Brexit , the negatives

Well have some good news then- or it could be bad news, or it could be more lies and desperation. I really don't know what to make of it

www.indy100.com

Brexit campaign group launches news website to ‘keep alive ethos of referendum’

A Brexit campaign group that was fined for breaking electoral law has launched a news website.Leave.EU – which was fined £70,000 by the Electoral Commission for breaking spending rules during the referendum – has launched The Foxhole to “keep alive the grassroots ethos of the 2016 referendum”...
www.indy100.com www.indy100.com
 
I am prepared to put both for leaving/staying. If I put anything that could be a positive though someone will say its not true or want bibliographies of evidence. What I put is what I believe, I am not perfect but it is done in goodwill.

Another issue is not we only really left 3 months ago so its very early days for any changes.

On the leaving side - we are now free to do own trade deals, over time we will stop giving payments to the EU (£8.6bn per year at last count), UK Government has more flexibility to provide subsidies to internal businesses, we have a more competitive exchange rate, there is no pressure on the UK to joining the Euro or join our monetary and fiscal policies with the EU, we are able to import more freely from non EU countries, we are able to impose conditions on the movement of people into the UK from the EU. We now have the freedom to accept EU laws or reject them on UK affairs, before we had to adopt them. The UK government appears more interested in helping economically deprived regions of the UK and the Tees Valley with significant OK promises at present. (Civil service jobs, Wind Turbine production, Carbon Capture, support for steel manufacturers, infrastructure investment). Some large multinationals have been stopped from moving profits (through dubious charges and transfer pricing) out of the UK for tax purposes to areas of the EU they have done special low tax deals with like Republic of Ireland and Luxembourg. The price of some food stuffs has dropped for example grapes from South Africa in Lidl are now £1.09 used to be more like £1.79 per punnet five years ago I suspect import taxes are now lower. (one of the prime objectives of the EU is to protect EU food producers in this example Spanish grape producers).

I accept its more difficult to export fresh food that highly perishable food as it requires vet checks etc. That small value exports to the EU are not economically viable at present. That some financial services jobs have left or wil leave the City of London (around 0.5%). That EU regional development grants will soon stop. That people can't just hop from their EU homes to the UK homes without any time stay restrictions.
 
Redwurzel said:
On the leaving side - we are now free to do own trade deals, over time we will stop giving payments to the EU (£8.6bn per year at last count), UK Government has more flexibility to provide subsidies to internal businesses, we have a more competitive exchange rate, there is no pressure on the UK to joining the Euro or join our monetary and fiscal policies with the EU, we are able to import more freely from non EU countries, we are able to impose conditions on the movement of people into the UK from the EU. We now have the freedom to accept EU laws or reject them on UK affairs, before we had to adopt them. The UK government appears more interested in helping economically deprived regions of the UK and the Tees Valley with significant OK promises at present. (Civil service jobs, Wind Turbine production, Carbon Capture, support for steel manufacturers, infrastructure investment). Some large multinationals have been stopped from moving profits (through dubious charges and transfer pricing) out of the UK for tax purposes to areas of the EU they have done special low tax deals with like Republic of Ireland and Luxembourg. The price of some food stuffs has dropped for example grapes from South Africa in Lidl are now £1.09 used to be more like £1.79 per punnet five years ago I suspect import taxes are now lower. (one of the prime objectives of the EU is to protect EU food producers in this example Spanish grape producers).
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I'm not sure goodwill is a reasonable replacement for critical analysis. Almost everything you've posted as a possible positive either has nothing to do with Brexit (in so far as we could do it before anyway) or misrepresents how the changes are having an effect. As far as I can tell, the only possible positive so far is that we moved more quickly on vaccines than the EU did, but the truth seems to be that we could have done that anyway.

we are now free to do own trade deals - how is this a benefit when we're geographically tied to the EU? How do e.g. shellfish businesses sell anywhere else?

over time we will stop giving payments to the EU (£8.6bn per year at last count) - those 'payments' came with a huge amount of benefits attached (worth more to the UK than the payments themselves)

UK Government has more flexibility to provide subsidies to internal businesses - will they do that though? All evidence so far suggests the UK Govt will let businesses flounder (no pun intended)

we have a more competitive exchange rate - with who? How is it competitive (import vs export)? And how is that tied to Brexit?

there is no pressure on the UK to joining the Euro or join our monetary and fiscal policies with the EU - what pressure was there? We had, and always would have had, a veto

we are able to import more freely from non EU countries - which ones? How do rules of origin affect other supply chains?

we are able to impose conditions on the movement of people into the UK from the EU - we could do that already. We chose not to.

We now have the freedom to accept EU laws or reject them on UK affairs, before we had to adopt them. - not true. We were always able to say no and push the formulation of rules back to the EU for amendment - the main reason we rarely did that was because we were instrumental in formulating most of the rules in the first place

The UK government appears more interested in helping economically deprived regions of the UK and the Tees Valley with significant OK promises at present - more interested than the Millions the EU spent? Really??

support for steel manufacturers - you mean like how the Tory Govt let Redcar steel-making die by vetoing the EU plans to limit Chinese dumping and refusing to give legal state aid?

Some large multinationals have been stopped from moving profits (through dubious charges and transfer pricing) out of the UK for tax purposes to areas of the EU they have done special low tax deals with like Republic of Ireland and Luxembourg. - Not seen anything on this one so won't comment.

The price of some food stuffs has dropped for example grapes from South Africa in Lidl are now £1.09 used to be more like £1.79 per punnet five years ago I suspect import taxes are now lower. (one of the prime objectives of the EU is to protect EU food producers in this example Spanish grape producers). - without actual facts and figures as to why these prices have changed, again I can't comment. However, much of Africas fruit produce was zero-tax rated in the EU already.
 
Scrote said:
I'm not sure goodwill is a reasonable replacement for critical analysis. Almost everything you've posted as a possible positive either has nothing to do with Brexit (in so far as we could do it before anyway) or misrepresents how the changes are having an effect. As far as I can tell, the only possible positive so far is that we moved more quickly on vaccines than the EU did, but the truth seems to be that we could have done that anyway.

we are now free to do own trade deals - how is this a benefit when we're geographically tied to the EU? How do e.g. shellfish businesses sell anywhere else?

over time we will stop giving payments to the EU (£8.6bn per year at last count) - those 'payments' came with a huge amount of benefits attached (worth more to the UK than the payments themselves)

UK Government has more flexibility to provide subsidies to internal businesses - will they do that though? All evidence so far suggests the UK Govt will let businesses flounder (no pun intended)

we have a more competitive exchange rate - with who? How is it competitive (import vs export)? And how is that tied to Brexit?

there is no pressure on the UK to joining the Euro or join our monetary and fiscal policies with the EU - what pressure was there? We had, and always would have had, a veto

we are able to import more freely from non EU countries - which ones? How do rules of origin affect other supply chains?

we are able to impose conditions on the movement of people into the UK from the EU - we could do that already. We chose not to.

We now have the freedom to accept EU laws or reject them on UK affairs, before we had to adopt them. - not true. We were always able to say no and push the formulation of rules back to the EU for amendment - the main reason we rarely did that was because we were instrumental in formulating most of the rules in the first place

The UK government appears more interested in helping economically deprived regions of the UK and the Tees Valley with significant OK promises at present - more interested than the Millions the EU spent? Really??

support for steel manufacturers - you mean like how the Tory Govt let Redcar steel-making die by vetoing the EU plans to limit Chinese dumping and refusing to give legal state aid?

Some large multinationals have been stopped from moving profits (through dubious charges and transfer pricing) out of the UK for tax purposes to areas of the EU they have done special low tax deals with like Republic of Ireland and Luxembourg. - Not seen anything on this one so won't comment.

The price of some food stuffs has dropped for example grapes from South Africa in Lidl are now £1.09 used to be more like £1.79 per punnet five years ago I suspect import taxes are now lower. (one of the prime objectives of the EU is to protect EU food producers in this example Spanish grape producers). - without actual facts and figures as to why these prices have changed, again I can't comment. However, much of Africas fruit produce was zero-tax rated in the EU already.
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The UK-SA trade deal is virtually the same as the one we had when in the EU.

Companies can set up their HQ for tax purposes wherever they like. Nothing has changed with us leaving the EU except companies that used to be UK based also set up subsidiaries in the EU for trade purposes from which we lose out on tax revenue.
 
I said this would happen and it has.

Its seems too an emotional issue for a lot of people to take any sort of balanced view.

An example - the £8.6 billion is a net payment - i.e. all the receipts minus all the payments. I thought everyone accepted the UK was a net contributor and has been since 1973 - its partly because the biggest part of the EU Budget are farming subsidies and the UK has a small farming sector relative to most other EU countries, if not all.

I did leave Covid off because hopefully its temporary - It was interesting though how Germany closed its borders completely at extremely short notice when faced with Covid. Thats it borders to other EU countries without any sort of consultation.
 
Currency devaluation seen as a positive always confuses me. If the pound gets weaker then UK is now worth less. For example if UK is worth £100 (basic numbers) and then sterling devalues by 25% you could argue it is still worth £100.

BUT if we were worth $150, tne country is now only worth $112.50.

Never have understood why we want to make our country worth less.
 
Redwurzel said:
An example - the £8.6 billion is a net payment - i.e. all the receipts minus all the payments. I thought everyone accepted the UK was a net contributor and has been since 1973 - its partly because the biggest part of the EU Budget are farming subsidies and the UK has a small farming sector relative to most other EU countries, if not all.
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This deliberately misses the point. Scrote said that the payments bring with them a host of benefits. He did not argue that we didn’t make a net payment. Saving that net payment is simply not an overall economic benefit by any analysis.

Unfortunately every single point you’ve put forward has been debunked both in this thread and hundreds of others. That has nothing to do with being too emotional, it’s simply an objective analysis and pointing out the obvious and clear flaws in your arguments, which unfortunately don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Scrote said:
UK Government has more flexibility to provide subsidies to internal businesses - will they do that though? All evidence so far suggests the UK Govt will let businesses flounder (no pun intended)
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Just to add to this one, it’s simply wrong. Our trade agreement makes it very clear (and I’m paraphrasing) that we have to put in place measures that broadly align with the EU rules on state aid.

Scrote said:
We now have the freedom to accept EU laws or reject them on UK affairs, before we had to adopt them. - not true. We were always able to say no and push the formulation of rules back to the EU for amendment - the main reason we rarely did that was because we were instrumental in formulating most of the rules in the first place
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It’s also not true in a practical sense. If we want to trade with the EU we have to comply with the LPF provisions. So now we have to comply with the EU regulations whilst having absolutely no say in them at all. See also: state aid rules. I’d also be interested in which laws were problematic prior to Brexit.

There is no point really in continuing to take these nonsensical arguments apart, they’ve been done to death and the poster’s pre-emptive ‘too emotional to discuss it’ nonsense betrays how he wants to frame the discussion.
 
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Redwurzel said:
An example - the £8.6 billion is a net payment - i.e. all the receipts minus all the payments. I thought everyone accepted the UK was a net contributor and has been since 1973 - its partly because the biggest part of the EU Budget are farming subsidies and the UK has a small farming sector relative to most other EU countries, if not all.
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So you have highlighted that you know the cost of something, but not the value, and no, no one has accepted we are a net contributor. This wasn't a pot that we threw money in. We were purchasing membership, access to the biggest global free trade agreement and market, that in itself was worth a multitude of times more than what we paid.
 
Redwurzel said:
Adi - any advantages in leaving the EU?
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None. I’ve searched and searched for one for nearly 6 years now. I’ve asked those that voted to tell me one and yet still I’m waiting to hear anything that stands up to any scrutiny. I’m desperate to hear one. In truth Brexit will have a very limited impact on my life. I am comfortable. It will seriously hurt the poorer part of society and I’m desperate to find some solace from somewhere. But there isn’t any. There are simply no benefits to this. None.
 
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Adi

I gather you electioneered for Remain in 2016, as your views appear very strong.

I put both positives and negatives in my first post on this thread as I am not as one sided.

Its sounds like me you believe increasing inequalities in the UK are a problem/issue and they have increased in the last 40 years (unless someone knows better of course........ which they usually do on this board :giggle:

Many people want to dso somethjing about this, but I aceept they may have different opinions of how that is possible.
 
Redwurzel said:
we are now free to do own trade deals,
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From a much weaker position. Too small to have significant leverage over US, China, EU, India, Japan.
No advantage has been demonstrated from the new trade deal negotiated with Japan compared to the one we had via EU.
US has already put UK in its place by threatening retaliation if any taxes imposed on the tech corporations and it will only get worse.
UK is loosening immigration restrictions with India to get them to look at a trade deal.
China - have probably forgotten UK exists by now.

Still, I think UK is confident of getting good deals with Thailand and Myanmar. For the win!
 
Redwurzel said:
I gather you electioneered for Remain in 2016, as your views appear very strong.
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No. My job means I am very familiar with the EU and our membership of it. I also did a lot of reading. That knowledge and research informed the view I took, which as a result is a very strong view.

Redwurzel said:
I put both positives and negatives in my first post on this thread as I am not as one sided.
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It is not about being one sided. You put both positives and negatives and in response every one of the positives you offered was systematically torn apart for the flawed nonsense it was. That is not being one sided, it is objectively scrutinising the arguments out forward and reaching a conclusion.

Redwurzel said:
Its sounds like me you believe increasing inequalities in the UK are a problem/issue and they have increased in the last 40 years (unless someone knows better of course........ which they usually do on this board
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Inequality is a huge problem in the UK and it is getting worse. This conservative government and its policies on austerity, the Brexit heist and more recent COVID heist are the root of that problem. If anyone thinks our membership of the EU has in any way contributed to that problem then they’re either ignorant or stupid.
 
To a degree I understand why some people voted for Brexit, because there has been such a huge division in society that has grown exponentially for many, many years.

They saw an opportunity to vote for change, to vote for something different and I understand that. The problem is, they kicked the wrong dog IMHO. The divisions in society were not the cause of the EU, but of the Government who had conveniently blamed the EU for so many of our national ills for so long. Repeat the lie for long enough and to many, it’s accepted as truth.

I don’t for one minute believe that the vast majority of people voted to leave for reasons of racism or xenophobia. Undoubtedly, a significant minority did but I still believe the majority voted for something they believed or hoped would improve their lot. Sadly, that doesn’t appear to be the case but we need to heal the divisions, take stock and look to how we can at least get back on the front foot as a nation.

That means we need to look beyond this ridiculous flag waving, two fingers up at the EU rubbish some of the Brexiteers indulge in, and us Remainers need to do our part too and stop accusing everyone who voted for Brexit of being racist. This division is exactly what keeps this shower of a Government in place.

We need to unite around the real issues, social issues that affect the majority of us and engage again in respectful discourse with others who may hold different viewpoints. Remember that united we stand and divided we fall.
 
WeeGord said:
Remainers need to do our part too and stop accusing everyone who voted for Brexit of being racist.
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An admirable plea WeeGord but fundamentally flawed I’m afraid. I don’t think many people accuse everyone who voted Leave of being racist. I’m absolutely certain that all racists voted for Brexit and that anti-immigration rhetoric was by far the biggest single factor in the vote but ultimately I am prepared to accept the premise that many folk just wanted something to change. The problem though in terms of being able to heal division is that there needs to be a critical mass of Leave voters who are prepared to accept the reality of what is happening in front of their eyes, accept that the promises they were made simply cannot and will not be delivered and stop living in this state of denial that persists. Without owning it, there will never be a legitimate place from which to unify.
 
Redwurzel said:
Its sounds like me you believe increasing inequalities in the UK are a problem/issue and they have increased in the last 40 years (unless someone knows better of course........ which they usually do on this board :giggle:
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It's not correct that they have continued for 40 years. In fact during teh late 90s and early 00s inequality reduced. Then the financial crash happened, a decade of tory austerity happened, brexit happened, and then covid. Nothing increases inequality like disaster and we've had to endure 4 in a decade of which one was brexit.
 
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