jawafour wrote:I could imagine that this could be a positive aspect. Wouldn't most folk want their country's government to be able to define and apply laws? Sure, EU laws were voted on by the member states, but that's not really the same as a country managing its own laws.
What I meant was it was bollocks that we couldn't make our own laws anyway. Parliament can already define and apply laws.
I believe the government wants to create trade deals with as many countries as possible; ideally with European member state countries as well as countries in the test of the world (USA, China, Australia, Canada). Now the Euro countries deal will obviously be problematic because of the break but, with the right relationships build lt, open trading with, say, USA and China could be a positive thing, and something the government was previously unable to do outside of general Europe-led arrangements.
We might be able to, but it is going to be a hell of a risk. Most of our trading is with Europe, burning that bridge to chase after America is insane. Especially when the EU is signing up to trade deals with Canada, Japan etc.
All the signs point to us being worse off, for a long time. Any trade deals with the USA or China are likely to have very negative impacts on the UK (the example of the poor quality chlorinated chicken for example).
We are already in a massively beneficial free trade deal with all of our biggest trading partners. Throwing that away to import cheap American meat doesn't strike me as much of a positive.
And the fact that we are threating to "have our cake and eat it", "no deal is better than a bad deal" and "we will walk away without paying our dues" isn't filling me with confidence and I doubt it is filling the other countries of the world with a desire to do business with us.
Don't get me wrong - I, too, am very apprehensive about some of the changes on the horizon but I am someone who is very much in the middle ground on this; the change is happening and so I want to seek out any positives that can be found.
You are a positive person and that's great. I usually am pretty positive about the future as well. On this though, I just don't see anything good on the horizon.