• About…George Matlock

eurosnews

~ Euro crisis solved, not merely explained

eurosnews

Tag Archives: Boris Johnson

If we vote to Leave, do you really suppose we will Brexit?

21 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by eurosnews in EMEA

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Brussels, Daily Telegraph, David Cameron, domino effect, Douglas Renwick, EU, Europe, eurozone, Fitch Ratings, football, Glasgow, greece, HM Queen, Ireland, Jo Cox, Labour, Leave, maastricht, Michael O'Leary, Nigel Farage, Poland, policy, politics, poll, referendum, Remain, Ryanair, Scotland, The Netherlands, UK, UKIP, vote, Wales, Westminster

breaking-the-sound-barrier-99684_1920

So you think Brexit is like Breaking the Sound barrier?

With Britain’s EU “#Breferendum” just days away, I felt it would be good to peep one more (and last!) time this week at various loose ends of the debate and to highlight them before you do the right thing – VOTE!

As I have passed through my upper middle class London neighbourhood over the past month I have been inspired by the amount of street corner debate which the In-Out referendum has stirred. In my lifetime, I cannot remember another period that there has been this much chatter, debate and name-dropping “Boris, Cameron, Farage, Brexit” as I walk innocently by. If Premier David Cameron’s only goal was to boost the usually passive voters of this nation into taking politics seriously, I would say there hasn’t been this much interest in politics since the watershed 1945 General Election, which was also a game-changer.

It is so evident that Brexit or Remain hangs on everyone’s tongue like a droplet of moisture in a stereotypical London smog scene. And in many ways, the “debate” we have read in the newspapers or on television has been one big smokescreen, hasn’t it?

While there is street corner debate, I have spoken to so many people who feel there is a lack of maturity and facts on the issue. That is not to say facts don’t exist. Bloomberg runs an analytical hub, and analysts and ratings agencies speak often, as I shall highlight in a moment. But they are obscured by so much elbowing from quarters who only want to peddle self-interest and propaganda. The facts have been drowned out!

As I have said before in the channel of this blog, the debate really isn’t about People Power, where you decide and the politicians carry out your wishes. Rather, it is about self-interest, and that means someone else telling you to do what THEY want you to do.

Everyone and his wife has jumped onto the bandwagon almost as though through Brexit they have discovered a commercially-savvy and search engine-optimised hashtag, to state their case, whether it is Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary urging us in a £19.99 flights booked by June 23 newsletter to vote Remain, or the top 20 Premiership football clubs yelling Remain.

But in all cases this is self-interest, their interests. At least O’Leary has the decency to say so in his email newsletter today: “Michael O’Leary and the team at Ryanair urge you to vote “Remain”. The EU and its single market has enabled Ryanair to revolutionise air travel and lower the cost of holidays between the UK and Europe.”

Similarly, the top football teams want Remain because it has satisfied their hunger for top players from other European nations on a scale that would be a tad harder (possibly) if we Brexit, meaning leave the European Union.

But no one asks what the next layer of football teams, not exposed to the opportunity buy flash European players and so secure that the newbies never get a chance at the top game, actually think about Brexit. We might find a lot of them aren’t nearly so adamant about Remain.

Even Ryanair needs to look again. Yes, batting for Brussels as the budget airline is doing certainly will mean it is better placed to win future battles with eurocrats when it wants to open a new airport hub or gain financial support. But it doesn’t strictly mean that budget airline travel will die off.

A new trade arrangement will follow any Brexit, but the manner of it depends on many things. There is no reason to suppose that budget air travel (even with its disastrous carbon footprint) will actually evaporate into thin air.

Far too much open-ended under-researched scaremongering has gone on in this debate, and both sides are to blame for doing it and therefore perpetuating it. If one side had stuck faithfully to the facts and only criticised the other for cheap thrills a more mature and meaningful debate might just have followed. Instead, we have to rely on street corner chatter to be informed. Not a good sign!

Locating some facts

That is not to say that independent bodies are not trying to fill the void of information. Ratings agency Fitch, although tarnished like Moodys and Standard & Poor’s eight years ago in the credit crunch, judges that a Brexit would deliver short- and long-term imbalance to the UK.

It said back in February in a note: “Lengthy negotiations and uncertainty over UK firms’ future access to EU markets following a vote to leave in the upcoming referendum on EU membership (Brexit) would weigh on confidence and delay investment decisions. This would have a short-term economic cost, although the precise impact would be highly uncertain.”

Fitch continued: “We believe that in the event of a Leave vote, the authorities on both sides would try to avoid disrupting the deep economic and financial integration between the UK and EU by establishing a clear new relationship, including a trade agreement that preserves UK attractiveness for investment. Some tightening of the freedom of EU citizens’ to work in the UK would be likely. Avoiding large-scale, permanent disruption to trade relations, including services, could limit the long-term economic cost to the UK, with Brexit only moderately negative for the UK.”

The respected senior director at Fitch, Douglas Renwick, then rather ominously added: “But there would be significant risks, especially if the remaining EU members attempted to impose punitive conditions on the UK to deter other countries from leaving, or the UK sought very tough restrictions on EU citizens coming to work in the UK.”

Part of the reason why I have been anxious about the behaviour of what latterly became a self-interest EU and Eurozone was the way it behaves to individual member states. Even if the statistics show that in most cases Britain has won the key votes in Europe, there is no understating the fact that often the EU has blocked opportunity and protection of citizens. Bear witness the 2010 spat of Ireland versus Germany and France over introducing a depositor protection scheme.

Rather than guaranteeing success and opportunity, the EU has also stunted it and tried to protect sick nations like Greece for the greater good of the euro and stability. In that sense, it has brought misery to individual nations – Greece endures harsh austerity and Ireland was threatened because it wanted to protect its own citizens. To that extent, it is evident that the EU’s greater good is more important than the needs of individual nations.

All of this has become a menace for how Europe is perceived. Maybe it is better-the-devil-you-know but we can’t see yet what a Leave vote would actually mean after the poll on June 23. Could it be so very different a year after a Brexit vote? And does it really matter? More on that in a moment.

But do we even want to be a part of a no-longer-rich club that behaves like an East End gang? If retribution for deserters was really on the cards, towards either Britain or any other country mulling to quit the EU, is that a body we really want to be a part?

There is also the issue of the “price of success” and lack of real reform. In April, Fitch said there was now evidence that after a long winter of many years the Eurozone was again recovering – but that it was reinforcing old divergences again.

“The cyclical position of the eurozone economy has improved substantially since the height of the eurozone sovereign crisis in 2012…Nevertheless, the recovery among member states is far from homogeneous and a new divergence has started to develop. The recovery accelerated significantly in 2015 in Ireland and Spain, outperforming Portugal and Italy where the recovery remained sluggish,” said Gergely Kiss, a Fitch director.

Masstricht was a treaty which endorsed a single market but never considered the “what if” questions related to nations like Greece fibbing about the state of their economies until they begged for bailout. And the EU still has not enough incentive to reform until and unless someone bravely quits.

If we do Leave, then Poland – never a fan of belonging to overbearing economic blocs, bear witness to EU rival Comecon until 1989 – and The Netherlands could well be the next to ask their people to vote.

Too soon to say a domino effect, but the EU does now have a public relations crisis on and it will become a disaster if the UK quits. Or a chance to really reform and make it attractive for Britain to re-join.

So, what happens next?

If we Remain, the status quo is maintained, and the back bench Tories who demanded the referendum to fight off defections of their MPs to the UK Independence Party, will be silenced, for now at least.

Will Europe really reform? No more so than can we trust Westminster to deliver on all of its promises made to Scotland in the weeks before the 2014 Scottish referendum.

Europe would resist defying self-interests so it is hardly likely to change much if Britain falls in line and pro-Europe Grandees pat Cameron on the back to tell him what a jolly good fellow he is.

Not sure he will get a purring phone call from HM Queen the way he reportedly did after Scots decided to vote to remain in the union of the United Kingdom. The Queen has reportedly been said to favour Brexit in a leak earlier this year.

That’s the Remain open and shut case.

But what if we Leave?

Well, my argument would be that we might not progress an awful lot further!

The bitter irony of the EU referendum is that neither a vote to Remain or Leave will actually be as important as the street corner chatter might suggest.

A slightly pompous and over-confident Cameron told us two years ago he would carry out the British will, but since it has become ever more possible that Leave will win (at least until this week when Remain staged a comeback in the polls) the question is does Cameron feel the same way he did in 2014?

Britain is governed by parliamentary democracy. So ultimately a referendum is nothing more than a grand opinion poll, backed by £150m of taxpayers’ money. Parliament would seek guidance from the poll, but doesn’t actually have to carry it through. There is no constitutional (a word rarely heard in the Brexit debate) mandate for a referendum.

It is a snapshot of people’s opinion and it is only a barometer that says whether the nation is broadly for or against remaining in the EU.

It is then for Westminster, as well as the EU itself, to interpret what it all means.

Hence, if Cameron wants to delay implementation he can. There is nothing on the ballot paper that names the alternatives in a Leave vote nor states the timeframe for quitting the EU. It is not a contract, after all.

The most we can hope for is that if the people’s choice by more than a thin 51% is in favour of Leave politicians will debate what kind of Brexit it would mean – Iceland, Norway and Switzerland all have different models of cooperation outside EU membership, as do Lichtenstein, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, to name but a few outsiders.

But if Cameron decided to delay, on the grounds that data shows that Brexit in 2018 or 2020 would not be in the national interest, he has every democratic right to overrule the referendum.

What a Leave vote is more likely to succeed in doing is open civil war within the Conservative Party. One thing Cameron may have done is increase people’s political awareness, but as we saw with the bestial slaying of a dignified Remain campaigner last week, the Yorkshire Labour MP Jo Cox, no other subject has more divided Britain and the Conservative Party.

In 2020 we will be facing a General Election and a split Tory party or possibly swelling ranks in UKIP. These factors would almost certainly usher in a majority Labour Government. Labour is opposed to Brexit and while many of its supporters in the party and its natural voters support Brexit, Labour would almost certainly defer indefinitely the talks paving the way to a Brexit.

So, you see, Resistance Is Futile!

At very least the referendum would be another protest vote like the anti-EU vote of the European Elections in May 2014. UKIP had a landslide victory outside of London.

And certainly we might yet see a repeat of that after the June 23 referendum. Cosmopolitan London is likely to vote to Remain. But other parts of Britain, especially English shire counties and northern England, are more likely to vote Leave.

This isn’t an aggregate vote, like a US presidential popular poll. Rather there will be 382 counting areas across the country. These will then offload the ballots to 12 regions. It is these that will then determine the result.

We could well see a result a bit like in the Scottish referendum, where Britain’s third-most populous city – Glasgow – voted to Yes to independence but all the other areas backed No.

London, Wales and Scotland are likely to support Remain in EU. But the rest of the regions are more questionable.

We will know the result before London stock markets open at 0800 BST on Friday. At least it will be a swift verdict!

But what manner it takes it is still too close to predict.

For an amusing take on what could happen and then what the newspaper actually thinks will happen, click onto The Daily Telegraph’s link. If you think my blog is long this time, spare a thought for the Telegraph, so scroll way down the page to see the scenario the newspaper predicts. Click here.

If Remain wins, bankers will sigh relief as many fear industry job losses to Europe – although I doubt their pessimism. If it is a Leave vote, don’t expect Nigel Farage to become the next Prime Minister!

In a nutshell, relax and vote with your convictions, not the self-interests of others. Even a Brexit-Leave result does not guarantee we leave the EU in our lifetimes.

And similarly, don’t buy into the hype that this is a once-ever vote on the issue. You don’t believe the carpet sale commercials, so why do you believe it here? The issue will return either on Brexit or the manner of a Brexit, in another generation at most. People’s disillusionment with the EU isn’t likely to go away unless the EU reforms.

And if you opt to vote Leave, no it doesn’t make you a racist nor anti-European. Just not happy with the current EU.

One thing to mull over on the way to the polling station is, if things were really good in the EU, would we even be having this referendum?

Zac back in Richmond. Why Goldsmith really lost London

07 Saturday May 2016

Posted by eurosnews in EMEA, Financial, Markets, Investments

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Boris Johnson, Breferendum, Brexit, David Cameron, EU, Europe, Heathrow, Jan Zylinski, jeremy corbyn, Ken Livingstone, London, Mayor, Muslim, politics, referendum, Richmond, Sadiq Khan, Semitic, UKIP, Zac Goldsmith

Zac Goldsmith

Zac Goldsmith

Zac Goldsmith MP, who happens to represent my Richmond constituency, will be remaining as my MP – notwithstanding a change of heart following the way he has been heckled after losing the election to become London Mayor this week.

And one might not blame him. He had been a strong candidate who ticked a lot of boxes as an eco-warrior opposed to London Heathrow Airport’s expansion. His one indiscretion this year was voting for the Government’s disability rights reforms – which cost him his tenure at a disability charity in the London Borough of Richmond.

Yet a day after the result, it seems that Goldsmith is being lampooned not only by his opponents across the political spectrum but also from within his ranks.

Whatever Defence Secretary Michael Fallon thought or will think about Labour’s victor for London Mayor, the first Muslim Mayor, Sadiq Khan, there is no point calling Goldsmith’s campaign “racist”.

It is evident that a lot of people in the Conservative party spoke out in favour of Goldsmith in the campaign – and not always in a very elegant manner. Even Prime Minister David Cameron, as well as Fallon (who had asked whether London was safe with Khan as Mayor), did their bit to destroy Goldsmith’s chances. His advisers may also have failed him.

But looking at his campaign, I am struggling to see where and when he was racist. At one point he did remark that with Jewish roots he was contesting for the London Mayor against a Muslim who was the official candidate of Labour, the only serious contender this time around.

But that was in jest and there was no indication that he meant to offend Khan or anyone else. If anything it was warming to see that people of different religious backgrounds were able to contest a job in a mature democracy like this.

It is always easy to batter a candidate after he failed to win. Yet more spectacularly when the victor Khan has achieved something far more remarkable: Khan’s victory gives him the largest personal mandate of any politician in UK history and ends eight years of Conservative control of City Hall. The former Labour MP and minister, 45, becomes London’s third mayor after Labour’s Ken Livingstone and the Conservatives’ Boris Johnson.

Of the 12 candidates, after the first round (hence excluding second preferences) the top five looked as follows:

Sadiq Khan (Labour) 1,148,716 (44.23 per cent)

Zac Goldsmith (Conservatives) 909,755 (35.03 per cent)

Sian Berry (Green) 150,673 (5.80 per cent)

Caroline Pidgeon (LD) 120,005 (4.62 per cent). Lose deposit

Peter Whittle (Ukip) 94,373 (3.63 per cent). Lose deposit

The question might be asked whether the Conservatives seriously wanted Goldsmith to win. He was opposed to Heathrow expansion. And Goldsmith was also in favour of Brexit.

Certainly, Khan has expressed opposition to a third runway at Heathrow, but it will be less damaging for the Government to have to wrestle with a Labour Mayor than one of their own.

Goldsmith was from a privileged background. His billionaire father who set up the Referendum Party – a kind of predecessor to UKIP – did offer an image of someone from a silver spoon background and did make it harder for his son to win. Witness what happened to poor, if not impoverished, Jan Zylinkski.

“Prince Zylinski”, the millionaire Polish eccentric, decided he didn’t need to identify with his actual first name, Jan, and instead on his ballot paper gave voters a chance to ridicule and humiliate him. He played up his privileged status as a former aristocrat and was sorely punished as all who make such claims tend to be through history. He polled just 13,202, or 0.51%, as an Independent candidate and was behind even the BNP candidate. Both will lose their deposit.

So what really went wrong? Europe

So what really did go wrong for Goldsmith? If we step aside from the vitriol against Goldsmith – which is just as vocal within the Conservative camp and now risks the media labelling the Tories another anti-Semitic party alongside recent accusations of the same for Labour under leader Jeremy Corbyn – we see an underlying cause.

For my money, his privileged status which he sought to dumb down, was not his real downfall. It was his view over the European Union.

He shared the view of incumbent Mayor Johnson that Britain would be best out of the EU. He made his views known repeatedly. And in a way, his remarks while perhaps of national appeal, sank badly in London. Put simply, it was the wrong audience.

In many ways the vote against Goldsmith was an indication of just how pro-Europe London is. With a sizeable immigrant workforce from Europe and one which – perhaps misplaced -fears repatriation or job losses if Britain leaves the EU, or “Brexit as it is known on Twitter, talking endlessly about Europe was a way of killing the campaign.

It was difficult to hear the pro messages and positive policies from a candidate with a lot to offer London – when instead it was so often about a national debate over whether to stay in the EU.

In that sense, the Mayoral election was largely an opinion poll, at taxpayers’ expense, of just how much London is against Brexit. It may not represent the views of the country Shires but cosmopolitan London is likely to vote to remaining in the EU.

The Brexit-Remaining in EU #Breferendum as I coin it on Twitter, will take place on June 23. And let’s face it, even premier David Cameron who wants to remain in the EU would have seen a Mayor Goldsmith as a massive thorn in his side in the next 6 weeks of campaigning. So it really does look like the Conservatives were not at all in favour of a Goldsmith win last Thursday. But sabotage is all too common in politics.

← Older posts

Recent Posts

  • Actions Overtake The Blog
  • Better Brexit Communications Needed
  • Review Brexit deal after five years
  • Brexit – Nobody Does It Better
  • Barnier’s Barnstorm

Archives

  • September 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • May 2018
  • January 2018
  • October 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • November 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012

Categories

  • EMEA
  • Financial, Markets, Investments
  • global
  • Global ex Europe
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Where on Social?

  • View georgematlock’s profile on Twitter
  • View georgematlock’s profile on LinkedIn

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 3,224 other followers

Follow eurosnews on WordPress.com

Tags

Alex Salmond Angela Merkel assets Athens austerity Austria bailout Bank of England banks bonds Boris Johnson Brexit Britain Bunds Cameron crisis Cyprus David Cameron debt debt crisis default democracy ECB economy Ed Miliband EFSF election elections EU euro euro currency Europe European Union euro zone eurozone Federal Reserve France George Osborne Germany greece housing IMF independence inflation interest rates International Monetary Fund investors Ireland Italy Labour London Margaret Thatcher Mark Carney Merkel Nigel Farage Oil Poland politics Portugal RBS recession referendum regulation restructuring Reuters Scotland Spain tax Theresa May UK UKIP US vote wealth Westminster

EURO CRISIS FEED

  • Eurozone Crisis Feed Eurozone Crisis Feed is supplied by breakingnews.com. eurosnews blog takes no responsibility for the accuracy of its content and accepts no liability for the suitability or consequences of the feed’s content.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Our Cookie Policy