Brexit discussion thread III

Anthracite · 23-03-2018 12:11AM

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

The Tories seem to think the Irish attitude is all for show over "the elections"

I've heard this being trotted out many times in the UK media, by Iain Duncan Smith and others, completely unchallenged. The fact that it would take literally 5 seconds for a journalist to fact-check this seems to be an insurmountable barrier to anyone calling them on this bare-faced lie.

Capt'n Midnight · 23-03-2018 12:29AM

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

The Tories seem to think the Irish attitude is all for show over "the elections"

Someone should remind them that the Civil War was fought over whether to accept a border or not. And FF were the crowd totally against it.

And that if FF get in they'd have to be even more hardline about the border to prove they are the "real" republican party, especially to take votes back from SF.

For a lot of us down here the idea that FG are actually doing something about the north is uncharted territory.

FreudianSlippers · 23-03-2018 02:01AM

Sam Russell wrote: »

One single Dutch trawler has 23% of the UK fishery catch, and it does not unload the catch in the UK, but rather in the Nederlands.

Common fisheries policy = problem solved.

No need to **** off mate!

FreudianSlippers · 23-03-2018 02:06AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Someone should remind them that the Civil War was fought over whether to accept a border or not. And FF were the crowd totally against it.

And that if FF get in they'd have to be even more hardline about the border to prove they are the "real" republican party, especially to take votes back from SF.

For a lot of us down here the idea that FG are actually doing something about the north is uncharted territory.

Look. I think that this is the time to be hard about the border.

I think we have an opportunity to show how a "united ireland" could work as two countries. What if we agreed that we would police the borders between the islands, if the EU subsidized us to pay for it, paid for reconciliation grants and allowed a limited common market between Ireland and the UK?

We get money from UK and EU to pay for NI plus a reunification effort payment, plus a guarantee that there is no negotiation on our corporate tax.

I just solved both brexit and Ireland.

*mic drop*

Peregrinus · 23-03-2018 02:39AM

josip wrote: »

You're not taking the multiplier effect into account.

http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Managing_the_economy/The_multiplier_effect.html

Sometimes it can make more macro economic sense to pay more for domestically produced goods and services.

But you're not taking reciprocity into account.

The UK firm that tendered for this contract and didn't get it, De La Rue, does a huge amount of security printing work for foreign governments - banknotes, postage stamps, passports, the lot. They produce 150 different currencies alone.

They are heavily invested in a global trading regime in which they are free to bid for these contracts, and are not discriminated against.

If the UK opts out of this trading regime so that De La Rue can be guaranteed the UK passports contract despite foreign bidders being cheaper, no amount of "multiplier effect" is going to compensate for the losses and opportunity costs suffered by De La Rue and other British companies who lose the right to tender for foreign government contracts.

The whole point of Brexit was supposed to be to allow nimble, creative, go-ahead Britain to escape the dead hand of Brussels bureaucracy and embark on a career as a world-beating economic power. Brexit hasn't even happened yet, and already Brexiters are making it clear that, no, it's all about little England protecting itself from nasty foreign competition.

Peregrinus · 23-03-2018 02:49AM

Really Interested wrote: »

http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=200403&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=735146

I have not read decision yet but in effect I believe it says a states own printing service does not save it from having to tender including passport services.

It's relevant in that decision that the printing agency, though state-owned, was organised as a private company (like any privately-owned commercial business), and the fact that the State was the principal shareholder didn't involve "any special mechanism for State supervision" in relation to security concerns. In other words, although the Austrian state held the shares in this company, this didn't put them in any position to address public security measures in this company any more than they could in a company they didn't own.

The decision might have been different if they were printing passports, etc, in a division of one of their own government departments.

It may be that the French are going their government printing in-house - as in, a state agency is doing it, rather than a state-owned commercial venture.

Or, it may be that, based on this case, De La Rue would in fact have good grounds for a complaint to the Commission about their exclusion from the French passport-printing business. And, if they have such a claim, possibly the reason they don't pursue it is the knowledge that, however good the claim is now, it will lapse with Brexit.

Peregrinus · 23-03-2018 02:54AM

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

The Tories seem to think the Irish attitude is all for show over "the elections"

This is a common Brexiter talking-point.

Whatever your views about the merits or demerits of the Irish border problem, it requires profound ignorance about Ireland and Irish affairs to imagine that it's a beaten-up problem, manufactured to secure electoral advantage.

But there's no shortage of profound ignorance about Ireland among Brexiters.

Skedaddle · 23-03-2018 03:00AM

Peregrinus wrote: »

This is a common Brexiter talking-point.

Whatever your views about the merits or demerits of the Irish border problem, it requires profound ignorance about Ireland and Irish affairs to imagine that it's a beaten-up problem, manufactured to secure electoral advantage.

But there's no shortage of profound ignorance about Ireland among Brexiters.

They're projecting their own mythology and political culture onto Ireland. Remember that is how they are thinking about everything they do - it's for electoral advantage and very little else.

They're coming up against an actual principled belief when it comes the the border.

They can't understand that people could simply be absolutely against a hard border because everyone actually believes that's a fundamentally bad thing and that they're not just saying things for the sake of political point scoring. Or that there's an Irish consensus on this issue across all parties.

Zubeneschamali · 23-03-2018 10:23AM

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I just solved both brexit and Ireland.

*mic drop*

Well, no. You have reset Ireland to 1914 or so when Home Rule was passed at Westminster and the Unionists and Nationalists started arming for civil war.

Thomas__. · 23-03-2018 10:35AM

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Someone should remind them that the Civil War was fought over whether to accept a border or not. And FF were the crowd totally against it.

And that if FF get in they'd have to be even more hardline about the border to prove they are the "real" republican party, especially to take votes back from SF.

For a lot of us down here the idea that FG are actually doing something about the north is uncharted territory.

Look. I think that this is the time to be hard about the border.

I think we have an opportunity to show how a "united ireland" could work as two countries. What if we agreed that we would police the borders between the islands, if the EU subsidized us to pay for it, paid for reconciliation grants and allowed a limited common market between Ireland and the UK?

We get money from UK and EU to pay for NI plus a reunification effort payment, plus a guarantee that there is no negotiation on our corporate tax.

I just solved both brexit and Ireland.

*mic drop*

Your suggestion is not working in reality and you haven't solved anything, it rather would feed the extremists on both sides in NI to start another Trubles era.
The best thing would be that the UK would simply abandon NI and leave it to reunite with the Republic and preparations should be made to keep the militant Unionists in check (which is easier said than done but nonetheless necessary) militant Dissos would also had to be under surveilliance in case they would use that for some retaliations.

demfad · 23-03-2018 11:13AM

Just a query:

Would it be possible to have coorporations, companies and businesses based in Northern Ireland registered as ROI entities for tax purposes and membership of the single market?

I'm sure a whole raft of EU, UK and ROI law might prohibit but just putting it out there.

This type of situation always struck me as a likely vehicle for a transition to a UI should that situation arise.
It might also serve as a half way house after Brexit, where companies that did more trade locally or with ROI and/or EU could register in EU.

Zubeneschamali · 23-03-2018 11:25AM

demfad wrote: »

This type of situation always struck me as a likely vehicle for a transition to a UI should that situation arise.

That is why the Unionists would rather die than allow anything like that.

demfad · 23-03-2018 12:13PM

Leroy42 wrote: »

There is this constant refrain from Brexiteers that the Remainers wull2nor accept the vote.

Nobody is claiming the vote is invalid. What remainers are claiming is that the vote does not give a blank cheque to the government to do whatever it wants. It cannot simply ignore the 48% that voted to remain or assume that every leave vote was on the basis of whatever the cost.

It is a trite line trotted out by the like of IDS and JRM to avoid having to deal with the genuine concerns that are being raised.

And when did democracy stop? My understanding is that a vote doesn't mean the losing side needs to shut up and accept whatever happens. It is the job of MPs to continue to serve their constituents and if that means raising doubts over Brexit then so be it.

This campaign to shut down any opposition is the worst aspect of all this. For a country that seemingly wanted to take back control there seems to be many that believes that means control only to them.

I think a number of people are now rightly claiming that the result is now in serious doubt.

On the Leave side:

Russia today and other Russian propaganda outlets spent more money than any other Leave campaign on the referendum
As with the US, Russian bots and trolls dominated the leave discussion on social media. eg Leave related tweets accounted for 80-90% of activity in weeks before referendum dissapearing to 10-20% the day after.
Russia used information warfare to change the behaviour of two target groups: radicalise leavers on an emotional level, and supress the vote of remainers.
Tools used are fake news, social media microtargetting, disinformation, kompromat etc
It is illegal to coordinate campaign groups: ALL campaign groups paid the then obscure company AggregateIQ monies. AggregateIQ was not even discoverable on a google search. Robert Mercer who owns Cambridge Analytica owns the Intellectual Property for AIQ. Every time CA is officially contracted, AIQ is also. BeLeave paid ALL its £700,000 allowance to AIQ. They were set up just to allow more money to be passed to AIQ/CA. THomas Borthwick (working for savethe8th) headed the official Leave the EU comms department.
Leave.eu used Cambridge Analytica probably to the value of a 7 figure sum but closer to 8. Brittany Kaiser reported as responsble for dirty tricks in Nigeria (kompromat, incitement resulting in many deaths) was at the leave.eu launch. Arron Banks main (official) leave.eu and UKIP sponsor said that they had a massove SM database from CA. As did Andy Wigmore.
Think about this: The Official Leave campaign paid £3.9 million of it's £7million allowance to AggregateIQ.
CAs methods have been exposed in the last week. They used information warfare on the British population just as they did in the US. They used it with an illegal database of indepth SM profiles of UK voters.
CA is being investigated by Mueller for coordinating with Russia in the US election of Donald Trump. In Many CA operations St Petersburg trolls have been subcontracted to CAs efforts.

Personally I have no doubt that Cambridge Analytica's or Russian interference in Brexit swung the result. Taking into account both it's a 55:45 win for remain or better IMO.

I can't be sure. The result is 'valid' in the legal sense (until ruled otherwise).
But nobody can have any confidence now that this result was fair.

Parliament should NOT take the advice from this result and revoke A50 or hold a fair referendum if politically expedient.

The fact that there is still not a national outcry over the result is testament to how deeply the Russian/Mercer oeration has suceeded in the UK.

demfad · 23-03-2018 12:16PM

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

That is why the Unionists would rather die than allow anything like that.

The DUP would rather die. I would wager that Unionist businesspeople might not be so dismissive when the daily sliced pan is at risk.

Leroy42 · 23-03-2018 12:31PM

They don't care. It would appear that the idea of democracy is more important that the actual.

There was a vote, and whether is was directly targeted as Demfad says or simply skewed by the outright and now fully accepted lies on the leave side, it is clear that people were duped.

But most people I have heard, and the polls seem to back this up, seem to be of the opinion that once a vote is taken it can't be re-run and they simply need to plow ahead and accept whatever happens.

Even the likes of IDS and JRM have stated that any transition deal needs to be seen in light of the overall goal. Don't worry about anything, once Brexit is delivered the details don't matter

demfad · 23-03-2018 01:12PM

Leroy42 wrote: »

They don't care. It would appear that the idea of democracy is more important that the actual.

There was a vote, and whether is was directly targeted as Demfad says or simply skewed by the outright and now fully accepted lies on the leave side, it is clear that people were duped.

But most people I have heard, and the polls seem to back this up, seem to be of the opinion that once a vote is taken it can't be re-run and they simply need to plow ahead and accept whatever happens.

Even the likes of IDS and JRM have stated that any transition deal needs to be seen in light of the overall goal. Don't worry about anything, once Brexit is delivered the details don't matter

The likes of IDS and JRM's position is understandable. JRM has met recently with Bannon who devised the CA election weapon.
The impotence of everyone else is a sign of the success of the attack where such a massive once a century scandal disapears into the sea of hype and other disinformation in the hyper-normalised world.

Professor Moriarty · 23-03-2018 02:03PM

demfad wrote: »

The likes of IDS and JRM's position is understandable. JRM has met recently with Bannon who devised the CA election weapon.
The impotence of everyone else is a sign of the success of the attack where such a massive once a century scandal disapears into the sea of hype and other disinformation in the hyper-normalised world.

Excellent observation and very well put.

trellheim · 23-03-2018 03:49PM

The revised EUCO guidelines are quite depressing, looks like they are letting them move onto trade without a border issue lockdown.

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/33458/23-euco-art50-guidelines.pdf

Zubeneschamali · 23-03-2018 03:53PM

trellheim wrote: »

The revised EUCO guidelines are quite depressing, looks like they are letting them move onto trade without a border issue lockdown.

But to coin a phrase - nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

If the exit agreement does not guarantee no hard border, we simply veto it and see how the UK manages without a transition period, free trade agreement with the EU, access to EU bodies, flights in or out of Europe, hard customs borders at Calais ... WTO terms March 2019, and good luck.

Leroy42 · 23-03-2018 04:01PM

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

But to coin a phrase - nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

If the exit agreement does not guarantee no hard border, we simply veto it and see how the UK manages without a transition period, free trade agreement with the EU, access to EU bodies, flights in or out of Europe, hard customs borders at Calais ... WTO terms March 2019, and good luck.

The problem with that is that we will then be seen as landing hardship on everyone. We will be under massive pressure from every direction to get in line. The further this goes, the more skilful I see the UK position as being. They are continually pushing the EU further back. The says things need to be agreed, but then agree that agreement can come later.

Of course the UK are also backing themselves further into a corner, but ever week they can dig out is better from them.

Time is the one thing that the EU has over everything else. You can argue about the outcomes, but the deadlines are fixed. EU controlled that. But they continually seem to be happy to move on the process.

Not saying that it is the wrong way to do it, but I am getting increasingly concerned that the EU is being far more pragmatic than their position on the NI border would signify.

Nody · 23-03-2018 04:37PM

trellheim wrote: »

The revised EUCO guidelines are quite depressing, looks like they are letting them move onto trade without a border issue lockdown.

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/33458/23-euco-art50-guidelines.pdf

What lock down? The deal clearly states that NI will remain in the customs union IF they can't come up with anything else. That has locked down the border and now it's up to UK to figure out how to get out of that bind OR they will default the whole deal. That is about as iron clad as you're going to get it but for some reason people on this site appears to expect UK to cede NI to Ireland and a unified Ireland in law at a minimum and anything less means EU are throwing Ireland under the buss.

The simple reality is that NI will scupper the deal and there will be a hard border but EU has ensured that when it happens that will be due to UK's failure to live up to their part of the deal and not the other way around.

Enzokk · 23-03-2018 05:07PM

Leroy42 wrote: »

The problem with that is that we will then be seen as landing hardship on everyone. We will be under massive pressure from every direction to get in line. The further this goes, the more skilful I see the UK position as being. They are continually pushing the EU further back. The says things need to be agreed, but then agree that agreement can come later.

Of course the UK are also backing themselves further into a corner, but ever week they can dig out is better from them.

Time is the one thing that the EU has over everything else. You can argue about the outcomes, but the deadlines are fixed. EU controlled that. But they continually seem to be happy to move on the process.

Not saying that it is the wrong way to do it, but I am getting increasingly concerned that the EU is being far more pragmatic than their position on the NI border would signify.

We are getting screwed either way though. The only way we are not getting screwed is if Brexit is stopped. If they leave with a Norway deal we are still getting hurt. The further away from that the more hurt we will be.

The UK is actually being helped by the EU urgency to not hurt their members, us. So the EU is pushing to move things forward to get a good deal for Ireland because we need it, not because of the wonderful UK negotiation positions. But still with this in mind the EU has not had to compromise on anything major so far. The UK has had to give in to all of its positions so far, but you think they are doing well?

Nody wrote: »

What lock down? The deal clearly states that NI will remain in the customs union IF they can't come up with anything else. That has locked down the border and now it's up to UK to figure out how to get out of that bind OR they will default the whole deal. That is about as iron clad as you're going to get it but for some reason people on this site appears to expect UK to cede NI to Ireland and a unified Ireland in law at a minimum and anything less means EU are throwing Ireland under the buss.

The simple reality is that NI will scupper the deal and there will be a hard border but EU has ensured that when it happens that will be due to UK's failure to live up to their part of the deal and not the other way around.

That is probably the outcome of the negotiations. The EU is setting up the best deal they can but trying to make sure they are not the one to blame when the UK hardliners derails everything.

trellheim · 23-03-2018 05:09PM

Hold on a second. The opening EU position was - no trade talks till NI was locked down. That was fairly unequivocal.

Now, we find that somehow we are onto trade talks. I see your logic above - but it doesn't matter - if It gets scuppered anyway, then why bother in the first place .

Your argument seems to imply that NI will break the deal; therefore thats a discussion we should have right now before this farce goes further because everyone is acting under false pretenses.

My canary in the coalmine ? The DUP are onside.

Nody · 23-03-2018 05:16PM

trellheim wrote: »

Hold on a second. The opening EU position was - no trade talks till NI was locked down. That was fairly unequivocal.

Now, we find that somehow we are onto trade talks. I see your logic above - but it doesn't matter - if It gets scuppered anyway, then why bother in the first place .

Your argument seems to imply that NI will break the deal; therefore thats a discussion we should have right now before this farce goes further because everyone is acting under false pretenses.

My canary in the coalmine ? The DUP are onside.

It will go one of two ways come the leave date.

Either UK panics and agrees NI will remain in the CU - Win for Ireland, Win for EU because no other solution will be place at the time and DUP can sulk about it all they want. How UK aligns that internally we honestly could not care less about.

Or UK crashes out because they refuse to accept the deal they signed and look as a bad partner in general who don't want to stick to what they agree. EU simply points to the deal signed and says we did our part.

That is why the negotiations continue and the closer we get to the final deadline the more likely UK is to panic and go for option 1 (which is preferable) simply because they don't have the maneuvering space to fudge it and delay any more. In essence EU is giving UK enough rope to hang itself but offers them a way out via remaining in the CU as a whole in some form. Now due to May and DUP I think the second option of hard crash out is the by far more likely scenario but I can still understand the point of continue the negotiation.

Leroy42 · 23-03-2018 05:17PM

Exactly. If the NI border is always going to be the piece that brings the whole thing crashing down then why even bother with the trade talks. What is the point? They had a position that everything in Phase 1 needed to be signed off before moving on to trade (the thing that the UK wanted) but have we really got that? All we have is a default position if something else doesn't come up but without putting any really hard lines on what that actually means.

But, even if you think that the lines are drawn, again what is the point of going on? Why won't the UK sign up to it now, and why won't the EU stick to their original position?

Leo, I think, is seeing this too. He mentioned yesterday that the EU needs to show that it is valuable to be in the EU, to make it worthwhile to be a country such as Ireland to remain. What is the point if when something bigger than us comes up (such as Brexit) the EU is more worried about the bigger countries than the individual members.

trellheim · 23-03-2018 05:24PM

My big worry is something big thing like the UK agreeing to pay their budget sub for another 20 years in return for a hard border

Enzokk · 23-03-2018 05:31PM

Leroy42 wrote: »

Exactly. If the NI border is always going to be the piece that brings the whole thing crashing down then why even bother with the trade talks. What is the point? They had a position that everything in Phase 1 needed to be signed off before moving on to trade (the thing that the UK wanted) but have we really got that? All we have is a default position if something else doesn't come up but without putting any really hard lines on what that actually means.

But, even if you think that the lines are drawn, again what is the point of going on? Why won't the UK sign up to it now, and why won't the EU stick to their original position?

Leo, I think, is seeing this too. He mentioned yesterday that the EU needs to show that it is valuable to be in the EU, to make it worthwhile to be a country such as Ireland to remain. What is the point if when something bigger than us comes up (such as Brexit) the EU is more worried about the bigger countries than the individual members.

Wasn't the position that there had to be significant progress in phase 1 before we move on to phase 2? Seeing that the UK has agreed to basically being in the CU and SM via Northern Ireland to get their progress, the move now for the EU is to get that down in legal text and signed. Also, isn't phase 2 just the withdrawal period and not trade? We haven't moved to trade yet as this is what will happen after they leave in March 2019. The work that happened before that will dictate what trade deal there will be so it is not wasted for the EU, but laying the foundations for trade.

trellheim wrote: »

My big worry is something big thing like the UK agreeing to pay their budget sub for another 20 years in return for a hard border

The EU will be monitored by the smaller countries in the EU as well. Will they throw a country in the EU under the bus to get a good deal for Germany and France?

Harika · 23-03-2018 05:33PM

trellheim wrote: »

My big worry is something big thing like the UK agreeing to pay their budget sub for another 20 years in return for a hard border

UK also doesn't want a hard border, so they won't be paying to get something they don't want.

josip · 23-03-2018 05:59PM

Leroy42 wrote: »

Exactly. If the NI border is always going to be the piece that brings the whole thing crashing down then why even bother with the trade talks. What is the point? They had a position that everything in Phase 1 needed to be signed off before moving on to trade (the thing that the UK wanted) but have we really got that? All we have is a default position if something else doesn't come up but without putting any really hard lines on what that actually means.

But, even if you think that the lines are drawn, again what is the point of going on? Why won't the UK sign up to it now, and why won't the EU stick to their original position?
...

Because the Conservatives get to stay in power longer, the longer they can fudge and keep the DUP in the coalition.
And there's nothing that the Tories won't consider in order to stay in power.

trellheim · 23-03-2018 06:16PM

why even bother with the trade talks.

I think he was writing that from the EU point of view, not the UK's.

Why carry on when the result will be a crap one

Brexit discussion thread III

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