Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Zanza]

The level of academic rigor and of scientific challenge was just not what I was used to from my German university. I picked a mix of undergradute and graduate classes (as we had a different system back then). You could study information systems there without having any serious computer science or math classes if I remember correctly.

From what I remember, I shared that feeling with quite a few of the other Europeans there.

[Valmy]

TTIP and TPP seem like they are both in real danger 

Oh well.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Quality of education isn't all that important if you aren't an academic, at least it's significantly overrated versus innate intelligence.

What do you base that on?

I think that going to the best college versus say, the 10th best, for most career fields isn't going to have a major impact on your life. A few fields at the highest levels operate differently, but I'm talking for the masses here. Like I don't think Australian college students are hindered from attaining success in life due to maybe Australia's colleges being inferior to say, ones in Britain or Switzerland.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I never saw TTIP as workable, too many sacred cows in both Europe and America that neither side will budge on, non-starter.

[Jacob]

I think that going to the best college versus say, the 10th best, for most career fields isn't going to have a major impact on your life. A few fields at the highest levels operate differently, but I'm talking for the masses here. Like I don't think Australian college students are hindered from attaining success in life due to maybe Australia's colleges being inferior to say, ones in Britain or Switzerland.

Reasonable enough.

[Zanza]

Incidentally Zanza, the FT's reporting that the SPD is going to oppose TTIP going into the next election.

What impact does that have on the coalition now? Is it influenced by Brexit (ie. the 'losers of globalisation' perspective) or just reflecting the long argument I understand the German and Dutch left have been having about it?

I am not aware of any connection to Brexit.

The SPD officially still supports TTIP, but they say that there is no willingness by the US to compromise on any of the sticking points at the moment and that there wouldn't be any movement before the new US administration is in power.

The SPD does officially oppose some parts of TTIP though and would vote against it if those parts stay in. This is mainly the ones about extra-judicial forums of arbitration as those are seen as an infringement on sovereignity and our independent judiciary. That argument should appeal to a Brexiter I guess.

There is a grassroots opposition against TTIP though in the SPD and Gabriel, just like Cameron with the EU question, could not force his party to his will and made the mistake to open the discussion on TTIP. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, he has very little hope to ever get it under control again.

CETA is more popular because Trudeau is seen as a progressive politician. 

[Sheilbh]

Excellent piece on the grey Mr Hammond:
https://next.ft.com/content/321637da-4aaa-11e6-b387-64ab0a67014c#axzz4EmtlZNKf

Something in his stoop, greyness and aquiline nose suggests Arsène Wenger, the football coach and fellow fiscal conservative, though we cannot be sure Philip Hammond would get the reference. In fact, Britain knows even less about its new chancellor of the exchequer — his hinterland, his beliefs — than it does about Theresa May, the prime minister who elevated him last week.

The mystery matters because the office matters. Whoever runs the Treasury co-governs Britain and, in George Osborne, Mr Hammond succeeds a restless doer of things who, like Gordon Brown and Nigel Lawson before him, seemed to steer the whole government from what is only a finance ministry in the way Everest is only a hump.

Think about how much is negotiable now. Post-Osborne, Mr Hammond can change the speed and design of fiscal consolidation. He can loosen the seals around expenditures — namely foreign aid and pensioner benefits — that hemmed in his predecessor until his only recourse was to the most incendiary cuts. He can erase the imprimatur that Mr Osborne put on high-speed rail and a third runway at Heathrow airport.

He can also revise the strategic commitment Mr Osborne made to China as an economic partner, which incurred American umbrage and amounted to the government's most substantial foreign policy outside Europe. He can choose not to press, as Mr Osborne would have, for the closest conceivable link between Britain and the EU consistent with a technical exit.

Or he might maintain all of this. The point is, we do not know because this shape-shifting survivor, a Tory Talleyrand, has reached the age of 60, discharged business as august as defence of the realm and foreign affairs and served two prime ministers without leaving clues as to what if any ideology motivates all this purring achievement. Britain's medium-term future hinges on the question, moot until now, of who Mr Hammond is. Even if he is the "accountant" disparaged by mandarins, this means something: a minimalist Treasury that does not conceive and drive projects outside its nominal domain of financial management.

There may be more to him than that, however. Novelists only discover their theme in retrospect, after decades of writing betray a pattern of fixation with a subject or worldview. Politicians are the same. Time and high office bring out their beliefs. Tellingly, Mr Hammond has tended to be a notch to the right of the leadership. When David Cameron sanctioned same-sex marriage and trimmed the armed forces, he advertised his apprehension. He called for more welfare cuts. The prime minister noticed but prized his work too much to object. In 2013 he said he would leave the EU on existing terms, though he became a sincere Remainer as foreign secretary. (What Tories put down to Whitehall capture actually confirmed that Euroscepticism diminishes the closer a politician gets to the subject.)

...

Prime ministers are seldom their own chancellors in the way they are always their own foreign secretaries. The subject is too specialised and Downing Street is too weak against the Treasury. The mismatch is wider now that the chancellor has experience of the brief, as shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, and the prime minister has none. She is very Home Office (vigilant, controlling, adamant about social order) and he is fairly Treasury (sceptical, laisser faire, preoccupied with the bottom line). These dispositions tend to clash. Prime ministers and chancellors tend to clash.

For these reasons, and his chance to redirect economic policy, the appointment of Mr Hammond is an Event. That it earned less attention than Boris Johnson's move to a husk of a foreign office, with all the gaiety of nations it supposedly augurs, makes sense only in a culture where adults play Pokémon Go and size up the new Ghostbusters against the originals.

[The Minsky Moment]

This is mainly the ones about extra-judicial forums of arbitration as those are seen as an infringement on sovereignity and our independent judiciary.

Arbitration by nature is extrajudicial.
I have terrible news for the SPD but German companies and massive contracts within and impacting Germany are subject to exclusive international arbitration all the time, and have been for many years. 

[Zanza]

I read that Germany is the country in the world that has most of these arbitration rules in other countries through bilateral treaties. Which doesn't surprise me considering the high degree of dependency on international trade we have. And Germany was the first country in the world that introduced the concept of private arbitration in a treaty with Pakistan in 1958.

We are world class hypocrites. 

[Sheilbh]

The Taoiseach has said the government and the EU must prepare seriously for the prospect of a border poll

[Zanza]

Border poll as in Irish Unification?

[Valmy]

Border poll as in Irish Unification?

Yep. Demanding a poll to annex foreign territory seems like a very hostile and aggressive act but then Ireland is a special case.

[Sheilbh]

Yep. Last one was in 73 and 1% of Catholics participated - it was 99% to remain in the UK.

Official policy of the Irish government has been against them so this is a big shift it would have been laughable to imagine the Irish government seriously suggesting the possibility just a few months ago.

Interesting/scary to see what the Unionist response will be.

Edit: Looking at his comments he's saying it may have to happen depending on the involvement of the Northern Ireland administration (as per the Good Friday agreement which, to some extent, relies on both the Republic and Northern Ireland participating in a European Union). Even if it doesn't he wants the EU to take a future border poll into account and to make it clear that the situation for Northern Ireland would be akin to East Germany rather than having to entirely join the EU again.

[The Minsky Moment]

The Taoiseach has said the government and the EU must prepare seriously for the prospect of a border poll

yes all sorts of things can come tumbling out of Ms. Pandora's box once opened.

[Zanza]

I can't really say why, but a democratic election where the minority just doesn't turn out and the majority vote 99-1 in favor of something seems to be a farce. Not sure how to address that though.