Does Brexit end not with a bang but a whimper?

No he didn’t. That’s how he introduced Nigel Farage at a rally.

Disclaimed: anecdata below.

From the few people I talked to, both the leave and remain group seemed to leave voters mostly thinking, “the other choice sounds bad,” rather than having real strong reasons and desired outcomes in favor of voting one way or the other. It was a fear-driven vote, one to avoid a bad outcome rather than gain a good outcome.

Similar to the US Presidential election, people tended to have stronger opinions against the other candidate than for their own candidate.

(+) used with heavy sarcasm to describe the current lot http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/reshuffle-cabinet-priv...

I don't think that's an accurate analysis. As far as I can tell the vote was driven mainly by economic distress, media (which papers you read) and community (a lot of people just voted the same way their friends or family did).

>The London Tech scene (which skews left/liberal) seems to be hemorrhaging talented people to Berlin and other places.

I know a lot of people in the London tech scene and I only know two off the top of my head who have gone to Europe, and I don't think Brexit was a major reason for either of them.

I also haven't seen much of a significant rise in rates. If all the valuable talent is gone surely that means I'm going to be worth more?

>Meanwhile, inflation is so bad the supermarkets are quietly reducing the quantity in boxes

That's how inflation always works in supermarkets.

Disagree. He said before the referendum that 48%-52% would be unfinished business, but didn’t seem to lose credibility amongst his supporters from it. Something may eventually tarnish his Teflon, but he’d probably be able to turn defeat in a second referendum into a rallying cry for a literal attempted revolution. (I place odds of UK civil war in the next 6 years at about 10%).

Also I would favour a disclaimer on the bottom

Tick here if you're aware that X% of doctors and nurses on the NHS are from the EU and reducing their number will result in more delays and/or need to have more doctors/nurses from non-EU countries

Tick here if you're aware leaving the EU (hard Brexit) will result in longer times and possible caveats when entering other countries in the Schengen area

Tick here if you're aware leaving the EU single market will increase prices of several goods, both by the reduced value of the Pound and higher import fees.

(oh and my favourite) Tick here if you're aware leaving the EU will make it harder to move between countries, including southern European countries (like Spain) and that retirees might need a visa to move or remain there

What does the word "this" refer to in the sentence above? A yes/no referendum on Brexit will not show the politicians whether the public want a soft or a hard Brexit.

No, we'll keep most of those laws, because in order to trade with the EU we'd have to comply with them anyway. We just lose any ability to control them.

To the OP, and going back to the article, a major issue is that of services, our major export. The EU does not have a single market in services, and has shown little interest in progressing it. It isn't so much Deutsche Bank as the mittelstand that demonstrates that the EU as a whole favours particular economic systems. Italy is a prime example of a sclerotic services sector that their own government has failed to reform, despite the EU being willing and able to influence the appointment of Mario Monti it isn't willing to impose a free market in service in the same way it has for goods - and stand up to blatant protectionism.

As far as the "old people did this to us" meme. The 75% of young people who purportedly are so strongly against brexit probably should have bothered to vote if they wanted that outcome.

Additionally, there are other factors than just age that correspond to voting outcome. E.g. degree education, having a passport, income level.

And if we afford those people a bit of empathy rather than casting them all as gullible fools or bad people, we might consider that they actually stand to benefit far less (or have plausible reasons to feel this way) from the EU than someone (such as the average HN reader) who has the privilege to e.g. be choosy about employment opportunities, be able to afford educating themselves, be able to afford to travel at will.

In any case there are many reasons to feel ambivalent about the EU. I do, and I've taken every opportunity that membership has afforded me. I still don't like how (or by whom) it is run or how expansive its powers have become over time.

Trade wise, there will be bumps, but it is mutually beneficial to both us and the EU to keep trading as much as possible the same as it is now. The only benefactors from making trading more difficult are the EU politicians who want to 'make an example of the UK' (Michel Barnier words).

Also these 'old people' were there when the UK voted to join the EU in 1975. So if they want out, then maybe they are seeing something you are not.

[1] https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/europeanunionwi...

You could practically see the Tories salivating when they mulled over the great repeal bill.

There are some positives - bringing the pound down is good for manufacturing output and employment. This is especially good for some of the more neglected areas of the UK. Of course, that will only give Londoners more reason to despise them - it's probably going to be worst for the London economy.

>It's old people in the country that have decided this

Actually that's not really true:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/10/brexit-cry-financial...

Just going to point out here that Brexit appears to be the ultimate in identitarian politics and that identitarian politics is all about divide and conquer and leave it at that.

    If anything because they'll have to rewrite thousands of
    laws and procedures that came from the EU times, and deal
    with the caos that that will cause.

    They have to negotiate with the EU so that they're not
    completely cut out of commerce, with nothing to offer in 
    exchange and therefore no negotiating power.

    It's old people in the country that have decided this,
    based on their ignorance on the matter...

    I'm Italian, just talking based on what I've read and a
    handful of friends who live in London

Consequently, the rhetoric aimed at the other side comes with more than a little hyperbole.

From what I can tell and have read Germany has huge influence on pretty much every country besides Poland and--perhaps--Hungary (I live in Poland, not sure about Hungary actually). Poland definitely thinks about its own citizens _first_, and _then_ at what's good for the EU, which is after all what politicians have been elected to do.

I'm Italian and Italy is a mess in part because of having no balls to stand up for what Italians would need. Totally different story in Poland, from what I can tell from living here.

My prediction is that the net result will make everyone a little worse off in 10-20 years from now than if the UK had stayed in the EU, but the effect will not be very noticeable and overall hard to quantify.

Oddly enough, I suspect that the younger generation probably think that about the Daily Mail reading older generation.

That is, the benefit is the ability to replace British-made goods with cheaper foreign imports? I'm just saying because normally people make the argument the other way round.

What exactly are changes in the UK's sovereignity?

That coincided with the post effects of the great recession, when Germany essentially refused to allow more liberal central bank posturing and action to try to follow the more aggressive US Fed lead on how to properly respond to the terrible recession and the financial system consequences. Germany wanted a very restrictive, conservative approach. There was a split at that point between the members that were suffering and Germany which was in mostly solid shape (the peak of the Greek disaster was also near a peak of the anti-German sentiment).

The US recovery took root relatively quickly, after about a year, thanks in part to the Fed taking aggressive action to stabilize the banks and financial system (the US would have seen Citi, Bank of America, etc. all collapse otherwise; those banks are now extremely healthy and printing massive profits again). It was only when the ECB finally copied the Fed's approach that the broad EU and Eurozone economies began to rapidly recover (and for those already in good shape, it has pushed them into something closer to economic boom). You can look at a chart of EU or Eurozone economic growth, you'll see a nasty double recessionary dip around 2011-2012. After that, the ECB finally began to shift its behavior and do what they should have done years prior, which has led to a sustained recovery in most parts of the EU since then (you see it in meaningfully increased growth rates, from Finland finally recovering after a disastrous 8-10 years, to Spain and Portugal finally seeing serious improvement, to German growth picking up, to French unemployment finally declining significantly, etc).

The EU agreed that given this agreement there would be no requirement for a customs border.

The term "Vassal state" is incorrect as it describes a nation that has been subjugated to the will of another nation e.g. Ireland's relationship with the UK before the 20th century.

The EU is not a state, it is a "collection of states" and is the realisation of the need for greater alignment of policy between neighbouring countries.

The portrayal of the EU as some kind of evil controlling super-state is a lie, plain and simple.

That's not to say there isn't plenty of things wrong with the EU but the correct response is, as one of the major nations of Europe for the UK to get in there and make it work.

Instead the UK has repeatedly sent Farage.

Quite possibly, but I'm not familiar enough with CETA to know the answer to this question - does CETA restrict Canada's ability to enter other trade agreements with third-party nations?

The partial Single Market membership mentioned in the article does come with that proviso - that the UK cannot make trade deals with other nations, which is why I think it's an untenable position.

Even not having service trade isn’t a great disaster. Companies with sizeable EU revenue can just set up a European subsidiary (in Ireland, etc) to conduct business in Europe from the UK (or anywhere).

(Though I accept it’ll be a pain for e.g. finance companies which the EU requires to be based within the EU,)

Startups eespecially aren’t held back by these rules right now, they just sell everywhere in USD (and at some point when they’re big enough create an EU subsidiary).

The goods thing would be a real issue, if everything on supermarket shelves became 1.5x as expensive. So as long as that’s solved it’ll be fine.

Interestingly enough, Australia and New Zealand have a bilateral work agreement, allowing citizens of either country to be instant residents of the other State upon arrival.

I'm not sure if it was a main driver but the powers that are pushing this whole thing behind the scenes clearly have realised the opportunity to subtely rewrite a lot of regulations/legislation to prefer their interests.

The "sovereignty" part of Brexit is playing out as taking power from a more socialist and green EU and giving it to the hidden capitalist interests behind the Tories.

The incredible sleight-of-hand has been getting the working classes to vote for something that could then be twisted to be so highly detrimental to them.

Anyway, to your question about industry regulations: safety, food standards, and environmentalism costs money. Companies within the EU trading block will sell the stuff that meets the regulations, UK will get to have cheap stuff that breaks easily and no longer have the 2 year 'warranty', or the restrictions on unfair business practices - UK companies will try and foist our lower standards on whoever we can fool in to it, eg with promises of "foreign aid" that end up in developing world officials bank accounts. Bonus, the workers making the stuff will get paid less, have less job security, less rights.

Double bonus, UK environment will be open for capitalists to fuck up if they want to make a quick buck.

Obviously there are already emergency plans to set up massive bureaucracies to replace the european ones. Just like there are enormous customs stations being built at the channel tunnel, the construction of which started the day after the election.

Or it isn't.

Because in the end the sheer enormity of the task probably is too much to take in, and even the slightest risk that all of this will somehow "go away" or "be delayed" means politicians aren't really ready to start burying billions of pounds in these projects. And the deadlines creep ever closer.

This at least leads me to think that the outcome of theis "first brexit" negotiaion will be that the Brexit proper will happen in X years. The UK will keep paying nearly all of what it's paying PLUS costs to move EU things from Britain to the rest of europe. The bargaining space is the rebate the UK had before brexit, that is, the EU could possibly concede to let the UK "only" pay what it used to, and not significantly more.

I'm not saying the EU is not in a stronger position, nor am I trying to make any claims that Brexit is good or bad, nor that it is being pursued competently by the current government (far from it). But the assessment of the process as being entirely one sided seems to me to be simplistic.

The whole thing is farcical, and I can only imagine it will become increasingly so as we near the deadline.

I hope the UK changes its mind, but even if they do too many things will have been broken in the process.

Can anyone provide anything close to a first hand source?