Brexit has well and truly begun!

[Angelo222]

If a hard Brexit really is going to be such a bonanza boon for British businesses, why are so many business leaders and CEOs against a no deal scenario?  Are they all stupid?  Do they not want to make oodles of profit and squillions of pounds from all the opportunites that a weak pound and WTO rules will afford them?

The key word is exporters.  The importers are doing all the squealing! 

[Venturi Swirl]

The key word is exporters.  The importers are doing all the squealing!

Really?

The UK food industry has threatened to stop co-operating with government policy consultations, saying it is busy trying to stave off the "catastrophic impact" of a no-deal Brexit.
The warning came in a letter to Environment Secretary Michael Gove from more than 30 business leaders.
They said it looked "ever more the likeliest outcome" that the UK would leave the EU without an agreement.
The government said leaving the EU with a deal remained its "top priority".
"We are meeting weekly with representatives from our food and drink industry to help prepare for all scenarios," said a spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
But the food industry said the current situation was a "moment of potential crisis" for their industry.
Those signing the letter included the heads of the Food and Drink Federation, the National Farmers' Union and UK Hospitality.
Members of the various trade bodies include Mondelez subsidiary Cadbury; KP Snacks, which makes Hula Hoops; and Butterkist popcorn, as well as consumer goods giant Nestle.
"Neither we nor our members have the physical resources nor organisational bandwidth to engage with and properly respond to non-Brexit related policy consultations or initiatives at this time," they wrote.
"Government has recruited many extra staff; we cannot."

[Venturi Swirl]

Read the letter from 1,280 business leaders in full below, all backing Remain:

Sir, We own and run more than 1,200 businesses, from micro companies to the FTSE 100, employing more than 1.75 million people. We know our firms are stronger in Europe.

Our reasons are straightforward: businesses and their employees benefit massively from being able to trade inside the world’s largest single market without barriers. As business people we always look to the future – and a future inside the EU is where we see more opportunities for investment, growth and new jobs. We know that Britain leaving the EU would mean having to re-establish terms of trade from scratch with our home market of 500 million consumers. That wouldn’t just hurt exporters but the hundreds of thousands of small and medium firms who do business with them.

signed by:

Paul Bassett, Principal, A P Bassett Solicitors; Kerry Glazer, Chief Executive Officer, AAR; Matt Regan, UK General Manager, AbbVie; Mark Glatman, Chief Executive, Abstract Securities; Dr John Burt, Chief Executive Officer, Abzena; Dr Julian Gilbert, Chief Executive Officer, Acacia Pharma; Jonathan Biggs, Partner, Accel; Sonali De Rycker, Partner, Accel; Philippe Botteri, Partner, Accel; Harry Nelis, Partner, Accel; Fred Destin, Partner, Accel; Matt McLaren, Executive Director, Access Ambition Recruitment Services; Rolf Fyne, Founding Partner, Accordo Partners Ltd; Matt Southall, Managing Director, Acorn Recruitment Ltd; Chris Brady, CEO, Acro Aircraft Seating Ltd; Robin Bhattercherjee, General Manager, Actelion Pharmaceuticals UK; Lawrence Turner, Founder and MD, Active Online Marketing Group; David Barry, Managing Director, Acunim Software Ltd; James Murphy, Founder and CEO, Adam and Eve DDB; Mark Evans, Director, Adaptix; John Joyce*, Managing Partner, Addleshaw Goddard LLP; Charles Penney*, Senior Partner, Addleshaw Goddard LLP; Eric Van Der Klej, Co-Founder and CEO, Adeptra, Level39, Tech City UK, and Co-Founder Entiq; Kasper Rorsted, Designated CEO, Adidas; Andy Wood, CEO, Adnams plc; Adrian Marsh, Director, Adrian Marsh Ltd; Samantha Hale, Managing Director and Founder, Advanced Performance; Dr Sanjeev Kanoria, Chairman, Advinia Health Care Limited; Doug Monro, Co-Founder and CEO, Adzuna; Mike Adams, Managing Director, Agenda IT; Peter Hancock, President and Chief Executive Officer, AIG; Claire Burrows, Founder, Air and Grace; Tony Fernandes CBE, GCEO, AirAsia and Founder, Tune Group; Paul

and hundreds more that there was not space enough to post, full list here http://www.europeanscom.eu/companies-that-support-brexit-and-the-companies-that-support-the-eu/

So what are they not seeing that Tim Witherspoon and Dyson are seeing?

[Venturi Swirl]

A lot of sense in this article IMO

A no-deal Brexit won’t result in a siege. The EU will be more clinical than that
Tom Kibasi
Talk of rotting food at Calais is hysterical: instead, no deal would see the EU calmly dismantle Britain’s industries over time
Thu 7 Feb 2019 10.41 GMT Last modified on Thu 7 Feb 2019 15.26 GMT

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 Lorries queue at the port of Dover.
 ‘There won’t be trucks filled with rotting food in Calais or shortages of medicines in pharmacies.’ Lorries queue at the port of Dover. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images
One of the most striking features of the ongoing Brexit shambles is the consistent failure of Britain’s political class to correctly assess the consequences of their decisions or the likely response from EU member states or institutions. So it is with the prospect of a no-deal Brexit.

With every passing week, new heights of hysteria are reached about the impact of crashing out of the bloc. Politicians and the media have embraced the aesthetic of the disaster movie, outlining all the most vivid ways in which our economy and society will fall to pieces after exit day in an imagined dystopia.

The government amplifies rather than dampens the threat in the hope that fear will bring MPs from both main parties into acquiescing to the prime minister’s Brexit deal. And the EU, keen to assist the government in getting the deal through parliament, does little to lower the temperature. But almost all of the fear-mongering is wrong.

 The hysteria needs to stop and the sobering reality of the scale of the stakes for the future must be better understood
In truth, the short-term impact of a no-deal Brexit would be not nearly as bad as predicted, but the long-term impact will be much worse than feared. Why? Because the British political class still fails to understand how the EU will respond to the crisis.

In a no-deal Brexit, the EU will not place the UK under some medieval siege; there won’t be trucks filled with rotting food in Calais or shortages of medicines in pharmacies. Planes will continue to fly, though British travellers would face longer queues at borders (yet still enjoy visa-free travel). A thin agreement – covering areas from aviation to contract continuity – would be quickly concluded.

Most households would feel the impact not through shortages but through rising prices, the result of a rapid weakening in sterling driving up the cost of imports. Living standards that have barely improved for more than a decade would get noticeably worse. But 3,500 troops are not going to be deployed to the streets.

Instead, the EU’s response to a no deal will be strategic: opening up advantage, sector by sector, calmly and patiently dismantling the UK’s leading industries over the course of a decade. They will eat the elephant one bite at a time. The problem with abandoning the rules of the international order is that you no longer enjoy their protection.

A no-deal Brexit would hand the EU enormous power: it would decide how and when to introduce new frictions between the UK and the single market, giving sufficient time for firms like Airbus, Nissan or AstraZeneca to relocate production. As recent decisions have demonstrated, even seemingly fixed capital investment is more mobile than many Brexiters imagine.

The EU would set out a timeline over which it would introduce compliance and rules of origin checks on the UK’s most competitive exporting sectors. It is not hard to imagine checks on automotive parts from 2021, pharmaceuticals from 2022 and aerospace from 2023, alongside constantly shifting sands of equivalence for financial services. This would allow firms an orderly departure from the UK to the single market. It will be a steady drift away from the UK, not an avalanche. Moreover, the absence of any agreement would mean lasting uncertainty that would deter future investment. The UK is particularly exposed in this regard: our serious lack of competitiveness is demonstrated by persistently large trade deficits. This means the UK is heavily reliant on foreign investment – the “kindness of strangers” – which would likely collapse. It is not hard to imagine a future government going cap in hand to the IMF for a bailout.

The Brexit fantasists’ riposte is that the Europeans have as much to lose since the UK is an important export market and we run a large trade deficit with the single market. But one of the legacies of Thatcher’s deindustrialisation is that the UK lacks the industrial base to switch from foreign to domestic production. It simply no longer exists, thanks to the 1980s shock therapy of the very same disaster capitalists that now champion no-deal.


Queen to be evacuated if Brexit turns ugly – reports
 Read more
Those same Brexiters who have marched from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm still bizarrely believe that the UK could pocket the £39bn divorce bill while pursuing trade deals around the world. Yet the EU would, calmly and rationally, place tariffs on UK trade until it had collected what it is owed. And the damage to trade with the single market could not be replaced by new trade deals – in addition to the EU27, the UK has the benefits of trade deals with 40 other countries through the EU, all of which would evaporate overnight in no deal. That requires 67 deals to be signed just to stand still.

Yet it is for these reasons that no deal remains the least likely outcome, its probability in the single digits. What began as a political hoax is now affecting real investment decisions in the economy, as Nissan’s recent decision has shown. The hysteria needs to stop and the sobering reality of the scale of the stakes for the UK’s future prosperity must be better understood. It is a damning indictment and a severe dereliction of duty that such a calamity as a no-deal Brexit is a possibility, no matter how unlikely. It’s time to rule out no deal, once and for all.

• Tom Kibasi is director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, and founder and chair of the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice

[Angelo222]

Read the letter from 1,280 business leaders in full below, all backing Remain:

Sir, We own and run more than 1,200 businesses, from micro companies to the FTSE 100, employing more than 1.75 million people. We know our firms are stronger in Europe.

Our reasons are straightforward: businesses and their employees benefit massively from being able to trade inside the world’s largest single market without barriers. As business people we always look to the future – and a future inside the EU is where we see more opportunities for investment, growth and new jobs. We know that Britain leaving the EU would mean having to re-establish terms of trade from scratch with our home market of 500 million consumers. That wouldn’t just hurt exporters but the hundreds of thousands of small and medium firms who do business with them.

signed by:

Paul Bassett, Principal, A P Bassett Solicitors; Kerry Glazer, Chief Executive Officer, AAR; Matt Regan, UK General Manager, AbbVie; Mark Glatman, Chief Executive, Abstract Securities; Dr John Burt, Chief Executive Officer, Abzena; Dr Julian Gilbert, Chief Executive Officer, Acacia Pharma; Jonathan Biggs, Partner, Accel; Sonali De Rycker, Partner, Accel; Philippe Botteri, Partner, Accel; Harry Nelis, Partner, Accel; Fred Destin, Partner, Accel; Matt McLaren, Executive Director, Access Ambition Recruitment Services; Rolf Fyne, Founding Partner, Accordo Partners Ltd; Matt Southall, Managing Director, Acorn Recruitment Ltd; Chris Brady, CEO, Acro Aircraft Seating Ltd; Robin Bhattercherjee, General Manager, Actelion Pharmaceuticals UK; Lawrence Turner, Founder and MD, Active Online Marketing Group; David Barry, Managing Director, Acunim Software Ltd; James Murphy, Founder and CEO, Adam and Eve DDB; Mark Evans, Director, Adaptix; John Joyce*, Managing Partner, Addleshaw Goddard LLP; Charles Penney*, Senior Partner, Addleshaw Goddard LLP; Eric Van Der Klej, Co-Founder and CEO, Adeptra, Level39, Tech City UK, and Co-Founder Entiq; Kasper Rorsted, Designated CEO, Adidas; Andy Wood, CEO, Adnams plc; Adrian Marsh, Director, Adrian Marsh Ltd; Samantha Hale, Managing Director and Founder, Advanced Performance; Dr Sanjeev Kanoria, Chairman, Advinia Health Care Limited; Doug Monro, Co-Founder and CEO, Adzuna; Mike Adams, Managing Director, Agenda IT; Peter Hancock, President and Chief Executive Officer, AIG; Claire Burrows, Founder, Air and Grace; Tony Fernandes CBE, GCEO, AirAsia and Founder, Tune Group; Paul

and hundreds more that there was not space enough to post, full list here http://www.europeanscom.eu/companies-that-support-brexit-and-the-companies-that-support-the-eu/

So what are they not seeing that Tim Witherspoon and Dyson are seeing?

Self interest basically, for every boss wanting to remain there are more wanting to leave.  You forget that the EU would be much much much worse off than the UK in a crash-out situation without reciprocal agreements.  Basically it ain't gonna happen VS.  Deals and Agreements will come quick and fast after we formally leave the EU with Germany, France and Belgium leading the way. The German car industry would be decimated without a deal such are the number of cars BMW, VW, Mercedes, Skoda, Opel and Audi sell to us. The same for the French with Peugeot-Citreon and Renault cars, vans and trucks pouring into the UK every day.

The UK is paving the way for France, Italy and Spain to get out too and that is why the EU big wigs are resisting so much.  The EU has little to do with trade any more, it is all about power. A European Superstate, a European Army is what it is really all about and now blighty has gone and spoilt it all.   

[Venturi Swirl]

Self interest basically, for every boss wanting to remain there are more wanting to leave.  You forget that the EU would be much much much worse off than the UK in a crash-out situation without reciprocal agreements.  Basically it ain't gonna happen VS.  Deals and Agreements will come quick and fast after we formally leave the EU with Germany, France and Belgium leading the way. The German car industry would be decimated without a deal such are the number of cars BMW, VW, Mercedes, Skoda, Opel and Audi sell to us. The same for the French with Peugeot-Citreon and Renault cars, vans and trucks pouring into the UK every day.

The UK is paving the way for France, Italy and Spain to get out too and that is why the EU big wigs are resisting so much.

if it’s self interest then presumably you think that these 1200 businesses will be harmed by Brexit, hence why the CEOs are against it?

[Angelo222]

if it’s self interest then presumably you think that these 1200 businesses will be harmed by Brexit, hence why the CEOs are against it?

No doubt they realise their bottom line will be hit but that happens in life and in business, there will always be winners and losers.

[Venturi Swirl]

No doubt they realise their bottom line will be hit but that happens in life and in business, there will always be winners and losers.

These CEOs and business owners employ 1.75 million people between them.  If only 10% of these businesses fail as a result of Brexit in the next five years then thats 175,000 people out of a job.

[Angelo222]

These CEOs and business owners employ 1.75 million people between them.  If only 10% of these businesses fail as a result of Brexit in the next five years then thats 175,000 people out of a job.

On the other hand, a great opportunity for exports and by inference, jobs.

[Venturi Swirl]

On the other hand, a great opportunity for exports and by inference, jobs.

What are we going to be exporting in far greater volume than before?

[Carana]

What are we going to be exporting in far greater volume than before?

British wine to Chile?

Fish to the Faroe Islands?

Watches to Switzerland?

[Angelo222]

What are we going to be exporting in far greater volume than before?

Well, let's see...   

Machinery including computers
Vehicles
Mineral fuels including oil
Gems, precious metals
Pharmaceuticals
Electrical machinery, equipment
Aircraft, spacecraft
Optical, technical, medical apparatus
Plastics, plastic articles
Organic chemicals

[Venturi Swirl]

Well, let's see...   

Machinery including computers
Vehicles
Mineral fuels including oil
Gems, precious metals
Pharmaceuticals
Electrical machinery, equipment
Aircraft, spacecraft
Optical, technical, medical apparatus
Plastics, plastic articles
Organic chemicals

LOL.  OK.  You forgot coal and textiles. 

[Carana]

The key word is exporters.  The importers are doing all the squealing!

Many exporters need imported components (from cars to confectionary). Bureaucratic hassle costs time and money.

Until such time as FTAs can be agreed, many of which will be on worse terms than those that the UK already benefits from, tariffs will apply on exports.

[Carana]

Ford told UK PM May it is preparing alternative production sites - The Times

(Reuters) - Ford Motor Co told British Prime Minister Theresa May that it is stepping up preparations to move production out of Britain, The Times reported on Tuesday.

(...)


Ford, which operates two engine plants in Britain, last month said that it faces a bill of up to $1 billion (775 million pounds) if Britain leaves the Europe Union without a deal.

Car makers and other manufacturers have warned about the toll a no-deal Brexit could impose, including higher tariffs, disruption to supply chains and threats to jobs. Britain is scheduled to leave the European Union on March 29.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-ford-motor/ford-told-uk-pm-may-it-is-preparing-alternative-production-sites-the-times-idUKKCN1Q12SK?utm_source=applenews