** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

[bovlomov]

Brexit was always going to be forged by the UK Government and the EU, together and through negotiation. Anyone who is surprised that we don't yet have a clear picture of what Brexit will be is easily surprised. This period of uncertainty is inevitable.

Inevitable if you pose a binary question where the outcome is far from binary.

You think it is reasonable? to propose a referendum, where one result is the status quo, and the other result is...
- a Norwegian-style arrangement: signing up to free movement and trade, with huge swathes of regulation adopted into national law
or
- complete separation, and departure from treaties related to trade, labour and environment
or
- that the PM can tell us that the British people's vote was a comment on immigration, despite the word not being a part of the ballot paper.
or any number of other possibilities between, that were never discussed, and were not on the ballot paper.

I am surprised that the country was led into such chaos, and that you are so carefree about it. But I think there is a cognitive dissonance going on among some Brexit supporters. No one wants to admit that they've been sold a pup, after all. Yes, you could say the same about Remain supporters - but many of those were closer to Corbyn than Cameron in that they were quite willing to see the EU's shortcomings. Then they made a consciously pragmatic decision, that it was the better of two bad options.

[thirdcrank]

... Brexit was always going to be forged by the UK Government and the EU, together and through negotiation. Anyone who is surprised that we don't yet have a clear picture of what Brexit will be is easily surprised. ...

I'll admit that with little else to go on, I assumed that the opinion polls were more or less right, so to that extent I was surprised by the Leave result, but the present situation is no surprise. I don't think that what I've described somewhere above as the phoney war is just the inevitable side effect of negotiations (negotiations which, of course, must always be cloaked in confidentiality, even if everybody is spinning wildly.)

The "surely nobody expected" line or a version of it, will eventually be used to sell whatever we end up with. I'm the last person who wants to be able to say "I told you so" just to have the satisfaction of being right if everything goes wrong. I'm really pretty desperate to be proved wrong, not only for the selfish reason that I have children and grandchildren but I don't want the world to be a worse place. Having once sought to give the Establishment a KITA, it may well be that some people will feel even more frustrated if they don't get what they thought they were voting for. It's obviously mistaken to characterise either the Leavers or the Remainers as homogenous, single-minded people. I would say there has been at least an occasional tendency to stereotype Remainers as élitists dismissing Leavers as unsophisticated. It would be ironic if they found their concerns were dismissed by élitist Leavers: Surely nobody expected ....

One of the features of our system is that the unelectable eventually return to power when everybody gets sick of "the other lot." Corbyn is dismissed as a no-hoper but if he just plugs away long enough, he could be left facing two or three versions of the Tories, fighting among themselves.

[al_yrpal]

According to all the top EU politicians after we leave we cant control free movement with free trade with the EU. So be it, World Trade Terms it is then. I cannot see the logic of their position can anyone please explain?

Al

[reohn2]

According to all the top EU politicians after we leave we cant control free movement with free trade with the EU. So be it, World Trade Terms it is then. I cannot see the logic of their position can anyone please explain?

Al

It's simple.
No free trade without free movement of people,that's a tenet of the EU,you can't have one without the other.End of.

[thirdcrank]

Re economic migration.

As an ageing, post-industrial society, we've come to depend on migration both for renewal and for part of the workforce.

One argument against immigration is that there's just not enough room or resources. Without immigration, increasing life-expectancy would mean an increasing part of the population would be both economically inactive and dependent on increasing levels of care from a shrinking working population and that would only be partially balanced by a reduction in chid-care, education etc. Except for a certain amount of childcare - and I can't remember if that counts towards GDP - I'm economically inactive and although I contributed both to National Insurance and my occupational pension, neither is funded so younger generations are keeping me in the manner to which I have become accustomed. Touch wood, I've not made huge calls on the NHS but there's time yet.

Some form of euthanasia is inevitable if we are not to become a nation of struldbrugs. Probably time for some of us BOF's to keep a low profile in case somebody spots a wheeze for making more room and saving money.

[PH]

According to all the top EU politicians after we leave we cant control free movement with free trade with the EU. So be it, World Trade Terms it is then. I cannot see the logic of their position can anyone please explain?

Al

I don’t know why people struggle with this, it’s always seemed very simple to me.
I trade my labour, it’s what most of us have to trade, free trade includes that or it isn’t free trade, there is no way of levelling the playing field if you exclude it.

[bovlomov]

Re economic migration.

As an ageing, post-industrial society, we've come to depend on migration both for renewal and for part of the workforce.

Yes. If anyone has a complaint about immigration, they should be asking how we can remodel our society in such a way as we don't have to rely on immigrants. Instead the demands are mostly directed at the wrong end of the equation: border controls.

Trouble is, no government is brave enough to tell us the truth: At present we need immigration, and unless an alternative economic model is found, it looks as though that situation won't change.

[thirdcrank]

... I don’t know why people struggle with this, it’s always seemed very simple to me.
I trade my labour, it’s what most of us have to trade, free trade includes that or it isn’t free trade, there is no way of levelling the playing field if you exclude it.

They struggle because they don't recognise the value of other people. It's like moaning about other people's children and more especially about other people having children. If I'm out and anybody apologises for their children, presumably on the basis that old gits like me don't approve of children, I always try to make the point that their children are the most important people in the room/ on the bus / whatever because they represent the future. Similarly, I'm OK queuing behind children in shops deciding how to spend their money: I've made the point that they have decades before them as customers, so they are the ones to encourage.

If someone only thinks of other people as a burden, they will inevitably find it hard to accept migration.

[blackbike]

We have a level of unemployment in this country which would have been considered appalling a few decades ago. And don't forget that the figures have been fiddled downwards time and time again to make them lower than they would have been on the old systems of counting the unemployed.

Added to that we have the relatively modern scourge of underemployment with many people having part time work whether they want it or not, and often even that work is casualised to the extreme via zero hour contracts which were unknown years ago but now number about one million.

We have quite high youth unemployment, and if we hadn't cynically vastly expanded the higher education system to keep youngsters of no real academic ability off the dole by offering them useless degree courses from mediocre new universities the unemployment figures would be even higher.

Added to this we have lost many jobs to automation and the internet, especially in manufacturing, junior clerical roles and shop work.

We will always need some immigration for skilled people, but the idea that we need anything like the kind of immigration levels we have seen over the last decade is simply untrue.

And if we started to train more skilled staff like nurses and engineers instead of wasting money training hordes of unemployable arts, womens studies and social science graduates, we might need fewer immigrants for skilled jobs too.

Brexit will give us more control over immigration, and that can only be a good thing for a country with our problems of unemployment, underemployment and casualised, precarious employment.

[bovlomov]

And if we started to train more skilled staff like nurses and engineers...

I'm not defending it, but perhaps it's cheaper to poach these from poorer countries.

[reohn2]

We have a level of unemployment in this country which would have been considered appalling a few decades ago. And don't forget that the figures have been fiddled downwards time and time again to make them lower than they would have been on the old systems of counting the unemployed.

Added to that we have the relatively modern scourge of underemployment with many people having part time work whether they want it or not, and often even that work is casualised to the extreme via zero hour contracts which were unknown years ago but now number about one million.

We have quite high youth unemployment, and if we hadn't cynically vastly expanded the higher education system to keep youngsters of no real academic ability off the dole by offering them useless degree courses from mediocre new universities the unemployment figures would be even higher.

Added to this we have lost many jobs to automation and the internet, especially in manufacturing, junior clerical roles and shop work.

We will always need some immigration for skilled people, but the idea that we need anything like the kind of immigration levels we have seen over the last decade is simply untrue.

And if we started to train more skilled staff like nurses and engineers instead of wasting money training hordes of unemployable arts, womens studies and social science graduates, we might need fewer immigrants for skilled jobs too.

Brexit will give us more control over immigration, and that can only be a good thing for a country with our problems of unemployment, underemployment and casualised, precarious employment.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record,didn't the present government or the Blair government before it FTM not have the opportunity curb the immigration that they could reduce,the 50% ish of which came from outside the EU?

I think it's more likely as Bov says,it's cheaper to poach than train.
Which is proof that successive governments care nought for their own citizens,further proof is the advent of zero hours contracts and the diabolical treatment of workers of such companies as Sports Direct,BHS and Amazon.
Not to mention the tax avoiding/evading giant corporate companies such as Apple,Google,O2,etc,etc.
All things that a decent government should have jumped on like a dog on a bone,that's if such governments weren't bought by those companies owners.


There many,many EU migrants who come to work here in low paid jobs that UK citizens don't want,such as working in the fields in back breaking menial work or care work,which is another 'industry' where profit matters more than people,and so it goes...

[al_yrpal]

According to all the top EU politicians after we leave we cant control free movement with free trade with the EU. So be it, World Trade Terms it is then. I cannot see the logic of their position can anyone please explain?

Al

It's simple.
No free trade without free movement of people,that's a tenet of the EU,you can't have one without the other.End of.

So theres no logic, just inflexibility. Very German. Just as well we are out then.

Al

[kwackers]

So theres no logic, just inflexibility. Very German. Just as well we are out then.

Al

Err, the logic is in the rules. Even the 'inflexibility' has logic behind it, you might not like the logic but we helped write those rules.
Should have vetoed them whilst when we had the chance!

[reohn2]

So theres no logic, just inflexibility. Very German. Just as well we are out then.

Al

In your opinion maybe other people have other opinions.

[al_yrpal]

So theres no logic, just inflexibility. Very German. Just as well we are out then.

Al

In your opinion maybe other people have other opinions.

Obviously they have.

Funny no one can explain the EU's policy? Genuinely puzzled by their policy. Seems to me to be all part of the EU superstate thing.

Al