Brexit discussion thread II

Lemming · 31-08-2017 12:44AM

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

I was just thinking about this today. For all we know there could be powerful forces within the EU planning to make an example of Britain.

If Britain gets badly damaged as a consequence of withdrawing from EU the remaining European electorate will see the danger in voting for Euro skeptics.

I'm not so sure that there are groups within the EU planning on making an example of Britain; actively attempting to harm the UK would require expending effort & resources - diplomatic or otherwise - and why go ti such an effort or risk being found out when you can let nature do your work for you if so inclined. Nobody need harm the UK, but then again nobody need help the UK either, unless it suits themselves to do so at the end of the day. Whilst that's a particularly callous viewpoint, and not one that I think the EU member states would be inclined to lean towards, the UK has burnt a significant amount of any goodwill capital it may have had with all of its jingoistic carry-on over the last year.

Indifference rather than malice would be more likely.

View · 31-08-2017 01:12AM

Peregrinus wrote: »

LeinsterDub wrote: »

You default on your debts you get junk status.

Failure to agree an exit fee, with the result that no exit fee is paid, would not be a default by the UK. It might have very adverse consequences in other respects, including reputational consequences, but it wouldn't be viewed by the markets as a default.

No one is discussing an "exit fee" but rather a settling of accounts by adding up and/or subtracting liabilities and assets. Failing to pay your resulting bill would be a default event.

First Up · 31-08-2017 06:50AM

Lemming wrote:

Indifference rather than malice would be more likely.

No, it is not indifference but it is very definitely prioritising the interests of EU member states over those of the UK. Those interests are being assessed individually and collectively and they will be defended individually and collectively.

That makes it more complex but the EU is well used to complexity. The UK still doesn't get it.

Peregrinus · 31-08-2017 06:57AM

View wrote: »

No one is discussing an "exit fee" but rather a settling of accounts by adding up and/or subtracting liabilities and assets. Failing to pay your resulting bill would be a default event.

No. The liabilities and assets aren't agreed, and there are no established rules for identifying or valuing them. If no payment is made because the UK and the EU don't reach agreement on a basis on which a payment would be due, legally speaking there is no default.

Imagine a divorcing couple, in a situation in which there is no court with power to value or divide their assets. If they fail to agree a valuation and division, is either of them in default? No; they have just failed to agree (and it's a failure on both their parts, necessarily). That's the closest analogy to the present situation.

First Up · 31-08-2017 07:01AM

Peregrinus wrote:

Imagine a divorcing couple, in a situation in which there is no court with power to value or divide their assets. If they fail to agree a valuation and division, is either of them in default? No; they have just failed to agree (and it's a failure on both their parts, necessarily). That's the closest analogy to the present situation.

Do you think the resulting (rather frosty) situation would help the UK achieve its stated wish of close trade and other relations with the EU?

Peregrinus · 31-08-2017 07:10AM

First Up wrote: »

Do you think the resulting (rather frosty) situation would help the UK achieve its stated wish of close trade and other relations with the EU?

No. It would be a very bad outcome for the UK, and I've already made clear that it's an outcome that the UK cannot accept. The must get a trade deal with the EU and to do that they must agree a Brexit financial settlement.

But, disadvantageous and and all as failure to agree would be, it would not be a legal default, and it would not result in UK government securities being downgraded to junk bond status.

But I don't expect it will come to that. The UK will make a deal because, really, they have no choice. They'll make the best deal they can, but they will make a deal.

First Up · 31-08-2017 07:15AM

Peregrinus wrote:

But, disadvantageous and and all as failure to agree would be, it would not be a legal default, and it would not result in UK government securities being downgraded to junk bond status.

That would be very poor consolation to them.

Peregrinus · 31-08-2017 07:17AM

First Up wrote: »

That would be very poor consolation to them.

But of great cheer to anyone holding UK government securities.

First Up · 31-08-2017 07:25AM

Peregrinus wrote:

But of great cheer to anyone holding UK government securities.

Relief more than cheer but the ramifications would extend far beyond that.

Peregrinus · 31-08-2017 07:28AM

First Up wrote: »

Relief more than cheer but the ramifications would extend far beyond that.

Yes, I know. But I only weighed in on this question to counter the claim that if the UK didn't agree and pay an exit fee, that would be a default which would lead to UK government securities being downgraded to junk.

Failure to agree an exit fee would be many bad things, but it would not be that.

solodeogloria · 31-08-2017 07:30AM

Goodness me!

It seems like the British negotiators are going further than I would!

They apparently gave a three hour PowerPoint on why they don't agree on the EU's position including paying into the EU budget until 2020 because it is legally contestable.

This is very interesting. I would have thought they would have contested other aspects other than the budgetary contributions! This would have been compromise territory for me.

Am I going soft? :pac:

Much thanks,
solodeogloria

First Up · 31-08-2017 07:30AM

Peregrinus wrote:

Failure to agree an exit fee would be many bad things, but it would not be that.

Give it a few years of economic winter and it could happen eventually.

Peregrinus · 31-08-2017 07:45AM

solodeogloria wrote: »

Goodness me!

It seems like the British negotiators are going further than I would!

They apparently gave a three hour PowerPoint on why they don't agree on the EU's position including paying into the EU budget until 2020 because it is legally contestable.

This is very interesting. I would have thought they would have contested other aspects other than the budgetary contributions! This would have been compromise territory for me.

Am I going soft? :pac:

No. You're just cutting to the chase.

The basis for identifying the UK's liablities to (and claims on) the Union has yet to be agreed. Both sides will take a position on how it should be agreed, and then negotiate from there. The expectation is that some movement on both sides will be necessary if agreement is to be reached; each side will therefore open with a position which is relatively advantageous to it, while rejecting the position of the other side. That's how the dance begins.

The dance ends, hopefully, with both sides agreeing a basis for identifying, valuing and apportining assets and liabilities, and agreeing the payment that results.

You're focussed on how the dance ends, and your figure is what you think the UK should actually be willing to pay. That bears only a distant relationship to the UK's opening position.

(And, similarly, there'll be a great gap between the EU's opening position and what they will eventually agree.)

Calina · 31-08-2017 07:51AM

solodeogloria wrote: »

Goodness me!

It seems like the British negotiators are going further than I would!

They apparently gave a three hour PowerPoint on why they don't agree on the EU's position including paying into the EU budget until 2020 because it is legally contestable.

This is very interesting. I would have thought they would have contested other aspects other than the budgetary contributions! This would have been compromise territory for me.

Am I going soft? :pac:

Much thanks,
solodeogloria

No, solo you are not going soft. You are demonstrating that you don't have an inside track on what the UK think they are getting away with.

I will say this. A three hour powerpoint presentation is not evidence of hardball. It is evidence of desperation. I hope the Guardian FOI's the slide deck. The minute I hear three hour powerpoint I also hear complete incompetence. Their opposite numbers are very bright. A document provided in advance of any meeting would have been more productive. This was a time wasting exercise.

Nody · 31-08-2017 07:58AM

Well looks like this week's negotiations ended with yet another failure; there are only two sessions left until October since UK insisted at the start on not needing as much time as EU proposed for negotiations (rofl). Here's the thing though which I wonder if the UK government has understood or not; even if a FTA was agreed it means nothing if the other issues are not resolved because it's one package deal and all issues needs to be resolved for it to go into effect. Hence even if the best FTA in the world was agreed it does not matter if the Irish border issues are not resolved etc.

steddyeddy · 31-08-2017 08:23AM

solodeogloria wrote: »

Goodness me!

It seems like the British negotiators are going further than I would!

They apparently gave a three hour PowerPoint on why they don't agree on the EU's position including paying into the EU budget until 2020 because it is legally contestable.

This is very interesting. I would have thought they would have contested other aspects other than the budgetary contributions! This would have been compromise territory for me.

Am I going soft? :pac:

Much thanks,
solodeogloria

Either position is ridiculous. To be honest views like yours and the position of the UK are making me of the opinion that the UK should leave ASAP. This is my position as an EU citizen. Too many lies, uneducated views about trade, the EU and Britain's power outside the EU have been spread and accepted. It's time those views are tested and the UK goes it alone.

ambro25 · 31-08-2017 08:51AM

Nody wrote: »

Well looks like this week's negotiations ended with yet another failure; there are only two sessions left until October since UK insisted at the start on not needing as much time as EU proposed for negotiations (rofl). <...>

It looks to me like the UK is stonewalling, and has been doing so steadfastly, ever since Davis first yay'ed the EU's agenda and points. With an end game of pinning the negotiations' failure on the EU, for placating the Mail- and Express-reading domestic support.

As long predicted.

solodeogloria · 31-08-2017 08:53AM

steddyeddy wrote: »

Either position is ridiculous. To be honest views like yours and the position of the UK are making me of the opinion that the UK should leave ASAP. This is my position as an EU citizen. Too many lies, uneducated views about trade, the EU and Britain's power outside the EU have been spread and accepted. It's time those views are tested and the UK goes it alone.

Good morning!

I don't think that positing the view that Britain could benefit from free trade agreements outside the EU is "uneducated". I think you need to start making substantial arguments for your position rather than using ad hominems.

As for the thing about being an "EU citizen". I'm an "EU citizen" also as an Irish citizen. So I don't see why or how you're presenting this as a trump card.

My hope is still very much for coming to an amicable arrangement.

Much thanks,
solodeogloria

listermint · 31-08-2017 09:12AM

solodeogloria wrote: »

Good morning!

I don't think that positing the view that Britain could benefit from free trade agreements outside the EU is "uneducated". I think you need to start making substantial arguments for your position rather than using ad hominems.

As for the thing about being an "EU citizen". I'm an "EU citizen" also as an Irish citizen. So I don't see why or how you're presenting this as a trump card.

My hope is still very much for coming to an amicable arrangement.

Much thanks,
solodeogloria

You've yet to make any substantial argument about sovereignty despite being asked time and time again other than we get out sovereignty back.

What parts of it are you missing specifically

Since this is pretty much the basis for your new found exit direction.

swampgas · 31-08-2017 09:17AM

ambro25 wrote: »

It looks to me like the UK is stonewalling, and has been doing so steadfastly, ever since Davis first yay'ed the EU's agenda and points. With an end game of pinning the negotiations' failure on the EU, for placating the Mail- and Express-reading domestic support.

As long predicted.

I suspect the UK cabinet are caught up in a situation bigger than any of them can deal with. Maybe they're just going through the motions, collecting their pay and expenses, for as long as possible before the wheels fall off.

I've seen projects in multinational companies like this, where the CEO or HQ have decreed that project X will succeed despite it being impossible, and everyone just plays along with it as best they can, while waiting for a change at the top.

.

Zubeneschamali · 31-08-2017 09:38AM

solodeogloria wrote: »

Am I going soft? :pac:

I think this is further evidence that they are going Hard - they have no intention of negotiating anything, they are just getting set to blame the EU for the fallout.

solodeogloria · 31-08-2017 09:40AM

listermint wrote: »

You've yet to make any substantial argument about sovereignty despite being asked time and time again other than we get out sovereignty back.

What parts of it are you missing specifically

Since this is pretty much the basis for your new found exit direction.

Good morning!

I don't think I've seen you present any "substantial argument" on the thread.

If highlighting every area where I feel the UK could benefit from regaining control and why that would be beneficial isn't "substantial" I don't know what is. I've explained all of this very clearly on the thread.

Not being willing to hear what has already been said, isn't the same as me not presenting a "substantial argument".

Much thanks,
solodeogloria

Zubeneschamali · 31-08-2017 09:45AM

swampgas wrote: »

I've seen projects in multinational companies like this, where the CEO or HQ have decreed that project X will success despite it being impossible, and everyone just plays along with it as best they can, while waiting for a change at the top.

In the software industry, this kind of project is called a Death March. Management have announced the impossible goal, and everyone involved works away, projecting good news upwards, knowing that it will all eventually go horribly wrong but trying not to be the one who gets blamed.

Seen in this light, the Tories Brexit omnishambles makes some sense.

ancapailldorcha · 31-08-2017 10:37AM

A fantastic article from Patrick Smyth in today's Irish Times:

Patrick Smyth, Irish Times wrote:

When Voltaire suggested that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him,” he was not denying the existence of God. Or, as some of his followers have argued, cynically putting down religion. On the contrary, the line forms part of a poetic polemic against atheism. And his point is that a God is an imperative to good social order, a necessary foundation of ethics, morality and co-operation: “This sublime system is necessary to man. It is the sacred tie that binds society.”

Which brings me, convinced atheist, somewhat improbably you may think, to Brexit and to the fundamental flaw in the UK’s negotiating position: its inability to come to terms with the reality, pace Voltaire, that, in this age of globalisation and sovereignty-sharing, “If the European Union did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.”

Or reinvent it by another name, in broadly the same form, a process we are painfully witnessing in Brussels in the Brexit talks, and the reason why the British are finding it so difficult plausibly to explain where they stand.

Larbre34 · 31-08-2017 11:47AM

Its a reasonable article (although I dont agree that May viscerally hates the European legal structures, she is forced to a strong opposing position from her (now very sketchy) mandate)

The conclusion is very good though and captures the nub of the UK conundrum:

You don’t have to love the European Union to acknowledge its necessity in some form in the modern age. Yes, it has a democratic deficit. Yes, it appears to work more for business than for ordinary citizens. But Brexiteers’ Little Englander obsession with the idea itself, with its otherness, misses the point.

“ ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy . . .
O be some other name.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Yes it appears to work for business first, but if it didnt forge economic progress as a priority, where would the income for ordinary europeans come from? The EU did after all morph out of the ECSC and EEC, overt economic co-operation at its core.

On that note, David Davis is apparently due to host various captains of British industry at his (shared) country pile this weekend, wouldnt you just love to be a fly on the wall at that one. Whatever about pub chain bosses and UKIP supporting property magnates, British industry on balance supported remaining in the EU, especially the FDI corporations and they are no-doubt by this stage getting hot under the collar about the abject failure to put a firm shape on Brexit and deliver the certainty they need and indeed were promised by the Tories.

If the groundswell against Brexit continues to gather momentum, at the crest of the wave will surely be the big exporting industries and commercials and the employees thereof who must be also now very worried.

Jim2007 · 31-08-2017 11:47AM

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

In the software industry, this kind of project is called a Death March. Management have announced the impossible goal, and everyone involved works away, projecting good news upwards, knowing that it will all eventually go horribly wrong but trying not to be the one who gets blamed..

Yap once worked on one of the moons ago called the European Logistics and Distribution Project (ELDP) for a US company. The Europeans soon renamed it to the Ever Lasting Dam Project! And in the end all that remained was pumper stickers that our American colleagues commissioned:D

steddyeddy · 31-08-2017 11:51AM

solodeogloria wrote: »

Good morning!

I don't think that positing the view that Britain could benefit from free trade agreements outside the EU is "uneducated". I think you need to start making substantial arguments for your position rather than using ad hominems.

As for the thing about being an "EU citizen". I'm an "EU citizen" also as an Irish citizen. So I don't see why or how you're presenting this as a trump card.

My hope is still very much for coming to an amicable arrangement.

Much thanks,
solodeogloria

It's not an ad hominem, it's an attack on the arguments for Brexit which rely on a complete misunderstanding of how trade works, how one benefits from being in a single market and a complete denial about how badly the negotiations have been going.

Based on the UK's performance in these negotiations I can't see other countries rushing to do a deal with Brexit Britain.

solodeogloria · 31-08-2017 12:04PM

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

A fantastic article from Patrick Smyth in today's Irish Times:

Good evening!

So the EU is like a non-existent deity (from the authors standpoint)?

I'm failing to see what's so fantastic about it.

An obsession with the foreignness of all things “European” has obscured the argument for the EU from the point of view of its function: it performs essential tasks that we and the UK need performed, from the regulation and control of an open trading market, or the protection of external frontiers, to co-operation in environmental projects or scientific research.

The UK can perform these tasks itself, like most other countries on the earth. Non-EU countries participate in European research programmes and vice versa. Environmental standards are typically agreed at a much higher level than the European Union. Climate agreements are signed internationally.

I'm not 100% sure I'd refer to the European Union as an "open market". It is only open to a degree. It is highly protectionist in respect to external trade also. It's open within the member states that are a part of it. The "protection of external frontiers" argument is also very weak. The UK already deals with its frontiers itself through the UK Border Force, it isn't a member of Schengen. It also handles its own customs.

But the UK wants to do a trade deal post-Brexit with the EU, and all trade deals now involve some means of judicial arbitration between the parties over disputes of interpretation. So it is inevitable that the UK will have to agree to establish and accept the jurisprudence of an international tribunal staffed in part by “foreign” judges, British judges and, heaven spare us, EU judges. An ECJ by another name.

No, it isn't the ECJ by another name. Having equal representation on the tribunal and including third country observers is much less prone to bias than allowing it direct jurisdiction over British affairs presumably without any British representation.

You don’t have to love the European Union to acknowledge its necessity in some form in the modern age. Yes, it has a democratic deficit. Yes, it appears to work more for business than for ordinary citizens. But Brexiteers’ Little Englander obsession with the idea itself, with its otherness, misses the point.

I don't understand why nobody wants to correct this "democratic deficit". I might be convinced that the European Union might be a "necessity" in some form. But I don't consider Britain's membership a necessity.

steddyeddy wrote: »

It's not an ad hominem, it's an attack on the arguments for Brexit which rely on a complete misunderstanding of how trade works, how one benefits from being in a single market and a complete denial about how badly the negotiations have been going.

Based on the UK's performance in these negotiations I can't see other countries rushing to do a deal with Brexit Britain.

Yes, it is an ad hominem.

Claiming that someone is "uneducated" for disagreeing with you about the benefits of external trade deals for the UK is baseless. It is also not a "misunderstanding" of how trade works.

The EU only accounts for 44% of British trade. If it accounted for the vast majority I might agree with your position. If it wasn't a decreasing share I might agree with you.

But on the basis of the facts, which is a global world that Britain trades with, then it is obviously better to seek a free trade deal with the EU, and sign new trade deals elsewhere. That's not being "uneducated". Quite the opposite, it is a conclusion made on assessing the facts that we know about British trade.

Snobbery isn't a replacement for a logical argument.

Much thanks,
solodeogloria

Jim2007 · 31-08-2017 12:15PM

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

I think this is further evidence that they are going Hard - they have no intention of negotiating anything, they are just getting set to blame the EU for the fallout.

I think it is yet another example of them putting party before country yet again. To make any progress the cabinet would need to get down to the nuts and bolts of the issue and make some hard policy decisions, leading to a split. And that must be avoided at all costs, so we get these broad statements that everyone can sign up to. Which will of course lead to an exit with no deal by default.

I doubt very much that there is any thought for the country going on.

oppenheimer1 · 31-08-2017 12:27PM

solodeogloria wrote: »

Good morning!

I don't think I've seen you present any "substantial argument" on the thread.

If highlighting every area where I feel the UK could benefit from regaining control and why that would be beneficial isn't "substantial" I don't know what is. I've explained all of this very clearly on the thread.

Not being willing to hear what has already been said, isn't the same as me not presenting a "substantial argument".

Much thanks,
solodeogloria

Solo, there has not been any country in history that has managed to increase trade by putting up barriers to trade. Ever.

The EU only accounts for 44% of the UKs trade, as if that was a trifling amount. It's just under half ffs.

Even worse is that much of the remaining trade is conducted under rules and agreements between the EU and it's international partners.

Brexit discussion thread II

Comments