I fear for the British people who will suffer under Brexit. If only the Queen could put her foot down and end this insanity before it hits them. She is the only one standing who lived through the second world war and its aftermath, understands the danger of disunity and knows why international cooperation is essential to stability and peace.
3
Britain is primarily a service-based economy, and the article rightly notes they have the best service industry in the EU. Funny thing about services, though, is that they are MUCH harder to incorporate into trade deals than goods, due to their relative complexity. You can't just slap a tariff on consulting or finance and call it a day. The holy grail for the service trade is a single market, which is what Britain is trying to leave. I do wonder exactly what the plan is there.
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No plan - they are a sign of too much knowledge and introversion and insufficient patriotism! What was it Michael Gove said - 'we are all a bit sick of experts!'
3
Brilliant! Let us shoot ourselves in the foot and then trust the ricochet will so badly scare the Continent that they reconstruct the EU on terms of Imperial Preference. Right, right, right
8
Yeah! We will be an independent nation tyat has regained its sovereignty and we will have nice blue/black coloured passports not like these nasty red ones approved by the EU!
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You are missing Denmark. A large proportion of its export of agricultural products goes to the UK. In a worst case scenario this export will be reduced to less than one quarter with a loss of several thousand jobs.
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I’m not quite sure what you mean by this sentence?:
“Even though the bloc is a single market, each country has a unique relationship with Britain as far as the movement of goods, services, people and capital.”
The “four freedoms” are not assured on a bilateral, country-by-country basis, but must be accepted by all members, and it’s the EU that regulates those freedoms. Or is the meaning just that some countries buy and sell more goods and services with Britain (or send more workers) than others? (Like Oregon has a different relationship with Washington than Maine does)
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Brexit is a monumental political/economic blunder by the UK. A voluntarily march off the cliff into the great unknown. The EU will gain from London's loss. But the new arrangements will hurt the EU.
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Will this help or hinder Russian oligarch money laundering activities? I guess the initial confusion will help.
5
Rather than benefiting from the chaos in the short term, the political instability that will result from reduced economic activity and reduced inter-governmental cooperation will benefit Russia's expansion plans in the Baltic and the eastern countries.
Putin and his oligarchs were successful in Ukraine and Crimea. They have done wonderfully well with the witting or unwitting cooperation of uninformed voters and complicit/incapable politicians.
Instead of unity of purpose, division, hatred and a turn to the chaos of the far right has been achieved.
As it has in your country.
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Their friends in the City of London and offshore tax havens will not let them down in a tight corner.
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Completely agree @Jean.
I'm ashamed that "my country" also includes Denmark - a country with an almost impeccable reputation for honesty and business ethics - until the ongoing Danske Bank Russian money laundering scandal. I'd like to blame Estonians for this, but my fellow Danes had to be complicit somewhere down the line in Copenhagen too. I guess the Russian threat to nuke little Denmark was a lot of bluster as they were funneling their loot through our banking system.
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