Why can’t the U.K. just leave? Say we are gone, we are not giving you any money, and unilaterally state a position on trade terms?
I realize this may sound naive, but I’m just curious.
I realize this may sound naive, but I’m just curious.
Simple example: if UK leaves without agreements and treaties then there can be no flights from the UK to the EU. This sounds crazy but we have tens of thousands of bilateral agreements that drive even the most fundamental things, and they can be (and are) affected by e.g. the EU membership.
Or UK citizens would not be able to buy products from the EU because there would be no agreements in place that'd allow companies in the EU to export goods. Yeah, as soon as you BMW breaks down that's it, because no spare parts would be available.
Yes, it's this important.
This is where you and I fundamentally disagree about how trade works.
If I want to trade with a person in a foreign country, I don't see why our governments need to even know, let alone come up with some agreement. If the foreign person and I can agree a deal, why can't we trade without asking permission from our governments?
You can try to change the direction your polity takes with its stances towards others. You can leave if you don't approve of those stances and see no signs of changing them. But the question belies a fundamental misunderstanding of...yanno...why polities, why politics, exist.
Plus, there's actual reasons to think completely open, unhindered, and uninspected trade is not desirable. Think human trafficking, etc.
Although, if the British public really want the 2013 horse meat scandal and the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster to become the norm rather than the exception, I guess now is the time to seize the opportunity.
Governments obviously have a real interest in what their citizen do regardless of where that activity takes place.
I'd argue the former is fine and the latter is still not fine. So international trade agreements are surplus to requirements, since basic decency is enforced anyway.
* closing borders with the U.K.
* embargoing or imposing severe tariffs on U.K. exports
* raise prices on U.K. imports to cover the monies not paid by the U.K.
So the U.K.'s choices are to:
* pay, in effect, what they owe (in the forms of tariffs and penalties) with zero bargaining position
* find enough other countries to trade with (who are willing to also thumb their nose at the EU) to make up for the goods and services they had been getting from the EU
* negotiate a clean exit
They don't even have to actually do anything to achieve that. WTO rules basically establish such tariffs already.
> raise prices on U.K. imports to cover the monies not paid by the U.K.
Same here. Also, additional tax revenues would likely be collected on business "redirected" from the UK towards internal companies.
I still hope we'll get another referendum before we reach a point of no return.
The UK can just leave—that’s what happens automatically with no deal, it leaves the E.U. and is in the same position as any other non-member country with no trade agreement with the E.U.
A lot of business in the UK has been dependent on its trade position in Europe, and there are even political stability issues tied in with that (the Irish border and it's relation to the situation in Northern Ireland, particularly.) So the UK can't afford to walk away, though they are perfectly free to do so.
Opinion : UK is going toward vassal state status to the EU by not having a say but still having to follow their rules.
I'm not sure that the debate here is very sensible or measured.
I think that Brexit is a tragedy, and dearly hope it doesn't actually happen. That is my opinion. But it seems difficult if not impossible to have a reasoned argument about any aspect of it; people are entrenched in their corners.
There are literally hundreds of collaborations between UK organisations and EU organisations. If we just stop our promised contributions to all of them they're not going to trust us again.
What about if you refuse to split the bill for the next dinner, to which you aren't invited?
What if you had very little choice on what was ordered for dinner? and ate almost nothing at dinner. You wouldn't want to pay right?
Once word gets round, not only your friends but nobody is going to go out to dinner with you ever again.
What would you price the reputation of the UK at? I hope more than £39bn. All the other countries of the world are watching the UK's actions.
But you would at least pay for what you ordered. Anyone just upping and leaving would be considered very rude, and nobody would invite him ever again.
If we expand on your analogy a little bit: its more like families going to dinner. The British family agreed with the dinner at first but due to some internal changes in the family, now says they didn't like what they ate before, don't like what they will eat in the future, and want to negotiate a different plan for dinner henceforth.
Before 20th century, breaches of treaties were grounds for war. Now we don't do that anymore, we simply cut off trade.
So the U.K would be ostracized, International companies would move out, it would probably face high tariffs on goods (or outright ban) etc.
Then you get the international problems directly connected to that, what can you import into Britain and at which tariffs. Plus, how do you cooperate between air traffic control across the channel and across the Irish sea. (While we are at it, is British Airways allowed to fly over France, without EU law?)
And that is just the things Britain has to figure out on their own. Ireland, France and the rest of the EU have interest in British tariffs and if Britain sets tariffs unilaterally they will respond in kind, a situation sometimes known as trade war.
So yes, in principle Britain could just state a position on terms of trade, a hard Brexit, but that would mean that the EU responds in kind. Neither the EU nor Britain wants to do that, but the thing is the EU is something like 10 times as big as Britain and so the EU can very comfortably wait for Britain, because Brexit only affects something less than 10% of the EU trade, not over half of all trade as for Britain.
They can, but then travel and trade becomes ~illegal between the UK and pretty much everyone else, the powder keg of NI starts heating back up, you've got a bunch of britons illegally present in mainland EU and likewise mainland residents in the UK, …
Oh and the UK becomes known for having no respect for international deals, which makes their positions weaker in every future international agreement.
> and unilaterally state a position on trade terms?
And the EU unilaterally states "no" and then what?
Reverting to WTO rules and hard (but not closed) borders isn't trade and travel being illegal, but it is a lot less free than the state when the UK was in the EU.
That's bullshit. WTO trade rules would still apply if the UK left the EU without a deal, and freedom to come and go outside the EU could still remain unchanged regardless of what Brussels wants to impose.
Now, lets say the five times larger economy doesn't accept your unilateral trade position, who just happens to be by far your largest and closest trading partner, what do you think happens then to your companies who are reliant on the EU market? Even if you don't work for such a company, what do you think would happen to your employer's clients? And if you work in the public sector, what do you think will happen to the tax revenue from those companies?
More than 20% of the UK's GDP is made up of exports to the EU. What do you think will happen to the government that cost the country millions of jobs because of one stupid decision to appease populists come election year? That's why the government can't just leave because it would be extremely popular in the short term but within a few years bring about very dire consequences.
I think most people now are assuming WTO and considering anything else to be a bonus.
For example, „which form do you have to fill with which information in how many copies, in order to export pastry?“.
That‘s much faster than a real trade deal, because it‘s mostly administrative, but it is still a hurdle to clear before you can trade under „WTO rules“.
And now do that for a gazillion sectors and special cases. With every trading partner.