Wednesday 19 October 2016

Fun Online Polls: Hard Brexit and the "price" of Soft Brexit

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Which is more likely to push the UK into a 'Hard Brexit'?

Political grandstanding and threats from EU leaders - 54%

The inevitable UK backlash thereto - 42%
Other, please specify - 5%


Which is pretty conclusive. As Tusk and others have said, the UK must pay a price and be seen to pay a price for Brexit pour encourager les autres. So if we end up with Hard Brexit, that was their decision, not ours.
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The question is, what will that "price" be?

1. Merkel keeps insisting that Britain can't get full single market access with free movement concessions. I'd be a hypocrite to oppose the freedom of EU citizens to move within the EU to work and I can't say it bothers me greatly (although it bothers a lot of others, fair enough I accept that).

2. There has also been some mumbling that the UK would have to pay a market access fee, estimated at £5 billion a year, half our current contributions and under the circumstances, a price worth paying if it's for the benefit of the whole economy. For some reason, the pol's are obsessed with UK-based banks having access to the single market, in which case it's not a price worth paying and the banks can pay it themselves out of a bank asset tax or something. Either way, it appears that the EU is not insisting that we continue being the second largest net contributor.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll, if it were a simple choice (which it won't be), which "price" would you rather we pay to retain tariff and quota free access to the EU single market? Or indeed neither?

Vote HERE or use the widget in the sidebar.

8 comments:

Random said...

Debunk Richie's BS in comments?

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/10/19/it-takes-remarkable-economic-incompetence-to-demand-an-interest-rate-rise-now/#comment-area

Comment:

"Increasing supply is the only way to reduce house prices"

Surely it can't be that hard to convince people to vote for big tax cuts with bank lending restrictions + land value tax?

DBC Reed said...

But miss! those European boys made us do it! We enter into a single market with conditions ,then they say we can't stay in as soon as we don't like the conditions. I ask you! We'll tough up some of them real good and show who's civilised round here.Anybody says we're not, will get it.

Mark Wadsworth said...

R, Murphy is perfectly happy to lie and contradict himself several times in the space of one blog post and comments so no point arguing with him. Despite masquerading as a Leftie he is in fact hard core Home-Owner-Ist. That's even before we start on his endless KLNs.

I don't mind people being wrong if they are at least consistent in their beliefs.

DBC, o ye of short term memory! We joined a club of 12 wealthy west European nations forty years ago with one set of rules which were deffo of overall benefit to all members at the time. We are now in a supra national Franco-German run government of 27 countries including very poor nations and paying infinitely more in contributions and being subjected to all sorts of new rules.

The tipping point where the EU objectively turned from good to bad was probably about 15 years ago, or 10 years ago if you are a bit slow to condemn, like me.

If you join the local football club for £50 a year and then decide they are going to play tennis instead for £500, are you not allowed to leave?

Bayard said...

We joined the Common Market. We voted to leave the European Union. Spot the difference?

Mark Wadsworth said...

B you put it far more succinctly than I did :-)

DBC Reed said...

@MW
The football club analogy is crass; arguing by analogy is crass.

There is a point about the demise of the Soviet Bloc which screwball lunatics in the USA and gender-confused public schoolboys in this country, who were naturally rushed into sensitive diplomatic jobs, strove night and day to bring about, with never a thought about what would happen if they succeeded.
In the event it has been the "accession countries" from the Baltic plus Romania which have caused the EU problem since the Americans did not want to know post-liberation and thrust them into the EU orbit because they couldn't be arsed.
If we had co-operated with the Soviets all along, the accession countries could have stayed in a pinko fringe area round Russia gradually coming up to speed economically.
Vietnam did alright post-liberation.
We should be working with Russia in areas of mutual interest: e.g Islamic fundamentalism where the Russians want to ally with us. Instead, we have public school yobbo Boris Johnson accusing them of war crimes for trying to deal with the tricky problem of Islamic militias holed up in Eastern Aleppo using civilians as human shields.

DBC Reed said...

PS Russian ships, including an aircraft carrier, are passing through the Channel on the way to the Eastern Mediterranean to help in Syria.Cue complete third-rater Michael Fallon to hop up and down with rage saying he will be watching them "every step of the way", mixing his metaphors as only a third-rater in all the basic competences can achieve.Why is not this man Prime Minister: he is so dangerously thick in the approved Conservative ways?

MikeW said...

Re the carrier

If you Google the name of the carrier, the 'Admiral Vodkasoaked'. You will see that there is/was always a British warship shadowing it. Which, given our Navy's recent episode of not being able to get out beyond the Solent,in their Billion quid Class, No Engine Designer,ships is nice to know.

One for the History fans. I hope this Russian trip through the channel goes better than the one at the turn of the last century. I think the score, from the top of my head was; Russian Navy 4 British Fishing boats 0. Unfortunately the gunnery practice did not help them much then.