Three months after the biggest decision in decades, and the subject is barely even being talked about seriously in the UK. I don't understand it.
May promised "We're going to make a success of Brexit" but basically does not have the means to do that. What she can do is delay, do studies and so on hence the lack of progress.
http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2016/07/14/everything-you-ne...
I also find the following article very informative:
"Brexit means Brexit – and that means there will be no debate on freedom of movement"
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-means-brexit-and-...
...Which is a purely political strategy to capture the continued support of leave voters - exactly the people whose lives will be destroyed when trade dries up.
The problem is that the typical leave voter understands immigration because they have direct personal experience of immigrants.
But leave voters don't understand the intricacies of trade deals, or the incredible damage poor trading conditions can do to an economy.
May does, which is why she has been warning of "tough times ahead."
If she was interested in continuing trade on realistic terms she wouldn't be saying that.
My suspicion at this point is that the Tory party is willing to sacrifice the economic future of the UK in order to remain in power.
The areas with any substantial immigration either from the EU or elsewhere voted remain.
There are two main groups of leavers, with some overlap - the working classes with limited education and low prospects, and the petit bourgeois, who are relatively poorly educated and uncurious but can be reasonably well off.
The first group has direct experience of poor working conditions, and often lives in an area with immigration. They'll have seen wages being kept down first hand. This vote was enough to swing it for Leave in many working class areas.
The second group may not have direct experience, but is easily persuaded by xenophobia and jingoism. They're often older and are nostalgic for an England that never really existed. They tend conservative - and Conservative.
They like simple explanations to complicated problems, and they're easy marks for the British press - the real source of many of the UK's problems - which has been stoking their prejudices for decades with a constant stream of anti-EU scare stories.
This pattern isn't unique to the UK, but so far the UK is the only country to stress test it.
I fit into neither group, and nor do the other people I know who voted to leave.
> "the British press - the real source of many of the UK's problems - which has been stoking their prejudices for decades"
I couldn't agree with you more on this point. However, I suspect this had a role in your earlier summation of the two groups of Leave voters. You really should take what you read/view/hear in British mainstream news outlets with a huge pinch of salt, even when it lines up with your own opinions.
To give you one example of a group you overlooked, I'd suggest taking a look at the Left Leave website:
Ironic, isn't it? But absolutely typical. In Germany as well, the areas with highest anti-immigrant sentiments (and voting etc.) are the ones with the least amount of actual immigrants.
Which kind of makes sense when you think about it...
Migrants don't go there, they come to where the jobs are.
The argument can be taken up with the following who we can assume voted (if they are or would be UK citizens) to leave the EU, and some of whom might well have some understanding of the intricacies of trade deals.
Roger Bootle, Managing Director of Capital Economics, and Gerard Lyons, Economic advisor to the Mayor of London and former Chief Economist of Standard Chartered Bank. Ruth Lea, Warwick Lightfoot, Neil MacKinnon, Ryan Bourne, Head of Public Policy, Institute of Economic Affairs, Keith Boyfield, Executive Director, Keith Boyfield Associates, Professor Tim Congdon, Founder, International Monetary Research Ltd, Sean Corrigan, Hinde Capital, Mike Denham, Research Fellow, The TaxPayers’ Alliance, Bryan Gould, Former Labour Shadow Cabinet member & former vice-Chancellor, University of Waikato, Dr David Green, Chief Executive, CIVITAS, Dr Graham Gudgin, University of Cambridge, Dr. Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director, The New Zealand Initiative,Damon de Laszlo, Chairman, Economic Research Council, Graeme Leach, Former Chief Economist, Institute of Directors, Andrew Lilico, Chairman, Economists for Britain, Neil MacKinnon, Global Macro Strategist, VTB Capital,Dr Eileen Marshall, IEA Advisory Council, Professor Kent Matthews, Associate Dean for Engagement & Professor of Money and Banking, Cardiff University, Michael Petley, Chief Investment Officer, ECU Group, John Mills, Chairman and Founder of JML,Professor Patrick Minford, Professor of Economics, Cardiff Business School, Iain Murray, Vice President for Strategy, Competitive Enterprise Institute (Washington DC),David Myddelton, Professor D.R. Myddelton, Emeritus Professor of Finance and Accounting, Cranfield School of Management.Ross Parker, Brian Reading, former economics adviser to Edward Heath, Professor Colin Robinson, Advisory Council Institute of Economic Affairs & Emeritus Professor, Surrey University, Matthew Sinclair, Senior Consultant, Europe Economics, Professor Phil Whyman, Professor of Economics, Business, Economics and International Business, University of Central Lancashire,Dr Geoffrey Wyatt, Heriot-Watt University
20 years ago Britain had 900,000 immigrants. Today they have 3.3 million. The British government promised to limit EU immigration to 100,000 last year but broke their promise: it exceeded 300,000.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-27/get-ready-...
These low-skilled immigrants compete for jobs in the UK and lower wage growth. Not those of professionals but of the working class/middle class.
In the US, in 1970 we had 9.6 million immigrants (less than 5% of the population) and 2013 41.3 million (about 14% of the population). That does not include the 11 million immigrants in the US illegally.
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/28/chapter-5-u-s-foreign-...
As in the case of Britain, the working class in the US is suffering from the mostly low-educated immigrants that compete for jobs and drive down wage rates. The 11 million immigrants in the country illegally take jobs with illegal working conditions and illegally low wages since they can't complain.
So, the issue is economic and not xenophobic.
The real issue of BrExit and the rise of Trump is because the political and media elites in both countries (and this includes the Democrats as well as Republicans) have ignored the economic concerns of the working class.
In the US, most people with American parents have higher income than their parents did (in their 30's). This is true for all quintiles except maybe the top 20%.
http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpew... Figure 1
http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publicatio... Figure 5
Yet when we look at cross sectional statistics (rather than longitudinal ones), income (though not compensation) has remained flat.
The way to square these two facts together is that George Jr. has a higher income at 30 than George Sr. did, but the average of George Jr. and Jose Jr. has lower income at 30 than George Sr. did.
Jose Sr. is excluded from the cross-sectional statistics since he lived in Mexico in his 30's.
It is probably for both reasons, but certainly immigrants that have low education compete with Americans who have low education for jobs and they do drive down wage growth. This is not my opinion. It is economics.
The issue is that proportion of both US and UK populations that are immigrants. Since 1970 in the US we have gone from 1 in 20 to 1 in 6 or 7 who are immigrants, most who are low-skilled.
It would have been wiser and more fair to the American working class to have kept the proportion of 1 in 20.
Since immigrants are consumers as well as producers, it's unclear that they drive down wages. Similarly it's unclear that Americans having children drives wages down.
I'm not sure what "fair" means in your comment, or why you only consider "fair to the American working class" rather than "fair to humans". Could you clarify?
Are you certain that this applies to Americans that don't have a college education? That didn't graduate from high school? Those who would suffer most economically from uneducated immigrants?
And one must average in those who are unemployed (eg, 0 wages).
Don't look at averages, look at distributions.
No, I am not certain that Americans with American parents in the bottom 20% didn't get an education. Some of them probably did (about half the population has at least some college) and had their place at the bottom of the ladder filled by an immigrant.
Don't look at averages, look at distributions.
It helps if you actually follow the link provided and look at the exact figure being cited. Then you'd see it's a histogram of a distribution!
“The facts support the application of Ricardo’s theory to immigration. Skilled immigrants lower the wages of skilled natives, and unskilled immigrants lower the wages of unskilled natives. … In contrast, in the United States, which takes in a far higher percentage of low-skilled immigrants than the U.K. does, it is unskilled wages that have stayed low: the income of unskilled workers has barely kept pace with inflation for the last forty years.” -- Tim Harford: The Undercover Economist (2nd ed) p. 30 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199926514/
Financial Times columnist Harford has a BS & MS Economics Oxford
The question is: For people whose parents were born in the US without a high school education and also without a college education, and including those who have no income because they can't get a job is there wage growth or a decrease?
It is economists that state that immigrants who are uneducated displace those citizens who are working class.
In any case, the specific stats Harford cites are cross sectional. This means the averages include immigrants and fall victim to the exact same Simpson's Paradox issue that I discuss above. To show that immigrants have reduced anyone's wages, you need longitudinal data.
And your question is also malformed, because you don't specify whether you are discussing the children (who may be educated) of uneducated American parents, or the uneducated children of American parents (who may or may not have been uneducated).
In order to successfully complete college, one needs an IQ of 110 which is of course above average of 100. Others are being left out not because they don't work hard, but because of biology/opportunity.
If one reads Harford's book, which I found out from the Freakonomics people, they'll get a better idea that the intent is that low educated immigrants compete with low educated American citizens for jobs and drive down wages and that highly educated immigrants (think H1-B visas) compete with highly educated American citizens.
The problem is not immigration, but the percentage of the population should have remained at 5% of the population and not at nearly 14% (which does not include 11 million immigrants here illegally).
By comparison, in 1990 about 1 million of 60 million Brits (1.5%) and now it is 3.3 million or about 5%. The legal immigrant levels in the US today are 3 times that of the level the Brits voted for BrExit.
Leave got better results in places with less immigration, i.e. in places where they don't have foreign neighbours but fear having them.
Moreso, restricting immigration will actually make economy worse and take unskilled jobs out of the country (to China, India, etc), thus screwing even more over the working class.
If it was the economy, people would favour immigration (young people paying taxes, keeping jobs around, not using the NHS, etc) and complain about other stuff (company tax loopholes anyone?), but they complained about immigration and that's what they fear.
It is xenophobia, but of course no one fears Swiss, Japanese or Swede immigrants because they're rich. I don't see many problems in UK for Saudi princes or Russian magnates that exploit and slave people, again because they're rich. Racism is basically now fear of the poor (hence all the negativity about asylum seekers and other refugees).
People, including me of course, are assholes.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/07/donald...
Believe what you want to believe.
The whole process will be immensely complicated: the deal should be bad enough for the UK to instil fear for an exit, but good enough to avoid an economic collapse.
Is that how Europe is governed? I think any country should be allowed to leave without condescending comments by anyone. I prefer staying in Europe, but if the majority of my fellows prefer the opposite, then it's democracy. Who are we to judge they are "stupid", "country-side, or "senile", like I've read all across newspapers, or even fascists, like I've heard too?
If Europe relies on hating the people who have a different opinion, twisting their vote to say it meant something else, and govern them with "fear" and "bad deal" (your words), then...
...then this is not the Europe I want to be part of.
The best deal possible is a Norway-like arrangement, which would be unacceptable to nationalists.
You have no factual basis for claiming these people are asserting false facts or voting based on false facts. Brexit is a vote on what the future should look like, and no one has a factual basis to predict the future.
tl;dr people you disagree with aren't fraudulent by default
And in Trump's case (describing immigrants as "rapists" and "murderers") it is also demonstrably false http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mythical-connection-between-...
I think people can handle condescending comments. The problem is that you cannot reap the benefits without paying dues, which is what the Brexit camp promised. It's in the interest of the remaining EU members to make this clear, or the whole union will crumble. It's likely that this will throw back Europe to nationalism and protectionism, which is counter-productive.
(Europe's history is littered with wars, if we don't want to consider the previous centuries, look no further than former Yugoslavia or Ukraine.)
This assumes the voters are gullible. But what if they are grown-ups who didn't literally believe Johnson, and made a decision based on rational arguments, would you accept it? Examples:
- What if, for example, voters wanted fewer immigration at all costs, and what if their elites refused to give them a referendum on this topic? Then they may decently choose to vote against their elites' interests on the next question they're asked. And boom! there goes Europe. Tough luck, but extremely bad politics too.
- What if rural workers and retired people, who demonstrated 10 years ago against the low benefits and who see violence, alcoholism and drugs raising, what if those people were genuinely getting the short end of the London intelligencia?
In both situations, it ends with "If you break my toys, I'll break yours". If you keep accepting more immigration / not reducing unemployment in countryside England, then we'll break the Europe that makes you so rich.
You know, you evoke crumbling and wars. I know nothing more pushing a country to wreckage than a divide between the rich and the poor. Which may be what happened in England.
If we want peace, it's important to listen to what other people want. I hear people blame the rise of xenophobia all across Europe. Maybe if we stop tagging anyone who suggest fewer immigration as xenophobic, and listen to a quarter of their proposals, then they won't need to vote for the extreme right?
[1] https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharch...
In your document I read "48% people think that immigration is one of the most important issues facing Britain, just ahead of the EU referendum". The Remain camp proposed to increase immigration.
48% voters for the Leave camp as a start, that's pretty pretty high! Plus whatever % they convince about leaving Europe for other reasons. Total 52%, I'm surprised the result isn't higher actually.
Personally I have not seen any examples. I've just seen sore losers on the Remain side latching onto this one vague campaign poster and declaring that the people (other people, obviously) were fooled and the result is therefore, in some way, illegitimate.
It's quite possible that the entire referendum campaign period was basically irrelevant. People have been discussing and forming opinions about EU membership for years. It's not like evaluating a new electoral candidate.
brexit misled
The unemployed father of two who is married to an
Irish wife watched the crash of the country's
currency, the pound, with increasing worries on
Friday. But one development in particular made
him change his mind [about his 'leave' vote]:
“My son has mental health issues and I feared
a privatization of our health care system,
which is currently for free,” Kerin said.
...On Friday morning, UKIP leader Nigel Farage
went on national television to say it had been
a “mistake” that some campaigners promised the
money currently being transferred to Brussels
would be spent on health care. "Nigel Farage
betrayed us," said Kerin.Apart from desire to punish the UK, what prevents the EU and the UK from coming to a CETA like agreement (exactly as Boris and May have expressed support for)?
> Is that how Europe is governed? [...] I prefer staying in
> Europe, but if the majority of my fellows prefer the opposite,
> then it's democracy.
How does democracy have anything to do with the UK then getting some sort of preferential treatment for trade once they're out?
That would not be in the democratic interests of the remaining EU citizens who don't want to see the EU crumble any further.
> in the democratic interests of the remaining EU citizens who don't want to see the EU crumble any further
It's in the democratic interest of the remaining EU citizen to know that they won't get hatred if they ever decide to leave EU. The democratic interest is in freedom.
I'm looking at the increase of power of international law, and its democracy, the fact that they override country-level laws, and the track record we need to set for future agreements. We're negotiating with powerful countries who have a track record of spying, blackmailing and subverting other democracies to make them sign agreements against the will of the people. Once signed by our leaders, TTIP is unrevokable. This is not in our democratic interest. In democracy, all laws are voted and can be changed. It may incur costs (e.g. the loss of not having free trade anymore) but it shouldn't incur any fine, hatred, or condamnation based on moral standard.
A positive outcome of the Brexit on the TTIP/EU/WTO/OTAN/Climate/... would be if international agreements faced a referendum by the People every 10 years. That way, we'd ensure the people are in on the laws that apply to them.
The same kinds of argument are made everywhere, with the pro-stay parties predicting bad deals for the leaving country, economic trouble, et cetera. They probably honestly believe that will be the result for a country leaving the EU.
Now the UK is leaving, and the deal they get must be approved by all remaining countries (they all have vetos).
Of course those countries will only agree with a harsh deal for the UK -- one, they really already honestly believe that that would be the result for any leaving country, and two, it is great ammo in their fight for power against pro-leave parties in their own countries. They get to show that their predicted doom comes true.
I'm not sure politics is always hating "the people who have a different opinion", but it's certainly doing everything to get power in your own hands instead of theirs.
Assuming your comment is meant as an argument for remain, it's an equally good argument for this woman not to get divorced.
If the EU is über harsh on the UK, especially if it will come from either the Eurocrats like Juncker or from one of the smaller states it will not fly well with both EU and EEA members up for renegotiations.
Philip Hammond was recently in China [1] and discussed the possibility of trade agreements with them and other representatives of other countries who were also there.
Australia has already mentioned opening up trade agreements [2] with the UK as well.
There is even talk of trading with the common-wealth [3].
The point is this, things are moving forward. Just because it's not in the news. Which the majority it won't be until it's ready to be announced. Doesn't mean that nothing is happening.
Also I don't know how old you are. But before the UK entered the EC which it was known back then. The UK was trading with the entire world. Now, it has the possibility of accessing the EU market AND trading with the world. Which I think is a great prospect for the UK.
Edit: To address the downvotes. When the UK was trading within the EU. These trading agreements were done by the EU for all the member-states. They were negotiating as one trading block.
Now that the UK is out of the EU. She can trade speaking for herself, not having veto's by France or another country. Go look it up.
Also [4]: EU-US trade agreement fails. Now the UK is free to open up trade talks with the US.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36877573
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/03/g20-theresa-may-i...
[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/29/a-bright-future-a...
[4] http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/704752/EU-USA-trade-deal...
Wonderful. Something which clearly is not possible while in the EU. I never understood why the EU did not allow that. The UK never had a chance to successfully trade within the EU and trade with other countries was strictly forbidden.
Brexit will change all that. Congratulations!
Huh? All EU countries trade with countries outside the EU all the time.
I hope the UK will never get back that glory.
The EU never prevented UK from trading with the rest of the world. If anything, it enabled the UK to keep some commerce that would otherwise have bypassed the UK for France or Germany, as the Japanese memo also suggests.
Upon joining the EU, the free trade arrangements that the UK had with Commonwealth countries were dissolved.
http://eulawanalysis.blogspot.de/2015/11/the-eu-or-commonwea...
Now they are EU trading partners, interested in remaining such, and to the extent UK agreements would collide with their EU agreements they are not prone to giving up any advantages they might have for the sake of dealing with their old oppressors.
Great reasoning.
As such, there is a lot of fuss and hot air about things that will possibly not materialize. Not to mention all those speculative business affairs..
It is binding in the sense that it's "the will of the people", albeit by a slender margin, and it's kind of tricky to just ignore that. I personally suspect the Prime Minister is not highly committed to Brexit (she campaigned against it) but can't be seen to be "sabotaging" it by action or inaction, so she's got her game-face on. But she might come back later and say "it just won't work" or "Europe has offered us a better deal on immigration if we remain in", so let's have another referendum.
> a lot of fuss and hot air about things that will possibly not materialize
Or they might materialize, and it could turn out to be a Bad Thing, which is why people are worried about it. The continuation of the current status quo seems highly unlikely, whatever happens.
In a way, a clean way to do it would to be a call for elections, and a proper mandate - either to stay in, or stay out. But that might not happen, considering the nature of the political game.
I agree about the reasons to worry, and to have a proper discussion. Things tend to get out of hand sometimes when it comes to media.
Absolutely, but the weakness of the opposition Labour party and the near-annihilation of the Liberal Democrats at the last election mean (as things stand) it's mostly a foregone conclusion that the Conservatives will win. So to their way of looking at things, they will have two mandates to leave.
It's an extraordinary situation, though. I said to my son on the morning the result was announced, this will affect all of us for the rest of our lives. I still don't think I was being hyperbolic. Seasoned politicians and commentators are saying it's our biggest political crisis since WW2 or Suez, and that's even coming from people who seem to support Brexit.
On the other hand, what if the electorate did not vote out of protest, was misinformed by the politicians or media, or simply not educated enough to make the proper choice? Apart from the shocking failure of an established western democracy to make a good economical and political choice, what are the consequences at stake here?
For our startup, for instance, it means that we considered dropping potential R&D partners from the UK. For the UK economy, the consequences might be devastating.
In general, I am all for removing UK's special privileges, and their counterproductive attitude towards the EU. But I also do not want to see them go. The EU would loose a member state, and the UK might desintegrate (Northern Ireland and Scotland sure want to stay in the EU!).
Well, that has always been the risk with democracy. People disagree, one side of a vote wins, the other side loses.
But you can't simply accuse the winning side of being misinformed or uneducated or irrational unless you are willing to accept that they view you in the same light. And making that argument publicly, as the Remain side has very vocally since losing, only hardens the position of those on the other side that you know nothing and are not worth listening to since you obviously don't see the good that will come from their victory.
So all the rest (economic devastation, EU disintegration, counterproductive attitudes) might be exactly what they desire. And they're in the majority, in a democracy. If you dislike that, perhaps democracy isn't really your preferred form of government.
> So all the rest (economic devastation, EU disintegration, counterproductive attitudes) might be exactly [...]
I doubt that one can draw a straight line from the outcome of the referendum to a fatalistic, self destructive attitude of the population of the UK. There are many factors at play here - protest votes against the political establishment, general abstinence, phobia against EU bureaucracy, nationalistic tendencies et cetera. I am not in the picture here, since I have never lived long enough in the UK to understand the tendencies at hand.
> perhaps democracy isn't really your preferred form of government.
I will not comment on that apart from the remark that every form of human government has its suboptimal characteristics. Democracy is not such a bad solution - apart from the fact when it fails.
All in all, again, the EU will survive the BREXIT, albeit it will take damage. The UK might not.
What does that mean? Votes voted either "Leave" or "Remain." That's it. It's a binary choice.
It's not binding as in they could theoretically put it to an MP vote and reject it, but it would be utter political suicide for any party that did. So it's only not binding only if you're completely and utterly delusional.
There would be riots, a major swing to UKIP, lots of 'safe' MPs would lose their seats, etc., etc.
When Economic Doomsayers Stumble: Cautionary Tales From Brexit, Grexit and U.S. Budget Battles
Proof: https://twitter.com/stucchio/status/747493530277294082
I'm up 14% (67% annualized) on EWU (UK index) and VGK (Europe Index) since then - it's a nice chunk of money in my pocket.
There are so many doomsayers here. When are you guys going to go short?
It's a lot easier to criticize the outgroup than it is to put your money where your mouth is.
It just looks like the market has priced in the current situation, which is worse than before, but doesn't yet know what will happen, because nobody really knows.
In fact, if it remains at the levels it's at, it will cancel out the additional tariffs UK exports into Europe would see as non-members of the EU.
The whole thing is really quite overblown.
Given that the UK economy is doing well, what is there to talk about? Most people are relieved to have that monkey off their back.
Assuming you're referring to the EU Parliament, the EU has little say in UK criminal law -- as opposed to various cooperation agreements and bits of harmonizing how criminal justice is carried out.
https://fullfact.org/europe/what-would-brexit-mean-criminal-...
That monkey was responsible for a huge number of regulations which benefit EU citizens, again, because it forces the government to take action that they would otherwise be too unwilling or lazy to take.
Can you provide a specific example of something that you think has been over-regulated by the EU?
https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-facts-behind-claims-uk-influe...
(I'll take the downvote to mean that you don't have an example?)
I recall Leavers on Facebook looking forward repealing stifling EU legislation restricting higher-wattage toasters and vacuum cleaners