Plan for a very hard Brexit, German firms told

[Mordac]

"Strong and stable" or "clueless and Marxist"?

Since "none of the above" isn't an option, weak and unstable it is.

[Platypus]

bob,

part of the EU's raison de etre is redistribution of wealth from the rich countries to the poor countries to bring everybody to the same level and they have been very successful at that

Keep the poor countries on-side with bribes. Keep the value of the Euro lower thanks to the poorer countries being in. Boost Germany and France in the process through cheaper exports. The plan is clearly working very well.... for them.

In retrospect, maybe we should have joined the Euro so that we'd have benefitted too.

[chopper]

So why would the UK not just slap a 10% tariff on goods from the EU? (or Germany)?

Seems fair to me?

WTO rules, innit. You have to have a tariff on 'cars', you can't have different tariffs for 'EU cars' and 'Everyone else's cars', and those old farts who bang on about WTO rules really have no idea what that actually means.

I mean, hahaha, they actually don't realise the WTO is just a bunch of supra-national rules and restrictions on global trade. These are the same people who think the Bombardier C-Series thing is a US-UK dispute, and not a US-Canada dispute and a load of US protectionism for Boeing.