Brexit discussion thread II

First Up wrote: »

Which can be done without any reference or dependence on the UK's exit "deal"

Am I correct in understanding that sentence, as your presuming that one or more or all of the EU27 can take proactive steps to include the UK onto their (respective) list of countries providing exchangeable driving license, in advance of end March 2019?

If I am correct, then can I just ask: what's in it, for the one or more or all of the EU27, at this stage of the EU/UK negotiations and considering where they're at (and through whose fault, mostly)?

This is all not a useful distraction, about an elementarily-simple fact of legislative and procedural life within an international context, tbh.

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Grim news from the Bank of England:



Loss of EU passporting rights certainly won't help.

Not to mind the many thousands of indirect job losses as a result of the 75,000 direct losses.

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's not appropriate to do this ahead of time. It may not need to be done at all if there's a Brexit treaty with catchall provisions which cover the point - in that case it will be effected by operation of EU law, and national governments are not going to waste their time and money legislating for something that EU law covers. Even if there's no provision covering it in the Brexit deal, the date with effect from which it needs to be done at national level won't be apparent until we know what (if any) transition period will operate, and adding the UK to the list of non-EU/EEA countries shouldn't be done until it actually is a non-EU/EEA country; we need to know that date.

In short, it's premature to legislate for this yet; we need to know when, and on what terms, the UK will leave the EU before we can draft legislation which will be apt.

For the avoidance of doubt: I'm well aware, Peregrinus. I'm just trying -like you I suspect- to narrow down First Up's apparent issue with the simple procedural principles underlying the problem

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Not to mind the many thousands of indirect job losses as a result of the 75,000 direct losses.

The real story is not the potential loss of x thousands of City jobs and their associated income tax (all non-trivial that it may be): the real story is how many of those x thousands jobs are tied to trading activity under the UK's passporting rights (I'd anticipate particularly strong correlation between both notions), and the economic cost to the Exchequer of losing the UK's passporting rights (which, I daresay, will be significantly higher than 75,000 high-earning City jobs and even including indirect jobs/activities - possibly orders of magnitude higher).

This is what the BoE alluded to, in coded fashion, in its brief (BBC article extract, "The Bank of England has asked banks and other financial institutions, such as hedge funds, to provide it with contingency plans in the event of Britain trading with the EU under World Trade Organization rules"): WTO rules are wholly unconcerned by banking (services) activity, that's effectively code for 'what are your plans in case the UK loses its passporting rights'.

breatheme wrote: »

I hope they don't get passporting rights, unless there's also Freedom of Movement.

I can't see the UK holding onto them regardless, unless the UK ends up not Brexiting at all.

I've long held it as a part-business minded, part-realpolitik minded belief (since before the referendum), that at least Germany and France (but also Ireland and Luxembourg, to a somewhat lesser extent) would be making a play for grabbing as much of the City's passported financial trade (and closely-associated know-how, networks and activities) to put some fiscal oil into their respective domestic socio-economic machineries, and help level up Paris and Frankfurt as global financial turnplates, if the UK was to Brexit - softly or not.

Yes, London is and has long been an important financial turnplate for the EU. And it might still be that, to a somewhat lesser extent after Brexit. But passported financial trade is fiscal manna, and the medium to long term gains from repatriating ('appropriating', really) those activities from the UK are worth the short-term inconvenience/pain of stripping those rights from London.

Merkel and Macron must be thanking their lucky stars for the referendum result and the British government's moronic approach to Brexit since.

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I don't know. The UK is a very big slice of the European pie to lose. Merkel didn't seem keen even on Greece leaving a few years ago, never mind an economy like the UK's. Obviously, they'll be keen to reap as many rewards as possible but the European project has no doubt taken a serious hit with Brexit.

Greece was (still is) in the €zone, and that difference relative to the UK was very far from insignificant at the material time.

Look at how €zone private sector heavyweights have consistently and unanimously played the dual unity & stability cards in all things Brexit since very early after June 2016: they'd been through a similar politico-economical mill with Greece in 2015. They know they'll take a hit, but they also know that this hit is far less harmful than the alternative (kicking Greece out of the €zone BITD, letting the UK having its cake and eating it present day).

No doubt about the hit to the EU, for sure. But at the end of the day, the respective and collective best interests of the EU27 have not aligned with those of the Brexit-seeking UK since July 2016, and arguably still less so now than then.

So, well, you know...[Jack Sparrow]take everything, give nothing back[/Jack Sparrow]

It may be a glib observation or just bias confirmation, but after spending the last week over there, the local vibe just reinforced my impression, developed from Continental newsreading over the past year and months, that the UK leaving the EU is by now generally seen as a blessing on the Continent. There is this feeling that the trouble-fête has (already) left the building, and that the EU project is getting bootstrapped in anger. That is not an attempt at diminishing the scale of the problems yet to solve, but likewise there is this sense that Continentals are effectively just putting up with the UK's domestic shenanigans as best they can, essentially by waiting on the UK to come out clean with what it wants, and taking a (typically Continental - and quite Germanic, one might say) pragmatic and procedural approach to the whole exercise, having already long worked out possible outcomes and respective flowcharts. Including a no-deal hard Brexit, if that's what the UK wants...or snookers itself into.

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

The point about Greece may not be as solid as I thought then. However, I think it's fair to say that many people on the EU-UK divide would much rather that Brexit simply went away rather than proceeding with it.

Honestly, I think they'd have mixed feelings.

Their heads would say, yeah, if the UK were to change its mind even now, and call the whole thing off, that would be a good thing for the Union.

But their guts would say Christ, here we go again. Say what you like about Brexit, but at least it means the end of the constant whinging, the throwing of toys out of the pram, the table-thumping, the demands for rebates and concessions and exceptions, the gutless leaders who gamble with referenda about EU membership in order to avoid facing party divisions. We thought at least we were getting out of all that.

It's an academic question, since I don't see any realistic scenario in which the UK would call this off between now and March 2019. But for all their dismay at the time of the vote, I think a lot of people in the Union have reconciled themselves to the UK's departure, and see the bright side, and would be a bit discomfited if it were to be called off now.

A recent opinon poll in France found that more people welcomed the UK's departure than regretted it. That's public opinion, of course; it doesn't necessarily reflect the establishment view. And it's just one country. But it may be a straw in the wind.

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I'm convinced that Jeremy Corbyn or someone under his wing will be PM soon. It would take very little to topple the current government. The problem is that Labour needs to decided what it wants vis-á-vis Europe and soon.

Maybe - I think Labour have been doing well by NOT calling out what they want, allowing them to highlight the divisions on the Tory benches without providing targets.

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Maybe - I think Labour have been doing well by NOT calling out what they want, allowing them to highlight the divisions on the Tory benches without providing targets.

Of course, it also allows them to avoid addressing their own divisions over Brexit, which will themselves become problematic if Labour takes power before Brexit is concluded.

The British government has said it expects to have hired up to 8,000 new staff by next year as it steps up preparations for leaving the European Union - with or without an exit agreement.

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2017/1031/916519-uk-to-hire-8-000-staff-by-next-year-to-gear-up-for-brex/

8,000 new staff, that's a lot of nurses and doctors that could of been hired

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's an academic question, since I don't see any realistic scenario in which the UK would call this off between now and March 2019. But for all their dismay at the time of the vote, I think a lot of people in the Union have reconciled themselves to the UK's departure, and see the bright side, and would be a bit discomfited if it were to be called off now.

I think there is at least one realistic scenario:

Serious Russian/Alt-right interference and subversion is suspected in the Brexit referendum prompting large investigations.

In the last day, Russian ambassador to the UK Alexander Yakovenko was named as a contact for indicted Trump National Security campaign aide George Papadopoulos.
Aaron Banks and Andy wigmore had 2 extensive 6 hour meetings with him during the Brexit campaign.
Last week a huge revelation that Cambridge Analytica contacted Julian Assange to offer to help distribute the stolen emails. As well as working for Trump CA was involved with UKIPs (Farage, Banks, Wigmore) Leave.EU campaign. CAs sister company AggregateIQ was paid by ALL 5 leave campaigns including £3.9m (over half allowance) by official Vote Leave.
Farage has been named as a person of interest in the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign.

It looks increasingly like Brexit and Trump are instrinsically linked via the right wing grouping of Mercers/Bannon/Farage/Banks/Wigmore etc using CA and Breitbart and other RW tools and media including Mercers vast propaganda inter- network. It looks like this group formed an axis with Russian Gov/Intelligence to coordinate to achieve these mutually beneficial results.

This means that there is a de facto investigation into Brexit being carried out in the US as the exact same bad actors were involved in both.

IMO Brexit is more vulnerable than people realise. I would be confident that an event like Nigel Farage being indicted would pose a massive existential danger to it for several reasons.

There are other dominoes to fall such as the release of the impact assessments on 58 sectors of the British economy (88% of the total).
When these are revealed to be disastrous....

Legal opinion seems to be that A50 can be revoked in 'Good faith'.



Just to show that the Brexit-Russia-US RW axis is being increasingly reported on: Here are some recent articles:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/30/revealed-ukip-whistleblowers-raised-fears-about-breitbart-influence-on-brexit?CMP=share_btn_tw

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/28/trump-assange-bannon-farage-bound-together-in-unholy-alliance?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/21/russia-free-pass-undermine-british-democracy-vladimir-putin?CMP=share_btn_twCMP=share_btn_tw

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/a-suspected-network-of-13000-twitter-bots-pumped-out-pro?utm_term=.aeVJ5DKJQ#.wdNp06Mpa

Peregrinus wrote: »

I suppose that, because they have done less of the nailing their colour to the mast and denouncing one another as traitors and enemies of the people, the various Labour factions have a bit more freedom of manouvre, and are better positioned to compromise on some consensus middle-ground approach to Brexit than the Tories are.

I think it is clear that the Tories cannot now accept a Norway solution even though that is what the likes of the Telegraph were screaming for before the referendum, and UKIP referred to it as desirable many times.

Labour have not painted them into that corner.

murphaph wrote: »

It would serve her right. I'm convinced the main reason for calling the GE this year was because several of her MPs in the last parliament were or are under suspicion and or investigation for fraud related to their previous campaigns. She wanted to wipe the slate clean as it were. If some other legal bear trap can topple her I'd have a wry smile on my face for sure.

I seem to recall there were issues with campaign finance returns for the previous election yes. But I also recall the general discussion the day before she called the election being she'd be mad not to given the polling figure at that time. I know that popularly, Nick Timothy is given credit for the election this year. It seems to me that this was not dealt with strategically.

My main concern at the moment is that the high profile alternatives aren't great. The Tory party has no options at all. Labour's problem is that Keir Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn probably don't fully agree on what strategy to follow with respect to Brexit if they suddenly wound up in charge. I'm not sure that a change is necessarily beneficial in other words.