I found this interesting. It’s mainly about how Brexit has introduced extra red tape when dealing with Europe. The article says how the EU is the UK’s largest trading partner, with the value of trade being over double that of the next largest trading partner: the USA.
Here are some quotes:
The days of freedom of movement for people, goods, and services between the UK and its neighbours are long gone.
The British economy has lost out and British citizens and businesses suffer from greater bureaucratic botheration.
Nor has immigration into the UK gone down since leaving the EU. The numbers have actually gone up, with people from Commonwealth countries, including India, Pakistan and Nigeria, more than compensating for EU citizens who used to come and go.
Dark money is involved with pushing the UK away from Europe, if Farage gets in during the next GE we’re fucked as a nation. Try and talk to everyone you know to (especially at a GE) convince them to not vote reform, they wont solve anything and are far worse than the alternatives. I can see the Union breaking up if we go down that path as well. (Id get a Scottish passport anyways so not much complaining from me but alas its still not ideal).
I’d break up the Union if that happened and I’m English. How about the People’s Republic of Yorkshire (there are more of us than Scots or Irish - I checked)?
I don’t think the Union is inherently bad, how its structured currently is absolutely rotten but keeping the Union and federalising it more is likely better than a total disintegration. This’d require moving focus away from purely London however and not neglecting the post industrial “mothballed” populations constantly which I don’t see happening.
From the perspective of London the focus is entirely on the shires. Every small minded thought they have dominates the agenda
From the perspective of a provincial, London gets all the investment, all the opportunity & a outsized share of the decent jobs. The plebians in the shires are getting pissed off due to this and are voting for really stupid shit (likely in part due to the education budgets in these regions being lower in real terms than London & the South East), the fact they gain progress in these endeavours shows how badly a huge swathe of the country has been neglected.
The fact that whoever they vote for then seem to just ignore these areas wishes (cough Labour screwing over farmers & failing to reverse Thatcherism during the Blair years cough cough) and continue the focusing on the South East merely throws fuel on the fire. And any wishes they do enact are often propagandised self harming actions which do nothing but serve the ruling classes.
In many post industrial areas the poverty is getting pretty horrific, there are very few jobs that actually allow them to live decent lives due to cost of living with their surroundings quite literally crumbling. Where I’m from (post industrial ex Mining & Fishing area) you cant even try and start your own business as (especially commerical) properties have been bought up by London based equity firms to serve as assets to borrow against which they maintain via artifically high rents that people in these areas could never afford.
Im aware this isnt the average Londoners fault but many of Londons inhabitants fail to understand exactly where this frustration is coming from & I often hear “but London is the only net contributor” which is true but this is directly due to intentional neglect of the other parts of Britain. Vicious feedback loop.
If we could focus on other areas of the country it’d likely also benefit Londoners as the pressure on your housing market would be reduced due to people being able to move elsewhere for decent employment and oppourtunity.
I really think you’ve misunderstood the nature and benefits of “investment in London”.
You can point at crossrail and endless tower blocks as in estment, but these largely cater to a commuter class of stockbrokers from outside London. In the shires.
You seem aware of this, perhaps you’re not aware of the poverty figures for parts of London are genuinely shocking, even compared to other poor parts of the country, largely due to housing costs.
By accepting the media framing of this group , exploiting londoners for their own benefit, as “London” you are hurting our cause. Providing opportunity and ending squalor across the UK needs a focus on the people not how close they are to those benefiting.
I’ve already addressed how putting more investment into other areas of the country would directly benefit Londons housing situation due to it being such a over centralised hub for well paying jobs & Im fully aware London itself suffers from severe inequality.
However the budgets London & the South East gets for virtually everything are signficiantly higher than elsewhere in the country, I genuinely think that via investing in Britains secondary cities more (which compared to French & German secondary cities they are extremely underinvested in and unproductive) it’d benefit the entire country and serve to cool off the political radicalism that has been festering for a solid decade now.
Over centralisation on London is a well understood issue for the UK & we are a very unusual country by European standards for how centralised we are. Even the way the living wage is calculated is a bit unfair, there’s a special allocated “London” living wage due to high costs of living while other areas of the country such as Bristol have similar CoL expenditures but no preferential treatment in the living wage.
The transport network both road and rail is overcentralised around London even, all the major airports (with exception of Manchester) with decent numbers of destinations are also overcentralised.
The fact that London has the only signficiant underground system in the country is absolute insanity and a perfect representation of the issue (Yes I know the Weegies have one but its a tiny loop that hasnt been expanded for over a century).
Yeah… As a Midlander, bring back Mercia too.
Undoubtedly leaving the union has brought additional trade barriers and hassle for a lot of businesses including travel chaos and the indignation of queues at passport control. But I think this opinion piece is rather click bait and not exactly written in full seriousness.
Unwary travellers returning from the EU risk having their sandwiches and local delicacies, such as cheese, confiscated as they enter the UK.
Ahh the real blight of Brexit. No more cheese and wine runs into France. What on earth did we do to ourselves! Idiots 😉.
The new jeopardy has come about because last weekend, the government quietly “extended” its “ban on personal meat imports to protect farmers from foot and mouth”.
Err I’m sorry but I’m old enough to remember being in the EU and having food items regularly restricted from being carried over and sold on the continent because of health and sanitation reasons. That’s completely normal and being inside or outside of the EU isn’t going to stop that. Unless the article is trying to suggest that the Foot and Mouth outbreak in the EU is a conspiracy from the British government? Is it? Oh shit reading a bit more it is suggesting a conspiracy. 😅
The UK’s ability to impose the ban is not “a benefit of Brexit”.
Has someone suggested that it is? I have obviously missed this. No-one is suggesting it is because of Brexit the UK can impose a ban on health grounds that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to impose inside the EU. At least not the news sources I have read. Maybe on Twitter and Facebook amongst the gammon legions?
Meanwhile, the UK and the EU are making travel between them more bothersome for their citizens and businesses.
This October, the EU’s much-delayed EES or Entry Exit System is due to come into force. Every foreigner will be required to provide biometric information - including fingerprints and scans - every time they enter or leave the Schengen area.
I’ll agree with this. A complete sham and I wish the world didn’t use this systems to fleece travellers. However most of the world is now moving towards systems like this. We like to think it’s just the evil US that have an ESTA style system but more and more countries have this now. Canada has one, New Zealand has one. The EU and the UK not having one is, frankly, weird given this. In my opinion 😊.
The British economy has lost out and British citizens and businesses suffer from greater bureaucratic botheration.
Let’s not pretend that the UK economy inside the EU would be lightyears ahead of where it is now. It would still be flat lining and we’d still be bobbing in and out of potential recession. People speak like being in the EU we would be bucking recessions and world economic downturns and growing year on year by 3%+. If Germany isn’t doing that, if France isn’t doing that then what the fuck are people thinking?
Meanwhile, minister Nick Thomas Symonds and the civil servant Mike Ellam are engaged in low-profile negotiations with Europe - which could be of far greater economic and social significance.
The public will have to wait to see what progress is being made at least until the first-ever EU-UK summit, due to take place on 19 May this year.
Personally I hope these talks reduce the friction between the two unions. Improved travel arrangements would go an awful long way to promote more good willing. Realistically, and I’ve said this many times, Labour are not going to be the ones to promote rejoining. I would be staggered if they joined the EEA even. The UK needs PR and needs to use that power of PR to put both Conservative and Labour into a minority with pro European parties making up a coalition majority with the sole aim of either joining the EEA or full EU. Labour certainly aren’t going to take us out again but they won’t champion bringing us back in either. The unions have never liked the cheaper labour free movement brings with it and as long as they control the Labour party things won’t change.
On the economic side I’m inclined to agree with you that I don’t think the EU is a miracle growth cure. However, you could argue that Brexit has helped sink all boats (at least a bit). I think it’s easy for people to dismiss the UK’s importance to Europe, but just like the US tariffs I suspect it hurts everybody.
Honestly, your well reasoned and fairly balanced comment is a breath of fresh air to me. Specially in the stale gas cloud of Brexit hate that always seems to dominate online. Along with the majority I voted for Brexit and I think it was a great idea then and still is now. The flack I’ve taken and the friendships that had to end (not on my account I have to say) because of it has been unfortunate but here we are. Thank you for your post.
I don’t see anything in Mannys post that was “pro-Brexit”. Its a stupid idea now, and it was a stupid idea then.
The only things I see are that all the complaints from the article are stupid because they have nothing to do with Brexit. There will always be a “cloud of Brexit hate”, because there are only downsides dreamt as positives by the deranged. However being in the EU will not help the country with a recession when Tories, and Labour don’t do anything that would actually help with a recession.
No.
Is that the best response?
I’m still waiting for Boris to give us bendy bananas, or was that just bullshit?
Nope.
Starmer seems to have done an alright job in getting closer to Europe, and European leaders seem more warm to him than our previous few leaders (to put it lightly).
I just wish he’d been a bit bolder and not ruled out things like rejoining the Customs Union during campaigning. I get why it was done, the press would’ve called him undemocratic and other such nonsense, but in case Kier hasn’t noticed, the press doesn’t like him anyway, so don’t pander to them!
I seriously hope Labour drop the “No rejoining the EU or CU” pledge for next election. It’s only doing us harm.
As for the patting Trump on the head and offering state visits thing… Meh. I don’t like seeing it either, but if gestures like that help avoid Trump having a hissy fit and economically destroying the UK, then I’m all for taking the pragmatic approach. If the choice is ever between the US and Europe, though, the choice is obvious 🇪🇺.
For me the problem with being scared of Trump “ruining our economy” is that he might just do it anyway. In fact, the more we play along with him, the more we become dependent on the US, and the more we prop up the order he’s trying to bring about.
The EU and the rest of the world are having success pushing back on the US (see: 90 day delay on tariffs) yet in the UK we act like we’re nothing but powerless mewling kittens who must act cute to survive.
But we are becoming more self reliant, and we are collaborating with non-US countries more.
Ah that’s a good one, do you know any more?
I think you’re right it would be “nonsense” if the press said that joining the customs union would be “undemocratic”. The referendum only asked whether the UK should leave the EU - people didn’t vote explicitly to leave the customs union or single market.
But sucking up to fascists and bullies ALWAYS works, right?
