Brexit: On a scale of 1 to 10, where do you stand?

How does the UK make money from trading honey, cashews and coffee with Africa? We already import cashews, coffee and some honey?

The UK stands to lose billions from lost financial services exports.

The UK can never make huge profits from exporting raw materials. We just don't have enough of them and we do't have the land to grow them. We have made money over the last five hundred years from adding value and trading.

asarah and the WTO rule. How do you propose we get around them?

Honey, cashews, coffee etc. etc. there is plenty and finance indurstries taking off. They may not be in the main stream at the moment, but they will be. Listen to the modern thinking coming from Africa on the World Service radio and think ahead to the next decade. I am thinking of my grandchildren, not myself.

asharah

And the WTO rules? How do you propose we get around that?

1 before and if possible a minus 1 now as I see the disaster unfold. Those voting 10 have not yet come up with any good reasons for their decisions, the economy is heading for disaster, farmers are in a panic about getting food off the fields, but still people bleat on about 'taking back control' and still elected fools like the duplicitous Gove promise fishermen that they will be able to fish where they like and as they like, as if regulations will no longer exist. I don't know what makes me despair more, the politician with their lies, or the people who believe it and elect them.

1 Renewable energy, bu the UK won't be the exporter. It will drain capital away from the UK into infrastructure projects in Africa. The Chinese are already there and have a significant influence.

2 Ask Arron Banks, who has mines in Southern Africa. He personally makes loads of money from them, but I don't see much of it filtering into the UK economy.

There's always Albania and North Korea, who aren't already aligned within a trading bloc.

What are we going to trade with Africa?eg will we be able to import fruit/vegetables/wine from them? This is a genuine question, by the way. I really want to know what these new markets are going to consist of. Maybe it will be like when we sold cigarettes and formula baby milk to third world countries to make money.

Thanks resesarered, I say as I see. I don't follow fashion, as my ex-husband used to say!

Excellent posts AsarahG

I hope we can all succeed and a I do have sympathy with those who wanted to remain. I just saw that London was doing fine and the rest of the UK was being ignored. I know that we are important to the EU and expect us to have a decent mutual relationship where we both prosper. We are a strong country and have other friends outside the EU that we have sadly neglected over the years. I hope they forgive us. Africa is a great emerging economy and should not be ignored as a partner, along with all the other emerging countries we have been ignoring in favour of the few.

P.S. the city just opens new regional offices like it has all over the world. They don't move offices!

The world has changed radically since the UK last went it alone. If jobs are lost as seems highly likely - and not just initially when the banks and medical agency move and other City institutions - others will go as contracts run out and are not renewed such as the car and aviation industries. The borders will make it so much more difficult for these businesses.
New jobs will be a while coming and what I wonder will everyone do? Less taxes will affect everyone because of the reduction of money for public services.
I hope that we hard Remainers are proved wrong and all goes swimmingly well because if it doesn't we will all be in the nasty stuff and have great trouble extricating ourselves.

There are arguments on both sides and it is easy to believe all you hear in the media. I have only one view and that is I do not want to be dictated to by a foreign power who I do not trust. No one knows how it will financially affect the UK and there are many and various media and internet statements which we can pick and choose. I feel safer voting for my own destiny. I am not frightened of going it alone and have every faith in our wonderful people. History tells us that we have some fantastic brains and can work well together.

UK has a veto and so have the other 27 - many of the laws are actually made by UK - Brits are considered some of the best lawmakers!
Cameron did get some concessions but the press made little of them. - one was an agreement of not needing to join the Euro and also more leeway on having immigrants having certain limitations put on their rights - cannot remember the details now. Mind you the mechanisms for the Uk to restrict the benefits immigrants had were ALWAYS there - the UK Govts simply CHOSE not to implement them - that was not the fault of the EU.
Are you not worried about the loss of jobs and trade that the UK will suffer very quickly - if not even before Brexit actually takes place. It is looking more and more as if thousands of city jobs will go to Frankfurt. These other countries stand to gain greatly from Britain leaving and yet they would still prefer it stayed!

MaizieD we did not seem to have any voice in the affairs. If we had, our worries would have at least have been discussed when DC went and expressed them. Laws are made that we have to follow, we have no way of voting them out.

If it were a dictatorship, AsarahG it was one in which the UK played a leading role.

But I am at a loss to understand how an organisation comprising 28 countries can be a 'dictatorship' when all the countries have a voice in its affairs.

I would hate anyone to think that I was a 10 at any point - never!

I have just asked HQ to delete it!
Apologies - I meant a very definite 1 and even more definite after a year, if that is possible!

Should that be a 1 leticia? ?

I think you've got that the wrong way round, Leticia...

10 then and even more so now.
Utterly nutty to do anything as damaging as leave- especially when no one has a clue how to do it!

10 definitely - the only way the EU will bring peace is if it is genuinely a union of different states. At present it is a dictatorship. They are talking about an EU army and I do not want my grandchildren conscripted into an army that could be sent to put down rebellion in the poorer southern countries, or the Russian borders when the EU wants to encroach into Russia as it did with Ukraine. They did not want us to join the EU and only wanted our money. Nothing there has changed. Working and living in on the continent will still be possible as it is in other countries in the world. We will be able have proper politics which has already started - the young have been sleepwalking into a dictatorship and have now woken up.

but not heartbroken to be leaving as long as we still keep free trade, including freedom of movement.

I doubt that is at all possible, though happy(ish) to be wrong..

5 then, conflicted because of TTIP and Greece.
Now that TTIP has gone feel more like a 2.
I think we would be better off staying in, but not heartbroken to be leaving as long as we still keep free trade, including freedom of movement.
In fact, thinking as I type, maybe going towards a 1.