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Comment by willyt | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting how many of the lead Brexiters have such strong connections to financial services. I do wonder sometimes if the whole thing is a play on the markets because I haven't seen any cogent explanation for why Brexit is a good idea yet. What exactly are they going to do with the things they have taken back control of that is better than how these things are currently run?

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It could be said though, that a lot of the leading Bremainers have strong connections to government jobs, no? What I'm saying is, if the Brexiter's dayjob has "corrupted" them, the same could be said about their opponents, no?

I doubt that most British people in finance were Brexiters, but rather Bremainers. And so it's not the job that tainted them, but rather the job they chose suited their personal traits.

I'm not sure I understand, they are all paid an MP's salary which is something like £75k per year. So I'm not sure that their government jobs are all that valuable compared to the amount of money that could be made by gaming a whole economy. Unless you mean civil servants? There are some retired civil servants that have come out as anti Brexit but the civil service will need to expand post Brexit so I'm not sure what they would have to gain personally from taking this position? If anything, and in common with a lot of other middle class Londoners, they are probably afraid of the value of their houses and investments dropping.

National governments in Europe are notoriously pro-EU despite the apparent contradictions involved (the EU makes those governments less powerful and important). The reason seems to be the EU's habit of giving powerful supporters in national governments exceptionally well compensated jobs as rewards after they leave / get kicked out by elections. See Peter Mandelson for a UK example.

There are myriad ways for ex-politicians to make money afterwards that are easier than becoming an EU bureaucrat. Tony Blair supposedly makes over a million a year from speaking engagements. Boris Johnson earns £150k p/a (double his MP's salary) by writing a weekly click bait opinion piece article for the Telegraph and he's still an MP. Honestly the idea of the EU influencing politicians by enticing them with high salaries for the few politicians that get the chance to be on the Council of Ministers is ridiculous if you stop to think about it.

For the funds that have relations with policits, I think it's mostly getting rid of regulations imposed by the EU.

It's not just a one-off gamble but more likely a plan to become the world's offshore and money laundering heaven. Well, relatively of course. This is why the emphasis in the early Brexit debate was on decoupling the country from the EU regulations.

In other words there might be some chance of immediate and long-term benefits in "hard" Brexit for some, but an enormous short and long term damage for the rest of the population.

Disaster Capitalism:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/04/disast...

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