FCA mulls listing rules after Hauser blames 'Brexit idiocy' for Arm's New York IPO The UK's financial regulator is looking at ways to make London more attractive for companies in the wake of Arm choosing to list in New York and Herman Hauser blaming the decision on "Brexit idiocy." Brit chip designer Arm disclosed over the weekend that it had filed for a public listing with the US Securities and Exchange …
The problem was the whole Brexit mess was deliberate. Cameron didn't want Brexit, didn't plan for it, tried to set everything up so it didn't happen, hated that he'd been backed into a corner to hold the referendum, and stated, flatly, that the referendum was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
The problem then was many people who were unsure saw Cameron's ploy as an attempt to hide something he knew the public wouldn't want, hence they voted to leave. Had Cameron left the door open for a possible second referendum at some later, undefined date, then they'd have likely voted to remain.
In fact the referendum was "advisory". Having got the result he didn't expect and obviously hadn't even planned for he panicked. It would have been quite reasonable - although unprecedented in government terms - to treat it as reason to undertake an impact assessment. That should have been his plan B. His emergence plan B was B for Bolt.
And referenda on major constitutional changes normally require a two-thirds majority, and if that isn't reached the status quo remains. It's not clear why Cameron set the bar lower, at 50% of those who voted (which was of course nowhere near 50% of those eligible to vote).
The generally held expectation prior to the vote seemed to be that remain would win, taking somewhere between 55% and 60% of the vote.
Had a 2/3rd majority been required to win, with a default of maintaining the status quo if neither side obtained the requisition ~67%, there would have been an obvious complaint that the vote was fixed in favour of remain: leave needs 2/3 of vote, so remain only actually needs 1/3 to win-by-default.
Arguing that getting only 1/3 of all votes counted in an 'either-or' vote represented the democratic will of the people would have been... difficult. (Note - this was a binary, either-or, vote, not a standard election for a multitude of candidates where the winner may often have less than 50% of all votes cast)
With the expectation that remain would win (simple majority). placing a requirement for a super-majority would have been troublesome - Remain would not have won by the rules, but again, won by default (even though they had a majority). This would pretty much guarantee that the losers went on (and on, and on) about the result ad infinitum. Plus, of course, there was no super-majority requirement when the vote to stay in the EEC was held in the 1970's (at least as far as I am aware).
So setting the bar at 50%+1 vote was the obvious thing for Cameron to do. It was consistent with the EEC referendum, it was obviously fair and couldn't be accused of being rigging the vote, and of course, since everyone 'knew' that remain would take 55-60% of the vote, guaranteed to give a remain result that couldn't be challenged. Oops.
Cameron was a reckless idiot for risking it all on a referendum to win the election. However, it was Johnson who threw his support behind it and that's what took it over the line. Suddenly you didn't have to be a Farage thrall to vote leave. And of course, Johnson did it purely for self-gain
"..........all the polls suggest that the majority of voters in the referendum realise they were idiots.........."
Care to back that up with links to the polls you refer to?
I can't find much that supports your sweeping statement. In fact everything that I can find suggests that opinions are much the same now as they were in 2016.
Came across this recently...
As of April 2023, 53 percent of people in Great Britain thought that it was wrong to leave the European Union, compared with 33 percent who thought it was the right decision. During this time period, the share of people who regret Brexit has been slightly higher than those who support it... "
https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-poll/
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/a-year-in-brexit-five-charts-exploring-how-public-opinion-on-the-eu-has-changed-in-2022/
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/11/02/growing-majority-of-britons-think-brexit-was-a-mistake-new-poll-shows
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/05/most-britons-think-country-has-lost-control-of-its-border-since-brexit-poll
Took me about 5 seconds to google, and 2 of those seconds were spent looking for my google-browsertab
Posting links to articles claiming most leavers have changed their minds taken from publications/organisations which were/are staunchly remainer is not really proving anything at all.
The reality is that people with an axe grind will twist and manipulate statistics to appear to show what they want them to do. In the real world, very little has actually changed, and my experience and contact of people who voted leave is that their anti-EU views have become even more deeply entrenched than before.
The mess that continues to develop since Brexit is more to do with the bunch of useless politicians (of all parties) who are installed in the House of Commons, and the very clear and obvious continuing inertia and obstruction by EU obsessed civil servants in Government departments.
If the Remain campaign had made an attempt to highlight the positive advantages of EU membership instead of thinking they could scare the electorate into voting remain, and hadn't issued pack of lies after pack of lies about how the whole British economy would collapse overnight, they might have been able to get the result they wanted. But they didn't, and we are now stuck with it, and every body needs to get on with trying to acheive the best result that we can, instead of continually moaning about it and being obstructive and trying to undermine any possible success.
Remain had their chance to put the argument to bed for at least a generation and they blew it; that is the fault solely of those in charge of the Remain campaign and cannot be blamed on anybody else.
More totally incorrect statements based on the false stereotypes that remainers have been allowed to get away with painting.
And as soon as you have to resort to abuse, you demonstrate that you either don't have a valid argument or that you lack the ability to articulate it.
Hey, when the tiniest majority of voters (many of them heavily influenced by a Ruzzian disinformation operation) pull your country out of the international community that was keeping your country somewhat relevant, maybe they deserve to be insulted. Because, you know, they're very, very stupid.
How's the NHS doing with that extra £350 million a week, btw?
Oh well, at least it'll end up reuniting Ireland.
-> Hey, when the tiniest majority of voters (many of them heavily influenced by a Ruzzian disinformation operation)
A majority is a majority. That is what the referendum was for. Meanwhile there was plenty of EU disinformation. Don't forget that. The majority voted they way they voted. You should respect their views or declare that you do not believe in democracy.
They still get to experience the consequences. I wonder how many of them wish they'd voted. IIRC when the result was announced it was reported that there was a peak of Google searches about the consequences. I wondered how many were from the non-voters and how many were from those who'd voted Leave as a protest vote against the government without thinking too much about what might happen.
Then there was the MP who'd campaigned for leave suddenly demanding that HMG replace all the EU funding his constituency had been receiving up until then.
Or possibly searches by Remain voters who had taken it for granted that Remain would win the day, and hadn't previously done any serious research of the actual consequences (as opposed to the fantasy land consequences of immediate, catastrophic economic meltdown that the Remain campaign kept parroting), and suddenly found themselves have to face the facts of life.
> that is how democratic votes work.
Depend on your style of democracy. The UK runs a Parliamentary democracy and currently, the Executive decides what constitutes a democratic vote (in the UK) and does whatever it takes to get Paraliament to rubber stamp it.
The point I was making is that it is totally incorrect to say “ the majority of voters” when reality is “the majority of votes” ie. “the majority of those voters who actually voted”.
CodeJunkie "A little pedantic but isnt a voter someone who votes. While someone who doesnt vote isnt a voter?"
Only if you think, "pedantic" means, "fucking wrong".
voter
noun
UK /ˈvəʊ.tər/ US /ˈvoʊ.t̬ɚ/
a person who votes or who has a legal right to vote, especially in an election.
Some of us weren't allowed to vote, just because we'd been out of the country for a while.
The referendum was - something, but to call it "democratic" is torturing the language. Nobody knew what the proposal was, because the question on the ballot was about nine orders of magnitude too vague and the actual "leave" proposal changed from speaker to speaker and from day to day (and I defy you to find even one of them that remotely resembled the final settlement). Team Leave lied with literally every single pronouncement (and to the best of my knowledge, they're still doing it). Team Remain ran a disastrous campaign, relying on the same elements of fear-and-conservatism that had done the trick in Scotland, but fatally impaired by both Tory and Corbynite backstabbing.
At the very least, there should have been a confirmatory referendum after the agreement was finally reached. Then at least people would have known what the question meant, and the leavers couldn't hide behind their chameleon descriptions.
> that is how democratic votes work.
Democracy also allows for changing a voted-upon course later, aka. reflects shifts in public opinion by regularly polling them through REPEATED and GUARANTEED elections, eg. in case it turns out that a prior decision was actually shite. That's why we have regular elections for parliaments, so we aren't stuck with bad decisions for a hundred years. This also ensures that people impacted far longer by a decision than the people making that decision (aka. people too young to vote), get a chance at correcting mistakes instead of having to live with them forever.
Now, how does this apply to this great "referendum", which was a one time decision, that the electorate has no direct say in when, or even if, it will be repeated?
And the answer is: It doesn't apply. One-time referendums, in which a simple majority, that doesn't even require an actual majority of voters, can change the economic, political and social course of a country for several decades, with no clear process to correct course, has as much to do with what we call "Democracy" as programming in Javascript has with kernel-hacking.
@Lis - I think it was far to say there was a lot of collective madness around this, which had been building for decades. I think for the matter to have been closed, the result needed to be overwhelmingly for Remain with the Leave vote being sub 10%. Agree the government and Remain campaign were over confident and under estimated why people might vote leave.
Fundamentally, David Cameron failed the country by thinking holding a referendum would lance the boil in the Conservative Party…
> Meanwhile there was plenty of EU disinformation. Don't forget that.
"Both sides"-ism.
While I've no doubt that, if pressed, you *would* be able to find some useful examples of misinformation from the pro-Remain camp- because it's inevitable there would have been at least some in a campaign of this size- let's not pretend that they would have even been in the same ballpark as the firehose of sustained lies and propaganda from Brexiteers.
> You should respect their views or declare that you do not believe in democracy.
You appear to be confusing having respect for someone's *right to choose*- which underpins democracy- with being expected to respect *them* for having made that choice.
Not at all- we're entitled to think what we like of other people, including yourself.
The Lib Dems shot themselves in the foot by jumping into bed with the Tories and then voting in favour of tuition fee rises, when one of their major manifesto pledges had been to oppose this. Even by politician standards this was so blatant that hardly anybody trusts anything they say now.
The fact that there is no mechanism to enact the renewed "will of the people" is the lack of democracy.
This!!
Tomorrow a lot of us get a chance to change our minds about votes cast a few years ago.
A one-off, irreversible decision shouldn't be treated as binding when it was presented as advisory and should require a good deal more than a simple majority.
Prior to the result not many people knew about the 'advisory' aspect, it certainly wasn't being mentioned by either side in the months of drivel that we had to endure so the vast majority of votes were cast by people expecting a final decision (like in every other vote). This resulted in probably the most contentious three years parliament has seen since the civil war.
I agree the requirement for a simple majority was not well thought through and having a 60%* target for major constitutional change would be far more sensible, however, the 1974 'do we stay in the EC' vote was also a simple majority because (I believe) that it used a modified version of the rules used for elections and anyway we'd joined the EC with only a parliamentary vote to accept the trade treaty.
Referendums across Europe to approve (or not) the EU becoming a a political entity during the 1990s would have rendered all of this unnecessary.
Tomorrow many of us have the opportunity to vote in safe, free and fair UK council elections, Please exercise that right.
* In this case for no other reason that the simple majority for leave would have given any UK govt. a really good stick to wave about in future negotiations - in the wider context we don't normally need constitutional change because it's based on Parliamentary acts & centuries of precedent with a few court rulings as garnish.
That is only because you don't like the outcome.
It works both ways. If you believe the decision needs to be revisited then the same applies when you do get the outcome you support. It may not be desirable but far too many only believe that Brexit and democracy apply to their view.
We do not have mandatory voting so all that is needed is a count of the votes case. If you don't vote then you have no part in the process. In terms of whether there should have been a specific percentage majority needed, well that also works both ways, the same applies to turnout. Both of these are used as arguments that the vote was somehow invalid or not democratic.
That is was ill-conceived is a completely different issue. That is down to the idiocy of the politicians. The same people that then ensured the chaos that followed until BJ became PM in 2019.
'...something can have majority support and be idiotic (look at religion).
In your infallible opinion.
OTOH, 'religion' is simply an umbrella term, which like a lot of umbrella terms covers a whole range, from 'simply barking' to 'profoundly sensible'.
But to those of us who prefer our opinions to be classed as 'certainties', it's so much easier just to stick with what we think we know.
And, yes, of course aspects of 'religion' can be classed as 'opinion'. The question is, is that 'opinion' worth having, or does it simply betray the ignorance and/or prejudice of the holder?
That's why for major constitutional changes you typically need a supermajority. This concept might be a bit alien to the UK where limited democracy based on first past the post has always been the order of the day (you're not telling me that the current, or previous, PMs were elected by a majority, are you?).
The correct response to a Brexit vote would be to examine its economic and social impact and use all this information to have a meaningful discussion inside the EU as to how that union was developing. Remember, the EU is the product of a "bait and switch" -- it started out life as an economic and customs union among nations that were culturally and economically similar but morphed into an expansive "United States of Europe" that incorporated all sorts of micro-nations, many culturally and economically at odds with the major players who saw the EU as a resource to exploit. (....and the union was completely lacking in recognizable democracy). Many British people were fed up with what they rightly saw as being taken for a ride (and for granted) but the result as pushed by UKIP and the like is a total screwup, its relegated the UK to not-qute-micro nation status.
And, of course, the UK government approved the change from trade & economic union to political pseudo-empire without a referendum. Supposedly because it wasn't the way we did things in Britain (according to John Major), more likely because all the polls showed 60+% opposition to the idea. That's when we should have had a referendum with a supermajority requirement.
A majority is a majority. That is what the referendum was for.
If you can call 37% of the electorate or 26% of the population a majority. In an advisory referendum. Which was then taken to mean the government must enact most extreme form of Brexit apart from leaving without any agreement at all. And Rees Mogg said the country must wait 50 years before deciding if it shat the bed and rolled around in it or not.
But do keep repeating zingers like "A majority is a majority". A small number of credulous people might even believe you.
The only number that matters is the count of voters who turn out on the day otherwise you must consider a non-vote as either yes or no, who decides where the 30-40% of non votes go?
How does your banana republic method translate to electing MPs when at every election only a handful ever get 50% of the electorate let alone 50% of the population.
Democracy is more than just counting bits of paper in boxes then enacting an extreme version of what was offered based on an extremely close vote. Let's learn from our Republic neighbour a bit about democracy.
Plus, those voting remain knew what they were voting for. Those voting leave, all wanted different things.
Ideally, what should have happened is to have had a vote first on what Brexit would mean. Put the various models (no deal, stay in custom union, etc) forward. Pick one of those in a vote. Then you have a binary choice between remain or the model previously voted for.
> Plus, those voting remain knew what they were voting for. Those voting leave, all wanted different things.
You should have attended one of the pre-Brexit hustings I did. Only two Leavers on the stage - a total xenophobic gammon and a young, well spoke chap who was planning to offshore his tech company due to EU regulations but was holding off to see what the referendum result was. On the other hand there were four or five Remain campaigners who started off well enough by attacking the more obvious Leave campaign fibs, but then turned on each other because they all had a different view of what remaining in the EU would mean. That ranged from "carry on as we are", through "liberalise and privatise more of the EU" and "a different (green) Europe is possible" to "we should wave all our previous vetoes and join the Euro/Schengen Area/etc". That was an unexpected but entertaining twist.
As was the anarchist who would normally have been a weird minority voice but in the resulting argumentative chaos "tear up your polling card as both side have it in for you anyway" seemed to make more sense than it normally would.
"............If you can call 37% of the electorate or 26% of the population a majority......"
I will say it again; if they do not vote, they do not count. Not voting is not an expression of a preference, it can only be taken as an indication that the non-voter has no preference either way.
This is how (and why) democracy actually works?
There were five different types of Brexit under the leave campaign (Norway/Switzerland, Turkey, DCFTA, Canada, WTO). How can it be called democracy if what people were voting for wasn't even clearly laid out before the vote? Check out the Fintan O'Toole article linked to above.
> Meanwhile there was plenty of EU disinformation.
Care to back that statement up with some evidence?
> You should respect their views or declare that you do not believe in democracy.
If the majority votes that 2+2=7, it's still 4, because reality has a stubborn tendency to not give a damn about peoples opinions. Neither does it mean that I have to respect the view of people who think 2+2 equals anything other than 4.
Democracy means exactly one thing: That majority decisions decide the course of action. That's it. That's all she wrote.
It doesn't mean that these decisions are correct, sensible, grounded in reality, adviseable or that anyone has to respect them.
Maybe the 28% that did not even bother to vote should turned up.
The analysis of the voting suggests that as age decreases so does turnout. Allegedly as age decreases, support for the EU increases.
Just blaming those who voted leave for the outcome is meaningless. People voted leave for a whole plethora of reasons, some genuine, some total fantasy. By the same token those who voted remain all did so under the assumption that nothing would change. With anything like this support for the status quo tends to be overshadowed by support for change unless you have 100% turnout. It is the very nature of the way anything like this works. Just blaming the Leave campaign also ignores the total shambles the Remain campaign ran. When the result looked iffy what did Remain do?
They started attacking Leave instead of promoting the positives.
We had companies writing to employees telling them how to vote.
Inevitably the Great British Public did what they have repeatedly done, the opposite of what has been asked.........
Equally the question was a simple In/Out, nothing on how "Out" would be achieved. What crippled Brexit and gave the UK the worse possible outcome was the fanatics at both ends of the EU & Political divide that blocked anything that was remotely a compromise.
The row is going to fester for years with endless blame as to who "caused" it, all of which is pointless. What is needed is politicians to get off their arses and realise that compromise is required. Being part of the EU as we were has been burnt, we cannot go back as the damage is pretty much irreparable. Also the outcome of joining the EU will be significantly different to what we left. That seriously winds me up however we have to be pragmatic. At the moment the quickest solution that fixes almost all of the EU issues if becoming part of the Single Market and Customs Union.
Unfortunately there appears to be no mainstream political support to do that, leaving the hard core Remain/Leave groups to ensure we continue with the worst possible solution.
Probably impossible, now that we are in CPTPP.
Why? Aren't we told that a great thing about the British parliament is future parliaments are not bound by previous decisions? So just pull out of CPTPP and back into the EU or the Single Market, if they'll have us.
Yes, Parliament can pull out of any treaty at any time with a single vote & also Yes, the EU will have us back in a flash, they want our money.
However I'll bet any money that the 'Rejoin' terms & conditions wouldn't be put to a referendum because 'we voted to rejoin' and we'll just have to take what we're given just like when 'we voted to leave'.
I don't really care which bunch* of politicos are stuffing my money into their pants - I want them to stop it and actually try and run the country with a long term plan to help normal people.
Politicians promises - for details look up Lies, Deceit & Duplicity.
*UK or European, Left, Right or Centre.
they want our money
They've got it anyway, it seems likely that one of the entry requirements will be if the UK is aware the EU is a political project (as it was in the 70s but somehow forgot by the 90s).
"Have you seen how we're sliding down the list of major economies?"
How are you measuring this? Because the answer seems to be, not very much.
In terms of GDP, we were 5th, after USA, China, Japan, Germany, and occasionally swapping places with France to 6th (though generally a little above, hence normally ranked 5th).
Now the UK is 6th having been overtaken by India; India, of course, having to overtake all of the EU countries (including France) other than Germany before it could overtake the UK.
The rise of India has nothing to do with Brexit.
A more interesting discussion would be on the mid-long term prospects of the EU vs CPTPP. My understanding is that the share of the global economy taken by the current EU nations is expected to reduce, whereas the share taken by the current CPTPP member states is expected to increase. Plus, the EU has little likely prospect of expanding to include significant/growing economies, while CPTPP is expected to expand to include a number of wealthy and economically strongly growing nations such as South Korea.
Sadly, I suspect any attempt to have a sensible discussion on this point would be swamped by 'Brexit Bad, M'kay?'
> if they'll have us.
That is one helluva big IF.
And even IF they let the UK back in, it will be with next to zero decision making power, no veto power, and certainly none of the many many many exceptions and special rules the UK enjoyed while still being a member.
Ironic coming from someone who'd previously bemoaned spin, beancounter ideology and chumism over technical competence from the current government when it suited you, yet you're now happy to see someone exemplifying the latter group "bugger off" because they don't agree with the populism-over-planning-driven Brexit?
Hauser insults the majority of the voters in this country in a referendum.
I’d like to hear what the majority of voters in this country in a referendum actually want. Currently there are a lot of Brexit supporters that amount to a swing factor, but I very much doubt it is the will of the majority. But this swing minority is enough to keep the politicians from talking about moving back toward the EU, despite the obvious negative consequences.
Those who would seek to deny the voters any more say are the ones doing the insulting, effectively denying further democracy because they have the position they want. Like the country voted for conservatives in the 2019 election and the conservative supporters saying, that’s it now, no more democracy.
Bookmakers and polls before the vote had remain ahead and this had the effect of motivating the leave vote, whilst many remainers were complacent believing they didn’t need to influence the outcome.
Scotland voted for remain, so did London, by an even greater majority than Scotland. Leave demographic was heavily weighted to those of poor educational achievement, and old folk who would not have to spend decades living with the mess. They didn’t give a shit what their own children and grandchildren wanted. Made a decision based on emotion and screw you kids, you can deal with it.
All in all, a lesson in how not to do democracy.
Actually, the only proof on these boards is that commentards here are predominantly Remainer, and a number of them swallowed the stereotype lies that have been bandied in the Remainer orientated media because it has suited their bigotted point of view to do so. The reality is that those stereotypes may apply to some Leavers, but they are not a typical reflection of Leavers, most of whom are intelligent and articulate enough to argue their case without needing to resort to foul and insulting language.
I'm sick of hearing variants of "poor feckless voters in the English provinces felt ignored by the "metropolitan elites" in London and had no choice but to use Brexit as a protest vote!" as a supposed excuse
I don't buy that they were ignorant of what they were doing or that was the entire reason. And if they cut off their noses to spite their faces by using the entire political and economic future of the UK as a political football protest vote over that complaint which- at the risk of stating the bleeding obvious- never even had anything to do with the EU, you can bet your life I'm holding them responsible for the consequences of their recklessness.
Scotland- in a similar position- managed not to do so and voted Remain, but got screwed over by the Leave vote elsewhere regardless. Any sympathy I'd have had due to the validity of the original complaint evaporated pretty much the instant they shafted the rest of us in its name.
Are you saying he isn't entitled to an opinion? As a founder of Acorn, which lead to ARM I think he is worth listening to.
It was also the very slim majority of voters who actually voted as well. Not all voters. Unfortunately, many voters at the time seemed to believe that the result was going to definitely be remain, so didn't bother voting. These people were part of the stupidity. As were those who voted leave just because they didn't like Cameron.
Hold another referendum now after people have seen the idiocy in action, I am pretty sure it would be a different result.
I translate this as "our friends in the city aren't making enough money from genuinely profitable businesses, therefore we have to create a new class of too-big-to-fail unicorns that the government will tacitly undertake to bail out in the likely event of their catastrophic failure".
In other words, we've screwed everything up, so now in an act of desperation we're going to allow a complete free for all, in the hope of bringing in lots more activity. And the problem that this will see lots of malfeasance resulting in investors left penniless? That's just an unfortunate risk that's inevitable as we try and win yet another race to the bottom.
It may not be high quality any more, but it will be cheap : it's the Poundland strategy steadily being applied to the whole economy, a really stupid road to choose to head down.
Ironic as race-to-the-bottom deregulation was always the stated goal of the hard-right-wing laissez-faire free-market ideologues who were pushing for Brexit in the first place.
Of course, with the Liz Truss fiasco, we already saw what happened when the Brexiteer-dominated Conservative party placed ideological extremism above basic competence.
Hardly surprising that the "solution" to their various foulings of the bed should be more of the same.
> It is a matter of statistical truth that 50% of UK voters are of below average intelligence.
Is this true, or are you just extrapolating from the fact that the average IQ in the UK is 100?
Assuming that by average we mean the mean value, it's quite possible for more than 50% of a population to have above-average intelligence, if (for example) that population counts among its number many people like VoiceOfTruth.
It is a matter of statistical truth that 50% of UK voters are of below average intelligence.
Ugh, this again. This is true (by definition) if by "average" you mean "median" and the dataset is large enough. If you mean one of the other sorts of average, it may very well be false. For "mode" it's false for all but degenerate distributions. For "mean" it's true only for certain distributions which may well not hold for whatever dataset you're characterizing.
Let's suppose we use IQ as our metric of intelligence (which is bullshit, but we need some numeric metric in order to have any kind of average). In a room containing four people, with IQs of 100, 100, 100, and 10, what's the mean, and what percentage are below it? (Note that your "statistical truth" also fails here for mode and even median, but of course the dataset of "all UK voters" is large enough that the median will converge at the 50% mark.)
Is this still the same "the UK holds all the cards and the EU will be so desparate for a deal that they'll hand us everything we want on a plate" line that underpinned the entire Brexit campaign?
Oddly, we're still waiting for that to happen.
Anyone else find it strange that, post-Brexit, the Leave camp shifted towards accusing the EU of being vindictive and petty and seeking to punish the UK for leaving?
Even if that were true, they're effectively admitting that the EU is the one with the power to (supposedly) bully the UK in the first place. And that the entire basis of their "argument" for Brexit above- which depended upon things being the complete opposite way around- was wrong.
I mean, it's not as if anyone with half a brain couldn't already have told you that this was obviously delusional, puffed-up, John Bull fantasist nonsense back in 2016.
"the UK holds all the cards and the EU will be so desparate for a deal that they'll hand us everything we want on a plate" line that underpinned the entire Brexit campaign?
Only in the minds of the remainers who simply don't understand the political and economic rationale for Brexit.
post-Brexit, the Leave camp shifted towards accusing the EU of being vindictive and petty and seeking to punish the UK for leaving?
Rubbish, that was being pointed out right from the start of the negotiations.
Rubbish, that was being pointed out right from the start of the negotiations.
I should have said "post-Brexit-vote", but that's neither here nor there. The claim that the EU is in a position to supposedly behave like that is an admission that the "UK holds all the cards" line was wrong, regardless.
".......Is this still the same "the UK holds all the cards and the EU will be so desparate for a deal that they'll hand us everything we want on a plate" line that underpinned the entire Brexit campaign?
Oddly, we're still waiting for that to happen....."
Oddly, that didn't happen because the politicians kow-towed to Remainers screaming "we must not leave without a deal" and tied the UK negotiators hands behind their backs. We went from "No deal is better than a bad deal" to "a deal at any price", which promptly erased any ability to lever/negotiate a reasonable deal. The EU side then dug their heels in a said "this is the deal, take it or leave it". The final deal (a very bad deal indeed) is the direct result of that.
Compounded by the fact that a combination of useless Ministers and Civil Service inertia and obstruction have mean't that a good proportion of the import checks and tariffs which were agreed in the deal are still not being carried out on imports to the UK from EU countries, whilst the EU has fully imposed the full gamut of agreed restrictions and charges on exports from the UK to the EU.
If it were all a work of fiction, it would be difficult to decide whether it is a comedy or a tragedy :(
"............Mainly by people who now know what the 50% of below average intelligence voters can be persuaded to go for............."
Here is a large part of the reason why Remain lost - you do not win voters over by constantly insulting them. Those who do so run the risk of calling their own intelligence into question, something that the mouthpieces of 'Remain' did repeatedly in 2016.
Re-entering Europe will not 'fix' Brexit, but make things significantly worse.
We'd not return under remotely the same terms, and politically it would further damage our reputation as an independent voice within the G7/G20 to make it explicit that we are dependent on the largess of Europe to survive.
Not only that, but it's a particularly daft fantasy that, even as a member, the other European financial hubs aren't actively competing with London. Throughout our membership there were moves to 'even out' the power spread between London, Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam - and not one single one of those changes was to the benefit of London. As a 'failed leaver', and given the changes across Europe since we left, it's pretty clear that we would not return with our existing competitive advantages intact.
Sadly, our political leaders have been forced by the continued idiocy from 'sore leavers' to do as little as possible about Brexit - keeping the whole country in limbo is perhaps the weakest decision they could make.
So the FCA wants to reestablish London as a centre for companies to list by removing regulations that protect the investors in those companies and allow genuine, stable, risk-aware, long-lived companies to thrive without unfair competition from fly-by-night entities that have no business plan except transferring money from cheated customers, well-run competitors and suppliers and their conned investors into their real owners pockets.
Why?
There are already plenty of locations for these fake companies. They are well established and have a price list for bribes to regulators, police, etc. I don't think London is going to be able to complete very well with the well-known tax and listing havens. So it will destroy the value of a London listing for real companies, bankrupt British investment funds and private investors, and not even deliver a successful crooked business because foreign crooks do it better!!
All I can see happening is loads of investors deciding the new risk and reduced control and transparency, with nonexistent additional reward isn't worth it and moving the money out to other markets.
Increasing the underperformance of it as a whole in the short term seems completely and utterly counterproductive to me.
And if you're really planning long-long-long term there must be better moves than this that are less damaging in the short and medium.
Maybe I am just cynical.
Given the nature of what Softbank are doing with Arm ie, make money, they are going to make the decision on where to list based on the amount of money.
The hysteria of these Tech-based flotations always favours the US when Venture Capital and Hedge Fund managers get into a total frenzy.
Arm was never going to be listed in London as that is not where the hysteria is.
In terms of Brexit, this is just making a noise for no reason. If they had listed in the EU then I would have believed it. They have not, it is the US so is Brexit is a complete red herring.
"While the UK has been Europe's biggest financial hub for many years, listings on the local exchange have reduced by 40 percent since 2008, the FCA noted".
This is being presented as being Brexit related, but the Brexit vote was in 2016, and the referendum was only promised in the 2015 election.
Why are we being given figures relative to 2008? What would the % reduction be if presented relative to 2016?
Being cynical, my first thought is that there is something (non-brexit related) that we are not being told about / that we are not supposed to find out about.
....that Brexit's epic fail would lead to a 'race to the bottom' in standards. This is presumably part of that.
Brexit was an act of economic suicide, and suicide is a one way street. The UK relegated itself. Brexit will go down in textbooks as one of the dumbest things a nation has ever done when, steeped in prejudice, ignorance and arrogance, it followed a populist liar and marched off a cliff.
.. or Europe either by first choice. The US has been the first choice for years (hence the reference to 2008 - quite a while before Brexit)
As usual, the same people who complain about the lazy assumptions made over Brexit go on to make lazy assumptions over financial regulation and the global investment environment.
Make the wrong diagnosis, and you end up picking the wrong treatment.
Our government and financial institutions are singularly unable to adjust their behaviour, captured by lobby groups and vested corporate interests that have absolutely no interest in tech companies and their associated risks. To be fair, the rest of Europe is little better - there is a real reason that Amazon, Google, Facebook, Oracle, NVIDIA, Apple, AMD... (it's a long list) are all American companies.
But we're not about to have a sensible conversation here, because someone said the B word and that completely overrides any real insight whilst everyone argues over whether it was good or bad, or bad, or worse. Deckchairs, Titanic...
... we're arguing over a company that was sold to Softbank, a Japanese corporation, that has since had a disaster in China and attempted to sell the company outright to Nvidia, an American Multinational.
The point for worrying about how British it should be passed a few years ago.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
