BREXIT Mega Thread (The Saga Begins?)

[Dumb Ideologies]

There is a wider question as to whether the bean-counters and assessors would be happy to let them to join. Scotland would, in the event of a "yes" independence vote, be in the process of divorcing itself from the partner who a huge percentage of its trade is with, be heading into a period of economic uncertainty, and be wanting to imminently join the Euro. I'd imagine that there'd be a lot of concern about the potential for a failing Scotland to become the next Greece, undermining a struggling European project even further.

Or it could join EU without joining the Eurozone with the agreement that it will eventually join the Euro pending its economic stabilization, as there is precedent for; therefore not having that impact.

Fair. I assumed they'd necessarily join the Euro immediately. An intermediate currency between leaving the UK and joining the Euro, perhaps? Two independent countries - presumably with distinct monetary and fiscal policies - would have to have separate currencies, wouldn't they?

[Frank Zipper]

Or it could join EU without joining the Eurozone with the agreement that it will eventually join the Euro pending its economic stabilization, as there is precedent for; therefore not having that impact.

Fair. I assumed they'd necessarily join the Euro immediately. An intermediate currency between leaving the UK and joining the Euro, perhaps? Two independent countries - presumably with distinct monetary and fiscal policies - would have to have separate currencies, wouldn't they?

The US Dollar is the currency in British Virgin Islands, but a small island is probably not that comparable to the Scottish situation.

[Vassenor]

An irate local farmer told me he voted to leave as a protest against EU bureaucracy that delayed payments of his subsidies. He thought Defra was an EU department. He didn’t realise it was The Department for Rural Affairs and that the EU had fined our governmental department for its incompetent administration of subsidies.

Guess that speaks to the level of outright disinformation that was going around.

[Vassenor]

Well, it's started.

Lloyd's of London will set up a European insurance company in Brussels after Brexit

[Great Nepal]

Or it could join EU without joining the Eurozone with the agreement that it will eventually join the Euro pending its economic stabilization, as there is precedent for; therefore not having that impact.

Fair. I assumed they'd necessarily join the Euro immediately. An intermediate currency between leaving the UK and joining the Euro, perhaps? Two independent countries - presumably with distinct monetary and fiscal policies - would have to have separate currencies, wouldn't they?

Quite likely yes (despite some weird suggestion to pull a Zimbabwe in 2014); although in the short term it might be better to have independent currency tied to euro or pound since as new country it likely won't have much economic credibility. By tying Scottish currency with more stable one, they can probably set a baseline from where to work from, even though they'd give up some financial levers.

[SD_Film Artists]

I even talked to someone who openly agreed that Britain should pay a significant exit fee because we're "paying our tab at a bar" despite the fact that there's not a single law or treaty which requires Britian to pay it.

You need to stop buying into the government's line wholesale then. It's more complicated than that - Britain agreed to make the payments. The question is whether they are legally enforceable. Britain says "no, our agreement was conditional on us being members because the EU is a stand-alone entity with stand-alone liabilities". The EU says "our budget is based on a joint and several liability guarantee and Britain agreed to take on this liability (including the joint and several part) when it took actions, e.g. voting for the budget, to make it appear". I'm not enough of a lawyer to tell you which claim is stronger. The UK has, astonishingly, found legal experts to say that it doesn't have to pay. The EU has found some to say that it does. The whole thing could go to court. But the point is that it really shouldn't, because Britain has said repeatedly that it wants to keep up good relations and negotiate a whole lot of other agreements, and walking away from a commitment of funding just because you don't think it's not legally enforceable is not a good start to that process.

The problem I see with the Make Brexit painful make Britain pay crowd is they are trying to keep other EU members within the EU by fear.

If that was actually the EU's position, then sure. But it isn't, any more than that the UK government's position is that they shouldn't pay a penny. In reality the EU is just saying: "we can't have a situation in which a member state withdraws from its responsibilities as an EU member while retaining the advantages of being an EU member". That's not vindictive, and I don't think it's fair to call it "punishment".

It is a problem for those Leave campaigners who more or less promised just that with their talk of more funding for the NHS and no more Polish in the supermarket, but a free trade deal and cheap retirement to Ibiza. That's where this story of the vindictive EU comes from.

I know that it's not as simple as 'we don't have to pay so we won't give you a penny'. There is at least the cost of Britain's MEPs which is reasonable for us to pay. What I do object to is how the hardcore side of remainers are equally as simplistic when saying that the EU payment is as simple and inevitable as 'paying for your food & drink at a bar' despite the fact that not even the EU states are completely sure what Britain is obliged to pay. A stark reminder of this is that the debate inside Brussels appears to revolve (and I admit I could be wrong on this) more on how friendly a state is towards Britain vs the EU rather than it being a strictly mathematical question.

On that point about "EU states", the hardcore side of remainers are also very keen to not only accept but actively support the idea that the EU (and its respective negotiators) is a solid wall with a single voice and any attempt by Britain to gain support with its friends within the union is an act of neo-imperialist "divide and rule tactics". Whether Britian can be successful in this act is another issue; the point is that as Brits we should at least be supporting that rather than simply bowing down to Mr Juncker and accepting anything and everything that he wants. You could argue that it's better to take a polite and constructive approach rather than playing dirty tricks, but it feels like many on the hardcore side of remainers actually want Britian to get a bed deal so that we will later vote to rejoin the EU.

[Dumb Ideologies]

An irate local farmer told me he voted to leave as a protest against EU bureaucracy that delayed payments of his subsidies. He thought Defra was an EU department. He didn’t realise it was The Department for Rural Affairs and that the EU had fined our governmental department for its incompetent administration of subsidies.

Guess that speaks to the level of outright disinformation that was going around.

I'm confused as to what you think you are adding to the conversation with this post.

Is it your position that this anecdote about a single misinformed voter renders the referendum result invalid and requires the referendum to be rerun, in spite of the cold, hard statistical figures you were provided with yesterday indicating growing support for Brexit rather than "Bregret"?

Or perhaps - given the propensity of voters to be misled - are you suggesting that the government should go further and unilaterally suspend Brexit despite growing support, leading to mass protests, political instability and Britain becoming an international laughing stock?

Or this just you - again - making snide, passive-aggressive, divisive, and thoroughly unproductive comments about how leave voters are stupid? Many such posts! Sad!

[SD_Film Artists]

As a Lib Dem I'm struggling to understand how one of our key policies is to have a vote on the final deal; in principle I support the vote as it would be hypocritical to say "Voice of the People!!" at the start of the debate and then deny it at the end of the negotiations. But in reality I don't see how it will work. A post-negation vote will be a self-fulfilling prophecy as the EU will see this vote coming and they'll give us such a terrible deal that everyone including some Ukippers will vote to rejoin the EU, thus giving the EU virtualy no incentive to give Britain a good deal. In short- a vote will work if it happens in a vacuum, but that won't happen.

[Novus Athenae]

The EU is going to make this as painful as possible for the UK

As they have every right to.

Old post, I know, but this requires my attention.


Vassenor, the European Union doesn't have the authority it wants over sovereign nations like the United Kingdom. It's the same as Trump's whole "we're gonna build a wall and make the Mexicans pay for it" shit. The United Kingdom doesn't owe the EU shit and they know that bill is meaningless. The EU is not going to make it easy, yes, but they have already lost the fight. It wholly depends on them on whether they want to slowly pull the band-aid off or rip it off quick and get it over with.

[Great Nepal]

As a Lib Dem I'm struggling to understand how one of our key policies is to have a vote on the final deal; in principle I support the vote as it would be hypocritical to say "Voice of the People!!" at the start of the debate and then deny it at the end of the negotiations. But in reality I don't see how it will work. A post-negation vote will be a self-fulfilling prophecy as the EU will see this vote coming and they'll give us such a terrible deal that everyone including some Ukippers will vote to rejoin the EU, thus giving the EU virtualy no incentive to give Britain a good deal. In short- a vote will work if it happens in a vacuum, but that won't happen.

If A50 is revocable yes, if it is not then whatever deal there is will need to be ratified because alternative is out without a deal. Almost as if we should've had some sort of agreed plan before the vote and government 'keeping cards close to chest' was a silly concept.

[Vassenor]

As they have every right to.

Old post, I know, but this requires my attention.


Vassenor, the European Union doesn't have the authority it wants over sovereign nations like the United Kingdom. It's the same as Trump's whole "we're gonna build a wall and make the Mexicans pay for it" shit. The United Kingdom doesn't owe the EU shit and they know that bill is meaningless. The EU is not going to make it easy, yes, but they have already lost the fight. It wholly depends on them on whether they want to slowly pull the band-aid off or rip it off quick and get it over with.

...I'm not seeing anything about money in my post or the post I was responding to.

There are other ways for the EU to go for Carthaginian terms without the lump sum.

[Vassenor]

Don't blackmail us over security, EU warns May

...Well nice to see the negotiations are off to a good start. </s>

[Thermodolia]

Don't blackmail us over security, EU warns May

...Well nice to see the negotiations are off to a good start. </s>

Now they are really going to make it painful on the UK

[Thermodolia]

As they have every right to.

Old post, I know, but this requires my attention.


Vassenor, the European Union doesn't have the authority it wants over sovereign nations like the United Kingdom. It's the same as Trump's whole "we're gonna build a wall and make the Mexicans pay for it" shit. The United Kingdom doesn't owe the EU shit and they know that bill is meaningless. The EU is not going to make it easy, yes, but they have already lost the fight. It wholly depends on them on whether they want to slowly pull the band-aid off or rip it off quick and get it over with.

Actually they do. When you sign up as a EU member that means you have to pay membership fees, those fees are yearly and the UK has to pay them.

[Hydesland]

Article 50 wasn't designed to be a negotiation for a free trade agreement. All it will do is sever the current relationship. There would most likely be a transitional arrangement while a trade agreement was worked out. Negotiating future trade relationships in two years is impossible.

Snip from article 50: "A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament."

I absolutely do not know how we can possibly have a meaningful negotiation about our "future relationship with the Union" without talking about trade, which is overwhelmingly the most important aspect. A lot of people are claiming that we need 2 - 3 years to negotiate the liabilities we owe the EU, and that's what has to be done first. This sounds like a suspicious ad hoc nonsense excuse, given how incredibly trivial the liabilities issue appears to me is. Also, it's possible to draw up trade agreements in a few months, let alone 2 years. The only reason it usually takes years or even decades is purely political - and of course any political blockading of human welfare in the name of narrow self interests should come under constant and sustained bipartisan criticism, rather than tribalistic casual acceptance.

[Hydesland]

Don't blackmail us over security, EU warns May

...Well nice to see the negotiations are off to a good start. </s>

I'm sure Britain won't use its own bargaining chips if Germany agreed not to use its overwhelming economic leverage as a bargaining chip. Since clearly neither will happen, let's return back to reality for now.

[Unremarkable Land]

Fair. I assumed they'd necessarily join the Euro immediately. An intermediate currency between leaving the UK and joining the Euro, perhaps? Two independent countries - presumably with distinct monetary and fiscal policies - would have to have separate currencies, wouldn't they?

The US Dollar is the currency in British Virgin Islands, but a small island is probably not that comparable to the Scottish situation.

You are forgetting Puerto Rico, El Salvadore, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, U.S. Virgin Islands, Timor-Leste, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Turks and Caicos, and Marshall Islands for the US dollar.

And Andorra, Kosovo, Monaco, Montenegro, San Marino, Vatican City are non-EU states that use the Euro.

[Great Nepal]

Article 50 wasn't designed to be a negotiation for a free trade agreement. All it will do is sever the current relationship. There would most likely be a transitional arrangement while a trade agreement was worked out. Negotiating future trade relationships in two years is impossible.

Snip from article 50: "A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament."

I absolutely do not know how we can possibly have a meaningful negotiation about our "future relationship with the Union" without talking about trade, which is overwhelmingly the most important aspect. A lot of people are claiming that we need 2 - 3 years to negotiate the liabilities we owe the EU, and that's what has to be done first. This sounds like a suspicious ad hoc nonsense excuse, given how incredibly trivial the liabilities issue appears to me is. Also, it's possible to draw up trade agreements in a few months, let alone 2 years. The only reason it usually takes years or even decades is purely political - and of course any political blockading of human welfare in the name of narrow self interests should come under constant and sustained bipartisan criticism, rather than tribalistic casual acceptance.

The keyword being framework, not a full point by point treaty. A framework exists for UK's planned relationship with EU after exit: a third nation outside of EEA and I'm sure that framework will be taken into accounts in the A50 negotiations.

[Sharania]

A sad day, indeed. I'd like to remind you about this prophetic article:


It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses
The Brexit has laid bare the political schism of our time. It’s not about the left vs. the right; it’s about the sane vs. the mindlessly angry.

Extremism has gone mainstream. One of the most brazen features of the Brexit vote was the utter repudiation of the bankers and economists and Western heads of state who warned voters against the dangers of a split with the European Union. British Prime Minister David Cameron thought that voters would defer to the near-universal opinion of experts; that only shows how utterly he misjudged his own people.

Both the Conservative and the Labour parties in Britain are now in crisis. The British have had their day of reckoning; the American one looms. If Donald Trump loses, and loses badly (forgive me my reckless optimism, but I believe he will) the Republican Party may endure a historic split between its know-nothing base and its K Street/Chamber of Commerce leadership class. The Socialist government of France may face a similar fiasco in national elections next spring: Polls indicate that President François Hollande would not even make it to the final round of voting. Right-wing parties all over Europe are clamoring for an exit vote of their own.

Yes, it’s possible that all the political pieces will fly up into the air and settle down more or less where they were before, but the Brexit vote shows that shocking change isn’t very shocking anymore. Where, then, could those pieces end up? Europe is already pointing in one direction. In much of Europe, far-right nativist parties lead in the polls. So far, none has mustered a majority, though last month Norbert Hofer, a member of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, which traffics in Nazi symbolism, came within a hair of winning election as president. Mainstream parties of the left and right may increasingly combine forces to keep out the nationalists. This has already happened in Sweden, where a right-of-center party serves as the minority partner to the left-of-center government. If the Socialists in France do in fact lose the first round, they will almost certainly support the conservative Republicans against the far-right National Front.

Perhaps these informal coalitions can survive until the fever breaks. But the imperative of cohabitation could also lead to genuine realignment. That is, chunks of parties from the left and right of center could break away to form a different kind of center, defending pragmatism, meliorism, technical knowledge, and effective governance against the ideological forces gathering on both sides. It’s not hard to imagine the Republican Party in the United States — and perhaps the British Conservatives should Brexit go terribly wrong — losing control of the angry, nationalist rank and file and reconstituting themselves as the kind of Main Street, pro-business parties they were a generation ago, before their ideological zeal led them into a blind alley. That may be their only alternative to irrelevance.

The issue, at bottom, is globalization. Brexit, Trump, the National Front, and so on show that political elites have misjudged the depth of the anger at global forces and thus the demand that someone, somehow, restore the status quo ante. It may seem strange that the reaction has come today rather than immediately after the economic crisis of 2008, but the ebbing of the crisis has led to a new sense of stagnation. With prospects of flat growth in Europe and minimal income growth in the United States, voters are rebelling against their dismal long-term prospects. And globalization means culture as well as economics: Older people whose familiar world is vanishing beneath a welter of foreign tongues and multicultural celebrations are waving their fists at cosmopolitan elites. I was recently in Poland, where a far-right party appealing to nationalism and tradition has gained power despite years of undeniable prosperity under a centrist regime. Supporters use the same words again and again to explain their vote: “values and tradition.” They voted for Polishness against the modernity of Western Europe.

Perhaps politics will realign itself around the axis of globalization, with the fist-shakers on one side and the pragmatists on the other. The nationalists would win the loyalty of working-class and middle-class whites who see themselves as the defenders of sovereignty. The reformed center would include the beneficiaries of globalization and the poor and non-white and marginal citizens who recognize that the celebration of national identity excludes them.

Of course, mainstream parties of both the left and the right are trying to reach the angry nationalists. Sometimes this takes the form of gross truckling, as when Nicolas Sarkozy, who is seeking to regain France’s presidency, denounces the “tyranny of minorities” and invokes the “forever France” of an all-white past. From the left, Hillary Clinton has jettisoned her free-trade past to appeal to union members and others who want to protect national borders against the global market. But left and right disagree so deeply about how best to cushion the effects of globalization, and how to deal with the vast influx of refugees and migrants, that even the threat of extremism may not be enough to bring them to make common cause.

The schism we see opening before us is not just about policies, but about reality. The Brexit forces won because cynical leaders were prepared to cater to voters’ paranoia, lying to them about the dangers of immigration and the costs of membership in the EU. Some of those leaders have already begun to admit that they were lying. Donald Trump has, of course, set a new standard for disingenuousness and catering to voters’ fears, whether over immigration or foreign trade or anything else he can think of. The Republican Party, already rife with science-deniers and economic reality-deniers, has thrown itself into the embrace of a man who fabricates realities that ignorant people like to inhabit.

Did I say “ignorant”? Yes, I did. It is necessary to say that people are deluded and that the task of leadership is to un-delude them. Is that “elitist”? Maybe it is; maybe we have become so inclined to celebrate the authenticity of all personal conviction that it is now elitist to believe in reason, expertise, and the lessons of history. If so, the party of accepting reality must be prepared to take on the party of denying reality, and its enablers among those who know better. If that is the coming realignment, we should embrace it.

I've always argued that some people a just not qualified for democracy and voting.

[Ifreann]

Well it's going to be messy for sure.

Here's hoping it just doesn't get violent.

*more violent

---

Well, it's started.

Lloyd's of London will set up a European insurance company in Brussels after Brexit

Blloyd's of Brussels.

[Na h-Alba Nuadh]

Fair. I assumed they'd necessarily join the Euro immediately. An intermediate currency between leaving the UK and joining the Euro, perhaps? Two independent countries - presumably with distinct monetary and fiscal policies - would have to have separate currencies, wouldn't they?

The US Dollar is the currency in British Virgin Islands, but a small island is probably not that comparable to the Scottish situation.

OTOH, the usual arguments* put against Scottish independence are summarised as Scotland being "too poor, too wee and too stupid", so obviously 2/5ths of the Island of Great Britain is comparable with "a small island".

But back to Europe, an independent Scotland newly joining (i.e. not inheriting the place of the former UKoGB&NI) would almost certainly require to commit to "eventually" joining the Euro, but there is a particular route to be followed to be a Eurozone member, some of the steps of which are voluntary. That is where Sweden, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia are just now - "committed" but not necessarily having a specific timetable for joining.

So the new Scotland would need some sort of currency. It can set up its own, or it can use another currency. That could be Pound Sterling, but that would introduce its own complications with not having any representation at the Bank of England, and it being a currency of a country outside the EU. On that basis it would be as simple to use the US Dollar, which post Brexit may be stronger than Pound Sterling and of course is the currency currently used to price oil**.

Or Scotland could use the Euro without being in the Eurozone on the same basis as Pound Sterling or US Dollar. That's what Kosovo and Montenegro are doing unilaterally - they have no agreements with the EU to do so.

Incidentally Andorra, Monaco, San Marino & The Vatican all use the Euro without being in the Eurozone, but they have a specific agreement to do so and to issue their own Euro coinage. So it's possible (if extremely unlikely) that a similar agreement could be made with Scotland for a transitional period until it joined the Eurozone.

*Not that there are not a number of perfectly valid arguments against Scottish independence, just they are rarely deployed

**Don't mention the oil. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right.

[Socialist Nordia]

If Scotland goes independent, what are the odds that they manage to get back into the EU without being blocked by the UK or Spain?

[Na h-Alba Nuadh]

If Scotland goes independent, what are the odds that they manage to get back into the EU without being blocked by the UK or Spain?

Better than 90%? The Former UK would have no say, what with not being an EU member any more. Spain have already said they would not object veto - of course they wouldn't, they are losing significant fishing grounds due to Brexit, and would regain most of them with an independent Scotland remaining in /returning to the EU.
And of course the Germans have been positively encouraging on the subject recently.

[Great Nepal]

If Scotland goes independent, what are the odds that they manage to get back into the EU without being blocked by the UK or Spain?

UK gave up its right to block, and Spain has no reason to (issue in 2014 was creating new EU state within borders of existing EU state thus setting president for Catalonia; that no longer applies plus this time they might gain Gibraltar if UK is sufficiently weaker).

[Souseiseki]

Guess that speaks to the level of outright disinformation that was going around.

I'm confused as to what you think you are adding to the conversation with this post.

Is it your position that this anecdote about a single misinformed voter renders the referendum result invalid and requires the referendum to be rerun, in spite of the cold, hard statistical figures you were provided with yesterday indicating growing support for Brexit rather than "Bregret"?

Or perhaps - given the propensity of voters to be misled - are you suggesting that the government should go further and unilaterally suspend Brexit despite growing support, leading to mass protests, political instability and Britain becoming an international laughing stock?

Or this just you - again - making snide, passive-aggressive, divisive, and thoroughly unproductive comments about how leave voters are stupid? Many such posts! Sad!

oh no not political instability and becoming an international laughing stock, can't have that.

actually now you mention it we do have "cold hard statistical figures" showing the british public are misled on almost every major issue (including EU related matters) and that they still overwhelmingly support this government no matter how much it fucks up. i don't think it can dismissed as "single misinformed voter".

edit: since i imagine you expect an answer from me as well: now that we're fucked with no chance of turning back the government should go soft brexit to minimize the damage to the country. the public may or may not support it, fuck knows what they support actually, they seem to flip flop between thinking the economy is more important than immigration, thinking immigration is more important than the economy and wanting single market access and no immigration, it's a fucking mess. but ultimately public support is not the be all end all of what should be done. some of the greatest achievements of this country were done by explicitly ignoring public opinion. our entire democracy is founded on the idea that direct democracy is a bad idea specifically because it leads to things like this. and if they hate it so much they can always change it later since we are ~*sovereign*~, right?