This. You really have to be here to believe the extent to which the average Joe on the street believes they'll be able to have their cake and eat it after this is settled.
What's bizarre is that when challenged on how ridiculous that is, they'll immediately accept it as rational before saying "well we voted out anyway so it doesn't matter".
> You really have to be here to believe the extent to which the average Joe on the street believes they'll be able to have their cake and eat it after this is settled.
Still, nothing beats the cluelessness of pro-brexit British expats when they are faced with the consequences of what they demanded.
The Brexiteer in my family blames it all on the Europeans, apparently they’re the ones raising all these barriers and cutting us off from the benefits of membership out of spite.
Polling has repeatedly shown very widespread public confusion over what Brexit will actually do. Even many remain voters don’t realise all the downsides.
The upsides of Brexit are generally, at best, very subjective and ephemeral (‘sovereignty’ in the sense of passport colour change) or outright imaginary (the EU is banning kettles and jam).
As a remain voter, I'm not best to advocate for the strengths of leave. As I'm sure you're aware, debate between remain and leave is difficult. Characterising sovereignty concerns as "passport colour change" won't start the conversation on the right path, however.
Please don't discredit the positions or the book solely from my my hazy memory of the book, but here goes:
* EU is a weakening trade bloc, so we're better off out of the customs union, and making trade deals that work for UK, rather than that work for the EU (example: cheaper tomatoes from Africa, that the EU will not make, since it'll make Spain/Italy worse off)
* UK's voting patterns within EU was anomolous: UK voted against policies far more than other countries anyway.
* UK public seems to have a max acceptable rate of immigration, and we may prefer more selective immigration policies (e.g. target the high skilled workers in India, China, Australia)
Those are meant to pique your interest in the book. I don't think starting a debate on HN will be productive, at least because I barely remember the book.
> Characterising sovereignty concerns as "passport colour change" won't start the conversation on the right path, however.
By that I meant that the Brexiter conception of sovereignty is heavily based on surface symbolism; the archetypical Brexiter is fine with taking US rules on food safety, in which they have no voice in making, if it means they can change the colour of the passport (which, of course, they could do within the EU anyway, but never mind). That is, Brexit is not generally actually concerned with sovereignty in any real sense, and Brexit Britain will lose control, not gain it.
Britain before the virus had close to full employment. We had 3 or 4 unfilled positions for every person on unemployment benefit. Most people unemployed found jobs quickly. In mid 2019 there were only 327,000 Britons who had been unemployed for more than a year, but over 3.5 million foreign nationals working in the UK.
The British jobs for British people argument is utter garbage. It’s so incredibly far from reality it beggars belief. It’s flat earth economics. The Johnson government knows this perfectly well, that’s why they extended work visa rights for foreign students in the UK and guaranteed that foreign nationals in the UK would keep long term rights to work here.
Our economy is crying out for skilled workers, it’s the number one roadblock to increased growth. Foreign workers tend to be young, more productive, consume fewer social services, pay more tax and commit fewer crimes than native Brits, by a lot. With an ageing population and increasing health care and pension costs, we need them more than ever.
> Britain before the virus had close to full employment.
This is not a good line of argumentation. I'll refrain from using stronger terms so as not to violate the site guidelines.
Fact is: In many European countries the low wage "jobs" (many of them on exploitative hidden contractor terms) earn barely above social security level.
All of that while still supporting parasites like state TV losers with big pensions.
Of course you have "full employment" if most people earn a subsistence wage.
1) Any analysis that tacitly assumes that the fundamental conflict is between "Europe" and "the common man" should be suspect immediately. It clearly has an agenda.
2) The UK government had at its disposal number of measures that could prevent or mitigate the impact of "Eastern European workers flooding the labor market" on "The Common man" (UK citizen edition thereof, only). Following the accession of Poland and other smaller states in 2004 they could have: raised minimum wage, increased social spending and outright limited the numbers coming from those countries for a time, as some other EU members did. (1) etc.
The UK government chose to do none of these, thus keeping their business backers happy, and were able to avoid blame for this decision, instead pointing at an "external enemy, i.e. "Europe". Of course, this fanned the flames of Xenophobia, and...
This is called the "lump of labour fallacy". There aren't just a fixed number of jobs to be filled by the people who live in a country. As more people arrive, those people need to pay for services such as rent, groceries, cars etc. etc. creating more work and more jobs. The fact is that the majority of immigrants in the UK are young, and therefore contribute a disproportionate amount of tax relative to what they take out from government services.
It's not all roses - UK companies, such as fruit farms, are able to treat low-skilled immigrant workers worse than long-term residents. But there are also plenty of high-skilled immigrants, so to pretend that it's about countries being "sold out to stock markets" is naive. Just wait to see what happens to the NHS as foreign workers leave over the next few months.
Would not the praised invisible hand take care of this? If toilet cleaners provide more value than stock brokers (they do), they should be paid more.
There is also the fact that Eastern European construction workers in Germany do not follow German regulations, rip out Asbest without precautions etc., thus undercutting local builders.
Is this a problem due to the existence of Easter Europeans or a problem of Government not enforcing the regulations. Why don't you demand enforcement of regulations instead of wholesale ban of Eastern Europeans?
Also, how do you feel about sending all non-complient workers to Eastern Europe or do you think that German non-complient workers should just get a fine?
Poor, desperate people who don't speak the local language are not exactly likely to turn whistleblower. We've seen this in the UK recently with the Covid-19 outbreaks on vegetable farms - which are (as Brexit opponents in the press repeatedly and smugly pointed out) almost entirely staffed by migrant workers from Eastern Europe to the point that when Covid shut down travel they had to charter special planes to fly them in - when the people who went to the press about the dodgy hygene conditions were the only British workers. There's a reason these companies prefer migrant workers, and it's not a good one.
Why would workers(those who are accused of breaking the law) blow the whistle? Why do you expect that? How about solving the issue through inspectors and such? Is it normal for UK to have its criminals to report themselves? Is this where Eastern Europeans culturally fail?
Also, were the high Covid-19 counts in the UK due to these workers? If so, if these workers are so bad in hygiene why UK is much worse off than Eastern Europe?
No. Notably in picking seasonal food. The supermarkets don’t pay enough for the food. The picking companies don’t demand enough, plus they have some questionable or outright illegal employment practises. Most of all it’s hard work and Brits simply don’t last in the job.
