The Brexit Thread

[Rick]

The £18 billion that was supposed to be diverted to the NHS if the Brexit referendum was won was never going to go there in reality. Enough people fell for it to tip the balance of the vote, however.

I think that's true, in that it wasn't going to happen, but a million different concoctions of the options could have happened with the political will for them. It's really important to reinforce in our debate that very few things have happened or will happen "because of Brexit", they will happen or are already happening because of the specifics of the Brexit that this government negotiated.

Maybe it would have been part of the "Red, White and Blue" Brexit that May proposed, which was presumably a bespoke British deal rather than a relationship like that of France, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Croatia etc.

Theresa May's deal would have probably led to far less logistical disruption, but the millionaire Conservative rebels were not in favour of that - convenient given their private healthcare.

Almost certainly and this is the reason Labour still won't talk about Brexit, they spent so long trying to mess around with it in the commons, they eventually supported a deal that (by their own admission) was more damaging than the one they rejected.

 

[Alsty]

Part of Labour's problem is many of the constituents in traditional Labour areas voted to Leave so they don't want to alienate them by saying they were wrong. Brexit is so divisive and cuts across party lines. Personally I think the cause is already lost trying to appeal to traditional voters and Labour should instead try get new ones. I would start by opposing the current Government's Brexit strategy for one. There are many people out there who are unhappy about it and they are looking for a voice; Labour could be that voice. Sadly the current opposition just seem completely impotent and aren't appealing to anybody on either side of the debate.

Anyway, that wasn't why I came to this thread... I came to post this latest #BrexitWin from The Independent. The days of being the Dirty Man of Europe return.

Government says polluters can dump risky sewage into rivers as Brexit disrupts water treatment
Supply chain disruption leading to fears of water treatment chemical shortage

The government has given polluters the green light to dump risky sewage that has not been properly cleaned into rivers and the sea as Brexit and Covid disrupt normal water treatment.

In recent weeks some businesses have found it more difficult to get hold of water treatment chemicals because of supply chain disruption at ports blamed primarily on Britain's departure from the EU.

...

In a statement released on Monday, the Environment Agency said: "Normally, you need a permit under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 to discharge treated effluent from a waste water treatment works (WwTW) to surface water or groundwater. Permits contain conditions that control the quality of the effluent you can discharge.

"You may not be able to comply with your permit if you cannot get the chemicals you use to treat the effluent you discharge because of the UK’s new relationship with the EU, coronavirus (COVID-19), [or] other unavoidable supply chain failures, for example the failure of a treatment chemical supplier."

"If you follow the conditions in this regulatory position statement (RPS) you can discharge effluent without meeting the conditions in your permit. You must get written agreement from your Environment Agency water company account manager before you use this RPS."

Read the full article here.

 

[Benzin]

Labour unfortunately don't have the sense to open up to the "Progressive Alliance" in an attempt to prevent the split of votes between the left wing parties.

Until the left wing parties realise than bickering with each other (especially Labour on an internal basis) isn't going to lead to anything then the Tories will remain in charge.

That this tax increase on NI can be spun positively after the hatchet job on Corbyn's proposed tax increase on the actual rich shows where the power lies.

 

[AstroDan]

Not going so well is it, Boris.

 

[GaryH]

But the gas issue isn’t down to Brexit. The EU are suffering soaring gas prices too. A longer cooler winter in Asia meant less reserves in Europe followed by Russia squeezing gas supplies to get the EU to agree to its new pipeline.
The only thing the U.K. did way before Brexit was to increase Green taxes and reduce the amount of gas storage we have here making us very reliant on Russia in Norway for our gas supplies.

 

[AstroDan]

But the gas issue isn’t down to Brexit. The EU are suffering soaring gas prices too. A longer cooler winter in Asia meant less reserves in Europe followed by Russia squeezing gas supplies to get the EU to agree to its new pipeline.
The only thing the U.K. did way before Brexit was to increase Green taxes and reduce the amount of gas storage we have here making us very reliant on Russia in Norway for our gas supplies.

It isn't, you are right. But - Brexit is impacting it to a degree, as we no longer have the trading relationships with the EU. Within the EU, there are linked auctions to balance prices. We are no longer party to that, which in theory could lead to lower prices - but in times like this, leaves us more exposed.

Brexit is certainly not helping any of this, that is for sure.

 

[BigT]

Gas prices going sky high is nothing to do with Brexit, the same goes with the cost of other raw materials going up.
It’s to do with covid and supply and demand, last year a lot of manufacturing worldwide slowed or stopped production as there was low demand and now there is a huge demand again they are struggling to ramp it back up again quick enough.

The lack of cheap workers and lorry drivers on the other hand…..

 

[Alsty]

One of the things about the EU is it balances the risk across the member states. Yes, gas prices in Europe are also at record highs but countries in the EU’s internal energy market trade efficiently with each other using linked auctions that balance prices across the bloc. The UK is no longer part of that market and so exposed to all the risk in isolation.

Anyway that aside... aren't we supposed to all be better off now because of Brexit? Why isn't that extra money we now have used to offset the rising costs of gas prices?

 

[AstroDan]

Gas prices going sky high is nothing to do with Brexit, the same goes with the cost of other raw materials going up.
It’s to do with covid and supply and demand, last year a lot of manufacturing worldwide slowed or stopped production as there was low demand and now there is a huge demand again they are struggling to ramp it back up again quick enough.

The lack of cheap workers and lorry drivers on the other hand…..

Brexit is part of the wider picture.

It's certainly not helping us!

Sent from my SM-G991B using Tapatalk

 

[BigT]

Brexit is part of the wider picture.

It's certainly not helping us!

Sent from my SM-G991B using Tapatalk

Your right that in the fact it’s not helping, importing and exporting to the EU right now is a paperwork nightmare but it’s not stopping anything just causing some slight delays.
We haven’t even begun to see any true impacts of Brexit yet be that good or bad.
I still sit on the fence on that one as I or anyone else for that matter has no idea how it will pan out in the end, anyone that says they know is either kidding themselves or are called Doc Brown.

The biggest issue at the moment is raw material be that gas, metal, microchips or more or less anything new in fact is in global demand due to the world slowly coming out of a global pandemic.
The only good news is if you have anything second hand to sell the price of that is rising.

 

[GaryH]

I always believed that the first couple of years after Brexit would be tough. This country is too dependent on other countries, we don’t produce anything, we don’t train people, we rely on cheap labour, we import everything. To cripple this country an enemy wouldn’t need bombs or missiles, just stop our supplies.

Brexit is highlighting these holes and as time goes on they should be plugged - but training nurses, hgv drivers, investing in renewable energy which isn’t funded by Chinese companies etc all takes time.

Granted it would be better to have had these things in place before starting Brexit but what’s done is done. It will be tough for the next few years but I think in the long term the country will be more resilient and stronger. I might be wrong I accept, but that’s my belief.

 

[GaryH]

Just seen this on Twitter on money saving expert page. It’s a real time chart showing average energy cost across Europe

https://thecurrent.lcp.uk.com/europe

UK, Spain, Portugal, France worst, Germany best Alton Germany appears to burn a lot of coal whereas we don’t anymore.

 

[Rob]

UK, Spain, Portugal, France worst, Germany best Alton Germany appears to burn a lot of coal whereas we don’t anymore.

You know you're on an Alton Towers fansite when someone's auto correct thinks the word you want is Alton rather than although!

As you were!

 

[Benzin]

Granted it would be better to have had these things in place before starting Brexit but what’s done is done. It will be tough for the next few years but I think in the long term the country will be more resilient and stronger. I might be wrong I accept, but that’s my belief.

A lot of things could've been avoided if a suitable plan had been put in place in order to prepare for the departure.

But instead those in charge both blue and red decided that suddenly everything needed to happen straight away without any idea of what anyone actually wanted. There was time but for whatever reason (maybe to prevent people from changing their minds?) it had to be done urgently.

Then we had an election (The great idea from May one) and even now we continue to kick the can down the road in terms of actually finalising the situation whilst most of the country suffers.

Actually turning around post result and saying "Right that's the decision we're going to look into the best solution" would've won people over. Instead they continued to create the divisive situs that has only gotten worse (and will continue to do so given rising prices and telling those on Universal Credit to "get better jobs").

 

[Alsty]

This country is too dependent on other countries, we don’t produce anything, we don’t train people, we rely on cheap labour, we import everything.

You do know we could've resolved those things domestically without leaving the EU? In fact, if you'd like to see more manufacturing in the UK then adding barriers to exports was probably not the best way to achieve it.

To cripple this country an enemy wouldn’t need bombs or missiles, just stop our supplies.

Who needs enemies when we voluntarily did it to ourselves

 

[AstroDan]

I always believed that the first couple of years after Brexit would be tough. This country is too dependent on other countries, we don’t produce anything, we don’t train people, we rely on cheap labour, we import everything. To cripple this country an enemy wouldn’t need bombs or missiles, just stop our supplies.

Brexit is highlighting these holes and as time goes on they should be plugged - but training nurses, hgv drivers, investing in renewable energy which isn’t funded by Chinese companies etc all takes time.

Granted it would be better to have had these things in place before starting Brexit but what’s done is done. It will be tough for the next few years but I think in the long term the country will be more resilient and stronger. I might be wrong I accept, but that’s my belief.

I agree we need to do many of those things - but we could have done them as part of the EU. Westminster policy shapes these things in the UK, not Brussels. As much as being part of the single market meant that goods, services (including labour) was easily transferable between member states, nothing stopped the UK doing what it felt necessary.

Manufacturing in the UK is certainly on a risky platform at the moment given the bureaucracy we now face when trading with the rest of Europe.

 

[Rick]

I always believed that the first couple of years after Brexit would be tough. This country is too dependent on other countries, we don’t produce anything, we don’t train people, we rely on cheap labour, we import everything. To cripple this country an enemy wouldn’t need bombs or missiles, just stop our supplies.

Granted it would be better to have had these things in place before starting Brexit but what’s done is done. It will be tough for the next few years but I think in the long term the country will be more resilient and stronger. I might be wrong I accept, but that’s my belief.

Do you think there is a danger you are conflating what you would like to happen vs. what is happening? I'd struggle to point to anything in policy that suggests we are trying to be anything approaching self sufficient (nor do I think that's sensible).

If anything, it's the opposite, as we have debated before, we're Going Global. The PM has gone to the US this week talking up our chances of a US trade deal, to ship stuff from America that we could have bought from France.

The US trade deal is a massive misnomer. Given we're a services economy, a federal trade deal with the US doesn't particularly help, because you need to negotiate at state level, as that's where access to financial service markets is controlled from.

Madness.

 

[Matt.GC]

Why anyone voted for Brexit when there were zero plans in place to deliver it is beyond me. I'm not normally right in my predictions as I have a habit of missing the point, but what was glaringly obvious to me in 2016 was that the whole referendum and both campaigns were driven mostly by emotion with little in the way of substance behind them.

As someone who never liked the EU, I managed to convince myself to vote remain on the way to the polling station when I took the emotion out and looked at the facts. Those facts being that we had a government, led by one of the worst Prime Ministers in British history, who were heavily reliant on securing a victory and had no plans if the result didn't go their way. Very little substance was being discussed by both campaigns, just nonsense about immigrants and World War 3. Most politicians or "celebs" (because many of them weren't even politicians) who were campaigning to leave not only didn't have any kind of manifesto or plan, but if they did have one they had such little political power anyway they would've be unable to carry any of it out. It was like voting to go to war with a bully nation you really need to take down, but neglecting the fact you don't have an army. The last few years were highly predictable.

And I don't buy this "ah, but it was our only chance, once in a lifetime vote" bull crap. Says who? If the result had been close, this whole thing would never have gone away but at least it would have given space and time for debate and for someone to come to power who actually did have a plan and how to carry it out. The 'once in a lifetime, only chance" Scottish IndyRef wasn't even close but you can almost guarantee they'll get another one sooner rather than later.

 

[rob666]

Problem is, the result was close.
There was no landslide.
It should have been "a clear majority", it wasn't.

 

[geo4chg]

And I don't buy this "ah, but it was our only chance, once in a lifetime vote" bull crap. Says who? If the result had been close, this whole thing would never have gone away but at least it would have given space and time for debate and for someone to come to power who actually did have a plan and how to carry it out. The 'once in a lifetime, only chance" Scottish IndyRef wasn't even close but you can almost guarantee they'll get another one sooner rather than later.

I think this is the problem with British politics at the moment - on both Brexit and Scottish independence you have pretty much a 50/50 split on what the general public want. Therefore when you have a referendum where the result is binary it is going to leave half the population unhappy with the result.

"Brexit means Brexit" is a phrase that annoyed me a lot, in that because 52% voted in favour of Leave, the views of the 48% that voted Remain count for nothing. Had the result been more one sided, if for example 70% or more voted Leave, then pursuit of a "hard Brexit" is far more justified, but with the vote so close, a softer approach seems far more sensible. Likewise, a tight result the other way should mean we stayed in the EU but the matter would be far from closed, while a substantial win would push the issue into realms of "once in a lifetime".

In terms of what is happening now, Brexit is of course a factor. By leaving the EU we have put barriers in place when it comes to trade and we have removed a huge amount of the workforce in low-skilled jobs. Personally I don't see how a country the size of the UK can negotiate trade deals that are better than a bloc the size of the EU can negotiate - like with the Brexit negotiations themselves, the smaller party (in most cases us) will always have a dud hand when it comes to negotiating with a larger party, be that the US, China or the EU itself, and to think otherwise is just delusional, but some people still see us as a global superpower from the Empire days.