how can the eu vote impartially on this?
Germany and france would benefit enormously if they could get a big chunk of what the city does. why would they vote for the uk keeping it?

on the other hand, it's not as simple as swapping London for Frankfurt. the language, the infrastructure, the size of the city, the local laws, the speed of transactions, the fact that people would rather live in London all make London much more attractive.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Wed 29 Jun 2016, 14:15, 2 replies)

No votes are impartial, it's all politics
And Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam, all lovely places to live and work...
(Smale is stuffed, Wed 29 Jun 2016, 14:24, closed)

all lovely cities
but people who are settled here aren't all that keen to move. some of them, sure, lots of them not so much.

still, people will follow the money, as a rule.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Wed 29 Jun 2016, 14:30, closed)

I lived in London for 6 years...
.. and worked with and partied with hundreds of people who did menial office work, middle management, senior management, academic work. Only a fraction of them are still in the UK. This is Brits as well as expats. People move to London because there are jobs and there is a cool vibe. But a cool vibe doesn't cut it for more than a few years when the quality of life is better elsewhere and the cost of living is so high.
(Bosch balls, Tue 5 Jul 2016, 8:18, closed)

Hollande has already said he wants the EU part of the city transactions
he needs ammunition to stave off Le Pen for the vote next year. Getting some big bank in Paris might help, but then again most of Le Pen's supports comes from the regions where workers aren't doing so well.

Apart from that, hiring people, and more importantly firing them, in France isn't easy. You can transfer them if you can persuade the unions not to hire locals, but then they get French contracts, which are much, much tougher to break than UK ones. Then of course high fliers are subject to much higher taxes, which is why there are 600K French people in London right now.

So whilst it all sounds easy on the surface "we'll just move everyone to France" you can bet that companies will be weighing up what is best for them. If they can't transfer their star traders then it might all fail at the first hurdle.

I think it is all moot though, it looks increasingly like government will kick the can down the road and never invoke article 50. After a few weeks it'll be obvious that no-one dares pull the trigger and it'll be business as usual.

In the meantime the rest of us can scream unfair and demand that stupid people don't get to vote, or we can think about what normally happens in UK politics, i.e. no one screws up their chances of a job in the EU after their Westminster career is over.
(plankton, Wed 29 Jun 2016, 15:00, closed)

You're right, they'd be fools to relocate to France...
Which is why they're setting up in Dublin and Frankfurt. Amsterdam has even had a number of Asian companies enquiring after relocation options within 24 hours of the result.

Which British politicians get jobs in the EU? You usually get a commissioner, but the cushy jobs go to the small unthreatening nations. Denmark, Luxemburg, Belgium, the Netherlands. You can't have a French or German or Brit in a leading role since it would at the very least appear biased towards one country.
(Bosch balls, Wed 29 Jun 2016, 16:23, closed)

Hmm, do you know how it works?
You do realise that there is always 1 commissioner per member state (including president and vice president)? So UK has just as many commissioners in EU as every other EU nation (even Hill who just resigned will be replaced by a Brit).

Commissioners are proposed by (elected) national governments. The EC president allocates roles based on their experience and capability. The (elected) Parliament has to agree to the list of commissioners and their roles.

Other roles in the Commission, and the non-political roles in Parliament, are effectively open for application by any citizen of a member state, except for seconded national experts, who are put forward by national governments. For any of these roles you need a decent knowledge of a 2nd EU language. I have many friends who work for the Commission, and their take is that UK is under-represented there because there is a lack of civil servants and others who have good enough knowledge of a 2nd European language.
(Smale is stuffed, Thu 30 Jun 2016, 9:06, closed)