Does the pound sliding today… June 6, 2016
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
…have any impact on the Brexit/Bremain campaign?
The pound has fallen against every other major currency this morning, following the string of opinion polls showing the Leave side leading the referendum battle.
Polling continues to point to Leave leads. How does that work?
By the way, if true this doesn’t look like such a great move.
Ministers have told the BBC they expect pro-EU MPs to conduct what one called a “reverse Maastricht” process – a reference to the long parliamentary campaign fought by Tory eurosceptic MPs in the 1990s against legislation deepening EU integration.
Like then as now, the Conservative government has a small working majority of just 17.
And;
They say it would be legitimate for MPs to push for the UK to stay in the single market because the Leave campaign has refused to spell out what trading relationship it wants the UK to have with the EU in the future.
As such, a post-Brexit government could not claim it had a popular mandate for a particular model.
And yet, it underlines just how inchoate scenario that ensues on a Leave – hardly articulated at all by those on that side – are. Would that soften Scottish (and more pertinently SNP) antagonism to a Leave?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Weaker pound makes British exports cheaper doesn’t it- so could be used by the Brexiters to bolster their case
Still on things economic- while Kenny and Martin are playing silly buggers with ‘new politics’. Old style politics is still ruling the roost
1 An Post has slashed its interest rates on savings, bonds etc. This apparently at the behest of the banks who cried unfair competition
http://www.irishexaminer.com/business/rates-slashed-on-an-post-products-233085.html
I thought fair competition was being squashed by Google, Microsoft and Uber and there’s not much that can be done about it
2 The insistence by Noonan et al that nothing can be done to lower interest rates for mortgage- holders otherwise the banks can’t turn a profit- where’s my violin?
3 The continuing sniping at the Credit Unions- why hasn’t the state taken up its offer of cheap loans to build social housing- or has it and I missed that episode?
Same ole, same ole….
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the brexit referendum is an english matter and it’s tory on tory. Whichever outcome will stir up a constitutional hornet’s nest -https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2016/06/05/post-brexit-bye-bye-uk/
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The mainstream Brexit campaign is so divorced from reality that it’s hard to imagine anything moving the Brexiteers. Then again, many Irish people would have the same attitude if they were exposed to the same volume of propaganda.
Has there been a week in the past thirty years where there hasn’t been some anti-EU headline in the anti-foreigner press? Some of these people are so convinced that the EU is the great Satan, that anything less than war breaking out would probably fail to convince them. Even those who don’t read those papers are exposed to mini-ads each time they pop down the shops for a pint of milk.
There is a tendency to mock “Little England” but after this campaign, you can’t blame non-English people for thinking that the stereotypical Englishman is a of Daily Mail reading, gardening enthusiast who enjoys a spot of casual racism. Brexit would have massive implications for Scotland and Northern Ireland but they barely feature in the debate. A vote for Brexit is a vote for Scottish independence and to destabilise the North. If I hear one more English Tory or UKIPer talking about how the UK is an Island nation or how they don’t have a border with the EU, my television will be on its way to Telly Heaven.
I saw a British man on German TV complaining about how you couldn’t buy a pound of ham or a pint of beer anymore. I don’t especially care for ham but he inspired me to pop down the pub just to confirm that pints hadn’t been prohibited. I wish I had his email address so that I could reassure him I had verified – and re-verified a few more times – that pints were still available in English pubs.
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/endrant
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“Brexit has massive implications for Scotland and N.I”
I’d suggest staying in has massive implications too.
The life is being squeezed out of the steel industry in Wales and no British government, including a future Corbyn led Labour government, can choose to nationalise/support Port Talbot under EU treaties.
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Actually the UK government could under existing treaties at the very least part nationalise it (and full nationalisation of co’s has occurred as with Northern Rock) – the govt would become co-owner, but the Tories obviously wouldn’t go for that. Nor would a New Labour govt, as always this comes down to political will.
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I’m afraid that WBS has a a point Peter. Right now, there’s no will to nationalise. Outside of the EU, well with the Scots gone, the Tories will probably be in power for many, many years to come. You can forget about nationalisation.
Off on a tangent, this is an interesting response to the Brexit Movie that’s been doing the rounds:
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Had a conversation about Brexit the other night with someone who had met and filmed Nigel Farage once and described with a single and not usable on this forum word. His view was that the Brexit vote was composed of those too stupid to get to a polling station, which I think is wrong and dangerous. But there is an incredulity that all those people are out there which we in Ireland used to get when we grasped the depth of feeling on divorce or abortion.
Later in the conversation, I remarked that English people were generally far more reticent about expressing political opinions, or even discussing politics than us; my interlocutor thought it was just complet disaffection.
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Speaking of that Tory majority of 17, almost 20 Tory MPs are under investigation for electoral overspending, which is a criminal offence in the UK. Looking forward to seeing how that pans out……
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The more I look at what is happening with Brexit, with the AfD here in Germany and indeed with Trump, the more I think it’s disastrous to ignore the, for the want of a better word, anti-establishment anger that drives some of their voters.
Yes the parties are more or less explicitly racist, anti-feminist, anti-sexual diversity, anti-leftist to the point of the tacit facilitation of violence, etc. etc.
But wheeling out establishment figures from hated institutions like Jünker, Draghi, Lagarde, innumerable bankers, etc. to promote Bremain was a major tactical mistake and is allowing Brexit campaigners free reign to appeal to a large pool of inherent xenophobia while mopping up the ‘screw them – we don’t care what happens afterwards – now we have a chance to stick them one in the eye’ vote.
That’s why anti-establishment parties on the left need to very cautious about coalitions, or being seen to be campaigning for coalition with establishment parties.
I think in this respect both Unidos Podemos (“United we can” – the name of the recently formed electoral alliance of Podemos and Isquierda Unida – currently topping the polls in Spain) and the current mood in die Linke are going in the right direction in being very wary of coalition with weakened extreme middle parties, which gives anti-establishment voters nowhere to go other than the xenophobic right.
Which I guess is also an endorsement of Sinn Féin’s approach since the RoI general election.
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Agreed. UK Labour should NOT be campaigning with the Remain lot which includes Cameron.
There was a vox pop on the BBC the other day with a Cornish fisherman berating a Labour Remain campaigner. “Go back to the toffs and bankers in London, I’m a Cornish fisherman” he said. So Remain is associated with the establishment, which Boris Johnson and various other Tories are not for some reason. Farage (former banker) claims to be some sort of ant-establishment figure as well.
But Labour hasn’t really articulated any sort of socialist message. Of course it is hard to argue for the EU, it stinks, so does Brexit. Labour needs to argue a radical programme for the UK and the EU, which it hasn’t.
It is also the case that Remain has concentrated on why Brexit is bad, rather than why Remain is good. There has been no mention of the benefits of EU wide regulations on food safety etc etc. No mention of research funding and collaboration, transport infrastructure etc. Corbyn does mention “workers rights” – limited and fragile as they are.
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+1
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And they’ve done it again. Clueless.
The WTO now says that Britain would have to ‘start again’ in the negotiation of new so-called ‘trade’ (=democracy disablement) agreements.
Now if I was an undecided voter who hadn’t responded to Farage’s dogwhistle racism, but had already suffered from some of the effects of neoliberal globalisation I might well think “Why not? I’ll have some of that.”
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Was talking recently to a young friend who works in some sort of international banking here in Ireland. He has what I thought was a good take on the implications of Brexit. He reckons they’ll be minimal. The powers that be – international capital, whatever you call it – will ensure that treaties, arrangements will be put in place to enable things to go on much as they do now between UK and the rest of the EU.
My money would be on a win for Remain on the day but if it’s a win for Brexit, I doubt much will change greatly.
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I think that your friend may be wrong. There are times when politics trump economics (ask the Greeks) and I highly suspect that Brexit might be one of those times.
If Britain gets a good deal, every other euroskeptic nation will want out and point to the deal the Brits made. Keeping the EU together will mean that the Brits cannot be seen to get anything close to a favourable deal.
It will also mark the death of the UK as it is currently constituted because Scotland will get out. Can you imagine Prime Minister Borris convincing Scotland to stay in the union after everything he’s said?
Now where I suspect your friend will be right Joe, is that things won’t really change for people working in international banking. Bankers will pop over and back between Dublin, London and Edinburgh. They’ll get paid in a favorable currency and continue to get on fairly well.
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That thought re politics trumping (ahem) economics strikes me. Interestingly polling people still a bit dubious about polls, mind you next up after the economics wait for the pro EU civil society love bombing in the UK. And more and more LP people pushed to fore.
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Just at a meal with academics in Kent – ‘the UK’s European University’ – and out of 8 only 2 of us had a vote. Lots of people saying they’d get out. And earlier talking to an Irish guy who wasn’t too fussed but his English wife wanted to go to Ireland in the event.
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Just to clarify on my young friend, Ivor. He qualified from an IT about 8 years ago with a degree in finance or business or some such. He started with some international bank on an annual salary of c33k. I’m guessing he’s gone up a rung or two on the ladder since then so (again guessing) maybe now on a salary of c50k. So a pretty ordinary working class bloke like myself.
I hear your point that the EU won’t want to be nice to post-Brexit UK pour encourager les autres. But a difference between how the EU will approach the UK as opposed to how it approached Greece will be that the EU will have to take into account the economic power that the UK wields. Bullies beat up on kids who can’t fight back but they’ll be more circumspect with someone who can hit and hurt them back.
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“Bullies beat up on kids who can’t fight back but they’ll be more circumspect with someone who can hit and hurt them back.” Which is part of the rationale that influences many in Ireland, greece etc. that they are better of in a club where the small can ally. the awful thing about Ff/Fg etc. is that they ally with the bullies.
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If Britain gets a good deal, every other euroskeptic nation will want out and point to the deal the Brits made. Keeping the EU together will mean that the Brits cannot be seen to get anything close to a favourable deal.
Can the EU afford not to give the UK a good deal? Trade is two-way and the UK is still a major world economy and world power. Imports from Germany alone would amount to about £5bn per month. I doubt the Germans could afford to take a hit on that.
Politics may matter, but as a German expat (living in London, bloody immigrant) pointed out long ago, the (short term) interests of the propertied class will always defeat it.
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Football? or Brexit?
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I still think England’s group performance will influence the vote.
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If it is Brexit it won’t be a vote to leave so that left policies can be implemented without EU interference. It will be a vote for anti-immigration policies and a belief in British (well probably English) exceptionalism. Mixed up in that there will be a “stuff the establishment” element, but encouraged to express that in reactionary ways.
You don’t hear much from the SP/SWP on this do you? Do the Irish parties take a different view to the UK sister parties? Bit like the CPI/CPNI and WW2?
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