| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re: Andrea Leadsom - out of touch with the real world !! | |
| Posted by: | Alan Clark | |
| Date/Time: | 21/12/18 08:32:00 |
| Perhaps the commons has always been like this - but surely in the run up to potentially a national crisis we should expect better. And as a no deal exit becomes more and more likely, be in no doubt this is the months leading up to a national crisis. There is a lot of bad thinking going on about ‘no deal’ and WTO trading terms. Arch dimwits like Leadsom are still promoting a notion of ‘managed no deal exit’ – a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. I read the recent speech by Sir Ivan Rogers and it offers some good explanations of the issues here. A couple of extracts to help the equally reality challenged contributors to this forum. “If moving beyond WTO terms with major markets represents a major step FORWARD in liberalising trade, then deliberately moving back to WTO terms from an existing deep preferential agreement – which is what the Single Market is – represents a major step BACKWARD to less free trade.” Which means we would be very aggressively inhibiting UK trade and exports, and practically destroying services trade. Which, and I do feel it necessary to explain this very simply, will directly and rapidly lead to a very deep and very long recession for the UK. Most likely significantly worse than that created by the financial crisis of 2008/9. “Market access into the EU WILL worsen, whatever post exit deal we eventually strike. And the quantum by which our trade flows with the EU will diminish – and that impacts immediately – will outweigh the economic impact of greater market opening which we have to aim to achieve over time in other markets, where the impact will not be immediate but incremental.” Which means an abrupt and near complete cessation of trade (i.e. a hard exit) will have the hardest possible impact. Please do not take comfort in the term incremental – it means very long and slow. Which directly equates to the recovery from the recession we will create. Very, very long and slow. Decades. “If we lurch, despite Parliament wishing to avoid it, towards a “no deal”, with delusions it can be “managed” into a quick and dirty FTA, that will not end happily or quickly. I am in no position to second guess those who have to try and model the macro effects of such a scenario. No developed country has left a trade bloc before, let alone in disorderly fashion, and let alone one which has become a lot more than a trade bloc. But I do fully understand the legal realities. And because so-called “WTO rules” deliver precisely no continuity in multiple key sectors of the economy, we could expect disruption on a scale and of a length that no-one has experienced in the developed world in the last couple of generations.” Please read that last sentence again if you are in any doubt about the consequences of a no deal exit. |