This thread exists to discuss British politics.
Political issues related to Northern Ireland and the Crown Dependencies (the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) are also considered on-topic here if there's no more appropriate OTC thread for them.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines before posting here.
As with other OTC threads, off-topic posts may be thumped or edited by the moderators.
- There is a dedicated thread to discuss LGBTQ+ rights in the United Kingdom. That doesn't mean it's always off-topic here, but unless something's directly linked to political events, that's probably a better thread for it.
- There's also a separate thread to talk about your favourite British Prime Ministers.
Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
- The Scottish National Party do really well in the elections.
A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 3rd 2023 at 11:15:30 AM
Reason I'm asking is because while the rest of the countries fit the region they are placed in perfectly fine (while some may get upset about the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia being included in Eastern Europe, most definitions of Europe don't include Central Europe as a region either and include those countries in Eastern Europe too except for the World Factbook, and Central Europe does overlap with Western, Southern and Eastern Europe as mentioned on it's page, which is why it has it's own regional page), the British Isles are usually considered Western European, but are geographically Northern European, mixed in with their history and included in Northern Europe by the UN and several European region maps.
Edited by CookingCat on Nov 4th 2018 at 8:29:31 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
North Atlantic. <shrugs>
Frankly, the very early medieval maps were correct in that the Isles should be pointed North.
It's the combo of the Roman Catholic Church and the Normans that yanked us all West.
Guess I'll stick with the UN designation if everyone here is OK with it. I already mentioned on the main Europe page that it follows the UN's definition, but Europe is the toughest of the continents to define in terms of regions and which country belongs to which region in Europe can differ heavily depending on which definition of Europe is being used, so you should always check with definition of the continent is being used, and I mentioned in Britain and Ireland that while they are geographically Northern European and included there by the UN and several European region maps, they are politically Western European and culturally both.
Edited by CookingCat on Nov 4th 2018 at 11:54:27 AM
The Europe page was discussed on the forum a year or so ago. I remember the discussion, but I can't remember who was cleaning the page or which thread the discussion happened in (it might have been the European Politics one).
So, that's the reason why the classification is 'Northern Europe' instead of 'Western Europe' — the UN definition was the deciding factor.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Nov 5th 2018 at 11:26:04 AM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Dominic Raab is now on record as "not realising the scale" of imports or the traffic through ports.
Also, interestingly, many supermarkets are subject to ND As from the government about Brexit planning - so they can't come out around the supply chain challenges that are likely.
Woo.
Do you want red, brown or yellow sauce with that, duck? 
But, seriously... is anybody surprised? <_<
In other news: He has also discovered that water is wet.
I wish I could say for sure that he's worked out that ferries regularly travel on very wet water towards Northern Europe from Northern Ireland, Northern England and Scotland, but... 
Edited by Euodiachloris on Nov 8th 2018 at 4:11:26 PM
Interesting thread. I'll post here but I recommend actually going to the thread because he posts a link to the source of his information in every single tweet.
Steris PLC, a company with $2.6 billion in annual revenue, is planning to redomicile from the UK to Ireland due to Brexit. What that means is that, as an Irish company, the Irish tax authorities will collect its taxes going forward and not HMRC. 2/50
8 health providers have warned of medicine shortages in the event of a no-deal Brexit: "we do not believe that the current medicine supply plans will suffice, and we will have widespread shortages if we do not respond urgently." 3/50
Pfizer - $100 million on Brexit prep:"Pfizer’s preparations are well advanced to make the changes necessary to meet EU legal requirements after the U.K. is no longer a member state, especially in the regulatory, manufacturing and supply chain areas." 4/50
Astra Zenica estimates its Brexit-related costs at £40 million for duplicate drug testing requirements, and building up product stockpiles. 5/50
Chubb (world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company) is redomiciling from the UK to France. It has already received permission from the french regulator, and aims to complete its move on 1 January 2019. 6/50
Columbia Threadneedle switched £6.2 billion worth of assets from UK domiciled funds to Luxembourg domiciled funds 7/50
Liberty Specialty Markets is redomiciling its insurance company from the UK to Luxembourg 8/50
Admiral Group is planning to move some of its UK business from Admiral Insurance Company Limited to an entity in Spain, Admiral Europe Compañía de Seguros, S.A, that was set on 20 December 2017. 9/50
A ferry company has brought in 2 new ships, including the "Brexit Buster" ship Celine (600 truck capacity, world's largest short sea roll-on roll-off ferry). Idea is to bypass the UK and send freight directly from Ireland to Belgium and Spain. 10/50
Swiss Quote cancelled its expansion plans in London after Brexit, and instead bought a bank in Luxembourg [article in French] 11/50
STM Life moving part of its business from Gibraltar to Malta to guard against the effects of Brexit. 12/50
JP Morgan and other leading US banks are getting ready to shift over 250 billion euro in assets from London to Frankfurt. 13/50
A hard Brexit may increase the price of Dutch plants by 50% due to customs delays, additional safety tests and red tape. But they can’t easily be replaced by increased UK production since 90% of shoots come from abroad. 14/50
XL Insurance Company SE (a company writing over £2 billion/year in insurance premiums) is moving from the UK to Ireland in January 2019 due to Brexit (the move is explicitly described as due to Brexit in its annual accounts). 15/50
Bank of America has spent between $300 and $400 million preparing for Brexit, including establishing new subsidiaries in Paris and Dublin, moving staff etc. Exact cost not yet clear as project is ongoing. 16/50
So many firms are stockpiling food against the disruption of Brexit that a cold storage company has now completely run out of room... 17/50
Brexit is killing a crucial source of tech funding: "Funding for UK tech firms by the European Investment Fund (EIF) fell by 91 per cent during 2017 to €61.1m (£53m) compared with €708.8m the previous year." 18/50
DEXEU (the Brexit Ministry) has spent over £100 million (estimated) on staffing costs since the referendum. That figure's just for the people in the department, and doesn't account for any other costs... 19/50
Insurer Hiscox spent US$15 million (£11.5 million) in preparations against a no-deal Brexit (it will also transfer some business to Luxembourg). 20/50
A $15 billion hedge fund specialising in distressed debt is gearing up to profit out of Brexit chaos. 21/50
Government has spent £5.5 million keeping Manston Airport open in case it's needed as additional overflow lorry parking after Brexit. 22/50
Corporate Sterling-denominated bond sales have slumped 34% this year, as companies put off investing in the UK due to Brexit uncertainty. 23/50
Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance plc is moving approximately 6% of its insurance and reinsurance business to a new legal entity in Luxembourg, with the intention that the move be effective 1 January 2019. 24/50
AIG operates in Europe through a single legal entity established in the UK (with branches across Europe). They are restructuring their business because of Brexit, and moving all non-UK business to a Luxembourg entity (planned by December 2018). 25/50
European Medical Agency (EMA), Europe's medicines regulator, is moving from London to Amsterdam. It used to employ close to 900 people in London. It's had to cut its short-term service offering as it will lose at least 30% of staff during the move. 26/50
France's top banks are moving 500 jobs out of London due to Brexit. 27/50
The Government has 7000 civil servants working on Brexit, plus Treasury funding for 9000 more. (Just imagine the mountains of red tape they're generating, and the forests being decimated to print it all...) 28/50
GSK Brexit prep spend: "We currently anticipate that the cost to implement these and other necessary changes could be up to £70 million over the next two to three years, with subsequent ongoing additional costs of approximately £50 million per year." 29/50
A major financial firm, CME Group's Broker Tec, is leaving London for Amsterdam because of Brexit, taking its $240 billion/day repo market with it. 30/50
British hauliers are already having to turn down contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds because of uncertainties surrounding a no-deal Brexit. 31/50
Theresa May repeatedly cancelled national security meetings because of being overwhelmed by Brexit planning. 32/50
The Government estimates that it will cost the chemicals industry £450 million to reregister chemicals under a post-Brexit regime. (That's just to replicate the status quo.) 33/50
Investment in UK renewables drops 46% year-on-year because of Brexit concerns. 34/50
Tokio Marine Group is using a "Part VII transfer" to transfer business from two UK-based subsidiaries (Tokio Marine Kiln Insurance Limited, and HCC International Insurance Company Plc) to a Luxembourg entity. 35/50
QBE Limited is reorganising the affairs of several of its group companies, using the Part VII mechanism, in order to be ready for Brexit. Follow the link for details of its plans to move business to Belgium. 36/50
Once we're out of the EU, we'll be cut out of the pan-EU transport strategy (which unlocks billions of euro in grants and other funding). Indeed, EU transport maps will be redrawn (policy-wise, not literally!) so that the UK doesn't appear any more. 37/50
XTX Markets is establishing a new office in Paris for post-Brexit trade (it is keeping its London office). [Article in French] 38/50
Credit Suisse is moving 250 jobs to Germany, Madrid and elsewhere in the EU 27, including Luxembourg. [Article in French] 39/50
New Look (fashion retailer) are closing a further 25 stores (85, up from planned 60 store closures) citing "significant headwinds and uncertainties, including Brexit". 40/50
Schaeffler, a car parts company, is closing two UK factories, in Llanelli, Wales, and Plymouth (affecting 570 jobs) because of Brexit. 41/50
Haulage companies face entering a lottery for scarce permits to continue doing business internationally post-Brexit, after the Government admits there are less than 10% of the needed number of permits to go around. 42/50
MS Amlin receives the green light to redomicile Amlin Insurance SE from the UK to Belgium. 43/50
Hiscox are transferring some aspects of their business to Luxembourg, and expect the Part VII transfer to complete by 1 January 2019. "The Transfer will move £421.5m of liabilities (and the corresponding assets) from HIC to HSA." 44/50
Scotland Yard is having to spend £2.4 million on setting up a no-deal Brexit "safety net unit" after Government ignored its reasoned warnings over how Brexit would make the UK less safe. 45/50
The Customs Declaration Service (CDS) is a major new HMRC IT system meant to replace existing customs systems. Supposed to be ready by January 2019. Delays mean it won't be ready by Brexit Day. Old and new systems will have to run in parallel. 46/50
Home Office private beta of its new EU citizen registration system took nearly 2 weeks to process just 1,053 applicants (despite testing relatively "easy" batches of applicants). Full system will need to handle over *3 million* people in 2 years. 47/50
Barclays is moving €250 billion of business to Dublin ahead of Brexit, making it Ireland's largest bank. It has already bought a huge gleaming new office building there in preparation. 48/50
The Government has spent £4.2 billion pounds on Brexit preparations (£2.2 billion in previous Budgets, plus an additional £2 billion in the most recent Budget.) 49/50
Finally, on a lighter note, Ladybird have finally "done" Brexit as part of their Ladybird for Grown-Ups series. The book brings together nostalgic classic paintings with some hard-nose, biting satire. Good early Christmas present, e.g. Secret Santa? 50/50
Thanks for reading this far. Hope you found this thread informative. Please retweet it if you did, and help spread the word! People need to understand that the Brexit consequences are real, and happening already. Once businesses leave, they won't be back. Time for Project Fact.
Added: if a lot of the companies in this thread seem to be in the service sector, that may be because the Government is explicitly not protecting services in its negotiations (based on Chequers) the way it is trying to do for goods...
Added: if you made it all the way here, there’s a ton more truths about Brexit in the compilation thread embedded below (about 20% overlap with this thread). It goes into great detail on many aspects of Brexit, including the meaning of WTO trade & no-deal.
Added: here's another thread with more examples of real-life Brexit impacts that are already affecting companies, jobs and investments...
Think I saw that thread.
I just.... I just cannot wrap my head around it. How ANY politician can see all that and assume it's "good" - unless they in some way profit or are being sponsored.
I just cannot fathom it.
Oh, bother.
Brinkmanship and personal ambition and nationalism are a toxic heady mix. And it doesn't help that human beings are very good at ignoring evidence that contradicts their worldview.
Edited by M84 on Nov 13th 2018 at 7:27:58 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
The Westminster bubble probably doesn't help. And the abject desire to NOT BE WRONG in the public eye, come hell or high water.
It doesn't help that the Opposition is fractured. We could do with a Liberal Democrat party that had credibility now, rather than the lot who sold us down the river last time. They're speaking sense now but they're too tainted.
Corbyn seems to be losing some of the shine and integrity he had. A lot of assumption that he is planning to sweep in and capitalise on the Tory disaster whilst ALSO getting Brexit. Not sure how true that is but it feels off.
x4
Well done, Tories. Maybe make an actual plan next time you decide to throw us all off a cliff, especially when there's a parachute right there that might spare you some of the broken bones.
Isn't free movement of capital just wonderful? Make one tax haven moderately difficult for finance to operate in and they leave for the other two nearby, suckers still firmly attached to the UK's veins.
It has been a while since I could really laugh about Brexit outside of gallows humour, but that one genuinely made me laugh in the end.
A draft Brexit deal has been reached, and is going to Cabinet. And then it has to pass both Parliament and the EU members.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/13/uk/brexit-deal-reached-intl/index.html
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Not so fast on that. That was probably a play by May to put pressure on Brexiteers, and it looks to be backfiring spectacularly. Literally everyone is coming out against it.
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
Oh boy if that's true May just smoked all remaining credit she had in Brussels.
"You can reply to this Message!"
That imploded slightly faster than I expected.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Why do you think BoJo & co (birthdays by appointment) started making a little more noise than usual over the weekend?
They were getting the pitchforks, tar, feathers and shredders together, is what. <sighs>
Brussels would have said no anyway.
If the UK insists on Brexit, it has exactly three options.
1. Join the EEA (permanently, not as some sort of transition period) - and this option might be off the table now considering all the talk of joining in order to leave.
2. Accept the border in the sea in order to leave the single market, and then use the transition period to strike some sort of trade deal which will never make up for the loss of the single market.
3. Stay stubborn and crash out, with all the live threatening consequences.
Those are the options. Or the UK finds a way to cancel Brexit. But that doesn't seem to be in the card currently.
Servant of the Omnissiah
1) Hardline Brexiteers will kill it stone dead before it even gets down to brasstacks.
2) Good Friday Agreement is going to make that super hard. Almost certainly will mean that Northern Ireland is defacto out of British Control - and that's a scenario no one wants to see.
3) Only path left forward, because 1) and 2).
Honestly, Britain's not looking so hot right about now.
Edited by TechPriest90 on Nov 13th 2018 at 10:49:35 AM
I hold the secrets of the machine.
I am kind of confused about the "deal" they are voting on today...are they talking about the withdraw agreement? What is now the supposed solution for Norther Ireland?
I believe this is the withdrawal agreement. Us plebs don't get to see the details yet, May is attempting to win Cabinet backing before it even goes to Parliament.
Figure of Hourai
Well, getting cabinet backing first is the right way to do it.
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If you want to be particularly pedantic, you could probably draw a line somewhere around the midlands to separate North and West based on relative influence from Vikings.
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