‘Order! Order!’: Parliament Speaker Is Brexit’s Surprise Star and Villain

[FlyingPenguin]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/worl ... r=msft_msn

[wvjohn]

Brexit is completely nuts. I've been following it pretty closely for at least 18 months. I have learned a ton about international trade and about the british system of ogvernment (or lack thereof). Imagine california leaving the USA and saying that it will be simple to do trade deals with the rest of the world. It seems that Brexit has some validity in terms of returning governance to the UK - but the whole idea that a small country is not going to end up aligned with one of the major trade blocs - US, China, or the EU is a pipedream. There are a lot of parallels with Trumpism. The biggest contributor to the leave vote was the "foreigners taking our job, getting free benefits, etc" Truth is that the brits never have kept any meaningful records about who comes in and goes out of the country. They have no idea who is there. No national ID system. They are deporting people who have lived there for 50 years if they can't prove they have a right to stay. Because the population is aging, they need immigration to cover a lot of jobs, from agri workers to doctors. They have sold off their industrial sector, and many of the remaing factories are foreign owned (BMW makes the Mini, Airbus makes wings there, etc. Japanese car manufacturers have invested there because it's part of the EU and ALL the production lines are just-in-time models. If the Brits crash out of the EU, all of that JIT stuff stops. Many of the pols there are completely clueless as to how world trade works. It could be the cluster**** of the 21st century.

[FlyingPenguin]

Yeah. I can't see how they come out of this with anything less than a dumpster fire. You've got certain groups - like fisherman - who want out at any cost because they don't like having to share their fishing areas with fishermen from the rest of the EU, but that's something that could be negotiated AS an EU member.

London is/was the banking capital of Europe and now the bank main offices are going to relocate. You've got the northern Ireland border problem. It's a mess.

Maybe it's too much of a conspiracy theory, but I wonder why no one has brought up the possibility that the PM Theresa May could be purposely sabotaging Brexit to force the government to have another referendum to revoke Brexit?

[wvjohn]

At this point it's impossible to figure out who's on first with the Brits. Greenpeace did an interesting bit of research on the fishing, and much of the UK quota is leased out to other countries by a hndful of families who are known as "slipper skippers" since they don't need to leave the house. From what I've read all the fish in the area move around, so that agreements are they only way to make sure one country doesn't overfish a particfular stock when it is nearby. The Brit fishing industry is miniscule compared to other industry and London. The Brits eat very little of what they catch, most is sold to Europe, which will be a problem is they crash out because it is part of their single market trade deal with the EU.

The Brit tabloids are constantly full of theories that May is a secret remainer who is trying to sabotage. Now the leavers are blaming the remainers for not preventing the leavers from totally screw*** the pooch . Leave won, they refused to consult/work with anybody else, chased the best talent out of the government, and are looking for scapegoats.

This is a long but very good summary /speech by Ivan Rogers who was the ambassador to the EU - he quit when the morons took over.

https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2018/12/13 ... on-brexit/

[wvjohn]

transcript of speech by Sir Ivan Rogers on Brexit. Long 21 pages. Like his previous speeches, he nails it.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/european-institut ... 012019.pdf