Brexit discussion thread II

On these points about “why isn’t there a gas line to France” or “why are Irish businesses over focused on the uk market”. The answer is simple: nobody ever imagined that the UK would suddenly pull the plug from the entire European single market project and all EU countries are closely integrated to neighbors. There’s absolutely nothing strange about that.

Why would Ireland have spent a fortune building gas lines under the Atlantic to France when we could share infrastructure with the UK? We all had a reasonable expectation of continuity of the single market.

We were encouraged to cooperate and see it as one bloc, one group, one market and to share and integrate networks. We were encouraged by policy to do things like integrate electricity markets and gas markets and our key partner in that has just torn up the contract and stormed off.

Should we also build a gas line to Norway, you know ... in case France ever goes completely bonkers and cuts us off? Or can we assume that the rest of the EU isn’t quite so unreliable?

Energy suppliers in Ireland buy gas on the global market which may transition the UK network. We aren’t buying gas from the UK exclusively.

If you are suggesting the UK cuts Ireland off or tariffs us, it would be behaving like Russia towards Eastern European states and cutting energy supplies for political reasons.

In that case, the EU should rightly impose trade sanctions as it would be utterly unacceptable behavior.

I’m also sure companies like Gasprom, Statoil, Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Total and so on would be highly unlikely to take legal action against a state blocking them from accessing customers too. They’d just accept Brexit politics...?!? They’re lovely and never sue or politically pressure anyone.

As for Irish businesses, they’re having fundamental parts of the foundations of the market torn up by the UK. How they operated was absolutely reasonable. Nobody in their right mind would have expected this to actually happen.

Creating this kind of chaos and uncertainty is going to cause problems similar to any other bout of geopolitical chaos. Nobody in business here where they’ve exposure to the UK or in the UK itself can reasonably plan.

The whole thing about the EU has been it creates a single, huge, STABLE and barrier free internal market. Brexit potentially returns Britain to a much less powerful version of how it was in the middle 20th century and in a world dominated by very different power structures and where it is just going to be a mid sized country being bounced around.

Assuming it does go for a hard Brexit, the consequences are just totally unpredictable. I wouldn’t really take any of the economic forecasts seriously as there’s no precedent and there are too many variables, many of which are political and not economic or rational.

Having watched yet more pontification and clueless arrogance on the Marr show on BBC this morning, I see nothing changing. Same characters ranting and raving and the same totally uninformed debate. You might as well be listening to a bunch of people discussing stuff they heard from a taxi driver after a few pints in the pub.

We should be preparing for the worst - the UK chaotically crashing out of the single market, probably a hard border with NI and the likely political and security problems that will bring and possible serious problems in Britain as the consequences of that will inevitably lead to a complete mess.

Well the current UK government / Brexiteer tactic appears to be to try to blame the EU on all negative consequences of Brexit and to stamp their feet and scream like a toddler when they can’t get exactly what they want.

They’ll try to blame the Northern Irish border on the EU and the Irish government for not just rolling over and bending to their will.

It’s a bit like someone threatening self harm when they don’t get their own way and then blaming a 3rd party for making them do it.

What’s more worrying is a significant % of the public and media will 100% buy into this and you can fully expect a very strange and hostile rhetoric for the next few years.

The only way I see this resolving is a general election in the UK before it’s too late.

If Arleen had any sense, she’d pick a politically neutral issue like failure to fund NI social projects or health and pull the plug. But, sadly, I think the DUP is blinded by sectarianism and will become more committed the harder the Brexit as it suits them to be cut off from the “south”.

If nothing else, I think it’s given a lot of Europeans a view of the kind of crazy we have had to deal with in the past. I’ve had a few comments to that effect from people in Germany, Belgium and France.

Leroy42 wrote: »

So you have accepted a doubling of the settlement bill.
You have accepted that the £350m to NHS was a lie
You have accepted an (at least) 0.4% drop in growth for the next five years.
You have accepted a fall off of growth from the fastest growing economy to the slowest since the vote
You have accepted a fall from 5th to 6th in the rankings, that has cost around £20bn since the vote.
And now you are prepared to accept indirect jurisdiction from a European body.
You have accepted an undefined transition period (I thought this was going to be the easiest deal ever)
You seem to be prepared to accept regulatory compliance.
If there anything you are not prepared to accept to get this Brexit?

Good afternoon!

I have no issue with joint arbitration on the Brexit deal. That's what I've preferred to direct jurisdiction. I think Britain should have its own body of regulators in the long term including for aviation.

The Government have been clear that they want the transitional period to end before the next election.

The UK's economy is also only the slowest growing in the G7. I anticipate as clarification on the end state comes in that we will see this pick up.

I'm keen to see the process conclude.

Much thanks,
solodeogloria

Iceland would probably veto them due to the way they’ve been treated over the years. The cod wars then using anti terrorism legislation against Icelandic companies in the UK in 2008 to freeze assets.

UK - Icelandic relations aren’t great at all.

I’m also not really sure the UK would see eye to eye with the EFTA members. They’re very different to the mainstream of U.K. politics.