Article 50/Brexit Negotiations

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I'm not sure using precedent in an argument about an unprecedented event is really sensible. This isn't Greenland leaving here, we're the fifth largest economy in the world, one of the few net contributors to the EU and a not insignificant amount of their trade already. The path ahead is unforged.

I suggested that the deciding driving force behind negotiations is and will always be economics rather than the sole. Political will is a thing but stick 100 politicians in a room together negotiating a treaty and it mainly seems to come down to money.
You didn't seek to justify your la la land proposal for our post Brexit free trade deal.
Not to worry.
By the way I think India has overtaken us in the world economic rankings, maybe France as well, not sure if we're sixth or seventh now.
 
I'm not sure using precedent in an argument about an unprecedented event is really sensible. This isn't Greenland leaving here, we're the fifth largest economy in the world, one of the few net contributors to the EU and a not insignificant amount of their trade already. The path ahead is unforged.

I suggested that the deciding driving force behind negotiations is and will always be economics rather than the sole. Political will is a thing but stick 100 politicians in a room together negotiating a treaty and it mainly seems to come down to money.

If the UK leaving was to be the catalyst for other countries leaving, how much money do you think the EU would lose? Do you think it will be on their minds? Very high up on the agenda of the political leaders is keeping the EU project on track and I think they place ENORMOUS value on that.

We'd be wise to remember that we are only 1 export market for the EU, and in the great scheme of things, not that significant. I am constantly told by optimistic Brexiters, that Germany wears the trousers and Germany gets what it wants (despite a trade deal needing majority support of 20 member states). But only 7.4% of Germany's exports go to the UK. If 7.4% of their output is subject to a (say) 10% tariff, and we imagine that perhaps their sales to the UK went down by 10% as a result, they'd lose 0.7% of their exports.

(And that assumes that Germany's exports to other EU countries don't go up as a consequence of less competition from now more expensive UK goods.)

Whereas on the other hand, if they agree to offer the UK a trade deal which is broadly better than what other EU countries enjoy (no free movement of labour, no or reduced subs, no supremecy of European courts, no compliance with EU legislation) and yet with tariff free access to the EU markets, what possible incentive is there for other EU countries not to seek to leave?

Agreeing a deal like this could be the catalyst for the collapse of the entire EU project. I think Germany would regard that as being VERY much more expensive than having 7% of its exports subject to a trade tariff.
 
I think the effects are being massively overblown by people with political agendas and the actual man on the street will see little change outside some additional paperwork when going abroad. Unless you're Irish then it could be bad.

The UK is a major trading partner of many EU countries, especially in the financial sectors where somewhere in the region of £1.3 trillion is based here in investment. The EU is a major trading partner of the UK and accounts for somewhere in the region of 44% of exports going into the EU give or take a very generous 4% for the Rotterdam effect. There's this narrative presented where either the EU has this crushingly great hand in negotiations and we have to beg them which is completely as false as the narrative that the absurdly positive Blighty Can Make It! with some remnant of Blitz spirit. This is a divorce and it will be simultaneously painful and create new opportunity for all involved to some degree.

Both sides are rational actors and will come to a mutually beneficial agreement. Economics runs the world, be in no doubt about that, and economics demands stability above all else. You can't on the one hand believe that politicians are controlled by corporate interests then on the other hand suggest that politicians won't do what is best for corporate interests. That's talking out of both sides of your mouth.

There's some potential benefits to Brexit. It's no secret that over the next 25 years the economic growth in the world is going to mainly be focused in developing economies such as India, China, the Mid East and parts of Africa - that's really where the money is going to be. Being outside of a trading union gives us the ability to strike more specific and quite frankly quicker deals than being inside it which will be better for us in the long term. In addition, nobody sensible is suggesting that we just stop all immigration and that's one of the freak out lots myths. Instead we can control immigration based on need and skillset which is ultimately the best of both worlds and exactly how every single non-EU country in the world handles it and manages to do so without the downfall of Western civilisation.

On the other side, the EU will want us to continue our commitments to them until at least the end of the current EU budget which is somewhere between £20bn and £60bn depending on who you believe (and the EU is keeping silent on it). That seems fair enough to me and something we'll probably acquiesce to in negotiations - the money is essentially already budgeted in both the EU and the UK mid range budgets and we did agree to do so. This however means we'll be paying into a trading union that we're not a part of which will be a difficult sell to the public at a time where the NHS is struggling so much. Both sides will want current citizens to not be affected and I imagine there would be a citizenship amnesty of some sort where Brits abroad or Europeans here will be given a fast track system. Again - both sides here are rational actors and not insane people who are rabidly biased so it seems an easy enough trade point.

Obviously without the EU we won't get access to the single market but many have argued this is a good thing as it allows us to cut bureaucracy in different sectors that aren't really applicable to the UK economy. The single market are the internal trade rules of the EU and don't apply to external products or deals. So the UK won't have to do adhere to rules that are designed to keep French dairy farmers competitive, for example. However the flip side to this is that manufacturers might be not fancy making "EU version" and "UK version" of their products if we have different rules so costs will go up. Realistically, we'll probably continue to mirror the rules of the single market for products that will benefit from it and change them for products that won't. Also realistically, there's no way we could stay in the single market because it's implied to be part of EU membership. I imagine we'll ask but give up on it fairly easily because even we're not stupid enough to believe that a members only club will continue to give us membership benefits without us paying membership fees. We'll probably keep access until the end of the EU budget then that will be it.

Access to the customs union is a complicated one. The customs union is the external part of the single market - essentially the rules that the EU put on imports into it from countries not in the EU. This is the one that we want to be a part of because otherwise all British goods would have a tariff on them and there's already precedent for non-EU countries being a member of the customs union, Turkey for example had an agreement which extended it to them all the way back in 1995. The Tories have said that they intend to exit the Customs Union and Labour have said that they intend to fight them every step of the way on this. Mainly because Labour seems to think that Northern Ireland will become a large smuggling area due to its EU border and the Tories seem to think that us being forced to charge tariffs on other countries to trade with us outside our negotiation is stupid in a non-EU Britain, at least as far as I can tell, the political parties are all over the place here. There's no real way to predict how this will fall, I imagine we'll push for a free trade area where we have tariffless access to the customs union and aren't bound by the common tariff on external goods. The EU will want to push us into the single market for access to this, which includes free movement of people so won't be accepted. I imagine we'll probably have some patchwork agreement where nobody really gets what they want and it doesn't really work for anybody because lines are drawn in the sand on this one. The threat of cutting London off from the EU and setting up a tax haven off the coast of the EU was not an idle threat and I genuinely believe the Tories can and will do this to keep London strong if necessary. On the other hand we'll be asking for a spectacularly biased deal that no country in the history of the EU or EC has ever gotten which would make France and some other nations eye up the prospect of leaving. Creating a whole new Free Trade Area between the UK and EU seems to be the minority consensus on where this is going rather than joining the currently existing European free Trade Area which Norway and Switzerland are in. It makes sense for both - we are not Norway or Switzerland, we're one of the largest economies on the planet and in fact have a larger economy than every non-EU member of the EFTA put together.

A big issue is Ireland. Both the British and the Irish would want Republic of Ireland to remain in the Common Travel Area which allows free movement of people between Republic and Northern Ireland. The problem, and this is one of things that points to some of the validity of the Leave arguments over sovereignty, is that it's not the Republic's choice to make. They can't negotiate that deal with the UK about whether their citizens are allowed in NI and vice versa, only the EU can and it would have to apply to the entire EU which the UK would never agree to in a billion years. How a hard border will affect both countries and really minute detail such as recruitment in jobs or skills is presently unknown but it's not going to be a good thing. We'll ask for special exemptions on this and we'll probably lose because the EU will ask for free movement of labour in return. I just can't see a way which the EU would grant "a bit of free movement".

The main thing to remember is that most of this is academic. A vast majority of the economic models that predicted a failing economic and slowed growth after a Leave vote were inaccurate and it's not surprising. Models of anything are only as good as the data going into them and nothing like this has ever happened before for them to really have any accurate data to build upon.

I think, somewhat controversially it appears, that everything will be fine for most people and they'll barely notice the difference. I would have preferred us to Remain as it leans towards my political utopia of a federalist world government, but the gaslighting that goes on towards the Leave campaign and voters is literally ridiculous.

Christ! The rest of this post is well thought out and written. hats off. The bold bit though...

That's as scary as fuck. World Government? You can't even trust the fuckers on a local government scale, how would a world version be accountable?
 
Christ! The rest of this post is well thought out and written. hats off. The bold bit though...

That's as scary as fuck. World Government? You can't even trust the fuckers on a local government scale, how would a world version be accountable?

Pretty much the same way that the EU works with a replacement from the European Commission into a democratic Upper and Lower House structure then expanded.

It's pretty silly that we have a Parliament now that represents one in ~70,000 people when we live in a digital world. You can do your taxes online, view medical records, and transfer millions of pounds. But democracy somehow still needs to be represented by only a few.

Also, a one world Government would mean a shared legislative frameworks and potentially shared public services. The crimes we see in the developing world would be actually punished which would hasten their growth into fully realised economies. Education would span, there would be very little need for a military because who you going to fight when there's no other countries, we could roll out the health service to Africa and the Mid East, there would be social safety nets for the whole world.

In addition it would kickstart unions again where labour movements could unionise across continents in a single framework which would actually stop some of the globalisation issues we see where other markets don't have minimum wage, there would be no barriers to trade, we'd share energy and other natural resources.

This will never happen in my lifetime and has a significant amount of downsides to it aswell but eventually the human race will probably decide that this is the best way forward. When everybody shares resources everybody wins. We have an economic case for international aid because growing their economies means that the so called third world will eventually become rich enough to buy our goods and services too. Co-operation is mutually beneficial. A one world Government would be the apex of cooperation.
 
Pretty much the same way that the EU works with a replacement from the European Commission into a democratic Upper and Lower House structure then expanded.

It's pretty silly that we have a Parliament now that represents one in ~70,000 people when we live in a digital world. You can do your taxes online, view medical records, and transfer millions of pounds. But democracy somehow still needs to be represented by only a few.

I'm wholeheartedly in favour of representational systems of democracy.

1. People don't always have the time to dedicate to fully considering complex questions whilst at the same time doing a full time job and/or having other demands on your time.
2. Not everyone has the intellectual capacity either. (Not very PC to say, but patently true. If average IQ is 100 then by the very definition some people are below 100 and some very well below.) Pretty pointless asking people to decide on matters they cannot adequately comprehend.
3. Sometimes decisions which are not popular are nevertheless in our best interest and if left to "micro referendums" such decisions might not be taken.

The idea that we let everyone have a vote on all sorts of subjects - let alone on a majority of subjects, or god forbid all subjects - is completely abhorrent to me. I'm very happy to be represented by my MP, who incidentally until recently was not even from the party I vote for.
 
passporting of financial services post Brexit will be the major battlefield and I expect a lot of blood will be shed by both sides on this issue sue to the sheer magnitude that this sector contributes to UK GDP - Tough one because if the UK can get free access it will undermine the whole concept of the single market and set a precedent
 
Pretty much the same way that the EU works with a replacement from the European Commission into a democratic Upper and Lower House structure then expanded.

It's pretty silly that we have a Parliament now that represents one in ~70,000 people when we live in a digital world. You can do your taxes online, view medical records, and transfer millions of pounds. But democracy somehow still needs to be represented by only a few.

Also, a one world Government would mean a shared legislative frameworks and potentially shared public services. The crimes we see in the developing world would be actually punished which would hasten their growth into fully realised economies. Education would span, there would be very little need for a military because who you going to fight when there's no other countries, we could roll out the health service to Africa and the Mid East, there would be social safety nets for the whole world.

In addition it would kickstart unions again where labour movements could unionise across continents in a single framework which would actually stop some of the globalisation issues we see where other markets don't have minimum wage, there would be no barriers to trade, we'd share energy and other natural resources.

This will never happen in my lifetime and has a significant amount of downsides to it aswell but eventually the human race will probably decide that this is the best way forward. When everybody shares resources everybody wins. We have an economic case for international aid because growing their economies means that the so called third world will eventually become rich enough to buy our goods and services too. Co-operation is mutually beneficial. A one world Government would be the apex of cooperation.

Sounds horrendous. So you would do away with every countries identity in a flash. I'm also sure religion would rear it's ugly head and nothing would be decided. Ever.
 
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