Brexit Britain unable to afford basic public services

Rich_cb wrote:

Paying 10s of billions per year to a political organisation in order to secure marginally better trade terms doesn't seem like a great deal to me.

"10s" Office for National Statistics, 2018:

I believe £20bn a year gross liability meets the 'tens of' criterion.

A mere £11bn net you say, what an absolute bargain.

Shame we have to spend that on the NHS now.

Rich_cb wrote:

I believe £20bn a year gross liability meets the 'tens of' criterion. A mere £11bn net you say, what an absolute bargain. Shame we have to spend that on the NHS now.

You seem to have missed the word "theoretical" - those monies were never paid. So yes, we have the £11bn back, huzzah, and in return all we have to do is accept an estimated 4% drop (Office for Budget Responsibility) in GDP, or roughly £120bn. Get back £11BN and in return throw away around £50BN (UKGOV tax receipts equal 40% GDP), absolute bargain indeed.

That 4% drop hasn't actually happened yet Rendel. It's a projection from a notoriously inaccurate forecaster.

I have informed you of this before. Strange you forgot.

Rich_cb wrote:

That 4% drop hasn't actually happened yet Rendel. It's a projection from a notoriously inaccurate forecaster. I have informed you of this before. Strange you forgot.

I certainly do remember, it was nonsense then and it's nonsense now. What a funny little egocentric world you live in where you think someone will ignore the economic forecasts of the independent governmental body created for the purpose "because Rich told me they weren't any good." I'd sooner rely on the word of the IMF than yours I think:

Quote:

According to the International Monetary Fund’s Fiscal Transparency Evaluation for the UK, the depth and breadth of the economic and fiscal analysis published by the OBR “can be considered as best-practice, and could be used as a benchmark by other advanced countries”.

The OBR's forecast is for 15 years from the date of publication.

Given that they struggled enormously to predict inflation just 6 months in the future I'd suggest your faith in their Delphic utterances is somewhat misplaced but only time will tell.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/19/uk-fiscal-watchdog-obr-...

Rich_cb wrote:

Given that they struggled enormously to predict inflation just 6 months in the future I'd suggest your faith in their Delphic utterances is somewhat misplaced but only time will tell.

That'll be what happens when, as your own link points out, a major war involving a superpower that was one of the biggest suppliers of our energy breaks out between the prediction and the event. Makes things a bit tricky, you see. I'll just quote again, in case you missed it, what the International Monetary Fund, who know a bit more about these matters than I or even, dare I say it, you, said about the OBR: "[the depth and breadth of the economic and fiscal analysis published by the OBR] can be considered as best-practice, and could be used as a benchmark by other advanced countries”.

Again with the cherry picking Rendel.

You really are looking to cement your reputation for deceitfulness.

Some predictions were affected by the Ukraine war breaking out post prediction. The later predictions were wrong because the OBR got them wrong. This was made clear in the article. You know that and yet chose to try and mislead people. Again.

It's amusing that you point out how geopolitical events can make short term predictions wildly inaccurate but place so much faith in long term predictions which are subject to far more unpredictable variables.

We've got quite a while to wait before we find out if the OBR was right so let's wait and see.

If (please note this is not a confident assurance) any major trade deals get signed in the interim then I imagine the predictions made before that will be null and void anyway.

Maybe the India deal will be signed in 2024 (not a confident assurance either), in which case the predictions will all need revising. Here's hoping (even this is not a confident assurance) that's the case.

I'll just quote again, in case you missed it, what the International Monetary Fund, who know a bit more about these matters than I or even, dare I say it, you, said about the OBR: "[the depth and breadth of the economic and fiscal analysis published by the OBR] can be considered as best-practice, and could be used as a benchmark by other advanced countries”.

Are you confidently assuring me that those OBR forecasts are going to be exactly right?

Well that depends on your definition of 'confidently assuring'...

Rich_cb wrote:

The point is that no tariffs has helped make them incredibly wealthy. Free trade tends to do that. If the EU were just a trade bloc I'd be in favour of membership but it is both a trade bloc and a political organisation. Paying 10s of billions per year to a political organisation in order to secure marginally better trade terms doesn't seem like a great deal to me.

Geography, history and trade policy has made them rich not just a simplistic remove all tariffs idea. If removing tariffs truly made countries rich every country would follow suit as its a really easy thing to do.  

So the free trade we enjoyed in the EU along with all those FTA's is only marginal, but free trade would make the U.K. enormously rich? 
 

Adding in this edit. 
In case anyone is interested in how Singapore actually got rich and coming as a shock to no one except the Singapore on Thames idiots amongst us, it ain't the removal of all tariffs. As always it's rather more complex than the simplism people like to propogate. 
 

https://youtu.be/KB1vxqD0uPE?si=ztbYaP2CWks12a3M

It's not an easy thing to do. That's why it hasn't been done.

Vested interests spend a lot of time lobbying to ensure tariffs remain in place.

Truly free trade would make the UK considerably richer. The quasi free trade the EU offers won't make anywhere near as much difference relative to the status quo.

No removing tariffs is really easy, you ignore the vested interest and just do it. It will make people enormously better off so would be an easy sell no? 
Truly free trade? You need to define that as I suspect it wouldn't be as free as you like to make out. Free movement of people from across the globe into the U.K.? Zero regulations as that is a restriction on trade? No enforcement of patents and copyrights/trademarks as that's a restriction on free trade? No to REACH style regulations etc etc. 

My definition of free trade would not include the movement of people.
Safety regulations would obviously remain but should be based on internationally agreed standards.
Intellectual property rights would also be respected but again there should be international agreement on patent length etc.

If ignoring vested interests and doing what was best overall was easy then I suggest that politics might look rather different than it does right now. It's an incredibly hard thing to do.

Rich_cb wrote:

My definition of free trade would not include the movement of people. Safety regulations would obviously remain but should be based on internationally agreed standards. Intellectual property rights would also be respected but again there should be international agreement on patent length etc. If ignoring vested interests and doing what was best overall was easy then I suggest that politics might look rather different than it does right now. It's an incredibly hard thing to do.

Free trade with a healthy dose of protectionism thrown in. So not truly free trade then. 

Protectionism in what sense?

If the regulations and IP rules are internationally agreed then each country is free to trade on the exact same terms as all others.

Rich_cb wrote:

It's not an easy thing to do. That's why it hasn't been done. Vested interests spend a lot of time lobbying to ensure tariffs remain in place. Truly free trade would make the UK considerably richer. The quasi free trade the EU offers won't make anywhere near as much difference relative to the status quo.

This reminds me of a quote I heard from Mervyn King (commenting on one of the first banknotes - "evil is the root of all money").

Things which have little impact on states' ability to exert control / manage their internal politics are easier (not easy...) to agree with others.  Things which are more involved - much harder!  Even though they may enable many benefits (including "richness").

I'd certainly agree that more "technical" agreements of standards can and have formed in a more "state-neutral" way.  (Though I only know some details of a few of these...)  Although in practice this is often swapping "state" for "multinational corporation" as often one or a handful of these have major influence over standards organisations.  Another debateable idea perhaps!

(Also - presumably a "vested interest" can be a politician, a company, a regional group, a multinational, a cartel, a party, a state, a trading block...?)

Rich_cb wrote:

Paying 10s of billions per year to a political organisation in order to secure marginally better trade terms doesn't seem like a great deal to me.

we were never paying 10s of billions

the leave campaign quoted figure of £350m per week, would be 18.2 billion.

However, the £350m calculated UK contribution included approximately £100m that never left in the form of the rebate negotiated by Thatchers government. About half of the rest came back to the UK in forms of various subsidies (for agriculture, education, research and assisting deprived areas etc)

So to maintain the current support to UK regions, agriculture, research and education, UK government would have to replaxce this funding and the net saving would amount to approx £125m a week (£6.5bn a year), or £2 per person per week. Impact on food prices of brexit has likely cost everyone in the country over £2 per week, before any consideration of lost trade.

To leave for purely financial reasons stinks of Trussonomics.

It was a discussion about the cost of rejoining.

To rejoin would lead to us paying over £20bn a year to the EU. Some would admittedly come back but the rebate would be no more.

The UK's inflation post COVID/Ukraine hasn't been particularly unusual compared to the rest of Europe. Quite a few EU countries have had far worse inflation than us.

It's all playing with definitions and what is a degree or a completely different thing (which we've seen illustrated on this thread!) but isn't it the case that nothing approaching ideal "free trade" exists anywhere? For the good reason that no state is willing to permit unrestrained movement of everything (eg. you can't import people freely if you need workers, no one seems to be happy "letting the market manage" recreational drugs etc.)?

After that it's just a quibble about how exactly we balance our requirements. And of course political considerations enter here. Indeed it seems there is considerable overlap between those who felt the EU was cramping our style and those who want far more restrictions on movement of people. Even though migration generally brings economic benefit to the destination county!

Completely unrelated to anything in this thread but I've been meaning to say for ages how delighted I am by your Asimov reference. Gotta love a bit of Isaac

jaymack wrote:

Completely unrelated to anything in this thread but I've been meaning to say for ages how delighted I am by your Asimov reference. Gotta love a bit of Isaac

I knew you were going to say that  

You and Hari Seldon both! 

If you bothered to look at the wine industry, the damage is long term and locked in. The same with parts of the fishing industry - unable to sell oysters to mainland Europe.

And some areas of the economy were badly damaged by EU membership.

Sugar refiners as an example.

That's the thing with all trade deals, there will always be winners and losers.

The potential boost to major areas of our economy is, IMO, well worth the disruption to relatively tiny areas like wine and oysters. Much as I suspect most people who favoured the EU felt the harm to sugar refiners was worth it.

They are clear examples of direct, current damage.
As ever, it's jam tomorrow (in 10 years ).

Which was always to be expected.

There's just been an analysis published that shows the UK growing faster than Germany and France over the next 10-15 years and retaining our position as the world's 6th largest economy.

The same analysis also shows India (eventually) becoming the dominant economic power in the world.

Long term gains are worth short term pains.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/uk-economy-will-grow-more-quickly-tha...