Brexit.

[whitey]

I'm totally intrigued as too how people are seeing the Trump's promise of trade deal with the UK as anything other that hot air.

How is he going to square that with his protectionism policies which he got elected on, massive import taxes on foreign cars not built within the US. And serious implication for US companies outsourcing jobs.

So what does he have to offer the UK outside of this and what does the UK have to offer? To me it is not making sense on any level whatsoever it all a smokescreen to back the Brexiteers.

Exactly!

you have the outgoing US Pesident saying the UK will go to the back of the line in terms of a trade deal.....you have Trump saying they will go to the front of the line

Immediate impact probably zero as these trade deals take years to formulate

My guess is that it strengthens Teresa Mays hand in her Brexit negotiations......but until everything goes down, theres really no way of knowing

[Declan]

From Toady's Times - seems accurate to me

Chris Johns: Theresa May continues to lie about Brexit

British leader's real priority is curbing immigration, whatever the economic cost

The best description of our new politics is that the truth is whatever leaders like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin want it to be. Stuck in old fashioned mores and habits, mainstream journalists and analysts hesitate to accuse US presidents and UK prime ministers of lying.

But post-truthism demands a robust and clear response: when these people lie they need to be called out for what they are: liars

When Theresa May says that the Leave campaign was crystal clear about exiting the single market she is lying.

Boris Johnson, Nigel Farrage, Daniel Hannan and many other prominent Leavers can all be looked up on YouTube declaring their affection for the single market and assuring us that free trade with the EU, usually via a Norway/Swiss-style associate membership, would not be threatened by Brexit.

"Orwellian" is an overused term, but seems particularly apposite right now. May spent most of her time at the Home Office failing to curb immigration despite being single-mindedly devoted to that objective.

She can now resume the fight, but this time with more chance of success.

For her and the ideologues in the UK government this is the order of priorities: curb immigration and accept the economic costs but don't admit this – lie some more.

Claim that the economic costs associated with hard Brexit are the exact opposite of what we know them to be.

May tries to pin low growth, low wages and the crisis in NHS funding on immigration. Even Orwell couldn't have dreamt that one up.
The truth, as opposed to the lies, is that lower immigration will damage growth and yield lower taxes for the NHS and other welfare-spending programmes.

Remember the Nissan deal? In the immediate aftermath of the referendum the Japanese car-maker sought reassurances on British access to EU markets.

It received a letter of comfort from the government, the contents of which have not been revealed.

I'm willing to bet Nissan was lied to – unless it swallowed a promise that Britain would have unfettered free trade despite leaving the single market and probably the customs union.

Believing in six impossible things before breakfast is not a trait usually associated with successful multinationals. Nissan executives must be rereading that letter with astonishment and a lot of buyer's remorse.

The specific claim – lie – on the economic benefits of leaving the single market is that the benefits of newly-negotiated free-trade agreements with non-EU countries will outweigh the costs of loss of access to EU markets.

The respected National Institute of Economic and Social Research has said that this is nowhere near being close to the truth.

You cannot ignore geography and gravity: loss of free trade with Europe will have costs vastly in excess of the gains from trade with places further afield.

Specifically, UK trade could get a 2.2 per cent boost from non-EU free-trade arrangements but will suffer a 22 per cent hit from loss of single market access.

One of the big unanswered questions focuses the on the jobs that migrants do. They are many and varied, often highly skilled.
But there are plenty in the caring and hospitality sectors that are not typically skilled. And they are increasingly done by migrants.

Who in their wildest imagination imagines that British workers are suddenly going to do all those jobs once the immigrants stop coming?

It's already a country with full employment and, unlike the US, an all-time high employment ratio (the proportion of the population in jobs).

Without the migrants there are going to be a lot of old and sick people without proper care and tourists complaining about plummeting standards in hotels, pubs and restaurants.

Arguably – and ironically – Europe's single market can be said to be Margaret Thatcher's greatest achievement.

It was driven, behind the scenes, by Britain in an explicit response to UK corporate lobbying for greater access to Europe's markets.

More generally, it should never be forgotten that the UK joined the (then) common market in 1973 because it was correctly viewed as the only way to address Britain's ongoing economic decline. And it worked. And now they want to leave.
But this is not about economics. The roots of the Leave campaign can be found in Enoch Powell's speeches in the 1960s and 1970s.

He also claimed that Britain would be better looking out to a free-trading world rather than an inward-looking Europe. Of course, then as now, it was more about thinly-veiled racism than economics.

May's 12-point strategy will not survive its first contact with the enemy. The plan's lies, contradictions and inconsistencies will be obvious to the EU-27.

And they now know that they are the enemy: the threats from May and her chancellor to turn the UK into an offshore low-wage, deregulated tax haven have seen to that.

[No wides]

I know a lot more about the North than No wides/Foxcommander know about Ballaghaderreen anyway.
Someone has to tell ye how to work the  PR system.

What a completely stupid post, but hey it's you posting!

[armaghniac]

Specifically, UK trade could get a 2.2 per cent boost from non-EU free-trade arrangements but will suffer a 22 per cent hit from loss of single market access.

There you go, the numbers are the same, only the position of the decimal point is different.

You do have to wonder what the letter to Nissan said, I see that Toyota are now making noises also.

[seafoid]

I don't understand why the City would accept a hard Brexit

[NAG1]

I don't understand why the City would accept a hard Brexit

Simple answer is they aren't, they are leaving in their thousands.

[heganboy]

If you are interested in a fairly realistic scenario read the transcript of Soros' interview at Davos yesterday.
Short phone cutnpaste below:


Former travel salesman Mr Soros also told business leaders and journalists in Davos that he expected financial markets to "not do very well" because of the uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration.

Moving on to the UK's attempts to leave the European Union, he raised the prospect of the country re-joining the union within just three days of leaving it.




"In my opinion it is unlikely that Prime Minister May is actually going to remain in power. Already she has a very divided cabinet, a very small majority in Parliament. And I think she will not last," said Mr Soros, who was nicknamed The Man Who Broke the Bank of England because of his $10bn (£8.1bn) short sale of sterling in 1992.

"At the moment the people in the UK are in denial.

"The current economic situation is not as bad as was predicted and they live in hope. But as the currency depreciates, and inflation will be the driving force, this will lead to declining living standards.


"This is going to take some time, but when it does happen they'll realise that they are earning less than before because wages won't rise as fast as the cost of living.

"The divorce is going to take a very long time. It's much harder to divorce than to get married, so I think the desire for rapprochement will develop, and in theory or maybe even in practice you could have a situation in 2019 or 2020 when Britain will leave the EU, because it does have to take place, but they could leave on a Friday but join over the weekend and have the new arrangement in place on Monday morning."

[Owenmoresider]

Soros is a rather odious creature.

[screenexile]

Soros is a rather odious creature.

]

No more so than Trump/May/Johnson I would say!

[armaghniac]

Seafoid will agree with this
http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/the_problem_with_the_english_england_doesn_t_want_to_be_just_another_member_of_a_team_1_4851882

Adams seems to have dug in re Brexit. Not before time.

[seafoid]

Seafoid will agree with this
http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/the_problem_with_the_english_england_doesn_t_want_to_be_just_another_member_of_a_team_1_4851882

Adams seems to have dug in re Brexit. Not before time.

I think that is on the ball. The core problem is the UK economy and the income distribution which has pauperised those living in the areas that voted for Brexit. The media will blame Europe but the reality is that the UK economy is banjaxed whatever happens

This from FT comments from 2014 :

"Wages for the vast majority of the population have fallen dramatically in the last 5 years, compounding a decline that started under Margaret Thatcher. This wage decline has occured at precisely the same time as incomes for the very wealthy have rocketed. The lie churned out by the very wealthy is that wealth trickles down into the real economy. It never has - it has trickled into the banking system and into normal peoples pockets in the form of cheap debt.The *real* problem is that a few wealthy people who are very adept at avoiding tax can never ever make up for 10s of millions of people earning decent wages and spending that on goods and services

it's because you are asking them to solve an equation which is unsolvable, no matter if you are Einstein. Start point of massive national debt + further spending demands of the electorate + globalisation taking "Joe Public" jobs away from UK + decline in UK of heavy industry + ageing population (pensions/NHS impact & demand) + five year election cycle does not = solvable solution for government finances. 

dant
@notasocialist Actually the source of this whole mess goes much deeper than party politics.  Deregulation of the financial sector (started by Thatcher in the late 1980s) has allowed the majority of our economy to become dependent on commercial bank credit.  This deliberate debt bubble creation has left us with an utter inability to pay down our debts en-mass.  As soon as any meaningful attempt is made, the economy contracts due to a shrinking of the money supply.
This debt based economic policy has continued through successive Labour, Tory and coalition governments.  Now the mathematical limits of ever-increasing debt have been reached, but none of the major parties have anything approaching an effective remedy for our economic ills.

RiskAdjustedReturn Unfortunately, all that new "money" has compound interest payable on it and in 2008 we saw what happens when debt levels overwhelm the system.  Post the 2008 Minsky Moment, all we have tried to do is restart the commercial bank money printing... but unfortunately people are tapped out.  QE eased credit supply restrictions, slashing rates made bigger mortgages more attractive, "help to buy" tried to bring more suckers into the ponzi scheme but unfortunately we can't get away from the economic reality of the fact that the system can't support higher overall debt.  Witness Osbourne's desperate attempt to fuel further mortgage lending by slashing stamp duty - that is really going to help with the tax receipts shortfall!
We are trapped between a rock and a hard place.  The only way we can have continued growth is through further credit expansion... but this will necessitate a return to sub-prime lending and we all know where that takes us.

lordmair The voters demand no cuts to pensions or the NHS (older people, who get sick more, are much more likely to vote), welfare cuts are tough to achieve in any material context, and tax rises are unpopular (other than as they pertain to eg "Russian Oligarchs" or the "super rich", and good luck taxing either of them - 1. there simply aren't enough of them;  2.  they will just go away; and/or  3. you kill the goose that is laying the eggs).
And at the same time the populous buys its manufactured products from overseas, wants to close down the evil financial services sector and wants standards of working conditions way above those in eg Asia.  The public sector is a huge employer and the private sector can't generate high value jobs b/c of all the above. 


From the position the UK starts in, with £1.5trn national debt, it just isn't possible to make the sums add up.  But that can't be told to the voters - there has to be a "long term economic plan" (even if it is mumbo jumbo), or say "next to nothing" and focus on sth more politically vote generative.

Is it that easy?
It is the case that this government is hell bent on ramping private debt again to boost GDP, as opposed to public debt (though I think it will continue to be both as there are no restraints).
However, it has been proven that there are no distinctions between private and public debt in  our monetary system - if private is extreme, it becomes public.Either way, the UK is stuffed, its just pretending and shuffling and redistributing."

And here is a more recent one

"The main problem of brexit is that it will fire the last remaining bullet, before the anger of the working class starts to turn inwards. Whatever happens after brexit, it will not solve most of the problems that convinced the white labour voters to support brexit (let's be honest - UKIP and Conservatives could not do it alone - it was the ex-labur working class voter class who pushed the brexit vote over the 50% margin).-The NHS will still be f'd up (and forget about those 350m GBP a week)-The EU rules will still apply for goods exported to EU, single market or not. So Brussels' bureaucracy will still determine the curvature of cucumbers that UK will try to export into EU.-Brexit will have NO effect whatsoever on Muslim immigration (whadya think, pakistan is the part of EU??!?)-Zero-hour contracts are here to stay (they are exclusively UK's invention, nothing to do with EU) etc.However, the EU boogeyman will be gone. And all political excuses with it. So the next time the angry voters determine that they want changes, all their anger will be projected inwards. And God help UK politicians then."

Hugely challenging for unionists BTW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfpRm-p7qlY

[seafoid]

I didn't realise that it was only north down and Antrim that voted Leave. Unionism is trína chéile.

[seafoid]

As a student, David Cameron is rumoured to have put his penis into a dead pig. To outdo him as an adult, in an act even more bizarre and obscene, Michael Gove put his penis into a Daily Mail journalist.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/22/beyond-good-and-evil-with-gove-and-trump-interview-stewart-lee

[armaghniac]

I didn't realise that it was only north down and Antrim that voted Leave. Unionism is trína chéile.

More  like mid Down, as North Down voted remain, as Brexit was threat to the wallet.

I think they should put their checkpoints on the River Bann.

[No wides]

Both outcomes were always going to happen - surprised it was 8 to 3 - expected it to be 11 - 0.