I'm staying for now. Don't want to unnecessarily disrupt my family. But if leaving is what's best for them, I'll be out of the door and won't look back.

I know a few who have moved on too. Not many, but time will tell.

Are they truly leaving, actually making plans and the like or did they just say they were going to leave because I heard countless friends talk of leaving for Canada if Trump won and not a damn one did.

I think Brexit is probably the best decision Britain has made since WWII second only to electing Thatcher.

I would have imagined that techies would appreciate this the most. The E.U is a bureaucratic, insatiable behemoth. Too many regulations and I would like to think that this is something techies have a great disdain for. I mean, just look at how unfairly the E.U has treated co.s like Google, Microsoft and Uber - these companies have deliberately been attacked by the E.U using antitrust laws among other regulations.

How has this helped the situation? I'd say, in no way. Stopping American companies from thriving in the E.U won't help the situation. Instead, learning from previous mistakes and correctly anticipating/predicting the next wave would be greatly rewarded by market forces and this would be the best thing for individual, sovereign European countries.

Please watch this video about the insane E.U laws I've mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44YTTyQKyJQ

> The elites in Britain basically didn't seem to care (and perhaps encouraged) the importation of labor to drive down market prices of labor both for untrained as well as trained labor

And you have hit on a basic truth there. A fair part of the vote to leave was because of economic hardship. A fair part of that is because of the perception of "people coming over here and working for less". But every employee has an employer. Government and business can do a lot to set industrial policy, starting with funding for education (for doctors, nurses etc), and minimum wage levels (for field & factory workers).

Emphasis on "can". They didn't.

The EU have been consistently clear that those freedoms are "all or nothing" - you don't e.g. get free trade without free movement, end of.

I would be delighted if England gets the "all" deal like Norway, but that's unlikely since to the Leavers that's a "why bother" Brexit In Name Only.

Both sides have said we won't be in the single market.

True, but May has (repeatedly) threatened to go out 'without a deal' if she can't get terms she likes.

The UK has to somehow bluff its way into a negotiation position and I fail to see how all these statements and laws are compatible with each other.

A lot has changed in Poland trough past couple years especially for developers. You can now get decent salary in major cities. It's still not as good as in UK where you can have decent salary in cities with population of 30k+ but it's getting there, plus there is always Germany witch is close enough.

Quick story. I am working for small UK holidays company located in one of the biggest IT hubs outside of London. Our whole dev team is made up from non UK, EU citizens. Recently we had openings for mid backend dev and junior/mid frontend dev roles and only about 20% of CVs was from native UK citizens (mostly, highly under qualified even for junior role/couldn't pass FizzBuzz). Rest of candidates was mix of EU, visas and double citizenship and we ended up offering both positions to two EU citizens.

If UK government will ban employment of people from outside of UK or make it difficult or expensive then small companies like ours will not be able to operate.

I see that developers are looking more and more for jobs outside of the UK. Recruiters and EU employers also can see what is going on and I'm receiving more job offers from them, offering help with relocation outside of UK.

There are some decent companies on the tech area. Poland is one of the "cheap" EU countries with decent workers, that's a good reason to have a big office there.

I have not made fun of everyone, I only pointed out the perennial "flee to Canada" claims in light of the most recent "bad thing."

And how many were hired in the previous December? When it comes to The Guardian, I find that numbers can be very "flexible" when the narrative demands it.

I actually would be one of the developers to come in. As bad as your problems are in the UK, the USA are far worse especially with your browser history effectively being able to be sold to the highest bidder[0]

Not mentioned([0]) is the fact that hiring and recruiting companies will be able to [ab]use this data

[0] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/your-browser-history-could-...

> I hope my outreach has a positive net impact on the HN community.

And of course on your wallet.

That's the UK politicians position, not mine. They could have easily stopped last week. "brexit means brexit" and "no deal we leave anyway". Blustering tough talk but who it is supposed to impress I'm not sure about. The self-destructive element is on the UK side and the sooner they realize it the better.

Jerf, you're a smart fellow, this comment is not at your usual level. The EU exists solely to reduce the chances of war, further commerce and to reduce the profile of nation states.

The 'take it or leave it' attitude has to do with the founding principles of the EU, if a club has a founding principle and you do not wish to subscribe to it then by definition you can't be part of the club. Putting the founding principles of the EU on the chopping block to deal with the internals of a single country is not acceptable.

In such a situation the single country then has the option to either resolve their internal conflict or to leave the union.

This has nothing to do with over-centralized government or the Trump administration, it's simply the reason why the EU exists in the first place.

The UK already has a special position within that EU, amplified by virtue of being an island. The illusion that the UK can 'go it alone' is still very strong but I suspect that when the rubber meets the road there will be some pretty harsh and quick realizations that the promised utopia is not going to arrive. The brunt of the impact will land squarely in the demographic that voted 'brexit' so at least there is some justice but it will also be felt elsewhere in the country.

The UK's days as an independent world power were counted in the 60's. Being part of the EU was good for the UK and good for the EU. A UK that will be further diminished when and if the Scots leave the union.

All in all this is a very bad decision made by the UK and the UK alone, to ask the EU to put their founding principles on hold for the UK was going to have a very predictable outcome.

The irony of all this is that now the UK will go into a very uncertain phase the best exit of which is to rejoin the EU at a later date, but then it will be without any privileged position, likely without their own coin and likely with a much worse negotiation position than they had so far.

Please do not point your finger at the EU about this debacle, it belongs solely to the UK and specifically to BJ, Farage et al. If you wish to apportion blame they should be your primary targets, and May you secondary for going further down a road that need not be taken at all.

  The EU chose to not make solutions available and stuck it into a "take it or leave it" basket.

What do you suggest the EU should have done? Free movement is one of the cornerstones of the EU and pretty much not up for negootiation. This includes associated countries like Norway or Switzerland.

So I'm really curious: What, do you suggest, should the EU have offered?

Britain didn't take advantage of the tools it had available. Britain could have kicked out people who stayed more than 6 months without a job, for example. But they didn't.

Their education mostly or totally happened at the expense of other states and the way they're being treated means that they don't get adequate recognition for their work, so yes, exploited.

They can go to work in other, more civilized, western democracies where they're not made to feel unwelcome. Standards of living in the UK aren't that special and these people are there because they're tied to specific research projects, not because it's a great country.

Perhaps GP is referring to Marx's theory of exploitation in which surplus value is appropriated from the workers. Many people, especially in jobs which require a lot of equipment (e.g physics, theoretical physics) can't enter self-employment or become bourgeoisie themselves, in which case they are almost forced by societal structure to stay as a member of the proletariat and thusly paid wages for labour-time during which they perform extra labour which is collected as surplus.

That's a reasonable take on what GP was referring to, though I'm not sure if that's it. Exploitation of human capital is everywhere, whether in Britain or China. The standards of living and 'civilised Western democracy' are meaningless and irrelevant to the theory of exploitation.

The political climate in the UK is currently leaning towards being hostile towards benefits being paid to EU citizens.

Why should I pay taxes for benefits that I can't use?

I'll go somewhere where I'm wanted.

It seems they are reconsidering, so no, not voluntary. They voluntarily started worked, now things have changed and they do not think that was a good decision.

Although this particular instance is distasteful, as a general rule do you not think individuals should be free to choose who to rent their properties to?

What's the alternative; forcing him to accept tenants he doesn't want?

It's actually very simple and let me be extremely clear here, this is NOT about picking someone's rights over others, this is about the magnitude of injustice. Here's a list of people incriminated for discrimination by month for violating fair housing rules. In February for example Oklahoma landlords were found discriminating against Veterans with disabilities. Laws are written to protect the most vulnerable FIRST, not the most protected first. It's absolutely unconscionable to protect for example landlords over our veterans.

https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/fa...

Well, once that's done as far as I understand it there is no way back, agreement or not, the clock ticks and after 2 years are up the separation is a fact. If people are hoping for a collapse of the Brexit after that point they are delusional, the only way this would reverse after that is by a new application, and I really don't see that ending up with the UK being in a better position after such a process than they have today. All kinds of exceptions were made to keep the UK in the EU, those are extremely unlikely to be granted a second time, especially not if the UK falls apart and Scotland ends up remaining.

The British prime minister is now making a strong play to pull Scotland out of the EU against their wishes, we'll likely see a race between the 'brexit' negotiators on the UK side and the Scottish 'remain' camp who will try to stay in without first exiting.

This is understandable from all points of view, the British government would rather like to negotiate from a slightly stronger position and the for the Scots because they were told they had to renegotiate their access to the single market if they seceded from the UK. Now that the British wish to exit that point has become moot which will most likely swing the referendum towards the Scots exiting the union. They probably feel quite cheated in Scotland.

  The UK could be officially outside of the EU but to the banks, universities and import-export companies EU cooperation is as much of a reality as ever.

Actually in the states that can still be discrimination and you can still be charged. Obviously it would be judged by a jury of your peers, however people have been successfully charged with discrimination in the states even when they defended themselves with your exact argument. Ethical concerns aside your advice is extremely legally dangerous.

Then the EU apparently wrote into its constitutional cornerstone something that was not possible to manifest in the real world, and as a result it is breaking up, at least a little now and possibly still more in the future. Again, at least it is doing so without bloodshed.

The EU has no ontological right to exist. It is not an immutable fact of the universe. It is not rationally or logically valid to reason from "The EU requires this attribute for it to exist as I envision it" to "This attribute must be attainable at a reasonable price." or any variant on that.

I take a historical view on these things. Things are always changing. There exists no polity in history that only grew and never shrank, excepting only those polities that are new enough to not have shrunk yet.

I'm actually sort of becoming something of a secessionist. Not pro-Brexit or pro-Calexit or pro-any-particular-secession, but just generally in favor of the idea that since polities are inevitably going to shrink at some point in the future, it is preferable to make sure that such processes are as easy and as bloodless as possible. People shouldn't need to die by the thousands or millions for something so predictable. I am coming to believe it is a mistake to ever think that one can "permanently" bind a smaller polity into a larger one. And I believe the US has the much greater problem here! The US has no established mechanism for leaving (though a Constitutional amendment could make it possible), and a big ol' Civil War that says it's not possible in the bloodiest possible way. To the extent that we are having similar issues arise in the US, we have no peaceful mechanism for dealing with it.

More interestingly cross border co-operation between engineering companies will become harder. For example a part for the BMW Mini crosses the channel 3 times before being fitted https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/03/brexit-uk-c...

> The only bargaining chip that England really has is the defense industry and a pretty strong, experienced army, which helps provide security for Europe. Else then that? Not much.

And that's under NATO right now, so the EU does not lose much in that respect.

Same publication, today: http://uk.businessinsider.com/eu-brexit-resolution-article-5...

> They'll only let us back in the club if they choose to from now on

I think this is basically correct. I also think that if, before the 2 years are up, the UK changes its mind about Brexit, the EU would be very likely to allow its membership to continue.

> and then we can try Johnson, Farage and the other scumbag liars for treason.

I hope you're kidding here. Trying people who won the previous election for treason is the mark of the worst dictatorships. Please don't.

>and then we can try Johnson, Farage and the other scumbag liars for treason.

And/or a serious rethink about the value of a free press that is allowed to act as News Corp. (The Sun, The Times) and Daily Mail and General Trust (Daily Mail, Metro, and previously the Evening Standard) have.

> They would be free to rejoin. Euro, schengen, and metricification are mandatory now though.

Well, in principle they could get unanimous consent on concessions again, they just don't come pre-baked.

It is unclear whether it can be revoked, yes. It is also unclear whether it cannot be revoked. It's simply unclear.

You're misrepresenting the realities of A50 throughout this thread Jacques. The court case in question operated under the premise of the Government's position that A50 is irrevocable. Whether it is or not was not judged, it was just presumed to be irrevocable for the purpose of the case. That's a very important distinction.

A50 is revocable unless a court says it is not and even if questioned, the courts would more than likely rule that it can be revoked. The official position of the European Parliament is that is revocable (1), subject to some conditions that are set out (the UK can't use it as a negotiating tool essentially) and this is also the position of many important EU officials. Piet Eeckhout (EU law professor) recently remarked that it would be unconstitutional to deny the UK a right to revoke A50 should it wish to exercise that option.

It's also a mistake to judge A50 purely in legal terms, political reality is more important in this case. A point made abundantly clear by lawyers reporting on Brexit.

If there's a will on both sides to abandon Brexit, it will be done. For that to happen the political landscape and mood will have to reshape itself. Such a thing is not impossible given that confidence in the economy is trending down and people are becoming more pessimistic (2) and because the many complications that lie ahead will be coming to the foreground. If the choice before Parliament is between a disorderly exit without a deal in 2019 with very clear negative repercussions, it would be unthinkable if they do not intervene.

1) https://www.scribd.com/document/343381933/Draft-Resolution 2) https://www.markiteconomics.com/Survey/PressRelease.mvc/c36c...

It's possible they could extend negotiations. As long as the EU and UK parliaments both agree to do that, they can do whatever they like, as they can just change the law to support whatever they're trying to do.

Whether there will be enough public support to do that is another matter entirely. Perhaps there will be another general election or referendum which will muddy the waters.

If the last year has taught us anything, it's that the world is a very uncertain place right now, and all predictions are worthless.

Well, that may be how the UK sees it but I can pretty much guarantee that that is not how the rest of the EU will see things. The automatic end to the negotiations and finalization after two years is currently the law, it would probably be best to go on the assumption that that's exactly how it will play out. There is some sense on the UK side that the UK will come out of the negotiations in a better position than what they have right now in the EU, but the European side is adamant that no matter what the UK will not come out of this better than when they were a part of the EU, and this makes good sense (otherwise, why would any nation remain part of the bloc).

Also, the UK has just handed the EU all their strong cards in the negotiations, and if the Scots exit the union that position will get weaker still.

Keep in mind that the exceptional situation the UK has (had?) in the EU was always an annoyance to other member states but was tolerated in order to keep the UK in the EU. If the UK falls apart and Scotland re-joins (or even remains) then the UK negotiation position with respect to those exceptions has evaporated, something that would definitely be appreciated in other EU countries.

Other general elections of referenda will not muddy the waters from an EU perspective, the deed is done, any regret will now take the form of a re-application, which will likely include the UK giving up their own currency, becoming a part of the Schengen area and getting rid of all the exceptions that were made for the UK.

This was a dumb move if there ever was one, such major decisions should require a supermajority, not a simple majority and May did a huge dis-service to the UK just now. But by the time the chickens come home to roost she'll be enjoying her pension sitting under banner reading 'I gave the people of England what they asked for, not what they needed'.

> As long as the EU and UK parliaments both agree to do that

Under Article 50(3), extensions can only be granted by unanimity in the Council. The EP and Council both need to agree to a final agreement, but the EP doesn't seem to be involved in extensions at all.

http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty/treaty-on...

> I've been paying a very close eye to this so I'm confused, what sources are authoritatively stating that A50 can't be revoked?

So have I. The only thing that has changed as far as I can see is that in the last couple of hours (and that's something I wasn't aware of when this thread came up) a number of politicians have said that they will propose a way for article 50 to be formally withdrawable. Up to now the status is that once article 50 has been triggered after 2 years, deal or no deal the separation is a fact and that there is no way back from that.

Any kind of suggestion that things are different ignores the actual text of article 50. The waters have been muddied a bit by the original author saying (but the bill not stating) that he meant for it to be withdrawable but I find that claim dubious, the only reason article 50 was drawn up in the first place was to allow for a way to exit the EU that nobody ever figured would be triggered at all.

Brexit took a lot of people (including the 'leave' camp) by surprise.

> And the European Parliament's official stated position is that it is revokable. And even if it wasn't the stated position, the UK would still be able to argue it on legal grounds.

Yes, they say that now. But that wasn't their position so far and these things have been made fairly clear. Again, my suspicion is that the impression so far was that the UK would not go so far as to actually trigger article 50, now that that has been done there is a substantial moving of the goalposts in order to allow the UK a way out. How they use that will be a big factor in whether or not the unanimous vote required to allow the UK to do so will be cast.

> I don't think healing would be the needed element, rather it would be the overriding desire to avoid further division and pain.

Judging by the comment sections of the various UK publications that desire is a long way off.

> Given how far positions have changed in a year, it would be terribly unwise to underestimate the degree to which the landscape can change in the next 2 years.

But they've gotten worse, not better, if this trend continues there is no way things will work out in favor of remain.

> Pre-referendum leave voters were optimistic about the economic future. That's trending down.

This is not my impression. My impression is that leave voters tend to downplay the economical impact of this and somehow believe that the UK as an independent entity will do a lot better because of 'all the money that goes to the EU'. Check out the comment threads under some of the articles linked here.

I suspect that thinking that people will come to their senses is one of the reasons the brexit vote happened the way it did in the first place.

> Pre-referendum nobody was factoring in a Trump presidency and how it might affect the UK's place in the world.

This seems to have emboldened the leave camp rather than weakened it.

In fact, there is something to say for Trump thanking his presidency to a similar emboldening of the pro Trump camp on the other side of the Atlantic. If brexit can happen anything can happen.

> Pre-referendum the vast majority of MPs in Parliament were pro-remain, something which was not reflected in post-referendum votes in Parliament (which is to say attitudes shifted and can shift again).

That's why there was a referendum in the first place. If it had been up to the MPs this would have never happened, they could see the economic impact a lot clearer than what you might be able to write on the side of a bus.

> To me the most significant repercussion of A50 having now been initiated is the fact that all those MPs that felt bound to submit to a plebiscite vote now may feel free again to act with the national interest in mind, given that they can say that they have dutifully observed the will of the electorate. In other words, the power of the referendum vote diminishes by the day.

That's wishful thinking. The referendum should never have been kept in the first place, now that it has been kept and a prime minister has made steps to withdraw the UK out of the EU they should start planning on how to run the country as an entity independently from the EU, anything less would be (another instance of) dereliction of duty. They were free to observe and to ignore the will of electorate in the past. That they did not do so has nothing to do with what's good for the UK or for their electorate, it only has to do with their own re-election.

The question then becomes: how fast will the economic situation deteriorate prior to an actual withdrawal, the more the better to illustrate what is to come after and maybe that will get people to realize this isn't all fun and games. But for now the 'wait-and-see' approach to this probably means that even though everybody will have a play-book on how to deal with the post brexit situation the majority of the parties will wait until very late in the process to move their assets and operations out of the UK, which will go a long way towards masking any of the real effects.

Of course the 'brexit' camp will paint that as fearmongering.

> Imagine if one or two major factories close down in leave areas, or if investment is shrunk down in light of Brexit with major job losses as a result.

Yes, it will. But until things are looking un-avoidable this will not happen. And by the time it is un-avoidable it is by definition too late. And when they do move it won't be just two major factories, it will be a whole slew of them in the space of a few months at the end of 2018 or thereabouts, for those that can move in two years. For others it may be later but at significantly higher costs (Nissan and BMW for instance).

> This could easily swing public opinion.

Public opinion is a dangerous thing to count on, that much should be clear from this whole exercise.

> With the cost of living going up, this next 2 years is going to be a true pressure cooker for the Government.

Yes. The problem I have with all this is that this triggering of article 50 should not have happened. That's a dangerous line to cross which puts the direction of the play in the hands of others. It is the beginning of the slide down and where that slide will end is anybody's guess. It's a bit like the Trump administration (forgive me, the UK has a much better functioning government than the United States at the moment but I think there are some parallels): making bold moves looks impressive because there is a lot of action, but longer term effects are far more important than the short term impression. Triggering article 50 to pander to the 'brexit' camp ('the will of the electorate') puts the UK in a very awkward position, if not followed through it allows the other side of the negotiation table to strengthen their position by simply waiting.

It also raises the expectations in the leave camp that brexit will actually happen.

Taking that away again could get ugly very quickly.

In order of preference: don't do that referendum, don't trigger article 50, don't exit the EU.

So we're one step closer to an actual exit, not one step closer to having this mess resolved in a way where all parties involved understand which side their bread is buttered on.

Added afterwards: In my opinion the whole brexit thing is powered by a yearning for things past, the time when the UK was an independent world power. So now a bunch of politicians (Johnson, Farage and others) have decided that they would rather be a big fish in a small pond than a medium sized fish in a much bigger pond. What they don't seem to realize is that on the world stage the UK really doesn't move the needle any more and that the strength of the EU lies in its unity and that the UK already had one of the best deals possible. These politicians will end up getting what they want and the 'leave' voters won't know how bad things really are until it is too late, but until then will be stuck in their convictions.

One thing you can be 100% sure of: any effects of brexit felt prior to the actual thing will in that camp be determined to be the fault of the EU, never the fault of the brexit voters.