with Mrs. May's cabinet to make our departure from the European Union as prolonged and gentle as can be managed.

Britain is not an economic powerhouse waiting to be liberated. We are a country of mediocre education and limited skills, whose preening vanity has prevented us from seeing our failings. Our membership in the European Union is not a set of restraints; it is what has been propping us up. If we insist on cutting ourselves off, parts of our economy will start to die.

Nationalists will always fuck you. You should not have listened to the lies tarnishing the superiority of the Globalist way Britain.

[Zanza]

Your comment is strange. Are you bashing both nationalists and globalists, which are typically perceived to be opposites..?

[Valmy]

Your comment is strange. Are you bashing both nationalists and globalists, which are typically perceived to be opposites..?

I am a 'globalist' so I am only bashing those stupid nationalists.

There I changed it to make the meaning clearer.

[Tamas]

This morning, when I turned the telly on I could see the newsreel saying the government published an official policy, wanting continued EU customs union membership in a transitory period after Brexit.

I thought "finally, some common sense!"

But of course there was foolish of me. When I actually listened to the morning TV people discussing it, it turned out they do want access to the EU customs union but they also want to be able to strike whatever trade deals they feel like, i.e. wanting to take full advantage of the single market without adhering to the compromises that come with it.

That's it. That's fucking it. It is middle of August, what, 14 months after the vote, 5 months after the trigger of Article 50, and we are still at this phase: officially declaring that we want to keep the cake and eat it too.

FFS

[The Brain]

I'm not worried. Steiner's policy will save you.

[Zanza]

This morning, when I turned the telly on I could see the newsreel saying the government published an official policy, wanting continued EU customs union membership in a transitory period after Brexit.

I thought "finally, some common sense!"

But of course there was foolish of me. When I actually listened to the morning TV people discussing it, it turned out they do want access to the EU customs union but they also want to be able to strike whatever trade deals they feel like, i.e. wanting to take full advantage of the single market without adhering to the compromises that come with it.

That's it. That's fucking it. It is middle of August, what, 14 months after the vote, 5 months after the trigger of Article 50, and we are still at this phase: officially declaring that we want to keep the cake and eat it too.

FFS

Their two proposed approaches are also fun:

The first approach is to so closely mimick the EU customs rules that it looks to the outside world as if Britain was still in the customs union - but of course without regulatory oversight by EC or ECJ! That would also require an undefined "tracking mechanism" to make sure that goods that are imported to Britain are actually consumed there and not exported to the EU because then Britain would have to pay the EU the previously levied external customs. And of course the same would probably have to be set up in the EU as well - at whose cost?

The second approach is some kind of IT solution to make customs handling at the British/EU border more or less automated at the border and relying a lot on self-assessments of the traders. Of course they haven't even started to build such an IT solution which requires appropriate hard- and software and stations at all land- and sea borders between the UK and Europe - probably again on both sides unless the EU completely trusts Britain with the implementation - despite again of course having zero oversight.

The EU has so far only said they are now looking into those proposals, but that agreement on orderly withdrawal was necessary for further talks.

EDIT: I guess we could add the cost of both solutions to the exit bill.

[The Brain]

The word omnishambles gets thrown around a lot these days...

[Josquius]

It is quite a stark contrast to the Scottish independence referendum where they had Scotlands Future, an entire book on the plan if yes should win,  published and distributed before the ref.

[Tonitrus]

I'm not worried. Steiner's policy will save you.

Steiner cannot get anything done without Davion's help.

[Valmy]

I'm not worried. Steiner's policy will save you.

Steiner didn't have enough men. The policy didn't take place.

[Zanza]

The more I think about the two proposals, the more retarded they seem to be from the narrow perspective of the underlying IT systems for both.

The first system would literally necessitate continously tracking every single import into the entire European Union and Britain to make sure that the customs fees are exchanged when the goods do cross the EU/UK border. The tracking mechanism is undefined because it is impossible.

The second system might work but would probably make the EU/UK border the smuggler's paradise in the world as policing it would either amount in the hard border they want to avoid or not be sufficient. And would still necessitate a very serious investment into IT, which would be incredibly hard to pull off in the 18 months remaining (and much less if they need some month to decide on it and then run through the EU public procurement process with tendering etc.).