Comment by matthewmacleod | Hacker News Reader

Comment by matthewmacleod | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

As a quick intro – membership of the EU has been a bit of a hot topic in the UK for quite a few years now, and longer in certain circles of the Conservative party. That party made a manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on membership as a bit of a concession to help avoid a split in the party. It was generally expected that this would be an easy win for the "remain" group, and there is only minority support among representatives for a Brexit policy in any form.

The problem there is that there are now several groupings of representatives – some of them would like to push forward with a "cliff-edge" style exit, some would like a negotiated but "hard" deal, some would like a very soft "technical Brexit", and others would prefer to remain entirely. The parliament is politically bound by the outcome of the referendum—it would be a damaging move to hold a referendum then not implement the result—but at the same time, there is no consensus on what "Brexit" actually means, so it's not currently possible to construct a majority for any individual plan.

It's not a good situation.

> some of them would like to push forward with a "cliff-edge" style exit

Agrees in Russian

Membership of the EU has been a hot topic before the EU even existed. Ted Heath got us into the EEC without a referendum in 72, and then offered us a vote to remain or leave in 75. The scaremongering about leaving back then was almost exactly the same as it is being presented now.

My opinion is that a deal cannot be negotiated among uneven parties. Right now, the UK can either leave with no deal, or leave on the terms demanded by the EU, with no concessions whatsoever. There is no table for negotiation. It is leave or surrender. Once we leave, we are no longer the begging party asking for concessions, but the roles will be reversed. The EU does not want to lose one of their largest export markets, and will quickly change their mind about a trade deal.

It's a large market for both sides, but Brexit will hurt one much more than the other.

The UK exports ~50% of its goods and services to the EU. The EU exports 8% of it's good and services to the UK. The latter is in absolute terms the larger amount of goods and services, but the former is just a massive portion of total trade to have to suddenly replace or re-negotiate.

Think about it this way: SMB company A has to suddenly replace 50% of its customer base. Enterprise company B has to suddenly replace 8% of it's customers. I know which one I'd rather be!

I have often wondered where this delusional "the EU needs us more than we need them" view comes from and here I have it on display. The EU is not happy with, but perfectly content to accept, the UK leaving. They will not change their mind about a trade deal and in fact will go out of their way to bend the UK leadership over and remind them of their public school days at Eton to prove a point. The fact that so far the UK has _zero_ post-Brexit trade deals and is already feeling the hand of Trump and the US on their neck bending them over should tell you all you need to know about the power dynamics of the UK on the world stage at this moment.

Pointing out the reality of the weak and pathetic position the UK finds itself in is not 'scaremongering', it is simply the first of many wake-up calls the UK will be facing in the near future.

> The fact that so far the UK has _zero_ post-Brexit trade deals

They thought they could simply quickly negotiate trade deals using the existing EU ones as a blueprint. I think they now reached a single digit number of agreements but nothing with a huge trade volume (includes economic superpowers like the Faroe Islands or Liechtenstein and as the list goes on it does only get slightly better).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com