Will Brexit continue after covid lockdown?
- Thread starter Karimbo
- Start date
there is a difference between the result and the problems this country will face as a result of brexit.
lots of brexiteers want to believe brexit 'got done' on the 31st Jan.
it did not
the UK left the political institutions is all
that has almost zero impact on business, those issues wont surface until the transition ends.
until then brexiteers can go on believing the propaganda slogans.
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You mean until then remainers can go on believing conspiracy theories?
Leaving the political institutions is significant because they EU is a political institution. It is also a lot harder to reverse now.
The massive disruptions of lockdown will put the relatively minor and purposeful changes of Brexit into perspective, and being less globalised looks a lot more attractive now.
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Further confirmation of the effect of Brexit on Nissan's position in the UK https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52829348
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D
Darren_Ssc
Yes I realised that after posting, how foolish of me. I feel really ashamed and embarrassed about it.
Happy?
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They have also considered increasing production if they can get more UK market share if EU imports become more expensive: https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/nissan-could-use-brexit-increase-uk-market-share-paper-says
They denied it but the wording was not a complete denial (they denied it was their plan, but not that it was something they were considering) and I think the Yes Minister principle of "never believe anything until its been officially denied" applies.
They denied it but the wording was not a complete denial (they denied it was their plan, but not that it was something they were considering) and I think the Yes Minister principle of "never believe anything until its been officially denied" applies.
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To return to the opening topic, for a moment, I believe that Brexit will still happen. My understanding is that the EU have offered up an extension to the negotiation period, but I would be surprised if our government took them up on that.
The legislation is in place. Provisions are in place for a no deal departure from the EU. Unless someone proactively brings out some new legislation, we are going.
I remember saying that it will always be hard to attribute economic consequences to one event, as there are always multiple factors in play. Right now, that looks like a massive understatement! Brexit is not the biggie, economically, just at the moment!
Of course, it will still be significant. And we will still be not allowed to have objective, calm, and useful debates about that without being shouted out of court.
The legislation is in place. Provisions are in place for a no deal departure from the EU. Unless someone proactively brings out some new legislation, we are going.
I remember saying that it will always be hard to attribute economic consequences to one event, as there are always multiple factors in play. Right now, that looks like a massive understatement! Brexit is not the biggie, economically, just at the moment!
Of course, it will still be significant. And we will still be not allowed to have objective, calm, and useful debates about that without being shouted out of court.
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One big problem with extension is what difference it will make to financial terms - will we need to contribute to EU covid expenses such as rescue packages. I do not know, but its likely to cost, and cost more because of covid.
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Yes. An extension to the interim arrangements under which we are now operating would almost certainly require us to continue making payments. I am fairly sure (now I will be proved wrong!) that our government are likely not to even entertain an extension.
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Its been a lot longer than six months since the sky was supposed to fall. In 2016 the Chancellor of the the Exchequer warned us that even a vote for Brexit would lead to a rapid collapse of the economy and a huge rise in unemployment.
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Brexit or no Brexit I have little time for these big companies and in effect their lobbying for state support by any means necessary. Given them too much air time plays into their hands. Nissan is well known for its direct line to No. 10 and its ability to get the UK taxpayer to pay for what it was likely going to do anyway. I have no doubts they have/had legitimate concerns over supply chains etc. but also I have little doubt they wouldn't use that as leverage to wring further concessions out of UK plc. A perennial threat to pack up and leave. Sadly not just Nissan but many other big companies too. Its why government ought to protect SMEs, we ain't big enough to play these silly games, we just pay our taxes and shut up.
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T
The Byre
Disasters take decades to happen and decades to repair.
WW1 was predicted by Bismark at least 15 years before it broke out. He even predicted how it would be triggered ("Some damn stupidity in the Balkans!")
The rise of fascism and WW2 was just as predictable.
The coming economic crisis is even more predictable. QE was a bad idea in 2010 and the subsequent wholesale abandonment of all fiscal responsibility in the face of media hysteria over C19 by governments and central banks almost everywhere will have to bring about an economic disaster.
In 2020, US deficit spending by the US government accounted for 15.5% of their total GDP (OECD figures). For the UK, it was a whopping 17% of GDP. One is forced to ask the obvious question - why bother collecting taxes when about 60% of government revenue came from the BoE's money machine?
Now central banks everywhere (and the US and UK in particular) are seeing the fruits of their arrogance. Inflation.
Inflation is everywhere and all that the various arms of government can do is bend the rules for the CPI figures in a last-ditch attempt to keep a lid on reality. The prices of everything except food and computers have gone through the roof over the past ten years of QE at lunacy levels.
Now add the effects of Brexit to that dangerous mix, light the blue touch-paper and stand well clear.
"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night!"
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In particular a particular effect of Brexit on Inflation will be the sudden realisation there were more EU citizens in the UK than realised by anyone (even the campaign group called itself the 3million when there appears to be 5m) and a lot of those worked in the food and distribution industry - covid saw a lot of them leave the country (or in the case of seasonal fame workers and peripatetic HGV drivers just change their area of operation to exclude the UK)
The current new visa/work permit regs require a min salary of a bit under £26k which is far higher than a lot of job in the transport/logistics sector - so even ignoring that figure lack of supply will drive up salaries, a rise in salaries in the food distribution chain all the way from farm to shop shelf will by the pure market forces mean an increase in food costs, food costs are a large part of the standard measures of inflation.
This is not a pro/anti Brexit post just a totally foreseeable effect of the resultant changes in labour supply. (PS as i have posted before, up until 2010 we already had an Aus style points system in the highly skilled migrant program - but to resurrect that already existent and easy to administer system would be admitting we did this before anyway)
And it is not like you can magic new HGV drivers out of thin air - even training new ones takes time, not least as they have to have a full medical before licence issue and most Dr's aren't doing them at present as they aren't considered emergency critical appointments. In the past (think 20 yrs) a lot of drivers had taken their initial tests in the military and became drivers when they left, not least as the military had exemption form certain age limits and staged licencing requirements. But with the slimming of the military a lot of uniformed driving jobs are now subbed back out to the private sector (Driver Hire near us continually had an ad in their window for drivers with experience during heavy tank transporters for agency work) - this has the double wammy of decreasing supply of new drivers and increasing the demand on existing uk based ones.
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D
Deleted member 59730
The First world war started in Ilfracombe!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ar...curious-tale-of-the-kaiser-on-the-devon-beach
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The economy always has cycles, QE is bad overall, eventually, but perfect for politicians who prefer to kick the can down the road rather than get a real agreement.
Brexit was rushed through, the EU deliberately try to sabotage a decent agreement, to send a message to the other 26/7 countries, the UK unfortunately did not have the minerals to refuse the deal on offer.
Even so, in the long run this will be more to the EU’s disadvantage than the UK’s, but there is a lot of pain to come, not just because of QE and Brexit, but the deliberate crashing of many industries due to this Covid pandemic, which has resulted in no further increases in average number of deaths over 5 years.
Brexit was rushed through, the EU deliberately try to sabotage a decent agreement, to send a message to the other 26/7 countries, the UK unfortunately did not have the minerals to refuse the deal on offer.
Even so, in the long run this will be more to the EU’s disadvantage than the UK’s, but there is a lot of pain to come, not just because of QE and Brexit, but the deliberate crashing of many industries due to this Covid pandemic, which has resulted in no further increases in average number of deaths over 5 years.
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The thing that gets me is that we already had a perfectly good points based system (the only issue it really had was points for English skills that could be gamed due to the poor qualification of awarding bodies) but because of a seeming ideological passion to assume anything prior was tainted we decided to reinvent the wheel and have come up with something at best the same but more expensive to implement
By the way this 2020 Govt publication covering salary thresholds etc has an interesting table on page 176 showing they knew exactly what was going to happen in food manufacturing and in warehousing
https://assets.publishing.service.g...d_Salary_Thresholds_Report_MAC_word_FINAL.pdf
"Table 6.6 below presents the same analysis but by sector rather than occupation. Again, we see that those sectors with high shares of EEA migrants also have some of the highest ineligibility rates, resulting in larger adjustments to employment. Equally those sectors that experience the largest changes in labour supply tend to be lower productivity, implying a relative shift in employment towards higher productivity sectors. Health, a sector often singled out as being of particular concern is one of the sectors where the predicted impact is smallest though any impact may be of greater concern"
(my take on this is that is shows a lot of EEA migrants took the lower paid jobs allowing uk nationals to take the higher roles)
Also starting p45 (p45 of pdf, 42 of document) of the same document covers the HSMP and basically concludes this (PBS is points based system)
"Many stakeholders found it hard to express a view on PBS because they were not sure know what it was, or what it would be used for."
So there you go - we reinvented the wheel knowing it would hamstring some industries but mainly because interested people didn't understand we already did this before so couldn't say whether it was good or not (PS the appalling grammar in that quote is a direct lift from the govt publication)
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Trickle down economics for SMEs? Not going to work.
It would be far better to spend this money on education, infrastructure, and health than to businesses. All those create the conditions that make businesses succeed.
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Well it does a bit - as in an employed Nissan worker will be spending more on haircuts and at the sandwich shop etc but nothing on par with the amount being spent by the govt.
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