Hard Brexit or Hard Brexit

[Rum]

The joke is that you do't appear to understand the economies of scale and collective negotiation. Alone we are vulnerable to the large trading blocks elsewhere in the world who will simply dictate their terms on a take it or leave it basis. We aren't anything special.

[mistermack]

The joke is that you do't appear to understand the economies of scale and collective negotiation. Alone we are vulnerable to the large trading blocks elsewhere in the world who will simply dictate their terms on a take it or leave it basis. We aren't anything special.

I don't know where you get your ideas from. Your own imagination, by the look of it. You said it. We can take it, or leave it. That's a trade war where nobody wins. It's not the norm. As the most powerful country in the world is learning. If the US can't dictate it's terms to the world, then nobody can.

Except maybe Saudi.

The latest evidence of sanctions shows that even complete embargoes don't completely fuck up a country. North Korea is still there. So is Cuba.
Russia is actually benefiting from the sanctions on it. The domestic economy is adapting to the conditions by moving into the home markets that foreign countries used to supply. It's now in much better shape, more diverse, and a lot less dependent on oil than it was.

[Brian Peacock]

The posting on this thread really is a joke. If you believed it, you would get the impression that every country in the world can put whatever tariffs they like on UK goods, free of any cost. That's absolute bollocks.
If the Japs or Koreans slapped taxes on Scotch whiskey, do you honestly thing that there is nothing we buy from Japan or Korea that can be taxed? There's billions of pounds worth of imports that the UK government can put tariffs on.

So you think a protectionist approach to future trade is on the cards?

As far as the internal market is concerned, I honestly can't see what all the bleating's about. It was clearly said right at the start, that the UK can't retain membership of that, without freedom of movement.#
What is so hard to understand about that? It's not a runner, and never has been.

As far as having ACCESS to it, that's there for deals to be done. China has access to it, Korea has access to it, Russia has access to it. Under the various deals that have been done.
The UK will end up having access to it, and we will do a deal, trading access to the UK market, for access to the single market. On the basis that nobody wins in a trade war, that's most likely to be a fairly even deal.

China, Korea, Russia, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, Mexico, the US and many other nations and regions have ACCESS to EU internal markets through reciprocal, negotiated trade arrangements. In return the UK's ACCESS to those other markets has been and is, like all EU nations, encompassed within those trade agreements. Come B-Day, we lose the clout, protection and reciprocal ACCESS which comes from EU-wide agreements with other global traders.

Sure, we're then free to negotiate our own arrangements, but how long do you think that will take? The government is currently trying to negotiate access to the EU free trade zone as part of it's declared exit strategy. How do you think that's going?

As a single nation with a predominantly service-based economy that, come B-Day, will no longer offer trans-global traders ACCESS to the EU the UK will have to formulate, negotiate, agree, and ratify individual agreements with China, Korea, Russia, Canada etc etc - and of course, with the EU itself. Now then, who do you think will be the dominant party in any of those prospective individual trade negotiations, that is; which party will need the trade the most and which party will be in the dominant economic position that allows them to lay down the primary conditions of any agreement? When it comes to forming new trading arrangements will bad-deals be better than no-deals?

To listen to the clean-break Brexit orthodoxy you'd think that any and every trading entity will be biting our hands off while bending over backwards to get a toehold in the newly revitalised economy of a trade-independent UK, but in realistic terms, what do we have to offer China, Korea, Russia, Canada, the EU et al other than a relatively small number of consumers for their goods and services? What will happen, for example, to the UK's pork pie industry when our supermarkets are flooded with cheap foreign knock-offs of the classic Melton Mowbray? Are we going to initiate a protectionist policy to ensure the continuing existence of traditional British pork pies or are we going to let the markets decide? What industries or service sectors do you think a future UK government will allow to be killed off in order to secure trade agreements with larger, more productive economies?

The alternative, of course, is to ignore those who'll bend us over and strike deals with underdeveloped nations and newly emerging markets, with the transitional economies of the second- and third-world, with nations with lower standards and lower costs - you know, shithole countries and dodgy regimes and the like. Do you think this will plug the gap falling out of the EU trade zone will create, and if it won't how much of a shortfall do you foresee and over what kind of time period?

Now factor in what you said last week: that a no-deal Brexit will initiate a period of "real austerity" (as opposed to the "fake austerity" or, perhaps, the "austerity-lite" we're currently enjoying) which will actually be good for the nation because "it will put is back in touch with the real world." How economically fit do you think a UK under the new "real austerity" is going to be? Will we be able to consume enough as-yet-to-be-determined foreign goods and services to successfully drive its own economy, at least to a level which maintains relative economic stability, let alone to levels which proceed unto the glories and heights foretold in the First Book Of Brexitarianism?

You know, it's almost as if the Brexitarian Brethren haven't even thought it through.

[Scot Dutchy]

Brian entirely agree and well said

Of course some Brexiteers have thought it through and those are the ones with the billions stashed away in offshore accounts. They will do anything to avoid the new EU wealth taxes on offshore money. I have seen figures that it would cost Moggsy almost half a billion euro's. As for the country they could not care less. Their world is secure.

[Brian Peacock]

Like any religion Brexitarianism encourages its flock to accept certain unsupported claims and assertions. In that the self-appointed priestly class seeks to oblige the faithful masses into an unthinking adherence to a dogma they do not feel bound by themselves.

[Svartalf]

but does accepting those claims make them become true? Many religions make self fulfilling prophecies...

[mistermack]

I've never read such claptrap. All this stuff about dominance in negotiations is bollocks.

Tescos are gigantic, compared to me. That means fuck-all. If Tescos demand too much, I don't go there. Simple as that. You lot don't seem to have even the most basic grasp of economics and deals.

That's why the no -deal option is so important. You don't give Tesco a guarantee that you will buy all your stuff there, and then ask them how much. I would have thought even you lot would be able to follow that.

[Brian Peacock]

I've never read such claptrap. All this stuff about dominance in negotiations is bollocks.

Tescos are gigantic, compared to me. That means fuck-all. If Tescos demand too much, I don't go there. Simple as that. You lot don't seem to have even the most basic grasp of economics and deals.

That's why the no -deal option is so important. You don't give Tesco a guarantee that you will buy all your stuff there, and then ask them how much. I would have thought even you lot would be able to follow that.

That's an overly-simplistic, fallacious comparison, one that confuses consumerism for the kinds of international trade arrangements upon which consumerism relies.

Seems to me the only means by which you have to qualify your own opinion is to dismiss challenges to it out of hand, to call them crap or claptrap etc. That's essentially a religious debating tactic: "We are correct just because we are. Therefore you are wrong, and to say otherwise is tantamount to heresy." Except Brexitarians don't call their opponents heretics, they call them enemies of the people, saboteurs, mutineers, Project Fear, and Remoaners instead. Brexitarians denigrate their opponents in order to avoid meeting their challenges. They just can't be be arsed to put the work into supporting their own claims and assertions.

Forgive them Maggie - for they know not what they do.

[Scot Dutchy]

I've never read such claptrap. All this stuff about dominance in negotiations is bollocks.

Tescos are gigantic, compared to me. That means fuck-all. If Tescos demand too much, I don't go there. Simple as that. You lot don't seem to have even the most basic grasp of economics and deals.

That's why the no -deal option is so important. You don't give Tesco a guarantee that you will buy all your stuff there, and then ask them how much. I would have thought even you lot would be able to follow that.

Talk about claptrap!
Your Brexiteer mind set is not able to comprehend the first basic principles about trade and trade agreements:
"Me big guy you little guy. I dont need your trade. Fuck off"

[mistermack]

And yet you push this simplistic notion, that the biggest can always dictate terms, a notion that you have pulled right out of your arse.
You can make these sweeping claims, unsupported by reality, and that's all fine.

Funny isn't it, how South Korea has managed to survive without being in the EU. And Taiwan.
And every country that ISN'T in the EU. How do they do it? Is it some kind of sorcery?

[Scot Dutchy]

And yet you push this simplistic notion, that the biggest can always dictate terms, a notion that you have pulled right out of your arse.
You can make these sweeping claims, unsupported by reality, and that's all fine.

Funny isn't it, how South Korea has managed to survive without being in the EU. And Taiwan.
And every country that ISN'T in the EU. How do they do it? Is it some kind of sorcery?

You obviously never studied these countries otherwise you would not being giving out more claptrap. Do you want to live like them? I doubt it.

[Scot Dutchy]

Moggsy is being told off.

Fellow Tories accuse Rees-Mogg of trying to blackmail PM on Brexit

Ministers rebuke Brexiter after he wrote that Theresa May risked splitting her party

[Scot Dutchy]

Surprise surprise! Once again pure arrogance. Wanting to change one of the four freedoms (yes remember those).

UK's latest Brexit proposal is unrealistic, say EU officials

EU sources who have seen drafts of white paper say proposals would never be accepted

A draft of Theresa May’s Brexit plan has already been dismissed as unrealistic by senior EU officials, who say the UK has no chance of changing the European Union’s founding principles.

The prime minister is gathering her squabbling ministers at Chequers on Friday for a one-day discussion to thrash out the UK’s future relationship with the EU. But EU sources who have seen drafts of the long-awaited British white paper said the proposals would never be accepted.

“We read the white paper and we read ‘cake’,” an EU official told the Guardian, a reference to Boris Johnson’s one-liner of being “pro having [cake] and pro-eating it”. Since the British EU referendum, “cake” has entered the Brussels lexicon to describe anything seen as an unrealistic or far-fetched demand.

[Scot Dutchy]

Surprise surprise Moggsy back stabbing.

UK-US trade deal discussed in secret meeting between Brexiteers and top Trump advisor

'It was a conversation between friends and, you know, we do tend to do a lot of conspiracies, don’t we, in the media at times. There’s no conspiracy here, it was just a general conversation'

Pull the other one; it has bells.

[Brian Peacock]

May to a room full of Tory donors last night...

“We each have a choice to make. Will we come together and stand together as a party, as a government and as a country?

“Will we find the boldness, the courage and the discipline to unite as one for the good of our nation and fellow citizens? Or will we be divided and allow the scale of the challenge, the complexity of the questions to overwhelm us?”

The high priests of the Brexitarian faith will schism rather than acknowledge Mrs May's authority over them. Rees-Mogg in the Telegraph...

“Theresa May must stand firm for what she herself has promised. One former Tory leader, Sir Robert Peel, decided to break his manifesto pledge and passed legislation with the majority of his party voting the other way.

“This left the Conservatives out of office for 28 years. At least he did so for a policy that works. At Chequers, [May] must stick to her righteous cause and deliver what she has said she would, she must use her undoubted grace to persevere.”