Sugar, along with milk and fish, classic examples of why we need a structure like the EU. Farmers lobbied for the removal of milk quota’s, milk quotas which were brought in to control overproduction. Milk quotas removed, milk overproduction follows, milk price falls through the floor, farmers sell their herd’s, most of the herds end up in the abattoir, meat market flooded with cheap cow meat, beef price falls through the floor. So much for free market’s. Now there’s a milk shortage. Sugar, farmers lobby for the removal of the sugar quota system, again brought in to stop the overproduction of sugar. According to the British sugar corporation they now expect a 50% increase in sugar production.
Apparently it shouldn’t be a problem unless after brexit the UK government decides to remove subsidies or cut the import tariffs on cheaper cane sugar.
To me it seems without some form of control, fishermen fish until there are no fish left and farmers grow whatever there’s a good profit in until everyone is growing it and we have a mountain of stuff no one wants.
Seems to me that very many people who are against Brexit have a view that is centred around economic prosperity and the capitalist ethos of striving for ever greater wealth.
Surely there are other aspects to life than financial profit. I find it a bit sad that so many folks seem to have lost sight of the importance of community and of doing what is right for others over the last 30 years or so.
There are many young people in the UK who wish to leave the EU simply because they view the whole thing as being out of touch with their needs. They think of it as a remote and unaccountable dinosaur which exists only to promote the interests of the wealthy minority at their expense. They think of the Common Agricultural Policy as stifling innovation in farming, the Fisheries Policy as resulting in perfectly edible fish being thrown back dead into the sea, and Freedom of Movement as something which they have no interest in exercising but which merely brings in other people to take their jobs at lesser wages.
Of course other people have still different reasons for wanting to leave the EU, Independence, Sovereignty, location and make up of seat of government etc.
Whether all these folks are right in their reasoning is irrelevant. What is relevant is that they all joined together in a referendum to voice their opinion that the UK should leave the EU. Perhaps a factor was simply distrust in the Cameron / Osborne team who clearly failed to convince sufficient people to follow their lead.
Whatever the reasons, the vote was for change, and so because it is a democracy everyone will have to abide by the result.
The people were told that there would be an economic price to pay, and the majority voted to pay it. Seems like they decided that there were other issues that were more important to them than mere wealth.
Perhaps it’s a social sea change that we would all be wise to take note of.
No, everybody does not have to abide by the result. The prosperity and the future of Britain and its people has nothing to do with a capitalist ethos.
I must have missed the part that about people being told that there would be an economic cost to Brexit, what I remember seeing in the popular press was a bus offering the impossible and the promise of having its cake and eating it. The economic future of any country and the wellbeing of its people has to be based on facts.
Surely you must recall the dire warnings given by George Osborne, the Bank of England, IMF, Institute for Fiscal Studies to name but a few.
Osborne warned that a victory for the ‘Leave’ campaign would cause house prices to fall “at least 10%” in the following 12 months (Didn’t happen — they rose 5.6%), he warned that public sector borrowing would rise by £12.2billion in 2016-17 if the UK voted to leave the EU (he was wrong there too ---- it fell by £20billion), he claimed that a vote for Brexit would cause unemployment to rise by 1.6% in the first year after a pro-Brexit vote (wrong again — it fell from 5.6% to 4.6%), and he also claimed that GDP would fall by 0.1% in each of the 4 quarters following a vote in favour of leaving the EU (that didn’t happen either ---- GDP rose by 0.5%, 0.7%, 0.2% and 0.3% in the relevant quarters).
Seems that those that voted ‘Leave’ chose to ignore Osborne’s warnings, and indeed that they were right to do so as so many of his predictions turned out not to be true.
I think it’s fair to say that the public were told over and over again that a vote to leave the EU was a vote for financial disaster. Clearly Mr Osborne had a substantial credibility problem.
Oh, I didn’t think you meant the facts presented by the remain voters. The senior leave supporters rubbished those so much I presumed that the leave voters believed that they were lies. (like the bus, like the list of powerful countries queueing up to make advantageous trade deals etc, etc, etc.)
If you really believe that Britain isn’t going to suffer financially you are in denial. Politicians on both side of the vote suffer huge huge credibility problems, it’s strange that you cherry pick the ones that support your side and ignore the real hot air merchants like Farage and Johnson.
I’ve had enough of your twisted arguments. My next reply to you will be in about 25 years time once we know if I have to bow to your superior insite or not. Until then, and probably after then, I will continue to believe that Brexit will be a disaster for the economy of Britain and her people.
I think leavers (the ones that actually thought about it rather than jumped on the bandwagon) were prepared for a degree of short term pain, if that was the price to pay for a stronger, more united and independent Great Britain. The naivety was in assuming that no government would be stupid enough or unethical enough to offer voters the opportunity to vote for something that the government didn’t know for sure that it could deliver. Those voters voted for an orderly and dignified withdrawal, staying on good terms with the EU, ploughing an approximately parallel furrow because basically we all want to achieve approximately the same things - a safe environment to live in, with a good quality of life and a healthy economy - but not the same furrow because we don’t always agree on the best route to take to achieve those things. Those voters didn’t vote for antagonising EU leaders, upsetting EU immigrants, worrying UK expats and all the rest of this farce. I’ve said it all along and I still think, that if the government had done its homework in advance, approached it clear-sightedly and positively instead of in a fever of panic and excitement and empty rhetoric and testosterone, and focused on the real issues instead of spin and politics, it would have been entirely possible to make a success of Brexit. Or if having done its homework it couldn’t see a way through, it shouldn’t have held the referendum until or unless it had a plan. But at this stage it’s dug itself so deep into the hole that I think the odds are stacked against it coming up smelling of roses.
I think the people who have no interest in exercising Freedom of Movement probably know little and care less about the CAP or the Fisheries Policy.
I think they are relying on hearsay, tabloid anti-EU propaganda scapegoating johnny foreigner for everything successive governments and they themselves have not done to address their problems, and magic thinking.
I’m not sure everybody actually understands what Freedom of Movement is, or at least they don’t all see the connection between exercising freedom of movement and moving to another EU state. People are still popping up on other forums saying casually that they are thinking of buying a house in Spain or France and moving there to live in a few years’ time, and if the issue of residence criteria is raised it comes as a complete relevation to them. They genuinely don’t seem to connect Freedom of Movement, which is an EU concept and therefore by definition an irrelevant and unnecessary piece of bureaucratic invention that has absolutely nothing to do with them or their lives, with the reason why it’s been possible for the current generation of Brits to move to Spain and France with a minimum of hoops to jump through. I think they just assume that Brits can move wherever they want simply because they’re Brits.
That said, these are the people who don’t even recognise the few hurdles that do exist under Free Movement, such as having a job or a sustainable income.
The fact that the UK economy did not collapse overnight has been held up to dispute some of the negative economic predictions. This is naïve.
I agree that Osborne should rightly face some criticism for focusing on the negatives - not least because they were predictions and therefore fairly easy to simply claim that they were wrong. However do not forget those predictions were made in the frame of Cameron’s threat to invoke Article 50 the morning after the referendum. We have not felt the full impact of leaving the EU because we have not done so yet.
Also there is considerable lag in the bulk economic data - the ship stays afloat for a while following the torpedo after all.
Yes the PSBR fell, in fact by £23.4 billion (source ONS) in 2016-2017 compared with 2015-2016 (April-March) but this continues a trend of reduced borrowing, it is predicted to rise for next year. More worryingly (but possibly nothing to do with Brexit) our public sector debt continues to grow unabated.
GDP has not gone negative either - see the point above about not feeling the full pain yet. What is clear however is that the UK is being seen as a less attractive destination for foreign investment which has important implications for our economy post Brexit.
Finally, unemployment has, indeed, fallen. Again continuing a trend and it is even possible that in the short term Brexit has helped because EU immigration is down considerably.
No doubt Leavers will laud this as positive but is it? EU workers came to this country because they saw opportunity, a strong economy and a tolerant society. The fact that they no longer perceive this to be as true is a significant loss both culturally and economically.
Funnily enough I was discussing this with people just last night. There should also be some kind of statistics gathered from employers and maybe recruittment agencies to reflect what percentage of vacancies are being filled promptly with workers with the required skills. How is it going to be good for the economy if it achieves 100% employment, meaning that even the wasters who don’t want to work have been shoehorned into some kind of job (probably a zero hours contract) and higher up the scale, there are vacancies that can’t be filled because employers are having difficulty recruiting candidates able to do those jobs?
This is now my standard reply to conversations about the B word. I guess I’ve got bored with the continual online spats.
In an attempt to put things on an even keel I urge everyone on both sides of the EU in/out debate to take the time to read Nick Clegg’s recent book “How to stop Brexit (and make Britain great again)”.
I don’t care if you get to the end of it & still feel vehemently opposed to having anything to do with the EU, even in the changed form that Clegg proposes. At least by reading it you will have heard many facts both for & against the EU, as well as an accurate history of how things got so bad that the referendum managed to come about. In other words you will be properly informed rather than swayed by tabloid headlines & soundbite broadcast journalism.
Personally I’d prefer that you feel moved to admit that Clegg has a point (well, many points) & that the much trumpeted hard Brexit is not only a bad idea, it’s downright folly. If you can appreciate that then supporting moves to prevent the UK from leaving the EU is the only option, when they come around (which they surely will).
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1115718/how-to-stop-brexit-and-make-britain-great-again/
Anne, I’m intrigued, how in your opinion could the UK government have made brexit a success?. Mr Hodge, I agree Osbourne and Cameron did put far too much emphasis on doom doom doom, but as this doom doom doom scenario was based on article fifty invoked the next day, out completely two years later, no deals no nothing, we will never know if it would have been doom doom doom or just gloom. After the referendum and the shoehorning in place of remainer May, most people accepted the fact it would go on for years and the UK would end up never leaving. The BOE bunged in loads of cash, assured everyone they would pay whatever to keep the economy afloat, and voila no economic catastrophe. With the referendum itself some people voted for change, some voted through ignorance, some voted purely based on immigration, some voted thinking the NHS would get loads of dish. But we are where we are, the UK is as is because its a member of the EU, foreign companies invest in the UK because its a member of the EU. The UK has a big economy because its a big consumer, the population borrow and spend, borrow to buy anything and everything, the population carries a massive debt. The UK exports around the same as Italy, exports very little in the way of hard goods, mostly revolves around services.
I would love to see who was right and who was wrong, see the UK leave in a huff, no deals, out of everything, WTO, Dover gridlocked, foreign investors leaving in droves, pound tank, government collapse, foreign workers leave in large number’s, then we would have a true idea of what leaving completely actually means, whether its just gloom, doom, doom doom or doom doom doom.
I don’t know how many of you remember the early seventies, the time when you could walk out of one job in the morning, get another in the afternoon, I can remember it all quite well. No one invested in anything, companies still used machinery built before the war, used labour rather than invested in new machinery. The state didn’t invest in infrastructure and the whole lot started to slide down the slope. Meanwhile across the channel all the main players were investing in the future, toodling along quite nicely. It took the UK over twenty years to catch up, and they are still failing to invest in infrastructure, housing, education and healthcare, still failing to invest in skills training, still using labour instead of investing in new machinery and new tech. To me it looks like when they finally leave they will be in a worse position than when they first joined.
If you refer to https://www.quora.com/What-European-countries-are-not-in-the-EU you will find that it us very difficult not to belong to EFTA or EU.
I haven’t read Clegg’s book but, oh boy, the comments on the Independent’s review are textbook ad hominem.
I’ve coughed up the fiver for the Kindle edition and will try to read through it but the one or two lucid comments suggest that his solutions might not be all that workable.
Actually David, I don’t believe that at all. I expect that there will be a short to mid term price to pay economically, but that not only will the economy pick up again after a period of readjustment, the price paid will be worth it to secure the non economic benefits of leaving the EU.
The main point that I was trying to make is that I feel that there is more to Brexit than economics, and more to life than the pursuit of financial wealth.
Agreed Robert, we are potentially ruining are children’s chance for culture and education with Erasmus Programme for students, which is in doubt.
We will also become more insular nation which is not the best way to develop our future generations.
So yes, you are right, there is more than finance and wealth at risk, when we leave the EU.
Martin
How many communities in the UK do you think have benefited from EU-funded projects, that the UK government would never have dreamt of financing, left to its own devices? I can think of loads - community halls, medical centres, community sports facilities, major regeneration projects, bridges and other civ eng structures, green spaces… I’ve noticed that in France, there are usually prominent notices telling you how projects were funded, there are a couple of installations in my town that acknowledge EU funding. They don’t make it nearly as obvious in the UK. Funny, that, innit.
EDIT - Oh look, here’s a list of ERDF-funded projects 2007 to 2013 ERDF programmes: achievements - GOV.UK
Mr Hodge, go tell a Bangladeshi garment worker there’s more to life than the pursuit of financial wealth. Back to being realistic. Costs 310 million a day to run the NHS, costs hundreds of millions every week to pay pension’s and benefits. Two billion quid buys you sixteen thousand council houses. The country is around 1.8 trillion in debt, interest alone last year was 42 billion. Debts going up £5,400 a second. Out of the EU, long term fall in GDP, long term fall in tax revenue’s will lead to more cuts in everything, civil unrest, strikes, the work’s. Debt will eventually become unsustainable, there won’t be any cash to invest in infrastructure, healthcare, social care, education, skills training, housing. There isn’t any cash now, pots empty. We could end up with the pound rated as junk, now won’t that be fun.
I’m intrigued about the short term pain followed by long term gain, perhaps Mr Hodge you could enlighten us on that one, and the Britain making brexit a success bit, still waiting for the rundown on that one.
I find it all quite interesting, the in’s and out’s of it all, the they need us more than we need them assumptions from the brexitaires, the bright new world of free trade no other country actually wants, the we could be like Singapore bit, love that one, has anyone actually ever taken the trouble to check out how Singapore does so well? If they bothered to take the trouble they would soon realise that being like Singapore is even more far fetched than being a beacon of free trade. Grow your own vege, start a religious order, keep your head down and everything should work out just fine.
The theory goes that we will have countries lined up eager to forge trading relations with us, given that we are such an economic powerhouse and all that. Coupled with a legislative light touch and low taxes we will be an attractive destination for foreign investment.
The danger - and I think that we agree on this - is that we will discover that the reason we currently have the 5th largest economy but are 21st by population rank is that we are seen as a gateway nation to the EU, who’s GDP is much larger than ours ($13.8 trillion without the UK contribution, compared with $2.6 trillion or over 5x as large). Unless we negotiate a deal, particularly on services, we risk loosing that after we leave.
We can already see that, although we have not hit recession, our GDP is now rising at a much slower rate than the Eurozone - just 0.3% in the 2nd quarter of this year compared with 2.3%, this is why gloating that Osborne “failed” in his prediction of recession is naïve, it does not matter that we are bleeding to death slowly, if we are still bleeding to death.
I have now read Clegg’s book. Can’t say it was worth a fiver. He does lay out how we got into this mess in a lucid manner and his ideas for moving Europe forward are interesting but I am not convinced by his calls for a groundswell of lobbying. Not that we don’t need it but I can’t see people shuffling off their apathy.
But, the ship has sailed for the UK to push dialogue on EU reform - perhaps armed with the referendum result we could have opened dialogue on the very valid issues that it raised. Particularly the issue of free movement caused influxes that were too great for a member state to absorb. Even then we might have had a weak argument given that our problems were largely of our own making (failure to set up limits on movement from the A8 countries and failure to use other checks on migration and access to support and healthcare available to member states).
I am also not convinced when he argues that we can just halt the A50 process or even pull out of Brexit altogether. I know there is some legal opinion that A50 is reversible but that is not a view shared by the EU.
Quite so ----- and the UK has been in the EEC / EU for over 40 years. Plainly it isn’t exactly all coming up roses then, and when something plainly does not achieve the desired result, then it is time to do something different.