(opinion) Don't buy the bluff. Here's the truth about no-deal Brexit

[nitpicker]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/03/no-deal-brexit-crashing-out-uk-europe

Don’t buy the bluff. Here’s the truth about no-deal Brexit

Anand Menon

Tue 3 Sep 2019 06.00 BST Last modified on Tue 3 Sep 2019 10.19 BST

No-deal Brexit has never loomed larger than in the current moment. Boris Johnson has said that Britain will leave the European Union on 31 October. His entire political strategy is based on the credibility of his threat to follow through, regardless of whether he has come to an agreement with the remaining 27 members. As a result, the need to understand what no deal may mean in practice has become increasingly urgent.

At the UK in a Changing Europe, we have tried to address this: our report on it is out on Wednesday. We don’t have any inside information. We’re not privy to material that others do not have. But we do have a team of scholars who have spent their careers studying the relationship between the UK and the EU, and so are well placed to consider the potential implications if the UK were to leave in this manner.

It doesn’t make for comforting reading. Johnson is set to present no deal as an opportunity for closure – a “let’s just get it over with” moment. But there’s a stark difference between the relative clarity of what no deal means in legal terms and what it might actually herald in practice. It is not a neat way of resolving a complex problem. On the contrary, it is a way of rendering a complex problem infinitely more so.

Legally, the UK will cease to be a member state, EU laws will cease to apply, and the UK will be treated like a “third country” by the union. A deal would have meant a transition period during which trade would continue as now while the two sides negotiated a future relationship. No deal means a cliff edge; the full panoply of checks and tariffs will be imposed on our exports to the EU, and cross-border trade in services will face new restrictions.

So trade with the EU will become more difficult and more costly, with those costs being potentially catastrophic for smaller companies that do not have the margins to absorb them.

But beyond these direct impacts, much is uncertain. How will households and businesses react? Will there be a broader collapse in business and consumer confidence, hitting demand and investment, or will consumers, as they have in the past, shrug off short-term shocks? And more broadly, what will the political dynamics of no deal look like?

Many of the worse possible consequences – such as severe disruption to road and air transport links – are not on the table in the short term because the EU has unilaterally put into place temporary workarounds. Would these – some of which expire as soon as the end of December, just two months into no deal – survive a political confrontation over the UK’s “divorce bill”?

Similarly, while there is no prospect of EU citizens in the UK becoming irregular migrants overnight, the government’s recent incoherence on what no deal means for freedom of movement has made many feel, understandably, insecure – and it is still unclear how employers, landlords and public services will be expected to apply any new rules. The position for Britons in Europe is even more complex and uncertain.

One little discussed consequence of no deal is that the UK will immediately lose access to EU databases and other forms of cooperation including the European arrest warrant, the Schengen information system and Europol. This will hinder policing and security operations in a world where data is key to solving crime. Nor is it inconceivable, say, that we will witness a rise in organised criminal activity, as gangs seek to profit from this disruption.

But perhaps the biggest and most dangerous unknown is what happens on the island of Ireland. The UK government has said it will not apply checks and tariffs at the Irish border – a stance which is at odds with its commitments under, inter alia, WTO rules. The EU, however, has made it clear it intends to apply the rules, though whether all checks will be imposed from day one is less obvious. Both sides are likely to blame the other, with unforeseeable political and economic consequences.
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[katmondoo]

1. I can't understand why the UK is doing this Brexit thing, seems like a total loser to me.

[DFW]

4. Common sense has little to do with it, and the EU is partly to blame.

As continental Europeans are want to do, the moment the EU came into being, they loaded it with a bloated, expensive and unnecessary bureaucracy, just like in most of the member states that make it up. Denmark almost gave up its membership within a week of joining when the EU bureaucracy declared that Danish apples were too small to conform to what their rules said could be called apples. The Danes were told they would have to call their apples something else. The Danes said that if THIS is what EU membership meant, then they weren't interested after all. The EU quickly relented, and "graciously" let the Danes call their apples "apples."

France insisted that the EU parliament not be headquartered only in Brussels. They wanted part of the pie (i.e. billions in costs charged to the EU). So a huge EU parliament building now stands in Strasbourg, France, some 400 KM from Brussels. Once a month, the whole paperwork is loaded onto a convoy of trucks, and brought for a week from Brussels to Strasbourg. At taxpayer cost, the whole EU parliament travels there, stays in expensive hotels and eats at the great restaurants there--at EU taxpayer cost. This was featured prominently in the pro-Brexit TV ads before the first referendum. It cost UK taxpayers alone tens of millions of pounds (a month or a year, I forget, but it was insane) just for their share of these costs. The UK was working feverishly for reforms within the EU, but they were swimming against the tide. Bureaucrats DO love their perks, after all, and the EU has no shortage of them.

In the bigger picture, of course Brexit is a loser for the UK (and the EU). But the Brexiteers played on people's emotions, and figured, correctly, that enough voters in the UK would see how obvious a bad move it would be to leave, and not bother to vote. "How stupid do they think we are, after all?" Well, now they know. As we saw in the USA less than half a year later, such stupidity is not limited to the far side of the Atlantic.

[RVN VET71]

11. Brexit was sold to the Brits based on lies and fear

Remember the 400,000,000 pounds WEEKLY that was to be freed up for National Health Care? The amount of money which the lies purveyor, Nigel Farage said, after the vote for Brexit, was absurdly out of whack with possibility, heh-heh! Son of a bitch lied, spent money to advertise his lie and, after winning the vote, admitted, shamelessly, that he had been freaking lying!

Fear? You think the Republicans know how to place the racist, xenophobic game? Sure they do, but the British pro-Brexit crowd could school even Trump in spreading fear and hatred when it means money in their own jaded pockets. The 2 biggest vote getters in the Brexit vote were the stabilizing of national health care -- which was a lie from the beginning -- and the fear of people coming into the country freely who 1. take over jobs (which they didn't) and 2. don't speak the language (which many didn't, but most could get by and were, if anything, more than eager to learn) -- oh, oh, and let's not forget 3. who don't look, y'know, British.

The U.K. was sold a bill of worthless goods by lying racists and xenophobes who foolishly, stupidly, saw more money for themselves if only the sheep would allow them to pull the country out of the EU.

If the U.K. economy does, in fact, suffer after Brexit as is being predicted, there are movements in Scotland and Northern Ireland to vote themselves out off the U.K. altogether. Doubt if they'll succeed but there will be blood -- there already has been some preliminary violence in Derry.

[Grokenstein]

7. Same thing that's happening in the U.S.

Inertia, lack of will to act, fear of authority, whatever it is--people are just standing by and watching it happen. The ones who can see the trainwreck in the making look to other leaders to "do something, anything." But those individuals just shrug their shoulders and mumble about waiting for the right moment to act--if that. The bad guys aren't waiting. Oh, they're very busy.

[The King of Prussia]

8. A number of reasons

I'm 58 and this has been going on all my life. Whatever happens in the next few weeks I can't see it happening. Why such a stupid vote? Well...
1. Racism
2. The outcome of the first referendum was never accepted, and there was a more than 40 year campaign of lies against the EU in our almost exclusively extreme right wing media.
3, Those of us who voted remain knew what we were voting for, those who voted leave were never told. They still haven't been.

[DFW]

2. Rather than "Let's just get it over with"

The sensible thing to do-and, I suspect, the preference of a majority of Britons--would be instead, "Let's just call the whole thing off."

Like Trump, Boris Johnson knows full well that he was not the choice of his country's people to lead them. Like Moscow Mitch McConnell, he also knows that he needs to resort to parliamentary tricks to prevent votes from being taken. Sort of a tactic akin to "I'm going to do as much damage as I can and please my paymasters before I get dragged out of here by my heels."

In terms of bureaucratic nightmares, the UK is in for a nasty shock exponentially higher than 90% of them imagine, and I think they are already imagining plenty. There are untold thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of Britons living all over the EU, legally and visa-free, as is their right under EU rules. They have billions of Euros/Pounds invested in their residences all over Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the EU. Suddenly, EVERY ONE OF THEM will now have to apply for a residence permit, and get with their accountants about avoiding double taxation. The same goes for all EU citizens living and working in the UK. Immigration authorities everywhere will be completely swamped.

Common sense would dictate that the UK use the "get-out-of-jail-free" card accorded to them by the EU high court. I.e. the court issued a ruling saying that that UK would suffer no penalties if they decided to call Brexit off. But common sense has never been a major commodity in politics of late. The last hurrah was when Germany returned Angela Merkel to a fourth term as Chancellor, and France rejected extremes of both left and right with Macron. Macron has shown little imagination in getting out from under the weight of his twin antagonist parties, and Merkel was sabotaged by the logical coalition partner (the FDP) when they pulled out of the negotiations, citing illogical (and therefore probably corrupt) concerns for the fossil fuel industry. The other coalition partner, the Greens, sensibly said the issue was not negotiable, and that coal was not an option for the future, something Merkel has adhered to, even without them as partners.

Has the UK realized too late how badly they shot themselves in the foot by letting Johnson become PM without much more than a whimper (NOW they're whimpering, of course)? Whether or not that is the case, Vladimir, er, I mean, Boris, seems to have learned quickly from Trump. "Who the hell cares what the people want, who the hell cares what is best for the country? It's my show now."

[DemocracyMouse]

3. Of course it's ripping up the UK. That's what Putin wanted when he funded the campaign.

If the luminaries of Britain want to stop Brexit they should hammer on Moscow's role in the vote for Brexit, and hammer hard, repeatedly.

The forces of democracy in the US should do the same vis a vis Trump.

PUTIN IS AN AMORAL, SELF-SERVING WEASEL AND I FOR ONE CANNOT STAND BEING A VICTIM OF HIS GAME PLAN (or any billionaire's game plan).

WAKE UP BRITAIN!!!
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!

[DemocracyMouse]

5. ...and did I mention PUTIN and his MOB are going for our 2020 elections too?

Everybody wake the fuck up.


(I just woke up to a friffin' typo and fixed it... but who the fuck cares about a typo when your democracy has been usurped)

[DFW]

6. Rifts in the EU and NATO definitely serve Russian interests more than any of ours. n/t

[Denzil_DC]

10. It's interesting that non-UK-based DU members always jump so quickly to blame "PUTIN!!!".

You tend not to find many of we UK-based members doing that.

The anti-EU drumbeat in our media has been going on for years, prodded along not least by our current prime minister when he was a "journalist". For instance, a recent study found that people in Liverpool, which has long boycotted the Sun newspaper, are less Euro-skeptic than those in other cities. In recent times, the BBC, after Tory governmental pressure led to placemen and women being installed in its upper management, has long promoted Farage and UKIP (and now the Brexit Party) and given them airtime way beyond what their numbers would have ever justified.

The influence of US "think tanks" and libertarian/neoliberal lobby groups in UK politics is well documented, and has been for years. If you're looking for outside actors contaminating UK politics, you don't have to look much further than that, and it's far clearer how those interests would benefit from a no deal Brexit.

It would be very convenient to blame "PUTIN!!!" for all our ills. Then all we'd have to do is find ways to block that influence. The fact is that it's rooted in our society. It can be exploited and nudged along, sure, but we have to own it to counter it. Until the referendum, there was plenty of everyday griping about the EU, but it wasn't a major priority among the public.

The Tory Party's attempts to counter the long-term Euro-skepticism in its ranks (which had been a major problem since at least the Major government) and counter the electoral threat of UKIP allowed opportunists to persuade enough people who had reasons for discontent that the EU was behind all our ills, when in reality it was our own over-centralization and the idiotic fixation with treating the country's finances like those of a household (a hangover from Thatcherism) and championing austerity as the solution.

Those are homegrown problems. Putin's a side player.

[DemocracyMouse]

12. You are missing the essence. ALL MOBS, indeed all monopolies, are killing democracy.

PUTIN is the poster child.

[Denzil_DC]

14. I don't believe I'm missing anything.

I listen to Americans discussing their country's politics. I may not always agree with them, but I accept they have more skin in the game and a closer perspective on events in their country than I do.

The same respect in return would be welcome.

By turning so readily to "PUTIN!!!", you are missing the fact that the most baleful and consistent influence on UK politics from the latter part of the twentieth century to the present and beyond, covert and overt, has been American capitalist interests, in league with our own kakistocracy. As we face the risk of being subsumed as the latest US vassal state, that's a more relevant and urgent focus.

And then there are own people. Not everyone who disdains or hates the EU is a gull of Putin, convenient as it would be to find a big baddie to blame for the mess we're in. Putin's regime may be opportunistic, but don't bestow on it more power than it actually has, or the myth may become reality. And meanwhile, we'll be sold down the river all over again.

[DFW]

15. I don't necessarily blame Putin as a main cause, just a big beneficiary

He is certainly shedding no tears over Brexit, and was probably cheering the whole concept.

As for who inside the UK (or the EU, for that matter) is benefiting, I can't think of anyone who will be better off.

[Denzil_DC]

16. He could be a beneficiary. But the EU was expected to implode with Brexit. It hasn't.

Last edited Tue Sep 3, 2019, 04:10 PM - Edit history (1)

One counter to that argument would be to ask how potentially closer ties between the UK and US would benefit him and his cabal in the longer term (assuming the US manages to extract itself from its current Russian influence in future). But then maybe Putin doesn't do longer term.

As for who in the UK is benefiting, I could draw up a list.

It would include our current prime minister, who wouldn't be in power if not for this clusterfuck, and a whole range of predatory disaster capitalists from Rees-Mogg via the various other millionaires at the top of our media and government (including Farage) who're already salivating at the prospect of collaborating with US interests to complete the privatization of the NHS etc. to hedge fund managers and the likes of nihilistic libertarians like Cummings and the ex-Revolutionary Communist Party members like Claire Fox grouped around Spiked and elected as MEPs in the aftermath of entryism into the Brexit Party. (I'm not clear how in thrall to Putin that last group are, but they're certainly as opportunist as he is.)

[The King of Prussia]

17. You really think it was Putin?

I'm afraid that's very ignorant.

[DemocracyMouse]

18. I'm sorry you feel that way...

The Guardian and a number of Democratic Senators would disagree.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjZyauuubXkAhVkpVkKHVqtAB4QzPwBegQIARAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2018%2Fjan%2F10%2Frussian-influence-brexit-vote-detailed-us-senate-report&psig=AOvVaw1CEONVnZ94YWpoc1NVfNvC&ust=1567627422100985

[Denzil_DC]

19. They're free to disagree. It's still not persuasive.

From your link (my bold):

Overall the report breaks little new ground in terms of fresh evidence but says the picture remains incomplete. “The allegations that have emerged of Russian interference prior to the Brexit referendum are all the more stunning given the innate resilience within British society to the Kremlin’s anti-democratic agenda,” the senators wrote.

The dark money ploughed into the Leave campaign certainly deserves more attention (and Russia isn't the only alleged source). But it and the likely exaggerated effects of social media are utterly dwarfed by the decades-long drumbeat of mainstream media propaganda, a not insignificant proportion of which was instigated by Boris Johnson to pursue his own petty, self-seeking, irresponsible agenda.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Time to reclassify 'Lord of the Flies' as a dystopian prediction?

Link to tweet

"An island ruled by British schoolboys who turn on each other, run short of food, kill the vulnerable and have to be rescued"

[DemocracyMouse]

13. It's not the people spreading chaos. ALL MOBS, indeed all monopolies, are killing democracy.

Putin and his mob bosses (I refuse to use the nifty romantic, white-washing term "oligarch" ) are the best stand-in for the larger problem.