Well, this is an interesting report. From The Independent newspaper in London, a prediction of possible “hard Brexit” troubles in the United Kingdom by Doug Gurr, the UK Country Manager at Amazon and a current advisory director with Britain’s Department for Work and Pensions:
Leaving the European Union with no deal could prompt “civil unrest” within days, the head of Amazon in the UK has warned.
Doug Gurr told a meeting organised by Brexit secretary Dominic Raab that the online retail firm was now considering this worst-case outcome as part of their contingency planning.
Mr Gurr’s remarks make Amazon UK the first company to issue such a warning, and “stunned those present”…
The claim has raised some eyebrows in the British press, and fanatical Brexiteers like the backbench Conservative Party MP Jacob Rees-Mogg have dismissed it out of hand. Who earth would the people of Britain be restless with? Maybe The Guardian has the answer?
…foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has warned there is a risk of the UK leaving the EU in March 2019 without a deal because of stalling by the bloc’s negotiators, and that British views of Europe would sour as a result.
“Britain would find that challenging, but in the end we would find a way not just to survive but to thrive economically. But my real concern is that it would change British public attitudes to Europe for a generation.”
Uh-huh…
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
More ‘project fear’ being spewed by big business. Also it also suggests that the Brits were right to vote leave I.e when big business is wailing it’s certainly not in the interests of the plebs.
LikeLike
Perhaps, and it is certainly an exaggeration. Or at least, Brexit will not be the proximate cause of civil unrest. An economic decline because of Brexit several years hence? That might be a different matter.
LikeLike
An sionnach fionn, nobody can predict the future, not even the experts. In fact the experts are that bad they couldn’t even see the financial crash coming, or could they? Imho if the UK or any other western country(especially) experiences serious economic unrest then it will be because the IMF and other financial bullies have decided so. For example, just like oil prices, electric, broadband etc etc the prices are rigged allthewhile the companies pretend they are competing with each other in order to dupe the customer/public. P.s the stock market is sure to be rigged too.
LikeLike
Brexit, the poor, like me, voted Leave, the rich voted stay.
LikeLike
That makes total sense because the Torys have been so good to the poor in the U.K and the pesky E.U meddling has been getting in the way of them being even better for you…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yep agreed with comments above. What the hell would a creep from Amazon know about people? Project Fear is ramping up, expect to see a lot more of it.
LikeLike
Ireland was left to fend for itself in the famine, about time the fat Brits lost a few stone
LikeLike
Actually, at the risk of refighting the last war, it’s not that simple that poor voted Leave, rich voted Remain. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/brexit-and-the-squeezed-middle/
This shows – and its’ just one of many analyses, a much more mixed picture, one where it was actually those in the lower middle rather than the middle or most deprived who tended to vote Leave and that this linked into education with those with no formal or lower educational qualifications and those with medium to higher being Remain and those between the two being more likely to vote Leave. This is echoed with respect to personal finances with those on worsening finances likely to vote Leave. And there’s a further point that 63% of Labour voters voted for Remain whereas 61% of Tories voted to Leave. There’s a further issue, there’s a skew in the figures due to age with those over 65 being more likely to vote Leave as those in younger cohorts which due to those in the former category being on pensions or other fixed and relatively low incomes increases a perception of those in the Leave camp being on lower incomes.
Of course there was support for Leave amongst cohorts including some support from working class and those on lower incomes but this has been overstated and the evidence simply isn’t there to suggest that this support was monolithic or a majority.
In a way all this academic. It’s a Leave, the UK should leave the EU on foot of the referendum, but the current efforts by the far right of the Tories (and Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson aren’t exactly short a few bob or two and their interest in workers is minimal to zero to judge from what they say and the policy approaches they support) to constrain the nature of that leaving so that EEA/EFTA status is a non-starter is a disgrace, wasn’t an aspect of the referendum question and is a recipe for an isolated Britain that tilts ever rightwards.
re Project Fear, one doesn’t have to listen to an Amazon boss as the last word, and indeed I wouldn’t – they’re an anti-union and anti-worker company, but there’s an overwhelming consensus amongst a range of analysts from the centre and centre left that this is going to cause serious problems (indeed already has through Sterling devaluation with the consequent effective cutting of incomes in the UK).
And all that before we even tackle what it will do to the island of Ireland, which frankly is the major concern for a lot more of us than what route Britain ultimately takes. A Tory led Brexit is a fundamental rupture for Ireland and it’s not just the Border.
LikeLike
Yep, Brexit voters are a much more complicated grouping that stereotype allows. My own instinct is to blame, above all else, forty odd years of eurosceptic and europhobic sentiment in UK politics and the media. A slow drip effect which persuaded an entire generation of UK voters to look askance at the EU and blame it for Britain’s major ills. Real or perceived. After that comes all sorts of tangled stuff about economic decline, political disenfranchisement, rapid societal changes, immigration, etc. etc. etc. I don’t think its fair to blame the old or the poor. The leading Brexiteers aren’t exactly working-class kids made good.
In terms of anti-EU feeling and Brexit, the British are the barking dog which finally catches up with the car but is now mystified what to do with it.
LikeLike
Lol, this is exactly the same Shiite the Scots were subjected to before their independence referendum.
LikeLike
Yep. And it worked.
LikeLike
We’re agreed on our dislike for Amazon anyway! Agreed also that the economic impact in Britain and the knock-on in Ireland will be serious. But ‘civil unrest’? These tech-execs love the sound of their own voices, cretins who won the lottery for the most part.
LikeLike
But if the UK has a 1970s-style recession after Brexit? It doesn’t necessarily mean pitched street battles, though that was probably the exaggerated intent of the comment. But I could well see a return to the disturbances of the 1970s or ’80s. Or the more recent London riots.
LikeLike
Just on Amazon, and yes agreed bradhar, alibris (must check spelling!) is good for books. There are times when sourcing stuff outside Amazon is near impossible, but for most things it is.
LikeLike
Maybe something like the burning Banlieu of France but that’s more related to common or garden disenfranchisement and unemployment than anything else.
LikeLike
Sure. But in a post-EU UK such events will be played back to Brexit, whether true or not. Expect every catastrophe to befall Britain for the next decade or so to be blamed on Brexit. And every solution to every catastrophes to involve a return to the EU fold. British politics is going to be very monotonous for the next few years with europhilia becoming the disruptive force that europhobia was up to now.
LikeLike
Didn’t you say it a few weeks back, ASF, Brexit will disrupt the British body politic for decades, whatever happens.
LikeLike
I have a few thoughts on SF and abstentionism that plays into this. And why SF and other Irish parties should stay out of the House of Commons as the blame game kicks up a pace.
LikeLike
Once BREXIT/EJEXIT has happened, there can be no going back. Not ever. Its out, permanently. think, terms of what this will do to northern Ireland, of it becoming something like a “Kinder, softer, GAZA Strip. Yes, really.
LikeLike