#brxit

BREAKING: EU leaders ‘unanimously’ adopt Brexit guidelines

EU leaders on Saturday unanimously adopted tough guidelines for two years of Brexit talks, in an unprecedented show of unity ahead of divorce negotiations with Britain. (more…)

We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of that most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.” It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”

by Michael Roberts

The UK’s referendum on European Union membership takes place three months from today.  How Britons vote will have an impact not just on Britain but also on Brussels.  The ‘capital’ of the European Union is under pressure from the terrorist bombings, but Brexit would open up fault-lines in the EU ‘project’ itself.  There could be implications for the survival of the European Union if one of its largest members should opt to leave.  It sets a precedent that could be followed.

“Should I stay, or should I go”.  The Clash

Should the British people vote to leave or stay in the European Union in the referendum in June?  Before anybody answers that question, they ought to consider this.  Whether Britons vote to leave or not is relatively small beer compared to the growing risk of a new world economic slump.  That will have much larger consequences for the British people than Britain leaving the EU.   Look at the damage that the Great Recession did to the major economies (graph below).

Some very pessimistic estimates have put the cost of leaving the EU for the UK economy at 10% of GDP. Some very optimistic estimates have put the gain from leaving at 10%.  Even if this were the case, either way, that margin would still be less than the loss of income per person already caused by the Great Recession and the very weak economic recovery since, which currently stands at 14%.  Open Europe, a think-tank that is itself neutral on the issue, reckons that, at worst, were the UK to leave the EU, its GDP would be 2.2% lower in 2030 than it would have been were the UK to stay in. And at best, it would be 1.6%  higher...