UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
There aren't enough large tech companies in the area for there to be any sponsored degrees available, which probably means that when the funding finishes, the research will start to dry up and the interesting researchers will leave with it. Take away the research and what's left is a department of third-rate lecturers. That's not an inspiring way to learn.
Will the NHS get some of the £350m? Maybe, maybe not. It's likely to be up for discussion. Will the post-Brexit government allot research funding for CS departments in North Wales? Not a chance.
[ edit: must have touched a nerve. +1 to -4 in an instant. ]
Ah, yes. Private charities providing public services, the driving force behind the rise of communism in the 19th century.
> Getting out from under EU regulations and negotiating as a free agent is a better deal for most Brits.
People keep saying that, but why? Britain is now in a much worse negotiation position than before.
All this anti UK sentiment is caused by fear mongering from the pro-EU lobby. The Brits are our friends, but just like the Russians, they don't dance to the tune of the power hungry EU bureaucrats and the propaganda machine is suddenly aimed in their direction.
Also TTIP is the kind of think I can see a Conservative government signing up to immediately. The UK is far more "free market" than the rest of Europe.
That's just not true [0] [1].
There's been a lot of movement relating to countries being open to global free trade [2].
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/06/29/...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/11/brexit-is-a...
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/08/business-min...
As far as I understand it the UK was a very strong driving force behind TTIP.. Getting us into this mess and then leaving before the consequences start to affect you, isn't very nice to say the least.
And the xenophobic posturing of the Leave side is not to blame?
- Human rights are governed by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which is a separate organization and treaty than the EU. It's unlikely the UK will leave the Council of Europe too.
- Safety regulations on products are part of the single market treaties, just as free movement of people is. If the UK wants to remain in the EEA (e.g. through membership of the EFTA), it will still have to accept those.
But her statement really shows her (willful) ignorance:
"The ECHR can bind the hands of parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals – and does nothing to change the attitudes of governments like Russia’s when it comes to human rights"
As the home office minister, she should know damn well that the ECHR has no teeth except for EU regulation. Leave the EU, and there is no enforcement mechanism left for ECHR rulings. Not to mention the inconsistency of her own statement: how come the ECHR binds the hands of the UK government, but not Russia's? (The answer is above: it's EU regulation, not ECHR that bound her hands).
The reason why the EU was providing funding was because market forces were unwilling to.
You only need to look at startup funding:
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/06/24/2167618/the-risk-to-uk...
And you realize there will be repercussions for funding and endowments too.
Whether or not research funding is cut is an entirely open question right now. Maybe it will be: the EU has effectively been overriding the austerity policies everyone else in the economy has had to deal with, and academias has benefited from that. But as no policies have been announced yet, nobody can know what will happen.
In short, "nobody can know what will happen" is expensive; it directly implies that the immediate short term will be costly.
The EU regional development funds are notoriously wasteful, I wouldn't ascribe any value to scale or institutional experience.
Can you give references? Preferably not only one anecdotical example, and with comparisons with state development funds (especially from the UK).
http://www.politico.eu/article/eu-wasted-money-on-new-airpor...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11985763...
I don't know of any comparisons with state-run development funds in the UK, if you find one let me know, but post-Gordon Brown the UK tends to focus less on big spending projects to try and economically boost the regions, hence the grumbling about how London gets the lions share of investment funding.
The EU likes to dole out a lot of money to businesses for investment purposes, which is suspiciously close to central planning. I doubt national-level central planners do a radically better job though.
Yes, and this is the short-term disaster of Brexit: much investment goes on hold until we know what will happen.
It might be better in the long run, but we have no idea what the long run will look like at the moment because there was no Brexit manifesto and a serious conflict between the "EEA" Brexit and the anti-immigrant Brexit.
edit: To clarify (given the telling off below), the rest of the public sector in the UK has seen massive budget cuts with 20, 30, 40% loss not being uncommon in some departments, or in the BEST case (like the NHS) large workload increases with extremely small or no budget increases. It's hard for me to imagine how anyone could be unaware of that given the amount of coverage of it over the last 8 years.
So when someone says "no pay rises" is the same thing as being hit hard by austerity, that shows a remarkable level of disconnection from what's going on elsewhere.
As I said given May's history with the technology industries it seems unlikely.
It'll be interesting to look in 10 years and see who is more protectionist and less open.
On the other hand if the UK leaves the EU and the EEA then under EU rules it will need to wait until it fully leaves before it can negotiate a CETA style trade agreement. In the mean time one could assume that UK / EU trade would follow WTO norms.
[EDIT] fixed typo
> EU regulations, but now without (sic) much reduced influence
You are misinformed, please read '1. "No Say"' of 'The Case For The EEA Option' [0]:
The next level of argument surrounding “no say” is that
despite not having a vote in EU institutions, EEA countries
have some ability to protect their own interests from EU law.
They retain a “right of reservation” - a veto - as set out in
Article 102 of the EEA agreement and thus have the right
to opt out of new EU legislation. This is a right that the
UK as an EU member does not have.
> Under EU rules it will need to wait until it fully leaves before it can negotiate a CETA style trade agreement.
Yet preliminary talks over global trade are already happening.
Trade agreements can be agreed faster than the length of time it takes to agree big complex EU-style agreements anyway [1].
It's one of the parts of the EU I like better, but isn't it one of the things the people voting Leave most disliked? Leaving the EU only to still have unrestricted immigration from eastern Europe seems like an outcome UKIP would consider a hollow victory.
I fully agree, however it was an extremely large part of the "leave" campaign.
So after the Brexit there will be more than enough money to continue the research funding. But as you mention already, it is another question if the government will be wanting to pay it. But is this really such a bad thing? The difference will that instead of the EU, the UK itself will decide which of its research projects it wants to fund.
The main thing is that at the moment, we really have no idea at all what the financial costs will be - particularly of accessing the EU market - and until we do then a lot of this must hang in the balance.
In practice, if the EU doesn't strike a deal with the UK (which it won't) then I think it will suffer more exits. Because the EU has spent years trying to sign free trade deals with America, Canada and other places. If it turns around and says "we will give those countries tariff-free access to our markets but not the UK" this will send a powerful message to all EU citizens that this is not an organisation with their best interests at heart.
It is a fundamentally unattractive entity. The people who run it have never even tried to combat rising anti-EU feeling across the continent, as they believe the EU is inevitable and unstoppable, so why bother trying to make it more popular.
Now it's probably too late: they've become so gripped by groupthink they can't reform quickly enough even if they wanted to, hence the focus is now 100% on trying to make leaving as scary as possible vs trying to make staying in as attractive as possible.
In the long run this is a failing strategy. The EU is unresponsive and so makes mistakes that upset local populations. In the UK it was migration policy. The latest was telling Spain and Portugal they'd be punished for breaking rules that France and Germany also break punishment free. That's not going down well.
The combination of a retention policy based on fear rather than respect + a succession of local gaffes do not bode well for the future of the union.
Yes, that's why the EU is doomed and will be gone within a decade no matter what they do now.
But in fact, communism survived for more than another twenty years...
My point: these things take longer than one would expect. Unlike logic, where a proven theorem takes its "logical effect" immediately, the politic process has massive inertia. The time gap between "result obvious and unavoidable" and "result effective" can be decades.
I second your sentiment, but I'm afraid it will take much longer for the EU to fall apart. Just like with communism before (and about as "reformable"). I personally think it will take a generation, starting now -- especially in parts of the west that have to tread this glorious neo-marxist path for the first time.
This presumably explains why 28 countries have joined and there are still more waiting to join.
> The people who run it (...) believe the EU is inevitable and unstoppable
The people who run it are for the most part the elected leaders of the member states, who are no strangers to euro-skepticism, since they never fail to exploit it when it suits them (e.g. to deflect criticism of unpopular legislation by claiming that "Brussels" requires it).
I thought discussion here was under the assumption that the UK wants to participate in exactly those research projects...
> In the UK it was migration policy.
It was the UK governments migration policy.
Serious question: would that make you happy? Would you maybe prefer a replacement for the EU?
Making a case from an uninformed POV is not convincing me. If you back up your statements with data and pointers I'll pay more attention!
[1] http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cb083c53-3998-4f3a-...
I tend to not argue from the basis of how the EU is supposed to work, because it tends to put its long-range vision ahead of following specific rules. See how the deficit rules are working out: France is allowed to break the rules "because it's France" (Juncker's words).
To predict the behaviour of such an institution it's better to listen to what the leaders are saying and how they've acted before rather than trying to read the fine print.
That is quite a bold statement that needs a lot of statements from people who can make these decisions to back it up. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
The people who run the Commission have been saying explicitly they don't even want to start talking about a free trade deal with the UK until after the UK is fully out. There's no reason for this, they could easily run the talks in parallel, but they have no desire to do so.
Now consider the extreme difficulty the EU faces in signing deals even when it wants to (will TTIP pass? won't it? I wouldn't bet on it either way), and adding these two things together makes any kind of TTIP or CETA like deal between EU and UK very unlikely.
Will the EU suffer more exits? Well, anti-EU politicians (or at least very eurosceptic politicians) have been rising throughout Europe for some time now and some countries are quite exposed to mandatory tariffs on UK trade (the Netherlands, France, Germany). Once the UK stabilises and the fact that trade barriers cut in both directions sink in, there will be a lot of people asking why the EU is dragging its feet over a deal.
To say there's no chance of further exits does not seem less extreme than saying there will be.
This is incorrect. They are saying there will be no negotiation until Article 50 invoked, after which there will be two years of negotiations before complete exit.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36682735
The EU's Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, says the UK cannot begin negotiating trade terms with the bloc until after it has left. "First you exit then you negotiate," she told BBC Newsnight.
Now how much power does Ms Malmstrom have over EU trade policy? I would assume quite a lot. It may be that she still ends up being wrong, but my statement was correct and your rebuttal was not.
I think that you wanted to say that "this is not an organisation with UK best interests at heart.
UK government has little sympathy in the rest of the EU
First, we're all significantly poorer. As individuals. Fuel, goods, foreign travel, etc. are all significantly more expensive.
Second, what goods? We don't actually export much stuff so the benefits of being able to sell stuff cheaper isn't terribly attractive. Even if this did stimulate e.g. UK manufacturing in the long term, we're starting from a poor position and...
Third, the stuff we do sell tends to be services or of the value-added variety -- all of which depends on imports, so much of any extra money we make will be swallowed up by increased costs.
Fourth, even if we did sell more stuff, the money we made from it would be worth 8% less.
Greece is a country where the population were 'sacrificed' to bail out French and German bankers (if you look where the bailout funds actually went most never hit Greece)
Whether or not Brexit will boost public finances is entirely down to how much of an impact it'll have on the UK economy. No one knows what the impact will be, but almost everyone agrees that it will be negative... though no one agrees to what extent.
So there's really two questions here: a) just how much more/less public money will be available? and, b) if there is more, how much of it will go to research?
No one knows the answers to either question, not even the government.
edit: a very quick back-of-envelope calculation based on the forecast tax receipts for 2014-2015 of 648.1bn[1]: 8.5bn makes up a whopping 1.31% of tax receipts. Unless I'm mistaken, tax receipts correlate strongly with the strength of the economy, so any more than a ~1.3% decline in the economy as a consequence of Brexit, would consume the "savings".
And it's assuming that a new government is inclined to take the money and give it to the kinds of projects that the EU used to give it to - I can think of a lot of reasons why that might not happen.
Speaking purely for myself, as a UK resident, I believe that the UK government will be significantly more populist and far more short-term in its thinking, and I expect to see research massively cut (with associated long-term damage) in favour of tax cuts and pandering. So in one man's view, this is such a bad thing.
Some projects are only viable at a super-national level, either because of cost or resources (such as access to specialised technical centres in other countries or a wider level of expertise). Brexit doesn't stop the UK contributing to such projects but it does make it significantly more difficult by withdrawing from the established structures in place.
The other reason is that much of the net cost to the EU involves paying for the common legal and political platform that makes international trade much easier. It may superficially seem that the UK will save money but in practice it is highly likely (and according to a strong consensus of international experts) that removing access to these structures will have a strongly negative impact on the UK's trade. This is likely to be very bad for UK science.
Research needs international collaboration, and UK funding only would make it more difficult.
Just as a sanity check: there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit.
Btw, here in Switzerland the sky didn't fall either after the people voted to 'leave' (the free EU labor market). After all the doomsday talk, Swiss labs can still apply to EU grants. The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs.
Calm down people. Nothing gets eaten as hot as it gets cooked. Its of mutual benefit for almost everyone in Europe to continue free trade with Britain.
Here in Germany we have locally funded research, research on the state level, research on the Bundesrepublik level, international research cooperations and EU research. All at the same time. No one forces scientists to 'collaborate'.
> there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit.
Countries in Europe want to see it coordinated and research pooled. Every government does that on a local level for its research budgets. The EU does that on a larger scale. Switzerland is a tiny country. CERN would not exist without outside money and collaborative research.
> The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs.
Switzerland labs are actually performing very well, and get more money from the EU research budget than what Switzerland gives to the EU budget (net gain of CHF 219 millions according to http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/aktuell/medien/00483/00586/index.ht... )
International collaboration is beneficial: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/05/debunking-the-m...
Yes, you can collaborate without a specific grant, but in my experience, it makes the collaboration easier.
Once the Swiss government actually implements the anti mass migration and breaks the core of the bilateral, a lot more treaties will go on both sides. This has not happened yet, and you can feel the worry on the political, economic and academic top. The quiet before the storm is almost over. Switserland, was not even part of the single market (customs for goods is still a thing here).
Switzerland also had the advantage of buying an insane amount of euro's and is tightly bound to the success of the eurozone. The UK central bank does not have such a stockpile of euro's and is much weaker in that regards.
Switzerland, is not a good example for the UK.
This is true in all areas except research funding. That's because researchers can take part in EU-funded projects (e.g. Horizon 2020) where the funding was awarded to a multi-national project team and so doesn't form part of the UK entitlement.
Do researchers in Wales teach much anyway? I know that, in the USA, researchers teach as little as possible.
Schools should get back to the proper job of teaching students. Research is best done by private institutions with their own funding. Government education funding should be used for education proper, not fluffing a featherbed for Nobel laureates.
Two, upper middle class still don't get it. They're still tone deaf. The Brexit was the working class demanding what was promised them, which was prosperity that never came. Instead they got sold out for a cheaper European work force (not faulting the Poles for wanting better, if just is) while the middle upper classes (professional class) got to enjoy the spoils and got to snicker at the working class for being upended by outsiders.
The professional class are now complaining that they will lose their privileged position... A position the working class never got to taste. So, there it is, they called in the promise and foolish or not, they at least are doing it by their own hands rather than that of the tone deaf professional class who never cared for the working class.
Of course, the professional class, showing their class in style, as they are wont to do, go about castigating the working class by telling them how provincial and selfish they are... But just look who is complaining about losing their privileged status.
Two, if you vote for people who are going to deny you prosperity, you don't get prosperity.
If the working classes don't understand that, it's not the fault of the professional classes who - mostly - do.
The reality is that some of those hoity toity Islington socialists care a lot more about the rest of the country than anyone else does.
The upper classes are happy to con the people they think of as plebs with flag waving, a bit of bunting, and wall to wall lies.
You can't blame the middle classes if they get shouted down with name calling for pointing this out.
The problem with socialists with respect to the working class, is that they treat the working classes all as one. The native working class are subverted for the non native working class. They didn't work hard enough for their own working class. The English and Welsh working class want the UK government to work and care for them, then, when they meet that, they can work on their pan- European workin class... However, the UK working class were given the short shrift, and now they are demanding what was promised them. And, lead to what it may, there is satisfaction in having your hand on your destiny, because frankly, leaving it in the hands of others have left them holding the empty bag of promises.
[s/subterfuged/subverted]
Subterfuged isn't the right word there but I'm not sure what is -- "passed over"?
There has been so much snobbery about Leave voters. I find it almost as disturbing as the (media magnified) hate speech from the other side.
Weather this actually happens will be interesting. I think the Tories will neg on that. I think Labour would keep funding.
But in Cornwall, all those millions of EU funding were spent on total crap and none of the local people saw much (if any) of the investment. Most of it went to big business or to stupid stuff.
How can they fund all that stuff when they said they would spend all that money on the NHS?
"Let's give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week" - that's not "some of" or "part of", that's "all of".
Not everyone in the leave campaign agreed with "Let's give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week" .... the people who DID don't want to fund science with that money. I assume that have another idea for where that money will come from.
I need money for food. For shelter. For clothes. There are a lot of us really far down on the maslow's hierarchy of needs. We need change, even if that change is chaotic.
I gave my answer to the question on the ballot slip, something I had a settled view on before the campaign began and I don't think I'm that unusual. I think that claims about the £350m etc made as much difference as claims that brexit would bring on the apocalypse by lunchtime.
Pensioners voted heavily for leave and they've benefited hugely over the last few decades. In the 1980s around 50% of pensioners lived in absolute poverty, it's now around 15%.
The vote is far more complex than can be explained in a simple sound-bite, and pretending it's just one thing be that xenophobia or worsening conditions it vastly over-simplifying a hugely complex issue where many different groups voted for different reasons.
I can only start to imagine how disappointed these researchers must be now, as winning the EU flagship was such a huge deal to everyone involved and took years of preparation from dozens of industry & research partners. It really is a shame.
If you believe they will say no for purely political reasons, then there's the problem. There are lots of academic collaborations that span the globe. It's only the EU that artificially ties quantum computing research to immigration policies.
edit: There is a massive amount of political downvoting going on in this thread. Voting is NOT intended to express agreement or disagreement.
My point stands: the EU allocates research funding based on political concerns that have nothing to do with science. And that needs to stop.
> continued participation in Horizon 2020
My impression was that the UK wanted to distance itself from the 'EU superstate'. Research is just one topic. Get rid of centrally planned and funded research projects, which are for the political benefit of the EU. ;-)
> if it wanted to.
'cherry picking'. Probably easier for Britain to concentrate on non-EU research projects. Since they save money from not paying to the EU, the UK can now freely invest that money into their own research projects and attract partners.
People might be fed up reading your opinion. You've posted 25 comments on this story, many of them alike.
http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/aktuell/medien/00483/00586/index.ht...
Is Theresa May and the conservative government against investing in Science?
It seems to me that most of this is is just knee-jerking, and it's likely that there are quite a few people who will work to ensure that things continue to work as they should.
Edit: That University Ranking chart posted earlier says it all really. The US and UK dominate the charts - you don't see EU universities until page two. This is just a few people cutting their noses off to spite their face.
For example, George Osborne has just proposed to slash the corp. tax rate from 20% to 15%, in order reduce (not eliminate) the almost certain reduction in UK investment.
Last year, CT net receipts were £ 42 billion[1]. At the current 20% rate. At 15%, that would be £ 31.5 billion, for a reduction of £ 10.5 billion. Let's divide that by 52 weeks and you get £ 200 million. Which happens to be £ 10 million more than the UK's net contribution to the EU budget.
So all your "savings" just evaporated just with corporation tax alone, and that's assuming that Osborne's plan works and there is no reduction in activity/investment, which is dubious.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
We saw this recently in the UK when the top rate of income tax was raised to 50% and the income to the treasury actually fell.
In no way is it "almost certain" that investment in the UK will decrease. The evidence currently suggests the complete opposite. Look at the performance of the FTSE100 since the referendum to see the flood of foreign investment coming into the UK listed companies thanks to the weaker currency.
I'd also point out that decreasing tax rates is the exact opposite of what the chancellor said he would do before the referendum.
As another commenter has posted [1], this had already been debunked in December last year [2]:
This claim is based on the UK being a “net contributor” to the EU budget as a whole. The size of that net contribution varies, but according to analysis [..] about 0.6% of nominal GDP. Models of impact to the UK economy on Brexit vary. [..] even the more optimistic assessments of the UK’s economic performance following a Brexit [..] model an immediate loss in GDP for the transition years following a Brexit. The size of that loss is substantially larger than the current net contribution of the UK to the EU budget.
[Brexit] is a sure-fire short term loss, wiping any free money for R&I investment until at least a decade down the line – according to the most optimistic scenarios.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12081215
[2] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/05/debunking-the-m...
See for example the Mac Planck Gesellschaft: https://www.mpg.de/en
Germany would be dumb to quit the European science cooperation.
> Only 12% of bids for Horizon 2020 funds are successful, a rate that falls by more than half in highly competitive areas. Given the low probability of winning funds at the best of times, Gorman said it was natural risk aversion to be cautious of UK partners. UK politicians simply don’t understand this, and think it is ‘business as usual’, at least until negotiations have been completed. They are wrong, the problems start right now
Brexit could endanger a whole project if british companies are members of your consortium. There's quite a bit of research money at stake, and some companies depend a lot on this kind of funding.
Once you find the companies that are going to partner with you and apply, then starts a long journey together, of several years (2 to 5) until the projects are finished... you can't just start the projects, and "do business as usual" and then see how UK companies are forced to abandon ship after few months for political reasons. The projects could collapse, and this is too much uncertainty.
IMO until the doubts are 100% cleared and we have a new EU <-> UK treaty for science collabs in place, many EU companies will be reluctant to partner with UK companies/institutions. Brexit is bad for UK research and UK scientists knew this...
This is the real reason experts were warning about the consequences: perception trumps reality. There may not be a direct impact, but the fear of an impact affects behaviour which in turn can create the exact impact itself.
I have heard rumblings of researchers' reluctance to work in the UK due to concerns about funding availability in 3 years. No one I know personally, but I have heard that active offers are being reconsidered.
If the UK can demonstrate a commitment to funds, that would mitigate the reluctance, but given recent events uncertainty is high to say the least. And science is uncertain enough already. Put another way, the UK might have to commit much more resources to attract researchers than before, to compensate for the added risk.
I think there is a lot of truth in this "British organisations will have to bring more to the table to justify the risk of them being included in a consortium", not only related to science but business in general. If EU businesses are supposed to trade with non EU members, of course they need to offer more.
This is due to the confusion around what Brexit will mean, how long it will take, how far it will go and what agreements the EU and UK will sign.
If a research partner drops out halfway through the project, the whole effort may fall apart - and with research institutions and industrial partners booking the alloted funds each month, such a failure is hard to justify for any EU officer.
Of course, it is ridiculous to simply require that the UK partners be dropped from the project without a significant change of plan or adequate substitution.
Edit: Also, the aim of these projects is always to strengthen industry or scientific progress in the participating countries - so politically, if the UK really drops out this would be giving something for free to a competitor.
Successful projects often lead to future projects, so people thinking of projects in a few years time might not want to start collaboration in the UK, at least if there's an alternative elsewhere in the EU.
¹ For example, the UK lost me — after the 2014 European Parliament elections in the UK, where UKIP won most votes, I started looking for a job elsewhere.
In general a partner dropping out of a project partway through is very disruptive, so you like to avoid it. You want partners who will still be there for at least 4 years from now: 1 year for the application preparation/review, plus 3 years for the project if the application is successful. Many people are not sure if that will be true of UK partners; can you say, today, that the UK will still be part of the EU funding mechanisms through 2020? I think there's a good chance they will be, even if they leave the EU (they will probably end up joining the research framework a la carte, like Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland have). But I could forgive people for considering it a risk they'd rather avoid.
It's trading a well-understood risk for a one that is not well-understood, hence my comment about it being irrational.
If the UK exits, they are no longer paying their EU club dues, which means the EU will no longer fund UK people/project in return; and it is easier to preemptively block further UK funding that hasn't already been funded and then (re-)fund it in the near-future if Brexit doesn't happen (no reason currently to think it won't, the UK just needs to get their shit together and actually do it), than it is for the reverse, semi-funding UK people/projects until Article 50 is signed by the UK.
This is the path of least bullshit, as far as I can tell. Given that the UK has to leave the EU to survive, wants to leave the EU, and the EU has given them significant reason to go ahead and leave the EU and not go down with the ship. I'm trying not to judge anyone, but France/German bailout of Greece, and the failure to save Spain in any respectable manner; all the while Iceland did the correct thing (and from the viewpoint as an American, our founding fathers would be applauding Iceland), the EU's economy is going to have their own Japan-style Lost Decade over this.
Side note: The point of investments is that they are not guaranteed. This is why investments have return, and there is an entire industry around calculated risk and the mathematics that go into it. As in, a low risk investment pays little (but most likely will pay it), a high risk investment must, in turn, have the chance of paying out a lot (but also has a high risk of paying nothing).
Given that (something everyone on HN should know, given HN was started as YC's news outlet, and grew into a rather nice community later on), if an investment fails, it must fail if that is the only way out. Continually bailing out bad investments is almost literally theft from everyone else who didn't fund that investment.
FDIC in the US exists for a reason: disconnect people's non-investment money from banks being commercial enterprises, and let people rationally choose to invest (or not invest) using a safe and well understood system. Telling Wall Street (or the European equivalents) that it's okay to just aim for the stars and pretend to get there every single time, teaches them that hyperinflation is okay and the little people don't matter.
The little people matter, because there's several thousand of us for every one of them, and the only "us vs them" mentality going on isn't some white collar vs blue collar shit, and it never will be, no matter how much CNN, Fox, and MSNBC bang that drum; instead, the only "us vs them" mentality I see going on is really is the 99% vs the 0.1%.
When push comes to shove, we shove back with several times more force. I'm already seeing an unprecedented push for locally grown/raised/manufactured/built/whatevered food/products/services. As in, city first, metro/county/whatever area second, state third, region of the US fourth, the US fifth, and first world countries that don't treat their citizens like shit sixth, with India/China/etc being firmly rejected as they are vehicles for legalized slavery, and only serve to enrich the already enriched.
There has always been this movement, but now I'm seeing poor people, people who simply can't afford to do this... doing it. And it's working. Hell, I'm not rich, I'm not even middle class (I'm probably the poorest regular on HN), and I'm buying $3 a dozen eggs because the money stays local, and the guy raising the chickens buys Blue Seal seed, which they themselves are largely anti-anti-nutritional (ie, not using garbage protein and fat sources, and not loading it full of corn and soy), are medium businessy (13 mills across the US, maybe only employing a thousand people across all of them), and only small local businesses are dealers for it. Their chicken feed is higher quality (== healthier chickens that live longer and produce more, and == better eggs with more nutrition, AND == more eggs), and less expensive than the garbage Purina/Cargill produces and sells to small time farmers.
So, yeah. There is my rant for the day. Good morning, everyone.
The decision UK made to leave the EU is akin for Unilever to switch from selling shampoos to selling software - and we are not talking about a multinational with 100,000 employees. We are talking about an entire country.
The UK -> EU export is 40% but even the rest of the 60% happens through EU treaties with other non-EU countries.
Not only will the EU trade treaty need to be renegotiated, but so does the 50 other trade treaty with other nations - those treaties took a lot of time and over 600+ negotiators to write, the UK only have 30 negotiators and about 2 years.
A reworking of the economy usually results is a lot of unemployment and retraining. Imagine if the C standard library made a small change in some function. Retraining means public investment or as the austerity people put it - deficit spending - not sure how much appetite the UK govt has to do something like that.
Regardless of how much people hate on Java and Oracle - if they suddenly disappeared it would be chaos and lose of GDP for many years before we retool our software on Python/Go etc.
Also there is uncertainty - usually the horizon for bringing new laws into action are declared ahead of time by 4-5 years to give people/businesses time to plan.
Even if by some miracle Theresa May decides to withhold invoking article 50 before creating new treaties using back channels with the 50 other trading partners of the UK, it wont be possible to enact them until the UK leaves the EU and negotiates a new trade deal with the EU.
Neither of these conditions are in the interest of the EU or the UK if talks are to be amicable and realistic. Amicable and realistic talks are very much in the interests of all concerned - and I guess from the EU point of view, the leadership resolution in the UK could have been a lot worse. The rules are meant to discourage les autres, but there is little appetite at the moment for other countries to flirt with leaving. Also rhetoric is beginning to calm down as well - no more calls for immediate Article 50 invocation and UKIP have faded into the background a little.
So far so not as bad as it could be.
Well, that's your opinion. EU officials and heads of government appear to disagree with your view of what's best for them, having consistently and unerringly insisted that there will be NO negotiations whatsoever until Article 50 is invoked.
The new administration is setting up a brexit department and accumulating expertise necessary to start negotiations. Talk is of article 50 invocation by year end (I think).
Citation needed.
I have never seen this, and a quick check reveals the opposite:
"Ms Merkel added: “We have spoken to Britain and made clear there will be no negotiations with Britain until they have made their application, and there will be no cherry picking.”"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-refe...
This is from yesterday.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/09/philip-hammo...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/02612186-467b-11e6-8d68-72e9211e86...
Assuming countries are willing to grant the UK alone the same terms as the EU as a whole, and don't (ab)use this chance to negotiate a better situation for themselves.
Stats show there was (is?) a clear divide between leave and remain along geographical, age, and class boundaries, which are most certainly correlated with higher education and/or interest in technical subjects.
And yes, we sympathise with you.
All countries in the EU have a keen idea of their self interest at all times, and the UK is no exception. The national interest here has always been wholehearted participation in the single market deepening and expansion and little interest at all in the larger political project, which did not exist when the UK joined the EEC. "Special deals" do not fairly characterise the relationship.
I don't think that EU leaders have an urge to make the UK suffer that is dominant over the desire to have good neighbours and a healthy, stable future. We have all done well out of the relationship and we want to prosper together in the future. Europe needs wholehearted cooperation on the issues that unite us, and that needs good faith and an appreciation of what we still have.
The UK hasn't done their own trade negotiations for over 30 years. The EU has. They haven't got the right people with the right experience to do this (yet). They need to hire the best they can, or outsource, in order to get things in place within the deadline once the UK parliament has voted the referendum result through and Article 50 is submitted.
It is going to be tight. I imagine that Whitehall is in a shit storm right now.
I've actually read trade deals. The idea that there's only a handful of people in the world who can negotiate these things is ridiculous.
Its also two things negotiators and knowing your strengths.
The world's best negotiators wont be able help you very much if you do not have much to offer.
Also I am skeptical of your assertion that anyone could write trade deals. It requires a very deep understanding of economics, international finance, geopolitics and a bunch of other topics - I would say being able to be a good trade negotiator is a lot more difficult than being a programmer and has far more profound consequences.
China pursues a mercantilist strategy in many respects. Take steel, for example: unrestricted trade with China would wreak havoc on Germany's steel industry, with potential knock-on effects further along the value chain - and there's no guarantee that China would keep steel prices low after predatory pricing.
No, that does not follow.
Like I said, I've read trade deals. One I actually read almost from start to finish (the recent WTO deal on upgrading customs rules, I forgot the specific name).
If Chile can sign trade deals with much bigger economic powers, much more quickly than the EU can, I see no reason why the UK would be unable to. Can you justify your assertion that trade negotiation is much harder than programming, or is that just a feeling?
It would take decades for the UK to catch up to the EU on trade agreements again, if they ever do.
However, why obey EU rules when you're about to leave? The only reason to do this would be to leave on good terms. But the EU sees Brexit as a betrayal that must be punished severely to try and scare other countries into not leaving. There are no "good terms" by their choice, not the UK's.
So the UK should start immediately violating whatever EU rules are convenient to do so, once Article 50 is invoked.
"Why would you think we wouldn't?"
"You're breaking your treaty with the EU."
The UK signed the deal knowing the consequences of it, why would another country sign a trade deal with you knowing that you will not follow the terms due to your countries internal politics ?
All the UK will be doing is following the treaties in place to end an existing agreement. That's not breaking a treaty - it is following it.
I doubt any trade agreements the UK might be able to get, would be worth the backlash of turning the EU into an enemy. Especially considering that anyone the UK would want to trade with, probably doesn't also want to harm their relationship to the EU. That last point alone probably ensures that nobody is going to start trade discussions with the UK anyway until after they leave.
However they have already shown very clearly that they aren't like that. Given the total absence of compromise previously I see no reason to expect any now, unless quite a few of the current leaders of the Commission and EU countries are removed.
The EU will use whatever tactics it can to preserve its own power, national populations be damned.
Nowadays, not so much. Perhaps that's Juncker, or perhaps it's the fact that it's now so large. See how Cameron's negotiation went (or rather, didn't).
Besides, most of the compromises were simply not forcing the UK to do new things. That's only seen as a compromise because the EU is run by people who believe every member should be forcibly 'harmonised' through automatic implementation of new EU laws. If the EU was more like a standards body that simply recommended laws instead of mandating their implementation, there would be no need for allowing alternatives to be seen as "compromise"
There would be no point in an EU that couldn't mandate laws.
Suffice it to say, the EU could have taken many structures that are not the one it has now.
The problem for the UK is that they always want have all the benefits but they don't want all the duties.
No, don't having the same deal while outside of the EU is not punishing.
Trade creates wealth and wealth is not zero sum. Trade deals get signed because all parties involved believe it will be to their mutual benefit. Why would you want to sign a trade deal with a weak country? It is self-defeating: you would get little out of it.
Parts of the EU establishment seem locked in a mindset that they can only grow by taking things away from others. I saw a lot of discussion post-Brexit by countries that want to abuse regulatory passporting to try and force banks and other high-earning firms into other EU countries, but no discussion at all about making those countries naturally more attractive. It's the equivalent of saying "We will grow our economy by forcing Facebook to relocate its HQ from Silicon Valley to France by passing a regulation saying they must do so". Even if you brought overwhelming political and economic power to bear and somehow forced the Zuck to move to Paris, it'd just be a terrible idea for all sorts of long term reasons.
But the rest of your comment seems to say "Yes."
> Trade deals get signed because all parties involved believe it will be to their mutual benefit.
I think that's optimistic. Deals get signed fundamentally because each side individually benefits. A better deal will see the weaker partner able to grow as a result, but that's not necessary for it to be worthwhile to the stronger partner.
> Why would you want to sign a trade deal with a weak country? It is self-defeating: you would get little out of it.
There's always a stronger and a weaker player at the table. It might take some fiddling to work out which is which, and it's certainly not limited to a single axis, but deals still happen.
> abuse regulatory passporting
I don't see that as abuse, that's just playing the game with the pieces that are on the board. From France's point of view, given the choice between a quick zero-sum win where they gain the limited number of banks available and a long-term mutual win where everyone grows, why not do both?
There are lots of small favours that the UK will now need to hand out to get what it wants from EEA member states. These favours will cost. Its loosing a institute or a foundation there.
Its clear that the UK benefited a lot economically from being in the single market and regaining access under new agreements is going to be costly. That is not punishment. That is the real world, the UK ate its cake no one is going to give it a new one for free.
I really don’t mind the brexit voters, them I understand. I can’t understand how a conservative party launched itself in the most revolutionary course imaginable over internal politics. Not just reversing 40 years of slow progress in one direction but burning it all down to the ground. Over a very badly phrased referendum.
I think Cameron will go down in history as a terrible PM, a modern day Chamberlain.
This continues to be one of the most suicidal moves in British history.
There's a legal requirement as part of the Lisbon treaty that as soon as a country invokes Article 50 (leaving the EU) they have 2 years to negotiate treaties with all parties involved, after which all existing EU treaties with that country cease to apply. That means, from the day the government invokes Article 50, there is a maximum of 2 years access to EU funding for any science project in the UK. Any project that will take longer than that has pretty much zero chance of getting funded in the first place. Given the fact that Theresa May might invoke Article 50 on Thursday, getting a long term project funded is going to be impossible.
> "What is important is that we do this in the right timescale and we do it to get the right deal for the UK," Ms May told ITV television, reiterating that she would not trigger the article this year.)
http://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/no-exit-trigger-unt...
What some leavers don't realise is that the entire world had gotten used to dealing with the EU as a whole and that the world probably doesn't care that much about what Britain (or England/Wales) thinks about tariffs, terrorism, refugees, wars, human rights, etc.
Britain will have to follow the EU on many issues if it wants access to the common market.
Britain is going from having a very strong voice in a very powerful organisation that the world has to deal with to being a rather small country the world can largely ignore.
The UK was also going to give it up (alongside its WTO seat) which was what drove Cameron's 'ever closer union' clause.
How? Seems to me most of the predicted bad consequences were tied to leaving the EU, which (barring some mutual agreement with the EU on an alternate timetable) happens two years after Article 50 is invoked, which it has not yet been. Why would the UK continuing to do well while it is still in the EU discredit any of the predictions of problems stemming from leaving the EU?
The Brexit crash was the beginning. The media told everyone to panic, so everyone sold. Then people realized how irrational that was. Personally, I'm hoping for more liberal-media driven sell offs. They're great opportunities to invest.
The future of the British economy is strong: an educated populace, competitive companies, and a pro-business government. They're going to get a great trade deal with America. They're going to do better than ever before having thrown off the beaurocrats in Brussels.
In response to dragonwriter below (I'm rate-limited):
In two years time is when the tariffs would kick in overnight in the absence of a deal. No company is stupid enough to wait that long to adjust their operations.
No, so actual consequences of leaving will take significant time to be clear after the exit, not be immediately apparent the day Britain finally leaves the EU.
(Which rather reinforces the point that they won't be clear long before Britain leaves the EU.)
> Don't you think markets take into account expected future outcomes?
Yes, but that's just another set of predictions, not actual counterevidence to any conflicting set of predictions.
So, in your view, the UK is doing " phenomenally well" right now? I mean I have read other opinions, including "deep political, social, democratic and economic crisis" and "value of the pound plunges".
If the EU is trying to convince the remaining member states that "leaving is terrible, you should remain", then it's absolutely working:
http://www.politico.eu/article/support-for-angela-merkel-ris... https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/support-for-eu-memb...
And as for today vs a month ago, what's the evidence for that? I see them in a very strong position. The anti-business Labour Party is doing poorly in the polls, and the Conservatives have quickly coalesced around a new leader. The FTSE100 and FTSE250 are doing fine. There's every reason to believe that both Hillary (judging by her policies over time) and Trump (by explicit statement) are eager to sign a great deal with the UK. The future is bright for Britain.
But not in very good shape at all compared to say, the UK a month ago.
We'll see what comes of this, but as I said, I think Britain's fundamentals are very strong right now. There's no doubt that Brexit created uncertainty in areas where there was none before; markets hate uncertainty. Britain's trade relations were certainties within the EU, but so were uncontrolled migration and over-regulation. Now, on those and many more issues, the Brits themselves will decide and negotiate. No one is quite sure what they will do, especially after the next election. But if Britain makes the right choices, and at least for now I think they have leadership that's inclined to make those right choices, I believe that they will do better than they could have within the EU.
Just like the Brexit campaign. Good job.
The likely dissolution of the political entity currently known as the UK, more formally the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" would preclude it "doing well", not so?
Now of course, if support for Scottish independence consistently polls at over 60% for years, that's a different story. But I think that pro-independence forces are likely to weaken as Brexit proves to have been a good move.
Or not, in which case England loses 5 million people (England is 53 million btw) and some oil. On the plus side, they'd shake off a chunk of the electorate that seems to be set on economic suicide by socialism.
> The EU referendum was already on the table during the Scottish referendum. The people of Scotland knew the risk.
Incorrect, it was sold as the other way around: Scotland must stay in the UK or it might be out of the EU. You are detached from reality. A second Scottish referendum is likely.
1) https://next.ft.com/content/1219f41c-4456-11e6-9b66-0712b387...
So, I for one see the Brexit (the process, not the outcome) as positive to European democracy. The process will (and should) be long and hard to reach a fair outcome to both Britain and EU and voters will learn from this.
The EU is messy by design, despite its obvious democratic-deficits which needs to be tackled by those who believe in european integration. I'd rather have neighbours settle their issues and common goals in a messy, frustrating forum then in the good-old battle-field (military or economic).
[citation needed]
The distinction is less important than you think, because the second question gets at the heart of the issue and naturally follows the first. Unlike the US, The EU does not have a strong executive/legislative/judicial (and perhaps more-importantly, a shared language/national history) backbone that ties the member states together.
Also, the UK is still the 5th largest economy in the world by GDP ($2.8T). It may be 1/7 the size of the US economy and 1/4 the size of the Chinese economy, but it's hardly going to be ignored.
2. The pound is recovering, and has already climbed back up beyond the point when the calculation in the article was made.
3. 5th or 6th, honestly, what difference does it make? The point is that they're still a major player in the world economy.
> Also, the UK is still the 5th largest economy in the world by GDP ($2.8T).
But relatively speaking, it's position is weakening year by year, as it's seeing anaemic growth compared to a large number of other economies.
More importantly, we're seeing the rise of more and more trading blocks, at a time when the UK has decided to stand outside. E.g. Africa is going to overtake the UK as a whole shortly. Hardly all that strange given we're talking about more countries than the EU. But ECOWAS - one of the regional pillars of the African Union - is on a trajectory to overtake the UK all on its own sometime in the next couple of decades, and with current growth it is likely more of them will.
It is pretty much inconceivable that the UK will remain 5th over the next decade, and it's looking likely that the UK won't even remain in the top ten over the next two decades, unless something happens to massively increase UK growth.
EU will die its slow death, Brexit is not the cause, its the catalyst.
The EU sceptics may be smug now but the EU is not some selfserving idea. It's now more relevant than ever.
You misunderstand my point. Even if, on the surface, they continue to ask what the "EU" thinks, they'll actually be asking (as they always have) what Merkel, Hollande, and (now) Theresa May think. Greece, Italy, Portugal, etc. don't have a say because they need to keep their heads down and continue to service their debt to the big 3 EU leaders, who clearly don't agree on much, even at the global level (war, trade agreements, etc).
Have you been to Africa? Have you seen the level of infrastructure (education, access to electricity and clean water) relative to violence (civil wars), corruption, and pillaging of resources (western countries, China) that continues to take place across even the most developed African nations?
The UK may not even exit the EU at the end of the day [1]. It's much too early to make such dire predictions for the future of UK growth. I prefer the simple or "naive" view that things will not change much.
[1] A referendum in the UK is not binding on the government of the day; it is advisory. The UK has a government with a slender majority (implying it will be tricky to ram things through parliament), it is looking for a new prime minister (and, possibly, a new leader of the opposition), the referendum result was close (the country is split) and no one seems certain who has the power to get the ball rolling by triggering the “infamous” Article 50.
I suspect not; for one, I think many of the 4+ million who signed the petition for a new referendum would probably vote "Remain".
This has been debated to death, 99% of politicians agree that the vote is cast, let's move on.
A central aspect of a democracy is that people are allowed to change their mind, and that people are allowed to continue to campaign for a decision to be overturned.
So no, we won't move on. Even after a Brexit we won't move on - some of us will fight to rejoin, some of us will work for independence (for my part, I've offered to help one of the groups starting to work for independence for London).
But this is not over, even it if takes breaking the UK apart to finish it.
More than 4 million people signed a petition for a new referendum
On top of that we now know that most of the promises from the leave camp were flat out lies, and they've basically been shown to not have the faintest idea what they want to achieve.
I'm sure some would switch and vote leave out of spite, but frankly I don't think the vote was fair or democratic to begin with - it presented a false choice, in that "leave" could campaign on anything under the sun, with contradicting ideas about what leaving actually meant, and we see now the problems that causes: Did the 52% want EEA membership? Did they want full on isolationism? Something in between? We don't know. And we don't know how the results would be if they had to pick a specific option, but it is highly unlikely that they'd be unchanged.
Cameron (our DM) came along and gave us all a free re-roll.
People with 10 or less voted yes. 11 - 15 were about 50/50 depending on risk aversion. 16 - 20 voted no.
The numbers are almost always going to sway in favour of change, there are too many people down at the bottom.
Sure, more options on how to leave would have been amazing, left-exit was interesting, green-exit was also interesting. Right-racist-exit was bonkers, but people liked it.
But remember that remain-the-same and remain-and-re-negotiate had both been tried. And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit card chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy car, no life insurance, no pension, crap.
Next time you're in an Oxfam shop look at us. Picking over dead man suits for our next job interview. The shame of it. Jobs gone. High streets gone. Only option is to move to London away from elderly parents, our kids, our friends.
Yep.
Except for one teeny weeny insignificantly minor detail: these things have nothing whatsoever to do with the EU, and everything to do with the austerity/de-industrialization policies of neo-liberal UK governments, primarily Tory, but to a somewhat less extent also New-Labour.
And the EU was, if anything, a counter to those forces, with structural funds, with labor standards, with investments by non-UK firms in the de-industrialized parts of the UK for access to the common market etc.
And leaving the EU will make these things worse.
So voting against the EU to protest these conditions is not even cutting off your nose to spite your face, it's cutting off your nose to spite someone else's face!
While it deserves the word "pathetic" I can't bring myself to it. It really is just sad. Very, very sad.
Pathetic? Name calling, wow that's low. I love how butt hurt you are. The more furious rich people are the better the decision feels.
In fact there may be no way to keep any of them happy, since apparently many of them voted Leave for impossible/EU-unrelated reasons: to keep non-EU immigration down; to spend money we won't even have on the NHS; because they don't like what the UK government has been doing and will keep doing outside the EU with even greater impunity, etc.
"Pathetic" 1. Arousing sadness, compassion, or sympathy, esp. through vulnerability or sadness; pitiable.
Seems fair enough. "Name-calling"?
"Rich people": I work for a university as support staff. I earn under the median UK wage and surely well under the median HN wage. We've had deeper and deeper cuts year on year for the past several years and post-Brexit an even bigger chunk of our budget looks like disappearing along with our best academics and researchers, not to mention other support staff, foreign language teachers/cataloguers/negotiators, etc. Education and research careers have been a route into the middle class for many and it's a shame to see that threatened - even more of a shame when the people who voted for it, the press, politicians have hardly even acknowledged it's a problem.
But have fun assuming that only rich people are interested in science or can get any benefit from cooperating with colleagues elsewhere in Europe...
If you are unhappy with what the UK government is doing, and the things you say you are unhappy about are 100% UK gov, not EU, then the time to "vote the bums out" is the UK general election.
Really having a hard time figuring out what you were/are trying to accomplish.
To address the description of the source of the problem offered upthread? Voting against the people actually responsible for the problems in UK elections (general elections and otherwise.)
If the problem is in Westminster, voting against the EU does nothing to solve the problem.
One side was allowed to sell a fairy-tale that was customised for each recipient, while the other had to deal with reality. The fairy-tales may have been appealing, but only one of them can even potentially become reality.
The reality is that we're ending up with something that nobody voted for, because it hasn't been put together yet. The only thing we do know is that it won't look like any of the promises, because most them have already been shown to be lies.
As it stands, remaining is the most democratic option, as it is the only promised alternative that actually exist and that we have an indicator of the level of support for, and the only option that doesn't rule out substantial subsets of the others later on.
Barring that, many of us will do what we can to minimise the ability for the Leave voters to harm us, by fighting for independence.
> And for millions and millions of people it was shit. Utter shit. Credit card chomping, crappy zero hour job, minimum wage, second hand clothes, crappy car, no life insurance, no pension, crap.
And I respect that a lot of people got it hard. But none of that has anything to do with the EU, and everything to do with the same governments that have been lying to you for decades (and yes, I include New Labour in that).
Brexit is going to affect those of us who are most angry about this least in most respects. I can deal with the economic fallout. I'll benefit from the housing market collapsing, as we can afford to take advantage of it. The impending interest rate drop means I will now pay less on my mortgage per month than I had budgeted with paying per week when we took it out before the financial crisis.
Meanwhile those in the most precarious situations are likely to get hit by slowdowns coupled with the effects of a government that doesn't give a shit about them.
And with the EU gone, a bunch of regulations that have prevented successive UK governments from stepping all over you will be gone.
If this country doesn't get ripped apart by independence movements, it will be torn apart through anger that'll make the winter of discontent seems like a polite garden party at the current rate when people realise the effects of Brexit.
David Cameron said he was going to wait for his replacement to start Article 50, and he would step down in October. Now that he's announced that he's stepping down tomorrow, we'll have a new prime minister much more quickly than anticipated. That might mean Article 50 could be coming within the next few weeks/months.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/08/legal-attemp... [2] http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/bu...
Britain could have national votes every week if the Government decided to hold them, but the government seems disinclined to have another referendum on Brexit.
China recently rated the UK as the number one soft power in the world [1] ... rather than just judging countries on the size of their economy, "soft power" is a measure of a countries ability to achieve its aims through diplomacy and influence. The UK has links of language, culture, trade and kinship across the globe dating back to the time of Empire.
Unshackled from the failing trade block of the EU I don't see any reason why the UK couldn't carve out a very acceptable niche for itself operating again as an independent sovereign nation.
This wasn't a corporate decision just based on raw economic numbers. This was a decision based on principle rather than pragmatism. It's democracy in action, and sometimes it's messy.
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21657655-oxbridge-one-...
Europe and Antarctica are the only two continents on Earth to see no net positive growth to their economies in the last few decades.
Hmm...the numbers appear to disagree with your claim:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/european-union/gdp-annual-growth-rate
Hmm...the article does not say that China is the source of the ratings: "compiled by Portland, a London-based PR firm".
Let me repeat that: a London-based PR firm rates Britain highly. In other news, the pope says vatican tops in catholicism and the US president thinks US is the greatest.
In addition, "Britain scored highly in its “engagement” with the world, [..] its diplomats staffing the largest number of permanent missions to multilateral organisations".
Hmm...
And finally: "But many of the assets that pushed Britain to the top of the soft-power table are in play. In the next couple of years the country faces a referendum on its membership of the EU; a slimmer role for the BBC, its prolific public broadcaster; and a continuing squeeze on immigration, which has already made its universities less attractive to foreign students. Much of Britain’s hard power was long ago given up. Its soft power endures—for now."
Gee...
It's possible that both sides are correct.
You don't need to be an expert to know the EU will find all kinds of weird ways to try and "punish" the UK for leaving, you just have to listen to men like Juncker. Instead of convincing people their ideas are good, they are 100% focused on maximising the pain of disobeyed Brussels. None of these sorts of things were unexpected by anyone who voted out.
There are certain benefits you get by being a member of this club.
I am leaving your club.
Then you no longer get the benefits that members of the club get.
YOU ARE UNFAIRLY PUNISHING ME!!!!
When you're in the same "club" you can be assured of how things will go. When a country decides that it wants to leave the club because they want to have their own rules that are different, and that they don't want to share finances, then that makes agreements take longer.
The EU is failing because its blind, ideological insistence on connecting lots of unrelated things together to make an artificial club (really: the beginnings of a new country). The EU's petulant "retaliation" is treated by far too many as a given, when in reality it is a policy choice driven by a quasi-religious devotion to an abstract vision.
These projects might not start until 2-3 years from now and are definitely not ending before that. At that time the UK won't be part of the EU.
Why would you waste money in something that has no benefit for anyone? Not even for the UK scientists.