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The Brexit Thread

A lot of African countries are averaging 5 or 6 children born per woman compared with under 2 in the likes of the UK and other western countries. One way or another people from those countries with high birth rates but poor economies and opportunities are going to make their way into countries like ours over time. I actually agree that we should train as many of our own people as possible but I'm also a realist. Like I said, the government like the cheap labour as it's ultimately good for the economy. Without the immigrant labour the farmer doesn't run his fruit business and without that business the government get less tax. In an ideal world the farmer would make the financial package lucrative enough so that British people will take the jobs but that's just not going to happen unfortunately so the government will just continue to allow immigration nevermind what they actually say about it.
 
Ok so serious question here - if we are so short of workforce in the UK, why the heck are we building so many houses all over the UK, and where are all the people coming from who are buying them? If there are so many extra people in the UK that we have to build all these houses, then I dont see why we have to be reliant on a workforce from another country?
 
I was under the impression that we have not built enough housing in this country for decades, so if we are starting to build at a faster rate I guess they're just starting to try to fix the issue (obviously not fast enough though with ludicrous property prices).
 
There’s so many big topics here it’s difficult to do any of them justice. I’m going to pick up on the housing crisis here. For those who are really interested in it, I’d recommend a book called All That Is Solid by Danny Dorling, which covers the topic really well.

The way the housing crisis gets presented to the public is often very one sided. Property developers donate a lot of money to political parties, and in particular to the Conservatives. A big percentage of politicians make money from the property sector, as do a lot of people in the media. I wouldn’t see myself as being a conspiracy theorist, but I’m sceptical that the government would want to make house prices more affordable, when so many of their own members make a lot of money from property.

There’s a lot of reasons why we’ve ended up with this property bubble, where land values keep on going up. It’s made housing a lot less affordable while a minority of people get very rich on the back of it.

1. I don’t have a problem with people coming over here to work, but a lot of property, particularly in London, has been bought by international investors and oligarchs. There are big blocks of apartments that very few people live in.

2. Some parts of the UK have a lot more job prospects than others. There are places where land values are incredibly high, but there other post industrial areas with high unemployment, where there’s a surplus of housing with lots of derelict properties.

3. London has much higher wages than the rest of the UK, but also much higher property prices. There are quite a few people with a main home in the country and a flat in London, that they use in the week when they’re working. In the UK the average commute to work is a lot longer than in most other countries.

4. There’s a growing number of people with a main home and a holiday home. Because property prices keep on going up, people are more likely to buy holiday homes, because they can also be an investment.

5. Under the right to buy a lot of social housing has been sold off. Councils now end up renting social housing from private landlords, which has helped to push up property prices.

6. People are living longer, and the elderly are sometimes reluctant to downsize, meaning we end up with large houses with one person living in them. I’m not saying we should force elderly people out of their homes. I don’t think we should.

7. The divorce rate has gone up, meaning there are families who previously had one home that get split between two.

8. Because property prices keep on going up, more people are buying property to rent out.

9. One of the solutions that governments have used to fight the housing crisis is to give grants and interest free loans, particularly to first time buyers. These schemes are often abused, and simply push up prices further. Normally there’s an element of supply and demand. If no one can afford something, the prices start to come down. When house prices have started to stall, the government and banks have simply lent more money and allowed people to put down smaller deposits.

What we’ve ended up with is a situation where property is very unfairly distributed. A lot of people have multiple properties and a lot of other people can’t afford to buy one. To borrow Dorling’s analogy, if the wealthy bought up all the food and then sold it to the poor at greatly inflated prices, there’d be an outcry. But when it happens with property, we just accept it. If the government were to genuinely solve the housing crisis and bring down property prices, it’d be the richest and most influential people in society who’d lose out. There’s little political appetite to do that.
 
There are hundreds of thousands of empty houses in the UK.

One of the biggest myths about Brexit was that we could not control the numbers of workers coming here. In reality the northern towns which suffered the highest levels of immigration and wage suppression/erosion, were the poorest ones with the most empty houses. Empty houses are what encourage mass immigration, and the government has always had the ability to demolish or fill these houses but chose to ignore the issue for years. Hence the Brexit 'revolt'.

I'd accept that there are a shortage of houses within the M25, but in reality it is the country (and world) that is overpopulated. Where do you draw the line for building and population growth if not here?
 
@GaryH ... with high employment it's a numbers game, if you find a way to get British people working in the fields in seasonal roles, you'll have to use migrant labour to fill the permanent roles that those people are currently doing. You'd then need to support the British citizens when the seasonal role came to an end, whilst paying more for your food. I don't understand how that is a win.

It feels like your side of the argument want to 'fix' this 'problem' for ideological reasons, rather than practical ones.

We're a country with a strong economy that has been in a fortunate position whereby people have wanted to come here to work and have felt welcome enough to do so and in a lot of cases, settle and make a home here. That feels like something to celebrate, although we have perhaps given them reason to think twice of late.
 
Rick said:
It feels like your side of the argument want to 'fix' this 'problem' for ideological reasons, rather than practical ones.

We're a country with a strong economy that has been in a fortunate position whereby people have wanted to come here to work and have felt welcome enough to do so and in a lot of cases, settle and make a home here. That feels like something to celebrate, although we have perhaps given them reason to think twice of late.
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I’m just fed up of society expecting things to be cheap, in particular clothing, at the expense of the people working to produce them. It has to end. And a country should not be dependent on cheap labour. I might not have the answers right now on how to achieve that, but the sooner it stops the better. We need to also stop importing cheap goods from other countries being made by workers in appalling conditions, or forced labour camps (For example China ).

Anyway as for workers being welcomed here, I’m sure they still will, but just like if we wanted to go work in Canada or in Australia, we can still be welcomed but need to ensure it’s a job that is needed or we can be self dependent without having to rely on the state if we did want to go and live there. I see nothing wrong with this personally although acknowledge others would disagree.
 
The SNP have said they will vote against the Brexit deal, and the Lib Dems leader has said the deal looks "insupportable"...

I hate Brexit and everything it stands for, but really? If you vote this down we won't magically stay in the EU. By voting it down we'll only end up with WTO terms and even more damage, and this nonsense will continue for even longer.

I think most people just want this sorry state of affairs over now. In my opinion the only sensible thing you can do now is accept this deal and campaign to improve it/ rejoin/ whatever rather than make things worse out of principle just because you don't want to leave the EU.
 
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Thameslink Rail said:
Unless at least 44 of Boris' own MPs vote against it (and the whole voting opposition), the deal will go through. (At least by my count)
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Keir Starmer has said that they will support the deal, so Boris already has the guaranteed support of Labour. I’d imagine most of his own MPs will vote the deal through too, so that gives him a pretty comfortable majority.
 
Starmer’s six tests for the Brexit deal are (were?):

1. Does it ensure a strong and collaborative future relationship with the EU?

2. Does it deliver the “exact same benefits” as we currently have as members of the Single Market and Customs Union?

3. Does it ensure the fair management of migration in the interests of the economy and communities?

4. Does it defend rights and protections and prevent a race to the bottom?

5. Does it protect national security and our capacity to tackle cross-border crime?

6. Does it deliver for all regions and nations of the UK?

https://labourlist.org/2017/03/keir...et-we-wont-back-the-final-deal-in-parliament/
 
The thing with working in the fields is that some people will choose not to work on a farm. I remember a couple of years ago on our local news after the brexit result they went to a Lincoln Town with high unemployment but voted for brexit and interviewed the locals. Result of everyone they talked to who was on jobseekers most thought it was below them to work in the fields and would rather stay on benefits.

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“The exact same benefits” is a troll of what David Davis said about what Brexit would look like. The exact same benefits would be freedom of movement of people, goods and capital - we certainly don’t have that.

With regards to people “choosing not to do” a certain type of job and yet still be paid benefits is one of the big problems modern liberalism allows for.
 
Do we have any indication all 27 states of the EU will vote for it? I mean the French as we have seen can be a pain in the backside.
 
Ultimately I get the feeling that this deal is pretty much what could have easily been agreed back in the Summer. In the end all we have is a framework agreement that gets reviewed every 5 years. That's along with a shed load of working groups for reviewing and building on different elements of the agreement (free of EU bureaucracy ey!).

Starmer has no choice but to have his party accept the deal, as less than 48 hours following the vote in parliament, the agreement comes into effect. Voting it down would being the alternative of crashing out. Labour's "six tests" would never be met, as the government red lines would never be broken to that extent. Like the less hardline tories in parliament, the government knew exactly what they were doing by bringing things down to the wire. Sure it's hurt businesses being completely unable to prepare, but they now have little to no risk of the vote not going their way.

This bad deal is better than no deal of course, I'm glad we have something. But, let's be under no illusion that whatever the short term consequences of the deal bring in the coming years, future elections are going to yet again be fought on the basis of either deviating further or working closer with the EU.
 
The SNP are voting against it? Well I never. For every moment Sturgeon impresses me, she equally infuriates me with her self-serving nationalist agenda.
 
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AstroDan said:
The SNP are voting against it? Well I never. For every moment Sturgeon impresses me, she equally unfuriates me with her self-serving nationalist agenda.
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I am waiting for this deal and London's dealing with covid to be used for another Scottish referendum.


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Just been talking to a family member about the business he works in. He suggests they are forecasting that they're going to lose about 70% of their EU revenue which is about 40% of their total turnover.

He said there is too much complacency in the fact that getting a deal doesn't protect or ensure anything, it just enables things to continue in a more convoluted manner if businesses choose to do so, which is quite striking. There are now barriers to trade that weren't there previously, so even with a deal most of their European customers are expected to buy from an EU supplier where they can.

Until now, if you were buying something from the UK, you were buying from another member state and didn't have to worry about it - now you're making the decision that you're going to buy from a third country and suffer the additional complexity that comes with that. Business is better when it's easier and cheaper, complexity brings costs and delay.

Compound that with those on the continent who will now not buy British on principle, it's quite a sobering thought.
 
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