I agree with you summer. I firmly believe that Brexit was the right direction for this country and if we had the vote again I would still want us out of the EU. My opinions, like yours, are not lead by the media but are founded by my own observations over the years when we were part of the EU. I rarely join in the Brexit discussions on here but watch, often with some amusement, the ways in which the so-called Remainers tie themselves in knots trying to make us see that we were wrong to vote the way we did.
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Love the way The Guardian have headlined this meeting lol
Wouldn’t a more appropriate headline have been something like ‘Brexit the way forward’.
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Funny how so many businesses are having to deal with the loss of sales to the EU countries or the additional costs & complexities of trying to keep their EU customers. And in contrast there are so few (that is, none) who are raving about the new customers and new sales to non-EU countries that has stemmed from Brexit. Any of us, individually, might not be directly impacted by Brexit. That is not the same as being able to take a view that Brexit is not a problem that is impeding the UK economy.
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https://www.ft.com/content/6d86951c-a4af-4d0b-95da-7856d4db8639
The UK companies seeing the upside of Brexit
Despite the EU-UK trade deal bringing disruption and red tape, some companies report benefits
As many UK ports struggle with delays and falling trade after Brexit, in Liverpool Stephen Carr is hiring 150 dock workers. “We are at 80-90 per cent capacity at the moment and growing,” said Carr, the commercial director of Peel Ports, which counts Liverpool as one of its UK shipping hubs. The Covid-19 pandemic and new border controls with the EU have upended business models across the continent and the economic impact is starting to be felt. Fish and meat have been left to rot because of delays and complicated paperwork. Many companies have stopped delivering to and from the UK because of increased charges. Economists predict leaving the EU will reduce the UK’s prosperity but, amid the disruption, opportunities are available, argued Mark Gregory, UK chief economist of EY, the professional services firm. “Brexit is a process not an event and the winners and losers will only become clear over time.” Liverpool, the UK’s fifth-biggest container port, in north-west England, is one of the early winners, gaining traffic from southern rivals as logistics companies try to avoid congestion at the busier Channel crossing points. In recent months three new services into Liverpool have started, following investment of more than £400m. One brings unaccompanied containers from Santander in northern Spain weekly. “That would have driven through France and gone across the Channel before,” said Carr. Another has won transatlantic freight trade, destined for northern England, from the congested southern port of Felixstowe. Rather than risk delays there, shippers load it on to a smaller vessel that stops at Liverpool. The third is Liverpool’s first link with east Asia in decades. Shipping line CMA CGM stops in Dunkirk to offload containers and collect others from northern France and Belgium before heading to Liverpool. Some EU retailers have also decided to hold more stock in the UK to ensure they can guarantee delivery times amid border delays. One UK logistics operator, who declined to be named, said it was opening warehouse space for EU clients. “We are working with a Polish company,” it said. It holds stock and delivers for EU customers in the UK, while its Polish counterpart does the same in the EU, limiting border crossings. “There will be a lot of these partnerships,” it said.
Some manufacturers have reshaped their operations to make the most of the changed trading environment. Statiflo, a maker of static mixers used in the water and other industries, has switched its warehouse to supply countries outside the EU from Germany to its Macclesfield base. “We could have built up our German operation but we have the expertise in the UK,” said Gareth Fry, managing director. It exports to more than 80 countries and is used to dealing with customs paperwork. “The problem is that companies who only sold to Europe were not really exporting. They don’t know what to do now,” Fry said.
For Brandauer, a 160-year-old family-owned engineering company, the drop in the pound caused by Brexit has boosted overseas demand for their products. The Birmingham-based business expects to grow beyond its pre-pandemic size this year and is recruiting. “We have won business in France, Netherlands and Germany recently,” said Rowan Crozier, chief executive. “We have not lost a single EU customer.” Brandauer, which makes precision components which go into cars, razors, medical devices and the Large Hadron Collider in Cern, exports 75 per cent of its output.
EY’s Gregory said he expects manufacturers will shift production for the UK into the country, while they shut operations that are part of EU-wide supply chains. So even as EU overall inward investment dropped in the four years after the June 2016 Brexit referendum it increased in some sectors as companies prepared to make products in the UK for the British market. “There is likely to be growth in UK investment in sectors such as food and advanced manufacturing as supply chains shift in response to the new trading requirements while export-oriented sectors such as automotive and financial services could well experience capital outflows,” he said. Inevitably, given the extra red tape and paperwork associated with the EU-UK deal agreed by the two sides on Christmas Eve, one big growth market is bureaucracy.
Watford-based accountancy firm Hillier Hopkins became an accredited customs agent after the government said UK businesses would need to make 255m customs declarations a year, up from 55m before Brexit.
Ruth Corkin, a former HMRC staffer, used government funding for training and has now employed an apprentice to help. “We could see there would be a market,” she said. She added that the software needed to fill in declarations was too expensive and complicated to operate for small companies so her service was vital and getting busier. HMRC’s Customs Declaration Service (CDS) is difficult to access by businesses and is still being developed. At the moment the old Chief system is being used for most transactions and can take between three and 12 months to register and secure the software needed. “It is so time-consuming. If it carries on like this I will have to reduce my VAT work. That will mean hiring someone else,” added Corkin. Simon Hart, international lead partner at RSM, the accountants, said he expected the system to bed down. “We are going to have to get used to more paperwork. If you are best in class people will come to you regardless of whether they have to fill out some paperwork,” he said.
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Yawn.
You and the Brexit fans can noise off as much as you like. The long term (hey, the short term too) view will continue to be that this was a crass, dumb, insular, fearful, inward looking, harmful, negative act.
I drone about this damaging action because I deeply care about the well being of the UK. If I did not care I would simply laugh. But instead I weep.
In the meantime can I note that one company in your FT article has had to open a EU based warehouse. This is not unusual. Many UK businesses that trade with the EU have had to create a EU based centre for re-distribution. That means growing employment in the EU, paying taxes in the EU and, directly, reducing both in the UK. These are not exactly a Brexit benefit are they?
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Passes Strathmore a box of tissues
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I think he may need more than one box …!
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What’s done is done, a moment in time, the crossroads, what has happened can’t be unraveled, just like 30 years of EU legislation which has been swept under the carpet.
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This just popped up in my YouTube feed, it is a month old but it also says that only 30% of Britons now say leaving the EU was a good idea.
I wonder where they got that figure from?
Nothing went wrong, silly.
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Course not our economy just shrunk all by itself and despite the bus claims the NHS just laid down and died .
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People who absorb all the hype are always going to be disappointed.
You say ‘hype’ whereas others might say ‘cynical lies’. You can imagine how pleased the leave campaign team was to come up with the pitch of pumping more money into the NHS as they just knew that this would be a vote winner. They had no intention of actually putting more money into the NHS of course. They probably knew that leaving the EU would damage the UK economy so in fact there would likely be less money available for the NHS. But this pitch was such a certain vote winner that is what went onto the side of the bus. So, no, not ‘hype’ at all. But a callous, cynical, baseless claim simply to win votes for leave.
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Do you not believe the cynical jibe about politicians and when their lips move?
I guessed that would be one response: “but they all lie, what did you expect?”
I think there is a significant difference between the hoped for truths put forward in, say, an election campaign. These are, at least in principle, the proposals that a party and its politicians set out to benefit the country as they see things, and as such to secure votes. And get into power so that they enact these proposals. Unfortunately these get seen as less than truthful proposals because (1) some politicians will add in vote winning proposals that they have no intention of fulfilling, they just want the votes; (2) it frequently transpires that there are good reasons or sound obstacles to enacting the proposals as they set them out to voters. Now the first instance is risky as voters can get wise to this ploy - it represents bare faced lies but these are infrequent. The second scenario does not represent lies, just political incompetence.
The Brexit suite of lies by the leave campaign was a case of any lie, any exaggeration, any mis-representation just to try to get votes. Remember, prior to the actual referendum it was widely reported that the vote would go to remain. So the leave campaign felt anything justified the means - hence the poster of thousands of brown skinned people supposedly waiting to get to the UK amid the claims of Turkey imminently joining the EU. And similarly the empty claim of shifting EU money to the NHS. And the claims that the post-Brexit deal with the EU will be even better than being in the EU. Knowing lies.
It is of course worth noting the remain campaign’s p*** poor and thoughtless wild claims of instant poverty and massive job losses if Brexit did happen. I knew before the referendum that Osborne and Cameron were simply posh boy chancers, elevated to way beyond their skills and judgement. But their remain contributions were so bad that they equally could be accused of being less than honest. And it did help deliver the leave vote.
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Yes, l saw that report too,not seems our recovery from shutdowns
and unexpected expenditure is proceeding at above average pace
among the nation’s Bread !!
Can we keep it up?
We have a problem with finding enough labour to supply both
highly skilled jtachnical staff , and can’t even find people to pick
vegetables etc either !!
Our economy has become completely unbalanced with our reliance
on the financial sector and retail ?
Anyway. good news l believe !!
Donkeyman! 
Let’s agree on the unbalanced dependence on the financial sector. I blame Thatcher for that gift. I’m actually a fan of the financial sector. But only when they follow and do not lead. And are strongly regulated.
Now, where is the UK’s strategy for manufacturing?
That was Donkeymans post from the other forum, just inserted it because some things don’t change. I was there, in manufacturing when the last nails in the coffin, the international outsourcing were being hammered home, and directly asked the question
I got no answer, so, I do not have one to enlighten anyone else with.
Good evening Bruce and all others,
nothing went wrong, maybe some politicians lied a bit too much and too bluntly. And maybe they just did not know what they were doing.
However, having read thousands of comments about (leaving) the EU over the last years (as a casual observer), I guess that most of UKs citizens got what they wanted so desperately. Seriously, enjoying the feeling of being independent can “move mountains” I guess.
I mean, some people pay 100.000 EUR to buy a car because they think it is worth it for them, others are buying a “Luis Vuitton” handbag for >2000EUR for the same reason.
I would not but many do because they ‘feel’ that it is worth it for them.
From that perspective I think, nothing went wrong!
P. S.: some day I will have to learn where to put commas when writing English…