But there will be a price to returning, and the biggest of those might be a demand that we join the euro. The loss of economic monetary sovereignty that might arise as a consequence might be a price not worth paying, albeit that interest rates in the Eurozone have been consistently lower than those in the UK because the Bank of England has so determinedly kept rates in this country artificially high to attract hot money into the City of London, whilst deliberately suppressing growth and employment in this country.
Inflation’s higher here than in the eurozone. So nominal interest rates are.
I would guess the other issue might be the Growth & Stability Pact, notionally limiting the deficits being run, blowing his pet theories out of the water. Commission says No.
Still, he could just keep on whining.
That’s why Gordon Brown didn’t sign up to the Euro as it would have limited hi ability to overspend HMRC’s income.
Well, that plus the fact that Bliar wanted desperately for the UK to adopt the Euro, as part of his plan to become EU President-for-life. If he’d been opposed to joining the Euro, Brown would have gone all in for membership.
We need a way to pull in previous comments or maybe a FAQ somewhere so we can just post “#37” when each one comes up again and again.
Fairly sure that money is flowing out of the UK because a country run by crazy commies is a poor prospect for investors.
Inflation is actually slightly higher in the Eurozone at the moment (3.3% vs 3.1% – though I don’t remotely trust either figure as meaningful).
Growth and employment in this country has been suppressed by government increasing the costs of growth and employment.
And why won’t these cunts just fuck off with the talk of rejoining? We voted to dump being governed by a load of useless, unelected European bureaucrats so we could be governed by our own useless, unelected UK bureaucrats. And it will only get worse now that WEF puppet Mark Carnage is attempting to shackle Chinada to the EU too.
To be fair though, lets have another referendum on joining the the EU after the same period has passed between us voting to join the EEC and voting to leave the EU, which will be never because we didn’t vote to join in the first place.
“We voted to dump being governed by a load of useless, unelected European bureaucrats . . .”
What Auberon Waugh referred to as Belgian ticket inspectors, although he was in favour of having them in charge.
We voted to remain members of the EEC in ’75, which of course was a very different beast from the EU it metastasised into (even if that was the plan all along).
That was my point Chris, we voted to remain, not join.
Grocer Heath took us in without a constitutional right to do so, so we had the sham referendum in 1975 on whether we wanted to stay in or not to legitimise his treason.
And this epic speech by Peter Shore was as right in 2016 as it was in 1975. And nothing has changed now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdPfcq5K8FY
We’re not going back in. I’ll go and buy a large sombrero, smother it with HP sauce and eat it if we go back in.
Andeh can sign a few deals, and a Reform government can come in and scrap them on day 1.But actually going in? Where’s the movement? Yes, the polls might say it, but polls on inactive topics are irrelevant. There is no Reverse Farage. Rejoin get pitiful results.
Whether we go into the EU or not depends on 50 million voters each looking at the situation from their perspective and asking if they will be better off. Immigration, exports, travel. If you work at ARM, it’s Samsung and Apple that put food on the table. So, EU? Don’t care much. If you make cars, you need to be in the EU. And the bit of the economy that ships physical goods to the EU has been shrinking over time. Everyone bangs on about farming, but we export more whisky than red meat now. A world has opened up in the last 50 years of people in Asia and South America that are rich enough to drink Lagavulin. Maybe the costs of transportation fell to the USA, too. So, if you work at Lagavulin, and you know it’s the Japanese, the Yanks and maybe Chileans paying the bills, how much less do you care about the EU?
The problem with continuity remainers, like Richie, most of the Labour party is that they aren’t involved in trade. They’re decades behind the reality. They still think cars and steel making are the future, that the EU is a golden place. So, they can only perceive Brexit as being about people being conned by evil Farage and Boris.
I would agree but they may be plotting to do it without a vote.
Which means we can leave without a vote. A referendum to do something sets an expectation that undoing it must also be done that way.
Reform should be capitalising on Burnham’s words about the EU.
You could be right. I’m just suspicious why Crash Burnham has brought it up now as it will create a lot of opposition. I don’t trust the guy at all. I don’t know why people like him.
As I point out below, nobody will do trade deals with us now so he can point at the lack of deals and say Brexit failed.
Currently, Burnham’s biggest challenges come from within his own chaotic supermajority (similar to Starmer and he actually “won” that majority); Burnham can be removed by coup too. The Rejoinerists are a powerful faction that he might need onside. So he can spout a load of positive sounding but non-commital waffle to placate them for now.
Dunno, just throwing that out there as a possibility.
Rejoiners may be small in number but they have two important features:
So yes, there’s keeping-the-MPs-onside, but alongside the nationalise-everything plan, this is a pitch to the Corbynista tendency who’ve taken over the Greens: “You don’t need to vote for Zack, I hate Jooz and love Eurofascism too.”
Burnham’s doing a lot of teasing. Lots of stuff that sounds like he’s going to take Labour back to the 1970s. “I’m proper Northern me”. He’s full of shit. He’s like a character from Viz or something Ali G would dream up.
Got a degree in English, spent a few years in London writing for a trade magazine, then became a political animal. Was pretty much a Blairite. Then did the mayor thing, because I presume he thought Labour were finished under Corbyn.
Mark my words: a few years from now, Labour are going to be tearing themselves apart because Burnham will have delivered nothing.
Most remoaners / rejoiners seem to believe quite sincerely that ever closer union between nearly 30 countries is neutral or so obviously the future that no arguments need to be made for it. Neither are there any costs, risks, threats to membership.
They act as if the EU isn’t less than 50 years and isn’t unexampled in human history. As if we’ve always been in the EU. Trading and arranging a country’s affairs on a bilateral basis for them is a rare privilege reserved for superpowers.
Being in the European project is like having a nice steady job. Leaving it is like going off to Vegas to become a professional gambler.
Since they have massive institutional power this conceptualisation formed the basis of the referendum and its aftermath.
The debate should have been about retrospective planning permission for Maastricht and Lisbon and on what (if anything) we wanted future membership to look like.
Instead the burden of proof was shifted to people who wanted to leave, as if the Westphalian state were the oddity and the (contested) European project entirely normal.
Thanks to that dribbling syphilitic cunt Burnham, we get yet another chance to relitigate this utterly backwards argument.
One of the things with the Guardian perspective is that they always think they’re the progressives. They characterised Leave as old men in blazers wanting a return to Empire. They never saw Remain as people who still thought the world as being like it was in 1980.
I don’t think the EEC was a bad idea back then. I don’t rule out the idea that the EU is a good thing for many Europeans. But it’s that sea border that does the damage. The shift from sea transport to road transport put Britain at a disadvantage moving goods and people around Europe. Apart from having to go from one corner of Europe, you have to pay in time and money to get over.
I often mention Colmar in France. It gets daytrippers from Germany and Switzerland, as it’s about an hour from Basel. It’s like nipping to the Cotswolds. No-one is nipping over to Canterbury from Dover as it’s going to cost a bit.
The shift to services gets blamed on Mrs Thatch, but if you’re a company making nuts and bolts in Derbyshire, you have more costs getting them to Bavaria than one in Lille does. So, what do you do? You move into services, where distance doesn’t matter, and specialist, high-value manufacturing. Making particular things that people particularly want where there ain’t a whole lot of competition and shipping is mostly irrelevant.
Problem with moving into remote services, the competition is the entire world. India. It’s always been a mistake.
It wasn’t a mistake because that’s what people did. Millions of people made choices. Make cars, shoes, or go into banking or software. Where was the money in 1986? Working in a factory making shoe soles or working for a bank? So those millions of choices led to where we are.
The alternative was a command economy where the state decides to protect Rover, toy factories, clothing factories or the British film industry from competition.
Where do we go with services becoming more globalised? Heck knows. But it’s not like the German car industry is exactly booming from Chinese competition, either.
You sound like someone from 1986. Looking backwards not forwards.
I think you need to read what I said again. Decisions were made at the time, maybe different ones now.
India – LOL. Steve will no doubt come along with an anecdote about Pajeet and his amazing IT skills, but no one cheers when they discover that an Indian team will be working on software (because they know it’ll be shit).
I come from the North-East: before 1964, particularly but not solely 1939, wages and local food prices were lower than in the South-East due to the higher cost of transporting goods to London or Europe. A dozen years before Mrs Thatcher won *the* election there were no jobs for me – or nearly all of my contemporaries, the sole exceptions being a footballer and an estate agent, in the North-East – thanks to Frank Cousins and Harold Wilson who chose to ignore reality.
The economic argument was always going to turn out to be a rounding error, hardly measurable given all the other inaccuracies in GDP calculations, even though that’s where the Remain campaign chose to make their stand (almost as thoughhthey had no other argument to offer). The UK was a lousy fit within the EU, not just for geography (an island with immutable, defensible borders) and economics (bias to wards services, not manufacture, agriculture or tourism) as WB has pointed out, but also because of our system of (common) law, and possession of a world language.
As a result, decisions taken for the benefit of the EU as a whole were very often deleterious to the UK and vice versa, so we ended up blocking and threatening to wield our veto. Both we and the EU are much better off with us outside – though I wouldn’t object to better trading relations, but that very much depends on the EU.
I don’t think the campaigning during the EU made a whole lot of difference. £350m for the NHS might have tipped some people.
What I’m talking about is a general gut sense people have of whether the EU was good for them or not. I talked to lots of people on both sides. People I knew on social media, people in workplaces, and in almost every case, I could say that their opinion was about who put food on their table. Including degrees of opinion. The loudest remainers were people doing utterly useless government jobs that were at threat if we left. The loudest leaver was a client of mine that sells software to America.
The more we shifted to services and specialist manufacturing (where shipping cost is less important), our global exports grew more. So more people had jobs where Rest of the World put food on the table. And yes, services are much more about language. All the CG houses used by Hollywood are in English-speaking countries.
If you’re a Belgian wedding dress maker not far from Lille, your heart might prefer a national government, but your head wants ease of trade with France.
I think Project Fear (unfounded codswallop though it so clearly was) is likely to have swayed some people at the margins. And there was a massive Remain campaign from the BBC (which a lot of people still listened to, 10 years ago) and the UK government sending a glossy multipage pro-EU propaganda leaflet to every household. Absent all that, I reckon it would have been closer to 60:40 than 52:48.
The £350m a week was a classic elephant trap, and Remain fell for it hook, line and sinker. It was absolutely true (there’s a page confirming it on the BBC website), though it was a gross, rather than a net figure. But Remain insisted on banging on about it being a lie, and as a result (as was always bleeding obvious) all the voters heard was that we send a shit-ton of money to the EU and wadda we get for it?
Andeh can sign a few deals, and a Reform government can come in and scrap them on day 1.
I wish I had your confidence, WB. First, a Reform government is not at all likely as things stand. With the right divided three ways, we are looking at a generation of left-wing coalitions.
Second, Burnham and/or the EU could (and probably would) install elephant traps for termination of agreements – eg a €100bn per agreement for withdrawal – that would bugger up the finances of any incoming right-wing government. [And defaulting would damage the UK’s reputation and have serious consequences…]
Hobson’s choice. Staying shackled to the EU is not cost free as per the last 40 years of stupid regulations like hoovers limited to 900W or curvature of bananas.
“And defaulting would damage the UK’s reputation and have serious consequences…”
You simply tell the world that you won’t pay it. No-one minds as long as you are transparent.
In this dirty old part of the city , where the sun refuse to shine’
Andy Burnham has raised the possibility, in his Labour Party conference speech and subsequent comments, that the UK might be on a path back to the EU, suggesting rejoining might be on his agenda now that he is in charge.
A party full of grifters, chancers and traitors wants to join a supranational gang of such people – on a par with ‘Pope = Catholic’ as a revelation.
There is absolutely no doubt that leaving the EU did impose a significant cost, in terms of GDP growth, on the UK.
There’s huge doubt, not least because COVID, the overreaction to which you supported with an almost murderous fanaticism (And that’s among many other shocks), caused such an effect Brexit is impossible to disaggregate.
There is also no doubt that leaving the EU did not let the UK “take back control” as those who promoted it suggested it would.
That process was never going to happen overnight and short of loyalty checks for the civil service (which most would have failed) you are faced with fifth columnists across every area (And even in the private sector) working on behalf of a hostile power – quite tricky to get control with such people in situ.
It is also undoubtedly true that leaving the EU made the UK’s management of inward migration issues more difficult, while making life for many people already in the UK considerably more difficult because of onerous travel and work conditions.
A very interesting admission that the EU deliberately made conditions of entry and work more difficult as a form of punishment. And this is an organization you are eager to rejoin??
Many businesses would be delighted to return to the EU because they would save on administration costs.
It’s true that many businesses prior to world War Two were also upset about the disruption to relations with an earlier totalitarian state – was Neville Chamberlain correct?
The reduction in complications around the Irish land border would also benefit people in Northern Ireland, because they have imposed real costs, whatever Boris Johnson once claimed.
Actually true – again the EU’s position was that Northern Ireland had to be sacrificed as ‘the price of Brexit’ – anyone contemplating going into closer relations with such an organization is an overt traitor – nothing less.
But there will be a price to returning, and the biggest of those might be a demand that we join the euro. The loss of economic monetary sovereignty that might arise as a consequence might be a price not worth paying, albeit that interest rates in the Eurozone have been consistently lower than those in the UK because the BOE has so determinedly kept rates in this country artificially high to attract hot money into the City of London, whilst deliberately suppressing growth and employment in this country.
Quite why someone who is such an enthusiastic adherent of Joseph Goebbels is retained on speed dial by the BBC says much about that organization.
The cost of membership might also have increased since we left, because the various opt-outs and discounts the UK negotiated during its previous membership will, no doubt, no longer be available.
Like a caveman confronted with a computer he stumbles across a truth. I’m not sure the Norths are everyone’s cup of tea here but they make the point there is almost no appetite on the European side to rerun the Brexit affair. It’s a dead issue
Neville Chamberlain started re-armament, including building Spitfires, while Lansbury was advocating pacifism.
Yup, Chamberlain got a bum rap. I’ve never heard anyone suggest a remotely plausible alternative to the Munich agreement.
(And one of his main critics was Michael Foot who, later in life, took Moscow Gold. Maybe he did at the time too, for all I know.)
I’d like to know what the military were telling the government during that period. They must have known the state of the French high command. That they were still living in 1918. It’s their job. The British army had trained for what the Germans actually did.
There’s a lot that is never mentioned about the Sudetenland. Like the fact it was full of German speakers that wanted to be part of Germany, and the peace process at the end of WW1 buggered up the formation of Czechoslovakia. And the Czechs had no time for their demands for self-determination. And the Czechs treated them as second-class citizens.
That’s not saying Adolf was right, but even before the invasion, Britain was trying to help find a peaceful solution and the Czechs were not exactly helpful.
You just didn’t want to get involved over this. And we needed time to re-arm.
John
I think the pace was the issue as well as attempting to treat Hitler at face value – If you have not read AJP Taylor ‘The origins of the Second World War’ its an all time classic.
Also the key target of the critique is Murphy (rather than Chamberlain) who could never be accused of getting a bum rap as he is the embodiment of evil in its purest form.
(i) Pace was as fast as he thought he could go without being denounced as a “war-monger” by people outside the idiot left
(ii) When I was 15 I read Churchill’s history of the Second World War which was heavy going for a 15-year-old, even me, so I haven’t read any of the other massive tomes on WW2
“Actually true – again the EU’s position was that Northern Ireland had to be sacrificed as ‘the price of Brexit’ – anyone contemplating going into closer relations with such an organization is an overt traitor – nothing less.”
The real treachery was going along with the EU on it. The EU wanted this because they didn’t want to arrange borders, have a fight with the Republic. Which is their problem.
The likes of May didn’t want to leave, was all chummy with the Europeans and helpful.
There’s a few odd things that have changed (one of the wine import forms, Chinese EVs) but we’re mostly Brexit In Name Only. We were supposed to Grandfather the laws in and start removing the crap ones. Allow us to import more good stuff from more parts of the world, allow our manufacturers to make things that don’t pass EU laws (because maybe Japan allows other things).
Tim et al
You have missed this also – a golden opportunity:
As many readers here will know, we are holding a Funding the Future event in Ely on Saturday.
The focus will be on solution-focused campaigning, the issues that we need to address, and what we can do to improve the prospects of change. There will, of course, be the opportunity to discuss issues around these themes, and the day will begin with an overview from me of where I see the world right now, but this is intended to be a participative day for around 50 people.
As is normal with such events, two people have had to drop out during the course of this week, and both have offered their tickets for others to use.
We do, as a result, have these available to give away to anyone who would like them. They have already been paid for, and refunds have not been requested, so they are being made available free of charge, although a donation would not be refused.
If you want to join us at noon on Saturday for an event that will last until around 5.30
Anyone of this parish who is going incognito please do reveal all on Sunday or Monday…
Not Fu**ing the Future again?
“… although a donation would not be refused.”
Yeah, I bet it effing wouldn’t.
I miss this Ely one I’m afraid due to another commitment.
The last one was a tough day to be fair as I got stuck next to a guy who’d driven up from Bedminster area moaning about the rentier (pronounced rontier by him) economy and neighbours who shoot off to second homes in France whenever they get the chance. Brain saying “how lovely, more people should be able to do that” and mouth saying “that must be awful listening to their entitled stories” is not natural.
One thing I would add is that the attendees did not look like they could handle themselves. No-one was so chiselled they could beat Clare Balding in a fight, or lean enough to beat Claire Hennessy in a parkrun. They wore a lot of charity shop apparel too. Nothing wrong with that of course.
A whole day with no biscuits? not for me.
He was boasting his first event sold out with 180 people and he was planning further events across the country. But this one is only for 50 people. Perhaps the other 130 have seen sense. Or perhaps they just like biscuits!
Will they have biscuits this time?
Ted
While planing the UK economy is relative childs play for someone of his ilk, biscuits pose a much greater dilemma for anyone.
The words “Sue Cook has dropped out” come to mind.
Genuine ROFL….
It still astounds me that countries would join a common currency hence accept interest rates that are right for other countries but could be horribly wrong for your own.
A significant number of people have no fucking idea what interest rates even are.
I’m a Leaver, will not change my mind, and hate and despise the Rejoiners, in Labour, LimpDumbs AND Tories.
However. It is the business of Government to continually keep options under review, make a range of forecasts, and follow the path that most benefits the population of this country.
Guess what? They don’t, partticularly with criterion 3 in the above paragraph.
I’m way more of a leaver now than when I voted leave before.
Forget the BoE rates, look at the market rates. 30 year gilt touched 6% this morning (since dropped back slightly under). 10 year gilt is at 5.4%, not seen since Jan 2007, just at the very peak of the pre-GFC boom. It doesn’t really matter what the BoE sets their rates at now, the market is speaking.
Incidentally does anyone know what period of time the OBR uses for its data point for the cost of government borrowing in its assessments? I believe its a 10 day window. If its any time now its going to make the room for manoeuvre in the budget micrometer thin.
I wonder if they think this is bond markets ‘falling in line’ or whatever it was that Government halfwit suggested they should do ?
We should have two referendums or indeed referenda. One for the electorate to give permission for parliament to open negotiations over terms. Once a set of terms is set in concrete, a referendum to choose whether to accept them or not.
That splits the constitutional case from the economic.
(Although I don’t believe the constitution allows parliament to surrender its authority to foreign princes. If it claims to be supreme (it isn’t) then it can’t give those powers away.)
“Although I don’t believe the constitution allows parliament to surrender its authority to foreign princes”
Pretty sure this has never been settled. Both the Law Lords and the Supreme Court have swerved that question each time it’s come up.
The fudge seems to be that it’s okay if we can take the powers back – like we did.
Even the EU Federalist Wolfgang Munchau from EuroIntelligence thinks we’d be mad to rejoin the EU as it is: over-regulated, lack of innovation,, lack of capital markets, protectionist just for starters.
But even if we ignore those reasons the EU may be saying they’d welcome us back now but negotiations haven’t started and they are going to want their pound of flesh and are tough negotiators. They’re also going to want some sort of long-term guarantee that we’ll be good members and not leaders of the awkward squad again.
So, even if Burnham gets a deal he likes he can’t bind the hands of a future parliament so try as he might his guarantees are going to be worthless. Furthermore, if he goes in without a referendum a future parliament can leave without a referendum and he won’t want to risk a rerun of 2016 where they thought Remainers had it but the polls were wrong.
But the stupidity of his reopening the debate is that we won’t get a deal for a long time and meanwhile al other negations for a trade deal will be off the table because they’ll torn up if we rejoin, why would other countries and blocs waste their time.
So now that’s another way he’s going to screw the economy and will blame Brexit.
…even if Burnham gets a deal he likes he can’t bind the hands of a future parliament…
In principle, he can’t. But in practice he could by agreeing to vast financial penalties if the UK withdrew from agreements signed.
Dear EU,
I refer you to the Arkell v. Pressdram case in the UK when it comes to your demands for reparations.
Signed
The British People (or at least those with an IQ over 60).
Parliament can and should pass a law banning smoking on the streets of Paris.
As a nation, we should then be sublimely indifferent to the consequences given the continent’s isolation as a result of fog in the Channel.
I know you yearn to agree with me.
Has he ever explained what ‘hot money’ is? Where it comes from?
He says the City is getting a lot of it even though growth is ‘suppressed’?