E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

Meanwhile the UK parliament has released a report on how Brexit is currently shaping up: http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7213

It has this section on the WTO option:

It's a pretty bleak report in general, if you ask me.

 

What made greece suffer more than most was that their productivity was the lowest in the currency union. Greece is simple an greater example of what has happened in Italy, Spain and Portugal. It's the eurozone that is the problem, the crisis was inevitable.

It was lack of homes being built.

I'm talking from a tax neutral to a tax positive movement towards income taxes (or maybe higher). On a tax neutral basis the change in incentives means more effort has to be put into producing something than putting in little effort and taking an economic rent from an asset to earn an income and that would be overall beneficial to those not owning high levels of assets.

Less income for the country doesn't matter if it's directly proportional to the loss/lack of growth of population i.e GDP per capita matters; and on the income levels of low skilled workers the marginal amount of tax added is less than the marginal increase in public spending necessitated by the additional person (on 13k you'll only pay 1k in tax and NI and the employer NI 700 quid). (and we shouldn't remove them but simply not keep adding them it's only benefiting the well off to have an almost endless supply of low skilled interchangeable labour)

And the point I was trying to make on winners and losers is that if there is a negative to say pension funds as a result of falling bond yeilds that specific effect has to be weighed against the positive effects of lower interest rates on people's disposable income. In other words bad news for some needs to be weighed against who it is good news for and that discussing winners and losers in terms of winners and losers of the overall policy mix is unhelpful when talking about a single issue.

 

Not based on the information I've looked at, besides this isn't about debating how Greece got into trouble, It's about comparing "system" and finding the commonality and differences, in this example Greece shares a commonality with 19 other nations so if as you claimed the Eurozone was to blame then we'd see the same problem with the majority of those 19.

That's not to say being in the Eurozone didn't play a part in their problems, as I've already said, however being in the Eurozone wasn't the primary cause of the problem, it wasn't the major contributor.

That's not a policy decision.

And when someone can't "put in more effort"?

You can't just magic more effort into being, if someone can't increase their earning potential by working harder then trying to incentives them by to work harder by taking money away from other areas of their life isn't going to work, it may actual have the opposite effect and result in lower income from taxes or more likely, in the example you used, just increasing rental prices to compensate.

Less income matters a great deal, when a government has less money to spend it's always the poorest in society that suffer the most, and GDP per capita is an awful way of measuring the level of inequality and how much a government protects its most vulnerable.

True but without going into the minutia if a majority of pension funds are expecting shortfalls i can guarantee it's going to negatively effect the poorest in society more than the well off.

 

I'd advise that on the eurozone it would be better to look at the economics rather than assuming greece is the only country suffering. It is always and everywhere a problem with competitiveness and therefore trade balances and germany is as much to blame as anyone else if not more and if you think it's only greece then you haven't been paying attention.
Beggar thy neighbour and thyself
Martin wolf
Mervin king
German hypocrisy
Simon wren lewis on eurozone issues
Wren-lewis: germany's role
krugman: eurozone problems
Paul krugman on the eurozone
My previous post
Optimum currency areas

The Eurozone is the most disastrous policy decision of the postwar period.

So planning regulation isn't a policy decision, so the government not investing in building housing isn't a policy decision....

You can incentivise it. Incentives always matter.

National Income matters not at all if the government has less people to spend it on and if those people are very low income it's fiscally positive to have less, you should read what I written previously more carefully.

More than the positive effects of a decrease in short term housing costs considering low interest rates is a short term problem for pensions funds also, that the people with the most to lose from pensions are the upper middle class and those who do have pensions of any worthwhile amount are at the upper end of the income distribution?

 

Whereas Britain is doing so well.

 

Funny that, isn't it, how despite all our progress, technological innovation, and increased output all countries are getting poorer...It's almost as if there's a democratically unaccountable force at work influencing things behind the scenes on a global scale and hoovering up the wealth for itself. It's a good thing the driving incentive of Capitalism isn't to commodify all it touches, even people and democracy itself.

 

As much as you'd like to make this about the Eurozone may i remind you of what we were originally discussing, that it's about comparing "system" and finding the commonality and differences within and then using that information to draw some fairly accurate assumptions.

I have neither the time or the inclination to discuss Greece's predicament or the Eurozone, mainly because i already know your opinion differs from mine on those two subjects and i feel neither of us are going to alter each others opinions on those two subjects no matter how long we discus them.

I refer you to what i said above but also I'll reiterate what i previously said, a lack of homes being built is not a policy decision, that's unless you can show me the policy that say's we're not going to build houses, incentivising is not the same as actually doing something, a parent can incentives their child to clean their bedroom but ultimately if they want a clean bedroom there's only one way to make sure it's clean.

I did read what you said carefully, maybe it's just me but some of what you say doesn't make much sense, from a reading perspective.

Either way GDP per capita is a very poor way of measuring how equal a society is, that being what i think was the original starting point of this discussion.

Would they be the same upper middle class that can afford to make up any short falls?

The simple fact is the poorest in a society always feel the effects more so than any other group simply because they have limited options available to them, as you move up the income scale you're more able to change with the winds instead of being swamped by them.

 

Greece unemployment rate: 23.5%
Uk unemployment rate: 4.9%
Labour force participation rate:
Greece: 52%
UK: 78.4%

If monetary policy is the zero lower bound and the government has a policy of fiscal contraction then any remaining economic adjustment is forced through in prices: wages and exchange rate. We are doing a lot better lets put it that way.

But it seems your assumption is the only difference is the Greek government's profligacy whereas if you actually pay attention to the economics the big difference between the Eurozone creditor countries and Eurozone deficit countries is productivity. That productivity differential is what is fundamentally what is driving the Eurozone problems because countries can't adjust through the exchange rate/ monetary policy/fiscal policy they are forced to in increasing unemployment or falling wages. Hell the issue of greek profligacy is driven by the difference in competitiveness, Greece is the least competitive country and if you have a trade deficit then you have to finance it through a capital surplus (it's a mathematical identity) i.e even if the Greek government hadn't borrowed the people/businesses of the country will have.

So if you haven't been accurate in finding differences and/or don't understand the economic mechanisms of how those differences came about then you wont come to accurate assumptions. Furthermore this goes more to prove the point that it is not just a simple layman's task that can come to "fairly accurate" assumptions about what is driving a problem, since multiple things at different levels can be driving a problem my argument is that the economic fundamentals are the driving factor, yours is that what in reality are superficial outcomes of those fundamentals are what is driving the problem in the above case.

So a policy of incentivising savings through tax free ISAs for example isn't part of a savings policy. So a policy of regulating planning isn't part of housing policy. Pretty much anything a government does or even doesn't do is fundamentally a policy.

If you can't understand what the implication of what I say is then either you maybe don't understand the underlying economic mechanisms that lead to those outcomes and/or don't understand the language of the subject.

The point was that I asserted the mechanisms through which constant additions of low skilled labour increases inequality and only benefits the well off to which you asserted that the mechanism through which it makes the poorest in country better off is through increasing national income and therefore taxes. Which I countered with the basic fact that the marginal addition of one low skilled worker from abroad pays less taxes than that marginal worker requires in additional government spending.

The reason GDP per capita matters is not about measuring the inequality but asserting the point that in real terms for this issue, i.e adjusting for population growth, GDP per capita is more useful for measuring the impact of low skilled migration on a countries national income than GDP that is not adjusted for the marginal worker i.e you could add 20 million people to the country's population and GDP would rise, but more than likely GDP per person would fall especially if they were all low skilled workers.

The amount of services a government can provide per person will be near directly proportional to the amount of national income (gdp) per person, not the amount of GDP overall

Which is?

 

It's got nothing to do with profligacy, i didn't even say that, i said they cooked the books.

It's also got nothing to do with productivity, all the figures I've looked at shows Greece something like 7th or 8th from the bottom in terms of GDP per capita across all EU nations, Nations that didn't find themselves in the same trouble as Greece.

Besides you're missing the point, Greece has nothing to do with comparing "system" and finding the commonality and differences within and then using that information to draw some fairly accurate assumptions, all your doing is using a red hearing.

WTF's with the prolific use of bold text?

It's got nothing to do with economic mechanisms, Greece cooked their books.

I've noticed you make use of lot's of informal fallacies, and this is another one, quoting out of context.

If you had quoted the entirety of that sentence you'd find what i actually said was "I refer you to what i said above but also I'll reiterate what i previously said, a lack of homes being built is not a policy decision, that's unless you can show me the policy that say's we're not going to build houses "

But for completeness a policy incentivising savings through tax free ISAs is not a policy of saving it's a policy to incentivise saving, a policy regulating housing isn't a policy to build houses it's a policy to motivate or encourage the building of houses, if you can't tell the difference between encouraging someone to do something and actually doing it then i can only assume you're being deliberately obtuse.

It's got nothing to do with understand the underlying economic mechanisms or the implications of what you say, it's the way you write somethings, some of what you write doesn't make sense, some of what you write is a grammatical mess.

You only have to look at this to understand why...

That just doesn't make any sense.

And if low skilled migrant workers did in fact pay less tax you'd have a point, unfortunately low skilled migrant workers contribute more in taxes than the natives, natives that are less likely to take menial low skilled, low paid, jobs, jobs that's probably wouldn't even exist if businesses didn't have access to a large pool of low skilled cheap labor.

So that must explain why places like Qatar, Singapore, Brunei, Kuwait, and the UAE are among the top GDP per capita in the world.

No it's not, the amount of services a government can provide is directly proportional to the amount of public sector expenditure and in turn the amount of public sector income.

Wow you really are being obtuse.

It would be to do it yourself.

 

That is because similar levels of debt were accrued in the private sector in other uncompetitive countries as Greece accrued in the public sector. Difference is that private citizens in the Eurozone can go bankrupt, a state can't default in the Eurozone which is a unique position for a situation like a sovereign debt crisis. Spain has an unemployment rate of 20% Greece has anunemployment rate of 23%. This is a Eurozone wide problem due to differentials in competitiveness in a system where a state can't adjust to that in terms of its exchange rate, or monetary policy, or fiscal policy.

And GDP per capita isn't productivity, productivity is GDP/hour worked not GDP per person. It's funny how all the worst performing, worst indebted (overall) and worst affected countries of the Eurozone are those below the EZ average. [1] Greece is just above Portugal.

Also Another issue is labour market participation rate in which all the worst performing countries have much lower labour participation rates which also doesn't help competitiveness.

But the problem in the Eurozone isn't only with Greece, if the Eurozone crisis and problems were merely to do with Greece lying then there wouldn't be problems elsewhere in Spain, Portugal, Italy....

No it is a savings policy. You'll hear the government say "our savings policy will incentivise saving by giving tax br..." If you have a policy that will increase the cost of building houses or restrict the amount of land, that will have a direct effect on the amount of houses being built. Planning is part of housing policy.


The state directly takes intervenes in drugs by outright banning sale and possession and see how counterintuitive that policy has been on many different levels. If the state's policy was to legalise, tax and regulate currently controlled drugs in a similar way as tobacco and alcohol I suppose that wouldn't be a drugs policy either because the state would just be setting up a framework of incentives to reduce drug harm rather than outright intervention.

No migrants as a whole pay more tax than they receive in public services, low skilled migrants are likely to pay less tax than they receive in public services and you talk about informal fallacies (composition in this case). The direct tax on a low skilled wage is not more than £2000 a year.

If there wasn't access to a low skilled pool of labour then wages would increase in those jobs, until someone is willing to do them, the firms themselves may find it cheaper, at a certain wage level, to invest in capital rather than labour which will increase overall productivity.

Maybe you should have read it more closely "the amount of services the government CAN provide per person..." didn't say will provide.

Public sector income is then linked to national income. But it also follows that the amount of services that can be provided per person is directly proportional to the amount of public expenditure per person and in turn the amount of public sector income per person (taxes) which is proportional to the amount of national income per person.

It then also follows that the level of services that can be afforded for a marginal extra person is directly proportional to the amount of public expenditure required by the marginal person and in turn the amount of additional public sector income that marginal person brings which is proportional to the marginal addition to national income that person provides.

Just because a government is providing more expenditure on services overall doen't mean that per person services have increased.
Learn the difference between total, average and marginal costs/revenues.

So you are basically saying that because the child isn't guaranteed to be responsive to the incentives given then the parent should just do it themselves. In my experience properly designed incentives always work on a mentally normal child. Doing someone else's responsibilities for them destroys incentives.

Furthermore it seems your parent-child analysis is that of a state-citizen analysis and that because we can't guarantee all citizens are responsive to incentives or take the opportunity to use those incentives to their advantage that the state should just do the job for them instead. But if the state just does the job for them then there is no incentive. What you argue for in that analogy is terrible parenting and also when applied to government is terrible government.

 

Talk about moving the goal posts, first it was their productivity, then trade balances, profligacy, uncompetitiveness, and now it's private sector debt, maybe if you concentrated on a single topic you'd come across as being credible.

And all the while you're totally ignoring the fact that Greek politicians and other notable figures have gone on record as saying Greece cooked the books.

But I've already said...

It's just for some reason you want to keep banging on about the Eurozone, did what i said above not sink in?

There you go again with your grammatically incorrect sentences "you can't take intervenes" you're following a verb with another verb, i can only guess English isn't your first language and normally i wouldn't pull someone up on it but as you've blamed me for not understanding it would be remiss of me not to point out why there appears to be a communications breakdown.

It's not a saving policy, it's a policy to incentivise saving, there's a big difference and if you can't tell the difference between motivating or encouraging someone to do something and doing it yourself then i can only assume you're trolling.

So that's £2000 more than the low skilled native workers who refuse to work under such conditions, isn't it.

No they wouldn't, they'd either be replaced by machines or the business would cease trading because their business model was no longer viable, thinking wages would magically increase is a fantasy, if the price of vegetables increase by 30% less people would buy them and less would be sold, the market sets the price and if people aren't willing to pay extra they won't.

I read it very closely and that's why i keep telling you your use of GDP per capita is flawed, it doesn't tell you what CAN or CAN'T be spent protecting the least fortunate in society, that's why i keep telling you public sector income and expenditure is a more accurate indicator of how a civilization cares for its helpless members.

No it's not, where did you get that crazy idea from? If public sector income was linked to national income the Qatar would have one of the highest governmental spending in the world.

Public sector income is linked to GDP per capita in the same way as the amount of money someone gives to charity is linked to their wages, i.e for all intents and purposes they're not linked.

So now it's about totals, averages, proportionality and marginals? Maybe if you were more ambiguous you could explain how the earths still flat.

As much as you like constructing strawman arguments, no that's not what I'm saying and you know damn well that's not what i said, i said if you want something done you do it yourself, so please stop trying to twist what i said into some kind of how to raise a child argument, and/or comparison with raising a child and running a country, it only makes what you're writing even more nonsensical and that's saying nothing about how your being perceived.

 

FFS they're all linked it's basic f***ing macro economics! Why don't you go back and read some of those links I posted and then maybe these kind of conversations can be had on a more level footing because it's quite clear you know next to nothing about the subject.

You know you might learn some little things like: if you have a trade deficit, then you have a capital account surplus, which means that you're borrowing money/selling assets to the rest of the world. If the government doesn't borrow the money then private citizens do (as happened in spain) or business. It's a mathematical identity.

Or maybe that if you are locked in a currency union you have no control over your monetary policy and that your exchange rate is fixed at a 1 to 1 rate. That means that if you have a trade deficit and your country is borrowing money, as stated above, because you lack overall competitiveness (productivity, labour participation etc) then that trade balance and the borrowing necessitated by it will persist, until of course your country reaches a point where they cannot afford the debt burden and/or the cheap money stops.

But that is not the only factor, nor the most important factor, nor a necessary or a sufficient factor as to result in the current problems with the Eurozone as a whole. It sure as hell didn't help, but the fact remains that the competitive imbalances in the Eurozone, that driven the trade imbalances and that lead to uncompetitive countries becoming over indebted (private and/or public) is the fundamental economic mechanism by which the Eurozone is failing.

You're the one who keeps trying to provide counter arguments to my arguments. Besides the original point was that if the banking crisis in Italy gets very bad then, the negative effects on bond rates as a result of a flight to safety in UK, US, German etc bonds, It would be hard to separate out that effect on pension funds from the brexit vote.

I didn't bring Greece into it, you did.

It's called a grammatical mistake which can be caused by many things that are not linked to one's ability to write in English, especially in of the cuff forum discussions. I don't think it would be beyond someone of your obvious intelligence and abilities especially in relation to reading comprehension to be able to comprehend a sentence with mistakes as trivial as that.

Also I don't always have the time after rephrasing and quickly writing something to go over it in detail.

Just because the government aren't doing something through the direct machinery of the state and instead doing something through incentives does not mean that does not make up part of their policy on a given matter.

Take this economic paper on housing policy:
http://samples.sainsburysebooks.co.uk/9781135280093_sample_625226.pdf

What control F "incentives" finds in first two results:
"Although some of these broader aspects of housing policy provide financial incentives for investments in affordable housing, others attempt to make housing available to low-income"
"Governments can shape housing policies in various ways. They can provide assistance
in the form of direct subsidies or through tax incentives. They can use their
regulatory powers to influence the availability of mortgage loans, the practices of real
estate agents, and the type, the amount, and the cost of housing that can be built in
particular areas."

EDIT: Or maybe look at this IFS report entitled " pensions and savings policy"

"The Conservatives have also proposed extra financial support for some individual
contributions to funded pensions, and a new matched savings account called the
Lifetime Savings Account (LiSA), to provide new incentives for private saving. It is
difficult to predict the overall effects of such policies on saving across the
economy."

Incentives are always and everywhere a part of any policy.

We have an unemployment rate of 4.9% with a labour participation rate of 78.4%. That means we are likely very near the NIARU (what is best considered as near full employment as an economy can get). That would mean that if they are not working in such low paid, low conditions jobs then they'd be working in higher paid, higher conditions jobs that pay more money and more taxes.

Furthermore it is not the point as to whether those low skilled migrants would be paying more taxes than the unemployed British, it is whether those taxes cover the total additional public expenditure required by their presence in this country. If they don't then it is a net negative for the provision of public services on an extra person that doesn't need to be here.

*Is that a question?

If the supply of labour is low they'd have to increase wages in order to attract labour, yes that results in higher short run costs and a decrease in output and therefore supply in the short run leading to an increase in prices. It would mean the market would move to a new short run equilibrium. Now if that were to force a particular business to be no longer sustainable then fine that is how capitalism works, but that isn't going to be the story across every business or the economy as a whole. It's the same mechanism that happens when an economy is running at full potential or with a positive output gap. When labour supply becomes tight, wages rise. If you have an endless supply of labour then there is unlikely to be any wage rises.

What do you think I said in the first place in regards to machinery? In economics capital means capital equipment i.e. the machines and tools used to produce goods and services. If labour is cheap then firms will substitute capital investment for employment. If labour costs start to rise then the trade off moves in favour of investing in capital. Which is a good thing, it's how countries grow their productivity in the long run.

If the Tax system takes roughly 40% of £1tn GDP one year and then the next year GDP is £1.1tn, all other things equal, the government can get greater tax revenues therefore can spend more. But if that GDP rise is fuelled, for the sake of the argument, entirely by population growth rather than a rise in real GDP per capita then the entirety of the extra tax take will be spent on those extra people not in providing more public expenditure on average (in fact on average it would fall if the extra people couldn't cover their public expenditure with their taxes).

Firstly public sector income (taxes), ceteris paribus, is directly linked to the amount of income a country generates. I said what a country CAN spend not what it WILL spend. If GDP per capita were to go up by 3%, ceteris paribus, then you'd expect tax revenues per capita to go up also and therefore the amount of money that the public sector can spend per person.

It's a well understood practise in even the most basic economic analysis to use figures in real terms for the given situation, otherwise they are useless, it's why we measure government debt and deficits as a percent of GDP.

Economic analysis also is nearly always looking at the margin, i.e the marginal person added, you were using the increase in the total when we are talking about a situation of whether or not the marginal tax provided by a marginal person will give a higher/lower amount available to spend on average per person in the country if that person were to be low skilled.

Forgive me if that's how it came across. Considering I was talking about incentivising people through policy to which you reply with a child tidying the bedroom analogy I took that impression. Maybe if you wanted to give a different Impression maybe use a different and better analogy.

*It's you're by the way

 

---------------PUBLIC SERVICE POST---------------------

---------------PUBLIC SERVICE POST---------------------

 

And it's quite clear you totally missing the point, probably on purpose, you're totally ignoring the fact that Greek politicians and other notable figures have gone on record as saying Greece cooked the books, i mean how much more proof do you need?

You can try to muddy the water all you like but it just makes you look desperate, you're doing exactly what you did before, you're ignoring the glaring obvious because it doesn't match your world view.

I couldn't give two monkeys about the basic f***ing macro economics because it's nothing more than you trying to throw a red hearing in the mix, it's you attempting to poison the well, it's faulty reasoning.

I'm what? You started this by replying to a post i made in reply to Nexxo, i decided long ago that i wouldn't respond to your post unless they were directed at me personally, something you decided to do, you were the one that started this right here.

And WTH did Italy come from, this is the first time its been mentioned, you're basically clutching at straws, I'm just happy to play along and watch you making a fool of yourself.

Yes i did, as an example of comparing "system" and finding the commonality and differences, not as a debating point on whether X, Y, or Z caused their problem, you were the one who decided to go off on one in some vain attempt to prove Greece's problems were all down to the Eurozone.

Considering how quick you're to assign blame by accusing others of a lack of understand maybe you need to take care with those grammatical mistakes then, we wouldn't want you using yet more logical fallacies and then blaming everyone would we.

Telling someone "If you can't understand what the implication of what I say is then either you maybe don't understand the underlying economic mechanisms that lead to those outcomes and/or don't understand the language of the subject."
If you tell someone that when it's actually your fault it just makes you look ignorant.

Then don't go around blaming others for your mistakes, simple.

Ok so you're being deliberately obtuse, why can't you get it into your head that incentivising and doing it yourself are two entirely different things, policy has nothing to do with it.

No, if it was i would have followed it with a question mark, it's a statement.

If it's not about low skilled migrants paying more taxes then why did you raise that as a point of discussion?

Look you started this and i only played along because it was funny to have my assertions about you confirmed, however it's obvious you're just trolling and i don't have the time, as amusing as you're long winded postulations are i just CBA talking with someone such as you, it gets boring.

Sorry you've lost me, easy to do as i think talking with Disequilibria has lowered my IQ.

I know what profligacy means but it wasn't me that raised that as a point of contention, all i ever said about Greece was they cooked the books, that they kept false financial records.

 

Greetings!

I didnt. Thats why I searched for it and then decided to post here for all other ignorants like me.

 

I'm saying that on greek book cooking

"But that is not the only factor, nor the most important factor, nor a necessary or a sufficient factor as to result in the current problems with the Eurozone as a whole. It sure as hell didn't help, but the fact remains that the competitive imbalances in the Eurozone, that driven the trade imbalances and that lead to uncompetitive countries becoming over indebted (private and/or public) is the fundamental economic mechanism by which the Eurozone is failing."

And a major difference is that Greece and others are countries will inevitably trend towards indebtedness because of such large differences in the competitiveness of the countries within the Eurozone system. I.e That because of the economic fundamentals of the EMU this crisis would happen one way or another regardless of cooked books.

In the period since the inception of the Euro those mechanisms I have already gone over resulted in unsustainable levels of debt in various debtor countries in the Eurozone and it might interest you to know that Greece went into this Eurozone crisis with a debt to GDP level of 100% and a financial crisis driven increase in government borrowing, such a level of debt to GDP has never been a problem for a developed country with control over its own monetary policy.

You're being obtuse. You specifically said:

And I say creating a system of incentives is part of the relevant policy. Savings incentives are a savings policy, house building incentives are an housing policy.

I raised it as a point to your counterpoint in which you said more national income on the part of low skilled migrants will result in more public services. To which I reply that it is incredibly unlikely that they're covering their own public expenditure costs with their taxes.

And yes it's not about whether they pay more taxes than the British, even though the only group they could do that relative to is the unemployed, It's about whether the costs of a marginal addition of a low skilled worker from abroad will outweigh the taxes that person is levied. If they don't then that is a net negative for public service provision.

I missed that day when the definition of trolling was expanded to fit using labour market economics to back up a point........

Exactly the point I was trying to illustrate.

 

In other news:

No staying in the EU by the back door, says Theresa May

So it looks like brexit means brexit is getting at least some fleshing out of the pledge........

 

Yeah, that's why she keeps saying "Brexit means Brexit" rather than the more unambiguous "Brexit means we're leaving the EU".

Fleshing out? I see a repeat of the same old wish list cast in the vaguest possible terms. I think Theresa et al are very good at making a stalemate look like solid progress.

 

Possibly but It seems when she says:
"no attempts to sort of stay in the EU by the back door"
Which seems to me to reduce the ambiguity somewhat, as to leaving the EU, which has been the main point taken from her remarks and would have been intended as such.

 

It's circular because it's circular

Your use of the word seems show perfectly the problem with the statement. Well the problem is that it is a circular statement, but your use of seems is the result. It's not a definite statement and people are free to apply their own dreams, wishes and interpretations to it. The result is a feel good statement that means whatever you want it to mean, but is devoid of any actual meaning. It doesn't indicate a plan or general intention. It's a non-statement. It's moronic.