Three quarters of UK firms are positive about post Brexit trade prospects according to the Head of Commercial banking at HSBC.
Berlin has awarded a contract to supply 430 new buses to the British manufacturer Alexander Dennis – even with the risk of a no deal Brexit in March next year! Even the prospect of World Trade organisation tariffs did not stop them because the UK is competitive and the Pound is competitive. More confirmation that there is no such thing as a “no deal Brexit’ – we go straight to a normal WTO trade deal – like about 160 other countries in the world!
Much Remainer panic is directed at the Car industry after Brexit but as Ian Duncan Smith has pointed out 1) car industry employment accounts for only 0.57% of British jobs 2) 64% of supplies come from outside the EU – despite customs procedures! and 3) the gross value added to our economy of motor vehicle manufacturing is only 0.8%.
Nor does the prospect of Brexit frighten foreign manufacturers setting up in Britain. The world’s largest plane manufacturer BOEING has just opened its first plant in the UK – in Sheffield – costing some £40m
More good news comes from academics at Aberdeen University who have predicted that there are still 17bn barrels of oil and oil equivalent to be extracted from the North Sea – at today’s prices that is worth £816 bn! No wonder that the UK remains the second biggest recipient of Foreign Direct Investment in the world – with $65.5 billion of FDI coming into the UK in the first half of 2018 alone, just behind China on $70.2 billion.
And when the British public is asked about their preferred Brexit options: 26% opted for a Canada-style trade deal. The WTO option attracted 24% support and No Deal attracted 17%. Theresa May’s disastrous Chequers Plan polled worst at 6% against 11% for the thoroughly discredited Norway-style EEA/EFTA membership. Only 15% wanted a second referendum on EU membership!
UK ECONOMY ON THE UP – EU ON THE WAY DOWN
The UK is still prospering with wages between June and August up 3.1% – the fastest for 10 years with inflation in the same period 2.5% so real wages up again – now by 0.6%. The Government deficit will be £11.6bn lower this year at £25.5bn and much better growth in income from income tax and VAT allowed the Chancellor to greatly increase take home pay by increasing tax allowances.
UK growth after a poor, weather affected first quarter rose 0.4% to June and 0.6% to September. This contrasts with poor Eurozone growth of 0.3% to June and 0.2% to September.
COLLAPSING EUROPEAN UNION PANICS
European Council President Donald Tusk has said his fellow Poles could end up following the UK out of the EU. In a remark which betrays the growing panic in Brussels about Brexit Tusk said:
“…the will (among member states) to keep Poland inside the EU is smaller than the will to keep the UK in it. This issue is incredibly serious, the risk is deadly serious, I want everybody to come to their senses,”
Indeed, Poland may well go (they aren’t in the Euro which helps their departure) and so might Italy (where there is stronger EU-exit leadership than there is in the UK). Indeed the German Secretary of State Sigmar Gabriel has said that if the UK and Italy go “the EU will be done for”.
Despite the anti British rhetoric and threats coming out of the clique around President Macron there are many Frenchmen who are extremely worried. Xavier Bertrand, president of the Northern Hauts-de-France region said that a no deal Brexit would be “chaos” and Brussels should preserve business between his region and the UK. And when the UK Brexit Secretary threatened to direct trade through Dutch and Belgian ports if the French made it difficult at Calais there was an immediate French reaction that there would be no such obstruction – because it would be suicidal for Calais!
The confederation of German industry (BDI) has called for a swift and solid Brexit deal, warning that companies are “staring into the abyss” unless an agreement is struck. German exports to the UK were $97bn in 2017 – twice as much as to China! Imagine what an average tariff of say 7% on that amount would cost them – for their exporters would not dare to put the costs onto prices and so would have to absorb them!
And would EU countries in the event of a refusal to trade fairly with the UK like to have their 3m “citizens” back who are at present earning a living in the UK? There are some 400,000 Frenchmen and women working in the UK – why? The UKIP Economics Spokeswoman (until recently) Catherine Blaiklock who used to work in the City reminds us of why:
I used to work for the French bank, Banque Nationale de Paris, generally known as BNP. They used to employ about two thousand people in their large, London offices. All their front-line trading staff were in London, not Paris. When I visited Paris, I asked why. I was told very simply, it is because we cannot fire people even if they are hopeless or for a cause.
So would major international financial institutions want to leave London? There have been major money laundering scandals in Denmark, Latvia and malta, there is a dangerous bank crisis in Italy, there is massive political instability in France, in Germany Merkel has resigned from the leadership of her party and will not last long as Chancellor, German industry is under attack for car emissions fraud, the EU is rejecting Italy’s budget, there are plagues of rats in Rome and Paris and unemployment in the Eurozone is still 8.3% – twice as much as in the UK.
ASHAMED TO BE IN THE EU
The German MEP Hans-Olaf Henkel revealed he feels “ashamed” to be a member of the European Parliament due to Brussels’ treatment of Brexit Britain. Mr Henkel also said EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier was always quick to explain how Britain will be affected by its exit but never outlined the effects on the EU. With a massive trade surplus with the UK and 3 million EU citizens working here, mass unemployment in EU states, collapsing share of world trade and a £10bn EU budget gap to plug the dangers of Brexit for the EU are obvious – unless you live in the eurofanatic dreamworld which still believes the EU is a success.
Another German voice, Dirk Schümer, European correspondent of the WELT lavished praise on Britain saying
“I don’t even want to imagine a Europe without England, without Great Britain. We should have fought for the British. Now the baby is out with the bathwater, now the horses have escaped and we are discussing how to get them back.”
Even the former French President Nikolas Sarkozy has said that the EU is crazy to let the EU’s second biggest economy walk away. He wants a new Europe that the UK could sign up to! The “new Europe” would improve the implementation of single market measures, and have only “around 10” major policies, such as agriculture, trade and research, but that the rest should be “without exception the responsibility of member states”.
Not very likely! The EU will not change (it is going in the exact opposite direction) and the UK would not accept a fudge nor the (still necessary) rule of the EU and its court.
MANY EU STATES THINK THEY STILL EXIST!
PORTUGAL, like many EU states, is sympathetic to the UK and wants to sideline Barnier and the EU Commission in Brexit negotiations. Remarkably they think they still exist and should be talking to the UK directly!
The Portuguese foreign minister Augusto Santos Silva said the lengthy Brexit negotiations mean member states have been unable to make their own bilateral deals with Britain – which he said was vital to Portugal’s economy. The UK is Portugal’s 4th largest export market.
Just as the British Declaration of Independence (see heading at Freenations home page) in 2001 showed British MPs how much they did not govern the country so Brexit negotiations are showing EU member states how irrelevant they are!
WHY DOES BREXIT TAKE SO LONG?
The answers are numerous. Firstly Brexit is being negotiated on the UK side by Remainers. Secondly there is virtually no one left in Government who knows that life existed before 1973 when we joined the EU – and traded with, had (controlled) movement between nations, and co-operated on traffic, licences, shipping, fishing, agricultural trade and much else – all without surrendering the sovereignty of our people to govern themselves under their own constitution. Thirdly delay for the EU is a bargaining chip. Fourth all 27 remaining countries need to agree (except for no deal!)
Martin Panek director of the Prague based Liberal Institute (not in the American sense!) wonders why it takes so long to negotiate a trade deal with the UK because he recalls how easy it was to split Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1992-93.
The Czech PM Václav Klaus met the Slovak PM Vladimír Mečiar in Brno on 8th July and they agreed to split up the federation. The agreement was signed on 26th August and Václav Havel resigned his seat in the meantime (20th July). By 13th November, a law had been enacted as to how the federal assets were going to be divvied up and twelve days later, an act was passed that set the dissolution date at 31st December. Complex matters such as the continuity of the Czech Parliament, continuity of laws, arrangements for courts and so on were all swiftly determined by December. A new Czech Constitution was passed on 16th December. Czechoslovakia was dissolved at midnight on New Year’s Eve. When the people woke up the next morning, they had new nationalities and the Czech Parliament re-elected Václav Havel as President on 26th January 1993.
There was reasonable good will in the former Czechoslovakia. The naive Theresa May, ignorant of political economy, history and political ideology and the causes of past wars thought she could be nice to her “partners” and “friends”. The EU cashed her goodwill and gave nothing in return. I wonder if she is surprised.
