advertisement


Brexit: give me a positive effect (2023 ‘Epic Fail’ box set edition)

eternumviti

eternumviti

Insufficient privileges to reply.
stevec67 said:
The % of businesses that export is neither here nor there. It will surprise nobody that my pal's gardening business doesn't export. Nor do any of the shops at the end of my road. I'm not even sure whether my own business is considered to be "exporting" when I supply my services to a company in France or Ireland. The important figure is the total amount, we can all hazard a guess that Asda and Morrison's import a great deal of product.
Click to expand...

I gave the figures for the total amount, some 14% of GDP, give or take, prior to 2020. The total value of UK exports to the EU I believe recovered in 2021, though I suspect it's fallen somewhat now, given the broader economic situation. The profile of exporters has undoubtedly changed. Ex-EU imports into the UK have, however, fallen.
 
eternumviti said:
Brexit - and the wall of red tape that leaving the bloc has tied around exporters and importers - apart, productivity seems to be an enormous issue pitching against growth. Petty bureaucracy seems to be a major factor in this. The mayor of London attempting to destroy London by making it impossibly expensive to drive within it even as the public transport system is in meltdown. My local district authority putting out traffic wardens in the local supermarket car park on a Sunday, when parking is free but you have to put a (free) ticket on your dashboard FFS. NHS hospitals introducing parking ticket machines that are impossible to operate, and then insisting that even their own employees have to pay to park. Any dealings with utilities, doctors' surgeries, the passport office, DVLA, banks and insurance companies leading to hours wasted on the end of a distorted muzak-torture phone line. Constant forms to fill in, most of them with the objective of making your business ever more instantly visible to HMRC and various overweening regulatory authorities. Planning applications taking months or years to reach any conclusion, and so on, we've all got experience of this, often every bloody day. Just getting the simplest things done seems to have become a nightmare since the pandemic. It isn't unique to the UK (France is notorious for it too), but it just seems to have reached breaking point, and it's absolute madness. The whole bloody lot needs sweeping away, but instead it just keeps getting worse.
Click to expand...

How does this relate to our relationship with the EU and Brexit? One could draw the conclusion from the evidence you provide above that it's all got worse since we left the EU. Whether it's a causal relationship or not, I'll leave it to others to decide.

You cite one EU state having a lot of bureaucracy but what about the other 26 and its effect on productivity?

Here's the latest data I could find.

https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm#indicator-chart

Looking at a very crude figure of GDP per hour worked, the UK is on par with France but behind the EU average. ISTM, EU bureaucracy is not the hinderance to productivity you think it is.

eternumviti said:
I agree that the UK should ultimately seek a more constructive relationship with the SM, but it cannot be at the cost of being drawn under the EC/ECJ cosh without a voice. As far as I can see at the moment, the only way to begin to achieve that is to seek membership of the EFTA Court (which has teeth) and some sort of membership or associate membership of EFTA. Rightly or (probably) wrongly, it won't happen under a conservative led government.
Click to expand...

Yes. Baby steps and all that. Join EFTA & rejoin SM first to help start unf**k the economy However, you're right, a Conservative government will not do that - that would admit that the Brexit many of its MPs and party members wanted has royally shafted the UK.
 
Seeker_UK said:
How does this relate to our relationship with the EU and Brexit? One could draw the conclusion from the evidence you provide above that it's all got worse since we left the EU. Whether it's a causal relationship or not, I'll leave it to others to decide.

You cite one EU state having a lot of bureaucracy but what about the other 26 and its effect on productivity?

Here's the latest data I could find.

https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm#indicator-chart

Looking at a very crude figure of GDP per hour worked, the UK is on par with France but behind the EU average. ISTM, EU bureaucracy is not the hinderance to productivity you think it is.
Click to expand...

First of all, I didn't claim (within the context of my post) that EU bureaucracy was hindering UK productivity, I clearly said that it was our own petty bureaucracy (along with our apparent unwillingness to actually go to the office) that is doing so. However, I also have little doubt that bureaucracy within the bloc, both of the EU and the homegrown variety, does stifle productivity. Your correlation doesn't really hold water, as you are otherwise (ex-UK) only comparing EU members, all of which have EU bureaucracy imposed upon them.

The UK was always very good at gold-plating EU derived rules & regulations. Most of them remain on the statute books, and the UK remains mind-numbingly good at elaborating and enforcing both them, and its own rules, petty and otherwise.

I suppose this all points to the awkward truth that the UK is pathologically incapable of creating any benefit from being out of the EU. We're addicted to bloody bureaucracy.

Seeker_UK said:
Yes. Baby steps and all that. Join EFTA & rejoin SM first to help start unf**k the economy However, you're right, a Conservative government will not do that - that would admit that the Brexit many of its MPs and party members wanted has royally shafted the UK.
Click to expand...

On the evidence of the last couple of pages, including the figures that you posted upstream, there is no compelling evidence to show that it has. Contrary to the piece that sean99 posted, the UK economy is not (currently) smaller than it was prior to the pandemic or brexit - as the OECD piece put it, it has in fact 'fully recovered' its pre-pandemic levels, and has in fact slightly improved upon them. I'm sure that the effects of brexit will become progressively detached and thus more visible from the more generic global factors as we go forward, but at the moment it seems to remain both sparse & pretty conflated.
 
What is “a more constructive relationship with the SM” anyway? But wait…. nah, can’t happen cos cosh, prison camp guards, vassalage. It seems specialness is not sufficient in its own right to get a free ticket to ride. Oh and there was the other proposition,


The newest member of Theresa May’s Brexit negotiating team has been filmed calling for the destruction of the European Union, The Independentcan reveal.

In a speech to a right-wing think tank, minister Steve Baker said the EU should be “wholly torn down”, before branding it an “obstacle” to world peace and “incompatible” with a free society.

That idea didn’t fly now did it?
 
TheDecameron said:
The broad expert* consensus is that Brexit has cost Britain. Even the British Govts impact assessments show net economic loss. Against that we have a couple of Brexit fans on a forum doing a Vicky Pollard on the subject.

* yeahrraknow- we’ve had enough of experts cos I know what I know.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure from what I heard at the time a majority expected an economic hit from brexit. It's not a surprise and it's not news. Maybe people wanted to leave the EU for similar reasons to your own reasons for wanting Scotland to leave the UK and they think it's worth it? I mean, you think an economic hit for Scotland is worth accepting for leaving the UK. No difference at all, or do you anticipate sunlit uplands the day after a referendum?
 
eternumviti said:
First of all, I didn't claim (within the context of my post) that EU bureaucracy was hindering UK productivity, I clearly said that it was our own petty bureaucracy (along with our apparent unwillingness to actually go to the office) that is doing so.
Click to expand...

What you seemed to be inferring was that our own bureaucracy has got worse recently, ie after we have left the EU - no link to the EU at all. That's all I was drawing from that part of your post.

WRT "going to the office" - office workers don't tend to have to be in the office to be productive.

eternumviti said:
I suppose this all points to the awkward truth that the UK is pathologically incapable of creating any benefit from being out of the EU. We're addicted to bloody bureaucracy.
Click to expand...

That's one hypothesis.

Productivity is linked to population health (and thus healthcare) is another.

Productivity is linked to trade is another.

Productivity is linked to workforce wellbeing is another.

Productivity is linked to the amount of time you spend on a computer in an office as opposed to at home is apparently another. :rolleyes:

eternumviti said:
On the evidence of the last couple of pages, including the figures that you posted upstream, there is no compelling evidence to show that it has. Contrary to the piece that sean99 posted, the UK economy is not (currently) smaller than it was prior to the pandemic or brexit - as the OECD piece put it, it has in fact 'fully recovered' its pre-pandemic levels, and has in fact slightly improved upon them.
Click to expand...

No, it is not.

From: GDP quarterly national accounts, UK: July to September 2022 (https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/gros...quarterlynationalaccounts/julytoseptember2022)

"The level of real GDP in Quarter 3 2022 is now estimated to be 0.8% below where it was pre-coronavirus at Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2019, downwardly revised from the previous estimate of 0.4% below."

eternumviti said:
I'm sure that the effects of brexit will become progressively detached and thus more visible from the more generic global factors as we go forward, but at the moment it seems to remain both sparse & pretty conflated.
Click to expand...

Only if you choose to ignore the effects.

From: "The consequences of Brexit for UK trade and living standards Swati Dhingra, Gianmarco Ottaviano, Thomas Sampson and John Van Reenen" (LSE, 2016) (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66144/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_LSE BrexitVote blog_brexit02.pdf)

"Reduced trade lowers productivity. Factoring in these effects substantially increases the costs of Brexit to a loss of 6.3% to 9.5% of GDP (about £4,200 to £6,400 per household)."



From: "Brexit has damaged Britain’s competitiveness, and will make us poorer in the decade ahead", (Resolution Foundation 2022) (https://www.resolutionfoundation.or...-and-will-make-us-poorer-in-the-decade-ahead/)

"The full effect of the [UK / EU Trade & Cooperation Agreement] will take years to be felt but this move towards a more closed economy, say the authors, will make the UK less competitive, which in turn will reduce productivity and real wages. The research estimates that labour productivity will be reduced by 1.3 per cent by the end of the decade by the changes in trading rules alone. This will contribute to weaker wage growth, with real pay set to be £470 per worker lower each year, on average, than it would otherwise have been."
 
sean99 said:
Does look like it's starting to sink in.
https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questio...n-was-right-or-wrong-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu/

It will require a change of government, so perhaps in 2024/2025 we might see motions to join the EEA.
Click to expand...
But not for the most serious Brexit proselytisers either because they’re making cash out of it, helping MEGA or cannot consider life in the shadow of the continental iron sausage again, threatening them with a punishment beating or presumably insertion.
 
eternumviti said:
I agree that the UK should ultimately seek a more constructive relationship with the SM, but it cannot be at the cost of being drawn under the EC/ECJ cosh without a voice.
Click to expand...
Your sentence is a nicely distilled summary of the conundrum that continues to plague Brexiters, and the whole country as they have been in charge for years now.
We would like the benefits of SM membership, but without the costs and constraints.
We want a voice in the EC/ECJ, but without the bother of actual membership.
"The cosh of the EC/ECJ", ooh, nasty.
Etc.
 
TheDecameron said:
But not for the most serious Brexit proselytisers either because they’re making cash out of it, helping MEGA or cannot consider life in the shadow of the continental iron sausage again, threatening them with a punishment beating or presumably insertion.
Click to expand...

I don't care about the Brexit ultras. They will eventually get crushed underfoot, and deservedly so, once the electorate becomes tired of being poor with high inflation and a completely dysfunctional healthcare system.
 
PsB said:
Your sentence is a nicely distilled summary of the conundrum that continues to plague Brexiters, and the whole country as they have been in charge for years now.
We would like the benefits of SM membership, but without the costs and constraints.
We want a voice in the EC/ECJ, but without the bother of actual membership.
"The cosh of the EC/ECJ", ooh, nasty.
Etc.
Click to expand...

The conundrum being, of course, that the SM is incumbent upon being tied into the ideological political project.
 
Well, yes, because we have recourse to the ballot box.

Although, of course, we could argue the point as to whether the vote for Brexit was ideological.
 
eternumviti said:
Well, yes, because we have recourse to the ballot box.

Although, of course, we could argue the point as to whether the vote for Brexit was ideological.
Click to expand...
We've been asking for recourse to the ballot box - a ratifying referendum - since the ****ing witless voted for it in 2016.
Have we touched bottom yet?
Doubt it.
Any idea when we might?
I'm going for Moggs fifty years.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top