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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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ThePanjandrum

CelticRambler wrote: »

London is not a great financial centre "just because" - it has been the back door into the EU for dozens of non-EU countries, like Switzerland. These countries needed an office in an EU country, and London's simultaneous connections to the EU and the anglosphere gave it an advantage over other continental cities. That's gone now, and as the world evolves, those angloshere connections will be less important in the future, so there's no reason to think offices that have moved will ever be re-established.

The most ardent Brexiteers go on and on (and on and on ...) about Britain being a great world economy and so it will inevitably recover from whatever harm arises from Brexit, especially on the back of trade deals with emerging economies around the world. They fail to see that two of those so-called emerging economies - India and Brazil - are hot on the heels of the UK, and a 5% hit to the UK will see it fall into the minor rankings with countries like Italy, South Korea and Canada. Negotiating great deals is never easy when your tag line is "fastest shrinking economy in the northern hemisphere" ...

London is the world's premier financial centre, despite the EU which has spent years trying to make it move to the Eurozone. The EU has also tried to wreck it with Tobin taxes and such like which have been resisted.
By the way, your "minor rankings includes every EU country except Germany.

Anthracite

ThePanjandrum wrote: »

https://euobserver.com/tickers/144007

No-one is permitted to check the EU's honesty then?

Not really sure if this has anything to do with Brexit.

If you want to start a thread about the formalities of state authorities interacting wtih the EU, with a conspiratorial slant, this would seem to be good material for an opening post.

RobMc59

Strazdas wrote: »

A few constitutional experts have been saying recently that it's crazy that England is being allowed overrule Scotland and Northern Ireland on massive constitutional change with a mere advisory referendum.....they say the other two should have been allowed a veto, this would be standard practise when holding a referendum across a political union of countries.

The Brexit referendum is treating Scotland and Northern Ireland as if they are two English regions who have been overruled by the 'rest' of England.

Regarding the constitutional experts,could you provide a link to this please?

EdgeCase

ThePanjandrum wrote: »

London is the world's premier financial centre, despite the EU which has spent years trying to make it move to the Eurozone. The EU has also tried to wreck it with Tobin taxes and such like which have been resisted.
By the way, your "minor rankings includes every EU country except Germany.

The EU didn't spend years trying to move London's financial centre to the Eurozone. The London financial centre was a fundamental part of the EU and there were discussions and arguments over different ways of regulating and doing taxation, as there would be in any organisation. Also it's an open market, it doesn't protect one region against others, and that includes not giving special status to London.

London now leaves the EU, so effectively other than being geographically closer to the EU, it's as relevant as Wall Street or Singapore in terms of how the EU will be dealing with it going forward. Unfortunately, that removes London's status as a gateway / financial centre for the entire EU, so it will probably diminish its status, at least until it reorientates itself in a decade or so's time.

So, of course you're going to see an EU financial centre emerge in the Eurozone. I would strongly suspect it will be more of a network of financial centres than a single city due to what the EU is but also due to massive changes in technology since the days when everyone had to be physically sitting in the same financial district.

Incidentally, London is not the world's largest financial centre, New York is and Hong Kong and Singapore are hot on its heels.

I'd say you'll probably just see a rather non dramatic emergence of an Eurozone financial network of cities though. It's not going to be a case of Frankfurt turning into something like Wall Street or London.

eagle eye

robindch wrote:

plus a vibrant immigrant community which enriches the country in too many ways to count.

No. Immigration policy in this country is horrendous. We have taken in a lot of people in this country with horrendous criminal records in their own country.
I can't get stats for it but I'm pretty confident that I'm right when I say that the percentage of criminals among non-nationals from other European countries living in Ireland is much higher that the percentage of criminals that exist in the countries they came from.
Lots of bad eggs over here.
And while I'm at it, I'm Irish, I'm not or never will consider myself European. Our ancestors fought hard to give us Independence and I don't mind being part of a common market but I'm not happy with this effort to try and make us believe we are all Europeans like it's one big country.
We have much more in common with the UK, USA and Canada besides language than we have with most of the members of the EU.
We also have a split island with a deep history of violence up north. We don't want that starting up again. If the EU are not able to prevent the troubles starting up again then I'm in favour of Irexit because I'd rather be poor than live in a place where good people are getting killed every week.

CelticRambler

downcow wrote: »

And I would love a NI sporting anthem as many English also want their own sporting anthem.

You've got the Derry Air, played as NI's anthem in the Commonwealth Games. Is that not good enough?

downcow wrote: »

It’s when people tell us we have the English national anthem. We own the UK and anthem every bit as much as England Scotland and Wales.

Yeah ... but ... so did a lot of other countries that have now ditched it in favour of their own anthem - Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, Rhodesia till it became Zimbabwe. Even France and Prussia used the tune for a while - I wonder how well it'd be received if you stood outside the HoC singing Heil_dir_im_Siegerkranz?

ThePanjandrum wrote: »

London is the world's premier financial centre, despite the EU which has spent years trying to make it move to the Eurozone. The EU has also tried to wreck it with Tobin taxes and such like which have been resisted.
By the way, your "minor rankings includes every EU country except Germany.

Thanks for reinforcing my point, :P even if you forgot to include France with Germany. Post Brexit, the UK will be a nothing-special economy, and have nothing in particular to offer serious players like India or Brazil. Meanwhile, other less important economies like Italy or Poland or Ireland will have one major selling point: access to the Single Market.

For years, London was able to fight the EU's efforts to move London's business to the Eurozone; then, in one hissy fit, English isolationists undermined all those efforts. To date, 10% of all the assets managed by London have been moved to the Eurozone, and Brexit hasn't happened. The EU has graciously allowed an extra year for further funds to be transferred prior to the renewal of contracts, but once the door is shut, London will be on an island with no further access to the EU's customers.

micosoft

Irishmale0399 wrote: »

I would ask the question......Can the Irish government afford Northern Ireland?? Could we support their public spending, could we support their social/pension system???....the list goes on. I see Ireland (I have been living away for 20 odd years) struggling with what it has at the moment without the burden of more. I have also seen the damage done here in Germany by joining East and West.....one major eye sore is the pension system which is on its knees. They were not ready to take on the problems East Germany brought with it.......high unemployment etc.

I personally feel the best and easiest way of solving things is to make Northern Ireland independant. Let them run their own country, let them decide if they want to be EU members after 1 or 2 years......until then they have to fend for themselves.

The benefit of being in the EU is that they will look at one time events such as the reunification of Ireland as strategically important and fund them. This is what structural and other EU transfers are for. Luckily one of the most influential EU members is intimately familiar with the cost of reintegrating a lost province - in their case provinces, and will be very supportive. Repeating history and Ardnacrusha we could have Germany help rebuild Northern Ireland back into a Industrial Powerhouse for Ireland - taking the remaining English manufacturing base over. Harland and Wolff could become Blohm and Voss building a new EU navy to hold off illegal English fishing and catching English immigrants in their dinghies.
Secondly the remainder of the UK (or England and Wales) will not be allowed walk away from their liabilities. They will have to step them down over a number of years but no doubt it does not go to zero the day after unification.
Finally there will be a massive dividend in the reintegration of the Irish economy. Remember Northern Ireland was the richest part of Ireland before 1921. That can happen again without the mis-governance and incompetence of the British and Unionist governments who don't understand business and trade like the Irish government does.

That said to all the above - I do feel a political arrangement with Scotland might allay some of the fears of the minority in a United Ireland.

jm08

downcow wrote: »

You still not getting it. That’s their choice. And I would love a NI sporting anthem as many English also want their own sporting anthem. But on Remembrance Day etc most. Want gstq.

But most want to stick to GSTQ. Remembrance Day is for the military, so its hardly surprising that their anthem is GSTQ.

briany

CelticRambler wrote: »

There's already a precedent - the re-unification of Germany. And that's why I think that the "Irish Question" will turn out to be the easiest problem for a post-Brexit chaotic UK to sort out. Because it is already separated from GB (physically, socio-politically and in respect of some regulations, e.g. the all-important agri-sector), and because there won't have been enough time for it to go down the third-country/rouge-state route, the EU can point to the East-Germany example and say to the UK "how about we treat NI as a special case, and use your willingness to sort that out quickly as a barometer of your good faith?"

Listening to the US news last week, it was said that once pilots started announcing to passengers that their arrival/depature was delayed due to the effects of the government shutdown, Trump had no choice but to cave in to the Democrats. The same thing will happen in England. People in Kent couldn't give a damn about where the DUP buy their daily bread, but they will care about not being able to take their dogs to the continent. As soon as the full impact of a chaotic Brexit is felt by ordinary people, they'll be clamouring for the government to get a deal, and if that means that some Paddy in Belfast has to have his British crisps checked at the port before he can eat them, that'll be a small price to pay.

The reunification of Germany is not a precedent for the current situation. There is no precedent here because no EU member has ever been leaving before, so what happens would be more of a precedent setter. In the case of German reunification, you had a change in sovereignty with two countries merging to become one. In the case of a post-crashout backstop, you would be asking to bring a portion of a non-EEA member back into alignment. If this were to go ahead on the fast track, it would give the SNP further impetus to seek a new indy ref on the basis that they could quickly rejoin the EU/EEA, and obviously the UK government doesn't want that. It would lessen concerns in other EU states about leaving the EU since it wouldn't be so much of a leap into the unknown if they had a precedent of an ex EU/EEA member (if only a region thereof) could be brought back into the fold quickly. You might even have Russia cheekily asking if they could get a deal on Kaliningrad.

Obviously, if you were to have Irish unification, it'd be a different story, but without that, the idea of having the north enter into the backstop after leaving just opens up too many questions that I doubt the EU would be overly keen to deal with.

Anthracite

ThePanjandrum wrote: »

By the way, your "minor rankings includes every EU country except Germany.

Yes, but other EU members don't seem to share UK's delusions of grandeur - hence the need for a community of democracies that can stand up to the superpowers of the future.

jm08

ThePanjandrum wrote: »

London is the world's premier financial centre, despite the EU which has spent years trying to make it move to the Eurozone. The EU has also tried to wreck it with Tobin taxes and such like which have been resisted.
By the way, your "minor rankings includes every EU country except Germany.

No it hasn't. France wanted Euro clearing business in Paris and complained to the ECJ who ruled in favour of the UK, so most Euro clearing business remained in London. Outside the EU is a different story.

As for Tobin taxes, some countries in the EU wanted to introduce a financial transation tax, but the ECJ yet again ruled in favour of the UK who didn't.

Bearing in mind the number of cases that the UK has won in the ECJ, its amazing that they are so against the court. Perhaps its too impartial and sticks to the laws as written down.

Anthracite

eagle eye wrote: »

I'd rather be poor than live in a place where good people are getting killed every week.

Well that makes perfect sense. There's absolutely no reason to believe that dirt poor countries have high numbers of people being killed because of violent crime, deprivation, or poor medical care.

Sigh.

Nody

jm08 wrote: »

Bearing in mind the number of cases that the UK has won in the ECJ, its amazing that they are so against the court. Perhaps its too impartial and sticks to the laws as written down.

It's Trump and the WTO courts all over again; if they can't control it and do what ever they want even if they win great majority of cases (WTO is something silly in the 90%+ range as I recall) they want it gone. Because how dare anyone actually try to put a limit or hold them accountable for anything...

eagle eye

Anthracite wrote:

Well that makes perfect sense. There's absolutely no reason to believe that dirt poor countries have high numbers of people being killed because of violent crime, deprivation, or poor medical care.

We'll never be a third world country so that stuff will never happen. I lived through the 80's which were hard times financially and we had the troubles as well.
I'd rather the 80's with no troubles than live financially better with that going on.
Also we'd get rid of lots of foreign criminals.

Anthracite

eagle eye wrote: »

We'll never be a third world country so that stuff will never happen. I lived through the 80's which were hard times financially and we had the troubles as well.
I'd rather the 80's with no troubles than live financially better with that going on.
Also we'd get rid of lots of foreign criminals.

I lived through the 80s and spent my time wondering which country I would be forced to emigrate to to find work when I finished school.

Ireland in the 80s was a shockingly bleak place to live - the Ireland of today is not perfect (and no country ever will be) but no amount of racism is going to make me consider that this age is not light years better than what we have left behind.

By the way, I'm sure you will have no trouble backing up your claim that our immigrants are more likely to be criminals. Please furnish the evidence.

Capt'n Midnight

Strazdas wrote: »

A few constitutional experts have been saying recently that it's crazy that England is being allowed overrule Scotland and Northern Ireland on massive constitutional change with a mere advisory referendum.....they say the other two should have been allowed a veto, this would be standard practise when holding a referendum across a political union of countries.

The Brexit referendum is treating Scotland and Northern Ireland as if they are two English regions who have been overruled by the 'rest' of England.

Then again the UK constitution is three words long 'Parliament is God'

Everything else can be overturned, there's lots of precedence and bits and pieces of laws that affect stuff in a constitutional way but there's no actual written down constitution. And nothing that can't be overturned by votes in the House of Common.

The Lords can only delay some stuff for a while.
But this close to 29th that could get interesting. IIRC there's less than 30 days in parliament left.

Seth Brundle

downcow wrote: »

Remembrance Day etc most. Want gstq.

Id love to see your source for that statistic! Given that about half of the population of NI would rather cut off their legs than be part of the Rememberance Day military services, your example hardly suits a modern NI.
Unless you're deliberately wanting to exclude all of these people?

ThePanjandrum wrote: »

London is the world's premier financial centre, despite the EU which has spent years trying to make it move to the Eurozone. The EU has also tried to wreck it with Tobin taxes and such like which have been resisted.

So all the nasty unelected bureaucrats in the EU had to do to move the companies to the eurozone was to have a Brexit? Who knew it would be that simple?

CelticRambler

briany wrote: »

In the case of a post-crashout backstop, you would be asking to bring a portion of a non-EEA member back into alignment. If this were to go ahead on the fast track, it would give the SNP further impetus to seek a new indy ref on the basis that they could quickly rejoin the EU/EEA, and obviously the UK government doesn't want that.

I agree that the case of East/West Germany is not a perfect precedent, but it's the closest we have; and it wouldn't be a question of bringing NI back into a "backstop" arrangement - it'd be as an (effectively) autonomous statelet pending further developments (i.e. a border poll). I would imagine that somewhere in the T&Cs of whatever deal was signed would be an understanding that the UK was ceding a degree of sovereignty prior to cutting NI loose entirely. A state of escrow, if you like.

As for the implications for Scotland/rest-of-the-UK ... well, from the 29th March onwards, that'll be none of the EU's concern. But if it should happen that the UK breaks up and the newly independent Scotland seeks admission to the EU, why not? The UK could not veto Scotland's membership in the way that (for example) Spain would veto an independent Catalonia's application.

The EU wants to welcome new members: there are other countries on the waiting list - Georgia, for example (kind of ironic that the Cross of St. George may yet fly alongside the flags of the EU27 in Brussels and Strasbourg :P ) I can well envisage Scotland and Northern Ireland being reintegrated into the EU on the same day - Scotland as an independent state, NI re-united with the RoI, and a restoration of the cultural and political alliances shared between our two countries until about 900 years ago. :cool:

Strazdas

RobMc59 wrote: »

Regarding the constitutional experts,could you provide a link to this please?

I was reading a lengthy Twitter thread a couple of weeks ago and there were people with knowledge of the subject saying it would be extremely unusual for a political union of countries to hold a major constitutional referendum and for the individual countries of the union not to have the power of veto.

The only reason England is able to overrule Scotland and Northern Ireland on Brexit is because it has a larger population.

bilston

Can someone explain to me how MPs in the HoC can rule out a No Deal Brexit? Presumably it means if the UK govt cant get a WA through Parliament it will have to try and get A50 extended? But what if, as is very possible, the EU says no to an extension? Surely an automatic No Deal would have to follow? Or would it then be a case of A50 (and therefore Brexit) being cancelled altogether?

Now I'm very much a Remainer, but even I would be very reluctant to see Brexit being cancelled without another referendum.

So basically, does it really matter if MPs in the HoC vote to rule out a No Deal? All it will do is weaken the British govts negotiating hand, should any further negotiations take place and ukitmately if no agreement is reached then there will be No Deal.

Anthracite

bilston wrote: »

All it will do is weaken the British govts negotiating hand, should any further negotiations take place and ukitmately if no agreement is reached then there will be No Deal.

The thing is, the EU is not looking to grind the UK into the dust. The strength of the UK's hand is irrelevant if the EU has moved as far as possible towards their position.

Nody

bilston wrote: »

Can someone explain to me how MPs in the HoC can rule out a No Deal Brexit? Presumably it means if the UK govt cant get a WA through Parliament it will have to try and get A50 extended? But what if, as is very possible, the EU says no to an extension? Surely an automatic No Deal would have to follow? Or would it then be a case of A50 (and therefore Brexit) being cancelled altogether?

Now I'm very much a Remainer, but even I would be very reluctant to see Brexit being cancelled without another referendum.

So basically, does it really matter if MPs in the HoC vote to rule out a No Deal? All it will do is weaken the British govts negotiating hand, should any further negotiations take place and ukitmately if no agreement is reached then there will be No Deal.

Yes they can; they can also vote that Unicorn production should be increased by 300% and that UK is the center of the known universe. The practical implications though are just about as big in your question as in my two scenarios. Well to be fair they can tack on a few "government should do this" to it all as well but in reality short of a majority uniting behind an actual pragmatic proposition (i.e. cancel A50, new referendum etc.), bringing it to the HoC and voting it through it means nothing in practice.

bilston

Anthracite wrote: »

The thing is, the EU is not looking to grind the UK into the dust. The strength of the UK's hand is irrelevant if the EU has moved as far as possible towards their position.

Fair enough, but I still don't understand what difference MPs voting to rule out No Deal makes. Maybe it puts pressure on the UK govt to offer the EU something significant (like a 2nd referendum or GE) in order to get A50 extended should notjing be agreed.

ArmaniJeanss

eagle eye wrote: »

I can't get stats for it but I'm pretty confident that I'm right when I say that the percentage of criminals among non-nationals from other European countries living in Ireland is much higher that the percentage of criminals that exist in the countries they came from.

This is probably true, simply because young single males make up such a large percentage of all immigration. i.e., we are getting more 20 year olds than 90 year olds, and the average 20 year old commits more crime than the average 90 year old. There's also issues with the living environment and jobs that immigrants end up in, they can often edge people towards criminality.

Whether any of this is a reason to be against immigration is a different issue.

downcow

Strazdas wrote: »

I was reading a lengthy Twitter thread a couple of weeks ago and there were people with knowledge of the subject saying it would be extremely unusual for a political union of countries to hold a major constitutional referendum and for the individual countries of the union not to have the power of veto.

The only reason England is able to overrule Scotland and Northern Ireland on Brexit is because it has a larger population.

This more wishful thinking I feel.
The UK was a patchwork of in and out.

2 countries voted in & 2 countries voted out

There were regions voted in and there were regions voted out

And even in NI there constituencies voted in and there were constituencies voted out

Wales and Scotland have both recently voted to be part of the UK and NI isn’t even close enough to consider haveing a referendum to opt out.

How could it be more democratic and how luderous would it be to start saying County Antrim stays and County Fermanagh goes

bilston

Nody wrote: »

Yes they can; they can also vote that Unicorn production should be increased by 300% and that UK is the center of the known universe. The practical implications though are just about as big in your question as in my two scenarios. Well to be fair they can tack on a few "government should do this" to it all as well but in reality short of a majority uniting behind an actual pragmatic proposition (i.e. cancel A50, new referendum etc.), bringing it to the HoC and voting it through it means nothing in practice.

It works the other way. The UK govt agreeing to Brexit were demands to remove the Backstop is pointless as the EU27 will never agree to that.

Akrasia

bilston wrote: »

Fair enough, but I still don't understand what difference MPs voting to rule out No Deal makes. Maybe it puts pressure on the UK govt to offer the EU something significant (like a 2nd referendum or GE) in order to get A50 extended should notjing be agreed.

Ruling out a crash out takes away a lot of bargaining power from the 'brextremists' and the debate moves onto the saner choices of either leaving with a deal or not leaving at all

The brexit negotiations are not between britain and the EU anymore, they're between different factions of the Tory party and the DUP

[Deleted User]

eagle eye wrote: »

No. Immigration policy in this country is horrendous. We have taken in a lot of people in this country with horrendous criminal records in their own country.
I can't get stats for it but I'm pretty confident that I'm right when I say that the percentage of criminals among non-nationals from other European countries living in Ireland is much higher that the percentage of criminals that exist in the countries they came from.
Lots of bad eggs over here.
And while I'm at it, I'm Irish, I'm not or never will consider myself European. Our ancestors fought hard to give us Independence and I don't mind being part of a common market but I'm not happy with this effort to try and make us believe we are all Europeans like it's one big country.
We have much more in common with the UK, USA and Canada besides language than we have with most of the members of the EU.
We also have a split island with a deep history of violence up north. We don't want that starting up again. If the EU are not able to prevent the troubles starting up again then I'm in favour of Irexit because I'd rather be poor than live in a place where good people are getting killed every week.

You'll need to provide proof of your statement, because if your using it as a potential reason for irexit, you could forgive the UK for wanting brexit because Irish people form the second largest nationally of foreign prisoners in the UK.

Strazdas

downcow wrote: »

This more wishful thinking I feel.
The UK was a patchwork of in and out.

2 countries voted in & 2 countries voted out

There were regions voted in and there were regions voted out

And even in NI there constituencies voted in and there were constituencies voted out

Wales and Scotland have both recently voted to be part of the UK and NI isn’t even close enough to consider haveing a referendum to opt out.

How could it be more democratic and how luderous would it be to start saying County Antrim stays and County Fermanagh goes

The UK is still not a single 'country' though (just as Belgium isn't). The referendum is effectively saying there is no difference between Scotland and Northern Ireland and Lancashire and Berkshire, they have the exact same status (which they don't in truth).

Anthracite

downcow wrote: »

Wales and Scotland have both recently voted to be part of the UK

When did Wales vote on this?