[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by Rudernst

Europe is not laughing, we were horrified, now a little sad, but life goes on.

What the Brits fail to grasp:
The EU was 27 member states and will be 26.
Many of these have very little commercial interaction with UK and could not care less if UK is an EU member or not !!
In fact, some of these countries are quite aware of the fact that the shift in EU voting rights following the Brexit works in their interest. To spell it out: Brexit is quite fine by them.

The countries that do profit from trade with UK, have not enough votes to swing this.

Germany was - behind the scenes - UKs strongest ally in the inter-EU discussions (because we had the most to lose). But - even in this thread - Germany got a lot of flak (remember the Nazi/war allusions even here in this thread). Well, really really clever to let rip against Your logical and most powerful ally and **** them off.

THESE are the reasons why the EU can take such a hard stance in the negotiations. 26 European states are more unified on the Brexit issue than the British people. THAT is quite fascinating. Governments representing more than 400 million Europeans can agree on something. One governement and one parliament representing 65 million Brits can not agree on much. Food for thought, isnt it ?

The UK economy accounts for roughly 15 % of the EU BIP.
Not nice to lose that, but not a desaster either.
Most of the damage of losing UK trade will be felt in Germany, and we are acutely aware of this, but currently we can afford this, there is 0 unemployment at the moment, who cares if we get one year of zero growth (this is how small the Brexit effect will be in Germany, who is the worst affected)
Again this is the reason why EU stands so unified.
Apart from Germany, nobody will really suffer

One can argue that the timing of Brexit is very bad for the UK position, in times of relative prosperity one can afford to loose a little business.
Would have been different before a crisis background where there was nothing to lose.

UK, on the other hand, does half of its trade with EU.
and UK will have to shoulder any loss of that alone, whereas in the EU it gets diluted amoug 26.

This is, why all talk of "they need us more that we need them" is plain wrong and delusional.
The UK negotiating position always was very bad (one against many).
UK managed to make it far worse than i imagined, but thats another story.

Following THIS thread here has made ME a staunch Brexiteer.
A nation as divided as the UK is on the issue of EU membership has no place in the union and no benefit to offer.
For a while Brexit was unthinkble but Europeans are starting to realise that things will never to back to the status quo ante anyway with UK, not in this generation, so Brexit is inevitable.

Seeing how divided the British are, my preferred option is a no deal Brexit.

RuE

I think you need to re run your numbers. The UK is a net contributor so even if Rumania can do without the trade it can't do without the money.