Vocal Voices

I’ve been doing a bit of ruminating about the reaction of the markets to May’s speech on Tuesday. We’ve been pedalled this whole story about how the “risk” of a hard Brexit is depressing the markets and we need to arrange the softest Brexit possible so that we can avoid all the pain.

So, I wonder, why did the £ bounce in response to May’s speech? Was it because she said that Parliament would get to vote on a deal? I don’t think so. Because the reality of that is different from what we are being sold.

What is the reality of parliament voting on a deal?

Simple. They get to say yes or we exit without a deal?

Think it through, we have to negotiate a deal with 27 countries. It’s going to take the better part of 18 months to negotiate it. Then, when we have a deal we think we can sign up to, we put it to parliament. Who get to do what? Rubber stamp it or veto it? Because, looking at what happened with CETA, nobody is going back to the negotiating table if the UK “parliament” don’t agree with the UK “Government”.

It’s not how the EU works. Wallonia was simply told “you are not changing CETA and we’re not going back to the table because it will take another year to come back again and that’s not happening.

I assume that the markets are aware of this, they’re not stupid and they don’t listen too much to the press on these things when the press is vacillating.

So I was wondering what triggered this growth in the value of the £. In the end it occurred to me that the most concrete statement made by May was “No deal is better than a Bad deal”.

Now that is something the markets can understand and get their teeth into. That statement guarantees that the UK will exit the EU unencumbered by restrictions and penalties which will make it impossible for the UK to get out from under the EU.

But, if that is true, then the markets were worrying about something totally different. They were worrying that the Blair’s and the Press and the Branson’s were going to force the UK to take such a bad compromise that the UK would actually be worse off out of the EU than in it.

If that is the reason, chalk one up to the markets for ignoring the BS machine and keeping their eye on the ball.

It's a pity there aren't more other countries wanting to exit.
(Perhaps there are but they haven't the guts to say so)..

Personally I can't see what all the fuss is about. Why can't we just tell them we are
giving in our Notice and will be leaving them on a certain date? Surely we can make
up our own minds. I'm sick and tired of all this talk and no action.

Well that would come down to the fact that we gave that right away in the following treaties.

Treaty of Rome
Maastricht Treaty
Lisbon Treaty.

You know all those important treaties which took away the power of the “member states” to decide whether they are in or out of the EEC initially and the EU since the Maastricht Treaty.

The only really good point about the Lisbon Treaty was that we were given a clear mechanism and the “right” to leave the EU. Whereas, before, it was clear that leaving the EU would be like the Southern states of the US trying to unilaterally leave the Union.

Whilst it may be stomach churning to go through this crazy process, at least nobody can deny us the right or stop us from completing the process.

I’m just amused that what the money markets are doing is the diametric opposite of what the press and the politicians like Blair, are saying.