I always bought my kids bikes from a great little UK company, Isla Bikes. But now they can no longer give you a price, you need to get a quote. Some extra parts are out of stock and you would need to go through it again. I just went with a German company.
Yeah, late last year I was set to order from a famous UK maker of bespoke bicycles, but I had to cancel. Now the EU imposes duties based on the origin of all components that are sourced from outside the UK. Most high-quality steel bike frames are from Taiwan, the parts might be from Malaysia or the USA, etc. There is very little on a bicycle that was actually made in the UK, it was just assembled there.
I remember watching the vote on HN, and a woman vox polled at the tube sation said she voted leave, but didn't think it'd get up.
Brexit has consumed the UK for the last 5 years with it's totally inwards looking activity.
COVID was a black swan event that will be bad for this generations outcomes. Brexit was totally avoidable but will have much the same lingering suppression of economic activity.
Honestly, I thought Brexit was going to ruin the UK before COVID. But the effects of COVID and the expected effects to come when furlough ends I think the UK is going to be in complete ruins for years.
I keep reading that they expect 1/3 of people to lose their jobs when furlough ends. The goverment is now suggesting companies move warehouse (and jobs) to the EU. The increase in the costs of importing into the UK will raise prices with people who are going to have less money. Orders coming from the EU will drop massively even for those with EU warehouses because, how do I know if they have one? I've literally made sure to avoid any UK business because I know I'll have to pay extra taxes when it arrives.
And I know people who voted leave who instantly regretted it and only voted leave as a protest vote. "We wanted to give them a scare" was how it was explained to me. So basically. While some pople are still 100% for a hard brexit, I don't think the majority of the nation even wanted to leave the EU 3 years after the vote. And when it cames to the general elections, no major party went with the anti Brexit campaign which seemed nuts. The politcal elite wanted Brexit and the poor will pay the most.
I don't think the majority of the nation even wanted to leave the EU 3 years after the vote.
The UK has had two general elections since the 2016 vote. If the electorate thought it was the single most important issue and that we should remain, the UK wouldn't have left.
Was gonna say the same. As an outsider looking in, I too was rationalizing it as a fluke vote. But nope, the nation doubled down on the pro-Brexit Tories in subsequent elections, thus confirming the desire to really go through with it all. It's all so sad.
Labour had a Brexiteer as it's leader (Corbyn). I know he said otherwise but it was an obvious lie, he had been campaining against the EU for his whole political life. There really wasn't a good chocie.
Between the leaders of the two largest parties supporting it and a majority of the citizens voting for it, Brexit was definitely going to happen. It's hard to say that it shouldn't have or was a fluke, even though it was a dumb thing to do :(
A set of first-past-the-post choices between effectively only two parties, one of which was pro-Brexit and the other of which was incapable of a coherent stance, is not exactly a great recipe for determining the actual will of the people.
My point was really that there existed genuine anti-Brexit positions, and people failed to vote for them. That shows as much about the weakness of voting systems as it does about Brexit, but in the end the pro-Brexit party won a majority of seats. If people really were that anti-Brexit they did have options.
The entire thing was a clusterf### that should never have happened. All voting systems are bad even in the best of cases, and this was far from the best of cases. Good luck living with it.
The Liberal Democrats got 1/4th of the Conservatives' votes but only 1/35th of the Conservatives' seats. Heck, they got 3x as many votes as the SNP but less than a quarter of their seats. EDIT: Also, the LibDems got 50% more votes in 2019 than in each of the previous two general elections, which is a hell of a fact to twist as "did not fare well".
If your intention was to refute my argument that first-past-the-post doesn't accurately capture voters' opinions, you failed.
My point was only that people had an anti-Brexit choice that they didn't pick.
I'm in complete agreement that FPTP is a terrible system, and does a miserable job capturing voters opinions. It does so even when there are many extra parties available. (The LibDems were, after all, part of a governing coalition just five years ago.)
The problem is coming up with a significantly better system. The UK is in this mess because of a direct vote that didn't really measure voters' opinions, either.
It's not so black and white. People consider all the issues and what parties propose and vote on balance. The way the system works they also vote based on who has got a chance.
The divisions on Brexit also run through both major parties, and Labour had quite a bad offering and spooked many people by being so much on the left (they had they worst defeat in 40 years in the last election, which is telling) and in any case they went for Brexit so people had no actual alternative on that issue as the Lib Dems were not seen has credible and as having any chance.
All in all I think it is difficult to draw clear conclusions based on the last general elections. Personally I think positions did not change much since the referendum (i.e. small majority for Brexit overall).
As I said, there was no major party with an Anti Brexit policy. Labour and Tories were both pro brexit. The SNP were anti Brexit and dominated and will dominate again. The libdems are still suffering the mistrust from dealing with the tories and they weren't even fully anti Brexit and labour managed to shoot themselves in the foot. Literally to win the last election the Tories policy was to not talk, since whenever they talked they suffered and all they talked about was pro-Brexit. This lead to Johnson hiding in a fridge. The UK was that anti-Brexit that for the main pro-Brexit party to win they had to hide in a fridge on live TV to avoid talking about Brexit.
TL;DR, there was no real anti-Brexit party other than the dominating SNP.
Opinion polling was most people wanted Brexit over with. They were fed up of hearing about it. It just wasn't explained to them the fastest way for that was to remain. Which if one major party took that anti Brexit stance and went hard with how long Brexit would remain a theme for they would done well. That's why the tories stance was get Brexit done. Which considering they're still trying to negotiate after the deadline and a deal was done tells you how much of that was a lie.
Your assertion was that you didn't think a majority of people were pro-Brexit come 2019. A pro-Brexit political campaign won in a landslide, despite multiple alternatives offering anti-Brexit stances (SNP, Greens) or softer stances on the matter (Labour).
> This lead to Johnson hiding in a fridge. The UK was that anti-Brexit that for the main pro-Brexit party to win they had to hide in a fridge on live TV to avoid talking about Brexit.
I just looked that up. It appears he was visiting a milk distribution company of some sort on his campaign when he was approached by a live TV crew who asked for an interview. He was then led into part of the facility by an employee. Truly compelling stuff!
> Your assertion was that you didn't think a majority of people were pro-Brexit come 2019. A pro-Brexit political campaign won in a landslide, despite multiple alternatives offering anti-Brexit stances (SNP, Greens) or softer stances on the matter (Labour).
The SNP basically dominated. Green? They're not a major party. And Labour's policy was ???, I honestly can't remember, but we all knew they were pro-Brexit. If Labour hadn't repeatedly shot themselves in the foot they would have done way better. Nevermind if they went hard on anti-Brexit, they would have done way better. I'm not 100% on this but I believe if you look at the stats, it was basically labour and centeral voters stayed home. And there was no real, and real is important here, altvernative. Many smaller parties splitting the vote wasn't ever going to get anywhere.
> I just looked that up. It appears he was visiting a milk distribution company of some sort on his campaign when he was approached by a live TV crew who asked for an interview. He was then led into part of the facility by an employee. Truly compelling stuff!
He was led into a fridge where he then stayed until the broadcaster moved on. Instead of his handlers telling the employee, hold on a sec, he's on live TV and this is a great chance to address the nation. They let him be lead into a fridge... And as a paid up member of the SNP, I would like to thank the tories for putting Mr Johnson in power. He's doing wonders for the SNP's cause!
The polls on Brexit did suggest a creeping increase in the popularity of Brexit. But that was backed by a slew of propaganda about how great it will be.
I still think it will end in either a disaster or some kind of rejoining of EU, possibly under a different name. But of course we’ll see.
> While some pople are still 100% for a hard brexit, I don't think the majority of the nation even wanted to leave the EU 3 years after the vote.
There was a referendum in 2016 and a general election in 2019 which the Conservatives won in a landslide. The notion that there was a major swing in opinion in that timeframe is simply absurd. Pro-Brexit political parties don't win landslide victories in such circumstances.
COVID will come and go... Hopeful nothing similar happens within our lifetimes.
BREXIT will unfortunately have an impact for much longer. The UK was a place I dreamed about living in. English-speaking, great quality of life, weather is pretty mild compared to where I currently am, and, most importantly, open borders with the EU.
Now the UK does not even register as an option.
This is just me, but I’m sure there are others in the same boat, and as a young Brit you just had a door shut in your face. Not to mention the impact on business that’s going to affect British workers within the UK.
It seems unlikely that we’re going to see a larger case of shooting oneself in the foot anytime soon.
> as a young Brit you just had a door shut in your face
I keep reading this and it's just not true. The vast majority of young Brits go to work or study in the USA/Canada/Australia/NZ, by far, and they don't have the EU's "freedom of movement".
Several of my friends worked and studied in Europe before the UK signed the Maastricht treaty in 1992 and it wasn't a problem for them. If you're determined to move countries, which is a significant undertaking, you'll do it regardless of whatever extra perceived barriers there are.
After the bridge has fallen, there may yet be people ferrying themselves across the river. This, however, does not mean the absence of the bridge is not a notable impairment to people's movement across the water.
They didn't want unspecialised poor immigrants from Eastern/Southern Europe and didn't want immigrants / refugees running away from Africa.
They're more than happy to charge thousands to qualified Eastern/Southern European to get them to come here and pocket high salaries and relatively cheap cost of living / taxes (the other place that compares in EU is Switzerland, but it's much more expensive).
Also, they didn't want to pay for poorer countries that will never get their economy together.
The UK was one of the few net contributors to the EU.
"The UK was one of the few net contributors to the EU" -> UK was in very good company as can be found easily here:
https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...
and it's not difficult to see that the amount of the net contribution is somewhat proportional to the share of the European GDP .
"They didn't want unspecialised poor immigrants from Eastern/Southern Europe" -> the fact is that they were getting a lot of graduated/high specialized immigrants from southern Europe as well.
I don't know if this is 100% true. Part of the anti-immigrant rhetoric is "they're coming here and taking our jobs", which applies just as much to white collar professions as to blue collar ones. Think of all the people in tech who complain about immigrants using H1B visas taking programmer jobs. If you have a zero-sum worldview about how the economy works and how jobs are created, then all immigration is bad, and immigration of people competing with you in the same segment of the labor market is the worst.
Exactly, such kind of thinking is unfortunately very much prevalent outside the big cities, even in developed nations like US and UK.
I guess it is because the folks outside big cities never had a chance to interact with the immigrants and see the value they add to the society, rather than seeing them as a threat. It is quite sad :(
I'm not so sure about that. E.g. there aren't any German truck drivers and trucks anymore, just companies and drivers from eastern europe, because it's cheaper. Similarly for lots of jobs in agriculture, construction and some industries like food processing. That's surprisingly not a problem because of unemployment in Germany as much as it is a social and legal problem: Eastern European workers abroad are underpaid (minimum wage circumvented), uninsured (social security dues circumvented), without appropriate workplace protections (truck drivers doing overtime, illegally having to sleep in their trucks for weeks on end, lax technical safety of the trucks), and draining the economy of their home countries of workers because factories that could have been nearby are in Germany instead.
This begs the question: Would it have been as bad as Brexit to restrict worker movements a little more? I would suggest that such restrictions could have even had an overall benefit if done properly. It's just that Germany desperately wanted those cheap workers.
With the 2004 expansion, Germany (among other states) pressured for restrictions and transitional agreements were made that allowed restricting movement of workers from the newly added countries for up to seven years. The UK was one of the few countries that did not do any of those restrictions, because it's government wanted direct access to cheap labor.
That is true, but changed over time with the changing local political climate. Back in 2004 Angela Merkel was still strictly right-wing anti-immigration, later she drifted more and more left and pro-immigration.
2004 Merkel also wasn't in power. And I think it's relevant, because IMHO the years after 2004 lead to the shift in British public opinion that lead to immigration restrictions becoming such a big topic, and pushing politics towards the referendum.
tl;dr: Nobody wants to become a truck driver anymore, even with improving salaries. Higher qualifications and better working conditions might solve the problem in the future.
In the meantime we still need drivers from eastern europe.
Yea and was why May who was pro-EU refused to agree to freedom of movement because she considered the Brexit vote to be a vote primarily againist freedom of movement. Johnson agreed.
And one theory/perspective is that May (with the background of a home secretary) was focused too much on that and drew lines in other sectors without enough consideration for the consequences she then had to try and walk back, which put her always on the defensive against the hardliners, which made a positive framing of a closer-aligned deal impossible. It's fascinating how that shift from "Brexit means a wide range of options and people voted for something of it" to a pile of red lines blocking out a large range of the solution space happened - apparently even to the surprise of members of the government.
A large aging population of post war baby boomers unhappy that younger generations are more liberal and different looking voted in a hardline anti immigrant admin.
Just like in the UK, a very large fraction of youth is very much against "leave".
I expect this to play out interestingly in the next 5-10 years when younger generations wrest political power from the baby boomers. I fully expect "millennials revenge" with a hard left turn eand forced generational wealth transfer using higher estate and property taxes
People age and change their points of view. Older people are naturally more conservative when they realize some things are better off the way they are.
More like "the way they used to be" which is what's causing friction in the US and UK.
Today's youth grew up with the dotcom bubble, financial crisis, 9/11, and COVID. They're far poorer with less opportunity than prior generations had. The government has failed them and they want change.
This is pushing younger generations hard left, and I don't think it's going to change. Most of the "conservativizing" life events like home ownership and building a family are being delayed or just never happening. Today's mellenials and gen z will likely lean democrat till they die.
There's also a social theory that older generations lean conservative because the conservative movement dominated their youth, not because they became that way with age. Today's boomers grew up during a ~20 year streak of conservative dominance. Today's youth are the opposite, it's yet to be seen what this will do to political beliefs.
Yes it does because as one ages, he realizes why things are and have been the same for a long time. Plus one gets used to those things. And therefore conservatism creeps in.
the statement is about things being better is in absolute terms where in fact it's just perception, as you said yourself biased due to age. older people may perceive lack of change as better but it doesn't mean it's in fact better.
People become more conservatives as they age, probably after understanding their tax returns and when the year of school (which is a prevalent liberal environment because of teachers) are a far memory.
Despite this, there's a increasingly liberal trend: spending, taxes and inflation keep raising, no matter the party.
This may not hold with today's youth. There's theories that people identify with the political party of their youth (much like they do with music) as they age. This is an alternate explanation for the increasing conservativism of older generations in the US that grew up during Reagen years. For nearly 20 years conservatives ruled and this lines up with the formative years of today's pensioners.
Another theory is that youth are not going through conservatizing life events like marriage or home ownership because they've been screwed by so many economic disasters. It's hard to argue against this theory, the question is how much of an effect this will have long term.
Yet another theory is more obvious. The anti immigration and anti gay policies of conservatives are wildly unpopular among those under 45. Some estimates I've seen are that less than 25% support either. The younger generations are also less religious, more urban, and more ethnically diverse. All traits that tend to increase left leanings.
I personally doubt school had much of an impact. Educators have been left leaning for centuries. I think it's used as an excuse by the conservative party in the US unwilling to admit their policies are unpopular for more based reasons.
I agree with you that deficit spending has become bipartisan. The fiscal conservatism that once defined Republicans is more of a libertarian aim now. Again I think this will play out in an interesting way. Without fiscal conservativism the Republicans are left with religious and cultural conservativism which are both wildly unpopular among younger generations.
I still can't believe they started Brexit because of a non-binding referendum that only got 52% of the vote. You'd think to start something so massive in scope they would at least want a super-majority buy in.
From what I’ve read [0], the economic effects of the pandemic will mostly be gone in a few years, but the economic effects of Brexit will last for multiple decades.
[0] newspaper articles, so the Michael Crichton [1] amnesia effect applies
[1] Michael Crichton came up with it and called it the “Gell-Mann Amnesia effect” because “by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have”.
> the economic effects of the pandemic will mostly be gone in a few years
I'm not an expert but afaik we're still in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis during which virtually every country in the west contracted insane amount of debt to save their economies, and this is exactly what we're doing again right now. I have my doubt any of this will be "mostly gone" in a few years, more like we're going to pay for it over the next X generations
>> more like we're going to pay for it over the next X generations
I think we need to move away from that construct. If we today are burdening future generations, the proper description is that they will pay, not us. The people saddled with these debts are not alive today. They did not ask for this. They did not consent to owe anything. It is little wonder that revolutions are generally run by young people. It would be very interesting to see how many of these multi-generational debt structures result in profound instability, but sadly nobody alive today will be around to see these decisions. In short: imho no country should take on debts that have no hope of repayment within a single lifetime.
Germany paid the last of its WWI reparations in 2010... roughly a century after the war. Even that was within a theoretical single lifetime.
I agree. Youth unemployment is a big problem. If you create debt and use that debt to drive down youth unemployment then the concept of "pay for it over the next X generations" doesn't even make any sense because when you are creating the debt you are also automatically writing a paycheck that clears that debt. It's effectively neutral on the economy.
If you have an economy with zero slack (meaning 0% unemployment) then adding more debt does increase the amount of work that has to be done in the future. In practice this means that the least profitable work will not get done and a backlog of work starts piling up. This is not a problem in practice because of technological progress and the subsequent rise in productivity.
Debt does become harmful if it is spent wastefully.
Financing consumer spending is a pretty good example. Since you do not expect to net a greater return in the future the debt is just an additional fee that provides no meaningful value compared to having the money in your bank account before spending it.
Getting a mortgage to buy an existing house can also be wasteful if there is a housing shortage (=more residents than housing). You're supposed to spend that money on building a new house or condo. The large difference between market rate housing and construction cost is not a flaw. It's a financial incentive for construction companies to build more housing. You just have to let them build.
Using debt to finance a war is also extremely wasteful. If you lose the war your economy will no longer be able to support the debt.
> If we today are burdening future generations, the proper description is that they will pay, not us.
Oh _we_ will too. More taxes, less pensions, more and more privatization of public entities, moving the retirement age up a few years ever decades, &c. the same shit they've been pulling all over Europe for the last 50 years basically
> They did not ask for this. They did not consent to owe anything.
Most of _us_ neither, only the elite/people in charge asked for it. It doesn't benefit the lower 90% of any countries' population.
It want the debt that made recovery so slow it was the inequality. And the US in in the middle of to doing it again - by allocating much more money to the corporations and financial markets then squeezing the aid to the middle and bottom in the name of austerity.
Not sure if you linked the right tweet or I'm missing something. This is what I see:
> There is a notion that the EU is punishing us. That our exports have to jump through more hoops than e.g. Norwegian products.
> This is what we agreed to. What we wanted. We didn't opt for the Norway model (e.g. alignment).
> This is not punishment, this was our choice.
That to me seems to say that this is self-inflicted, not something that the EU as a group inflicted on the UK. Not to dismiss the idea that UK is leaving the EU, not that the EU is kicking out UK.
So I guess when it comes to "how much blame the EU deserves for this", it seems the answer is "none".
And the irony is, you actually were reaping a lot of the perks while not being "in the club" under many, many respects (the €, first of all). Just a sad, sad turn of events all around.
The UK had literally the best deal in Europe. They had a rebate, they weren't a member of the schengen area, they refused the Euro, etc. They then went and got more concessions and then decided to leave. And now the hardcore Brexit people think all the negative effects they were warned about for 5+ years is the EU punishing them.
FWIW, I think the UK would’ve been better off if it had joined the Schengen Agreement.
But you are absolutely right that Brexit people are treating the exact things they dismissed as Project Fear as if it was a punishment. I’d personally witnessed this happening even before the referendum, in a conversation which went:
Him: “Brexit will be fine because the EU will give us a good deal”
Me: “No”
Him, shouting: “That proves we should leave!”
I almost wish I’d had a camera running at the time. I am well aware how mad it sounds.
From a pragmatic standpoint the Euro is a complete failure. I don't blame any country that decided against adopting it. However, the rest is relatively solid. There are warts and inefficiencies like in every governing body but it's does its job as an economic union.
I disagree, every added governing body is a failure in itself. I would prefer to just see a Europe-light with countries maintaining their currency and laws and just dropping trade restrictions, import taxes and need for touristic visas.
I'd even extend it to any country in the world, let the customer decide if the want to buy from China or from the UK
But "dropping trade restrictions, import taxes and need for touristic visas" automatically leads to production shifting towards the countries with the loosest regulation and the lowest wages. So, you need at least a supranational regulation body that tries to make regulations uniform across the zone.
But then, you need a supranational body of elected officials to jointly control that regulation body, by passing legislation.
But then, you need an executive body that sets the agenda of the legislative body. And some judiciary mechanisms to handle transgressions to the laws and regulations coming from all these organs.
And then... you basically end up with something pretty similar to the EU as we know it.
(I'm not saying the EU is perfect, mind you. Just that they didn't create such a complex collection of institutions just "for the lulz")
Everything was predicted a long time ago. All the friction at the border is the inevitable consequence of the choices the successive British governments made. I like to show this as a demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agZ0xISi40E .
Of course. Nobody says it aloud but there were multiple members with anti-EU, pro-exit governments before brexit. Not anymore precisely because UK didn’t get any favors to put it mildly.
Of course it's largely UK's own making. But EU surely didn't make it any easier. The VAT rules alone make it really difficult for small business to export to EU. Each country has its own rules, thresholds and agencies. Compared to how easy is it for us in the EU to do business within EU it's crazy. That's why UK's own government recommends opening a subsidiary in the EU.
The EU cannot make it any easier. Not because it wouldn't be possible at all, just that it would be suicidal for the EU or its politicians for several reasons.
There are tendencies in several members to leave the EU or at least get rid of a few of the treaties. That means that leaving the EU in any really beneficial way for the UK would be strengthening the "leave" position in other members. And while the UK alone leaving is bad, more members leaving would be far worse.
Then there is the topic of the UK rebate and the UK's special role in several treaties. The EU has always had to pamper the UK and the UK gave nothing but grief in return. It would have been political suicide for the EU leadership to give any impression of continuing to pamper the Brits in the Brexit treaties. Also, beneficial status for a non-member would weaken the EU position in treaties with other non-members such as Norway, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, etc.
And then there is the problem of the UK being not really one country but a haphazard agglomeration of several territories. While Great Britain is somewhat uniform, Northern Ireland is special. There are several reasons for treating it in a special way in the Brexit treaty, like a looming civil war, a possible Irish veto, a possible smuggling route into the EU market. But it was clear from the start that this would hugely complicate matters. Same for Gibraltar and the channel Islands, French and Spanish vetoes looming, etc.
I won't be surprised if the Brexit treaties don't hold forever. If the UK feels the squeeze of non-forthcoming trade with the rest of the world and diminishing trade with the EU, a more aligned status like the Norway/Switzerland model is possible. And I guess there will be a realignment of Northern Ireland and Gibraltar in some way, either towards a more unified UK or towards a weakened UK and Spanish/Irish unity, depending on what kind of hit the respective nations will take during COVID and the next few years.
But from an internal EU point of view, the current Brexit treaty is the farthest the EU could have gone.
I suspect under the current model, Northern Ireland, and perhaps also Scotland, are untenable as parts of the Union. Northern Ireland is a political chimera that only existed in peace because you could pretend there is one Ireland under EU membership.
I think as soon as Brexit pinches for good, NI and Scotland, both of which voted to remain in the EU, are out. Let’s just hope there isn’t another civil war in it.
Scotland has far greater trade with the rest of Great Britain than with the EU, so it would be in their interests to remain in the British internal market and customs territory even if they gain political independence.[1][2] Northern Ireland remains in the EU Single Market, so the previous pretense of a unified Ireland within the EU can continue.[3]
> Scotland has far greater trade with the rest of Great Britain than with the EU, so it would be in their interests to remain in the British internal market and customs territory
The UK has far greater trade with the rest of the EU than with the rest of the world, so it would be in their interest to remain in the Single Market and Custom Union.
I've always found it quite funny when English make this argument about Scotland. Particularly as the last independence referendum was won by the unionist side with a razor-thin margin, under the premises that the way for Scotland to stay in the EU was to stay in the UK. How is it that English nationalists are allowed to be unreasonable, but Scottish should not?
Brexit was an emotional issue, and I think this would be the same. 68% of Scots voted against Brexit, but the London government ignored that and piled ahead with fairly hard Brexit. Even the fishing industry, the prized jewel in the crown, got pretty screwed by Brexit.
I don’t think the Irish arrangement is workable in practice. It’s trying to fit a square peg in a keg of dynamite. The Irish Protocol effectively puts it outside the British economic zone, since trade with Britain is effectively import and export, going thru customs and enormous red tape. Meanwhile, Ireland proper is just across the field.
I think Northern Ireland will make it to its centenary but not much beyond.
UK had a big hand in crafting trade rules with third party countries while in the EU. They then refused the Switzerland arrangement, the Norway arrangement etc. and wanted to become a third party country. And now surprise pikachu face at the consequences of that.
> The VAT rules alone make it really difficult for small business to export to EU
But how would you do otherwise if one of the parties does not want any regulatory alignment and is barely cooperative? There was an easy way of solving this, which the British chose to ignore because they were not Norway.
There is also a theory that the delays and controversy of Brexit have been caused by the remainers who want to reverse the referendum, in other words some people out there blame the trouble caused on those who didn't want there to be trouble in the first place.
So, yes, this is a comparison againt January last year, pre-pandemic. I'm in no way a brexiteer, but I do wish people wouldn't do lead articles with such easily refutable arguments.
But of course, this is the Guardian - they know their audience, they know who they're talking to and aren't too interested in persuading someone from outside their half of the bubbleverse.
> Trade experts said part of the reason for the sharp fall in exports was the coincidence of Brexit and the pandemic. But several heads of trade bodies fear worse is to come.
I wouldn't exactly call that "addressing" it. It's vague hand-waving about some guesswork done by some un-named "trade experts". The later mentions are from Gove of all people. Any brexiteer reading this rather than being convinced will just dismiss it as project fear. But as I've said elsewhere, this isn't an article for brexiteers, it's a warm-bath article to reinforce their readership's beliefs.
There is indeed, which is why it was so surprising that the UK gov. turned down the offer to extend the transition period, which could have stopped these two economic events overlapping.
You could argue the opposite, that a time of significantly reduced economic activity and particularly cross-border trade was the ideal time to end the transition period and implement new trade protocols.
Goods still need to flow in a pandemic. The UK still needs to trade. It's those flows that are possibly worst hit. Adding to problems that would've been present with just covid.
Also attempts to find alternate markets can be hampered as business people can't travel easily to visit potential new markets for their products.
(as pointed out elsewhere on thread) you could assume that having both at once allows the government to blame all economic issues on covid...
I would argue that it isn't even good for most UK elites. Whatever benefits they're getting out of it are likely to be swamped by the overall downturn of the British economy in the future, an economy that they are presumably heavily invested in.
Not a BREXITer but the libdems are putting way too much trust in the EU. This can potentially backfire in the recent future when the EU does not perform as well as it should.
When you actually look at the metrics you do not actually see the EU as a whole performing better than the UK and definitely worse than the US and Australia.
"Doing good" is relative to what our aims are. Switzerland has to obey all EU rules and regulations or they loose market access and open borders, which would be catastrophic given their trade is mostly with the EU and they are completely surrounded by EU members. However, Switzerland has no say in deciding any of those rules and regulations. They just get a "take it or leave everything" deal each time.
So while Switzerland is doing fine, they are, at least when it comes to trade, borders and certain security measures like weapons controls, very much a second class member. I'm quite sure that is the opposite of what the Brexiteers intended, at least in my interpretation of their aims.
Potentially a land border is better, so people can cross to buy food and petrol.
I'm sure there are also old Germans around who remember the price increases when switching from DM to €. These kinds of things are complicated.
I'm also not sure if these articles are supposed to be pro-EU fear-mongering, or simply a wake-up call to people in the UK to deal with the consequences of Brexit and "adapt"?
They had a only-in-a-lifetime chance to start from a scratch with their regulatory framework governing exports.
They should have replaced the EU captive market they were about to lose, with sufficient trade deals with the rest of the world so that when the time came, they would have had a much stronger negotiating with the EU. They would have had a healthier economy right before COVID, too.
Instead of hunting around the world for deals and getting their industry free rein to produce more and export away, they wasted their entire time bickering with the EU ...who was happy to sit tight and let the UK take the blame.
I guess when you know that politicians were in charge, you can easily assume nothing productive would come out of it.
It's clear the winner here is not the citizens of Great Britain, but of those who use London as a secret store of their unusual wealth, which now escapes EU oversight.
Having gone shopping regularly there during December and January, the major change was when lorries stopped crossing the channel. That's when we started seing empty shelves. The pandemic by itself never managed that.
It seems that those who are championing the freedom for humanity in EU and and USA cannot seems to champion for freedom of economy. How can you have freedom for humanity if they cannot openly trade with each others without unnecessary restrictions?
It seems that what EU (federation of participating countries) and USA (federation of participating states) practices of major trade blocs are not unlike the old empires, but the age of empires namely Imperial China, Byzantine, Mughal and Ottoman probably fare much better with their openness to trades.
The trade blocs as we know today was started by the Hanseatic League of the Holy Roman Empire that is neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire [1].
Back in the good old empire days, openness to trades meant letting tradespeople in at all. Others just forbade traders to cross the border, in a closed way like nowadays maybe North Korea. The "openness" consisted of accepting traders, but with tariffs and restrictions on tradeable goods as well as necessary bribes and taxes. Not to mention the nonexistence of any kind of protection along the routes, you just had protection within the walls of a city, and then only when paying the necessary taxes. If you wanted protection for the route, you had to hire your own soldiers.
The granularity of it all varied, usually trade in Central Europe was regulated differently by each city, so you had to pay your dues when crossing the city gates. Others had larger territories, there you had to pay at the border crossings in addition to each city. Oh, and not trading in a city because of taxes? Big no-no, only cities had the right of market, meaning you got in big trouble for that.
I would suggest even the most restrictive trade policy today is more free than in the empires you enumerated. There is only a difference in sophistication of the rules, because nowadays there are far more varied goods and that "unnecessary" stuff like consumer protection.
Your views are very simplistic with regard to how the empires operates. I think that your views are mainly from the European perspectives when at the times they have what you called "dark ages" where the quality of life during the time span period is worst than the time before and after that.
For the rest of the world's empires the arrangement are more sophisticated than that namely Imperial China, Byzantine, Mughal and Ottoman. Most of these empires works like the current trade blocs, and the members of the empires pay taxes to their master [1][2]. Those smaller autonomous states or countries who are not directly under the empires most of the times pay tributary "protection taxes" or Arabic "jizya" where they becomes vassal countries/states of the bigger empires [3]. One of common examples are the Dubrovnik in Croatia which was under Ottoman protection for about 500 years! [4]. At its peak it rivals The City of Venice and this is only one famous examples of a major city not directly under a particular empire but flourished under the protection. I can provide more examples but I hope you get the points.
This arrangement is something like countries not belongs USA but in which under NAFTA trade blocs. This thriving ancient port cities can be like Taiwan today and Taiwan is probably probably moving towards this exact direction [5].
Interestingly since Holy Roman Empire (HRE) is not technically an empire, Hanseatic League of HRE based countries initiated the trade blocs among themselves to emulate a trading under one unified empire. As I mentioned previously this is the basis of our current trade blocs.
You also claimed the non-existence of any kind of protection along the trade routes. This is not particularly true since the Imperial China has extensive guard posts along the the Silk Routes and the distance between them is reportedly one "marhalah" or around 45 km meaning that a horse can run without stopping between these two guard posts. If you like this is the earlier version of the Pony Express since they also used the posts as messengers to deliver the important news (e.g. emperor has died) to the Generals/officials far away from the center of the empire. The Islamic empires also have this similar arrangement and they called this temporary resting places for travellers/traders as "Waqaf". After time some of these Waqafs became large cities [6]. Obviously this arrangement is not security foolproof (similar to today) and they introduced and made popular the concept of "sakk" or "cheque" (meaning contract document) for deferred payment to avoid carrying gold/cash for the traders along the Silk Routes [7].
How the empire is organized internally is beside the point for the trade policy mostly. And yes, my comment is a little euro-centric in that central asia had some states and countries along the silk-road where not every stop along the trade route was a city that wanted to tax travellers. But: all the -as you said- autonomous countries did want their taxes all the same, no matter if they had to pay the next higher organisational layer or not.
You are contradicting yourself (and historic evidence) in claiming that the empires you named are "unified" in any way. The farther (as in, a few days ride) away from the capital you get, the less unified they get, provinces are governed by king-like governors with quite some autonomy, farther out vasall states had to pay tributes and submit to imperial authority, but were autonomous. The Chinese even made it into a world model and philosophy. Regarding trade, you did not point out any imperial mandate unifying that. There was only enlightened self-interest, because trade lined all pockets, so most generally allowed trade. But all the provinces, states and vasalls also had their own policies, taxes and regulations.
As for the protection between cities, there is also a very nice example in one of your named empires: Read up about the Thugee threat before the British got rid of it. There was no protection outside cities, period. Otherwise, even your example about cheques would have been unneccessary.
Nothing you said changes anything about my point, just reinforces it: The empires of old were more restrictive and less unified trade-wise than almost all current nations and trade blocks.
I totally disagree because in some aspects the empires were more unified, open and liberal than today.
For examples nowadays can you bring physically huge amount of cash or gold across borders without being detained? In the empire of old you really can. One of the richest men ever existed in recorded history Mansa Musa, 14th century King of Mali has been reported to travel with tons of golds on the way to pilgrimage in Mecca because apparently his empire held half of world's gold resources at the time [1]. According to historians he so lavishly did he hand out gold in Cairo Egypt that his three months stay caused the price of gold to plummet in the region for 10 years, wrecking the economy for many years [2]. This is probably the main reason modern countries do not allow bringing along your stack of cash or gold in very large amount when you are travelling across borders.
Regarding your not-so-unified under the empire arguments, the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia will not be successful for 500 years (being a main port-city rival to The City of Venice no less) and will be really stupid to pay Ottoman tributary for 500 hundreds years! Additionally these port-cities such as Dubrovnik are autonomous and not even directly under the empire administration. I'd imagine the countries or states under the Ottoman empire will be even more integrated than that in term of taxations and contributions? It will be like asking UK to pay taxes/contributions for several hundreds years to EU even after the separation from the EU. Without a unified and strong empire you cannot do that even in today's world let alone in 16th century AD.
