Brexit, aka, the UK Becomes a Clown Car of the Highest Order

Anything not nailed down is being relocated.

James Dyson, Brexit evangelist and celeb Brit industrialist was often quoted in the campaign and since by the Denialists.

P&O has been foreign (non-EU) owned for a while, to be fair.

I was mostly amused by the boat names.

They’ll have to rename them with Culture ship names. I suggest Dramatic Exit, Bad For Business and, of course, A Momentary Lapse Of Sanity.

British Airways will be unaffected because it is already owned by a Spanish company.

The whole makes me want to cry.

Or escape into a game…

At the Gates came out today!

Not actually true. IAG (the parent company) is in all sorts of trouble because the EU has rejected its arguments about foreign ownership - most group level shareholders are non-EU27.

ahh, really?

Well I guess they’ll move HQs soon…

So Sir Ivan Rogers, he of “Brexit as a Revolution” and former UK representative to the EU, has held a couple more talks which really should be required reading for anyone who wants to discuss Brexit.

Nine Lessons of Brexit (from December)

  1. Brexit means Brexit.
    “[This is] a major regime change, with massive political, legal, economic and social consequences, [in which] the EU is negotiating with us, not as a member, but as a prospective soon-to-be third country… once you leave the EU, you cannot, from just outside the fence, achieve all the benefits you got just inside it… market access into what is now their market, governed by supranational laws and Courts of which you are no longer part – and not, as it used to be, yours – is worse and more limited than before…That is unavoidable. It is not, vindictive, voluntary, a punishment beating, or any of the other nonsense we hear daily. It is just ineluctable reality…And finally, the solidarity of the club members will ALWAYS be with each other, not with you. We have seen that over the backstop issue over the last 18 months. The 26 supported Dublin, not London. They still do…This may be the first Anglo-Irish negotiation in history where the greater leverage is not on London’s side of the table…just wait till the trade negotiations. The solidarity of the remaining Member States will be with the major fishing Member States, not with the U.K. The solidarity will be with Spain, not the U.K., when Madrid makes Gibraltar-related demands in the trade negotiation endgame.”

  2. Other people have sovereignty too. And they too may choose to “take back control” of things you would rather they didn’t.
    “The EU … is a global player – a global rule maker – able and willing effectively to impose its values, rules and standards extraterritorially… it does so quite as well as, probably more effectively than, Washington, in multiple critical regulatory areas – and using its pooling of internal sovereignty to impose its values and standards well beyond its borders… in “taking back control” over our laws and leaving the adjudication and enforcement machinery of what used to be our “home” market, we are privileging notional autonomy over law- making over real power to set the rules by which in practice we shall be governed, since departure from norms set by others when we are not in the room will in practice greatly constrain our room for manoeuvre.”

  3. Brexit is a process not an event. And the EU, while strategically myopic, is formidably good at process against negotiating opponents. We have to be equally so, or we will get hammered. Repeatedly.
    “…you set yourself a ludicrous, unachievable deadline for a complete regime change, don’t be shocked that others use the pressure of the clock and the cliff edge to dictate the shape of Brexit.”

  4. It is not possible or democratic to argue that only one Brexit destination is true, legitimate and represents the revealed “Will of the People” and that all other potential destinations outside the EU are “Brexit in Name Only”.

  5. If WTO terms or existing EU preferential deals are not good enough for the UK in major third country markets, they can’t be good enough for trade with our largest market.
    “… every version of Brexit involves a worsening of the UK’s trade position and a loss of market access to its largest market. As we strive to limit the extent of that worsening, public debate will have to be serious about what the real trade-offs are. Because the EU will be quite brutal in teaching us them.”

  6. The huge problem for the UK with either reversion to WTO terms or with a standard free trade deal with the EU is in services.
    “The reality, as I say, is that UK services’ industries needs have been sacrificed to the primary goal of ending free movement… Yet it is in services sectors where the U.K. currently has a sizeable trade surplus with the EU, whereas in manufactured goods we have a huge deficit…For all the imperfections of the Single Market, services trade between Member States is, in many sectors, freer than it is between the federal states of the US, or the states in Canada. The US Government is unable, even if it were willing, to deliver on commitments in many areas in international negotiations, just as it cannot bind its states on government procurement, on which many federal states are as protectionist as it gets…a substantial hit on the balance of trade and on the public finances of substantial relocations out of the UK’s jurisdiction is guaranteed, because we have rendered the best mode of supplying services across borders far harder.”

  7. Beware all supposed deals bearing “pluses”.
    “The “pluses” merely signify that all deficiencies in the named deal will miraculously disappear when we Brits come to negotiate our own version of it.”

  8. You cannot, and should not want to, conduct such a huge negotiation as untransparently as the U.K. has. And in the end, it does you no good to try.

  9. Real honesty with the public is the best – the only – policy if we are to get to the other side of Brexit with a healthy democracy, a reasonably unified country and a healthy economy.

But really, go read (or watch) the lot. It’s absolutely worth it.

The follow-up talk from a few days ago also takes a look at how the current situation has come about: Where did Brexit come from and where is it going to take the UK?

Long, but also worth reading/watching, although it naturally reiterates a lot of the point from the earlier speech.

It’s not about moving HQs, it’s about shareholder nationality. They’re trying to avoid forcing shareholders to divest or lose voting rights, but it’s looking like they’ll have to, or at least create some complicated, “inefficient” EU27 ownership structure to get over the 50% line.

Thanks for that.

In the eyes of post-Brexit UK the EU likely will become a “big bad bogeyman”. What kind of shenanigans are Brexiters going to try to pull in opposition to the newly minted evil bullies across the Channel post-Brexit?

Brown people, LGBTs etc will replace the EU as the enemy within. The EU is merely a scapegoat and target for their inherent bigotry and hate.

Take it from America: it’s easier to hate people for how they look.

We used to hate the Irish, Poles, Jews, but really at the end of the day it’s too hard to spot them at a distance. So go after people with different skin color, easy to ID and unite similar racists without making the mistake of accidentally cutting out potential supporters. I mean what if a dude is really racist, but also a Freemason?

They’re going to paint a target on the EU, of course, and use that for what it is worth (because the comparison to a revolution is apt - you either point the revolution at an external enemy, or get eaten by it yourself). But I’m not sure there really is much shenanigans that the Brexiters can do against the EU, other than to force a no-deal hard exit.

The UK is not going to be able to out-negotiate the EU. The EU has decades of experience negotiating international treaties; the UK are - as demonstrated during the past couple of years - amateurs (This is not unique for the UK. One of the side-effects of the common market, is that all of the best talent end up working for Brussels, rather than their national governments). And even if that was not the case, the EU pretty much has every card in it’s hands, as Rogers points out. It’s pointless to try and outbluff someone who is sitting with a Royal Flush.

And I think May has already tried shenanigans … and failed resoundingly. I think Rogers is right that the only way this is going to go well, is with a much more transparent and honest process. Unfortunately, I don’t think either May or Corbyn are able - or willing - to deliver that.

But obviously as/when the negotiations fail and Brexit is completely unable to deliver on what it promised, the “traitors within” are going to be the distraction used for Johnson et al. to escape retribution. PoC and eastern european immigrants first and foremost, of course, though I wouldn’t feel too happy living in Britain if I were Scottish or Irish to be honest. It would be easy to craft a narrative where it’s the fault of the perfidious Irish that Britain didn’t get the Brexit it wanted, for instance.

Indeed. Brexit can never be said to have failed, it can only be said to have been failed. It will be the knife in the back all over again.

It’s already happening.

Tory MP: D-Day, the day we broke alliance and started a war with Germany

I hate them. I hate them so very, very much.

What in the fuck kind of statement is that?! The rot in our nations is grotesque.

We live in a Scumocracy. We’ve found the worst scum in our country, and put them in charge.

No bullying by any German? Well, the Royal Family would be most displeased, I’d think…