What will the UK look like with the new change in economics?

It would seem that the finance industry has been moving huge sums of investment out of Britain and into EU member states in the last year due to Brexit.

Over eight hundred million has been rolled over into European investment with banks and other financial institutions opening offices in EU member states to handle the finance transferred into Europe.

The above has now cost London its status as being the worlds premier financial city, with New Yorks Wall Street now holding that accolade.

So, any Boris Brexit bounce is as yet a long way from revealing itself for all those engaged in the finance and vehicle production industries it would seem.

Media links to the above can be found here:-
www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/new-york-london-brexit-financial-services-centre-survey-a9304521.html

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/banks-brexit-moves-assets-billions-uk-to-eu-a8818116.html

Now, firstly, I apologise for getting John McDonnell's name wrong. Secondly, I don't think I was particularly assertive in saying that I thought the fishing industry would say it lost out after we joined the EU. I think it did lose out but not just because of joining the EU. I agree that fishing is now quite a small industry in relative terms and, as I said, I don't expect Brexit will make it a large one again.

The 'Boris' bounce is not my invention and, if you disagree, maybe people should take it up with Goldman Sachs and other forecasters. Since people seem to agree that investment has been delayed because of Brexit, it is not too far-fetched to think there might now be a bounce. Time will tell.

It was interesting at Davos that the CEO of Deutsche Bank was relatively, if guardedly, positive about Brexit and London's future as a financial centre. It is good to hear that he can be a little upbeat, even if so many here won't countenance the thought.

Fishing is a ridiculous reason for Brexit and those fishing towns which voted for it could very well regret it. If the government decides to support fishing financially (and there isn't a very sound financial argument), it will be flying in the face of free marketeers in the Conservative Party, who don't agree with state subsidies.

Fishing is such a tiny industry in terms of gdp ( less than 2%) whereas financial services prop up the economy , so the B supporters don’t quite understand the repercussions of trying to promote fishing as a huge reason for Brexit. UK fishing is dominated by 2 very wealthy Scottish families, most of the rest of it foreign owned. So trumpeting about fishing being a great reason for Brexit is shooting yourselves in the English foot.

Fishing stocks were declining decades before the UK joined the Common Market. There were two main reasons - mismanagement as a result of having no quotas and huge modern trawlers.

The distribution of national quotas is the responsibility of national government, not the EU. The UK sold many of its quotas to fishing companies in other countries and I'm not sure how the country is going to get those back. Presumably, they'll have to pay for them at market prices.

The EU's Common Fisheries Policy hasn't been perfect, but it would have helped if the UK had had somebody to represent it and fight our case. The UK's representative on the Fisheries Committee was a certain N Farage, who only ever attended one out of 42 meetings in three years. During that time there were three major votes on the common fisheries policy, but Farage failed to vote in favour of improving legislation, which would have been of benefit to the UK fishing industry.

Ironically, Brexit could mean the demise of the UK fishing industry. Norway and Iceland can stop illegal fishing in their waters because they have negotiated a treaty with the EU that protects their fishing interests. Unless the UK negotiates a deal with the EU, there will be a situation that will hurt the British fishing industry. Currently, more than 70% of UK seafood exports go to the EU, while a third of the seafood we import comes from the EU.

Brexit bounce? Bre it nonsense.

Absolutely nothing has improved because of brexit which has so far cost us billions and is virtually guaranteed to make the country and 99.999% of the population poorer in every way.

Cunco As you have stated quite assertively that British fishing lost out when the UK joined the EU, would you be so kind as to justify your assertion.

Interesting article Maizie. Thanks.

Maizie and Cunco. It is really good to see people trying to be reasonable and very good to see the occasional "I don't know about this". As I don't know a lot about a lot of it it's good to see references to those who do!

It seems our government must try to hang on to our markets in the EU without giving too much away. We must then also try and open up markets elsewhere. Some do need to recognise that all trade agreements will be hard-fought. No one will be nice to us just because of our past - the opposite I would have thought.

My worry would be that governments are not good at looking to the future and have a tendency to go off in one direction. I worry that we are not hearing enough about industries for the green revolution. The wide boys who have come from a financial background do not fill me with joy either.

"Technology" on its own is not something to aim for. We have had at least two technological revolutions in the recent past, in communications and information. What next? I also see a social revolution coming. You cannot show people who have nothing - in parts of Africa and India for example and not expect them to want what we have. Wars are fought for such progress and there are stirrings in many first world countries too.

More questions than answers but so far neither of the two larger political parties - or anyone appearing as a lone voice are making suggestions about our economic future.

Who's John McDonald? (Another person on this site seems to think that such a person is a senior Labour Party member.)

MaizieD I think most forecasts, both for the UK and EU, assume a reasonable trade deal between the two. On that basis, the so-called 'Boris' bounce is driven by investment that has been delayed by the uncertainty over Brexit and whether Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonald were going to be running the show. Growth forecast in UK, Germany, France and Italy is, nevertheless, anaemic by historical and geographical standards.

I mentioned fishing because it lost out after we joined the EU. I don't imagine it will regain its position.

By the way, I am still waiting for you to answer my earlier question about which societies have developed without an 'underclass'. My own research hasn't come up with an answer but it has underlined that we have to be careful about what we mean by 'underclass'. I suspect we don't mean the same as Karl Marx or Charles Booth.

vegansrock I would not like to see extreme governments to Left or Right. As part of a United States of Europe, I would particularly not wish the UK to be bound by their rules. Some people think it will never happen but people did not expect the US to have a President like Trump.

I am really hard put to see where 'growth' is supposed to come from, Cunco, but that is one bit of financial 'forecasting' that I don't have much knowledge of.

What I do see is that, unless we stay closely aligned to the EU, we lose a great deal of our trade in goods and service, with a diminished prospect of it being fully compensated for by deals with the rest of the world, and very poor prospects for our financial services sector as financial services are, I'm given to understood, not easy to slot into FTAs.

The fishing industry (seeing that you mentioned it, is going to lose out big time without alignment as most of their catch is actually sold to EU states because the Brits won't eat it! We import much of our fish from Norway and Iceland...

This is the excellent Ian Dunt on the problem for fishing (written in the form of a conversation)

Start

You were talking about fisheries policy.

Ah yes. So the British position is simple. We are now going to be a sovereign coastal state. We want our 200 mile limit. We'll decide what goes on there. The EU position is very different. It wants everything to stay the same as it is right now.

And what is the status quo for fishing exactly?

Basically anything outside of 12 miles from a member state is a common area. The stocks of individual fish species are then divided up between countries in set quotas to prevent overfishing. So Britain might have a 15% share of a particular stock, for instance. Those quotas are set. They do not change. But each year scientists provide advice on the total allowable catch. If it was 100,000 tonnes, Britain would get 15,000 tonnes that year. And that's how they divide up the stock.

So they want that to stick.

Yeah. But Britain, on the other hand, will probably want something like what Norway has. Each year, in the autumn, Norway gets together with the Europeans and sorts out some annual fish arrangements. It's fraught and tense, but it has a lot of power in the talks. They haggle over how much of a quota it gets on certain stocks. And unlike in the EU, that quota can change. Sometimes, if no agreement can be reached, Norway just says you can't fish in their waters at all. Britain would love to operate just like that.

Why can't it? You said the law is on the UK side.

It is, but the leverage isn't.

Recurring theme.

Quite. We can take control of our waters and block anyone fishing within 200 miles of them if we want, but there's a problem: we don't eat our own fish. Eighty per cent of what we catch goes to the EU. The fish we actually eat - good old British fish and chips - mostly comes from Norway and Iceland.

OK, but so what?

So the European threat is simple. If we don't do what they want they'll put tariffs on fish. That would absolutely hammer our fishing industry. The tariffs are high in this area and it would apply on almost everything it sells.

OK so what about some sort of compromise? Maybe the UK could stay in the EU system but they agree to rejig the quotas a bit to placate us.

Tempting, but the trouble is that would involve opening up the whole quota debate across the EU again. It would be like opening Pandora's Fish Box. They won't do that.

So we're faced with two sides with really quite distant goals in a highly emotional area of trade.

Yep. Which is why it's instructive to look at how they plan to talk about this. Britain wants to talk about fish separately to everything else. But the Europeans aren't having any of that. They want to bring the issue into the general trade discussion. And that'll be the attitude throughout - the British trying to silo off individual topics so they can't be used as leverage against each other and the Europeans making it more comprehensive.

What is it the Europeans actually want?

I thought you'd never ask. It's quite simple. They don't want Britain to undercut them. And that's not just about price - it's about regulations, subsidies and taxes.

End

www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2020/01/23/brexit-2020-everything-you-need-to-know-about-johnson-s-trad

All the project fear by Brexit supporters of EU countries lining up to follow the U.K. haven’t seemed to have taken hold, despite the election of some right wing politicians in various countries, latest elections in Italy have shown a swing away from the populists back to an EU supporting party. The political chaos of the last few years isn’t something any sane country would want to emulate.

I am not sure we can measure accurately net gain or loss by being inside the EU. I suspect the fishing industry would say we have lost and the financial markets would say we have gained. To answer the question, we would need to look at where we have been against a scenario of where we would have been outside the EU. I am not aware of such an analysis and, if there was one, how much confidence we could have in its results.

We can see that not joining the Eurozone has not left us trailing behind, as was projected by its fans. The Eurozone still has major issues which the EU will probably try to resolve by moving further towards economic and political union. Our assessment of whether we should remain in the EU has to take account of future performance more than the past. It is very difficult but, short term, it is likely to be a bumpy ride. There was 'dislocation' when we joined and there is likely to be as we leave. The question is, how much?

Personally, I would not make too much of projections that the UK will outperform the Eurozone in 2020 because the growth forecasts are very similar.

All of this concentrates on the economics with no mention of the sovereignty issues. We have become less independent being inside the EU and, as it continues down the road towards economic, monetary and political union, more sovereignty will be ceded. I recognise that for some this is unimportant or even welcome. Personally, I feel sovereignty is taken for granted until it is lost and then, too late, it becomes the principal issue.

Hope it doesn't look like this

www.facebook.com/HeyNewsVideo/videos/211189836709333/

Have had problems getting son’s anti epilepsy meds for the last year. And you can’t brand swap a lot of epilepsy meds (you can’t brand swap his) - despite this the govt advice in the case of shortage due to Brexit is to brand swap

I have just been speaking to a pharmacist who works in Denmark. She says that brexit has already caused problems as they import a lot of drugs and medications which are manufactured in the UK. After we leave the EU we will be a third country and all these British imports will have to be re-tested which will make them far more expensive.

"They will consider" Grandad? Therein lies the problem. There are a few who know a bit about what changes it will bring about and for whom; they really only look at it being good for themselves. For the rest it was a war, a war against things they didn't understand and against countries who are seen through ancient glasses. All they wanted was to win. It didn't matter if it is a pyrrhic victory as long as they "feel" they won. When else do you ring out the bells? When you want to just get on and stop talking about it - which is what I believe many voted for - or when you want a modern beating of chests to show how ever old or less educated you feel you are still the strongest voice.

Reality will have to come after next week and we will see what can be done in eleven months and whether it will be with or without Trumps blessing or Congress's agreement.

Well, MaizieD it seems that we shall not receive an answer to our enquiry as to what "rules" MerylStreep and others would wish to see abolished for Britain to be an economic success following Brexit.

The above has seen similar on this forum for some considerable time now, with members asking Brexiteirs such questions as "how has being a member of the EU damaged Britain". In that, never was an answer brought forward.

Now Britain is about to leave the EU we are seeing statements regarding " rules" that will be required to be abolished, but no facts as to which "rules" or "regulations" should it be, or why any "regulations" are required to be abolished at all.

Perhaps when British employees are working in the same sweatshop conditions as those that so often prevail in India or Bangladesh they will consider Brexit to have been a success.

Oh, it couldn't possibly be workers' rights and workplace safety, Grandad. We were constantly assured by Leavers that a) the UK made far better rules than the EU on these matters and, b) that there was no way that Brexit would mean that our superior rules would be in any way weakened...

Perhaps it's those pesky rules on product safety and standards (though we'll have to retain some, if not all, of them if we want to continue to trade with the EU). Or food standards?

We know that exporting to the EU is going to increase the red tape needed in the way of documentation and proof of conformity to EU standards, so it can't be that... Exporters to the rest of the world already have to cope with that, anyway...

And, of course, a number of 'rules' such as state aid rules also exist under the WTO regime...

Looking forward to hearing just which 'rules' can go on the bonfire...

Not much point attracting talent if we refuse them entry.

MaizieD in regard to your above post-@15:38 today, in my question to MerylStreep I was thinking in terms of the "rules" that control industry and workplaces in the European Union and United Kingdom.

In that, would it be the legislation that controls workers rights that MerylStreep wishes to see reduced or eliminated, Perhaps the forum member would wish to see the legislation which controls industry and workplace safety removed, or that which controls holiday pay, pensions and maturity/paternity leave and pay.

Let us hope that MerylStreep or a forum member that shares her views will state what "rules" they would wish to see eliminated.

Like the 'rules' in China, where it has been established that the coronavirus now threatening to become a global epidemic probably crossed from animals to humans because of poor health standards in Chinese live animal markets?

MerylStreep Quote [What sends a cold sweat running down the spine of European policy makers is a vibrant talent-attracting economy right on europes doorstep, with rule books more liberal than the eu's] End Quote.

So, what rules would you wish to see abolished or made more "liberal" MerylStreep.

It's a question that is very offen asked but never seems to draw any specific answers?

I believe that what is "perceived" as employment status is also viewed by many here in the UK as what denotes an underclass. In Britain, it is perceived that someone who sits behind a desk for their employment is seen as having a greater status than someone who carries out manual work.

By example to the above, a person working in a call centre often just reading from a script in dealing with customer calls would be viewed by very many has having a higher employment status than a person working in a sewage treatment plant.

However, in modern-day sewage treatment plants, many employees have been highly trained to possess many skills that enable all of us to lead comfortable lives. However, those persons when asked about their employment in the company of others will just state that they work in the "water treatment industry". It is often the case when such persons do reveal the true nature of their employment they then feel they are viewed as underclass workers by others.

The above I have witnessed as fact while leading workplace safety courses, where at the start of the week we ask all attending to introduce themselves and briefly state what employment they carry out.

The above attitudes do undoubtedly 'I feel" prevent Britain from achieving the employment mobility that is necessary in a time of great occupation and social change. Therefore until Britain has a fundamental change of attitude in what is seen as status and success in employment, we will wrongly perceive who is of underclass status and who is not.

When our society looks upon those that are employed in those sewage treatment plants as workers of high status for the skills they possess and the service they do for our society, then Britain will once again be at the forefront of employment prospects and through that industries wishing to locate here.

Andrew Gundlach, scion of one of Germany's most famous banking families was asked did he think the outlook is grim for post Brexit Britain
He laughed and then added the whole point of Brexit was to align with the high growth of America and China and not low growth Europe. What sends a cold sweat running down the spine of European policy makers is a vibrant talent-attracting economy right on europes doorstep, with rule books more liberal than the eu's