Off Topic The Politics Thread

At it again?

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Worried about the Brexit divorce bill? Here's something to put it in perspective.

Britain has 95 bilateral investment treaties with countries around the world, where companies from here and our partners agree to invest in each other. Companies investing under these treaties have legal protection from dramatic regulatory changes which could damage their profits. An investor putting money into the U.K. before June last year would be justified in thinking that we would remain part of EU, giving them access to all the EU markets and those which the EU has agreements with. Indeed, this may well have been a huge motivation in them deciding to invest in the first place. Any Brexit deal that does not maintain this access is a material, government led change in trading conditions and companies negatively affected can, under the terms of the treaties, sue us. Nissan, of course, has already extracted promises from the government that it won't be damaged by Brexit, presumably by a cash transfer from the taxpayer to the company if things go tits up.

Tens of billions of £ of claims possible. Can't happen? Spain is being sued by multiple companies, including British ones, for changing its subsidies for renewable energy industry. Argentina has to pay over £1bn because of changes to its financial regulations.

Bite the bullet, go Norway model. Latest poll has more people saying we were wrong to vote to leave the EU for the first time.

 

Meanwhile, looks like the Chinese are forging ahead with their new euthanasia policy......



(Actually it's a bizarrely translated airport disabled toilet)

 

With the new found power afforded to the 'sensibles' (Hammond, Green, Rudd, Davidson), it's beginning to look more and more likely that we'll end up with a 'Norway' arrangement.

 

Someone on another forum I frequent was at a meeting this morning that included Peter Lilley. Here's his synopsis of what Lilley (who was a Brexiteer) thinks about things. I found it interesting, thought you lot might too. It's only his view, obviously.

/starts/
Lilley can't see what the fuss is about.

1. Brexit bill

We don't owe €100 billion - most EU officials think this is stupid. Lilley thinks we will make a 'goodwill' payment to smooth the negotiations, but nothing like what's been asked.

2. Trade deal

Lilley said this should take 10 minutes as we already have one in place - the free trade deal. We already have EU legislation in place so the whole thing could be done quickly. The UK is the EUs biggest market - sales to the US are falling. He thinks a free trade deal is doable.

If it isn't we fall onto WTO tariffs. Some things are zero, cars are 10% and some food items are very high. Analysis done at the Treasury suggests tariffs would cost the UK around £4 billion a year - since we currently pay a net £10 billion the UK would be £6 billion better off but could use some of the £10 billion to fund tariff relief for UK businesses.

Under WTO rules German economists predict that EU car makers would lose around €9 billion of which €7 billion would be in Germany which would result in a fall of 260,000 cars which would be over 30% of Germany's output putting 18,000 jobs at risk. He doubts the EU will want a WTO deal.

And that's before you come to food producers. The inefficient EU farmers will be in meltdown as the will sell very little as tariffs are high. We could import more produce from abroad on a non-tarriff basis meaning food prices would fall. Money would have to be spent subsidising our own farmers.

An contrary to what the newspapers tell you the EU has free trade deals with around 40 countries so it is doable.

3. The City

The EU is stuck between a rock and hard place. They want to move Euro clearing away from London and into the EU. He doubts this can be done as London is the world's clearing house for all the major currencies - the benefit is the currencies are all netted off against each other so only small amounts of money have to paid on outstanding balances. If the EU moved this to bank in Germany they would need to capitalise it with upwards of €75 billion and more likely €100 billion - who will stump up the cash. And even then there's no guarantee it will work.

Trump is currently deregulating the US banking system so the EU risks the world's financial institutions decamping to New York. The EU raises money in the City of London and would prefer London over New York as the US is becoming unpredictable (see below).

4. Immigration

The UK will have control but numbers won't go down while the economy grows - people will still come here to work or study and Brits will go the other way (see below). EU citizens will have rights as will EU citizens and he thinks free travel will remain without a visa.

5. Future relationship

He thinks the UK will have a stronger partnership with the EU as an ally and trading partner as they will be able in integrate and create an economic area backed by a single currency and common finance system. He was at the French embassy this week and privately this is what the French think. We won't be 'family' but we will be best friends.

He was speaking to an ex-PM of Czechoslovakia who said the Czech's and Slovaks were at each others throats - after the country split into Czech Republic and Slovakia the animosity vanished and they got on really well, lots of trade and travel. He thinks the same with happen between the UK and EU which is why we are a special case.

He also said to me that you shouldn't believe everything the press prints - they misreport things and have an agenda. The EU is not as hostile to the UK as you are led to believe. We will have to give a little but overall he thinks you may be surprised as to the average man in the street not a lot will change. Both sides have too much to lose and a full blown recession in the EU would be its death knell.

That's it in summary.
/ends/

 

Why doesn't Germany want to leave the EU? Surely as they pay the most and export the most it would make sense?

What do they know that Davis and farage don't? Or vice versa

 

Thanks for posting this. Well, Lilly is pretty hard core Brexit, so unsurprising. If the 'average man in the street' won't see a lot change and the immigrants still flow in while the economy is ok, what is the point of leaving? The rhetoric about freedom of movement and the ECJ conveniently forgotten in this analysis.

 

Germany runs the EU and arranges things so that German industry increases sales at the expense of economies like Greece. We're just suckers that were deep pockets. When we're out, I can see problems as EU states fight for a share of a smaller pot

 

But they pay more than us - surely that would mean they are better off out. Think of all those deals with the rest of the world?

What about the Dutch and Danes then?

 

Nothing like a good old fashioned worldwide domination conspiracy, eh? Europe first and then the world. Seeing as they pay more than anyone else, take in more immigrants than anyone (and then find proper jobs for them) and run public services properly, I'm not sure your analysis stacks up. Could it simply be that they believe in an ideal which the UK has forgotten? Yes that has its benefits and no doubt the fact that they choose to invest in their economy, education, health, research and development and public services does make them the continental nation that others want to trade and work with. Perhaps they can afford to do that because they have not had a proper army to fight wars for 80 years and haven't felt the need to jump to the tune of our American warmongering friends so often.

 

Well, here we are a year on from the vote which will change everybody's life.

The vote which was called purely for an egocentric Prime Minister to control a nasty clique in his own party. Which then allowed this clique to take over.

The vote which enabled an empty space to become Prime Minister, no decisions taken, no direction provided, a Prime Minister so bad that she enabled an unelectable ideologue agitprop leader of an opposition at war with itself to look like a viable alternative, through calling an election aimed at crushing all potential opposition.

A year in which all the fault lines in our country, not just those regarding the EU, have got wider and deeper. The divisions are now so stark that it feels like a smashed glass with dozens of fragments of different interests, paranoias, grievances rather than a country with a clear identity.

And now we drift into negotiations with a well organised EU looking woefully underprepared with a zombie leader, while we evacuate people from unsafe public housing, our police say they cannot cover all the jobs they are meant to do because of the efforts they have to put into investigating and preventing terror attacks, while inflation is rising, wages are lagging and economic growth is lower than the other developed nations, while our government tries to stay in place through a deal with a bunch of horrible throwbacks - and they can't even get that over the line.

Thank you for absolutely nothing the Conservative and Unionist Party. A party so obsessed with itself and getting and retaining power that everything else is secondary to that end. Thank god their competence doesn't match their ambition.

 

Don't worry mate. David Davis will make sure we come out of things just fine.

David Davis FFS

 

Yawn!

 

Doesn't look good though, does it? You can be the most ardent Tory and Brexiteer there is and not be happy with this shambles.

 

We're leaving our EU masters.........everything is good.

 

Cool. Let me know when we see some benefit.

 

Share with us your difficulty with him

 

I don't think he's knowledgeable enough for his position. He thought we could negotiate individual trade deals with Germany and France a year ago and we need someone who knows the rulebook inside out.

 

Defence is a classic. The Germans haven't pulled their weight since post-war reconstruction but ridden on the back of others. It will change. Trump's criticism of those failing to fund NATO has had a resonance in the US. Hence, talk of an EU army, although I suspect the UK will still do more than its share, providing security in the face of Russian expansionism

 

You have inside knowledge of all the negotiations do you?