[Politics] Brexit

Baldseagull said:

No, it's shitty, but it is legal, it is an extreme version of what Ireland and others do now and the EU is trying to clamp down on, which I fully support. It isn't fair, he allowed taxes to be avoided in one jurisdiction by allowing very low taxation in his jurisdiction, it is exactly the type of "competitiveness" Mogg and Farage advocate for the UK and I want to avoid, and you want to enable.
Tell me how Brexit fixes this?

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BensGrandad said:

Slightly OT but when we pull out of Europe with whatever deals will we be able to ignore the EU ruling on spot light bulbs and get back to having proper bulbs which show up brightly.rather than the dull 40w maximum permitted and available now.

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mothy said:

Why do we need a back stop? We dont want a hard border. The Irish dont want a hard border. So don't have a hard border.

The only people who want a hard border is the eu. So isn't it their problem to resolve? Not ours

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cunning fergus said:

Nothing has been avoided, it has happened and continues to happen.

The beneficiaries of tax evasion are the rich, the victims are the poor........that is the underlying problem with the EU, whether it is the CAP or its accommodation of rapacious bankers. It’s for the rich, not the poor, and that’s why the poor (the uneducated thockos; as is often referenced here) voted leave.

We have a better chance of changing it out than in, there’s the reality. Nothing will change all the while we are in.

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mothy said:

Why do we need a back stop? We dont want a hard border. The Irish dont want a hard border. So don't have a hard border.

The only people who want a hard border is the eu. So isn't it their problem to resolve? Not ours

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The U.K. is the broadcasting hub of Europe, home to more channels than any other EU member state. International media companies collectively spend about 1 billion pounds ($1.26 billion) annually in the U.K. on things like content, production facilities and technology, according to research by media analysis firm Oliver & Ohlbaum commissioned by the Commercial Broadcasters Association lobby group.

EU rules say broadcasters need to have their head office, a significant part of their workforce or a satellite up-link in the country to qualify for a license there.

Adam Minns, executive director at the Commercial Broadcasters Association, said the expansion of international channels has been one of the biggest drivers of economic growth and employment in the U.K. television industry.

“But going forward, if the U.K. cannot grant an international channel a broadcasting license that is recognized by other countries, it is going to be very hard to sustain that growth in the medium to long-term,”

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Triggaaar said:

Could they not vote on it now, and agree a period (eg, 1 month) which the UK could rejoin on current terms, agreeing to waive any veto during that period? Legally, I can't see why not.

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WATFORD zero said:

I believe a certain Mystic said 2.5 years ago that the three options were

1.Softest of soft Brexits
2. Another vote (either GE or referendum)
3. No deal

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pastafarian said:

Not really no Trig. Not legally possible.

Article 50 makes reference to how a country can rejoin.

"5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49."

Article 49
Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union. The European Parliament and national Parliaments shall be notified of this application. The applicant State shall address its application to the Council, which shall act unanimously after consulting the Commission and after receiving the consent of the European Parliament, which shall act by a majority of its component members. The conditions of eligibility agreed upon by the European Council shall be taken into account.
The conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded, which such admission entails, shall be the subject of an agreement between the Member States and the applicant State. This agreement shall be submitted for ratification by all the contracting States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.

After we have left its a rejoin process as a new member, our application to join must be approved just like other countries, then the terms of joining negotiated in an Accession treaty. The old vetos are gone and since 1993 the accession protocols include taking on the aims of monetary union.....it would be nigh on impossible for an economy such as ours giving excuses as to why we were not ready to be in the EURO.......even plenty of remainers are against that.
Would the EU even approve an application to join at this time? Im sure there might be objections who will say....oh god,there is a special place in hell for you Brits.....just piss off and leave us alone.



Changing your Meg options yet again, a few months ago you insisted there were only two options not three, try and keep track of yourself.

1.Softest of soft Brexits
Cant see the whole kit and caboodle being rewritten at this late stage to try all over again to come up with the softest of soft instead. Even King of the soft brexit Ken Clarke looked resigned a few weeks ago when his pleas for a soft brexit instead of the withdrawal deal fell on deaf ears.
2. Another vote (either GE or referendum)
GE DEAD, 2nd referendum DEAD
3. No deal
Looks like, out of the only 3 options you say are available, no deal is your last option left

How come your crstal ball didnt see that one coming?

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Lever said:

Are you gloating?

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Baker lite said:

I wonder what will transpire?
Will the UK be CRASHING out with a WTO Brexit?

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We know that politics makes strange bedfellows, but few alliances are more surprising than the one linking the ultra-rich to ultra-nationalists. What could the wealthiest people in the world have in common with those upending politics in the name of the “forgotten man”? As I have found in over a decade of research on global elites and tax havens, a shared political project unites them: both seek to weaken or dismantle international alliances that constrain them.

For ultra-nationalists, this project means “taking back control” of their governments from foreigners. For the ultra-rich, it means eliminating the controls that international organizations and alliances have imposed on them individually and as a class: a world without the EU, or without the Global Magnitsky Act, is one in which the people who appeared in the Panama Papers can get even richer and expand their influence over an increasing share of the world’s governments and resources.

Thus what the media has treated as two separate news stories are actually manifestations of one big story, linking the shocks of the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, the Brexit vote, and the 2016 US election. It is a consummate irony that ultra-nationalism has been repackaged for voters as an effort to regain local control, protect national boundaries and reassert the dominance of local ethnic groups. What has been sold to working-class and middle-class voters as “a war for the little guy” is in practical terms the wishlist of the ultra-wealthy worldwide.

When Steve Bannon, who served Trump as chief White House strategist and is now fomenting populist revolution across Europe, called for “deconstruction of the administrative state”, he specifically targeted the systems of taxation, financial oversight, and public accountability that constrain the ultra-wealthy. The American hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, whose $60m offshore “war chest” bankrolled both Brexit and the Trump campaign, only began donating to political causes after the US Internal Revenue Service fined his firm $6.8bn for tax evasion. Arron Banks, the UK businessman with substantial offshore holdings, may have had a similar motivation: he became the largest financial backer of Brexit’s Leave.EU campaign following the imposition of costly international regulatory requirements on his insurance companies.

Even richer is the irony that ultra-nationalist campaigns have been funded by wealth hoarded offshore, courtesy of the same global elites demonized by Bannon and other self-proclaimed nationalists. Populist ultra-nationalism is a project bought and paid for by global elites and their tax haven wealth.



The links first started to become apparent in the Panama Papers leak of May 2016, which showed that several of the most prominent supporters of Brexit held substantial assets offshore, in accounts that later came under investigation as conduits for illegal foreign influence – including contributions from Russia. That wealth helped finance the Leave campaign, which touted the importance of local control and taking back control from “foreign elites”.

Through the Paradise Papers we also learned that Donald Trump, who campaigned against the “corrupt globalism” of Hillary Clinton and proudly proclaims himself a “nationalist”, had surrounded himself with cabinet members whose vast fortunes are stashed in tax havens around the world. Some of these tax haven schemes link them to foreign adversaries of the United States.

This link between offshore finance and ultra-nationalism is not exclusive to the Anglo-Saxon countries. France’s Jean-Marie LePen, founder of the political dynasty behind the anti-EU party Front National, was exposed in the Panama Papers leak for having stashed millions in offshore accounts. His daughter Marine, who now leads the party, recently mounted a presidential campaign that included the promise of a Brexit-like referendum on withdrawing France from the EU; this campaign was later found to have been financed by millions of Euros from Russian sources, funneled through offshore accounts based in Cyprus.


After interviewing 65 wealth managers in 18 countries, I learned that many individuals with enormous wealth and power deeply resent any institutions that limit their freedom or hold them accountable to obey the law. Thus, they form common cause with populist political movements, which attack the authority and legitimacy of policy professionals and politicians. In this effort, the ultra-rich weaken the actors empowered to impose restrictions on them, liberating themselves to make even more money by flouting regulations, tax obligations, trade embargoes and other inconveniences. The goal, as a Guardian columnist wrote presciently back in 2012, is to “free the rich from the constraints of democracy” – and that, sooner or later, has the ironic consequence of aligning global elites with authoritarian nationalists.
These wealthy individuals’ political inclinations may seem like relatively harmless self-interest, until you consider the power they have to realize their ambitions. Many of the wealth managers I spoke with warned of client ideologies and offshore mechanisms that were openly hostile to democracy and popular sovereignty. One Zurich-based practitioner specializing in individuals with $50m or more in investable assets said that her clients saw themselves as “above nationality and laws”. Of their belief that any legal limitations placed on them were de facto illegitimate, she added: “It’s potentially very dangerous.”



A London-based wealth manager made a similar observation about the extreme power imbalance between his multibillionaire clients and democratic regimes: “I think what people fail to realize is that governments are now just little parishes. Who do you think is more powerful: Procter & Gamble or the government of France? P&G, of course. They can set down their business anywhere in the world they please. And high-net-worth individuals are the same way.” The problem was, he said, that onshore governments – particularly some in Europe and North America – didn’t yet understand their place in this new hierarchy. Thus, he added, “Social democracy is creating too big demands on the wealth creators.”


For that global elite, it is convenient and profitable to support ultra-nationalist movements. Unlike other insurgents, these elites have no desire to destroy the state: they enjoy public roads, fiat currency and other creations of government just like the rest of us; they simply want to weaken states’ power to constrain them. And that power lies not in the hands of any single government, but in the cross-national alliances that have been the only effective bulwark against the otherwise unchecked power of people with multiple passports and bank accounts scattered all over the world. It is these alliances that ensure fair treatment of workers, environmental protections, equitable taxation and progressive redistribution, even for those who can slip the surly bonds of national law by sheer force of wealth.

The rich know that they won’t bear any of the costs of populist movements. While Britain stockpiles food and medicine against the coming crisis of a no-deal Brexit, one of the billionaires who bankrolled the Leave movement quietly exempted himself and his family from the fallout by purchasing EU citizenship. Billionaire Trump supporters in the US buy New Zealand passports.

Yet even though the global network of offshore tax havens is a relatively recent tool for billionaires to advance their interests, the impulse driving the sponsors of populist movements is not. The novelist GK Chesterton had their number over a century ago, when he wrote: “The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea on his yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.”

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cunning fergus said:

Nothing has been avoided, it has happened and continues to happen.

The beneficiaries of tax evasion are the rich, the victims are the poor........that is the underlying problem with the EU, whether it is the CAP or its accommodation of rapacious bankers. It’s for the rich, not the poor, and that’s why the poor (the uneducated thockos; as is often referenced here) voted leave.

We have a better chance of changing it out than in, there’s the reality. Nothing will change all the while we are in.

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hans kraay fan club said:

As has been explained roughly 426 times on this thread alone, there is no default WTO ‘deal’ that we crash out, and simply fall into.

But you knew that already

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CHAPPERS said:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/07/why-the-wealthy-back-trump-and-brexit

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Bold Seagull said:

At least with Baker lite we know the content of the Daily Mail each day without having to go near it.

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