Fail Britannia

[vetran]

The response of the EU to Brexit is the most telling. Suggesting punishment and a severance payment before we talk is hardly what I expect of people I want to be friendly with.

[jamesbrown]

I don't much care for the EU or the EU leadership. I just trust the UK political class even less. I have to say that the complete nightmare of the Article 50 negotiations and trade deals, with the real risk of being the only major developed country relying solely on WTO rules did pass me by before the referendum.

Right, but they're our lying, backpedaling, duplicitous scumbags, afterall, and we at least have the possibility of unseating them.

Ultimately, the EU has (many) other things to worry about. Brexit really isn't at the top of the list. As they see it, maintaining the integrity of the single market and the associated "indivisible" freedoms is critical, and we've already (sensibly) rejected any have/eat cake approach to this, despite the early rhetoric. Tusk's statement this morning about the negotiating guidelines was very conciliatory. I expect the process to proceed with some of the usual bluster, but it appears, increasingly, that both sides will adopt a realistic approach. I also expect that May will gradually erode the expectations of some of her more extreme backbenchers. It's clear to everyone that she doesn't want to exit on WTO terms (as you say, no one trades purely on WTO terms), but retaining the possibility will focus minds (the EU's too, because they don't want a UK that's actively working against them).

[northernladyuk]

I don't think he was saying that. It seems to me he was pointing out the fact that, because of that history, other countries may not be as keen on "Empire 2" as the UKIP fantasy of replacing EU trade with Commonwealth trade has come to be called.
Even with the best will in the world on both sides, trade with Australia, Canada etc is neglible and not likely to increase by much.
That is a cold hard fact.

Don't you think it's a bit late for facts?

[sasguru]

But I could say the same about the Remainers - I think most have been duped into thinking that anything other than the Blairite way of voting to remain as part of the EU is nothing short of idiocy and that you are siding with old people and racists. I think there is smoke and mirrors on both sides of the argument and whichever side won there were going to be points in time where "sides" could take shots at each other and say how well / badly they / the other side did by the outcome of various circumstances.

We can debate all day long (and many on the forum here seem to) about what the current news paper headlines are saying (most of it sensationalist click-bait claptrap), about what might happen in this service sector or that industry, about what the EU might do to punish us, how we might be better / worse off for the outcome of the vote. Even economists with more understanding of these things than sas and NLYUK (hard to believe, I know) said they could not predict the outcome. And we still can't predict the outcome.

My opinion is that while I can see short-term pain for the UK I think that the leave vote will mean our Government will have to work harder for us. I have seen people laugh on here about UK manufacturing and tech being shafted due to lack of talent etc. But if we take the right steps, starting with eduction and a plan of where we want the country to be, then I think we can succeed. I am more hopeful for the future of the UK for my kids being out of the EU than being pulled into an EU superstate with no choice about how things are run or what decisions are made. It may take a few decades to get right but I have hope. I am probably naive and a cretin, but I am hopeful cretin

But we weren't. It was going to be enshrined in EU law that the UK would not be joining any further political and economic union.
We had our own currency, access to the largest single market in the world, everthing was cushty.
The EU wasn't stopping us solving homegrown UK problems.
Bloody hell, we could even have controlled EU migration using EU laws (no claiming benefits unless in full time employment) and/or putting in Swiss style barriers to residency, which the EU acceded to.
In other words we really could have had our cake and eaten it.

[jamesbrown]

So how do you think most old people and racists voted?

Scooterscot may be racist, but he's still middle-aged.

[northernladyuk]

I am probably naive and a cretin, but I am hopeless cretin

FTFY

[jamesbrown]

Don't you think it's a bit late for facts?

It's always best to get in early with the facts, apply an exponent, and then add 3.2 to achieve a spurious sense of precision.

[Benny]

Sometimes its good to step out of our parochial British bubble and see ourselves how others see us.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.ad9fd0b8a02f

what my colleague Karla Adam describes as “a gigantic ’cut and paste’ job,

Piss poor journalism should be 'copy & paste'

Pax US time is ending just as Pax Britannica did, China is in the ascendancy and only a matter of time before that is demonstrated on the World Stage

[BrilloPad]

The response of the EU to Brexit is the most telling. Suggesting punishment and a severance payment before we talk is hardly what I expect of people I want to be friendly with.

However entirely expected given the way they behave.

[sasguru]

The response of the EU to Brexit is the most telling. Suggesting punishment and a severance payment before we talk is hardly what I expect of people I want to be friendly with.

Well we could always walk away