The Brexit Deal Is Done But Services Are Likely To See Losses
So I was wrong predicting that there would be no Brexit deal.
Good.
A deal was found on Christmas eve and while both sides, Britain and the European Union, may have lost, the British loss seems bigger.
The 1256 pages of the deal are mostly about trade in goods, not about trade in services. While there will be no tariffs and quotas on goods there will be new bureaucratic measures imposed on goods exports:
In announcing the trade deal this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain acknowledged it offered “not as much” access for financial firms “as we would have liked.” But he was not as straightforward about the difficulties facing even British retailers under the deal, analysts said.In promising that there were “no non-tariff barriers” to selling goods after Brexit, he ignored the tens of millions of customs declarations, health assessments and other checks that businesses will now be responsible for.
The declaration issues will take a few months to sort out. Border queues can be expected in the first few weeks. Sensational reporting about them will follow. But the queues will soon make place for more routine patterns. Trade in goods will then revive to previous levels.
But services like banking, insurance, and legal advice will have more difficulties. Adherence to British rules will no longer be sufficient to be recognized as legit within the EU. Service companies will have to adhere to local rules of other EU countries to do business with them. It is here where Britain is most likely to lose business:
On services, by quitting the single market, it was made clear during the negotiations that the U.K. lost some market access for trade in financial services. This is still the case since there is no provision for the sector in the agreement. More than 40 percent of the U.K.’s exports to the EU are services, and the sector accounts for around 80 percent of the U.K.’s economic activity.
A look at recent British trade balance data shows why that will matter:
bigger
Britain has an overall trade deficit in goods and a trade surplus in services. While the deficit in goods is expected to stay in the current range the surplus in services will probably shrink. The above numbers are for all British imports and exports. The numbers for Britain's trade with the EU are even more unbalanced:
[The deal] leaves financial firms without the biggest benefit of European Union membership: the ability to easily offer services to clients across the region from a single base. This has long allowed a bank in London to provide loans to a business in Venice, or trade bonds for a company in Madrid.That loss is especially painful for Britain, which ran a surplus of £18 billion, or $24 billion, on trade in financial and other services with the European Union in 2019, but a deficit of £97 billion, or $129 billion, on trade in goods.
“The result of the deal is that the European Union retains all of its current advantages in trading, particularly with goods, and the U.K. loses all of its current advantages in the trade for services,” said Tom Kibasi, the former director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, a research institute. “The outcome of this trade negotiation is precisely what happens with most trade deals: The larger party gets what it wants and the smaller party rolls over.”
The British trade balance with the EU as well as its global trade balance are now likely to worsen. That will put pressure on the British pound. As Britain has a sovereign currency it can devalue it. But that is likely to increase the import prices for goods, especially food, and hit its people in their pockets.
But that will be a slow process and by then few will make the connection.
I have always seen the whole Brexit idea as something born out of British nostalgy for its lost empire. Ironically the result seems to have put it even further away from that once mighty status.
Posted by b on December 26, 2020 at 18:33 UTC | Permalink
@ Posted by: J | Dec 26 2020 18:45 utc | 1
You're moving the goalposts here.
I remember rather well that the argument of the Brexiters was that:
1) Brexit would stop mass immigration from Eastern Europe, thus lowering supply of labor power, thus rising wages for local Britons (i.e. employers would have to hire British people, which are fewer in numbers, thus having to pay them higher wages);
2) The UK, as a major world power, would gain the opportunity to negotiate a plethora of bilateral free trade deals which, overall, were more advantageous economically than the overall deals it had to swallow up as part of the EU. In other words, the UK had more leverage alone than within the EU.
In no moment I saw any Brexiter - not Nigel Farage, not Boris Johnson, not anybody - say one bad thing against the City.
@ Posted by: J | Dec 26 2020 18:45 utc | 1
I tend to agree with J
The bloated banking sector combined with disappearing goods production served only to enrich the elites. The masses either being idled or turned into servants for the elites got no benefit from this transformation to a 'service economy'. Rather it was like a return to feudal times.
It was the masses who wanted Brexit not the elites. Under Brexit, the UK will now be forced to have a more balanced economy. Britain may on average become poorer under Brexit, but for the median person the long term prospects in an independent Britain are likely to be better.
Posted by: dh-mtl | Dec 26 2020 19:35 utc | 3
@ b who ended with
"
I have always seen the whole Brexit idea as something born out of British nostalgy for its lost empire. Ironically the result seems to have put it even further away from that once mighty status.
"
The devil is in the details. What sort of financial transparency was the EU requiring that the UK was unwilling to provide? And all this huff and puff for a few oligarchs in the EU that don't get to work directly with the perverse tools of City of London finance.....yep. I don't have the time to read the deal and sus out the new financial requirements but I expect that would be enlightening.
And of course there was a deal because offsetting the desires of the EU oligarchs are all the citizens of the UK that just want to live reasonably and are the real losers in this basic finance ploy.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Dec 26 2020 19:40 utc | 4
"I have always seen the whole Brexit idea as something born out of British nostalgy for its lost empire. "
Yes, b, that is clear.
It is not however an explanation for the enormous number of English votes in favour of leaving the EU. It may explain some of those votes, particularly in the Tory counties where there is nostalgia for the Empire. But most of the anti EU votes came from the old 'rust belt' as the American term is, areas of the run down former industrial heartlands. And these have always been precisely the areas, just as the working class has been precisely the constituency, most opposed to the Empire, imperialism and all its works.
So how is it that suddenly, after two hundred years of sullen opposition to the Empire, the people of Liverpool, Sunderland, Halifax and Pontefract and the old epicentre of radical socialism in South Wales, suddenly become friends of the Empire of which they have always seen themselves as a victimised part?
They haven't. Their opposition to the EU is based upon something that it is surprising that so few people have forgotten: its radical anti-democratic neo-liberal rules, exemplified in the ongoing crucifixion of the Greek working class.
The vote was held in 2016, months after Corbyn's victory and at a time when new enthusiastic, fired up socialists were flooding into the Labour Party. And nowhere more enthusiastically than in the old Labour heartland. They were excited by Corbyn's programme, at that time being developed into the 2017 manifesto, which called for a wholesale reversal of Thatcher and Blair's neo-liberal policies.
The call was for nationalising the natural monopolies, the railways, the power utilities, the oil and gas companies; for a massive programme of public housing and for an end to the corrupt practice of financing public facilities through sweetheart deals with usurers. And there was much else, including proposals which would have reversed the steady privatisations of education and the health service.
And what these ideas all had in common was that they directly challenged EU regulations under which they would not have been allowed.
That, not salivating over Kipling, is what all the talk of sovereignty was about.
The story from there is complex and sordid, essentially the long held ambitions of the socialists were defeated by a combination of the money and the power of the capitalist class in alliance with the world's worst enemies, from the State Department and MI6 to the Israeli government and a scabrous intelligentsia. As we contemplate the defeat, the latest in a long line going back many centuries, of the hopes of the working people of the UK it would be not only merciful, but honest, to spare them- who have for centuries borne the burden of the imperialist call and the City on their backs- the final insult of being written off as right wing, racists nostalgic, in a masochistic way no doubt, for the return of the Empire from which they, as a class, never received a single dividend, and to establish which they paid not only with their lives but their liberties and the property in the country which was their own, the land.
Posted by: bevin | Dec 26 2020 19:46 utc | 5
@vk, I'm not talking about any particular stated reasons. I'm talking about the material reasons that underlie the blue collar working class movement to leave the EU, regardless of whether most making the demand even understand anything. Boris Johnson is not part of this movement. Nor is Nigel Farange. They are using it for their own interests. (Bexit splits both the capitalist and working classes because its effects are primarily distributional as between import vs. export industries, though there are complexities here, e.g., the financial sector.)
Within the working class, this is a revolt against the Western globalizing forces that turned countries like the UK and US into import powerhouses (overvalued currencies) at the expense of what were considered well-paying, stable manufacturing jobs that provided a relatively comfortable standard of living. That transformation had distributional effects harming blue collar working class people and benefiting high earning white collar and professional class workers (as well as the import capitalist class + financial sector, primarily). Bexit is trying to reverse that.
And while leaving the EU isn't singlehandedly going to reverse the changes that have occurred over decades now, it is a push back in that direction. It's what the core of the fight is about. Immigration, for example, is just the superficial politics of it, a simple narrative the movement uses to grow. No doubt those who invoke it genuinely believe it, but that's just how movements work. In any event, immigration debates are basically always rooted in labor unrest wherever and whenever they occur.
Posted by: J | Dec 26 2020 19:47 utc | 6
I keep trying to tell people there is a big difference between the ‘retail’ world of Financial Services that the City has been involved in the last decades compared to the ‘grey’ world of banking that the Ancient City, which demanded the U.K. government into BrexShit.
There is not much difference between this ‘thin’ deal and a ‘no deal’ for these ancient vultures - they are free of the EU regulations against Tax Evasion and Money Laundering.
The financial services ‘passporting’ problem is and was easily addressed within days of the referendum as companies chose to set up ‘HQ’s’ within the EU with some of their staff.
Dublin and Frankfurt have done well out that already.
But when it comes to Tax Havens - all these islands in the sun will now be dwarfed by this giant island Singapore/HK on Thames dedicated to the continuation of the British perfidy of enabling the richest, nastiest thieves, robbers and ancient slave holders and opium and armament sellers to keep their money safe from their obligations to pay tax on it.
b, you need a more nuanced analysis of the truth of this. You can get it here on the financial side
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2020/12/26/tax-haven-uk-is-on-its-way/
& here on the political side.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/12/the-fake-political-and-media-class/#click=https://t.co/0JLH5eJvid">https://t.co/0JLH5eJvid">https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/12/the-fake-political-and-media-class/#click=https://t.co/0JLH5eJvid
Like MoA , truly independent bloggers and experts in their fields. Keep up the great work.
Posted by: DG | Dec 26 2020 20:14 utc | 7
- I still think the Johnson government still was very reluctant to make a deal with the EU. That a "No Deal" was precisely the plan. But the 2 day closure of the borders of the EU with the UK was the thing that brought the UK back to its senses. In that regard the new COVID-19 strain was a "blessing in disguise". It allowed the EU & France that were frustrated with Britain's attitude, to retaliate. And see, Johnson who was AWOL for months, now suddenly knew what the telephone number was of Mrs. Van der Leyen.
Posted by: Willy2 | Dec 26 2020 20:18 utc | 8
thanks b... thanks j for your posts and others as well...
regarding the idea that neoliberalism and this mass expansion of the financial sector are not directly related doesn't make sense to me.. to blame it on the eu seems weird... neoliberalism is still happening and world finances continue to balloon off it all... i think @dg is correct - now london is a tax haven in a win for these same forces... i am not sure this takes the air out of any of the things that @ bevin feels are the aim of the little person... i wish this was it, and maybe there is more fragmentation of it, but it doesn't seem to change much to me... i always viewed the uk as being more in bed with the usa then the eu, even though they are right next to the eu... it is the same deal with the eu and the usa - much more closely aligned then with russia which makes no sense from a geographical point of view.. it only makes sense from a financial angle on who can manipulate who more easily.. in this regard nothing has really changed.. the little people will continue to get screwed by the powerful while financial dinosaurs compete with one another...
Posted by: james | Dec 26 2020 20:47 utc | 9
I would disagree with b regarding a desire for "empire" by the working class, inasmuch as I do not believe the working class view things on a global scale, other than what the propagandists have been telling them everyday for the last 300 years. Inasmuch as I think economics rules all, working people see a decline in their livelihoods and changes in their culture, since the the Crash of 2008 and blame the EU banks for the austerity program.
I see the same attitude in the States, but here for the most part everyday people do not understand they are part of an empire, since that has never been revealed, and goes against the ideology so carefully cultivated through our education and media industries.
Racism and tribalism play a great part as that is continually blasted at them subtly in entertainment and through the news, as well as intra-tribal communications, ie religious establishments, fellowships et al.
I recall during the boom times in the 90s, the left and the right were enthusiastic about immigration, documented and non-documented, since local capitalists benefited from the cheap labor and extensive credit was available to everyone. This stopped after the Crash of 2008.
The reaction to free immigration has been exasperated by the endless wars the Western Empire has been waging for the last 20 years, third world austerity via neoliberal export economies, and the consequential flight by those most affected. This of course, is not a bug, but a feature of neoliberalism.
Posted by: Michael | Dec 26 2020 21:51 utc | 10
Well the day finally came, the day when B made himself clear that he would stand with the globalist banking class, whinging about how they will be hurt by Brexit. As has been abundantly explained by commentators above, the Brexiteers weren't voting with the interest of the (((London Bankers))) in mind. Get over it. It's another plus of the deal in my mind.
Posted by: frankie p | Dec 26 2020 22:30 utc | 11
So finally we got a Brixit deal just now to be voted / rubber stamped by the government !
Then we can all live happily ever after.
Snigger fall about laughing.
b is right in his appraisal, but none the less, his factual post is ringing all sorts of alarm bells with me.
What an incredible coincidence!! The U.K. got the new extra virulent virus with perfect timing, resulting in closed borders with Europe at Christmas, with only days to go to a no deal. Nah sorry I’m not buying it.
—————
And then —- we are so focused on the now, we appear to have lost all forsite.
Shops and businesses are falling like dominoes, massive covid debt built on behalf of the tax payer, normal life turned upside down.
My point is —- in reality, in the near future we won’t possible know if Brixit was good or bad. We will be in a post covid epocaliptic world. Removeing all ‘before and after’ Brixit comparisons.
————
The zionists own and control both major political party’s, the media, yes all of it.
It appears to me whilst we’v all been obsessed with Brixit, Britain has been sold to the zionists.
Posted by: Mark2 | Dec 26 2020 23:00 utc | 12
As bevin notes @5, this is a smashing Neoliberal victory given what Neoliberalism is all about--Modernized Feudalism. With luck however, it will break the Union, which will serve to weaken global Neoliberalism.
Let me put it another way ——-
‘Out of the frying pan into the fire’
Having accomplished Brixit, we now need —-
Brit-zio-exit (Mark2 tm)
————
The zionists are moving their people into key positions in the U.K. And US.
The poorest 50% of the public being culled. No longer needed
I don’t think it’s just Palestine that’s being resettled.
Let’s give it a euthamism —- Gentrifacation.
Posted by: Mark2 | Dec 26 2020 23:33 utc | 14
I am tempted to think that in the long run (maybe 10-20 years time frame)the Brexit deal is in the interest of Germany which needs to get less attached to France, it sounds "counterintuitive" - in the immediate future France will dominate the EU politically, and that needs to be corrected in German eyes. Therefore, it may have been the last "stroke of genius" by Merkel to go along with this deal. My thinking seems to run along similar lines as ´karlof1´in his #13
Posted by: bystander04 | Dec 27 2020 0:10 utc | 15
@ Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 26 2020 23:00 utc | 13
I don't understand why so many Americans speak of the return of feudalism.
The USA was never feudal; there are no objective material conditions for the restoration of feudalism anywhere in the world - let alone the USA. The USA will never be feudal (or "neofeudal").
The only reason I can think of is that, by using the term "[neo]feudalism", Americans will be able to, at the same time, fight the elites while spooking the specter of communism. It would serve as an imaginary enemy that could unite both conservatives and progressives, so to speak.
Leaving an imploding EU is a large plus,bad trade deal aside.
Times of potential secession is no time for voluntary foreign domination and taxation.
Independent England is a geopolitical powerhouse compared to captive EU nations of its size, like Italy and Spain.
Posted by: Liberty Blogger | Dec 27 2020 1:08 utc | 18
Hmmm ... while what B says in his post is significant, I do wonder if the most important aspects of Brexit's effects on the British financial industry are deliberately being left unsaid by The Powers That (Should Not) Be.
How might Brexit affect the Channel Islands? They are part of Britain and are close to France. They are a tax haven and notorious for money laundering. Those MoA barflies who have read Nicholas Shaxson's "Treasure Islands" may remember the insularity and political corruption the book describes, and the juxtaposition of the wealthy who drive real estate speculation and prices with the local poor, squeezed out of the property and forced to leave with the result that local culture and history are being destroyed. Might the UK financial industry move offshore to these islands and maybe other small parts of Europe (and overseas possessions such as French Guiana and Curacao) to circumvent EU taxation and tariffs resulting from Brexit?
Also as long as most laundered monies sloshing thru the sewers of the British financial industry are coming from Russian oligarchs (while they remain unthreatened by Magnitsky laws), Gulf oil sheikhdom princes, Chinese billionaires fleeing Hong Kong and the profits that come from bombing and killing people throughout the Middle East and Africa, I am not sure the British financial industry has too much to worry about in 2021.
Posted by: Jen | Dec 27 2020 1:51 utc | 19
I would add to Bevin's comment @ 5 that the British working class includes and has always included immigrants from all over the world, be they French Huguenots and Sefardic Jews fleeing persecution in the 1500s, Irish and Eastern European Jews escaping famine and poverty in the 1800s or Afro-Caribbean people and people from the Indian subcontinent seeking work in the 1950s onwards. (Not to mention the Russian prince who became a taxi driver after the 1917 revolutions in Russia and who was the ancestor of the British actor Helen Mirren.) To suggest that British working class people are racists nostalgic for Empire ignores the reality that they've always been mixed. Indeed the very mixed nature of the British working classes and their inclusiveness are what their upper and upper middle classes hate about them.
Posted by: Jen | Dec 27 2020 2:05 utc | 20
Mark2 | Dec 26 2020 23:33 utc | 14
"Let’s give it a euthamism —- Gentrifacation."
How 'bout goyogentrocidiabritannica
Posted by: pogohere | Dec 27 2020 2:23 utc | 21
I'm poking around on the www to see whether Joe Stiglitz and Yanis Varoufakis have expressed an opinion on Brexit. Both of them feel that the West can't fix its Trade and Financial problems until it fixes its "Democracy" problems.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Dec 27 2020 2:42 utc | 22
vk | Dec 27 2020 1:02 utc | 17
"I don't understand why so many Americans speak of the return of feudalism.
The USA was never feudal;"
See: THE TENANTRY ON THE NEW YORK MANORS
A New York lawyer who looked at his state Constitution twenty years ago was probably puzzled by part of the Bill of Rights.' Among the protections of the citizen there listed he found:Sec. 11 [Feudal tenures] All feudal tenures of every description, with all their incidents, are declared to be abolished, saving however, all rents and services certain which at any time heretofore have been lawfully created or reserved.Sec. 12 [Allodial tenures] All lands within this State are declared to be
allodial, so that, subject only to the liability to escheat, the entire and
absolute property is vested in the owners, according to the nature of their
respective estates.Sec. 13 [Leases of agricultural lands] No lease or grant of agricultural land for a longer period than twelve years, hereafter made, in which shall
be reserved any rent or service, of any kind, shall be valid.Sec. 14 [Restraints on alienation] All fines, quarter sales, or other like
restraints upon alienation, reserved in any grant of land hereafter to be
made shall be void.All these provisions were dropped from the Constitution in 1938.
But the debates in the Convention of that year show consciousness of a
passing tradition, not abandoned without objection. One delegate asked
in protest at the elimination of the clause on feudal tenures,We are a people in a hurry .... Have we no space for four lines on one
page reminding us that we are a people with a history?This paper proposes that same reminder.
In the ending of great landed estates in New York appears a premise
of all political theory, of all legislation. It is the lesson that all government depends on the consent of the governed, not only in majoritarian theory but in hard political necessity. Real compulsion can only be exercised on a very few by an overwhelming majority. When any substantial part of a people reach the point of refusal to conform, government in some part changes or ceases to function. Our law remains customary in the truest sense. Self government should be the privilege of a people, but it functions only when the individual governs himself.II
New England early came to be peopled by villagers or farmers living
on their own lands, owned in fee.8 But New York, on 'both sides of
the Hudson, along the east and west branches of the Delaware, and in
the valley of the Schoharie, was originally populated by farm tenants of
great landowners holding under colonial grants. Some of these patents
were immense. The Patroonship, later the Manor, of Rensselaerwyck,
originally obtained from the Indians4 by Killian Van Rensselaer between 1630 and 1637, fronted twenty-four miles on the Hudson, and extended twenty-four miles back on each side of the river.5 The Livingston Manor in Columbia County was ten miles wide on the Hudson and ran back over twenty miles to the Massachusetts border. There were other grants of almost equal size.. . .
Colden, more than a century before the "rent wars" of 1846 saw
trouble arising from the large grants. He mentions the loss of quitrents to the King, but finds a much worse disadvantage in the retarded
development of the country.
The Anti-Rent War (also known as the Helderberg War) was a tenants' revolt in upstate New York in the period 1839–1845. The Anti-Renters declared their independence from the manor system run by patroons, resisting tax collectors and successfully demanding land reform.
Posted by: pogohere | Dec 27 2020 2:42 utc | 23
Does anybody know something about the conflict resolution mechanism? It`s not the EU`s Court of Justice as far as I know but which court or institution is it?
Also rather overlooked so far seems to be the fact that under the new trade deal the EU has the perfectly legal right to introduce new regulations for British exports or the British financial industry at any moment. Brussels can tighten the screws on the UK at will.
Posted by: m | Dec 27 2020 7:10 utc | 24
This post, along with the previous one, has a cavalier theme of underlying anti-British racism which is, in my opinion, unbecoming of B. Perhaps it is just the times, with all the woke racism, or just some schadenfreude which I am misinterpreting.
The assumption that you must by definition be racist to countenance Brexit is also amusingly nonsensical, but alive and well here. All those smugly comfortable middle - class intellectuals who benefit from the over-regulated, centralising EU don't have to compete for jobs and housing with the immigrants. I wonder if wealthy Frankfurters will start to complain as UK bankers relocate and force up the price of everything, out-competing the locals? Would that be racist?
Posted by: Insert name here | Dec 27 2020 7:56 utc | 25
bevin @ 5
Great post, but just to say:
'It may explain some of those votes, particularly in the Tory counties where there is nostalgia for the Empire.'
I was brought up in a Tory county by Tory parents and even went to a Tory private school, and in 57 years I can't remember hearing anyone express nostalgia for the Empire. I'm not saying people don't feel it, maybe they do, but you'll very rarely hear even Tories saying it out straight.
Posted by: pt | Dec 27 2020 8:21 utc | 26
A rather skewed perspective that ignores:
- trade in good allows the UK to now access cheaper products from outside the EU - this should especially reduce food prices given the premium prices in the EU. The trade balance will shift as EU food producers lose out and the CAP becomes even more of a mill stone.
- UK exports can now trade to non EU countries outside of EU regulations allowing more cost competitive products. JCB indicated that this was a burden for their non EU business.
- trade in services will not be subject to EU regulation for non EU business and EU business will be more complicated - but not insurmountable - requiring an EU branch office that contracts with London.
- UK can implement independent tax (VAT and corporate) and incentive regimens to encourage inward investment and to benefit from the local content rules.
It is definitely a change but the UK was already trading more with non EU countries and growing business, while EU business was declining. The aggressive negotiation on non trade matters by the EU shows their concern that the UK may benefit being outside the EU.
Posted by: Ian | Dec 27 2020 8:28 utc | 27
The nostalgia for empire was harnesed to serve finanace (again). Look at Nigel Farage, he's an complete propaganda construct who dresses like someone thirty years older.
Posted by: Johny Conspiranoid | Dec 27 2020 10:06 utc | 28
What I see is everybody is more interested in keeping anybody else from doing anything good, than in doing anything good themselves. That the main thing we do here, try to prevent things, prevent change, prevent better products from coming to market, prevent anybody from showing us up. Clinging to the past. That ain't the country I grew up in. All these masters of the universe, do they have any ambition beyond having lots of people suck up to them? What a bunch of losers.
Posted by: Bemildred | Dec 27 2020 11:16 utc | 29
The[domestic promise] might have been propagandized as a call for nationalising the natural monopolies, the railways, the power utilities, the oil and gas companies; for a massive programme of public housing and [a call to ] end corrupt practice of financing public facilities through sweetheart deals with usurers. And ..proposals to reverse the steady privatisations of education and the health service. basically direct challenges to EU regulations. bevin @ 5
this is a revolt against the Western globalizing forces <= that turned countries like the UK and US into import powerhouses (overvalued currencies) <= at the expense of what were considered well-paying, stable [domestic] manufacturing jobs <=these jobs provided a relatively comfortable standard of living. That transformation had distributional effects harming blue collar working class people and benefiting high earning white collar and professional class workers (as well as the import capitalist class + financial sector, primarily). Bexit is trying to reverse that. j @ 6
the British financial and corporate sectors are free of the EU regulations against Tax Evasion and Money Laundering.
when it comes to Tax Havens - all these islands in the sun will now be dwarfed by this giant island Singapore/HK on Thames dedicated to the continuation of the British perfidy of enabling the richest, nastiest thieves, robbers and ancient slave holders and opium and armament sellers to keep their money safe from their obligations to pay tax on it.
and from the link you posted I get the following as important
"Abuse [of the governed] is the stock in trade of this [British] government at a great many levels..." Bexit returns things to the old days <=in which foreign places (those in the EU) were tax havens
and that reversal <=will force the EU to retaliate <=probably by requiring taxes on British earnings and loans to be withheld before any funds are allowed to flow from a EU controlled place back into the corrupt UK.
DG & 7 .
what gets me is why this discussion was not made clear during the arguement and decision period of the Bexit ? did no one understand it, or is it because now that its done, its ok to talk about it.
Clearly there is no advantage to anyone governed by a nation state to keep the nation state in which they are imprisoned unless such person is an oligarch or enjoys being a slave to the few with the wealth. I continue to point out, the problem in this world is the nation state system. I argue that everything from war to poverty can be tracked directly to the power of a nation state system controlled by the wealthy few.
Posted by: snake | Dec 27 2020 11:27 utc | 30
snake@30
'I continue to point out, the problem in this world is the nation state system.'
Snake, you have it perfectly wrong!
The problem is not the nation state. It is the oligarch (authoritarian dictatorship) rule. Authoritarians can take over any system, from the smallest company to the largest state. It is not the fault of the system, but the weakness of human nature to allow such people to get a 'toe-hold' in the power structure. Because, once they do, they spread like a cancer, and in the process destroy their host. It is telling that the 'Globalist Elites' want to destroy the nation-state. Why? Surely not to enhance the ‘power of the people’!
If one defines 'democracy' as government ‘of the people, by the people and for the people' then 'democratic’ governance has produced the most successful societies, at all levels including the nation-state level. Authoritarianism (oligarch rule) is completely incapable of achieving such performance. Rather, like a cancer, it destroys the success that societies, and nation-states, achieved under democracy. Bemildred@29 perfectly describes the authoritarian character that leads to this result.
So why do the ‘Globalist Elites’ want to destroy nation-states? Because the nation-state is a vessel in which ‘democracy’ can exist. Without the nation-state, ‘democracy’ will be limited to local levels; thus eliminating the threat of the ‘people’ to ‘Globalist’ rule at both the national and supra-national levels.
The ‘Globalist Elites’ believe that without nation-states their neo-fascist ‘Global’ utopia will be unchallenged, and humanity will forever enjoy the fruits of ‘sustainable’ serfdom!
So no, Snake, ‘nation-states’ are not the problem. Rather they are a critical part of societal infra-structure necessary to counter the ‘Globalist Elites’ and their neo-fascist wet-dreams.
Posted by: dh-mtl | Dec 27 2020 12:38 utc | 31
The City of London has signed the deal long time ago but this information is not widely circulating in MSM.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/22/city-free-port-brexit-deal-bankers
Posted by: Barabaka | Dec 27 2020 12:55 utc | 32
vk @17: "I don't understand why so many Americans speak of the return of feudalism."
In general I think you are correct. Imagining some sort of return to feudalism gives Americans license to oppose the interests of the capitalist elites so long as they can hang some label on the elites other than capitalist. This is also why westerners, Americans in particular, pretend that there are different kinds of capitalism, some of which are bad. This allows them to not have to challenge the false programming that they have all grown up with that capitalism=good, all alternatives=bad. This is what powers interest in pop pseudoscience like MMT or Hudson's pop pseudo-Marxism. These types of notions let people think that there is some particular formulation of capitalism that society can strive for, be it "industrial" capitalism or "pastoral" capitalism or capitalism controlled by morally upright capitalists. They don't have to commit the blasphemy of questioning "The Market™" (hallowed be Its name) if they believe that the problem is "financial" capitalism or "corporatism" or simply not enough non-"deplorables" in the boardrooms, or some sort of reversion to feudalism, or worst of all, "socialism for the rich".
With regards to "neofeudalism" people are confusing form with function. Westerners are programmed from infancy to believe that capitalism is fundamentally fair, even meritocratic. If you are smart and industrious enough then you succeed. If you fail it is because you are stupid and lazy, or perhaps because of some hidden bias permeating society that must be rooted out. It is important to note that in western society it is necessary to believe that this imaginary "hidden bias" is a failing among masses of individuals in society. To suggest that impoverishment and mean conditions of life for some in capitalism is due to the very supply-and-demand rules inherent to "The Market™" (hallowed be Its name) itself, and that the poor are simply people who have nothing of value to offer capitalists in the open market... well, that suggestion implies that the problem is capitalism, which is a train of thought denied to Americans. Instead of thinking in that direction then Americans must imagine that capitalism has transformed into something else that they are allowed to criticize, thus "neofeudalism".
Since capitalism is fundamentally fair you cannot have dynasties of wealth and generational poverty in it, but since we see dynasties of wealth and generational poverty, then what we have cannot be capitalism, the pre-programmed population imagines. What kind of society has dynasties of wealth and generational poverty? Why, feudalism, of course! So the form (wealth vs poverty) is focused upon rather than the function (economy powered by serfs vs labor bought and sold on the free market). Are there any serfs in America? No, of course not. There are just impoverished people who cannot command a sufficient selling price for their labor in the capitalist marketplace. But that is a functional view of the difference between capitalism and feudalism which Americans avoid because it highlights capitalism as the cause for the problems that they observe.
Posted by: William Gruff | Dec 27 2020 13:21 utc | 33
@vk
@gruff
I want to throw into the conversation the idea that the "return to feudalism" is about return to a class system, where you have nobles (hereditary "elite") and commoners (a fractured rabble). In the beginning it was politically correct dogma that everybody was equal here, a particular reaction to the toxic British class system and the fact the proles were needed to win the war (1776). I don't want to criticize the POV you are advancing, but that is what I see, we have a new upper class that is blatantly hereditary, with the usual features of that sort of society. This is the second or third time they have tried to take over here. Each time we have failed to take away their money. You can have democracy or you can have vast piles of private wealth, but not both.
Posted by: Bemildred | Dec 27 2020 13:52 utc | 34
@ Posted by: Bemildred | Dec 27 2020 13:52 utc | 34
Sure, everybody is entitled to his/her own point of view.
But there are objective consequences with the choice of the adoption of the term "[neo]feudalism":
1) if you accept that this new phase of capitalism (where wealth is mainly determined by birth) is due to "neo/feudalism", then the logical conclusion is Elizabeth Warren's: you just need to periodically enforce antitrust laws to fragment big businesses, in an endless cycle until the end of the universe. Capitalism is then the End of History, a circular system;
2) if you accept this new phase of capitalism is just capitalism, then the logical conclusion is the communist revolution. In the USA, this would imply in the destruction of the Senate and the Congress, as well as the expropriation of the monopolies/big businesses, and the foundation of a new, proletarian government, which will control and own both the infrastructure of big business/monopolies (big business + water, electricity, roads, transportation et al) and the legislative power, and the conversion of the US Armed Forces into a Proletarian Armed Forces.
So, here we have two completely different alternative futures for the USA, changed by the use of one word.
Nation-states’ are not the problem. Rather they are a critical part of societal infra-structure necessary to counter the ‘Globalist Elites’ and their neo-fascist wet-dreams. dh-mtl @ 31
No, dh-mtl @ 31, no you have it wrong. the nation state is the armed leg breaker system it has law making power so it can be used to create rules and rights where before there were none. The nation nation state was developed by the oligarch since the enclosure acts (1640 or so) and designed it to be a global franchise system to enable local oligarch to join in raking available profits from those the local system governs. and at the same time to coordinate its governance of the local with the governance of the 8 billion in the world.
Oligarchs can exist only if there is or are property laws and media to blind the mind of those who are the governed. If no one can privately own the real property, without the means to invent private property, and without the means to attach by rule of law enforceable rights to the invented property (like copyright patents, and such) there can be no coordinated enforcement of global monopoly powers and few if any local monopoly powers. The nation states are the weapon by which the oligarch take from those the nation states govern.
The main Oligarch use of the nation state has been to invent and enforce private property rights against those who are the governed. Without a global system to coordinate those private rights there could be no globalization.
Those without private property are the poor.
Posted by: snake | Dec 27 2020 14:35 utc | 36
Posted by: vk | Dec 27 2020 14:13 utc | 35
Well yeah. But a "well-regulated" capitalism would be better than what we have. The problem is how to maintain it. I would forbid big piles of money myself, we need to reorganize our values around something besides consumption. A comfortable life is all very well, but it is easy to see that being frugal and conservative in our resource use is our future, if we have one.
I'm just saying it is "reasonable" for people who fancy the US ideal of liberty, equality and personal enterprise ( you know, the frontier pioneer stuff) to look to "fixing" the system here rather than trying to reinvent it or change it to a managed economy. (I know we DO have a managed economy, but we aren't supposed to know that.)
You want a managed economy, a good idea I think too, but I don't know if we are ready for it here. At least you/we have a good argument now, we are getting our ass kicked in various ways. The fat days are over.
Posted by: Bemildred | Dec 27 2020 14:38 utc | 37
@ Posted by: pogohere | Dec 27 2020 2:42 utc | 23
But you're speaking of the mythological era of the USA. Those tenant systems - which were not truly feudal, but you could make an argument - were short lived, often failed after some years and was restricted to the northern colonies (from Carolina upwards).
By the time of the Founding Fathers, that system already was prehistory.
Snake@37
'Oligarchs can exist only if there is or are property laws and media to blind the mind of those who are the governed.\
It doesn’t matter the vessel. If nation-states don’t exist the ‘Globalist Oligarchs’ will use global institutions to enforce property laws and use global media to ‘blind the mind of those who are governed’. This is their plan, and the objective of the Great Reset. From global institutions they will rule unchallenged.
The ‘nation-state’ provides a vessel from which the ‘Globalist Oligarchs’ can be challenged. This is why they want to destroy the nation-state.
Posted by: dh-mtl | Dec 27 2020 14:59 utc | 39
Related to
I would disagree with b regarding a desire for "empire" by the working class
Posted by: Michael | Dec 26 2020 21:51 utc | 10
and numerous related comments
If you look closely at the articles written since late January 2020 you will see a distinct change in bias - becoming both more US-centric and more elite-centric. The the former is easy to see; the latter is more subtly disguised, but shows itself especially as underlying assumptions that gently skew reports in ways unforeseen by the author.
Posted by: BM | Dec 27 2020 15:50 utc | 40
COVID p(l)andemic is orchestrated by (a) oligarchs (b) nation states (c) other operational entity (d) a random event. No matter the origin, the outcome will serve to produce a more oligarch-pliant world population .
Posted by: Jan | Dec 27 2020 15:58 utc | 41
This is what powers interest in pop pseudoscience like MMT or Hudson's pop pseudo-Marxism.
I disagree with William Gruff.
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) describes how the economy actually works.
Apparently, Mr. Gruff discounts the constitutional mandate that "The Congress has the sole
authority to create the currency" Ie: creating the USD is a monopoly of the US Government.
MMT brings to light the fact that the USG must "spend into existence" all USD used by the country. This is denounced by all an sundry to facilitate the alternate means of USD creation.... loans made by US Banks...
Mr. Gruff wants the USG hobbled, the US population enfeebled, disenfranchised, so a handful of Bank executives can make Millions via loaning USD into existence, rather than the USG spending USD into existence.
Mr. Gruff wants the US population held in thrall via 30% punitive interest charges on loans, rather than employed by the USG in productive endeavors, like the post office.
Mr. Gruff wants entities like the Post Office dis-membered so he and his minions can make obscene profits providing shoddy service instead of the post office, water supply districts, sanitation districts, and REMCs. No means of rent extraction is too egregious for the likes of Mr. Gruff and his minions.
Mr. Gruff finds Mr. Hudson's researches into credit jubilees of the past, a threat to his empire of extortionate loans, too.
I find Mr. Guff and his scum all too often parroted by the ignorant, easily swindled and converted to his nefarious schemes.
INDY
Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Dec 27 2020 16:43 utc | 42
Below is a quote from a Reuters posting that provides some clarity around financial services
"
Under a system known as equivalence, access to EU markets will not be granted to banks, insurers and other financial firms based in Britain unless their home rules are deemed by Brussels to be “equivalent”, or as robust as regulations in the bloc.
The two sides will aim to agree a memorandum of understanding on regulatory cooperation in financial services by March 2021, and Sunak said that such language should provide reassurance.
"
And as I was scanning the comments I came across
Barabaka | Dec 27 2020 12:55 utc | 32 who provide a link to a report saying the City of London negotiated continuation of cross country derivatives trading back in February of 2019.......in the infamous words of Barack Obama..."...but it is all legal.".....
The West has the best governments money can buy.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Dec 27 2020 17:12 utc | 43
@ Dr. George W Oprisko | Dec 27 2020 16:43 utc | 42.. i am not sure where to jump into this conversation, but i think what is missing in your commentary is how the imf, world bank and international bank of settlements were designed to favour the usa thanks to their increasing importance after ww2... but what altered much of this was the usa going off the gold standard in 1971 or thereabouts... the fact one of the key elements of the agreements after ww2 - of commodities like oil having to be denominated in us$ was more of the undue advantage the us$ had and continues to have on the world stage... some argue that these salient facts don't matter, but i personally think they do... thus there is a large amount of resentment and resistance to the build up of power associated with the us$ for the simple reason is it might have been partly earned in the winner takes all position after ww2, but it is not being respected now given these changes and what it means for the world in 2020... no need to call others scum for holding to a different and perhaps more educated view on this.... cheers james
Posted by: james | Dec 27 2020 17:50 utc | 44
i share the viewpoint expressed @ dh-mtl | Dec 27 2020 12:38 utc | 31
Posted by: james | Dec 27 2020 17:52 utc | 45
@ BM | Dec 27 2020 15:50 utc | 40.. you're really a broken record at this point... i 've always thought more of your ability to participate in the conversation then this..
Posted by: james | Dec 27 2020 17:55 utc | 46
@ Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Dec 27 2020 16:43 utc | 42
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) describes how the economy actually works.
No, it doesn't.
MMT has a lot of ceteris paribus for their system:
1) stationary society: there's no accumulation of wealth;
2) any kind of innovation or technological development is an alien, completely spontaneous factor;
3) allocation of money automatically translates into allocation of resources (the transfiguration of money to a spiritual status);
4) the central government (central bank) can print and recall money at will, with zero delay/latency.
Those factors obviously don't exist - and will never exist - in any society, let alone a capitalist society.
Even the most basic affirmations of the MMTers are simply not true: for example, your cited maxim "the USG must "spend into existence" all USD used by the country" is patently false: there are trillions and trillions of USDs that only exist in constant flow in the financial system; they don't translate in any kind of objective wealth. How does MMT explains that? Humans are time travelers now?
Still dh-mtl @ 39 you don't get it, re Snake @ 37
"Oligarchs can exist only if there is or are property laws and media to blind the mind of those who are the governed.\ It doesn’t matter the vessel. If nation-states don’t exist the ‘Globalist Oligarchs’ will use global institutions to enforce property laws and use global media to ‘blind the mind of those who are governed’. This is their plan, and the objective of the Great Reset. From global institutions they will rule unchallenged.
The ‘nation-state’ provides a vessel from which the ‘Globalist Oligarchs’ can be challenged. This is why they want to destroy the nation-state.
I would be glad to help in the destruction the nation state system, it stands in the way of democracy and independence. without nation states there can be no global institution because the people would not stand for it. .. Global institutions can only exist when there is sufficient coordinated fire power to hold the governed at bay.. The French Revolution showed what I predict soon is going to happen to those in the nation state governments, I see abused humanity everywhere understanding the only way to freedom is to take down the entire nation state system.. and to eliminate armed governments.
Few are more despicable IMO than a person so low in self esteem that he or she would work for an oligarch or his government; such people are the stooges that defend and support the Oligarch promised land. The Oligarch owned nation state makes human dignity a privilege allowed only to the Oligarch.
I offered that a second government composed only of those who are governed by the nation state should be instituted to govern those who govern.. Many of my fellow governed were more than willing to arrest those in the Oligarch owned nation state system, but the oligarch defended the unaudited continuance of the nation state system.
Posted by: snake | Dec 27 2020 18:10 utc | 48
@ 5 bevin Liverpool voted Remain & stayed true to their Labour roots. Corbyn & McDonnell campaigned on "another Europe is possible" platform, highlighting the need to remain part of a larger block to enable social reforms. The red wall fell because the voters preferred farage over corbyn. They believed eu bad & did not sign up for Labour policies. You claim it had nothing to do with "salivating over Kipling" & then went all Kipling! "... never received a single dividend, and to establish which they paid not only with their lives but their liberties and the property in the country which was their own the land."
Posted by: boon | Dec 27 2020 18:10 utc | 49
Bemildred @34: "I want to throw into the conversation the idea that the "return to feudalism" is about return to a class system..."
The United States has had a class society since its very inception. Class society cannot be "returned to" because it was never left behind. There was a brief period after WWII in which America developed an extensive middle class, and that middle class liked to imagine itself historically exceptional and above the class dynamics of the economy that powered American society, but that belief was always just crass arrogance and egotism steeled in miseducated and willful ignorance. What we are witnessing now is not the society transforming into something new (or returning to something old) but rather the American middle class collapsing to levels that the country's productive economic base and imperial holdings can support. The middle class doesn't now and has never objected to exploitation and only squeals due to the wealth gap between itself and the working class being narrowed or eliminated.
More importantly you are making the very mistake I mentioned above @33 of confusing form for function. Class isn't determined by some certain income dollar amount. Class is determined by an individual's relationship to how goods and services are produced. There are middle class people who are impoverished (the self-employed yard maintenance guy who keeps your lawn mowed, for example) and there are working class people who are better compensated than most of the middle class (salaried top engineers and quants).
Bemildred @37: "...a "well-regulated" capitalism would be better than what we have."
America had a well-regulated capitalism. Unfortunately it became necessary to begin removing the regulations in the 1970s in order to restore some dynamism to the economy. That deregulation wasn't gratuitous, though, it was necessary. The surest way to kill what is left of capitalism's vitality in America would be to restore those regulations. The only way for America to get back to the post-war "good ol` days" would be for there to be another global war in which the USA comes out on top again. That is probably not possible in the current era.
Posted by: William Gruff | Dec 27 2020 18:26 utc | 50
Still Snake@48
You mistake the the tool (the nation-state) for the enemy (the Globalist Oligarchs).
Getting rid of the guillotine will not end executions - getting rid of nation-states will not end oligarch rule!
If you want to strip the oligarchs of their power, you must first strip them of their wealth.
'without nation states there can be no (resistance to) global institution because the people would (be too fragmented) (to) stand (against) it'.
The oligarch's are not defending the nation-state, they are trying to destroy it - i.e. 'World without Borders'.
Getting rid of the nation-state to defeat the 'Globalist Oligarchs' is like committing suicide to defeat cancer, only in this case the cancer will have already moved on to the next victim, while the people of the nation-state will have their lives destroyed.
Posted by: dh-mtl | Dec 27 2020 18:56 utc | 51
again i concur with @ dh-mtl | Dec 27 2020 18:56 utc | 51
it seems this getting rid of the nation states is the hipster thing for proper virtue signalling... i have some young friends who think this way...
Posted by: james | Dec 27 2020 19:07 utc | 52
Posted by: bevin | Dec 26 2020 19:46 utc | 5
dont ruin poor b`s pro eu stand🤷♂️
i think he is a pro eu moron.
Posted by: Per/Norway | Dec 27 2020 19:17 utc | 53
Posted by: frankie p | Dec 26 2020 22:30 utc | 11
that have been clear since he started to push the fauci narrative about the fakedemic.
if he needed to push pro eu/globalist bullshit for you to notice i truly hope you will start noticing things sooner in the future after this late lesson.
Posted by: Per/Norway | Dec 27 2020 19:23 utc | 54
Posted by: dh-mtl | Dec 27 2020 12:38 utc | 31
i can not remember the last time i agreed with you 100% dh.
but you nailed it in no31 in this comment feed.
Posted by: Per/Norway | Dec 27 2020 19:35 utc | 55
If you want to strip the oligarchs of their power, you must first strip them of their wealth.
'without nation states there can be no (resistance to) global institution because the people would (be too fragmented) (to) stand (against) it'.
The oligarch's are not defending the nation-state, they are trying to destroy it - i.e. 'World without Borders'.
Getting rid of the nation-state to defeat the 'Globalist Oligarchs' is like committing suicide to defeat cancer, only in this case the cancer will have already moved on to the next victim, while the people of the nation-state will have their lives destroyed. dh-mtl @ 51
Not so, the source of the Oligarch power is the armed and dangerous oligarch controlled global law making nation state system.. without the nation state there would be no privatization of everything, without privatization there is no monopoly power, without monopoly power their is no disproportionate distribution of wealth and no disproportionate use of that wealth to direct non democratic outcomes.. When everyone is in the same economic and the same social boat their is no authority except that authority vested in angry and hungry mankind.
A world without governed and regulated borders is quite different than a world governed by international institutions. I understand and agree the Oligarchs want to rule through one world government So you just proved the point, the first step to freedom is the total destruction of the nation state system. As long as the oligarch controlled nation state system survives, humanity throughout the globe cannot organize across borders sufficiently to stop the organized criminal organizations called nation state governments. so the change will be occur most likely in a near leader-less spontaneous rising. Once humanity gets the upper hand, I predict there will never again be a government that does not serve the governed. Revolution against power has seen a gradual righting of top down to bottom up power.
To treat cancer one suicides one's own cells. when the cancer cells die, so too do the viable cells of the victim. its a race against time..and target technology to select out the cancer cells for destruction vs the biological ability of the cancer cells to mutate and survive. The way most people are cured of cancer is either to remove all of the cancer or to kill off both the good and bad cells, until there is no more cancer cells, then the problem is to nurse the survivor victim back to good health.
Throughout history, mankind at the bottom of the heap, has had to rise against unbelievable odds to kill off the cancers that take control of the political systems in which mankind is born, but history has shown each battle brings humanity closer to self-determination. In year 0 AD it was unthinkable that a religious leader would not rule, in 1000 AD it was unthinkable that a king would not rule, in 2000 AD it was unthinkable that republican group of wealthy privileged Aristocrats would not rule, in 2030 it might be unbelievable to most that mankind suffered oligarch nation state privilege as long as it did. Time will tell. I urge the Oligarch to continue their push to tighten their control.
What might be different this time around, is before the rebels act, they might plan how they are going to manage things after they win.
When there is no system, there is no wealth and no privilege to buy anything with.
Posted by: snake | Dec 28 2020 0:13 utc | 56
@snake
You are correct about the Nation state being a root cause of problems.
England itself was a backwater feudal country with tribal delineation when Nation States came into being, never mind the UK which came a long while later.
So start with the Treaty of Westphalia.
The drone of the gaslighting echo chamber here, who are in my considered opinion professional trolls, here to preserve the statusquo of the invented left/right narrative. They exactly mimic the same creeds as we get from the MSM and controlled politics and many a supposed Alternative Indy blog site (Moa being one of the honest ones). They are basically using scripts to counter all progressive thinking and conversation through their red/brown bridging memes.
You can figure out yourself who I speak of.
Stay focused on teasing out the truth of history which is obscured.
Money. Of course is a cruicial thing to understand. Wrapped up in mumbo jumbo and pseudoscientific almost religious, Economics - as good as Astrology in its usefulnes! (Not. Just to be clear)
Taxation too.
Joint stock companies which in Europe were the precursor to the European Empires - starting with the Dutch East India Company, before it branched into the English East India Company...
All of it financed and created through the centuries by The Money Owners as was the Bank of England, as is the Media and Politics of today , which they have spread across the Globe as their levers of control of resources and humans. They create nations to control these lands and peoples and indenture their peoples for ever.
Keep digging for the truth. The reason for Brexshit becomes crystal clear.
Posted by: DG | Dec 28 2020 1:31 utc | 57
Lots of good analysis above, by William Gruff, vk, snake and others.
One thing not mentioned though, is the problem of (representative) Democracy. As the saying goes, "if voting changed anything real, they wouldn't allow it"
Representative Democracy is a major part of the scam.
What we need is a system based on sortition (as well, of course, as all the other things we need, such as putting the oligarchy into re-education camps, breaking up the USA, destroying capitalism, etc.)
A first step to an Anarchist Government might be to introduce a true proportional voting system, then a sortition system, which would (apart from bribery) allow better decision making.
Lots of controversy here - go to it!
Posted by: Jams O'Donnell | Dec 28 2020 17:49 utc | 58
it is nice to see people disagreeing with each other without flipping out... one of the nice things to be grateful for at moa..
Posted by: james | Dec 29 2020 17:33 utc | 59
The comments to this entry are closed.
As was always the case with Brexit, UK import industries will be harmed, and UK export industries (except ones you identified like the finance sector) will be advantaged. But, this was pretty much always the objective of the forces behind Brexit. The UK actually needs its finance sector to be weakened, as it is way too large relative to the economy as a whole. It is also way too politically powerful, corroding democratic governance. While the UK didn't necessarily need to leave the EU to accomplish shrinking the sector, it may have been the only way practically speaking.
Posted by: J | Dec 26 2020 18:45 utc | 1