I realize this is a Typhoon topic, but to make just one more point on the UK F-35 – will AARGM-ER fit inside the smaller F-35B bays? Seems annoying to compromise stealth by external carriage in the one mission where the capability is perhaps most relevant!
AARGM-ER will yes, but not current AARGM (wingspan too big – 1.1m)
There are plenty of Eurosceptics in the EU parliament, although many of them still support EU membership as they see it as the ‘lesser evil’ (for want of a better term). Unfortunately they are outnumbered many times by federalists, which is why anything passed down from the commission regarding further EU integration often gets the rubber stamp with little opposition save a few loud but meaningless objections from people like Nigel Farage.
The opposition for giving Britain a punishment settlement will come from the EU’s 30,000 corporate lobbyists, who won’t want trade barriers with a huge, important, and profitable market.
The damning thing for EU member states as regards trade barriers is that they won’t even get to collect the tariffs, the EU will, just as they do now with non-EU imports, the recipient states only get a tiny fraction of it. On the other hand, UK HMRC would receive the full tariffs on roughly £300bn worth of EU imports, as well as the full tariffs on the £300bn of non-EU imports, which they don’t currently get, as well as collecting an extra 0.3% on VAT (about £2bn/year) that currently goes to the EU on top of the annual £2bn/year membership fee.
I’ve actually tried find the figure for how much in non-EU import tariffs we pay to the EU, but to no avail. I would imagine almost any percentage of £300bn will come to a significant number though. This seems to suggest around £12.9bn would be a WTO tariff on EU exports, so the figure for non-EU tariffs on a similar value of imports would likely be around £13bn too.
So £15bn/year (13+2) extra for the treasury either way and possibly £38bn (13+2+13+10net) if no deal is struck. That figure excludes other indirect EU costs that could be cut like legislation, higher education subsidies for EU citizens in the UK (circa £2.5bn/year), JSA to EU citizens (£0.75bn/year), overseas child benefit payments (£0.25bn/year). So £41.5bn/year total minus legislation cost reduction. Assuming every export to the EU was lost, which is an unimaginable worst case, then that means £200bn worth of exports (after Rotterdam effect) lost. In fact only £133bn in terms of physical exports (not sure if that excludes Rotterdam effect), rest is unaffected consultancy services. Revenue collected on GDP is about 25%, so £33bn in lost UK government revenue on exports to EU, vs about £41.5bn increase in revenue plus savings elsewhere, not including legislation. Wonder who’ll pick up the tab for the £41.5bn out of the remaining 27 states?
On the exit fee side of things, the current MFF ends in 2020. So given a £10bn/year net contribution, assuming we were liable for this, that makes a £10bn bill, assuming we pay all of 2019. Not sure where the EU got the rest from. This is offset by a UK claim on EU assets due to contributions paid, which could be considerable:
http://ec.europa.eu/budget/mff/index_en.cfm
http://bruegel.org/2017/02/the-uks-brexit-bill-could-eu-assets-partially-offset-liabilities/
The ‘Brexit bill’ is likely to be one of the most contentious aspects of the upcoming negotiations. But estimates so far focus largely on the EU costs and liabilities that the UK will have to buy its way out of. What about the EU’s assets? The UK will surely get a share of those, and they could total €153.7bn.
Then there’s also the argument that we’ve paid £600bn into the EU come 2020, so our claim on assets could extend well beyond this.
Over the next five years, the UK is set to pay a further £96 billion to the EU, with total contributions hitting £600 billion in 2020.
I have also noticed something somewhat curious:
Verhofstadt – Belgium
Juncker – Luxembourg
Tusk – Poland
Is it my imagination, or have they been extracting the urine? Belgium – not poor. Luxembourg – highest GDP/Capita on the planet. Why are they being subsidised by the EU? Poland – £12bn seems a little extravagant.
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