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The Brexit Thread

Isn't she also a strong favourite for any potential leadership challenge?

Boris sending her like a lamb to slaughter to knock her down a few pegs.
 
The Impact Assessment on the Australian free trade deal has been announced today. DITs headline assessment is that "The deal is expected to increase trade with Australia by 53 per cent, boost the economy by £2.3bn and add £900m to household wages each year in the long-run."

The less good news ... the government are expecting a £225m hit to the semi-processed food sector (primarily around tinned goods, which we can ship from Australia). Furthermore, a £100m hit to farming and fishing sectors.

Reminds me of my regular sparring with @GaryH earlier in the summer, where there is often an assumption that exiting Europe would mean that we would make/grow more here, but the strategy is very much the opposite - we're going to ship & fly it in from all over the world.

You can't help but wonder if Liz Truss has been given this responsibility (back) in the hope that it will go wrong and she will be squarely blamed as she positions herself for the leadership.

Impact assessment of the FTA between the UK and Australia: executive summary (web version) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
 
I recently read an interesting article which I've been meaning to share.

It was reported by ITV News: Analysis shows Brexit caused £12 billion of lost trade in October.

It gives the example of a retailer in London who imports plants for their business. The phytosanitary certificates, certificates of origin and phytosanitary inspections that he now has to do cost his business an extra £55,000 per year. The delays incurred also means it now takes three days for items to arrive instead of 24 hours before Brexit.

The article also features modelling by the CER:

"The Centre for European Reform (CER) has modelled the trading performance of a UK that did not leave the EU, using trade data from countries - like the US, Germany, Greece, New Zealand and Sweden - whose performance was similar to the UK’s before Brexit.

It then compared this “doppelgänger” with the actual performance of UK imports and exports since January.

The CER used the latest trade data, published this morning by the Office for National Statistics, to calculate that leaving the Single Market and Customs Union reduced trade in goods in October by 15.7% or £12.6 billion."

brexit12bnnew.png


Rick said:
Reminds me of my regular sparring with @GaryH earlier in the summer, where there is often an assumption that exiting Europe would mean that we would make/grow more here, but the strategy is very much the opposite - we're going to ship & fly it in from all over the world.
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And one of the most baffling things about this... we're in a climate emergency. Why would we facilitate trade from countries thousands of miles away whilst restricting trade from countries that are on our doorstep? In what way does that possibly make sense?

Rick said:
You can't help but wonder if Liz Truss has been given this responsibility (back) in the hope that it will go wrong and she will be squarely blamed as she positions herself for the leadership.
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I thought this too. Boris Johnson knows his time is limited, however the Conservatives won't want to start a leadership race until there's somebody credible to take his place.

Boris Johnson has already done a good job of trashing one rival, Rishi Sunak, whose high spending throughout the pandemic puts him at odds with the "low tax, low spend" mantra of the party and its backbenchers. Putting Liz Truss into this position gives her a poison chalice that risks her future leadership challenge.
 
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delta79 said:
I wonder what happen if there MPs keep messing up and quitting, and another party get the seat.


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Every seat the Tories lose is one closer to running a minority government and a vote of no confidence but I can't see them losing ~40 MPs unless there is a mass defection. Moreover, I would expect Boris to be ousted as party leader and the Conservatives staying in power until the next election but with a new leader.
 
Yeah @Thameslink Rail is right. As much as these By-elections slowly defeat the tories and certainly will put them in a weaker position at the next election it won't mean they'll be ousted anytime soon. The red wall tory MP's aren't going to trigger a vote of no confidence in case it does trigger an election which would likely result with them out of a seat.
 
By elections, and local elections, historically go against the ruling party it's not as easy to translate that into a general election result.

I still think Labour are pretty unelectable. Now should be the time for the Lib Dems to shine after that victory, but at a national level its like they don't exist.
 
The Lib Dems are always disfavored in general elections, in 2010 (their best vote share) they won 23% of the vote but only 8.8% of the seats.
 
Thameslink Rail said:
The Lib Dems are always disfavored in general elections, in 2010 (their best vote share) they won 23% of the vote but only 8.8% of the seats.
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To be honest, small parties in general tend to be quite disfavoured in GEs. For instance, didn't UKIP get something like 20% of the vote in 2015, but only 2 seats?
 
It's because of our lovely outdated methodology of First Past The Post. Which often leads to the tactical voting and smaller parties not getting much of a look in.

When they did the Proportional Representation vote many moons ago there wasn't really much said about it at the time if I recall. But I wasn't very aware of politics at the time.
 
Incredibly, or perhaps not, the watered-down Erasmus replacement The Turing Scheme bas been taken off the British Council, who have run the Erasmus scheme in the UK for many years, have been stripped of administrating the scheme in the UK. It has been outsourced to Capita.

Well i'll be.
 
AstroDan said:
Incredibly, or perhaps not, the watered-down Erasmus replacement The Turing Scheme bas been taken off the British Council, who have run the Erasmus scheme in the UK for many years, have been stripped of administrating the scheme in the UK. It has been outsourced to Capita.

Well i'll be.
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That's a very effective way of ensuring the programme will be of no use to anybody then.
 
Despite living there for 18 months, I didn't realise that the Australian farming standards were so poor. I haven't seen much about if/how UK supermarkets will have to label foods to identify the country of origin and the standards that have been applied to the product.

 
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