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Are there any positives to brexit

Cheshire cheesemaker says business left with £250,000 'Brexit hole' To save his business he will now have to switch a £1m investment he was planning to make in a new distribution centre in Macclesfield to the EU, with the loss of 20 jobs and tax revenue to the UK. (Guardian)

A leading skateboard distributor has set up another business in the Netherlands to avoid paying tax twice on exports after Brexit (BBC)

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As individual citizens, I am struggling to think of any benefits. From a consumer point of view things are vastly worse. It is more expensive / difficult to go on holiday to Europe now and mobile phone roaming charges, the bain of the British holiday maker will be back in force very soon.

Then there is is the fact you can no longer buy stuff from Europe knowing it won't attract any customs tariffs so our choice is limited. And of course we are now very much limited by job and education opportunities in this country only.

As for benfits. Well if you are a very rich importer / exporter friend of Boris Johnson or Jacob Reece Mogg, you stand to become even richer by taking advantage of new trade deals. How that benefits people like you and I is beyond me because chances are it will pave the way for cheap imports that put British manufacturers out of business.
We have more freedom in the laws and policies we choose to implement. Of course we'd have to vote outside the blairite paradigm in order to actualise this. Brexit was a revolution which has been more or less co opted by the same liberal status quo that got us into it in the first place.
Only benefits. Forget the economic suffering, blatant barriers to trade and us falling down the pecking order in terms of our international reputation which is now shot to bits. We hold all the cards.

Don't take it all from me though..



See, all the cards.
(edited 3 years ago)
Original post by imlikeahermit
Only benefits. Forget the economic suffering, blatant barriers to trade and us falling down the pecking order in terms of our international reputation which is now shot to bits. We hold all the cards.

Don't take it all from me though..



See, all the cards.

That picture is a terrible misquote from what he actually said.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10052775/We-must-be-ready-to-leave-the-EU-if-we-dont-get-what-we-want.html

3 Global influence. The EU is arguably better placed to strike trade deals with the US, or China, than the UK on its own, though this proposition is plainly untested, and the idea of an EU “Common Foreign Policy” is plainly a joke. Where was the EU on Iraq, or Libya? What, come to that, is the EU position on the Falklands?

4 Perception of UK. It is often said that our strategic significance for the Americans or the Chinese depends on our membership of the EU; though, again, this is untested. More generally, there is a risk that leaving the EU will be globally interpreted as a narrow, xenophobic, backward-looking thing to do.


You see it has taken two separate paragraphs and merged them together to say something quite different than the reality.
Original post by DiddyDec
That picture is a terrible misquote from what he actually said.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10052775/We-must-be-ready-to-leave-the-EU-if-we-dont-get-what-we-want.html



You see it has taken two separate paragraphs and merged them together to say something quite different than the reality.

Either way, did the mastermind of Brexit say those two sentences? Yes or no?
Original post by imlikeahermit
Either way, did the mastermind of Brexit say those two sentences? Yes or no?

You can read his article.
Original post by DiddyDec
You can read his article.

I just did, in your quoted post. So I ask again, did he say those two sentences, yes or no?
Reply 8
Avatar for Napp
Napp
22
Not that i disagree with the point but surely you could have used better examples than a small cheese maker and a skateboard manufacturer..?
Original post by imlikeahermit
Either way, did the mastermind of Brexit say those two sentences? Yes or no?

Do you not understand context?
Original post by Burton Bridge
Do you not understand context?

Did he say those two sentences? Yes or no?
Original post by imlikeahermit
Did he say those two sentences? Yes or no?

No, not in the context you paraphrased them in.

If you argue against that, you don't understand context.
Reply 12
Avatar for Joleee
Joleee
19
the benefit is that it revealed how not to do a referendum so maybe the UK and countries who watched can learn from its mistakes --

1) don't call for a referendum you don't believe it (a la David Cameron and co). 2) don't carry out a referendum of such enormous measures and implications that it only requires a simple majority vote. 3) don't write such a bloody ambiguous question on the ballot box (' Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?' - hardly does it allow a voter to make an informed decision because what does 'leaving the EU' look like and when). 4) voters need to ask more questions and demand more explanations from their government and it's a mistake to read what's on the side of a bus and cast your vote based on that. 5) voters should demand more legal experts involved reporting in the media so they are aware a government can't amend 100 gagillion laws overnight and so avoid disappointment. 6) voters and government should be aware how government is so far removed and ignorant of voters' concerns that it would call the public's bluff on a referendum.

too early to tell future benefits tho and the UK won't be able to assess that except over years to come, which imo doubt voters much thought of either.
It's like most of the posters here have been in a cave for two weeks.

Try reading the German press the last couple of days if you want to see a big benefit of independent UK policymaking.

Actually, scrap that - it's like you've been in a cave for a year, and are planning on staying there for like the next five.

In case you still don't get it: before thinking about "thousands of lives saved" if BJ had locked down earlier (how much earlier? At what other costs?), ask the same question about the EU27's vaccine delays cf. the UK's trailblazing performance.

And for anyone thinking "Oh, the UK had the biggest GDP fall from Covid," again, ask yourselves what the relative economic performances will be in the coming months, of a UK emerged from the pandemic and its lockdowns, and a Europe generally still mired in them?

Given the choice between starting badly and ending brilliantly, and starting a bit less badly but ending fitfully and attritionally... it's no contest.

Someone mentioned the UK's international prestige. Well, think what a boost that's getting right now by establishing itself as the West's leading nation in this all-important vaccination campaign, and the respect and influence that will give us in the later international negotiations on framing a coordinated pandemic response strategy for next time it looks like being needed.
Original post by Justvisited
It's like most of the posters here have been in a cave for two weeks.

Try reading the German press the last couple of days if you want to see a big benefit of independent UK policymaking.

Actually, scrap that - it's like you've been in a cave for a year, and are planning on staying there for like the next five.

In case you still don't get it: before thinking about "thousands of lives saved" if BJ had locked down earlier (how much earlier? At what other costs?), ask the same question about the EU27's vaccine delays cf. the UK's trailblazing performance.

And for anyone thinking "Oh, the UK had the biggest GDP fall from Covid," again, ask yourselves what the relative economic performances will be in the coming months, of a UK emerged from the pandemic and its lockdowns, and a Europe generally still mired in them?

Given the choice between starting badly and ending brilliantly, and starting a bit less badly but ending fitfully and attritionally... it's no contest.

Someone mentioned the UK's international prestige. Well, think what a boost that's getting right now by establishing itself as the West's leading nation in this all-important vaccination campaign, and the respect and influence that will give us in the later international negotiations on framing a coordinated pandemic response strategy for next time it looks like being needed.

None of that has anything to do with Brexit.
Original post by imlikeahermit
Only benefits. We hold all the cards.

We can all quote out of context :smile:
If only someone had been around to tell George Washington that independence might cost the USA 2% of GDP...
Benefit number 1.

Democracy has been followed through with action.

Benefit number 2.

We’re out of a trading block that seems to have a desire for a European superstate with no democratic accountability.

Benefit 3.

Approval of vaccines. Remember when they said there’s be outbreak disease or a pandemic and we wouldn’t be able to survive without the EU.

Should I link in 17 million f**k offs?
Original post by MatureStudent37
Benefit 3.

Approval of vaccines.

This is pure lies.
https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-vaccine-brexit/
Original post by DiddyDec

It’s not really a lie. The EU only approved the AstraZeneca vaccine on Friday. We’ve been banging it into people’s arms for over a month now.

Had we been in the EU we could’ve used national legislation to use the vaccines earlier, but as we’ve seen nobody is doing that in the EU.

Hungary has now broken ranks and approved the use of the Sputnik vaccine. The EU is now takin them to court or using some other mechanism for punishing them for breaking ranks.

Either way, I did it quite funny. All of these delays in trying to overturn a democratic referendum result has resulted in the pandemic coming at the worst possible time for the EU.

The minor punitive measures they’ve tried to impose on the U.K. has been lost in the background of a global pandemic.

Has brexit impacted on fish exports? We don’t know. Sea food restaurants on the continent are all Closed due to Covid restrictions so sale are down anyway. Even though the SNP managed to get one of its biggest political donors out to with its fish wholesaling lorry’s decrying brexit as bad for business, the Devon and Cornish fleets have seen a combination of delays expecting goods due to French customs officials, rejecting paperwork because it was missing a full stop. Delaying exports because on one box on a lorry load of fish one fishes tail was sticking out. When they do get their to market, sale price is 30 to 40% lower than expected because the markets not there at the moment.

You’ve still not explained how we’ve manage to vaccinate more people in the U.K. that the whole of Europe combined. It can’t all because the U.K. managed to develop and produce a not for profit vaccine that is logistically easy to produce and transport.

Maybe it’s because we spent 4 times more on vaccine development and hedged our bets on vaccine supplies.

The EU seems to be very reliant on a rather expensive joint US/German vaccine, an expensive French vaccine that’s failed tests. An even more expensive vaccine from ten US than the Pfizer jab.

So yes. I’d say brexit has helped the U.K. to remove the political shackles that would’ve hindered us greatly with the great European cluster fu*k that is the EU vaccine procurement strategy.

The EUs PPe outshining scheme wasn’t too good either.

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