Brexit will be Titanic success, says Boris Johnson

Unfortunately, IMO, the only way that the UK can survive is if the EU falls apart. Our fate is in EU hands - they could really screw us if they wanted revenge and take us down with them.

 

If that were the case, then surely, our exports should have grown. But exports to the EU have fallen since we joined.

The point of the car industry was unique to NAFTA, though the principle applies everywhere. Under NAFTA, masses of USA based car companies up sticks and moved factories to Mexico as they could hire labour for $3 a hour compared to USA labour and then import the parts back into the USA under NAFTA free trade. The Mexican economy benefited, but the USA lost.

Other examples with the UK and EU abound. For example, Ford Transit which with the help of a EU subsidy moved its plant in the UK to Eastern Europe and now exports back to the UK. The UK workers lost out to the cheaper labour costs.

Globalisation via free trade has been a disaster. Often as well for the poorer countries where production moves to.

 

There is free trade in goods going between EU countries. Exports have fallen because our goods are too expensive.

I'm sorry, but I am still struggling to see your point. It seems like that you may be agreeing with me in stating that for a country that imports more than it exports, a free trade deal is not good. With reference to car exports from the UK to the US though, the EU obtained a great trade deal for us in that our car exports into the US had an import tax of only 2.5% as opposed to the 10% that the UK charge US car companies to sell their cars in the UK.

A free trade deal is great for countries that can manufacture goods cheaply hence free trade deals are not good for the UK. But the consequence of not having free trade is that inflation will increase in our country, hence wages increase, hence goods become more expensive to produce leading to job cuts - it is a vicious circle, while trying to find the right balance

 

India was only one example of a growing market, there are plenty of others .. I've never understood this passion some people have of looking inwards, placing pretty much all the eggs in one basket and hoping no one trips up and smashes the lot . .which is exactly where the EU is heading . .a trip and a lot of smashed eggs. It will only take France or Italy to fall and the EU will be in deep, deep crap.

Italian total real economy debt (that is, government, household and business) is around 259 per cent of GDP, up 55 per cent since 2007. France’s equivalent debt is around 280 per cent of GDP, up 66 per cent since 2007. This ignores unfunded pension and healthcare obligations as well as contingent commitments to Eurozone bailouts.

 

That is pure and utter crap .. Are you suggesting that the EU will violate their own laws which state that they cannot place punitive tariffs etc onto a country that leaves the EU, or that they will ignore the WTO if a deal cannot be reached .. you seem to forget that any tariffs imposed onto the UK will only result in the same tariffs being applied to the EU and it will cost them a whole lot more.
You also seem to forget the power that the German car manufacturers etc have, Merkel would be committing political suicide if she backed harsh measures against the UK, with Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, and Ireland all having a large export market with the UK they are not going to risk destabilising those markets.

The EU has already been warned by around 30 non-EU countries that if they attempt to "punish" the UK for leaving - by banning countries they have trade deals with from negotiating with the UK - that those countries will punish the EU back, by insisting that trade deals be re-negotiated as the deals they already have include the UK.

 

You still don't seem to realise that UK having free trade with the EU is not good for the UK. so your first paragraph makes no sense in your argument
As for your second paragraph when have the EU said that they ban other countries from making deals with the UK?

 

Who said anything about free trade deals, I said that the EU cannot place punitive "punishment" onto the UK, and as I said it is in the interest of the EU to get the best deal they can with us, not the other way round.

Just something I saw.

 

When the mierda does hit the fan they'll all being squabbling with one another to save their own skins and Swiss bank accounts: I'm talking about the ruling classes, not the populaces for whom I truly feel sorry for what's ahead for them - except the fools who went on a bacchanalia when the misbegotten farce was 'born', or when they themselves joined up. Suckers!

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I'm on my 4th BMW, and if they (*)(*)(*)(*) us about there won't be a 5th.

 

I don't think anyone actually knows what Trump will do now that he has been elected.

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What was the concensus of the economists about joining The EU.

 

They were never asked, we joined the Common Market (EEC) not the EU. The Common Market was actually a good idea for the six founding members, not so much for the UK. We really didn't have a good economic reason to join, our growth rate around the period we joined was 7.4%, De Gaulle could not understand why we wanted to join, In his famous press conference of January 1963, when he vetoed British entry, (http://www.cvce.eu/en/obj/press_con...-en-5b5d0d35-4266-49bc-b770-b24826858e1f.html) he pointed out that Britain had democratic political institutions, world trade links, cheap food from the Commonwealth and was a global power. Why would it want to enter the EEC which was a bunch of countries, fours of which held no international weight whatsoever. West Germany was occupied and divided and its armed forces were under the strict supervision of NATO. France, meanwhile had lost one great colonial struggle in Vietnam and another in Algeria.

 

We had a very good reason to join it. Britain was in economic decline and went cap in hand to IMF for a bailout.
Britain has done well from being part of the EU. Nobody is going to claim it's perfect, but we were a darned sight better off being part of it than we can be outside.

Yes, we can get some trade deals, but they won't be as favourable - especially as Britain is not open to immigration.

 

Still spreading alarm and despondency I see?

 

I'm sorry it leaves you alarmed and despondent, but it's the truth.

You not liking it won't change it.

 

Britain experienced a sharp and seemingly inexorable economic decline and was notoriously prone to strikes, in the period from about 1966–7 till 1985, while there was a mild improvement after joining the EEC that alone was not the reason for the UK's change in fortunes, in fact in the first few years after joining prices increased as trade tariffs came into effect with Commonwealth nations we have previously enjoyed free trade with. The EEC cannot take all the credit for the the economic recovery and growth of the EU6 - there were other factors at play. Marshall Aid from the US pumped millions into their economies. Soviet tanks on the intra-German border provided an incentive for strength.

That is not necessarily true, the biggest changes that occurred in the UK that pulled us out being "The sick man of Europe" had nothing to do with the EU (or EEC as it was then), like the woman and her policies or not it was Thatcher's government that stopped the UK decline .. but by that time we had cut trade ties with Commonwealth countries and their ~2.5 billion population in favour of the EU with its ~500 million population.

Pure bollocks, Britain has been and always will be open to immigration .. what we are not open for is unregulated immigration and neither are the majority of other world countries. The EU seems to think that they are the centre of everything, when in reality they are a failing social experiment.

 

How about providing a source for that?

The fact is, we beggd to join the EEC back in the 1960s because we were broke

I'll give you a source from my point of view

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/review-of-the-balance-of-competences

There's a lot of it, but it's very thorough.

The pity of it is, it was never published properly so we could read and understand it.
Basically, Britain does very well as a member of the EU. There is no economic reason to leave

It had everything to do with being part of the EU. We bargain our access to other EU countries to strike trade deals.

Any trade deals Britain strikes in the future will involve some kind bargaining. Already India has made it plain Britain will have to relax its visa laws if it wants a trade deal.

Rubbish. People voted to leave because they thought the East-European workers would have to go back home.

Some people are open to immigration. Most brexiters aren't.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...ung-voters-remain-eu-referendum-a7103996.html

A very fair analysis of why people voted the way they did. You'll see immigration played a huge part in why people wanted to leave.

The pity of it all is this:

It seems attitudes to EU integration are closely tied to domestic issues. So the austerity pursued by the British government after the 2010 general election has implications for the referendum vote.

Since 2010 the government has systematically reduced funding for deprived areas of Britain. It is a safe bet that when the government started cutting the budgets for deprived communities in the North of England, it did not realise the decision would come back to bite them in the form of a large vote to leave the European Union.

 

Most Brexiters are worried about where all the housing - you know, roofs over heads? - will come from, not only for the immigrants but for their own children and their children's children. Obviously you have no such concerns so Pull the ladder up, Jack! How can people be so bloody short-sighted, not to say stupid?

Here's a question for you, lil - suppose your Continental 'friends' turn nasty, and forcibly eject our ex-pats - where would they live if they had to return to dear old Blighty?

 

Studies highlight two main periods when prosperity increased: in the 1970s, soon after the UK joined, and after the EU opened its single market in goods in 1992, a sea change in integration. But, because it is so difficult to distinguish a causal link from a mere correlation, the UK’s post-1973 rebound does not itself definitively establish that EU membership has made the country more productive — the fundamental issue at stake. Ruth Lea, economic adviser to Arbuthnot Securities, a private bank, says the leading cause of its reversal in fortunes was in fact “a certain lady from Finchley” — the late Margaret Thatcher, who privatised state-owned companies, took on the unions and deregulated the City of London.

http://voxeu.org/article/britain-s-eu-membership-new-insight-economic-history - This is actually a source in favour of the EU, but it does give a very balanced approach that details some of the issues concerning the EU as well.

With inflation running at 24% (CPI inflation is currently 0.3%), rising food prices were a huge issue for voters in 1975. Some blamed the recent introduction of decimal coins. Others blamed the parlous state of British industry.
The Out campaign blamed the Common Market, which through the Common Agricultural Policy, forced Britain to buy food from other member states and, to give one much quoted example, banned the import of cheap butter from New Zealand.
"The price of butter has to be almost doubled by 1978 if we stay in," warned the Out campaign in its leaflet. In fact, the price of butter quadrupled by 1978.





Source - https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&r...04.pdf&usg=AFQjCNH3CYdJkOpxayy3VtyqOg0seU__VQ

The graphs above show a massive increase in the retail price index circa 1973.

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/marshall-plan - The comprehensive program to rebuild Europe. Fanned by the fear of Communist expansion and the rapid deterioration of European economies in the winter of 1946–1947, Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act in March 1948 and approved funding that would eventually rise to over $12 billion for the rebuilding of Western Europe.

The EU in the 1960s and 1970s was in no position to aid anyone’s economy. It spent most of its meagre resources on agriculture and fisheries and had no policies at all for furthering economic growth. If Europe grew after 1945, growth was kick-started by Ludwig Erhard’s currency and supply-side reforms in West Germany from 1948, which in turn revitalised the economies of the Low Countries. Also important was the work done by the European Payments Union under the Marshall Plan and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which worked on the ‘most favoured nation’ principle.

Growth rates in Western Europe were 3.5% in the 1950s and 4.5% in the 1960s, British growth rates were in not very far behind and often ahead. In 1959, when Macmillan took office, the real annual growth rate of British GDP, according to the Office of National Statistics, was almost 6%. It was again almost 6% when de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s first application to join the EEC in 1963. In 1973, when we entered, our annual national growth rate in real terms was a record 7.4%.

We joined the EEC because political leaders panicked over the assumed decline of Commonwealth Trade, their desire for a Federal Europe and their lying over "ever greater integration"

no it didn't, changes to the UK economy did not actually happen until the early to mid 80's and they were down to Thatchers policies, not EU trade deals, the deals with did with the EU actually increased costs to the UK people, as shown in the CPI graphs above.

Of course bargaining will be required .. however it will be people democratically elected bargaining for the UK, not some unelected people in Brussels telling us we MUST accept terms that we don't agree with.

The Indian call for relaxed visa laws is not a carte blanc overhaul, the focus is on post graduate students .. but again this is something a post Brexit UK can decide for itself, in its own interests .. where as members of the EU we are left with no choice, even if that choice would be beneficial to the UK.

It is your comment that is rubbish, please point out in that article cited where it says "People voted to leave because they thought the East-European workers would have to go back home" .. it doesn't, it does say that people wanted Brexit because it would give greater control over immigration and that is still the case.

Austerity measures have zero to do with the vote to leave, it is an assumption without evidence or if you prefer correlation does not equal causation.

 

That shut her up!!

 

Titanic success! A good joke [:

 

Yes it's a very good joke, but I don't think poor old BoJo meant it to be.

Thanks for the information, Fugazi, but it doesn't really support your position.

Sadly the first link doesn't work any more, possibly because it's been a week since I've found time to respond, therefore I don't know how useful it was,

As far as I can tell, the reasons for fluctuations in the economy were for global reasons, rather than having anything to do with belonging to the EU.

I'm glad to see you actually do understand that Britain is better of in the EU than out

and as for people thinking EU migrants would go home after the referendum...come on.

You must surely know that immigration was the main reason people voted to leave.

http://www.cer.org.uk/insights/britain-will-struggle-make-eu-migrants-‘go-home’

Why would that even be up for discussion if it wasn't a major issue?

There was no economic argument for leaving that stood up to scrutiny.

There is still no economic argument. It's fantasy and wishful thinking.

Do you know why cerberus is talking to himself?