So long and thanks for all the fish EU | Hacker News Reader

So long and thanks for all the fish EU

bbc.co.uk

8 points2dvisio15 comments

Main submission (over 200 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13416955

Mods: can these comments be merged with that submission?

Also, article title is "Brexit: UK to leave single market, says Theresa May"

The UK has the tantalising prospect of new trade agreements with major non-EU nations here. Can't understand why anyone in the UK thinks remaining in the EU makes sense?

A bloc of 27 nations in various states of ill-health, with whom the UK has a trade deficit?

The EU - a union that prevents the UK enjoying its own free-trade agreements with the rest of the growing non-EU, English-speaking World?

What's really ironic here is that the EU, from what I understand, completely destroyed the UK finishing markets making a once prosperous and lively industry from within the UK pulled out to some other nation that now owned the rights to do fishing in some areas.

I just find it funny given the title.

Well OK, the UK fishing industry was cannibalised.... But EU integration and harmonisation made it easier for young people from Grimsby and Hull to go and do their International Baccalaureates in Florence. So, swings and roundabouts...

Boulderdash! Young students have been able to go to universities all over Europe since ever, when universities were a new thing in the Middle Age Europe, but even before in the Antiquity!

Perhaps because European integration has been the antidote to the extreme nationalism which devastated not only the continent, but the whole world in the first half of the 20th century?

We're seeing rises in ethno-nationalism again, a turn to leaders who project strength and authority and demagogue via twitter, and a new theater of war where we are just as clueless of the consequences (cyber) the world was about explosives and machine guns in WWI. Couple those with the pressures from climate change and I sadly predict a major war between major nation-states in the next 15 years

That sounds alarmist to me. Britain just selected their second female prime minister. Far from a warmonger - Theresa May has been conciliatory and has expressed her desire to make "Britain work for everyone"

As for the EU being the antidote to nationalism - I'd say it's the German's magnanimous post-war culture that has set a shining example to its neighbours. And a strong UN and NATO.

The EU, on the other hand, has pitted nation against nation, with the Troika's treatment of Greece leading to near civil war in Greece and some very nasty language used against Germany

> Britain just selected their second female prime minister.

No it didn't. She ran unopposed in the final ballot for the leader of the majority party when the previous PM resigned. That's how UK parliament works.

I didn't claim she was elected by populous. I said she was "selected," and I'm well aware of how my country's Parliament works thanks.

Fair enough! :)

That'd be equivalent to Canada choosing to end free trade with the US after 2008.

It's the UKs largest aggregate trading partner by an enormous margin. They're cutting off their nose to spite their face and there will be significant economic consequences.

Is more sovereignty regarding immigrantion policy, etc, worth that cost? That's not for me to judge. But please, don't try to downplay the economic turmoil this will cause.

I see your point but the UK is in a very different situation to Canada.

The US doesn't prevent Canada from trading freely with other major world nations.

While the UK remains locked within the EU, EU treaties prevent the UK from establishing its own free trade agreements with the rest of the World.

This prevents the UK trading freely with large, growing English-speaking nations like Canada, the US and India. The economic costs of this are are huge.

And conversely the UK previously benefitted from the enormous negotiating power of the EU block, an economy that every nation in the world would like to trade with (for perspective, in 2015 the UK contributed 17% of EU total GDP). In fact Canada and the EU just completed negotiations on CETA to exactly that effect, a deal the UK could have taken advantage of if it was in the EU.

I contend that the economic costs of going it alone are far more profound.

Though I find it classically British that they would see themselves as so important that they feel they can negotiate better trade terms than the entirety of the EU. I guess they just can't shake off the feeling that they should be a superpower, if only someone would notice! ;) ;) ;)

I like the final sentence. In order to be a superpower, you wouldn't need anyone to take notice. It would be apparent and obvious.

The agility of the UK to negotiate trade deals is far higher than that of the EU, where any one of the 28 nations is able to veto the deal. TTIP, a case in point.

And as Trump has made clear, post-Brexit, the UK is now at the front of the queue.

We're the World's fifth largest economy. We originated the language and many of the standards that the World uses to trade. We're not pretending to be a superpower, but we do have a reasonable chance at striking up free trade deals with all the Commonwealth countries. Especially as the Commonwealth was our own creation.

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