I’m not sure Brexit itself is the cause of the revolving door of No 10 Downing Street. Social media had a lot to do with Brexit, as the Leave campaign used it far better than the Remain campaign and it has now had as much effect with Prime Ministers.
I wonder if David Cameron will ever realise what he did.
Calling the referendum was bad enough. The result was caused by the Remain campaign’s complacency. He can take the rap for both of those.
I reckon we will rejoin in the aftermath of a Reform implosion. Probably about 2040.
I’m not sure Brexit itself is the cause of the revolving door of No 10 Downing Street. Social media had a lot to do with Brexit, as the Leave campaign used it far better than the Remain campaign and it has now had as much effect with Prime Ministers.
It's over-determined, but a large cause of the revolving door is the UKs economic model blowing up in 2008 and not really being replaced, with succeeding governments trying to kick the can down the road. The Conservatives deliberately shrunk the state (in capacity terms) during austerity with the excuse that good times would come later. Brexit is a result of people realising the good times weren't coming and trying to register their disapproval meeting with the right wing media's project since the late 80s of Euro-Scepticism.
Social media played a role, but by the time the UK went to the polls it was a fairly Euro-Sceptic country:
This is an interesting article from the Electoral Reform Society which suggests the UK has a structural problem
Read the article. On the other hand, having a president that is deeply underwater now, is not a good way of governing for another two and a half years either.
I'd agree with @chrisstiles's analysis to a large extent. The financial crisis of 2008 set the wheels in motion and Cameron's Referendum gamble back-fired on him, with dire consequences for all of us.
Burnham is promising electoral reform and I support that, although my Australian relatives say we should be careful what we wish for and I've heard Labour councillors argue that a proportional system could play into the hands of groups like Reform.
I think there have been a range of factors leading to the unprecedented turnover in PMs. Brexit is a major one. By gambling on the EU Referendum at a time when the country was smarting, Cameron destabilised something that was already shaking.
Social media I see as a symptom rather than a cause but it doesn't help.
This is an interesting article from the Electoral Reform Society which suggests the UK has a structural problem
I'm not persuaded by this. I agree that FPTP is pretty wretched, but I don't think it can take the blame for our succession of short-term PMs. Italy has had a famously large number of PMs, and has had various kinds of PR.
This is an interesting article from the Electoral Reform Society which suggests the UK has a structural problem
I'm not persuaded by this. I agree that FPTP is pretty wretched, but I don't think it can take the blame for our succession of short-term PMs. Italy has had a famously large number of PMs, and has had various kinds of PR.
This seems to suggest that Britain’s structural problem is political but I believe it is economic. Far too much wealth is in the hands of far too few. We have an obscene level of income inequality that is exemplified by this country’s economy being the fifth largest in the world while our population is the twenty-second (boat people notwithstanding).
The Austerity policies caused hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and these, rather than Brussels, immigrants or anything else are the symptoms of the structural problems affecting the British people.
This is an interesting article from the Electoral Reform Society which suggests the UK has a structural problem
I'm not persuaded by this. I agree that FPTP is pretty wretched, but I don't think it can take the blame for our succession of short-term PMs. Italy has had a famously large number of PMs, and has had various kinds of PR.
This seems to suggest that Britain’s structural problem is political but I believe it is economic. Far too much wealth is in the hands of far too few. We have an obscene level of income inequality that is exemplified by this country’s economy being the fifth largest in the world while our population is the twenty-second (boat people notwithstanding).
The Austerity policies caused hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and these, rather than Brussels, immigrants or anything else are the symptoms of the structural problems affecting the British people.
I don’t think Brexit is a big reason behind our parade of PMs. Boris went because of Partygate. He should have gone when he put Brexit over people. The EU offered to pause Brexit during Covid. He refused.
I agree social media and trad media have been a big cause.
I note that Farage was not happy with the BBC not giving him an easy ride. This is a reflection of changing attitudes in the country. The chief architect of Brexit is not happy
This seems to suggest that Britain’s structural problem is political but I believe it is economic. Far too much wealth is in the hands of far too few. We have an obscene level of income inequality that is exemplified by this country’s economy being the fifth largest in the world while our population is the twenty-second (boat people notwithstanding).
That is not in itself evidence for income inequality inside the country. In itself it reflects that Britain is a rich country. It is evidence that there is income inequality between Britain and other countries in the world, which may be unjust but is definitely not an economic problem per se for Britain.
I agree that income inequality inside Britain is a problem, but this does not exemplify it!
@TurquoiseTastic, yes, I was clumsy and “demonstrates” economic inequality would have been better. It all goes back to the English Evil of Class. Back in the 1980’s one would see “7/84 Club” posters and placards (one of the more extreme socialist parties produced them) as it was thought that seven percent of the population owned 84% of the wealth. It hasn’t lessened in the last forty years and the tax burden has continued to shift away from the rich.
The problem these days is that the richest entities are corporations and companies. Actual people don’t control half as much wealth as they do.
People are shareholders, directly or indirectly of corporations and companies. A lot of wealth is in land and comparatively few people own a lot of that, and how they howl when the tax on that is increased.
The problem these days is that the richest entities are corporations and companies. Actual people don’t control half as much wealth as they do.
Actual people own significant fractions of those companies, and often have a high level of control over them. Anyone seriously doubt that Amazon's riches are primarily under the control of Bezos?
The problem these days is that the richest entities are corporations and companies. Actual people don’t control half as much wealth as they do.
Actual people own significant fractions of those companies, and often have a high level of control over them. Anyone seriously doubt that Amazon's riches are primarily under the control of Bezos?
And ultimately the other fractions of ownership are owned by individuals, or by entities over which individuals have high degrees of control (Blackrock, Blackstone etc).
The Knotweed and I have a brother-in-law and a niece with Irish passports. Unfortunately it's on the in-law side, there is precisely bugger all Irish anywhere in my family tree, or I'd be in there too. Instead, it's wait for an independent Scotland...
I can't help wondering if B****t is one of the reasons UK bioscience is so fucked right now. If so, its certainly cost me a job and possibly a career.
I know five in my family, and I’m looking into it myself now I have found out more about a grandparent.
Mrs Sioni may, and our youngest son definitely has a claim to Maltese citizenship. Until Malta joined the EU he wouldn’t have wanted that because conscription was nigh mandatory.
My brother, my sister, and I - along with five cousins - all qualify for Irish citizenship on account of our grandfather, born in what is now Dun Laoghaire in 1889.
My sister lives in France, and finds that Brexit made it harder to travel to and from the UK (who would have thought it? Why, we took back control, didn't we?). She has applied for an Irish passport, as she prefers to be a citizen of a European Union country...
A useful fact is that the family member through whom you claim Irish citizenship only has to have been born on the island of Ireland - the north-south border is irrelevant. They can have been born in Ulster before or after Partition.
My English mother would not have approved - she would have been turning in her grave if she hadn't been cremated, though there is a river in Scotland that may have boiled for a while after I got my Irish passport.
My Mum told me that her dad was an Ulster an who has been sent to boarding school in Essex. A couple of hours research put me straight. He was born in Essex. So no Irish passport for me.
While support for Brexit has swung the other way, it's very soft, and swings back as soon as Britain entering on identical terms to other European countries is discussed (as opposed to the pre-Brexit opt-outs). Which indicates a certain amount of exceptionalism still persists, and ties to Europe are likely to remain a live political issue.
There's a lot to be said here, but one interesting thing is that the UK post-Brexit seems to be economically in much the same place as the eurozone. Which I appreciate is a statement that is hiding a lot of things, not least that there are many countries in the Eurozone so in a sense we are comparing the UK with the average of (essentially) the EU countries rather than the best performing. That said, it's not great for either position (in or out) in that post-Brexit the UK hasn't reached the sunlit uplands promised by those gilt-tongued liars who sold us this nonsense. But maybe we've also all been a bit buffered by the global winds from Trump, Ukraine, COVID and Iran and to get out of that lot with comparable performance to the EU - well that could be a lot worse given the politicians we have had in charge recently.
It strikes me that the British Labour government now really needs to bite the bullet and realise that the only way to get to sustainable growth - which we absolutely need to pay for healthcare and the elderly - is to invest a lot of public money. The days of austerity and stupid financial rules are over.
My list of investments that make the most sense are all in terms of "NetZero", even though it is a term I hate. We clearly need to think about how we need to cope with flooding, a few weeks of higher temperatures than we have had before, storms and a few cold winters every decade. Which isn't an easy mixture, but clearly our infrastructure is struggling to cope, and a young person recently gloomily said to me this is probably the coolest summer they will be experiencing in their lifetime.
I think rejoining the EU would be expensive but we need to really think about it, the costs and benefits. The way to beat the Far-Right is to show them that their way would lead to financial ruin and only a progressive "green" future will make everyone's lives better.
I think economic comparisons with the EU are not entirely helpful because Brexit, while most harmful to the UK, also weakened the EU. One has to wonder how the world might have been different over the last few years with a stronger, united EU. Of course without the warning of Brexit it's possible that (say) Italy, France or Hungary might have left instead.
I think economic comparisons with the EU are not entirely helpful because Brexit, while most harmful to the UK, also weakened the EU. One has to wonder how the world might have been different over the last few years with a stronger, united EU. Of course without the warning of Brexit it's possible that (say) Italy, France or Hungary might have left instead.
Yes, I can see that too, although adding counter-factuals on one side of ledger feels unhelpful given that one can also invent others: if the UK had remained in the EU then maybe the impact of Trump would have been worse. The British government was in a tough position already, maybe it would have been even harder if it had been caught between NATO, the EU and the UK-US relationship.
There's also some bitter irony in that HS2 is widely considered a white elephant. Here in central Birmingham work and it feels like many think it will eventually be abandoned.
On the other hand, it is one of few large infrastructure projects that is currently in operation, and hence there must be a stimulating effect of the economy. Maybe we would be in a worse state if it was never started.
No, it really is a white elephant. It's done incalculable damage to the environment, including destroying several ancient woodlands, and it's not even going to do what it said it would. It's not going to give the Northern cities a high-speed link with the south and it's going to terminate somewhere in West London, so anyone wanting connections with the existing mainline stations is going to have a trek. Useless. Except for the people in that lucky London suburb who want to get to Birmingham in under an hour, I suppose.
I mean, it has presumably increased the size of the economy: but if the money had been spent on something else, it would still have increased the size of the economy and we might also have had something more useful to show for it.
I’m a railway advocate but HS2 gives any amount of ammunition to those opposed to railways because of the cost. Have a look at the cost of similar projects elsewhere and you really will wonder why public sector projects, in any sector cost so much in the United Kingdom.
I too am generally in favour of railways, but I would have spent the money on upgrading the cross-country network. There are plenty of high-speed lines serving London, to the point where many journeys are quicker if you go into London and out again, even if it's much further that way. London takes the lion's share of infrastructure funding, one of the many reasons why other parts of the UK are being 'left behind.'
I think economic comparisons with the EU are not entirely helpful because Brexit, while most harmful to the UK, also weakened the EU. ...
Sorry, but I think that is an exceptionalist delusion. It is tantamount to saying that the UK is so important that its absence must have been significant to all the others.
No, it really is a white elephant. It's done incalculable damage to the environment, including destroying several ancient woodlands, and it's not even going to do what it said it would. It's not going to give the Northern cities a high-speed link with the south and it's going to terminate somewhere in West London, so anyone wanting connections with the existing mainline stations is going to have a trek. Useless. Except for the people in that lucky London suburb who want to get to Birmingham in under an hour, I suppose.
I mean, it has presumably increased the size of the economy: but if the money had been spent on something else, it would still have increased the size of the economy and we might also have had something more useful to show for it.
It is, however, important government spending on infrastructure. On the very basic level of more people in employment with money to spend, it has succeeded.
Things are not white elephants just because you say so. The problem was never with starting HS2, it was the mismanagement and timidity that meant it could never be enthusiastically completed.
I think economic comparisons with the EU are not entirely helpful because Brexit, while most harmful to the UK, also weakened the EU. ...
Sorry, but I think that is an exceptionalist delusion. It is tantamount to saying that the UK is so important that its absence must have been significant to all the others.
I think any large country leaving the EU would have weakened it. France leaving, especially, would have been a body blow. I don't see how that's "exceptionalist" or a "delusion". It's a counter-factual, of course, but it's hardly unreasonable to think that a free trade area is more economically productive when it's larger.
I too am generally in favour of railways, but I would have spent the money on upgrading the cross-country network. There are plenty of high-speed lines serving London, to the point where many journeys are quicker if you go into London and out again, even if it's much further that way. London takes the lion's share of infrastructure funding, one of the many reasons why other parts of the UK are being 'left behind.'
I hear this same complaint in the states, that the big cities get the lion's share of all government funding and us poor country people get nothing. Yet, statistically, when you break it down on a per capita basis, it can be soon rural people actually get more funding, What seems to be happening, with more people concentrating in the cities, they do seem to get more bang for the buck. It goes to the economy of scale.
Going back to the impact of Brexit and the strength of the EU, doesn't rogue governments like Hungary put more stress on the EU now than Brexit ever did? There appears to be more internal problems with the EU that need to be addressed.
I think economic comparisons with the EU are not entirely helpful because Brexit, while most harmful to the UK, also weakened the EU. ...
Sorry, but I think that is an exceptionalist delusion. It is tantamount to saying that the UK is so important that its absence must have been significant to all the others.
I think any large country leaving the EU would have weakened it. France leaving, especially, would have been a body blow. I don't see how that's "exceptionalist" or a "delusion". It's a counter-factual, of course, but it's hardly unreasonable to think that a free trade area is more economically productive when it's larger.
Clearly those negotiating for the EU did not think that the UK leaving would have a hugely negative impact otherwise they might have conceded more in the exit negotiation.
Which is not to say that they should have conceded more, I think there is truth in saying that there are ideological constraints on the whole EU which cannot be watered down. However the countries and their leaders clearly weighed the positives and negatives and decided that they were best to leave the UK as a third country rather than in any kind of bespoke relationship.
And of course the idiots in charge in the UK seemed determined to negotiate a lose-lose agreement with the EU.
I think economic comparisons with the EU are not entirely helpful because Brexit, while most harmful to the UK, also weakened the EU. ...
Sorry, but I think that is an exceptionalist delusion. It is tantamount to saying that the UK is so important that its absence must have been significant to all the others.
I think any large country leaving the EU would have weakened it. France leaving, especially, would have been a body blow. I don't see how that's "exceptionalist" or a "delusion". It's a counter-factual, of course, but it's hardly unreasonable to think that a free trade area is more economically productive when it's larger.
Clearly those negotiating for the EU did not think that the UK leaving would have a hugely negative impact otherwise they might have conceded more in the exit negotiation.
I think the EU had several objectives in Brexit negotiations, of which minimising economic fallout was only one. Protecting EU institutions, not being seen as giving into UK brinkmanship, discouraging other countries from leaving. Certainly sticking to the principle that the four freedoms of the EU are inseparable was very sensible. It wasn't really a matter of concessions so much as the UK having to choose how close a relationship it wanted and whether it was willing to accept everything that came with that relationship. As it was it became clear that it was politically easier in the short term for the UK to accept the economic hit rather than concede freedom of movement or being subject to the ECJ.
I think economic comparisons with the EU are not entirely helpful because Brexit, while most harmful to the UK, also weakened the EU. ...
Sorry, but I think that is an exceptionalist delusion. It is tantamount to saying that the UK is so important that its absence must have been significant to all the others.
I think any large country leaving the EU would have weakened it. France leaving, especially, would have been a body blow. I don't see how that's "exceptionalist" or a "delusion". It's a counter-factual, of course, but it's hardly unreasonable to think that a free trade area is more economically productive when it's larger.
Clearly those negotiating for the EU did not think that the UK leaving would have a hugely negative impact otherwise they might have conceded more in the exit negotiation.
That's not self evident at all; every government has limited time and bandwidth for political negotiations of all kinds (including those that are purely internal and lead to changed laws), so you have the individual costs to each country from the UK leaving vs the benefits of whatever else they could do with that negotiating time (or conversely the costs of not doing so).
Being an intransigent partner and thus driving up the costs of those negotiations were likely to skew the equation further.
This is one reason why from fairly early on the EU was keen on the UK mirroring one of the existing arrangements it already had with some external partner and avoiding unique bilateral arrangements except where unavoidable. Hence Barnier's staircase diagram.
I too am generally in favour of railways, but I would have spent the money on upgrading the cross-country network. There are plenty of high-speed lines serving London, to the point where many journeys are quicker if you go into London and out again, even if it's much further that way. London takes the lion's share of infrastructure funding, one of the many reasons why other parts of the UK are being 'left behind.'
I hear this same complaint in the states, that the big cities get the lion's share of all government funding and us poor country people get nothing. Yet, statistically, when you break it down on a per capita basis, it can be soon rural people actually get more funding, What seems to be happening, with more people concentrating in the cities, they do seem to get more bang for the buck. It goes to the economy of scale.
Maybe that's true in the States. Over here, there are quite a few large cities besides London. They are being held back by a lack of investment, and one of the things that is holding them back is outdated transport infrastructure. The government keeps saying they are going to do something about this, but hardly ever does. To take just one example, because of the way infrastructure funding is allocated under devolution, Scotland and Northern Ireland got more money for rail projects because of HS2. Wales did not, because their infrastructure funding is lumped in with England's. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgmymnw2yxko The quickest way to get from North Wales to Cardiff by rail is currently to go back into England and change trains several times.
@Basketactortale we already had a bespoke arrangement. We had opted out of Schengen and the Euro. Maggie Thatcher had negotiated us a huge reduction in our contribution to the budget. We had the EU regulators for banking and pharmaceuticals, both based in London. What have we got now? Blue passports.
That's certainly one way to interpret what happened. Personally I like mine better. Thatcher had a rebate for the UK that other countries did not have, so suggesting that any other option was impossible seems to me to be stretching the truth. But I do accept that it's entirely possible that the dominant view from within the EU was that they could do nothing else.
The founding principles included freedom of movement. If the EU negotiators had conceded that to the UK they would have had to concede it to every other third country that wanted to trade with them as well. And the EU would have lost one of its biggest strengths, a very large, flexible labour market.
I think economic comparisons with the EU are not entirely helpful because Brexit, while most harmful to the UK, also weakened the EU. ...
Sorry, but I think that is an exceptionalist delusion. It is tantamount to saying that the UK is so important that its absence must have been significant to all the others.
I think any large country leaving the EU would have weakened it. France leaving, especially, would have been a body blow. I don't see how that's "exceptionalist" or a "delusion". It's a counter-factual, of course, but it's hardly unreasonable to think that a free trade area is more economically productive when it's larger.
Clearly those negotiating for the EU did not think that the UK leaving would have a hugely negative impact otherwise they might have conceded more in the exit negotiation.
Which is not to say that they should have conceded more, I think there is truth in saying that there are ideological constraints on the whole EU which cannot be watered down. However the countries and their leaders clearly weighed the positives and negatives and decided that they were best to leave the UK as a third country rather than in any kind of bespoke relationship.
And of course the idiots in charge in the UK seemed determined to negotiate a lose-lose agreement with the EU.
The negotiations were an indication of how poorly the entire Leave or Brexit topic was handled. Essentially, while the benefits of the Remain campaign were crystal clear, and would mean that our current agreement, with issues many did not like for a variety of reasons, the Leave campaign promised a whole battery of benefits against no losses, without ever stating the intended arrangements beyond an “It will all be wonderful”. I am so, so, angry how the Remain campaign was so complacent about this issue. After the referendum the victorious Brexiteers portrayed their opponents as “Remoaners”, and gradually the Leave arrangements, after abandoning Theresa May’s plan, were put in place we now have the Hard Brexit as advocated by Jacob Rees-Mogg and others, with all its benefits which seem to be few and far between, especially in those areas that voted most enthusiastically to Leave the European Union.
Comments
I reckon we will rejoin in the aftermath of a Reform implosion. Probably about 2040.
This is an interesting article from the Electoral Reform Society which suggests the UK has a structural problem
It's over-determined, but a large cause of the revolving door is the UKs economic model blowing up in 2008 and not really being replaced, with succeeding governments trying to kick the can down the road. The Conservatives deliberately shrunk the state (in capacity terms) during austerity with the excuse that good times would come later. Brexit is a result of people realising the good times weren't coming and trying to register their disapproval meeting with the right wing media's project since the late 80s of Euro-Scepticism.
Social media played a role, but by the time the UK went to the polls it was a fairly Euro-Sceptic country:
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/LAP_reminder-of-vote_15032019-1024x537.jpg
Read the article. On the other hand, having a president that is deeply underwater now, is not a good way of governing for another two and a half years either.
Burnham is promising electoral reform and I support that, although my Australian relatives say we should be careful what we wish for and I've heard Labour councillors argue that a proportional system could play into the hands of groups like Reform.
I think there have been a range of factors leading to the unprecedented turnover in PMs. Brexit is a major one. By gambling on the EU Referendum at a time when the country was smarting, Cameron destabilised something that was already shaking.
Social media I see as a symptom rather than a cause but it doesn't help.
I'm not persuaded by this. I agree that FPTP is pretty wretched, but I don't think it can take the blame for our succession of short-term PMs. Italy has had a famously large number of PMs, and has had various kinds of PR.
This seems to suggest that Britain’s structural problem is political but I believe it is economic. Far too much wealth is in the hands of far too few. We have an obscene level of income inequality that is exemplified by this country’s economy being the fifth largest in the world while our population is the twenty-second (boat people notwithstanding).
The Austerity policies caused hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and these, rather than Brussels, immigrants or anything else are the symptoms of the structural problems affecting the British people.
I don’t think Brexit is a big reason behind our parade of PMs. Boris went because of Partygate. He should have gone when he put Brexit over people. The EU offered to pause Brexit during Covid. He refused.
I agree social media and trad media have been a big cause.
I note that Farage was not happy with the BBC not giving him an easy ride. This is a reflection of changing attitudes in the country. The chief architect of Brexit is not happy
That is not in itself evidence for income inequality inside the country. In itself it reflects that Britain is a rich country. It is evidence that there is income inequality between Britain and other countries in the world, which may be unjust but is definitely not an economic problem per se for Britain.
I agree that income inequality inside Britain is a problem, but this does not exemplify it!
People are shareholders, directly or indirectly of corporations and companies. A lot of wealth is in land and comparatively few people own a lot of that, and how they howl when the tax on that is increased.
Actual people own significant fractions of those companies, and often have a high level of control over them. Anyone seriously doubt that Amazon's riches are primarily under the control of Bezos?
And ultimately the other fractions of ownership are owned by individuals, or by entities over which individuals have high degrees of control (Blackrock, Blackstone etc).
The Knotweed and I have a brother-in-law and a niece with Irish passports. Unfortunately it's on the in-law side, there is precisely bugger all Irish anywhere in my family tree, or I'd be in there too. Instead, it's wait for an independent Scotland...
I can't help wondering if B****t is one of the reasons UK bioscience is so fucked right now. If so, its certainly cost me a job and possibly a career.
Mrs Sioni may, and our youngest son definitely has a claim to Maltese citizenship. Until Malta joined the EU he wouldn’t have wanted that because conscription was nigh mandatory.
My sister lives in France, and finds that Brexit made it harder to travel to and from the UK (who would have thought it? Why, we took back control, didn't we?). She has applied for an Irish passport, as she prefers to be a citizen of a European Union country...
My English mother would not have approved - she would have been turning in her grave if she hadn't been cremated, though there is a river in Scotland that may have boiled for a while after I got my Irish passport.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2026/06/we-want-to-rejoin-on-certain-conditions
While support for Brexit has swung the other way, it's very soft, and swings back as soon as Britain entering on identical terms to other European countries is discussed (as opposed to the pre-Brexit opt-outs). Which indicates a certain amount of exceptionalism still persists, and ties to Europe are likely to remain a live political issue.
It strikes me that the British Labour government now really needs to bite the bullet and realise that the only way to get to sustainable growth - which we absolutely need to pay for healthcare and the elderly - is to invest a lot of public money. The days of austerity and stupid financial rules are over.
My list of investments that make the most sense are all in terms of "NetZero", even though it is a term I hate. We clearly need to think about how we need to cope with flooding, a few weeks of higher temperatures than we have had before, storms and a few cold winters every decade. Which isn't an easy mixture, but clearly our infrastructure is struggling to cope, and a young person recently gloomily said to me this is probably the coolest summer they will be experiencing in their lifetime.
I think rejoining the EU would be expensive but we need to really think about it, the costs and benefits. The way to beat the Far-Right is to show them that their way would lead to financial ruin and only a progressive "green" future will make everyone's lives better.
Yes, I can see that too, although adding counter-factuals on one side of ledger feels unhelpful given that one can also invent others: if the UK had remained in the EU then maybe the impact of Trump would have been worse. The British government was in a tough position already, maybe it would have been even harder if it had been caught between NATO, the EU and the UK-US relationship.
There's also some bitter irony in that HS2 is widely considered a white elephant. Here in central Birmingham work and it feels like many think it will eventually be abandoned.
On the other hand, it is one of few large infrastructure projects that is currently in operation, and hence there must be a stimulating effect of the economy. Maybe we would be in a worse state if it was never started.
I mean, it has presumably increased the size of the economy: but if the money had been spent on something else, it would still have increased the size of the economy and we might also have had something more useful to show for it.
It is, however, important government spending on infrastructure. On the very basic level of more people in employment with money to spend, it has succeeded.
Things are not white elephants just because you say so. The problem was never with starting HS2, it was the mismanagement and timidity that meant it could never be enthusiastically completed.
I think any large country leaving the EU would have weakened it. France leaving, especially, would have been a body blow. I don't see how that's "exceptionalist" or a "delusion". It's a counter-factual, of course, but it's hardly unreasonable to think that a free trade area is more economically productive when it's larger.
I hear this same complaint in the states, that the big cities get the lion's share of all government funding and us poor country people get nothing. Yet, statistically, when you break it down on a per capita basis, it can be soon rural people actually get more funding, What seems to be happening, with more people concentrating in the cities, they do seem to get more bang for the buck. It goes to the economy of scale.
Going back to the impact of Brexit and the strength of the EU, doesn't rogue governments like Hungary put more stress on the EU now than Brexit ever did? There appears to be more internal problems with the EU that need to be addressed.
Clearly those negotiating for the EU did not think that the UK leaving would have a hugely negative impact otherwise they might have conceded more in the exit negotiation.
Which is not to say that they should have conceded more, I think there is truth in saying that there are ideological constraints on the whole EU which cannot be watered down. However the countries and their leaders clearly weighed the positives and negatives and decided that they were best to leave the UK as a third country rather than in any kind of bespoke relationship.
And of course the idiots in charge in the UK seemed determined to negotiate a lose-lose agreement with the EU.
I think the EU had several objectives in Brexit negotiations, of which minimising economic fallout was only one. Protecting EU institutions, not being seen as giving into UK brinkmanship, discouraging other countries from leaving. Certainly sticking to the principle that the four freedoms of the EU are inseparable was very sensible. It wasn't really a matter of concessions so much as the UK having to choose how close a relationship it wanted and whether it was willing to accept everything that came with that relationship. As it was it became clear that it was politically easier in the short term for the UK to accept the economic hit rather than concede freedom of movement or being subject to the ECJ.
That's not self evident at all; every government has limited time and bandwidth for political negotiations of all kinds (including those that are purely internal and lead to changed laws), so you have the individual costs to each country from the UK leaving vs the benefits of whatever else they could do with that negotiating time (or conversely the costs of not doing so).
Being an intransigent partner and thus driving up the costs of those negotiations were likely to skew the equation further.
This is one reason why from fairly early on the EU was keen on the UK mirroring one of the existing arrangements it already had with some external partner and avoiding unique bilateral arrangements except where unavoidable. Hence Barnier's staircase diagram.
[Cross posted with Arethosemyfeet]
Maybe that's true in the States. Over here, there are quite a few large cities besides London. They are being held back by a lack of investment, and one of the things that is holding them back is outdated transport infrastructure. The government keeps saying they are going to do something about this, but hardly ever does. To take just one example, because of the way infrastructure funding is allocated under devolution, Scotland and Northern Ireland got more money for rail projects because of HS2. Wales did not, because their infrastructure funding is lumped in with England's. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgmymnw2yxko The quickest way to get from North Wales to Cardiff by rail is currently to go back into England and change trains several times.
@Basketactortale we already had a bespoke arrangement. We had opted out of Schengen and the Euro. Maggie Thatcher had negotiated us a huge reduction in our contribution to the budget. We had the EU regulators for banking and pharmaceuticals, both based in London. What have we got now? Blue passports.