'We're all worse off': Britain is now paying the price to leave the EU | Hacker News Reader

'We're all worse off': Britain is now paying the price to leave the EU

theatlantic.com

The strangest thing about brexit is that all it took was one single 50% vote to exit.

After untold time, money, effort and history put into joining Europe, you’d have thought that tearing the whole thing down would have required best of three votes to exit, or a supermajority, or a 12 month cooldown followed by a deciding second vote, or an “time apart” period before ending the relationship.

Instead all it took was some politicking and a vote and it’s over. Seems a huge flaw in the planning of joining Europe in the first place. I suppose they didn't anticipate brexit as a real possibility.

I remain flabbergasted that Brexit happened but wasn't the overwhelming victory of Boris Johnson & the conservative party at the end of 2019 basically a re-statement by the population that they wanted it?

IIRC that was basically a single issue election after which Brexit was more or less fast-tracked without continued internal opposition.

Up until that point there had been a series of delays and rejections of Brexit plans in parliament and it looked like it might not happen.

(I'm not British and have only watched this from afar so I'm actually curious about if this read is accurate.)

It's accurate in that that's what the government said, and they had a huge majority so could do whatever they wanted

But due to our awful electoral system, they achieved that with only around 40% of the vote

Murdoch wanted brexit.

Rupert’s Australia's ‘deadliest export’.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/rupert-s-our-dead...

UK employers refused to increase salaries because they had unlimited supply of cheap labour from Eastern Europe, they treated them like shit but they still came and worked for them. Well the end result is those same working class British who they refused to pay more eventually voted Brexit. Now the UK employers are super desperate for staff because there is no more cheap labour for them to take advantage off. And wages are rising faster because the workers are in charge now.

an example from the industry I'm in

https://www.ft.com/content/13a0a9f5-5db6-488c-9860-18bd74fd2...

Oh no, we've got to invest in our staff

The vote wasn't binding, and didn't specify exactly what a vote to leave even meant so there were multiple points at which a functional state could have course corrected.

That's what people mean when they say don't "take things for granted". Peace, health, relationships. All can be destroyed in minutes.

Everyone except those that keep their money in the British offshore banking system, the real reason behind Brexit as Eu banking regs would have been a big problem.

It is estimated that half of the worlds wealth resides in the British offshore banks.

Almost half of the worlds wealth is in real estate, which is hard to store offshore or in a bank. British banks probably store less than $5 trillion or less than 1% of global wealth.

It's possible that a large fraction of outstanding mortgages are owned by intermediaries that ultimately reside in such an arrangement.

But half does seem like an exaggeration. 1/10 would be more believable.

Leverage in residential real estate is minimal. Probably less than 30% globally.

Would you happen to know anything one can read about this? Sounds interesting.

There is a documentary about this called "the spiders web"

https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-spiders-web/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYfnkLurLA8

I guess this is the banal reason why most conspiracy theories take off. They "sound interesting".

I find it puzzling that every suggestion of how to recover relative prosperity for a western society reads like it was written by stage coach drivers or their reluctant employers.

UK unemployment is somehow¹ only like 3.5%. To win relative to other countries you need to automate away domestic service and maintenance jobs and put those people in higher paid jobs, jobs related to exports, etc.

I'm going to guess Slovenia isn't passing the UK by making impossibly complex privatization scams that need more people to get other people, their communications or their goods from point A to B, domestically or convince them to pay more for that..

¹ Of course a plan like that excludes the people not seeking work so there are other options.. But the plans you hear from politicians are basically how to make a profit gouging your people for their savings and somehow indefinitely maintain a higher GDP as a result of those internal redistributions of money.

Can somebody from the UK confirm?

It's been a hugely divisive topic from what I've gathered in the last years.

Are things on average worse, or the same, or better?

I would say things are worse but it's difficult to disentangle it from the other major events like Covid and the war. Also worth pointing out that the UK's economic stagnation began well before Brexit and goes back to the 2008 crash: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FvPzCWYXwAEoIRu?format=jpg&name=....

As someone who supports Brexit, I always thought there would be greater costs in the short term but getting out of institutional structure of the EU would be beneficial long term, as long as we take advantage of the institutional freedom and try to get onto a different path as a country (investing heavily in science and technology, having a more rational approach to regulation, having an immigration system that attracts great talent while also controlling the borders and thus making the whole thing less toxic).

I haven't overall changed my view as the EU still seems to be on a very bad path as I see it, I can't say I'm hugely optimistic about the UK either though. There are glimmers of hope like the new ARIA institution for blue sky science, but the main political parties are a pretty depressing spectacle.

The trouble is the UK electorate has no appetite for the kind of changes that would make Brexit a success. Instead we are going to slowly creep back in over the coming decades. Having such a large trading block right on our doorstep makes that inevitable.

In Australia no-one ever discussing anything about current propsperity in the context of "disentangling it from the other major events like Covid and the war".

Sure those are things, but we are not trying to make sense of current affairs through that lens as a major factor.

> I would say things are worse but it's difficult to disentangle it from the other major events like [the pandemic] and the war.

It's just surreal to me that brexit is just in the top 3 events in the past few years.

The big mistake was that the uk went with austerity in 2008.

As someone who has spent a significant amount of time in the UK and the Czech Republic (an EU country) since Brexit, both places are worse off now, but the Czech Republic is significantly more worse off than Britain. I have plenty of anecdotal evidence, but it suffices to look at inflation statistics, with Czechia at 15.1% and the UK at 9.07% for 2022. I haven't noticed any empty shelves, except for eggs, which were caused free-range chicken quarantine (according to a store worker). Maybe it's a coincidence, but as far as I can tell, this crisis has nothing to do with Brexit.

Compairing UK and the Czech Republic is like apples and oranges. A comparison with France or Germany would be more appropriate (but this way Brexit looks really bad).

Would you elaborate on your comparison with Germany? OECD GDP, CPI inflation, and inflation forecast figures seem to contradict your argument.

Interesting. So we can guess that this article (and others like it) observes local isolated phenomena?

The article talks about store shortages and becoming a poorer country. I haven't been affected by the shortages so I presume they aren't as significant as the media present them. As for getting poorer, it seems to be a Europe-wide problem - hardly related to Brexit.

Things are a lot worse but it's difficult to disentangle.

The coronavirus pandemic was an absolute shitshow of wasted money. A ton of locals left the workforce as well. We're paying for that on top of Brexit.

Corona, plus the war. Really, really hard to disentangle.

Yes, that too.

So we basically have issues with imports, less foreign labour, a ridiculous tax burden and an energy crisis. At the same time.

I guess one way to compare would be how did the rest of EU do vs Britain? If everyone did poorly Brexit had no measurable effect.

That assumes Brexit had no affect on the rest of the EU. Seems unlikely to me.

How do people feel about Brexit three years on? - BBC Newsnight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KloM9uVcIOY

Can’t think of anything that’s better

Yikes, that seriously sounds alarming. Sorry to hear.

Worse, much worse - but it's still unclear how much of that can be chalked up to Brexit vs. the war vs. corona.

It was hugely divisive between 2016-2019 but once it dropped off the media's radar people mostly stopped talking about it (before corona).

So it's no longer divisive, as in, there's now a public consensus whether Brexit was good or bad?

Or it's no longer divisive, as in, nobody has a clue anymore because too many things happened and nobody can follow the trail of economic hardship?

It's less about the trail of economic hardship and more about the media losing interest in using it to divide people.

Therefore people stopped arguing over it.

Comparison to European economies (which suffered through the same coronavirus pandemic and the same, if not worse, energy crisis) might bring some clarity.

I dont doubt it was an economic net negative.

On the whole I think the war has been far worse though.

Those who are anti-Brexit are loving it as they are blaming EVERYTHING caused by Ukraine war and gas prices inflation on Brexit. They are just as much the liars as the Brexitiers they accuse of being so. Some of them will in fact will be reading this and being in glee and loving how much Putin's invasion has helped them.

What do you think the real reason is?

For Brexit supporters - was it worth it from an autonomy perspective?

A lot of the arguments I heard were things like, "we don't want Brussels having such a strong say in our <country/government/people/culture/etc>!"

Do you feel the economy is worse but you have better control or options?

Non-paywall version: https://archive.is/VSDdb

I'm more curious about how it compares to other Western nations. There's only a sentence or two about that, and neither gives specifics.

A lot of the issues listed - high inflation, product shortages, worker shortages, strikes, etc. all happened here in the US and worldwide as far as I'm aware.

For me there is value (I'm not sure exactly how much) to avoid having an unelected technocrats in Brussels (and sometimes Strasbourg) write the rules I must abide by.

Now you can have an unelected technocrat somewhere in the UK write the standards for your new toaster. Or more likely it'll just be forgotten in the bonfire of regulations and you'll end up dead on your kitchen floor in a warm pool of butter.

Or, even more likely, we’ll just adopt the EU rules anyway as it’s the most pragmatic option but have absolutely no say in how they’re made

This. The Uk copied large amounts of EU law verbatim.

That is not a blip due only having recently left. It's due to their main trading partner is the EU and it will remain the EU. To trade with the EU you have to follow EU laws.

I'm afraid the bendy bananas was all FUD. And the "benefit" was chlorinated chickens.

The UK hasn't passed EU laws since Brexit was done Jan 2021 like they did when they were a member. It's just a free trade agreement now. It is up to UK exporters to provide proof of compliance just like Canadian exporters to EU. 42% of total UK exports is to EU, even pre-Brexit it was below 50%.

In 2015 it was still just 44% of total UK exports to EU: https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/internationa...

So the majority of trade was/is/likely to remain with the EU?

Perhaps I should clarify on the EU law point. I made the point that most EU laws were copied, but the trade point was not about laws in the Uk. It's that UK companies will and do voluntarily comply with EU laws. They do that so they can continue to trade with the EU - the Uks largest trading partner. Moreover previously the Uk had a large seat at the table in deciding such EU laws. Now the Uk largely complies either by law or by necessity to trade with laws it doesn't even have a say in.

On bendy bananas, it also turns out...

> EU ‘bendy bananas’ regulation to remain despite Brexit

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-bendy-bana...

Not that this is some huge deal. It's just another (somewhat amusing) data point in a project that doesn't appear to have any significant tangible benefit.

Moreover I'd claim it isn't going to get much better, because how can it? The UK made trade much harder with it's main trading partner.

I don't think that's funny. It's dumb and tragic.

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