General Chat

maybe if the powers that be had paid more attention to the northern half of England, there might have been more belief in staying in EU.

There has been a North - South divide as long as I have been aware of politics ............ and that's one heck of a long time!

heh heh well we hedged a while back, we have a nice old house nr Paris and I have perm right to reside in France brexit or no. Over half the biz is in the EU proper alreaady. So personally I don't give a monkeys esp as my €uros will go further.

The sorts of people who funded brexit ( eg Aaron Banks, Richard Desmond ) don't care one iota for the sorts of people who made their protest votes. Quite how the denizens of Sunderland etc will react to being trapped inside a malevolent government of the far right is anybody's guess. The success of Corbyn + Momentum in neutering Labour has been such one might imagine a plot ...

Getting back to the £ whoever is running what's left of the govt + the BOfE will have a royal headache. UK Growth is already weak and for some time has depended on the housing bubble and mortgages financed by foreign funds. As a consequence the trade deficit is a magnificant and unsustainable 7% of GDP. Remember Greece?

Large scale business hates both transaction costs and volatility. That is about all the UK can offer and so large scale mfg ( all of it in foreign ownership except Rolls Royce ) will gradually slope off to other parts of the EU eg BMW Mini, Nissan. The lucrative arbitrage business of the City of London will exit to Frankfurt, Singapore, Shang Hai and so on.

It is highly likely that even more of the young and highly skilled will leave. Brexit seems to believe that losing top notch health workers and IT stars is ok so long as the supply of Bangla Deshi chefs is maintained.

The govt will then be wrestling with the current massive deficit and a declining tax base. That can only mean yet more cuts and tax rises. It won't do much for house prices either.

Turning away from the nasty financial maelstrom about to hit the UK what about the politics?

Brexit has won the referendum by a narrow margin of 2%. Against that 90% of the people with power and money went with Remain. The other 10% have nefarious agendas eg Aaron Banks, Gove. Around 400 MPs are with Remain. The referendum only covers exit not how to implement it. The wilder ideas of Gove and Co. simply cannot command a majority in the House. Brexit will find that it has to negotiate something like single market access which will of course come with the dreaded free movement proviso and no 4yr break.

The line from the EU that it would deny SM access on any terms is bollox Germany and France do need the UK market. Not on any terms but badly enough to work something out. The chances of the UK neg advantageous trade agreements with other states in short order are nil.

If the infighting within the UK and rush to the doors by mfg and finance gets bad enough then a one way collapse of the £ is for sure on the cards and the YK could end up crawling back into the EU this time with the €uro, Schengen n all.

Then of course all those nasty EU laws and regulations. Suddenly there would be pretty well no product, labour or environmental law some of which woujld be sina que non in order to trade.

In short the whole brexit project is impossible. It will end n tears and quite possibly blood.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy Goves should enjoy their day in the sun the sky will darken all to soon.

cry the beloved country
:-(

I read elsewhere the pound has went down ad gold sales have spiked

It's quite amazing looking at the blue and yellow coloured map on MailOnLine

Ken ..............

don't you think it will bounce back up again when everyone realises the world will not come to an end??

Give it a few days!

Already the pound has dropped to its lowest level since the eighties. I hope everyone got their holiday currency early.

:-D :-D :-D

My home town (which is also your wife's) apparently voted 61% to leave!!

Rollo will have a solution ;-) :-D :-D

it looks as though the Leaves have won, as they are over 1 million ahead at this point

It's going to be very interesting ...... I bet it will take years to sort it all out.