worth highlighting (again) that there is no credible alternative to hard brexit causing massive costs for businesses that will be passed onto UK consumers. 1/
and before you say "but it will cost the EU too", for the vast majority of exporters their EU customers will tell them to swallow the costs / reduce their prices so that the EU customer is not impacted. UK exporters lose profit margin 2/
and the reason this will happen is the EU customers will have a choice of 27 other countries to buy from WITHOUT any hassle. for UK customers buying from the EU, they will not be able to push the costs onto their suppliers because the UK customer has less alternative suppliers 3/
(there are exceptions to this but UK suppliers with patent protected products or sufficient past investment to produce at lower cost than all competitors, are few and far between) 4/
None of this is going to happen immediately of course - you don't switch your supply base overnight, but you can already see evidence that contracts are not being renewed or suppliers are not winning replacement business, and this will just increase over time. 5/
there will also be a few winners - suppliers in the UK who will win business from EU suppliers for UK customers - but i wouldn't expect their to be too many of those. in fact it's more likely that our desperate need for trade deals will accelerate off-shoring to the far east 6/
and this is the really depressing thing. Everyone who works in manufacturing or import/export knows this to be true. they know the huge cost of hard Brexit. but this message is just not hitting the media who are obsessing with political gossip on which minister will resign... 7/
i've worked in manufacturing for many years so i'm focussed on that. but i've yet to hear anybody working in any other segment say anything positive about Brexit. the best i've heard is "we don't think we'll be too badly impacted" 8/
i'm still waiting for someone to give me a concrete example of how this country will be better off after a hard Brexit? anyone? hallo.... ? end rant/
