Brexit or how I'll make a killing in forex

The sad thing is that in three to five years, the UK is going wind up with an arrangement that looks suspiciously like being in the EU. We'll still have the common market, we'll still have freedom of movement within it, and we'll still be paying truckloads of money to be a part of it. Oh, and we'll still have to abide by a whole host of EU laws and regulations (...except we'll have no vote on them.)

So, basically, all that pain will have been for very, very little...

 

And the 70 percent of senior citizens who voted to leave will be five years closer to death.

 

As a matter of practical politics, the 27 other EU countries, which are more or less democracies. must drive the hardest bargain possible in the divorce. Britain voted to leave the EU because at bottom, voters didn't want "that kind of people" coming to their country in large numbers. But to 27 leaders, "that kind of people" is "my voters." They can't go back home and say that for the sake of some exports and fragile stability they're going to let their own people be treated as lesser beings by Britain.

 

They can't let Britain cherry pick the good parts of belonging to the EU (single market) and drop the less convenient parts, and they can't afford to send the message that members can threaten to leave and renegotiate their deals.

 

Britain needs to be brought to heel.

 

From the EU's standpoint, it would be self-defeating to allow one member country to change the rules for itself. Terms must remain more favorable for those countries IN the union.

 

It is interesting how much of the discussion of this issue here (not just on the board, in the US generally) is driven from the perspective of Britain. Is it good/bad for Britain? What should Britain do? And so on. But the EU remains much larger and in any practical consideration of much more importance to US security and economic interests. But the rest of the EU doesn't have English as a first language, and the most language-challenged society on earth therefore thinks Britain's more significant than it is.

 

You're staying in France, right?

 

Britain already had their own rules (currency).

 

I'd love to. Can't afford it.

 

Yes, Britain already has its own currency. So do other EU nations, and nations outside the EU in the EEA single market (such as Norway). But all have to agree to the four basic principles of the 1989 EU treaty, including free movement of labor, to do so. Britain wants in the EEA without the four basic principles, and that's just not gonna happen. What it will get instead is higher taxes and fewer services, as in lower old age pensions. I'm not saying that, Chancellor of the Exchequer (it's always a good day when you get that into a sentence) George Osborne said so today.

 

Funny, but I'm guessing the "Boaty McBoatface" crowd were more likely to support "Remain."