Brexit thread - what happens next

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Yes, trigger it before we've got a proper negotiation team or have had "warm up" conversations with the people we want to have trade negotiations with.

We should do it when we're ready. Which we aren't.
 
scorza said:
Agree it is strange. What do you mean by "built" though? Starting development of a plot? Completing development of a plot? Actual completion of a sale?

Agree that customer interest means very little - it's still better than him saying that customer interest has fallen though. I'd expect that TW have week-on-week sales figures available to their management, so if sales had fallen sharply over the last few weeks he would have said that.
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Starting a new house build on an existing development. Obviously they are finishing the ones they had already started but 6 weeks ago they stopped digging any new foundations out full stop across the whole North East and Yorkshire.

Which is why work for all the builders is going to dry up in a few weeks time. Prior to 6 weeks ago, every site had foundations dug for a new house every week.

obviously stopping starting a new build means work will have to finish at some point although they are now saying that they are thinking about only finishing the brickwork, windows and roofs on the current houses and not bothering with the internals and leave them as shells for now as they dont have any money to complete them.

They may have had a great previous quarter but the next quarter is going to be dire.

Even if they started digging foundations again today, they would end of with half the number of houses built in this quarter.
 
Aldav said:
The UK has never been fully committed because our own governments, Labour and Tory, have never bothered to get a mandate from the people for what they were doing. And that anger grew and grew, with the real irony that had we had the referendum promised before Maastricht but then not given, or the one Blair/Brown promised before the EU Constitution/Lisbon, there's a pretty good chance they'd have won it, and if so, we wouldn't have had one this June.

All that reluctance, that lack of commitment, is because we were never given a chance to either commit to it, or to opt to leave. No doubt if we had, and the decision to stay had a referendum approval, there'd still be a rabid hardcore refusing to accept it, but my expectation is that a majority of leavers might not like the decision but that if it was a democratic decision of the people, would accept that that was that.
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Yes, I totally agree. There should have been a referendum around the time of Maastricht or Lisbon. It would have set a clear mandate and back then I think Remain would likely have won.

In the 90s and early 2000s Euroscepticism hadn't reached the peak it now has and there was a different economic and social climate, more hopeful, less inward looking. Brexit seems born of a more desperate pressure for change, any change. There's hope too of course, but a more blind hope, a sense of 'anything must be better than this'. Be careful what you wish for IMO.

The problem I have with the "you lost, deal with it, move on" agenda is that I don't fundamentally think that Brexit will bring the change people desire, so I'm finding it hard to deal with it on that basis. Not because I believe in a federal Europe (I don't) but because I don't think the EU is fundamentally the cause of the biggest problems this country faces.

Unless the rampant inequality and disenfranchisement that runs deep through this country is tackled then things can only get more ugly for the UK, whether in or out of the EU. And yes I know what Theresa May said in her inaugural speech about making Britain fairer, I just don't buy it and will take a lot of convincing. Initial signs aren't great, with plans afoot for a variable regional minimum wage, possible minimum wage waivers for some businesses and the government stalling the EU Development Fund payments and not giving any reassurances about replacing the EU funds going to poorer areas and much needed research.
 
Aldav said:
Finally, and this is my single biggsst reason for wanting to Leave - the EU is, at it's very heart, a closed, navel-gazing, self-absorbed protectionist customs union. You can hear it in the subtext, or even overt tone, of Brussels bureaucrats over Brexit with threats of tariffs and other barriers unless the UK accepts their dictat over freedom of movement and "contributions" to the budget. It's small-minded protectionism at it's worst, designed to work for those on the inside at the cost of everyone on the outside.

Well, okay then. My vote is for the UK to be a smallish but economically still significant player in tne big, wide world rather than a coward huddling behind those protectionist barriers, afraid of the competition from the US, or China, or other developing and browing powers like India, China, etc.
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Could you please be more specific about why this is a negative?

What sectors do you believe the UK can compete with the USA, China, and India in? How much trade do those sectors do with the EU compared to those countries?

It's a nice notion, but I have much less confidence in it than you. Seems more likely to me that you've got it backwards - protectionism is precisely what a small developed country like ours needs to avoid further loss of industry to developing nations and to preserve our cultural heritage.
 
Aldav said:
'Outers' haven't been moaning about the EU for 40 years, not least because it hasn't existed for 40 years. It didn't legally exist until Jan 1st, 1993 on the activation of the Maastricht treaty. Which, by the way, was when the four 'freedoms' were implemented, including the ever-so controversial free movement of people. Prior to that, it was the EEC/Common Market, with roots in the ECSC, which is what the people of the UK voted on. Maastricht radically changed what the EEC was, and Lisbon radically changed it again.

So this is the FIRST time the people of the UK have had a chance to express their view on being in the organisation that is a huge political union, the EU, as distinct from the EEC/Common Market we originally joined. And that expression said 'leave'.

If you're going to use precedent to justify another referendum, that'll be in another 40 years then.
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Fortunately for all though it will only be 'leave lite' then in the fullness of time it will be 'back in' again up to our elbows and the lunatics will no longer be running the asylum. :D
 
Cern said:
Leavers and Europsceptics have been moaning about the EEC / EU for 40 years, pretty much ever since Britain joined the EEC in 1973. They even blamed the EEC for the terrible tyranny of the decimal system, even though this was implemented before we joined the EEC.

Battling with the EEC (as it was then) and moaning in the British press about Europe was a constant feature of the Thatcher years, a time when a lot of the crazier Euromyths were born. Thatcher had a lot of trouble with Eurosceptics in her governments throughout the 1980s.

But of course it was John Major's administration which had the worst of it, particularly with the exit from the ERM and the fuss surrounding the Maastricht treaty in 1992. A period rife with Euroscepticism and constant moaning in the press.

And since Maastricht it's only got louder of course.

So none of this is anything new. It's been going on since Day 1, it's been a constant and never-changing stream of negativity about Europe. Some of it justified of course. A lot of it not. Much of it whipped up by the British media who have always had an unfailingly toxic anti-European stance. And all this constantly endorsed by Eurosceptic elements of the political parties, mostly on the right but not exclusively.

It's hardly surprising that this constant barrage of negativity has brought us to where we are with Brexit. Britain has never fully engaged with Europe in the past 40 years, not at any point. Always reluctant, always with opt outs, special vetoes, rebates, special clauses and of course never fully integrated into the Euro or political systems (nor was Europe demanding that the UK should be). All these concessions and yet still the UK moaned and moaned.

The UK never really gave Europe a chance by fully committing to it. The UK might like to think it did, but it didn't. Not even close.
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Your post is just about the best post I see written on the subject anywhere and sums up the British in a nutshell.

We think we are superior - we are not. We are still little englanders playing at being a world power - I'm afraid that boat sailed as far back as 1939. How sad the only club we can be in is our own club with our own rules - says it all really.
 
scorza said:
Except that's what happens when you increase the supply of labour - the cost of labour goes down meaning lower pay and conditions for workers, more profits for businesses, and people whose income is determined by profits (business owners, executives) get more money. Entirely predictable through the laws of supply and demand.
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You're still wrong. Immigration in reality has no impact on either wages or unemployment levels of British-born workers.
 
Firestar_3x said:
His views have little say in what we finally agree, he is simply set to get the best deal for the EU in a framework setout by others.
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The choice sends a message: you(the UK) won't get a special treatment. They could have chosen a lesser known figure, instead they chose a bulldog. Make what you want of that.
 
Zethor said:
The choice sends a message: you(the UK) won't get a special treatment. They could have chosen a lesser known figure, instead they chose a bulldog. Make what you want of that.
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Or they are running scared - you can look at it either way.

I think they will cave when it gets real but pointless speculating.
 
Darujhistan said:
It was a war, however you spin it.
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Really, please tell me the date Britain declared war on Argentina. It was an incident no more.

Mulder said:
GDP figures for Q2 are out and better than expected, at 0.6%. This includes the week after the Brexit vote. The rise in GDP growth was down to strong retail figures and manufacturing.

"Very few" respondents to the ONS survey cited Brexit uncertainty as having had an impact on their business.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-36867846
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Except the figures were strong in April and suffered a sharp slowdown in May and June. The next two quarters will start to tell the story.

nkata said:
Probably not, I am 63, and do not remember too much foreign labour at harvest time when I was a kid. Certainly it was a family affair, whole villages turned out and school age children did work 'picking spuds' and all sorts of produce particularly in the countryside. It was good for the pocket money.

Probably with legislation on school attendance, minimum wage, working time directives, and age related operation of machinery etc. this would be (quite rightly in some respects) due for change.
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Must have been different in your area as I am of a similar age.

Nate--IRL-- said:
May should really pull the finger out and Trigger A50. Everything is in Limbo at the moment.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/us-spurns-offer-of-trade-talks-wsk6gc5wx

"The US has rebuffed attempts by Liam Fox to open negotiations on a free trade deal, saying that “meaningful” talks before Brexit were impossible."

Nate
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Was that not what the experts were saying though, that countries would wait until they knew what type of a relationship we had with the EU/where we stood in the world.
 
n111ck said:
Or they are running scared - you can look at it either way.

I think they will cave when it gets real but pointless speculating.
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"Running scared" by choosing a tough negotiator? Hardly. Both sides understandably want the best outcome and so initial stances are going to be tough and relatively hardline.

When the reality of negotiation bites there will indeed be some movement, likely from both sides, because pragmatism, compromise and damage limitation will become part of the considerations.

It's not in the UK's interest to trash the EU on the way out, a damaged and failing EU does nothing for the UK. And it's not in the EU's interest to grind the UK into the dirt either.

My prediction is a muddy middle ground outcome that doesn't really please anyone or solve any core issues, but causes the least upheaval. In which case, this all rumbles on for many years to come.
 
do_ron_ron said:
Really, please tell me the date Britain declared war on Argentina. It was an incident no more.
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We didn't declare war on Argentina, we never attacked Argentina herself, merely fought to protect our territories after their invasion. As such no declaration of war was made, we did however make a declaration of a warzone and declare that a state of war existed between our two countries.

scorza said:
Still relying on the discredited LSE to prop up your rapidly collapsing arguments I see.
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Unfortunately for you, your assertion that things are discredited does not actually make it so. I predict that, as usual, you will not bring a single shred of evidence to the argument and instead merely pout and assert that you're right.
 
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