The Brexit aftermath thread

[Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang]

The USA did not support the UK in the Falklands War. They supported the Argentinians. In case you had forgotten.

Spain is also a member of NATO, who would invoke Article 8 and thus gain the military support of almost every nation west of Russia except for Belarus, as well as that of Canada and the USA. The WTO would impose trade sanctions on the UK until it ended the aggression.

Welcome to reality on the big stage when you're a little fish.

What's exactly the point in invoking NATO here? Given that both Spain and the UK are members, with the latter being arguably more essential to the Alliance and the US in general?
Plus if we consider the actions of another major NATO member, Turkey to not name it, towards other NATO countries and other friendly countries/factions, and the resulting lack of consequences...

[Elegiac]

Apropos of nothing I present to you a 14 year old going to his dad's wedding that looks exactly like a disgraced UKIP candidate about to issue an apology for an offensive remark. Or announce an austerity package.

[Easo]

Apropos of nothing I present to you a 14 year old going to his dad's wedding that looks exactly like a disgraced UKIP candidate about to issue an apology for an offensive remark. Or announce an austerity package.

While funny as hell we really should not stoop down to what is basically insults. No need to feed dribbles even more...

[dribbles]

As the talks stall yet again, German MEP Gunnar Beck (representing 1 in 4 Germans) says Britain has saved £72 billion as a brexit benefit of not having to contribute to the EU corona rescue fund. (Enough to give the NHS £350 million a week for the next 4 years honouring the Boris battle bus pledge until the next election).

Meanwhile some are not so happy as the cost per capita hits home of continuing EU membership folly.

Every man, woman and child in Ireland liable for €3,201 payable from 2028.

https://twitter.com/hermannkelly/sta...67222206357504

No one other than Luxembourg has to pay more than the Irish. The UK had a very lucky escape leaving just in time, we made the right decision lads!

Meanwhile Barnier is still living in some kind of alternate reality as he whines "the UK is effectively asking for near total exclusion of EU fishing vessels from UK waters"

He still doesn't get it does he? We are not asking for near total exclusion, we are informing without agreement there will be total exclusion. The EU can't have their cake and eat it, no cherry picking...tick tock!

[Slant]

huh, I thought it was §8 that the US invoked after 9/11. No matter

Art. 5 is what they did. The original main purpose, collective defense.

Also, as we see with Greece and Turkey, NATO tends to ignore internal strife and hope it goes away by itself. If not, NATO would not get involved, mostly to avoid the question of whom to support.

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But we can all (except for Dribbles) agree that in the case the UK does something so spectacularly stupid as to attack Spain for enforcing its own border with Gibraltar, NATO would be on Spain's side. Hell, the UN probably would too.

NATO would stay out of it, most likely. And the UK wouldn't attack in the first place. That's just Dribs' insanity induced armageddon fantasy, because that is what simple folk do when they run out of arguments. They start making shit up.

[Omega10]

Two questions:

What is going on with English ports being Super Enterprise Zones, or Ultra Capitalistic Money Areas, or Non Regulation Trade Areas, or whatever their name is (sorry, I forget the real name).

The UK will be designating various port cities as super business zones (does it have to be a port CITY, or can it be any port area with suitable facilities?), and the take I read on it is that these will be a game changer for the UK.

So that's a recent pro-UK article that I read. Basically, the gist of the article is that the UK will be just fine powered by these pro-business zones. Is this close to reality?
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A recent pro-EU article is quite interesting. I have no idea how close to reality it is.

https://theweek.com/articles/927130/...oming-together

Title: America is coming apart. Europe is coming together.

The beginning of the article is all about Europe. Basically, the theme seems to be that regardless of what happens to the UK, EU has benefited a lot from Brexit and will continue to reap rewards. The recent articles have basically been about how Brexit is a win-win situation.

Excerpts from the article:

This week's exemplar for "banding together" is the European Union, whose leaders agreed to extraordinary new measures to promote a broad economic recovery in the wake of the novel coronavirus. The agreement represents an about-face from the stance the EU took in the wake of the financial crisis of the last decade, which emphasized austerity rather than stimulus. More importantly it broke two key structural taboos: the European Commission will, for the first time, be authorized to borrow significant sums of money; and a large portion of that sum will be disbursed to member governments in the form of grants.

The first part of the article talks about how the virus has changed EU, where basically the virus has been something that has almost forced EU to cooperate on things that were out of bounds in the past.

This seems true from what I've been reading.

The next paragraph talks about how this at least partially fixes what was a structural flaw in what the EU could and could not to.

Those structural changes set a precedent that could be a foundation for a much stabler European governmental edifice. A key problem with the setup of the EU has been that it is a monetary union with no comparably unified fiscal policy. As a consequence, in times of recession, member states are constrained (much as individual American states are) by their inability to print money or to run up unlimited debt — but they had no equivalent to the federal government to turn to for fiscal assistance. Now, they do.

This sounds significant to me.

The next part talks about how their used to be 3 major powers, with the UK basically having veto power and almost paralyzing EU. Well I extrapolated some of that. Now that there are two major powers, France and Germany combined have gained quite a bit of power. And when they work together, they can get things done.

The simple answer is that France and Germany were in broad agreement on what needed to be done, and that when the two giants of the EU agree it is difficult to build a blocking coalition. One might also say that even the most reluctant member states understood that this is a time when, if they did not hang together, they would surely hang separately.

But, in fact, they did not all hang together. One key member, the U.K., had formally walked out only in January, just as the viral storm was breaking.

It should be pointed out that if UK was still in EU, then UK would likely have paralyzed EU once again, which is partially what the next few parts are about.

That departure was not irrelevant — and may even have been dispositive. The U.K. was a large and strong European member state particularly disposed to guard its own sovereignty, and hence to resist efforts toward ever-deeper union. Had it been in the room, the historic deal would have been much less-likely to happen. But it's possible that the deal would never even have been on the table because, with the U.K. in the EU taking stances congenial to the German financial class, Germany's own political calculus might not have shifted as it did. Merkel might have inclined less toward unity with France, and more towards the "frugal" states like Austria and the Netherlands, much as Germany did during the aftermath of the financial crisis.

The gist seems to be that without UK, the rest of EU is more inclined and much more motivated to find consensus and work together. A key phrase from above:

One might also say that even the most reluctant member states understood that this is a time when, if they did not hang together, they would surely hang separately.

Are the issues discussed in this article even close to reality? We don't get good information in the US.

[Cardlist]

Two questions:

What is going on with English ports being Super Enterprise Zones, or Ultra Capitalistic Money Areas, or Non Regulation Trade Areas, or whatever their name is (sorry, I forget the real name).

The UK will be designating various port cities as super business zones (does it have to be a port CITY, or can it be any port area with suitable facilities?), and the take I read on it is that these will be a game changer for the UK.

So that's a recent pro-UK article that I read. Basically, the gist of the article is that the UK will be just fine powered by these pro-business zones. Is this close to reality?

Despite the doom-mongering of the more aggressively anti-brexit posters in this thread, there is no particular reason why the UK can't prosper outside the eurozone implementing measures like this. No particular reason apart from the fact that the current government has proven woefully incompetent at doing literally everything. What sound like sensible policy proposals tend to be messed up at the execution stage. That's really the issue here. They will mess it up, somehow. They don't plan ahead, they don't research things properly, people don't communicate, they often seem unaware of basic law, it has become as predictable as clockwork.

[Cardlist]

Two questions:

What is going on with English ports being Super Enterprise Zones, or Ultra Capitalistic Money Areas, or Non Regulation Trade Areas, or whatever their name is (sorry, I forget the real name).

The UK will be designating various port cities as super business zones (does it have to be a port CITY, or can it be any port area with suitable facilities?), and the take I read on it is that these will be a game changer for the UK.

So that's a recent pro-UK article that I read. Basically, the gist of the article is that the UK will be just fine powered by these pro-business zones. Is this close to reality?

Despite the doom-mongering of the more aggressively anti-brexit posters in this thread, there is no particular reason why the UK can't prosper outside the eurozone implementing measures like this. No particular reason apart from the fact that the current government has proven woefully incompetent at doing literally everything. What sound like sensible policy proposals tend to be messed up at the execution stage. That's really the issue here. They will mess it up, somehow. They don't plan ahead, they don't research things properly, people don't communicate, they often seem unaware of basic law, it has become as predictable as clockwork

[Acidbaron]

@Omega10

Their obstructionist attitude won't be missed in the EU, as for their being no opposition to ideas any more, that is wrong as each nation or even region has their own interests and wishes. To not get the idea that everything will now move in one straight line. The virus is in essence just a crisis and the EU always needs a crisis to move forward.

Them still being fully in the EU with their often unconstructive and childlike attitude most likely linked to how the EU is the scapegoat for the UK's own political failing for decades now would have made all these coming talks about corona relief a bit more difficult. Their relationship with the EU was never great, from our perspective often disconnected from reality and they kept getting exemptions to simply keep them on board. Not to mention their political system simply does not fit into the EU structure in my opinion, a whole host of reasons of why they consider the EU undemocratic is how they personally deal with appointments of politicians.

[Omega10]

@Omega10

Their obstructionist attitude won't be missed in the EU, as for their being no opposition to ideas any more, that is wrong as each nation or even region has their own interests and wishes. To not get the idea that everything will now move in one straight line. The virus is in essence just a crisis and the EU always needs a crisis to move forward.

Them still being fully in the EU with their often unconstructive and childlike attitude most likely linked to how the EU is the scapegoat for the UK's own political failing for decades now would have made all these coming talks about corona relief a bit more difficult. Their relationship with the EU was never great, from our perspective often disconnected from reality and they kept getting exemptions to simply keep them on board. Not to mention their political system simply does not fit into the EU structure in my opinion, a whole host of reasons of why they consider the EU undemocratic is how they personally deal with appointments of politicians.

I assume you meant Do not get the impression ...

I don't think there will ever be a time when "things move in one straight line". For a lot of reasons. It's just not the way things get done. But yet, your next statement is almost a good summary of the situation. The EU... just like any other person or group of people... always need a crisis to move forward.

This sounds pretty normal and human to me. And the virus seems to have caused? enabled? helped? the EU to become more unified as an organization.

Recent events, including but not limited to the virus, have given the EU a chance to shine. It seems like the EU is mostly stepping up to the plate. Which, in reality, is as good as it gets.

At any rate, good luck getting stuff accomplished and dodging the land mines that are in your way.

[Huehuecoyotl]

The LSE confirm what we already knew; Brexit is going to fuck up pretty much the entire economy, and it will be particularly bad for those areas that managed to get through Covid without being too badly hit.

Oh, and this will be regardless of whether we manage to get a deal or not.

Brexit; the gift that keeps on giving. Still, lucky we saved that £72bn that we would have spent bailing out Europe. Wait, what's that you say - Brexit has cost us £66bn since 2016?. Hmm, I guess we didn't save as much as we thought.

Still, I'm sure those foreign types will cave to the mighty Brits in no time. And we can roll into the brave new world of freedom from environmental safeguards, and health and safety and the like. I worked 40 years down the mines when I was a child, and it never did me any harm. Bring on the poisonous chicken!

[Slant]

It's not poisonous. It's chlorinated. That literally means there is nothing in the chicken that could harm you. I mean, there's also nothing left that is useful for you, let alone taste, but it won't kill you! Btw, you saved on not having to take part into this covid funds thing. The UK would definitely have been a net contributor.

[Masark]

Bring on the poisonous chicken!

Not poisonous. It's basically washed in pool water.

[zealo]

Even with chlorine washing rate of yearly food poisoning is a fair bit higher in the US.

It might not be outright poisonous, but American food standards are less safe all the same.

[Mayhem]

It's not poisonous. It's chlorinated. That literally means there is nothing in the chicken that could harm you. I mean, there's also nothing left that is useful for you, let alone taste, but it won't kill you! Btw, you saved on not having to take part into this covid funds thing. The UK would definitely have been a net contributor.

No, and I have linked a study explaining that the best thing chlorinated chicken is good at is to make it hard for tests to detect harmful stuff, not get rid of the harmful stuff.

[dribbles]

The LSE confirm what we already knew; Brexit is going to fuck up pretty much the entire economy, and it will be particularly bad for those areas that managed to get through Covid without being too badly hit.

Oh, and this will be regardless of whether we manage to get a deal or not.

Brexit; the gift that keeps on giving. Still, lucky we saved that £72bn that we would have spent bailing out Europe. Wait, what's that you say - Brexit has cost us £66bn since 2016?. Hmm, I guess we didn't save as much as we thought.

Still, I'm sure those foreign types will cave to the mighty Brits in no time. And we can roll into the brave new world of freedom from environmental safeguards, and health and safety and the like. I worked 40 years down the mines when I was a child, and it never did me any harm. Bring on the poisonous chicken!

The Guardian article quoting the EU funded and mouthpiece LSE is hardly going to be unbiased is it, you might as well have asked Juncker for his opinion or whoever his irrelevent replacement is.

And the standard, London centric rag edited by arch remainer Bullingdon boy George Osborne, really you support him? Only statement of truth in that article is Brexit poll reveals all of England and Wales now favour no deal - except London. He must have choked allowing that to be printed, sweet little video though accompanying the statement.

And in any case simple arithmetic shows if Brexit cost is £66bn and saving is £72bn that's still a win. But it's not just a £72bn saving is it. On top of that Brexit benefit the EU just agreed a trillion euro 7 year budget that the UK won't have to pay into. There's at least another £125 billion burden on top, or 350 million a week ish, saved in there as a brexit benefit that will now fall on the poor shoulders of other tax paying eurochums.

Everywhere you look cherries and cake all round for the UK as a result of brexit, even from remainer sourced newspapers.

[Slant]

No, and I have linked a study explaining that the best thing chlorinated chicken is good at is to make it hard for tests to detect harmful stuff, not get rid of the harmful stuff.

Oh really, lol that's funny. Whelp, guess he's fucked then.

[Demolitia]

Only statement of truth in that article is Brexit poll reveals all of England and Wales now favour no deal - except London.

Except 75% of London. And Scottland. And NI.
Awwww Dribs ...Never change.

[Demolitia]

And it's fun excluding a city that has 13% of the population of the UK and 16% of England. Apparently 1 in 6 people don't count.

And convenient!

[Slant]

Except 75% of London. And Scottland. And NI.
Awwww Dribs ...Never change.

Unfortunately, with trolls like him you have to be precise. Scotland and NI are not part of "England and Wales". He will probably lord it over you with his next post, because trolls have no real argument, they only have ridicule of semantics.