Brexit discussion thread III

More echo chamber stuff coming up. This time the US Embassy is at it by describing the danger the UK is in. I guess they are stuck in the same echo chamber we are in as well.

https://twitter.com/davemacladd/status/1011636382786314240

Enzokk wrote: »

More echo chamber stuff coming up. This time the US Embassy is at it by describing the danger the UK is in. I guess they are stuck in the same echo chamber we are in as well.

https://twitter.com/davemacladd/status/1011636382786314240

The other aspect of that video is that the other people in the room are mostly smiling during it. This stuff is well known, apparently everyone else can see the mess that Brexit is except the UK.

There wasn't even any push back against the fall off in the economy, really it was more about that the political outcome of such outcome would be.

Given that the the UK will rely on the US so much after Brexit, to hear them talk in such terms means that they are going to go into any negotiations with the belief that the UK are in a very weak position.

flutered wrote: »

they also thought that we would leave the eu to join them in a race to the bottom

the did indeed only to be proven wrong... again!:rolleyes:

At the end of the day all thats going to happen in 9 months time is that they'll extend it for another 9 months or whatever.

At the end of the day all thats going to happen in 9 months time is that they'll extend it for another 9 months or whatever.

That is an easy one to misunderstand I think , if you extend it will be a GE immediately in the UK and party unity will win out , and both parties policies is to leave, not leaving when promised will continue a constitutional crisis ( plus it will wreck their NHS budgets )

Also the other 27 will need to be arm wrestled into agreeing an extension

EdgeCase wrote: »

What worries me a *lot* is what do people like this guy do when Brexit happens and delivers even more austerity and the Tories' wet dream of funnelling resources into elites?

They will vote Nazis, National Front. Think 1930s.

Leroy42 wrote: »

Totally agree, my point being that Leo would, based on the agreement and pronouncements since, have expected that the trade off for going easy would be that TM and the Uk would work on finding solutions. It must be very difficult to watch as the UK spends all its time fighting itself and blaming others rather than working on the problem at hand and how they can limit the damage to others.

I don't think Leo imagines that the UK think he "went easy" on them back in December, or since. They think, and he knows that they think, that he screwed them to the wall. They were shocked - shocked, I tell you! - that we demanded that they honour their no-hard-border guarantee, and they were amazed and appalled that the EU backed us.

Varadkar certainly did not, and does not, expect any "trade-off" from the UK for this. On the contrary, he expects resentment.

His strategy is not that the UK will cave because they feel any obligation to be nice to us. Rather, he is banking on them caving because it is the best option available to them, from their own point of view. He - and Enda before him - have tried to ensure than any Brexit with a hard border will be worse for the UK than the Brexit they can achieve by committing to an open border. It's about interests, not gratitude.

Anything is possible, but this strategy may yet pay off. Next week May is having another Cabinet awayday at Chequers to sign off on the Brexit White Paper that the UK is to issue shortly afterwards. There are straws in the wind which suggest that this White Paper may drag the UK further towards the soft Brexit end of the spectrum. In particular:

- Remember May's much-derided announcement of increased spending on the NHS, to be part-funded by the "Brexit dividend"? Some well-placed sources have suggested that this is a bone she threw to the Cabinet Brexiters, some [fake] credit they can take, in return for which she expects them not to impede her softening of Brexit.

- As the result of a late change in plan, the Cabinet awayday includes not just the Brexit Committee of Cabinet, but the whole Cabinet. The date of the awayday was changed to facilitate this. The Cabinet is understood to be a bit more Remainy than the Brexit Committee, so this shifts the balance a bit.
Also, the awayday has been stretched into an overnighter, which suggests room for much argument, which suggests a significant shift of position may be in the offing.

- The EU has been signalling more loudly and more explicitly than ever that, if May can shift some of her red lines, all kinds of good things become possible. It may be that it has been suggested to them that now would be a really good time to signal this.

OK, there's an element of reading the entrails here. These aren't terribly strong signal on which to predict a softening shift of the UK's position. But don't rule it out either.

Enzokk wrote: »

We have heard about this before, then May comes out with a position that is decidedly hard Brexit on the back of threats by the likes of Gove, Davis and Johnson . . .

She has a pattern of spouting hard Brexit positions, but also of caving at the last minute and softening the position to the degree necessary to avert a collapse of the talks and a no-deal Brexit.

Enzokk wrote: »

I wonder if it will come down to their threats of resigning and forcing a leadership challenge against her. She probably know she will not win against Johnson or Gove if all Leavers in the party back one candidate and she will not have a majority support among the party membership to defeat either of those.

I think the outcome will be the same as always, she will fudge a deal through that looks and smells like hard Brexit to me to keep herself in No. 10 for another week. This would be the UK is leaving the customs union and single market. As Barnier has explained many times before, this would actually mean only a FTA like Canada and all other things will be off unless there is a specific EU program that allows for third country participation. If Gallileo doesn't allow for this unless you are a EU/EEA member then they will not get access to it. Otherwise other third countries, like any other in the world, can get the same and the EU will not open itself towards that.

The UK can't get a Brexit deal based on leaving the CU and the SM unless they also agree different treatment/status for NI to keep the border open and, implicitly, some degree of border between NI and GB.

Leaving the CU, leaving the SM and having no customs/regulatory divergence between NI and GB can only be achieved with a crash-out Brexit. Which (among its other disadvantages) also kicks the possibility of even a Canada-style FTA into the middle distance.

Enzokk wrote: »

She also has a pattern of hardening her position after speaking to her "partners" in government. So the only thing we know about her is that she doesn't have a firm position of where she stands. This may not be a bad thing as I expect anyone to be able to change their position when they receive evidence to support a different view. But she changes her mind it seems based on who she spoke to, not what facts she received.

A point to grasp here - and I don't think May has fully grasped it - is that what the UK says directly to the EU in the negotiations and related correspondence matters to the EU. They pay limited attention to what UK figures say in speeches for public consumption, in Parliament, in leaks to the press, etc. etc.

May sends conflicting signals - signals different stances at different times, or at the same time, but to different people. (There are domestic political reasons for this, and we know what they are.) The EU pays relatively little attention to this. What really matters is what the EU negotiating team says across the table, or in written negotiations.

And their main complaint has not been that the UK team is blowing hot and cold, saying different things, etc. It's that the UK team is saying very little. Since the joint report in December last, the UK team has really only put one detailed submission on the table, in relation to customs, and even that was incomplete and uncertain. In relation to other matters, the problem is not that the UK keeps changing its position; it's that it still doesn't have any position.

Enzokk wrote: »

Agreed, which again gets us back to reality, she is in debt to the DUP who will not accept divergence from the UK for NI. But she wants to leave the CU and SM, which means she goes back on the agreement with the EU to keep the border open. So she needs to stay inside both, but that isn't Brexit so NI needs to have a different status than the UK. But the DUP will not agree to this so...and on and on and on we go.

Now we have the UK finally paying for years of austerity and the need to reverse it. The problem seems to be that the economy is slowly grinding to a halt exactly when you don't need it to. It's a complete mess but it is one she was part of for so long I fail to muster a lot of sympathy for her. She was in cabinet when George Osborne and David Cameron started the austerity drive. She is just as culpable as any of them for the mess they are in now.

I, too, have no sympathy for her. I get that she is in a difficult position, politically committed by the decisions of her predecessors to a course of action that must harm her country, just at a time when the global environment within which this must be managed is becoming extremely disadvantageous. But she has dealt with that situation as badly as it could possibly be dealt with, missing every opportunity offered to her and squandering the limited advantages she had. She couldn't have made a bigger hames of this if she tried to.

She's in hock to the DUP, as you point out. But the DUP's overriding concern is "no regulatory divergence between NI and GB". Given that, it is madness for her to plump for a hard Brexit, no CU, no SM, no ECJ jurisdiction, since this makes it absolutely impossible to deliver on her open border guarantee without pissing off the DUP. That's the kind of political calculation that a complete novice can spot, but she missed it.

She is terrible. The way that she has let Boris walk all over her. Does she not think that people don't notice? Her own party, the EU? Of course the EU realise that many of her statements are for domestic consumption but they also she the reality, brought home with devastating effect by the DUP in December, that she has no authority. Nothing she agrees is actually agreed, even the discussions they have are open to whatever interpretation she takes after she has 'consulted' with her cabinet.

The UK needs a leader. It is not her fault that they are in this mess, but she continued failures to lead is causing more and more problems for the UK.

She is being saved by a even more useless opposition leader and by the fact that nobody else in the party wants to take up the challenge

EdgeCase wrote: »

I think there's also an element that is trying to paint May, who was one of the most hard line and right wing Home Secretaries in modern history (Go Home Vans etc etc) as some kind of "damsel in distress".

She's trying to run with fox and the hounds, while her position seems to be more about a hard-line on migration and removing human rights oversight by the ECJ etc at all times.

I see May as one of the biggest "cakists" she’s only softer on economics but pretty hardline on the rest.

Also comparing her with Thatcher (as happens a lot) is ludicrous. She approaches politics more with passive aggression than taking issues on head first.

Having been an advocate for Remain, she is also a hypocrite who sold her principles to become PM.

But two years on from the referendum vote several DUP figures admit that the process of leaving the EU is more complex than they had reckoned, particularly in Northern Ireland, where the vote has rekindled serious discussion of a united Ireland. The European Commission has made it explicit that Northern Ireland would retain EU membership if it were to secede from the UK and join the Republic.

Shocking I know who would of thought it would be difficult to unpick over 40 years of agreements and untangle such interlinked economies

“In five or ten years’ time, the negotiations, Brexit, the transition period will have been completed and I think you will see a move away from this zero-sum game because they can’t win that. But I want to see the next two or three years over and done with.”

5 or 10 years time could be too late if you get a full on economic meltdown coupled with a hard border

In the last day we have won the referendum, ****ed Cameron, ****ed Corbyn, caused a second referendum in Scotland, caused a discussion of a united Ireland…”, Banks wrote to Farage, who fronted Banks’s Leave.eu campaign

Unionist loyalty to Britain is so appreciated
https://medium.com/@marcusleroux/the-dup-didnt-think-brexit-would-be-this-complicated-e0dabc645fa2


Lots more in the article a good read.

J Mysterio wrote: »

I have zero sympathy for May and hold her in contempt. This is her fault

Wish we could thank this 10,000+ times. Imagine if she'd won the parliamentary majority outright in the GE she called last year - it'd be cakism galore. Though, the DUP would be back under their rock, which is good.

megaten wrote: »

Nah its Cameron's, at the end of the day he's the one who gambled a county to try and make the day to day of his job easier.

May is the one who decided what the 'mandate' was. She is the one who was leader during the referendum. She is the one who can and has influenced public discourse. She is the leader of the government and the responsibility for how the negotiations are conducted and how Brexit is implemented is hers.

She has allowed her party and its 'personalities' to run wild and unfettered.