By the time this edition of Asian Voice drops on our doormats, the supreme court judges will have delivered their ruling (24 January) whether the prime minister could trigger article 50 and start the ball rolling towards the process of leaving the European Union (EU) without the parliament’s assent.
We await with awaited breath what the ruling would be and whether the British PM can start the talks of leaving the EU regardless of what that decision would be. This process of negotiations will take months to fianalise and the European Union’s Jean Claude Juncker has already commented that the Brexit talks will be “very very very” difficult.
While this is going on, many major banks are making contingency plans to move thousands of their staff and jobs to Paris. HSBC and UBS have already announcesd that jobs will move from London. HSBC have said that 1000 jobs will relocate to Paris and UBS have also made similar annoucements. Therefore what is UK’s loss will be Paris’ gain.
One wonders how would all this affect Britain’s economy as most of our income is generated by the London’s square mile of financial institutiuons. We are not an agricultural country. Most of our food is imported from abroad. We are no longer the manufacturer of goods as cheaper goods are produced by China and other Asian countries. Therefore, we rely on our financial institutions to generate the income. This would probably suffer on our Brexit from the EU.
Dinesh Sheth
Newbury Park, Ilford
