Why Brexit Was Not a Mistake
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NONE of the Brexiters had any planning in place to get us from in EU to out. I honestly don't believe any of them even expected to win. The only politician with a plan of any form was Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP.
Britain is now experiencing overt racism like the last 40 years of progress didn't happen. Brexit has been taken as carte blanche to be proudly racist. I have witnessed this myself, last week, in an area where I'd have expected it to be non-existent.
The few politicians speaking are all seeking EU-lite, and it seems, wishing to rejoin as much of the single market (with associated costs) as possible.
By most measures it looks like it's shaping up to be a disaster for Britain.
You should have stopped there because that is the most rational conclusion to this whole thing.
But regarding the racism part: if you haven't noticed, the entire west is having a massive surge in racist ideologies. IMO it is one of two things, either a) it is not racism but classified as such by the left, or b) it is racism and the reason for its massive surge in the past few years are the current policies in place. In both of these scenarios, a change is required. Is Brexit that much needed change? I don't know. But what I do know is that leaving the EU is not as suicidal as people make it sound to be.
Then what would you call it?
Racism has been growing across the west in line with discussion of immigrants and refugees. The last two months, and especially since result, has seen a change in the UK I cannot explain by other means. It's more than just immigrants at Calais, or Poles and Latvians - all of that has been there a decade or more without people being quite so blatant about it. Something has changed. If not brexit and the campaign how else do you explain the last two months? For heaven's sake there's a huge amount of incidents along the lines "you lost, get out" which is highly indicative of mindset, no?
> But what I do know is that leaving the EU is not as suicidal as people make it sound to be.
I happen to agree, even though I was in favour of remain. However, this particular means of leaving the EU, at this time, in this way seems to have higher than evens chance of poor outcome.
What do I mean by that?
The first exit by any nation is likely to receive poorer terms than they might expect in any subsequent trade negotions, "pour encourager les autres".
In lacking any plan, team or responsibility for the outcome we are even less likely to get good deals. Both sides should have been planning, the FO should have been using our alleged diplomatic skills to start forming plans and allies. Start thinking about trade missions and so forth.
Selling brexit by means of a series of lies has split the country (cf 350m a week to the NHS with Farage and Boris the morning after result) in a way that was near unthinkable.
So no, leaving the EU need not be anywhere near as suicidal as people make it out to be, but leaving the EU in such a clumsy, ill-prepared and scare driven, manner could easily be.
Absolutely. But someone has to be the first. Could/should it have been someone else? absolutely, but that's just how things unfolded.
> In lacking any plan, team or responsibility for the outcome we are even less likely to get good deals.
Couldn't agree more. I just think that the anti-EU themselves did not believe it would happen so fast.
This creates an aura of conformity as viewers and readers nod to the views of their favorite talkers eventually absorbing them into their own.
The ultimate effect of this can be seen in the Rwandan genocide. It was the radio that made people do it in that case.
And don't try and minimise the outbreak of racism in the UK as if it's "happening everywhere". It's not happening here in NZ. And when people are being abused by yobos specifically referencing the Brexit vote, it makes your argument patently false and frankly, disgusting.
I've followed the arguments for and against and it's pretty clear that the biggest common denominator in the Leave argument is "It's the immagrunts, innit?".
I will give you that Brexit is not literally "suicidal" but economically it will be close and it terms of the UK's image to the rest of the world - the damage there is already done. You look like a bunch of racist, impetuous, sulky, ill-informed yobos blaming the world's victims for the acts of the very people you voted into office.
British tourists have already ruined it.
For anybody who is consistently anti-imperialist, Scotland breaking of UK is just cherry on top of the cake.
So lets see, which is more likely?
a) It just so happened that France, Sweden, Norway, UK and a bunch of other countries turned racist over night (see the rise in numbers of voters for the extreme right parties), or
b) you are wrong because you have an incomplete picture of how the world actually looks like?
I'll let you decide which one it is.
You have to be pretty ignorant of history if you can't find parallels with Irish, Jews or Blacks and different times and places. And YES I am saying that just as in history when all those groups were demonised, this current bout in Europe is racist.
I have seen pretty nasty stuff posted (second hand) on my facebook about Polish people go home and the like since the result. On the other hand when you question open door policies and what we are going to do with the immigrants arriving, many of the intolerant left shout you down as being racist.
UK is NOT the number one immigration country and did take NO responsibilities during the ongoing European immigration crisis.
In other words, my argument is that in order to maintain internal peace, a society needs to be mostly homogeneous. Multi-cultural societies throughout history have always had major racism and other form of group-oppression. Traditionally, in order to maintain internal peace societies have exported that conflict in order to rally the citizens around the flag (example of this would be the US).
I might be wrong about this but I have never heard, read about or seen a single multi-cultural society that have managed to remain in peace for too long. The only exception to that are societies that are ruled by dictators with an iron fist (ex. Syria prior to the war). Groups did co-exist peacefully but they had to be forced to do so.
The areas that voted leave seem to demonstrate xenophobia in its fundamental form: fear of the other.
Leave voters clearly are not all racist. Unfortunately, though, a vocal racist minority has taken the referendum result as validating their views.
Racism should absolutely be called out where it exists.
Your argument that homogeneity invoked a social survival instinct needs strong references, otherwise it sounds like hand-waving legitimising of xenophobia. We're smarter than that.
What do you think explains it?
Of course there is.
It would be truly astonishing if there wasn't.
Finding it might prove hard, though. And anyway, so what? If we did find those neural correlates and genetic components we'd... do what, exactly? Invent a pill, a therapy?
In the meantime, we can rationalise simply that xenophobia is destructive, and we can determine effective interventions.
Should we tackle what our understanding currently allows, rather than waiting to uncover an explanation?
If we go further fighting racism, what are those effective interventions? Can we even trust that current relatively good situation will continue? Is there any way to reliably export western anti-racism?
Alternatively we just accept the current levels. Maybe express disappointment on Facebook.
If this scapegoating phenomena is somehow built in feature of human beings, what/who would be the healthiest possible target for it?
If it's not built in feature, how can it be eradicated?
This is why I can't take the leftist arguments seriously. You refute phenomenon that have been taking place for thousands of years in order to glorify an ideology that you believe in without a single shred of evidence...
If you think that the fact that certain cities voted X compared to others who voted Y describes the sudden rise of nationalism across all of Europe AT THE SAME TIME, then you sir are in for a ride.
I didn't claim to be "leftist". I'm not "glorifying" anything. I'm not sure what you think I'm "refuting".
If by "refute phenomenon (sic) that have been taking place for thousands of years" you mean "racism" I'm not refuting the fact that it exists, what a strange claim that would be. I don't really follow what you're saying here at all.
I certainly didn't claim that Brexit voting patterns describe (do you mean explain?) the rise of pan-European nationalism. So again I don't follow what you're saying here.
In fact, I believe quite the reverse direction of influence: that the rise in pan-European nationalism influenced a vocal minority of the vote who now feel legitamised.
I suspect that the rise in pan-European nationalism is due to people being worried about recession, austerity, crumbling national institutions, etc etc. and immigration has become a surrogate for that: There's only so much cash in the coffers; there aren't enough {houses,schools,hospitals,whatever}; immigrants consume a non-zero fraction of these resources; therefore reducing the number of immigrants will improve the capacity of these services.
The problem being, of course, that you could pick any scapegoat and substitute it into that equation equally well. Consequently, when people do pick immigration as their scapegoat of choice, I consider that xenophobic.
But that's what the anti-immigrationists were claiming - that the UK was taking in far too many immigrants and that the country was being flooded with immigrants.
Only about 5% of the population of the UK is an EU immigrant.
EDIT: London voted to remain. London is about 40% immigrant. Multi-culturalism isn't just about immigration, it includes different religions (London has a Muslim mayor) and other stuff, all of which London does pretty well at.
There are easy fixes to these problems (build more houses), but its silly to say that immigration doesn't contribute to the problem.
I can't quite see how you can't see that remaining homogenous and accepting immigrants are opposite sides of the very same coin?
No matter how you interpret that, there is something fucked up:
"The figures lend themselves to extremist interpretations: at one end, some accuse the criminal justice system of being brutally racist, as either intentionally or unintentionally destructive to the interests and well-being of Māori as a people. At the other, there are those who dismiss the entire Māori race as constitutionally 'criminally inclined'."
NZ has quadruple incarceration rate compared ton Finland, Japan or Iceland, which you could claim to be homogeneous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass_(disambiguation)
Its dissatisfaction with the distributional effects of the economic system and the lack of mainstream elites in many countries -- of either the left or the right -- even acknowledging, much less addressing, the problem. This creates an opportunity for all kinds of opportunistic demagoguery laying blame for the problem -- doing so based on race and religion is common, but not the only element of this -- to sell policies that have little rational connection to the problems people are having.
Brexit is far from the only example of a policy being sold this way.
Most people recognise those as extreme groups, and don't join them.
But now? There's been a dramatic rise in reporting of racist incidents. Those incidents are not being committed by members of those groups.
When I first heard about the referendum (as a non-Brit) I felt it would be an interesting thing. At the time I was not aware of the propaganda around Brexit, and thought it was a decision for more political and economic control. Which sounded like something that might be good for the country; but as someone not aware of the details, I wasn't sure.
Then I realized one of the main reasons was immigration. Which was my first inkling that something is wrong, and that it can be harmful. Stopping free movement could end up destroying tons of lives and probably affecting the economy in the process. Before I had read about this I thought Britain wanted a Switzerlandesque deal, where you still have free movement and whatnot; just a different trade/politics situation.
And then I saw the full extent of the racism fuelling this. And then I was convinced it was a bad idea.
From the article:
> Jingoism, xenophobia, and Trump-like obnoxiousness have led to an obviously wrong conclusion, so the story goes.
This has things backwards. It might be indeed that leaving the EU was the right decision. The fact that it was caused by xenophobes is the main issue. Because xenophobes will want to move forward on this in a xenophobic way. They are not fuelled by a desire to make the right decision[1]. They are fuelled by xenophobia, with getting the immigrants out being the primary concern. If leaving the EU turns out to be the right thing for Britain, that will be by accident, even a broken clock is on time twice a day.
(This sort of echoes larger issues with our system. Being fuelled by a desire to gain votes is not the same as being fuelled by a desire to make the country better. But it at least is an approximation.)
[1]: They may think they are, but in this situation I mean making that desire foremost and doing the necessary research to make it true. AFAICT this campaign was in part about ignoring the experts, which disqualifies it from being foremost concerned about making the right decision.
I suspect that is in part down to "Vote Leave" and "Grassroots Out" being political campaigns, not political parties. UKIP, a large voice in the campaign to exit the European Union hold _a_ seat in the Commons, any plan they make is completely irrelevant. Equally, we now face a situation where the next Prime Minister is to be decided by a Conservative leadership election. There is no necessity that the new leader be from the Brexit camp - even if we do end up with the fore-runner, Boris, compromise with the majority of MPs who voted to stay is necessary.
If anything, I place blame at the feet of the government. Planning for losing is not the same as planning to lose. The idea that the only plan the government had for this scenario was "don't let it happen" makes me appreciate the preparation of the Bank of England quite a bit more than I did beforehand.
> NONE of the Brexiters had any planning in place to get us from in EU to out. I honestly don't believe any of them even expected to win. The only politician with a plan of any form was Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP.
> Britain is now experiencing overt racism like the last 40 years of progress didn't happen. Brexit has been taken as carte blanche to be proudly racist. I have witnessed this myself, last week, in an area where I'd have expected it to be non-existent.
> The few politicians speaking are all seeking EU-lite, and it seems, wishing to rejoin as much of the single market (with associated costs) as possible.
> By most measures it looks like it's shaping up to be a disaster for Britain.
And for lulz and giggles UK is dragging us down too.
Looks like I will move soon to US.
For the next ten years, and probably more, Britain's economy is going to be all over the place. It will be hard to keep things stable whilst new treaties are negotiated and new trade links are established.
Britain is effectively rebooting its relationship with it's biggest trading partner. There is no way that such a move cannot have significant negative repercussions.
I've already seen such repercussions with UK friends who run small businesses being impacted the drop in the value of sterling. Another UK friend who runs a tourist coach business has been told by his EU based tour operator clients that once the Brexit happens they may have to drop him as a supplier - which now means a planned expansion has been put on hold. This is the sort of stuff happening even before article 50 is invoked, once that happens then all bets are off.
The leave camp didn't have a plan, but even if they did there would still be major negative effects on the UK. And so far people have only focused on issues surrounding trade the movement of people. There are dozens of other issues that will need to be dealt with as well such as standards compliance, product safety certifications, cross border consumer issues, science/R&D partnerships, the NI peace process, OpenSkies agreements and so on and so on.
Lets assume the author is correct in his thinking and that in 10-20 years the UK economy will be thriving, you can't deny it will have been a very, very painful journey to get there.
"My three reasons for departure, in strict order of precedence, were Democracy, Democracy, and Democracy. For the so-called “European Parliament” is no Parliament. It is a mere duma. It lacks even the power to bring forward a bill, and the 28 faceless, unelected, omnipotent Kommissars – the official German name for the shadowy Commissioners who exercise the supreme lawmaking power that was once vested in our elected Parliament – have the power, under the Treaty of Maastricht, to meet behind closed doors to override in secret any decision of that “Parliament” at will, and even to issue “Commission Regulations” that bypass it altogether.
Worse, the treaty that established the European Stability Pact gives its governing body of absolute bankers the power, at will and without consultation, to demand any sum of money, however large, from any member state, and every member of that governing body, personally as well as collectively, is held entirely immune not only from any civil suit but also from any criminal prosecution.
That is dictatorship in the formal sense. Good riddance to it."
Britain could and should declare free trade unilaterally with every other nation, whether they reciprocate or not. They would become an incredibly dynamic and prosperous trading hub.
First, not sure if you understand how trading hubs work.*
Second, not sure you are listening to why people think Brexit is bad for the UK economy if you think this is the solution.
The biggest economic risk to the UK from Brexit doesn't come from the fact they now have to renegotiate access to the EU internal market, it comes from the fact that Scotland might decide to go independent.
In turn, that has unleashed a ton of uncertainty for banks like Royal Bank of Scotland that, you know, take deposits and make loans denominated in British pounds to Scottish people.
Even if you could manage the transition across independence, redenomination and recapitalization, the potential shock to credit/liquidity is sufficient that a LOT of babies are likely to get thrown out with that bathwater.
~~~~
* It's not really tarrifs that are the big constraints to trade these days, it's stuff like regulations (please no plastic in our baby formula, thx China), IP, 'dumping' etc.
That and the fact that giving nonreciprocal market access would mean you end up spending even more on imports than you receive in income from exports (they already do this...a lot).
Meaning you have to borrow money to finance consumption...until you borrow so much that the rest of the world stops lending you money...
this is (partially) why trading hubs tend to form in places that export a lot vs import a lot.
~~~
World Bank tarrif data: http://bit.ly/293JtWZ Melanin in baby formula: http://bit.ly/29nVRQH
"With or without tariff issues being resolved — which are actually irrelevant to the access issue — the claim is false. Tariffs do not prevent access to a market. They simply impose a tax on entry. The actual barrier is regulatory conformity — what is known generally as a non-tariff barrier (NTB) or, sometimes, as technical barrier to trade (TBT)."
https://medium.com/@WhiteWednesday/what-s-wrong-with-the-wto...
TL;DR, the OP is seriously confused about how economics works.
- "unrestricted free trade will be awesome"
- peace is not at stake, au contraire
- decentralization is awesome. And small is beautiful!
- it doesn't matter that it's a little about xenophobia
It sounds more like a prayer to Ricardo and the Seven because there really are no arguments given. "Let's try this awesome experiment because we're awesome!"
We'll hear this a lot - especially from the Boris Johnson side of the equation.
And the UK may well get the best out of this. It could become the mythical european Dubai, half fiscal paradise and half tech/creative/trade hub. This would also mean that the biggest losers would be the exact same people would voted for Brexit: white, older, English middle class. Politically, this will be interesting.
You will always have trickle down economics to make the middle class much richer.
Oh, wait, this does not seem be to be working as expected [1]
If we follow through with the idea that the ideal level is the nation state, the you have 200 odd countries doing deals with each other. Not very practical.
OR, we have several world regions doing deals with each other, plus the UK.
Which is a version of "Beggar_thy_neighbour" policy [1]: in a world in which countries in world regions are cooperating with each other by making compromises, there is always the option by one of those countries to play dirty and try to game the system (for example, tax heavens).
Note: this applies to big issues. There are things which are better decided at the national, regional or even the city level.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/683739/EU-referendum-...
"Greater Germany" all over again? Makes perfect sense actually.
Or is your comment satire? Hard to say these times ...
Maybe UK decunstructs itself, because Northern Ireland and Scottland leave it and join the EU anyway.
The EU can use the rest of UK to create an example, so no other country will leave in the future.
After that I think Londons tech hub will spread more to Ireland or Germany. Many people already use Ireland to create cheap companies and Berlin pushes hard to become the SF of Europe.
These will be bad times for the UK but I think it will wake the people up and they will fix their country.
If the EU shows that the only way it can maintain unity is by punishing those who try to leave, many will leave.
They will absolutely not 'create an example' of the UK because that would amount to fueling the nationalist voices in France and the Netherlands. Even in Poland there are people who are now uncertain that they want to be in the EU.
I would like to see some figures for that, but I think that more than tariffs, the author is not taking into account the VAT, the price of carburant and some other things.
What is this? Most of the regions in conflict in the world are, according to the scales he sets, "weak".