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Comment by digi_owl | Hacker News Reader

Meh, its fearmongering.

The biggest issue right now is that Brussels won't clarify anything either way until they get the article 50 declaration from London.

Effectively it has turned into a staring contest, with the hope that London will brink first.

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I have to take Brussels side here. They have gotten their special treatment [0] long enough. We wanted them to stay, they wanted to break up. Now they want to get out and get a new special deal at the same time. If you want to stay, great, stay. If you want to leave, leave. Don't wait for us to offer you a deal.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_rebate

I've yet to hear any reasonable defense of this often repeated assertion (UK 'special treatment'). The UK net contribution per capita is similar to other comparable EU countries (time periods vary but see this link (payments tab, net by population)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8036097.stm#start

Without the rebate, the UK would be a massive outlier (paying a much higher net GDP per capita).

The other often cited 'special treatment' is that we are not part of Schengen - a situation which also applies to Ireland and Cyprus (Cyprus are technically committed to joining but it remains to be seen whether this will actually happen). The common factor is that these countries are islands. Is it really that much of an inconvenience for people to bring their passports when you already need to have booked a plane, ferry or channel tunnel ticket (practically, it isn't the same as driving from France to Belgium)?

For what it is worth, I voted to remain.

It's not about waiting for someone to offer a deal. In the wake of Brexit there are elections to decide the new prime minister. Article 50 will be triggered after the new prime minister has been chosen.

That's not what Leave said, and it's not what Cameron said.

He said that article 50 would be triggered very soon after the vote.

Depends on who gets in. There are three candidates in the Conservative leadership contest (it was five, but it's down to three now). May and Gove have indicated they would want to wait, but Leadsom has indicated she wants to get on with it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/what-is-article-50-the-onl...

Between sovereign states their is no friendship, no fairness. The UK has immense interests in keeping trade free with the continent. They also have immense leverage over Germany and their car industry in particular. It is in everyone's interests to see a deal that maintains free trade between the UK and the continent.

Yes, it's not fair that they'll get free access to the single market without following half of the rules, because they're stronger than Switzerland and Norway, because Germany and France need British trade more than the other way around.

Britain has zero obligation to be fair, only to use all of their power to protect and advance the interests of their people.

There is friendship between states. States do symbolic acts for some states, which they do not do for others. Germany hates getting involved in wars, but when the US (Afghanistan) or France (Syria) get attacked, it joins (symbolically) regardless of the NATO definition of attack. There is a long tradition of friendships between France and German leaders [0]. Of course all of this is partly because they are dependent on each other, but I think there is no clear distinction here.

To your second point: I would argue that France and Germany have more to win of of a hard line here. Yeah, the auto industry will tank, but as this very article shows, there are many sectors in which Britain might lose to the other big nations. We should definitely take our slice of that financial industry pie. We want to avoid an avalanche of exceptions for other countries so let's not start giving them out too easily. We want to keep the club together.

And final argument: At least Germany or France are not at risk of losing half of their federal states. Exciting times. Would be a really strange and random reason after all this years of violence for a more united Ireland.

[0]: http://media0.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/feuilleton/3725638940/...

Shared interests can look a lot like friendship. Looking at the postwar period as evidence of friendships between Western European powers doesn't help your point. They were and are unified by strong common interests and common enemies. Economic integration and cultural similarities also lead to common interests. Any conflicts they do have stay below the level of military conflict due to the overwhelming force of American troops keeping peace on the continent, and nuclear deterrents.

Before the Cold War, Europeans had been slaughtering each other for centuries, for millennia.

Of course some a common enemy and a possible nuclear winter let you think twice about the next war, but Germany and France have shared interests with a lot of other countries, too, with whom pictures like this do not exist.

I think I found almost all my friends through common interests and in times of piece, for which we ourselves had done very little (while I do not share your point that this is only because 'murica). Does not mean that they are not my friends.

The UK is not going to get free market access without free movement of people - this has been stated repeatedly - so that outcome will upset a lot of leave voters.

Don't forget that the Brits will have a much more friendly administration in Washington by the time they start negotiations. Both Hillary and Trump are much more disposed to cutting a deal with the UK than Obama seems to be.

The US is only half of the UK's trade; what about the other half?

http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/lets-quit-eu-and-link-up...

Is it half? That seems high, and some googling suggests more like 15% and that the US is roughly similar to Germany alone.

Where did this "German cars sales to the UK mean they can start and win a trade war with EU" meme start? Are people really just blindly repeating UKIP talking points as if it was credible economic analysis?

They wouldn't be starting the trade war, the war has already begun. The Europeans are threatening to impose tariffs on British goods unless Britain signs up to EU rules. Threatening to respond in kind is completely reasonable. Whatever the rules of the EU were is totally irrelevant now, except insofar as they represent interests that the EU is seeking to defend. This is now a negotiation between sovereign powers, each with leverage over the other.

As to whether Britain can win, I think the next Conservative government is likely willing to walk away from the table. Shifting to a more Atlantic-oriented vs. European-oriented position would be a somewhat painful economic transition, but it's what a lot of Tories want at heart anyway, so it's not an infeasible outcome if the continent proves unyielding.

And don't forget that Merkel and Hollande cannot afford to be seen allowing hundreds of thousands of job losses in some effort to punish Britain and deter the further crumbling of the EU, which is increasingly unpopular in their countries as well. Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the National Front (FA) are biting at their heels, and FA might actually win the presidency in France next year, which would almost certainly be the end of the EU.

You're just repeating the same talking point!

The UK can walk away from the trade deals it has with the EU (and lets' be clear, the UK expressly voted to cancel those treaties, this was not initiated from the EU side) and apparently no-one in the UK will care. But the Germans will cave (and force the rest of the EU to cave) because we buy their cars?

And you don't even expect the EU to exist for much longer, so the economic and political chaos on the continent amongst our biggest trading partners is somehow a good thing? They'll drag the UK down just as surely as the UK is dragging them down currently.

I sincerely hope you are right. There's a lot of assumptions there.

Will Germany sacrifice its principle for car sales? I don't know. Will France and Germany persuade the other EU members to follow them? I don't know. Will this happen quickly? In the meanwhile what happens? There's a lot of uncertainty.

> Meh, its fearmongering.

With all that's been happening in the UK for the last few weeks, my sarcasm detector is seriously broken. Can you please clarify if this was intended as sarcasm or not?

I doubt it's intended to be sarcasm. There is a lot of fearmongering going on regarding Brexit. Regarding this particular article, as another commenter pointed out the majority of the UK's space spending goes to the ESA, which is separate from the EU.

However, pesky things like "facts" shouldn't get in the way of a Brexit story. /s

And why would Brussels clarify anything before the actual process starts? If they did, other countries could start asking "you know, purely theoretically, if we wanted to leave, what sort of deal would we get?" and that would be just stupid. It's like saying to your wife "you know, if I decided to divorce you, how would we split everything?" - if you want a divorce, then say you want a divorce, doing anything else is just making the whole situation sour.

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