I have been wondering why the UK government seems to think it can just keep asking the EU for more and hope to get it.
The answer, I suggest, can be found in how bad the UK’s relationship was with the EU before Brexit. Basically the UK would often sit in the corner refusing to have anything to do with the latest EU project, or cherry picking the bits it wanted and the other EU members would let it. It was easier, quicker and simpler just to let the UK opt out of what it didn’t like and then let the rest get on with whatever new plan they had. Schengen, eurozone you name it the UK sat in the corner and opted out of it.
It was one reason Brexit was so stupid, the UK had opted out of everything it didn’t like already and had a hand made deal of its own. But it seems to have got into the UK’s head that this is what the EU always does and if you keep asking you keep getting.
But that only works if you are in the organisation. Outside they will eventually just stop throwing you scraps. So France is now threatening to veto UK’s membership of the Horizon research programme, which would be a huge hit for the UK’s universities and businesses. All over an argument about fishing quotas, a very small part of a very small industry.
It may not happen but unlike Oliver Twist, who had a rich uncle to rescue him, the UK faces the future alone. Any EU member state can veto the UK’s participation in any EU scheme.
Harry Secombe will one day yell “MORE???????”
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
Would love to hear your opinion on Brexit in light of the recent Nobel Prize in Economics that in part showed that a huge influx of (low wage, low skill) migrants did not depress the local wages, but in fact stimulated the economy to grow. Now I'm no economist, but I would think the corollory of this would be that forcing all your low wage workers out of the country will do little to increase the wages of low-paid workers, and will help to depress the economy.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct2dkn