We already control our borders. Indeed so much so we control them in part on the land of another country!
I'm always amazed why people are always puzzled by the UK low productivity per person figures compared to those lazy French and unionised Germans.
Did we say that? OK you've got us in video saying that.. But no one actually believed that did they?
Hang on you said control our borders nothing about immigration. I think you've used one of those dog whistles didn't you?
Not only that how much of our exports to Australia are because we are part of the EU? I would be very surprised if there wasn't a high percentage of EU trade hidden in those figures.
I think one of the big ones (which the UK doesn't actually have to do anything to wield) is the reality that anti-EU populism has scored a significant victory in the UK, and it's also on the rise in several EU countries. The EU applying all sticks and no carrots to negotiations with the UK could backfire against the interest of incumbent leaders like Hollande and Renzi, probably also Merkel given those two.
Overstated. Several EU countries have been eager to grab financial business from London for decades, arguably it is cluster-network effects that drove London's ascent not just being in the EU. Brexit probably kills off the financial transactions tax in the EU if it wasn't already dead in the water. If the EU was to somehow try to go ahead with it (pretty sure that won't happen) then there would be a massive incentive for firms to book flow business in London not the EU. In respect of "passporting" most institutions have sales offices in the EU anyway, the location of operations staff and other staff is more to do with cost and talent base, London never scored well on cost but scooped location despite that and because of the latter (and most bankers don't suddenly want to move to Frankfurt), moreover London did actually just get cheaper. Also a great many financial products sold in Europe by institutions whose main base is in London are actually registered in places like Luxembourg or Dublin anyway (because . . . . firms tended to have long thought the UK was less likely to remain in the EU than others), so the issue then becomes whether or not these EU registered products can be sold in the UK post Brexit, which would perhaps entail registering them in the UK. And the UK is a large demand pool for a lot of financial products, in many aspects bigger than France, Italy, Spain.
That is a very interesting question, the answer to which I don't know but will attemp to determine.
Some actual polls suggest that support for the EU has gone up since the referendum result, mostly recruited from the "don't care" camp. The Farages of the Other 27 are getting their fifteen minutes of fame, but the example the UK is presenting has concentrated a lot of minds.
They have much bigger issues than Brexit.
Being in the EU has been part of London's environment for forty years. All its development over that time - which is to say, all the financial world's development over the last forty years - has occurred within that environment. London's domination of the financial world predates the EU by centuries anyway, and not without competition.
Didn't Singapore do that decades ago?
