thecrashingisles

To be fair, who can predict what unintended consequences his constitutional reforms could bring. New Labour thought they would dominate Scotland, but ended up handing it over to nationalists. Perhaps they will repeat the trick in England.

Take it up with Sir Keir.

It will be interesting to see how much anti-Brexit sentiment holds up under a Labour government that treats it as the status quo and isn't willing to revisit the question of membership.

How do you account for the millions of non-EU citizens in the EU if you think it's a "no go zone"?

More bluster, and now flouncing off because you've run out of ways to dodge the question. If you had a more international and less UK-centric outlook, you would be aware of how silly your claim is. The idea that we would definitely have been chosen for the Gigafactory if not for Brexit is a variant of the kind of "stab in the back" myth that was popular in interwar Germany. In reality, as Musk explicitly stated when the matter first came up well before the referendum, a site on the continent was always most likely, and there were a number of sites competing:

I won't go through your whole posting history to point out your dishonesty, but one example will do: Please provide just one direct quotation to justify the claim that the UK was Tesla's "preferred location" and Germany was "a poor second choice". Musk's response about Brexit making the UK a riskier option certainly doesn't back it up.

Musk said that Brexit (specifically the uncertainty during the negotiations) made the UK too risky to consider. He never said what you explicitly claimed which was that in the absence of Brexit, the UK would have been chosen. You really have no right to call anyone dishonest when you throw out unsubstantiated claims and then resort to insults when you are unable to back them up.

This is overly simplistic. There isn't a simple relationship between exports and wealth. The USA has the biggest trade deficit in the world but I doubt you would say it's a poor country. Arguably the relationship is the opposite way round: the ability to import the things you need is the real sign of wealth.

This is why I think the charge of parochialism is justified. Several European countries had indentified sites and were involved in detailed discussions with Tesla. It wasn't just a choice between the UK and Germany.

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/07/britain-liberal-nation-europe

My point is simply that Brexit or no Brexit, it is unlikely that Tesla's first Gigafactory in Europe would have been in the UK, and you can see this from statements from Musk and the company going back well before the referendum. You appear to be basing your entire knowledge of the situation on reporting in the British press about a remark to a British journalist after the fact. It's a shame that it isn't a remedial English thread because you are clearly in need of one. You referred to Eustice as "the minister who negotiated it" but there is no sense in which this is remotely true, whatever his degree of involvement.

You think George Eustice negotiated our trade deals?

As I said, you're painfully parochial. https://electrek.co/2017/01/08/tesla-gigafactory-2-french-minister/

Houses are very illiquid so it's never going to be like a stock market crash were you can see the prices move in real time.

You're so parochial. Musk never said that Britian would otherwise have been the preferred choice which was your claim. He had said before the referendum was even on the horizon that the first European factory was going to be on the continent and a range of locations had been in a bidding war.

If you're happy to defer to the authority and competence of the people who are negotiating on behalf of the UK, surely that has to apply equally to the deals with the EU and NZ?

Have you actually read the outline of the deal we currently have with the EU? https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/relations-non-eu-countries/relations-united-kingdom/eu-uk-trade-and-cooperation-agreement_en "It provides for zero tariffs and zero quotas on all goods that comply with the appropriate rules of origin."

Indeed, to call 48% of the electorate 'elite' would be a contradiction in terms.

Those articles don't say what you think they do.

As far as I can tell this is a pure confabulation on your part. Musk said well before Brexit that their first European factory would be on the continent. https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tesla/model-s/87332/tesla-plans-uk-rd-base-charging-network-and-25k-3-series-rival

Do you seriously think the Tesla factory would have been in the UK if not for Brexit?

To be clear, you think we are "truly fecked up" because we don't have enough immigration, despite having record immigration?

It's more that you ignore the problems faced by the EU and imply that any issue faced by the UK would magically vanish if we were still part of the EU.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/german-manufacturing-shrinks-june-demand-weakens-pmi-2023-07-03/ Germany's manufacturing sector contracted at the fastest rate in more than three years in June, with both output and new orders falling, a survey showed on Monday. The HCOB final Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for manufacturing, which accounts for about a fifth of Germany's economy, fell to 40.6 from 43.2 in May, the fifth consecutive monthly decline.

The EU has decided to hurt itself unnecessarily? Why is it letting ideology override its interests? Where is the democratic mandate to harm its own citizens? Is this a constitutional system that anyone would want to copy?