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Brexit Discussion Thread VI

johnnyskeleton

Hi folks, as Theresa May has won the vote of no confidence and we are heading into Brexit day early next year, I thought for the new thread people might give their summary of their views on Brexit to date before we get into the more day to day discussions.

So what do you think about what has happened so far? Who has come off well, who has come off badly?

Where do you think Brexit is going? What is going to be the likely impact on Ireland, Northern Ireland, the rest of the U.K. and the E.U. respectively?

Both this thread and the Mark V thread will remain open simultaneously for the next day or so and Mark V will be closed as it gets closer to the server busting 10,000 mark. Hopefully we can set down a solid foundation now for a top quality thread to come!

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downcow

Anthracite wrote: »

Hard border almost guarantees a United Ireland in the next decade or two.

Now just why would that follow?

Leroy42

But what the UK seems to not get is this is not simply a disagreement between Ireland the UK. Ireland will not be taking the UK to any court of the border.

What Ireland have done is to get the EU fully on its side, much to the annoyance and apparent surprise of the UK. This effectively means that JRM etc can bleat all they like about not putting up a border etc but the elephant in the room is that no matter what the UK want a deal with the EU, either by way of WA or a future FTA. Either way the UK will need to face up to the issue of the border.

There is zero chance that the UK will erect a border in April 2019, and the EU will understand the need to be careful about demanding that Ireland implement one.

But no FTA agreement will be agreed until the conditions are in place for the border to stay open legitimatly. And it has nothing to do with the UK. If they let the UK away with an open border then the Swiss, Norway, Turkey etc will all be demanding the same. And whilst you can argue about the special nature of NI, that will only get you so far since the UK will have refused the deal on offer.

The UK seem to think that once this phase is over then it reverts back to Ireland v the UK, (in which the UK would have the strong hand) but of course that is not the case.

road_high

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Much better to have a quiet word with Macron and have his officials be as diligent as possible at Calais, much bigger impact on the Brits.

Won’t be necessary - you know what the French are like! They’ll probably shut the border on odd days to uk trucks just because they can!

brickster69

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Yes. It's an international peace treaty lodged with the UN. If one side breaks it that is what happens.

That's just the way it is.

Incorrect !

Ireland in its declaration states that it recognizes the jurisdiction of the ICJ

“with the exception of any legal dispute with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in regard to Northern Ireland." This explicitly prevents the Good Friday Agreement being discussed in the International Court of Justice.

lawred2

Berserker wrote: »

Because the GFA is a complete farce and people are just pretending that it is still relevant. It's not worth going to anyone over it. The sooner London takes back control of affairs in NI the better.

From the moment Brexit happened, I said that a hard border was going to happen and I see nothing to change that. It was the only viable solution for the border between the UK and the EU on this island. The EU support it behind the scenes. I've no doubt about that. I find it hilarious that so many here believe that the EU are their friends and that they are looking out for them. Fool me one, shame on you; fool me twice ...

Why should London have sole say over the lives of Irish citizens in the North of Ireland?

Haven't we been there before?

And you want to go back there?

lawred2

Scoondal wrote: »

Yes, Amber Rudd is talking complete and utter balderdash. These hard line remainers are causing as much damage to UK as the hard line brexiteers. She needs to realise that she is part of the problem.

In what ways are remainers causing as much damage to the UK as hard line Brexiteers?

Peregrinus

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

From day one the stance of the UK has been contradictary

1. No special deal for NI
2. No hard bother in Ireland

They have trotted those two out for years now and one of them has to now give if the backstop is not acceptable. Anyone with half a brain could have seen this coming and the Tories should have been held accountable by the media for this mess

"Hard bother" is a very happy misprint, I think!

But, yeah, you're quite right. The May government adopted an inconsistent set of objectives. It was literally impossible to achieve them all; they were always going to have to sacrifice some of them to have any chance of acheiving others. People have been pointing this out for at least 18 months now.

But they either couldn't see this or, politically, couldn't bear the cost of admitting it, so they continued to pretend that the logically impossible was possible in practice. And that legitimated outrageous fantasy; if the government could speak like that, then so could the government's critics. And so ths surreal conversation has continued in the UK right down to now. And we are where we are, with options rapidly closing off and great pain getting closer and closer.

I wouldn't mind if it was pain just for the UK. But it isn't.

A Dub in Glasgo

Berserker wrote: »

Because the GFA is a complete farce and people are just pretending that it is still relevant. It's not worth going to anyone over it. The sooner London takes back control of affairs in NI the better.

From the moment Brexit happened, I said that a hard border was going to happen and I see nothing to change that. It was the only viable solution for the border between the UK and the EU on this island. The EU support it behind the scenes. I've no doubt about that. I find it hilarious that so many here believe that the EU are their friends and that they are looking out for them. Fool me one, shame on you; fool me twice ...

From day one the stance of the UK has been contradictary

1. No special deal for NI
2. No hard bother in Ireland

They have trotted those two out for years now and one of them has to now give if the backstop is not acceptable. Anyone with half a brain could have seen this coming and the Tories should have been held accountable by the media for this mess

murphaph

If there's a no deal Brexit then the EU won't need to be extra diligent to make things quite bad for the UK, the EU just needs (must, in time at least) simply apply the existing rules wrt third countries. That alone turns the M20 into a lorry park. Being extra vindictive is not something I'd condone. If the UK were to start being really silly and interrupting gas supplies to Ireland or something of that nature then the EU can fairly respond in kind, but it should not be the instigator.

There are millions of Brits who did not want this and think it's a tragedy and I hope that in the medium to long term, a somewhat chastened UK can return to its natural place within the EU. It did contribute enormously to that single market that has benefited Ireland so greatly.

Zubeneschamali

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

If there is a hard border, I hope Irish customs will be very diligent to carefully check every single passport and every single piece of luggage and freight coming in with special attention to UK entrants.

Much better to have a quiet word with Macron and have his officials be as diligent as possible at Calais, much bigger impact on the Brits.

Peregrinus

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

If there is a hard border, I hope Irish customs will be very diligent to carefully check every single passport and every single piece of luggage and freight coming in with special attention to UK entrants.
If the UK government want it, they can have it. If people don't like it, they can approach their local MP to voice their displeasure.
Sometimes pain is the only teacher. The reflex of letting something go that burns/stings/bites is very powerful, even if the higher brain functions are insufficient to make the connection.

That would be a poor strategy, since a far greater portion of the Irish population will be crossing this border than of the UK population. 98% of UK residents will be wholly unaffected, at least directly, by a hard border with Ireland, regardless of the level of checks. This really would be shooting ourselves in the foot in order to teach the UK a lesson. Leave that kind of thing to the Brexiters.

(Plus, there'll be no warrant for checking anybody's passports. The Common Travel Area is not under threat. The concern is that there will be controls and checks on goods crossing the border.)

dr.fuzzenstein

If there is a hard border, I hope Irish customs will be very diligent to carefully check every single passport and every single piece of luggage and freight coming in with special attention to UK entrants.
If the UK government want it, they can have it. If people don't like it, they can approach their local MP to voice their displeasure.
Sometimes pain is the only teacher. The reflex of letting something go that burns/stings/bites is very powerful, even if the higher brain functions are insufficient to make the connection.

Peregrinus

sKeith wrote: »

How does half-life of 66 hours change to a half-life of 6 hours?
It either halves in radioactivity every 66 hours or it halves in radioactivity every 6 hours.

I can't believe anything in thing in this article if they try to push this unscientific nonsense.

Words you may regret, sKeith. It's not the article that is scientifically off; it's you.

The half-life of a radioactive substance is not the period over which it "halves in radioactivity" ; it is the period over which half of the atoms will have undergone radioactive decay.

Molybdenum-99 atoms undergo radioactive decay by emitting beta- and gamma-radiation. As they do so they decay into atoms of Technetium-99m, an entirely different element. For a given quantity of Molybdenum-99, after 66 hours, half of the atoms will have decayed into Technetium-99m.

Technetium-99m is also radioactive; its atoms decay into Technetium-99. Technetium-99m has a half-life of just six hours meaning that, after six hourfs, half of your Technetium-99m atoms are now atoms of Technetium-99.

(To complete the story, Technetium-99 is again radioactive; it decays into Ruthenium-99, which is stable. Technetium-99 has a half-life of 211,000 years, so it's a long time before you end up with stable Ruthenium.)

Right, for nuclear medical purposes, the isotope you want is the Technetium-99m. Inconventiently, it has the shortest half-life, meaning it's only useful for medical purposes for a few hours. You can't arrest the process of nuclear decay so, once you have a consignment of Molybdenum-99, you have a couple of days to the "sweet spot" when decay into Technetium-99m is maximised, and once you have that you have only hours to use it. As the stuff decays into Technetium-99 it becomes useless, or worse than useless; it's just radioactive waste.

Jim2007

Berserker wrote: »

Yeah, Ireland is going to take on the UK, just like they said no and stood up to the EU!!! The UK will leave, the border will be a hard one, the EU will pretend that it tried it's best and tell Ireland to deal with it. That's what will happen.

Well first of all Ireland is not going to take on the UK, the EU is. Second if the UK exits without a deal neither Ireland or the EU will be in a position to do anything other than follow WTO procedures. That is what will actually happen, not your highly opinionated Daily Mail style BS.

Peregrinus

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

JRM and Leave EU noting Leo's comment that Ireland has no plans for a hard Border, even though the government may well have no alternative come March.

Sam Russell wrote: »

I think they are confusing 'No Plans' and 'No Published Plans'.

Is it possible there is a secret back channel with TM such that in the event of a 'No Deal' exit, that the UK Gov will implement full checks at ports to make an EU border unnecessary at the NI/Ire border?

It was back channels the enabled the GFA.

The Irish government's position is that they are not making any plans for a hard border because, even in a no-deal situation, they expect HMG to honour the "no hard border" guarantee that it has given. That guarantee was not expressed to be conditional on there being a withdrawal agreement, so should be delivered on even if there is no withdrawal agreement. Therefore, what need have we to plan for a hard border?

Of course, the more cynical among us might think that there's just the teeniest possibility that, in a crash-out situation, HMG will be unwilling or unable to deliver on its "no hard border" guarantee.

But the Irish government is not going to say that out loud. Firstly, because it would in effect be accusing HMG of bad faith, and there is rarely any diplomatic, political or negotiating advantage to be obtained by making an accusation of that kind. And, secondly, becuse it would be politically damaging with their domestic audience to admit that they were expecting a hard border. So they'll never say this out loud. Or not before 29 March, anyway.

So, there are absolutely definitely no plans being made on the Irish side for how to manage a hard border, no sir, absolutely not, and if you suggest that again you'll be hearing from my lawyers. But of course in the long winter evenings by the fire one's thoughts do stray from time to time to absurd hypotheses and fanciful speculations, and one might occasionally toy with the idea of how, if a hard border were to be required in an alternative and definitely fictional universe, it might be managed?

And this is how:

First, there will be no prior agreements, back channels, random encounters in Brussels coffee houses, in which there are even hypothetical discussions with UK representatives to co-ordinate this, for several reasons. (A) There's no point; HMG is not a reliable counterparty on this issue. (B) It would send the wrong signal to the UK about Ireland's openness to a hard border. (C) It violates the fundamental rule for EU no-deal planning, which is that the EU will act unllaterally to address the consequences of no-deal. If it's no deal, there can be no deal, formal or informal, about how to manage the hard border.

Secondly, Ireland is still operating on the basis that any measures needed to manage the hard border will be temporary, because the UK will still need a deal, and reopening the border will be a condition of any deal. It's May's red lines and her dependence on the DUP that prevent her from agreeing measures to give effect to the no hard border guarantee; neither of these are mandated by the 2016 referendum, and neither will survive May's tenure as Prime Minister, which after a crash-out will be short.

Thirdly, Ireland's hope will be that they may actually get away with doing nothing, or next to nothing. Neither side will want to be the first to introduce border controls, and in the general chaos of a crash-out Brexit there will be other things that need attention eevn more than the Irish border, plus there'll be a certain forbearance on the part of the EU, who understands the political sensitivity for the Irish government. Yes, the integrity of the single market will be threatened, but at least in the early days that threat is modest, since the UK will in fact still be in almost total compliance with all single market requirements. True, customs duties will need to be collected and something has to be done about VAT, but it was always going to take time to devise and construct systems for doing this and until that's done there's not a huge point to border controls.

The hope, essentially, is that the other disastrous consequences of a no-deal Brexit will bring the UK back to the table and in a more rational frame of mind before it becomes necessary to do much by way of border control in Ireland.

But that's a hope, not a confident expectation. We'll be in wholly uncharted terrritory, and even if the UK do come back to the table fairly quickly it may still be some time before a deal that will deliver an open border is arrived at. So, yeah, it may be necessary to introduce some measure of border controls, and the EU may want Ireland to do that, or at least start doing that, before the UK does. And there are certainly not plans but, you know, idle hypothetical speculations - quite detailed idle hypothetical speculations, from what I hear - about what such measures might look like. Just don't expect to hear anybody musing out loud about this before 29 March.

Peregrinus

Berserker wrote: »

Yeah, Ireland is going to take on the UK, just like they said no and stood up to the EU!!! The UK will leave, the border will be a hard one, the EU will pretend that it tried it's best and tell Ireland to deal with it. That's what will happen.

If the UK crashes out, the border will be a hard one, and Ireland will have to deal with that.

But that's not the end of the story. The UK needs a deal with the EU, and crashing out doesn't make the UK's need go away - if anything, it intensifies it. And, by the same token, crashing out doesn't alter the EU's strategic or tactical position, its interests, its priorities.

In short, crashing out doesn't actually change a great deal. The UK still needs to negotiate a relationship with the EU; to do that they have to address the EU's priorities and positions; there is no reason why these should be any different after 29 March from what they are today. Ireland's concern will be to ensure that, even if border controls do have to be introduced as a result of the crash-out, any future relationship agreement must contain terms which will allow those controls to be removed, and the border to be reopened.

Peregrinus

Berserker wrote: »

Any you think his equivalent in Brussels does? Probably couldn't point out the Belfast on a map, unlike the above.

Seriously? Barnier has a long history with Northern Ireland. He knows Ireland, and Irish politics, well. Back in the day, as European Commissioner for Regional Policy, he was responsible for the EU PEACE Programmes in Northern Ireland, and he devised, secured approval for and then implemented the second Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland addressing economic renewal, social integration, and cross-border co-operation, all supported by substantial EU funding. He had visited both the Republic and Nothern Ireland many, many times before he was appointed to lead the Brexit negotiations.

Rees-Mogg has demonstrated repeatedly his profound ignorance of Ireland and matters Irish. Barnier, by contrast, has a history of involvement in Irish affairs going back nearly 20 years. He knows how much work has gone into getting NI to where is is today, and he feels that he played a (small) part in that. His familiarity with this issue is part of the reason why he was chosen for this gig.

(If only the UK had taken a similar view of the desirability of their negotiatiors having some experience of, or even some clue about, relevant issues, they might not be in the position they are today.)

J Mysterio

Berserker wrote: »

Because the GFA is a complete farce and people are just pretending that it is still relevant. It's not worth going to anyone over it. The sooner London takes back control of affairs in NI the better.

From the moment Brexit happened, I said that a hard border was going to happen and I see nothing to change that. It was the only viable solution for the border between the UK and the EU on this island. The EU support it behind the scenes. I've no doubt about that. I find it hilarious that so many here believe that the EU are their friends and that they are looking out for them. Fool me one, shame on you; fool me twice ...

Was this what you were trying to say?

Seriously though, the EU seem to be a bit more reliable and trustworthy than the UK. Ireland has a future with the EU, while the UK is doing its best to destroy itself. So... better to be in the EU.

Peregrinus

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Yes. It's an international peace treaty lodged with the UN. If one side breaks it that is what happens.

That's just the way it is.

But, while failing to maintain an open border in Ireland may undermine the GFA, it doesn't breach the GFA. As bit cynical says, there'd be no legal remedy for this. And, politically, dipomatically, tactically, morally, etc, etc, for Ireland to be the one actually to pull the plug on the GFA would be wrong in every possible way.

Bit cynical

EdgeCase wrote: »

Well if it's a hard border, I suggest we name all the crossing points after those who created it in the senior ranks of the Tory Party and DUP.

They need to fully own their border.

If May can't get the deal to pass in the UK parliament then the EU will require us to erect the hard border.

This is why Varadkar is saying that no preparations are being made on the hard border scenario in the event of no deal.

EdgeCase

Well if it's a hard border, I suggest we name all the crossing points after those who created it in the senior ranks of the Tory Party and DUP.

They need to fully own their border.

Bit cynical

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

If it's a hard border the agreement is over.

There is no sugar coating it.

Not sure of that. If the UK are still holding up their side of it, despite the border, then I don't think Ireland has a legal case against it. Also I don't see it being in Ireland's interest to bring it to an end.

Kermit.de.frog

Bit cynical wrote: »

I don't think iti is in Ireland's interest to tear up the GFA in the event of no deal. Ireland will try and make it work, though of course it will be harder without a deal.

If it's a hard border the agreement is over.

There is no sugar coating it.

Bit cynical

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Yes. It's an international peace treaty lodged with the UN. If one side breaks it that is what happens.

That's just the way it is.

I don't think iti is in Ireland's interest to tear up the GFA in the event of no deal. Ireland will try and make it work, though of course it will be harder without a deal.

Kermit.de.frog

Berserker wrote: »

Yeah, Ireland is going to take on the UK

Yes. It's an international peace treaty lodged with the UN. If one side breaks it that is what happens.

That's just the way it is.

Bit cynical

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Why does Varadkar and Coveney not just come out and say that they are preparing for a hard border, that the failure of the UK to support the backstop in the context of Brexit is a breach of the GFA and that this country is going to bring the UK before the Hague for thrashing an international peace treaty?

They have said that no preprarations are being made for a hard border even in the event of no deal although preparations are being made in other areas.

I have suggested that the reason for this is to put a bit of pressure on the EU as it weakens the EU's position slightly in Ireland's favour.

Berserker

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Ireland does and Ireland is a member state of the European Union.

I agree that Ireland does. I've no bones about that. I'm saying that the boys in Brussels don't, unlike the boys in London and Dublin.

Berserker

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

And Ireland can bring the UK to the Hague as a defacto rouge state when they break the agreement.

Yeah, Ireland is going to take on the UK, just like they said no and stood up to the EU!!! The UK will leave, the border will be a hard one, the EU will pretend that it tried it's best and tell Ireland to deal with it. That's what will happen.

Kermit.de.frog

Berserker wrote: »

Any you think his equivalent in Brussels does? Probably couldn't point out the Belfast on a map, unlike the above.

Ireland does and Ireland is a member state of the European Union.

Berserker

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

And the Brits are?

You think Lord Mogg of Sommerset gives a rats arse about NI?

lol

Any you think his equivalent in Brussels does? Probably couldn't point out the Belfast on a map, unlike the above.