Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[The Minsky Moment]

The noise in London about independence is obviously silly but it isn't inconceivable that London or parts of it would push for some kind of FTZ kind of setup.  Possibly including expedited/favorable treatment of foreign workers. 

[Admiral Yi]

FT does a better job than I, and stealing their content is easier than me typing:

???  Seems to be arguing against your point.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Note also--I'm only responding to Hamilcar's dumb-person claims that "The City is dead in the water." There are tons of reasons to expect this is not true:

1. It is a center of global insurance markets, and this has little to do with its EU membership
2. The pound is the 4th most traded currency in the world, and the third most held reserve currency.
3. It's a center of futures trading
4. It's the location of the London Stock Exchange--and while every major country has a large national exchange, London has that plus the other things I've mentioned.
5. It's the world capital of currency exchange. This is the business most threatened by Brexit, as it will likely lose a lot of this business--but most likely to a variety of different cities, not one single one.

Plus, many of the cities mentioned--Warsaw, Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin are not major financial centers. None are in the top 10 of the GCFI (although Paris and Frankfurt are in some alternative rankings, albeit on the bottom end.) So the City losing jobs and business to those cities, in a dispersed way, is not going to elevate any of them to the top of the rankings, nor will it even elevate them to the top of Europe (i.e. above London.)

I agree that Asian financial centers are going to continue growing strongly, while the City will not--but I actually think that's true because Europe (inclusive of Britain) is simply not going to grow as fast as Asia.

For the size of its economy, in part due to the nature of its economy and its odd ball domestic exchange (which is small and semi-free market), China doesn't have nearly the sort of domestic (excluding Hong Kong) financial center on par with the size of its economy. It has Shanghai, but Shanghai ranks below both Hong Kong and Singapore. As Asia grows, and as China liberalizes, both Hong Kong and Singapore will continue to grow (far faster than Frankfurt, Paris, Dublin or etc) and likely would've supplanted London at some point anyway.

No one is saying Brexit is good for the City, but "bad" and "kills it completely" are different concepts.

[OttoVonBismarck]

FT does a better job than I, and stealing their content is easier than me typing:

???  Seems to be arguing against your point.

Nah--my argument is the City isn't dead, not that it won't be hurt. The FT points out the city is going to lose jobs/business to Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin and a few other European cities. But it doesn't suggest the City is going to "die."

Hamlicar's expression that Frankfurt is going to become this mecca is pretty off base. Frankfurt is already a minor financial center and will grow a bit from this, but it won't become London 2.0.

[Zanza]

FWIW if I was God-Emperor of the EU, I'd be going for a "nice" break-up. I think despite the desires for "revenge and recrimination" by some, if the EU does that I think it actually makes itself look even worse to the populist anti-EU movements in the rest of Europe. An "adult" breakup, and one accompanied by what absolutely must be a round of reform for the remaining 27 states I think is the way forward to a stronger EU, getting in a bitch fight with Britain, or even trying to foment Scottish nationalism, I think can cause a series of problems that could shatter the EU. I think the EU should remain essentially neutral in the Scottish matter, particularly.

The person closest to being an empress of Europe pretty much agrees with you.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36630326

[The Larch]

If this is true, I don't know wether to laugh or cry.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-anger-bregret-leave-voters-protest-vote-thought-uk-stay-in-eu-remain-win-a7102516.html

Anger over 'Bregret' as Leave voters say they thought UK would stay in EU
Some said they had not forseen the immediate economic impact, while others were angry at Nigel Farage's admission that NHS funding claim was a 'mistake'

Remain voters are voicing their outrage amid claims by some people who voted for a Brexit that they regret their decision.

Electoral services workers have reported calls from people asking if they could change their decision after Friday's result became clear, while some publicly admitted they intended to use a "protest vote" in the belief the UK was certain to remain in the European Union.

The anxiety – dubbed "Bregret" – emerged as the value of the pound tumbled and markets crashed, while somefelt betrayed by Nigel Farage's admission that a Vote Leave poster pledging to spend millions of pounds supposedly given to the EU on the NHS was a "mistake".

Mandy Suthi, a student who voted to leave, told ITV News she would tick the Remain box if she had a second chance and said her parents and siblings also regretted their choice.

"I would go back to the polling station and vote to stay, simply because this morning the reality is kicking in," she said.

"I wish we had the opportunity to vote again," she added, saying she was "very disappointed".

Khembe Gibbons, a lifeguard from Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, also said she had regrets about her decision after Mr Farage said he could not guarantee NHS funding.

"We've left the EU, David Cameron's resigned, we're left with Boris, and Nigel has just basically given away that the NHS claim was a lie," she wrote.

"I personally voted leave believing these lies, and I regret it more than anything, I feel genuinely robbed of my vote."

A woman calling into an LBC radio show echoed the sentiment, saying she felt "conned" by the claim and felt "a bit sick".

A voter who gave his name as Adam told the BBC he would have changed his pro-Brexit vote if he knew the short-term consequences it would have for the UK economy.

"The David Cameron resignation has blown me away to be honest and the period of uncertainty that we're going to be magnified now so yeah, I'm quite worried," he said.

"I'm shocked that we voted for Leave, I didn't think that was going to happen. I didn't think my vote was going to matter too much because I thought we were just going to remain."

A blogger from Sheffield shared a message from a friend working in electoral services, claiming Brexit voters and pro-Remain members of the electorate who failed to turn out because they were confident of the win had been calling in.

"We had people phone up today wanting to change their vote or ask if they could still vote as they don't want to leave," the message read.

Several pro-EU politicians voiced their suspicions that some Leave voters would have regrets on Friday, with Labour MP Diane Abbott and Green MP Caroline Lucas saying Euroscepticism had become a "kind of proxy" for deep-seated problems with immigration, the NHS and other key issues.

Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, said the Remain campaign had failed to show people the referendum  "was not a protest vote against the Government or indeed the Establishment".

Opinion polls in the months leading up to Thursday's historic vote had dominantly shown a lead for Remain, although surveys in recent days showed the result on a knife-edge and around 10 per cent of the electorate still undecided – generating a huge swing.

The final result was 17,410,742 votes for Leave (51.9 per cent) compared to 16,141,241 for Remain (48.1 per cent), on a turnout of 72 per cent.

[Admiral Yi]

Boo fucking hoo.  If you dick around with your country's future you have no one to blame but yourself.

[LaCroix]

though the expressed regret is great for promoting the EU

[CountDeMoney]

Boo fucking hoo.  If you dick around with your country's future you have no one to blame but yourself.

Preach it, Yi.

Referendum's not the place for a protest vote, you fucking mutts.  Now you've got bigger problems than your shitty little hang-ups with brown people and snobby continentals. 

And I'm sure the world appreciated the erasure of over $2 trillion in stock value--including $800 billion exiting the US economy, fuck you very much--over your "but I wanted to vote my heart" Britain's Got Talent phone-in vote bullshit.* 

*Even if it wasn't a little satisfying: Brexit strips world's 400 richest people of $127bn - Bloomberg




Oh...and as an aside, if by chance the citizens of the United States somehow manage to go full retard and elect President Trump, BRITS CANNOT SAY A MOTHERFUCKING THING ABOUT IT.  Other Euros, sure.  But you fuckheads?  No. Retards can't judge other retards.  That's retard law or something.

[jimmy olsen]

David Cameron, machiavellian genius?

From the Guardian's comments section:

If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost.

Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron.

With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership.

How?

Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice under Article 50 the morning after a vote to leave. Whether that was scaremongering or not is a bit moot now but, in the midst of the sentimental nautical references of his speech yesterday, he quietly abandoned that position and handed the responsibility over to his successor.

And as the day wore on, the enormity of that step started to sink in: the markets, Sterling, Scotland, the Irish border, the Gibraltar border, the frontier at Calais, the need to continue compliance with all EU regulations for a free market, re-issuing passports, Brits abroad, EU citizens in Britain, the mountain of legistlation to be torn up and rewritten ... the list grew and grew.

The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.

The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?

Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?

Boris Johnson knew this yesterday, when he emerged subdued from his home and was even more subdued at the press conference. He has been out-maneouvered and check-mated.

If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over - Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession ... broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.

The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.

When Boris Johnson said there was no need to trigger Article 50 straight away, what he really meant to say was "never".

When Michael Gove went on and on about "informal negotiations" ... why? why not the formal ones straight away? ... he also meant not triggering the formal departure.

They both know what a formal demarche would mean: an irreversible step that neither of them is prepared to take.

All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable in reality without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne. And David Cameron has put the onus of making that statement on the heads of the people who led the Brexit campaign.

[CountDeMoney]

David Cameron, machiavellian genius?

Timmay, fuckstick retard who doesn't understand what "machiavellian" means?

[Berkut]

I predict that Britain will not leave the EU.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm highly confident they will.

[Monoriu]

I think it will be too difficult to ignore the referendum result.  They voted leave.  The best, or only way to overturn that result is by another referendum.  But there needs to be an excuse before another one could be held.  The trigger could be after negotiations with the EU, the harsh divorce terms are presented to the electorate for another decision. 

[Razgovory]

Boo fucking hoo.  If you dick around with your country's future you have no one to blame but yourself.

They forgot that elections matter.