Europe, Referendum & Brexit (formerly Europe..IN or OUT??)

Lords last night voted to reject the government and demanded that Britain stay in the single market. The commons will likely vote against that and the Lords will probably pass on the second time round but it has opened the door to The EEA option. Here are a couple of articles on that and what it means for the Labour Party I particular

http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2017/09/...ard-brexit

http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2018/05/...yn-to-hide

Is May more f****d than Trump at the moment?

nah shes not facing jail

Rumours Farage is joining the DUP and sales of Black and deckers rise in Belfast

Electoral Comission fines Leave.Eu the maximum of £70k for breaches in electoral law and refers its chief to The Met

Aaron Banks of Leave.eu is a right slippery fucker the sort of type that if he offered me a kidney (should I need an organ donor) I'd ask him what he did with the rest of the body.But Banks crowing on about the political bias of the Commision's decision (despite them fining Momentum,Lib Dems etc for over-spending in previous elections) is merely a ruse to disguise the dirty money that swirls around in elections that needs a proper clean-up with proper accountability.

Article in The Guardian reporting that figures released from Companies House show that the number of businesses from EU nations being registered in the UK has fallen sharply, contributing to OECD figures that show that foreign investment into this country has collapsed by a staggering 90% but then when you have Brexiteers like John Redwood telling his clients not to invest in the UK it's not exactly a surprise

https://www.theguardian.com/business/201...istrations

The Financial Times also reports that Japanese negotiators plan to make fewer concessions to the UK than they did The EU when it comes to trade deals such as pushing for Visa exemptions for Japanese workers. Basically free movement of people from Japan to UK but not UK to Japan. Thank god foreign investment hasn't fallen so far that we desperately need these trade deals to help our economy recover from the fall in growth from leaving The SM & CU otherwise Japan would really have us by the balls on this one

https://www.ft.com/content/8f0724b8-5a84...ceb45fa9d0

Two pieces brought the scale of this thing home for me today.

First, this fairly obvious article from the beeb. (And no matter what ridiculousness anyone prefers to believe about BBC bias, the direct cost of new customs borders and the knock on overheards for businesses are going to cost big.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44229606

But related, and exponentially more insightful, is this call to LBC from a guy who's company supplies UK time imperative production chains from the EU. http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/ja...by-brexit/

The referendum showed up the age old problem of politician's contempt for the public's intelligence. Project Fear was dumbed down nonsense laid on with a trowel for the plebs and it backfired spectacularly. But the truth will be destructive and IMO it was missed in 2016 because of Fear's exaggerations. 

I honestly believe that not enough of the Brexiteer public have a handle on the implications for the UK economy even now. It's more than just looking at a few trade figures and going well we only import that figure and we export that figure, so that's not to bad if it's held up a little, and well we do alright when we export outside the EU don't we. Why can't it all go back to being done like that because it all ran okay before the single market didn't it..? Well yes it did but EVERYTHING has changed since then - virtually nothing is the same, or on the same level quantity wise, as it was back then. 

Direct import/export figures are only a part of the picture. The internet and free trade has spawned a myraid of interconnected businesses that if you take away truly frictionless borders it all falls apart like a house of cards. This is why the Tories are so totally and utterly flummoxed on the issue. If you look beyond the surface figures at the real-life implications you have to be of the truly rabid ideological type to think it's worth the pain to the people on the ground. 

Yes Brussels is a massive cesspit but we were complicit in its making and walking away will harm us in the end (the faces charged with the job can't but help make a poor job of it). Sometimes you have to put up with status quo shitiness for the greater good. 

No amount of Boris jetsetting will make up for the eventual impact of Brexit. After any transition period there will be a direct impact on millions of people's liviliehoods, connected in ways that are hard to see clearly. Portraits like the one painted by this haulage guy bring bits of it into focus.

And please no non-EU comparisons. You can't compare trade with the EU after a hard Brexit to non-EU trade because this interconnectedness is predicated on the simple geography of trading with 27 relatively near neighbours. Apples and oranges.

Former Vote Leave Chair Nigel Lawson applies for French residency

One Brexit for the rich and powerful and another for the average British citizen

I've said it before and i'll say it again Brexit was a con and the people that advocated Brexit are laughing at those who voted for it