Overheard in the kitchen:
The Chairman is blundering around in the kitchen and walks into the open oven door, which is ajar, kneecapping himself in the process.
Chairman: "Bugger! I've just done a Brexit."
Hay: "No you haven't - you've merely injured yourself. If you'd done a Brexit you'd have harmed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of others by not looking where you're going and seeing what's in front of your eyes."
Hay and I are of a similar mind...
Was having an argument with several Brexiteers yesterday and was given the same old tropes - I even heard an MP saying the same on Radio 4; "We buy more from the EU than they buy from us, so it a No Deal will hurt the EU more."
EU GDP is $17,900 Bn; UK GDP is $2,622 Bn. That makes EU GDP without the UK $15,728 Bn – 5.8 times as large as the UK economy - that's quite a buffer.
In broad figures, the UK exports $312 Bn to the EU while the EU exports $443 Bn to the UK, so while it’s true that we buy more from them in absolute terms, our exports to the EU comprise 11.9% of our GDP while the EU’s exports to the UK comprise only 2.8% of EU GDP, the vast majority of that coming from Germany – 2.46% of German GDP.
Simple maths - no, not even maths but arithmetic - shows that we would be hit 4 times harder by a complete stoppage in trade than the EU, not that all trade would suffer.
Ireland would be hit almost as bad as the UK, but at least it has the rest of the EU on which to call for financial assistance - the UK would be on its own. The EU and, more importantly, the Eurozone have shown previously that they will do anything necessary to protect the integrity of the bloc.
Given N.I. voted Remain, the secession of N.I. would be a distinct possibility.
I found the above graphic, which clearly illustrates the effect.
As we have seen, German car makers will not come to the UK's rescue by lobbying for a special deal for the very simple fact the single market is more important to them than the UK alone, and they realise that cutting a deal for the UK would risk the collapse of the EU and put the rest of their EU market at risk from Japanese predation. The UK is less than a quarter of German car makers' total EU sales.
It's no accident that many British entrepreneurs (Mike Ashley, Tim Smith, etc.), tax exiles and the financiers who fund them (e.g. the Rees-Moggs of this world), who specialise in buying failed companies and turning them around by stripping them down and paying minimum wages to their staff, are ardent Brexiteers. It’s called Disaster Capitalism - whereby small groups will often do very, very well by buying bankrupt businesses or having competition wiped out, while large sections of the population are left with decaying public infrastructure, declining incomes and increased unemployment. Professional company managers who run listed, British exporting companies are overwhelmingly anti-Brexit, while billionaire company owners looking to swell their empires and dodge taxes are pro-Brexit – think about it.
Now you can disagree with the above, and I welcome rebuttals based on evidence or facts; but if your response is simply; “Rubbish,” then your opinion remains worthless.
EU GDP is $17,900 Bn; UK GDP is $2,622 Bn. That makes EU GDP without the UK $15,728 Bn – 5.8 times as large as the UK economy - that's quite a buffer.
In broad figures, the UK exports $312 Bn to the EU while the EU exports $443 Bn to the UK, so while it’s true that we buy more from them in absolute terms, our exports to the EU comprise 11.9% of our GDP while the EU’s exports to the UK comprise only 2.8% of EU GDP, the vast majority of that coming from Germany – 2.46% of German GDP.
Simple maths - no, not even maths but arithmetic - shows that we would be hit 4 times harder by a complete stoppage in trade than the EU, not that all trade would suffer.
Ireland would be hit almost as bad as the UK, but at least it has the rest of the EU on which to call for financial assistance - the UK would be on its own. The EU and, more importantly, the Eurozone have shown previously that they will do anything necessary to protect the integrity of the bloc.
Given N.I. voted Remain, the secession of N.I. would be a distinct possibility.
As we have seen, German car makers will not come to the UK's rescue by lobbying for a special deal for the very simple fact the single market is more important to them than the UK alone, and they realise that cutting a deal for the UK would risk the collapse of the EU and put the rest of their EU market at risk from Japanese predation. The UK is less than a quarter of German car makers' total EU sales.
It's no accident that many British entrepreneurs (Mike Ashley, Tim Smith, etc.), tax exiles and the financiers who fund them (e.g. the Rees-Moggs of this world), who specialise in buying failed companies and turning them around by stripping them down and paying minimum wages to their staff, are ardent Brexiteers. It’s called Disaster Capitalism - whereby small groups will often do very, very well by buying bankrupt businesses or having competition wiped out, while large sections of the population are left with decaying public infrastructure, declining incomes and increased unemployment. Professional company managers who run listed, British exporting companies are overwhelmingly anti-Brexit, while billionaire company owners looking to swell their empires and dodge taxes are pro-Brexit – think about it.
Now you can disagree with the above, and I welcome rebuttals based on evidence or facts; but if your response is simply; “Rubbish,” then your opinion remains worthless.
3 comments:
Dear chairman Bill,
I get your economic points of view - which are put very well .. but what is your opinion on being ruled by unelected officials in Brussels which is the crux of the problem in a lot of brexiteers eyes.
Permanent Secretaries in the civil service aren’t elected and neither are EU Commissioners – they perform the same functions. The President of the European Council has no executive powers, so not applicable. The President of the European Commission is nominated by the European Council (the elected heads of state of the member countries) and formally elected by the European Parliament – elected by our representatives! It’s always someone who has held a political position in their own country, and therefore someone from the equivalent of the House of Lords. The Prime Minister of the UK is appointed by the Queen, and much of his or her power is actually legally Royal power – unelected power. In theory, the Queen can choose whomsoever she likes, but in practice it must be someone who commands the confidence of the House of Commons, which means that the leader of whichever political party holds a majority will be chosen as PM and asked to form a Government – that can be an unelected member of the House of Lords, and has been on many occasions in the past (Palmerston, North, Wellington, Salisbury, Alec Douglas-Home). The leader doesn't have to be an MP, but these days, by convention, not law, they are. The Church of England, an unelected body, runs one in four primary and secondary schools in England; the Archbishop of Canterbury is selected by the PM on behalf of the Queen; its bishops sit in the House of Lords, making Britain the only country - with the exception of Iran - to have unelected clerics automatically sitting in the legislature. Gordon Brown’s administration contained 8 ministers who were not even parliamentarians – the Government of All the Talents, or GOATS. Leavers make a big issue of so-called unelected bureaucrats, but across the EU the average turnout for European Parliament elections is 42.6%, with UK turnout being 35.6%, indicating how unimportant the elected bureaucrats are in the minds of the British people, never mind about the unelected ones. The simple solution to the so-called Democratic Deficit is to make the EU into a fully-fledged state – which is total anathema to Leavers. To cap it all, Liam Fox is under fire over £1m-plus plans to appoint new, unelected “trade commissioners” around the world, on gold-plated packages normally handed to the UK’s ambassadors. You can argue they will be fighting the UK’s corner, but you can’t logically then argue about EU Commissioners being unelected when the UK’s own Commissioners will also be unelected; and even then, there are competing interests within the UK between England, Scotland, Wales and NI. Conclusion: Brexiteers are hoisted by their own petard and this argument is an excuse, rather than a reason; it is a fig leaf to mask other reasons for their position.
And when did we ever vote for officials on the WTO?
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