In the wake of the latest shakeup involving who will be the UK’s EU ambassador going into the Article 50 negotiations, people have wondered anew about whether or not the government has a detailed plan regarding Brexit or not. Are they simply winging it, or is there something they’d rather not discuss?
For what it’s worth, I do think Theresa May would very much like to get the best Brexit deal possible – I just don’t think she knows what that actually looks like. That’s where the problems begin.
I think back to May’s remarks to George Osborne when she moved him from Number 11 to the backbenchs: all that stuff about leaning what your own party is all about. She had a point, one that had ramifications I’m still not convinced she fully comprehended. For there is a large section of the Right which has had a plan for Brexit for a very long time.
It goes like this: the negotiations with the EU will be a disaster and that’s fine – a positive even. We make no special deal with the EU and are left with an immediate crisis to settle. This creates an opportunity, as now the country must be remade in a certain image. The plan for getting around the tariff problem is to offer tariff free access to the UK in return for tariff free access in reciprocation. Take corporation tax down, cut public services much, much further than we’ve already seen.
The people who espouse this idea as being the inevitable destiny of Great Britain – and this part is not conjecture, as I’ve heard the major players involved talk about it this way in the flesh enough times – argue that the market will decide and thus it will all come out to the greater good. Only, have they thought about the fact that the Communist Party of China could, under such circumstances, dump stuff on the UK market at a loss, hoping to corner said market in certain goods by driving domestic players out of business, sort of a large scale, global version of Walmart’s business plan?
Or better yet, I wonder if the Redwoods of the world have seriously considered the fallout after a referendum won on cutting immigration, putting more money into public services and “putting one in the eye of London” has the precise opposite effect. In ten years time, if this is the way Brexit unwinds, London will be much richer than it is now and the rest of England will be notably poorer.
I don’t really understand why The Canary doesn’t spend all of their time shouting about this, other than because all this might actually happen as opposed to being a figment of leftist imagination. I guess they just can’t see what’s really in front of them. I suppose the final fire sale of the post-war settlement is less interesting than attempting to get Chuka Umunna deselected as well.
Yes; Brexit might; might end up like this and due to lack of opposition virtually unstoppable. Scotland would be in a hell of a whole if this happened though and I am not sure how Ireland could deal with it.
Because of the obvious opportunity for dumping that you have highlighted, I do not think that the EU could reciprocate, since the UK could become a conduit for dumped products. The countries that might go along with free tariffs are those that will gain; this would lead to a bigger trade deficit, a sliding pound and more home unemployment. The only question is whether competing with the Cayman Isles, the Bahamas, Jersey etc for tax evasion and money laundering could be enough to offset all the loses.
Still, the right wing tabloids would be constantly telling that the Brexit nirvana that 52% had voted for was being achieved (as well as castigating the unemployed as feckless).
My problem is that this outcome is the easiest to envisage. In fact I am dubious that the terms for exit can be dealt with within 2 years, let alone a post Brexit treaty. It is actually easier to see a possibility that Brexit will not be instigated before April Fools Day.