Re: How will Brexit go?
I appreciate the optimism Higgins, but I think it would be a reckless EU that allowed the UK to trade as normal without contributing to the overall project. I know that Brexiters are firmly of the belief that the EU needs the UK market more than the UK needs the EU market. I think the two are intrinsically co-dependent and that both will suffer.
I'm no great fan of the "who needs whom more or even most" theories either, nevertheless the fact that the EU sells more to the UK than it buys from there is often (almost comically) confused by ardent Brexiteers with some sort of favour being granted in the West-East cross channel direction. Recklessly ignored in this is that a country's trade deficit often results from its inability to sufficiently self-supply at acceptable effort and is not principally always a case of rolling in the money to such an extent that it needn't bother along those lines. Because it can simply buy what it's not producing.
It's indisputable that Brexit will hurt both sides and that the loss of the UK consumer market would (will) be a grave blow to EU suppliers. But one also needs to see the number of EU companies producing goods in the UK and, pertinently here, the share of those goods that then go back to the EU.
Let one side start the dance of imposing import tariffs (with the other retaliating) and the UK can , just as an example, kiss its car industry (which isn't British anyway) good bye virtually for good. Because whatever foreign makers deem fit to produce in the UK to meet market demands there, will certainly not maintain the number of jobs currently in place.
IF having a production site in UK is deemed worth the trouble at all, seeing how that location will lose its attraction for satisfying the overall EU market. When that can be done from plants already existing elsewhere in the EU.
I raised a similar point (with BMW as the example) in a thread dealing with envisaged US protectionism. Namely that BMW has created a considerable number of jobs in the US but that, just all on its own (forget VW and Merc) it exports more cars FROM the US than GM and Ford together.
That's "just" the automotive industry but even here we're getting silly if we dwell on pipe-dreaming over "how they need to buy our stuff more than we need to sell it". Or vice versa "they need to sell more than we need to buy".
Put import tariffs alone on stuff moving to the UK and affordability will sink, add unavoidable job losses and the attractiveness of the market will as well.
I'd very much hope for a settlement that avoids any of this, yet I don't dwell in cloud cuckoo land sufficiently (yet) to not see that mechanisms of today forbid the EU to grant any special status to anyone leaving. If it did, it would provide incentive for others to follow suit and then it might as well dissolve itself right here and now.
It isn't just about political principles (however nebulously defined), it's about business. And in business comes a time to cut one's losses rather than to throw good money after bad.