Brexit Thread

[Pannonian]

An economic expert is someone who can explain why his predictions were wrong. It's all guess-work they should shutup

One of the predictions can safely said to be guaranteed though. The bigger party in a negotiation holds the whip hand over the smaller party. Especially if the smaller party starts with a bad hand and has a limited amount of time to negotiate. Once article 50 is invoked, beginning the negotiations of the UK's exit, that is the UK's position relative to the EU. The UK will have a limited amount of time (2 years) in which to negotiate new trade deals with the EU, or else be left with the default WTO conditions that no exporter in the UK wants. As an example of the disparities, something like 5% of Germany's exports are to the UK, which can be swallowed up in the overall EU economy, or else find another market elsewhere, which the size of the EU makes it easy to do. In contrast, 50% of the UK's exports are to the EU. If we can't compete, then we'll need to find another market for these goods, and the biggest markets will dwarf the UK, thus worsening any trade deals that we can expect.

No economic predictions, merely a comparison of size and power, and why unions hold more power than fragmented individuals. Is this disputable? Yet this is the position that we've got ourselves into.