How will we measure the success of Brexit?

There seem to be people willing the country to fail just to prove they are right. Tough luck to their children and grandchildren’s future as long as their smug superiority is not challenged in any way.

I think that the majority are keen and ready to make it work and they will succeed. The miserable winghers will bask in their negativity and be dragged down with it.

We have excellent butchers many who own or part own their flocks and we will continue to buy from them. If you need cheaper cuts the butcher will offer suggestions and recipes.

Which orders do we have to take from EU courts?

The UK does control its own money and always has.

I agree that it would be good, if the UK does actually save any money. So let the government tell us how they're going to spend it, rather than insisting that all government departments find savings of 5% and cutting grants to local authorities, especially in the poorest areas. I'm all for it!

The UK does already have trade deals with other countries, but there's a reason why it's advantageous to deal with the EU.

It is simply not the case that we can’t criminals entering the country. The EU’s 2004 citizenship directive makes it clear that the free movement of people within the EU is not an unqualified right and can be restricted on grounds of “public policy, public security or public health”. This means that serious offenders can be denied entry and the right to live in Britain. The UK's continuing membership of Europol is one of the issues which needs to be agreed by the end of 2020.

Nope! I have no desire at all to see the country fail. I would gain no satisfaction at all from being right. Please don't judge others by your own standards.

I just don't buy into airy fairy promises with no basis in fact.

Errrmmm … I'm so glad that your own meat supply is assured. What about all the vegetarians and those who can't afford to go to a butcher, but rely on supermarket cheap meat?

How about stopping blaming everybody else?

The Irish Times article is interesting - I find the US perspective often interesting as well & look to the NY Times and other American papers for their perspective often.

I laughed out loud at this:

Analysis reveals that “voting Leave is associated with older age, white ethnicity, low educational attainment, infrequent use of smartphones and the internet, receiving benefits, adverse health and low life satisfaction”, Eleonora Alabrese, Sascha Becker, Thiemo Fetzer and Dennis Novy report in Who Voted for Brexit? (European Journal of Political Economy, 2019). This study is one of many that all reach similar conclusions. Merely quoting facts such as these is no longer permissible in the culture war. Equally unacceptable is to point out that the legitimate grievances of the typical Leave voter will not be addressed by Brexit

Given the abuse I received for posting exactly the same quote the author is absolutely correct in saying posting facts such as the above is no longer permissible. Perhaps they were reading GN while writing the article.

Stop saying those those of us who reject nativism and xenophobia want the country to fail or hate the UK (for as long as it lasts). I hate the increasing nasty populist rhetoric. I suppose I want my country back. The nice, tolerant, welcoming one.

I think that the majority are keen and ready to make it work and they will succeed. The miserable winghers will bask in their negativity and be dragged down with it.

How are the people who lose their jobs when their employer relocates to the EU, or winds up their business because the cost of exporting to the EU (additional paperwork and checks) makes them unprofitable, going to 'make it work'?

How are the farmers losing going out of business because they're undercut by cheap imports of food produced by lower the standards than those the UK has prided itself on for msny years, or they can't get anyone to harvest the crops going to 'make it work'?

How is Remainers being like children at a pantomime and screaming 'I believe in Brexit' going to 'make it work'?

How is everyone buying UK produced food when we CAN'T ACTUALLY PRODUCE ENOUGH FOOD TO FEED OUR POPULATION going to 'make it work'?

Is some dim memory of the 1960s 'I'm Backing Britain' campaign, which had zero effect on our economy, surfacing here?

Isn't it now absolutely clear that the referendum result of a mere 52% in favour of leaving the EU should never have been acted upon. I have previously mentioned the referendum in Sweden in the 1960's when the public voted on Sweden changing driving on the left to driving on the right. The vote was 80% in favour of keeping left side driving. Despite this huge majority the government of the day decided that it was in Sweden's best long-term interest to change. The vote had been cast in a referendum and therefore was only advisory. The change took place.

In this country we decided that 52% was all that was needed to implement our definition of democracy. And now we are blaming the 48% for thwarting a 'democratic' decision and we are witnessing what that has lead to.

Good news for the people in the Northeast.
Nissan are backing the uk in the case of a no deal.
If there is no deal Nissan will pull out of mainland Europe.

Amazing really when you think that a company as huge as this is backing a little no nothing, can't produce anything, looser country.
It's in the FT if anyone's interested. I doubt if 'most' on this thread are.

Thank you for the Irish Times link MaizieD.

I too was taken aback by the quote about the demography of those who voted leave, Nezumi65 and Merely quoting facts such as these is no longer permissible in the culture war. You might think he had been reading GN threads. Sadly, I think Equally unacceptable is to point out that the legitimate grievances of the typical Leave voter will not be addressed by Brexit is also true.

Even more extreme but believable is the fact that the culture war - played out on here daily - is a cancer we cannot cure. In past times such cultural rifts have ended as Orwell commented when the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

Terrifying but again, all too believable.

Your argument is a very reasonable one Greta and has been made many times before. Sadly, backing the small majority in an advisory referendum was, in this case, the path to power for some and worth it to them, whatever the outcome.

Sadly MerylStreep the latest from Bloomberg suggests that Nissan isn’t quite that clear - they have a new person in charge now. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-02/nissan-s-brexit-scenarios-include-closing-european-plants-ft That’s from late last night. I suppose they’ll choose whichever is most economically beneficial to them. Let’s hope it’s Sunderland (& no doubt European plants will hope the opposite).

Nezumi65 I suppose I want my country back. The nice, tolerant, welcoming one.

You mean the land of unicorns and rainbows? ??
I thought that was where the leave voters lived.
I guess remainers will soon be dreaming of those long golden days when we lived in a land of milk and honey under the EU. ?

Interesting

MaizieD
^ How is everyone buying UK produced food when we CAN'T ACTUALLY PRODUCE ENOUGH FOOD TO FEED OUR POPULATION going to 'make it work'?^

There are countries outside the EU (and not necessarily the US) who produce wonderful food and would probably be happy to trade with us.

So why is it so much better to buy from them Joelsnan than the countries on our doorstep? If we are having to search for a country to have a deal with rather than continue to deal with those who are geared up to service the UK market what are we gaining exactly?

Reading all the anti-Brexit comments on various threads reminds me of the stories of animals having been mistreated and kept in cages who when rescued refuse to leave the cage as they are prefer to remain caged rather than face the unknown

We already import food from all over the world, Joelsnan. Being in the EU has never prevented us from doing that.

But making it more difficult and more expensive to import from our nearest neighbours is ridiculous. For a start, it's environmentally damaging to import more food from further away. Perhaps climate change and its implications for future generations doesn't bother you? Let's just waste more of the world's scarce resources and pump more CO2 into the atmosphere by transporting food from further away...

Or perhaps you are happy to see the destruction of our farming industry when they can't compete with cheap food produced to less high standards than our industry has (and which the government has promised to maintain)?

Does no-one ever think things through?

It would be better if we produced more of our own food but due to the growth of population (5 million more in the last 20 years) that becomes less and less of a possibility. Free movement of people does not do us any favours when it comes to feeding everyone.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/education-51094279?__twitter_impression=true

Isn't this what we should have been doing for our children for years rather than bringing in cheap already trained people. Our industries and organisations have ignored our children for too long and have avoided training costs for years.

And, more importantly, what are we going to sell them?

We have trade deals with the following countries:

Andean countries
CARIFORUM trade bloc
Central America
Chile
Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) trade bloc 
Faroe Islands
Georgia
Iceland and Norway
Israel
Jordan
Kosovo
Lebanon
Liechtenstein
Morocco
Pacific states
Palestinian Authority
Southern Africa Customs Union and Mozambique (SACUM) trade bloc
South Korea
Switzerland
Tunisia

With all due respect to them, they just don't have the potential markets to replace the EU. In any case, we trade with some of them already. Distance will mean that exporting/importing will add to cost and air miles.

One way or the other, the UK needs big, wealthy export markets. One possibility would be the African countries, but most of them are years away from being successful, stable countries and China already has its foot in the door.

The UK needs export markets on mainland Europe, but Johnson seems determined not to negotiate a deal. He bleats on about fishing and free ports, neither of which will provide more than a handful of jobs or contribute much (if anything) to GDP. In the case of free ports, he seems to want the UK to become a hub for tax dodging and illegal activity.

Amazon won't provide many jobs. Their warehouses are becoming increasingly robotised and their van drivers are not well treated. A London office will provide a few jobs in London, but I thought the idea was to make the country less centred on London.

I have the impression that over the last three years, the emphasis has been on "winning" some kind of phoney war, but very little thought has been given to the future - and that's what I'm interested in. All those people who voted Conservative for the first time expect to see some results, but don't see them happening.

I disagree with you totally Joelsnan. It's our children who will suffer most from Brexit. They have had opportunities removed and will have to live in a poorer and less open country. There never has been anything to stop them being trained and seeking jobs elsewhere, if there are no local jobs. That's what young people have done since the beginning of time.

MaizieD
Or perhaps you are happy to see the destruction of our
farming industry when they can't compete with cheap foodproduced to less high standards than our industry has ^(and which the government has promised to maintain)?

Does no-one ever think things through?

Once again negativity.
Do you travel?
If you do you will see British food being sold all over the world, usually sold as a prestige product. These markets are still there and potentially open for more growth based on mutually agreeable terms. Currently our trading terms are fixed to ensure fair trade within the EU so UK can be restricted in what it can or cannot offer if it is considered as being unfair to another EU country. This, rather than encouraging trade actually depresses it.
Many of the goods we buy from the EU are in fact third party imports, flowers for example.

Maybe you should think things through.

Chestnut The UK produces more of its own food than it did seventy years ago. The reason that we import food is that other countries can produce it more efficiently and cheaply, mainly as a result of climate. The UK could possibly produce a greater range of food, but it will need technology, such as vast polytunnels, which require energy, and vast areas of land. It would also push up the price of food. Is the UK going to give up drinking wine? We currently import 99% of the stuff we drink.

In any case, food production jobs are generally poorly paid. It's much better for the UK to import its food and export what we're good at, which is knowledge and services.

Maybe if we consumed more of our own food instead of exporting it then we wouldn't have to import so much.