If we vote for Brexit what happens

Thrugelmir

Gangaweed wrote: »

I think it's clear that the EU does not want a deal they are being plain obstructive now. Perhaps it would be best for May to stop even trying.

The states of the EU do want a deal. However it is on the basis of their individual demands.

WengerIn

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Starting with Gibraltar........ and then..... and then....

Juncker is all mouth and no trousers as they say. An unelected President.

Yes. Just like our head of state.

cogito

WengerIn wrote: »

Yes. Just like our head of state.

Except that the Queen has virtually no powers unlike the Commission Presidents who can pretty much do what they like.

WengerIn

cogito wrote: »

Except that the Queen has virtually no powers unlike the Commission Presidents who can pretty much do what they like.

Rubbish, utter twaddle. You might hate the EU but you don't help your cause by getting it so very badly wrong. This is what the EU Presidents do:

https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/presidents_en

If you think they do more than that then perhaps you could give specific examples.

Anyway, in actual news rather than just making stuff up:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/theresa-may-brexit-tactics-wrong-eu-former-greek-finance-minister-yanis-varoufakis-a7721151.html

Varoufakis, who has had quite a bit of experience in negotiating with the EU reckons there'll be no agreement with the UK and EU on Brexit of substance.

"Britain will have to be made an example of.......no way Europe would allow a deal that left Britain in "a better place"......There will be no negotiations, make no mistake......

cogito

OK. Wind your neck in.

I'm familiar with Varoufakis's book and although it's written in tortuous language, he knows better than most the sheer impossibility of negotiating with the EU whose only objective is to preserve the union. He gives some very good examples of his experience of which at one point he likens to Penelope, wife of Odysseus, who fought off suitors by refusing to accept marriage proposals until she had completed the funeral shroud of Odysseus's father, Laertes. She wove all day and spent nights unpicking her work. The Greek delegation's negotiations were just like that. Spend all day negotiating with them, think you've made progress and return the next day to find that everything you thought had been agreed had been unpicked.

I think that this is exactly what will happen in negotiations with the EU. We'll spend 18 months wasting time getting nowhere and come out of it without any kind of agreement. We might as well just get on with preparing for life outside this malign undemocratic organisation.

Moby

cogito wrote: »

OK. Wind your neck in.


I think that this is exactly what will happen in negotiations with the EU. We'll spend 18 months wasting time getting nowhere and come out of it without any kind of agreement. We might as well just get on with preparing for life outside this malign undemocratic organisation.

Not getting an agreement will be disasterous for our future. That's the problem!

WengerIn

cogito wrote: »

OK. Wind your neck in.

I'm familiar with Varoufakis's book and although it's written in tortuous language, he knows better than most the sheer impossibility of negotiating with the EU whose only objective is to preserve the union. He gives some very good examples of his experience of which at one point he likens to Penelope, wife of Odysseus, who fought off suitors by refusing to accept marriage proposals until she had completed the funeral shroud of Odysseus's father, Laertes. She wove all day and spent nights unpicking her work. The Greek delegation's negotiations were just like that. Spend all day negotiating with them, think you've made progress and return the next day to find that everything you thought had been agreed had been unpicked.

I think that this is exactly what will happen in negotiations with the EU. We'll spend 18 months wasting time getting nowhere and come out of it without any kind of agreement. We might as well just get on with preparing for life outside this malign undemocratic organisation.

:rotfl: I thought not.

By leaving without agreement, assuming that we manage to get the EU to agree to trade with us on WTO terms, the EU is going to add a whole lot of complexity and expense to our trade. As I'm sure you've been told many times before but presumably consider to be trivial, the EU takes 43% of the UK's exports while the UK takes 2% of the EU's exports. A drop in trade by just 10% as a result of Brexit would cost the UK something like 5% of GDP, roughly the equivalent of the GFC, and cost the EU just 0.2% of GDP, a rounding error.

Rinoa

WengerIn wrote: »

By leaving without agreement, assuming that we manage to get the EU to agree to trade with us on WTO terms, the EU is going to add a whole lot of complexity and expense to our trade.

It would be illegal under WTO rules for the EU to treat us differently to any other country.

And other countries have no problem accessing the EU market.

WengerIn

Rinoa wrote: »

It would be illegal under WTO rules for the EU to treat us differently to any other country.

It would and while I believe trade under WTO rules is the most likely outcome there is a chance that the sovereign nations of the EU will decide to break those rules or maybe interpret them in an unusual way. Countries are being taken to arbitration at the WTO all the time, a long winded process which can seriously stuff up your economy in the meantime.

Rinoa wrote: »

And other countries have no problem accessing the EU market.

Absolutely right. As other countries that are outside the EU have never been members of the Single Market they have supply chains that are set up not to be in the Single Market.

However the UK is a member of the Single Market and the companies operating in the UK have supply chains that have developed over the last 25 years as a part of the single market.

I posted before the impact of a 10% import duty on the UK's car industry. Now the reality is a bit more complex because if you import from the EU, add value to that thing and then re-export it you only pay duty on the added value, you don't pay a second lot of duty. In some respects that's worse because a bit of tax isn't much of a problem for a company: tariffs would lead to a wind down of the UK's car industry by a lack of future investment rather than companies simply leaving.

What is a problem is a load of extra bureaucracy and paperwork. It's difficult, unpredictable and expensive.

Also don't forget that if you tailor the rules properly then you can still stitch up the UK within WTO trade rules. For example you could introduce a rule to say that 'systemically important' Euro settlement has to happen within the EU and set the rules so that only the UK-based settlers of Euro derivatives fall into them. As the LCH is by far the biggest ex-EU Central Counterparty it would be laughably simple to do it and very easy to justify.

A_Medium_Size_Jock

The Telegraph today says that the European Commission's own lawyers advised the Commission that the Brexit bill is legally impossible to enforce.
Yet the Commission and particularly the President, Juncker, have persisted in using this as a threatening tactic.

The Commission’s initial position - now apparently over-ruled by EU leaders - would appear to support British contention that the European demands on what Britain owes Brussels are legally flimsy and wildly over-stated.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/06/100bn-brexit-bill-legally-impossible-enforce-european-commissions/


(Readable non-paywalled version here: https://www.youthdebates.org/t/100bn-brexit-bill-is-legally-impossible-to-enforce/111574

and here: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-sunday-telegraph/20170507/281513636063476 )