Posted on 03/12/2019 1:22:12 AM PDT by Cronos
...If Britain proceeds with giving effect to what future historians will legitimately describe as the longest suicide note in history by leaving the union, the cold, hard reality is that the mathematics simply don’t stack up in terms of credible economic alternatives to Europe. Much as any Australian, Canadian and New Zealand governments of whichever persuasion would do whatever they could to frame new free-trade agreements with the UK, the bottom line is that 65 million of us do not come within a bull’s roar of Britain’s adjacent market of 450 million Europeans.
As for India, good luck! India’s trade and commerce bureaucracy is the most mercantilist and outright protectionist in the world. They virtually single-handedly sank the Doha round in 2009. In the same year, as prime minister of Australia, I launched a free-trade negotiation with Delhi. But a decade later, those negotiations remain at a standstill. The Australian economy is only 50% the size of Britain’s. A substantive India-UK FTA is the ultimate mirage constructed by the Brexiteers. It’s as credible as the ad they plastered on the side of that big red bus about the £350m Britain was allegedly paying to Brussels each week. Not.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
The US can, if the idiot, May, gets replaced. Nobody wants to screw the EU more than Trump.
Methinks I am a prophet new inspired
And thus expiring do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death! —John of Gaunt, “Richard II
I tend to agree...if the ‘hard’ BREXIT occurs and there’s no trade agreement with the EU, then I think May is replaced (rather quickly) and a new relationship between the US and the UK will occur. There are dozens of possible arrangements that would make the UK a highly favored partner.
I will also add that a fair number of EU members....like Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, and Poland....will likely go out on their own (sidestepping the EU mechanism) and make their own treaties. The Germans and French may think they are ‘destroying’ UK trade, but it just isn’t going to happen.
Yeah. Italy also keeping a close eye these events.
If I was UK, I would look to form a trade block with the countries you mentioned and a few others.
it'd take months to hash out a US-UK trade deal.
There were good reasons the UK kept the Pound Sterling; they always had an eye towards the Anglosphere, and would always play second fiddle to Germany in the Fourth Reich...er, EU.
Ah, The Guardian. They never, ever, change.
They’d have to replace a lot more than May.
Britain has a uniparty, too.
On that you are correct. It’s only 100 and something MPs are pro Brexit.
I agree.
However, Brexit will not end UK trade with Europe. The two are corporately integrated and that integration will smooth the bumps
Having lost Thursday’s vote in Parliament, May is being urged to step down. Even Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph’s Washington DC correspondent and faithful workman of Whitewater, who has been an economic Cassandra for the last few years, sees no benefit from remaining in the EU. He thinks the Backstop, ie, the problem of customs at the borders of Northern Ireland etc, is trivial.
Anything the Guardian is for, I’m against by default.
Thankfully central and southern Europe are still true.
Brexit will have a bad effect on the UK economy for 6 to 12 months. It can be shorter or longer depending on the competency of the British leaders. Looking at the conservative and labour leadership I think the worst.
Where is Thatcher 2.0?
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