nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

Brexit discussion thread X (Please read OP before posting)

johnnyskeleton

This is the tenth incarnation of our Brexit discussion thread, so Ive copied ACDs comments from the last thread to here. Same warnings etc still apply:

As we are approaching the critical end of March October 2019 period, please bear the following in mind before posting:
Insults directed at popular figures are not acceptable in this forum
Please do not post memes, videos or comedy links here
Please do not be uncivil to other posters
Please use the report function to alert the mods when necessary

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

prawnsambo

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

It's expected that the Spanish nurse currently working in the UK world have already applied for settled status and so be allowed to return to work there.

Interestingly, I saw a report that since the 16 referendum, the NHS has recruited 4000 Asian nurses and medical staff to replace EU workers who have left.

That sounds like a large number, but before the referendum there were roughly, on average 800 new EU nurse registrants a month. That took a nosedive to under 100 a month after the referendum.

Valhallapt

Enzokk wrote: »

There is about 3 million EU citizens in the UK I believe, and in March 600 000 had applied for settled status. The scheme was also supposed to kick in at the end of 2020 and not October 2019. There are many cracks in this system and the crazy thing is it will hurt people in the UK if they go ahead with this.

What about the £30K limit for immigration visas though? If they implement that decision then they can hire as many nurses from Asia as they like, they will have to refuse their applications. I guess they will have a exception for medical staff, but what about the other industries. Its madness, the more you look the more problems you see.

I was speaking to a Portuguese nurse, working in the NHS the other day, she didn’t bother to register / has no interest, while she enjoys it in England she has plans to move to Belgium once things become difficult over there. She was fairly young, said there are loads in the same position, no family, U.K. was never a permanent thing, mostly have plans for Dubai / Australia etc.

They could lose tens of thousands of employees in a very short space of time.

Capt'n Midnight

BonnieSituation wrote: »

But once they're out and they're 3rd countries and the WA won't apply and the "deal" they get from the EU will be even more unpalatable for them.

Any post-Brexit deal is still dependent on the three main pre-conditions being sorted out first.

Divorce bill, but that's sorting itself out. It's a red herring as it would get paid off in tariffs. Or the EU could go after companies using UK dependencies for tax evasion.

Northern Ireland - Red line.

Rights of EU citizens in the UK - Priti Patel has undermined that.

Would her parents have been allowed into the UK under her rules ?

Will she literally feel terror if she has to face the music over the kind of dodgy dealings she had in Israel ?

Look at how she voted. Her grandparents were Indians who emigrated to Uganda, her parents emigrated to the UK before Idi Amin came to power.
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24778/priti_patel/witham/votes
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/inhumane-immigration-system/69956/

Rain Ascending

Rain Ascending wrote: »

Looks like Michael Gove's Rapid Refutation Unit is going to have its work cut out ... refuting a Cabinet report :rolleyes:

More seriously:
Unlike the "plausible worst-case scenario" slides Sam Coates had two weeks ago, this material is based on a "basic, reasonable" scenario.

As noted by Faisal Islam in his Twitter feed, the Dover crossing throughput figures have been updated, to reflect the better preparedness in Calais. This indicates that the document has been recently revised.

And what was the response of Michael Gove, presumably with the backing of the full intellectual heft of the Rapid Refutation Unit? Well, it was this:
https://twitter.com/michaelgove/status/1163042724972511232

By way of contrast, the Government of Gibraltar, which had to deal with a mention in the Sunday Times article of possible 4-hour long delays at the border with Spain, rapidly issued a much more detailed press release:
https://twitter.com/GibraltarGov/status/1163020869192552448

That contrast is remarkable, especially considering that the much more extensive resources available to the UK government. While there are points that one could argue with in the Gibraltar press release (especially the lack of dealing with the central issue that Spain could unilaterally make life very difficult on the land border, should they choose to do so), at least the Gib government makes an effort to communicate what it is doing. From the UK, we instead get a very fluffy statement with a lot of <ahem> "terminological inexactitudes".

Why difference? Well there are two big points to be made:

The UK government needs to sell "No Deal" to its own populace and MPs. That means it can't admit to the issues involved or, worse still, get into detail to discuss their mitigation and the residual risks after that mitigation, in any depth. The Gibraltar government has no such problem: over 95% of its population voted against Brexit and the policy is being forced on them by the UK government. So it can happily admit to the problems and discuss a lot more openly what it's doing.
But the first point is a secondary one to the UK PM and the Cabinet office. Gove's messaging, while totally inadequate for more most audiences, is more than enough for the only audience that counts for the PM, namely those Leave voters that are in danger of flocking to the Brexit party. Of course, that overlooks audiences that the Gibraltar government is thinking of, namely the broader population and businesses operating on the Rock.

If you consider the upcoming House-of-Commons election as the main, and perhaps only, concern for Johnson and his immediate team then a lot of the actions and messages make sense. Preparing for No-Deal Brexit, paradoxically, becomes secondary.

Finally, let's come back to the original Sunday Times article and consider what audience the leaker was trying to reach. A lot of last week was taken up with the in-house fighting on the anti-No-Deal side in the House of Commons. It is reasonable to assume that the leaker's primary target was exactly that grouping of MPs. The message was "if you don't get your act together, this is what the UK faces with no deal".

Peregrinus

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Any post-Brexit deal is still dependent on the three main pre-conditions being sorted out first.

Divorce bill, but that's sorting itself out. It's a red herring as it would get paid off in tariffs. Or the EU could go after companies using UK dependencies for tax evasion . . .

The divorce bill will certainly not be paid off in tariffs. If UK goods being exported to the UK become subject to tariffs, those tariffs will not be paid by the UK; they will be paid by the EU businesseses that import the goods. Tariffs are levied on importers. The notion that taxes paid by EU residents could go to reduce the debt owed by a government of a third country is incoherent.

The way the tariffs will adversely affect the UK is not through UK exporters businesses paying them. It's through UK exporters having to accept lower prices, if their goods are still to be competitive in the EU, or simply having to forgo sales altogether. The likely result is a drop in the volume and value of UK exports to the EU. But of course the tariffs paid on exports which no longer happen are zero; to the extent that the imposition of tariffs reduces UK exports, the tariff revenue to the EU will b zero.

johnnyskeleton

So the ERG & DUP want the backstop scrapped, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants £39bn to spend on bribes around the UK to sell them on Brexit and win the election, and now Home Secretary Priti Patel appeara to be gunning for the non-UK EU citizens currently exercising Free Movement rights:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-eu-brexit-freedom-of-movement-ends-november-boris-johnson-priti-patel-home-office-a9064376.html?amp

While I appreciate that this could be no deal planning, or even a bluff to try to coerce the EU, I wonder will this be seen as further proof that they intend a no-deal

Infini

briany wrote: »

I'll spell this out - the UK government have every intention of putting up a border in Ireland. They're just going to wait until Ireland/the EU put one up on the southern side first. At this point, the UK will go, "Ah, we see you've put up a border. Oh, well. Pretty sh*tty of ye to break the GFA and all that, but no use in crying over spilled milk, now. Only fair we put up one of our own, now that the GFA, which YOU guys broke, is over. See you on Tuesday for trade talks, yeah? Cool."

That is their plan. Plain and simple. They're banking on the idea that the EU is so officious and so rule-abiding that they will not tolerate an open border for very long and will do what the UK government has always hoped it would, that being to disregard the feelings of the Irish government and heave it under that bus, while Brexiteers in the UK laugh heartily as Ireland cries, thinking it's big friend would protect it.

Simple truth is that leaving without a deal against the wishes of the Majority of NI while allowing an anti-GFA party into government and rejecting the ONLY viable agreement on the table will firmly put the British in violation of the GFA. When a border inevitably goes up it will be likely in responce to a British company or group violating Single Market rules.

On top of this all we have to do when the British Government inevitably come crawling back after such a self inflicted catastrophe is make it abundantly clear that if there isnt an agreement reached over NI to either agree to what was initially agreed or theres a Referendum on its future that they will find themselves in a very difficult spot economically and diplomatically and will be stuck there until they have no choice to concede.

For all their bluster they will have very little power to do anything post Brexit, they can't even accept the hard truth that Ireland as part of the EU will be more powerful than them because any carryon against Ireland would result in retalitory measures from the EU in solidarity with Ireland further undermining them.

fash

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

So the ERG & DUP want the backstop scrapped, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants £39bn to spend on bribes around the UK to sell them on Brexit and win the election, and now Home Secretary Priti Patel appeara to be gunning for the non-UK EU citizens currently exercising Free Movement rights:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-eu-brexit-freedom-of-movement-ends-november-boris-johnson-priti-patel-home-office-a9064376.html?amp

While I appreciate that this could be no deal planning, or even a bluff to try to coerce the EU, I wonder will this be seen as further proof that they intend a no-deal

Of note, this stuff makes it harder for them to later run the narrative that " it's all the EU's fault that there is no deal".

As an aside, I see that Shankar Singham called whoever leaked the project yellowhammer document an EU "collaborator". The rhetoric on this is getting interesting.

brickster69

Peregrinus wrote: »

The way the tariffs will adversely affect the UK is not through UK exporters businesses paying them. It's through UK exporters having to accept lower prices, if their goods are still to be competitive in the EU, or simply having to forgo sales altogether. The likely result is a drop in the volume and value of UK exports to the EU. But of course the tariffs paid on exports which no longer happen are zero; to the extent that the imposition of tariffs reduces UK exports, the tariff revenue to the EU will b zero.

This is true. However the UK will keep all it's tariffs and VAT coming in on all imports, instead of sending it to Brussels. Roughly this equates to twice as much as what exporters customers will pay in tariffs.

Also worth considering under MFN rules quite a large amount of goods would have zero or very small tariffs. Stuff like medicines and aircraft parts for example.

johnnyskeleton

Re breaches of the GFA and who is to blame, I wonder are we looking at this from too genteel a point of view. At the moment, the narrative seems to be about who is breaking the GFA rather than whether it will be broken or not. I think what has been pushed to one side is that the GFA is more than an intergovernmental agreement between Ireland and the UK, it is also a multi party agreement with paramilitary organisations which have, with the exception of splinter groups, maintained a cease fire for 20 years.

So, regardless of what international bodies or political commentators make of Brexit and the GFA, what do PIRA think about it? If they consider it breached and finished, its either a case of enter a new agreement or, shall we say, the alternative.

Powersharing isnt working, cross border matters will be badly damaged by physical infrastructure, but by far and away the most concerning part is that the special status of Northern Ireland will be removed, and replaced by a DUP led idea of an indivisible United Kingdom.

Even without physical infrastructure, abandoning this core feature of Northern Ireland's status could lead to an end of PIRAs ceasefire, and this is far more worrying that thorny issues of trade etc.

Peregrinus

reslfj wrote: »

Yes, they are scanned (mine was last time i arrived) and the UK may have a database problem post Brexit and the MOU with Ireland may need to include some more data to be exchanged.

Just to be clear, you travelling on a (non-CTA) EU passport when you arrived in Ireland (from outside the CTA) and your passport was scanned?

(Not doubting you; just want to make sure I have correctly understood you.)

reslfj wrote: »

But the point is: The EU27 will allow bilateral agreements between member states and the UK on areas that will not cease by TEU A50.3

Ireland and the UK has explicitly been allowed to use the CTA and not be involved in Schengen or other like EU stuff. The UK and Ireland can fix CTA problems between themselves.

In a no-deal Brexit, might data-sharing between the Irish and UK authorities have to cease because the UK will no longer be committed to EU data protection standards? And could this cause problems for the operation of the CTA?

McGiver

Peregrinus wrote: »

reslfj wrote: »

Yes, they are scanned (mine was last time i arrived) and the UK may have a database problem post Brexit and the MOU with Ireland may need to include some more data to be exchanged.

Just to be clear, you travelling on a (non-CTA) EU passport when you arrived in Ireland (from outside the CTA) and your passport was scanned?

(Not doubting you; just want to make sure I have correctly understood you.)

All EU passports are scanned when coming from outside of the CTA.

Peregrinus

brickster69 wrote: »

This is true. However the UK will keep all it's tariffs and VAT coming in on all imports, instead of sending it to Brussels. Roughly this equates to twice as much as what exporters customers will pay in tariffs.

I'm not sure we can say this. Couple of issues.

1. At present its true that 80% of the tariffs the UK collects (on goods imported from outside the EU, obviously) goes to Brussels, while in a no-deal Brexit they get to keep that.

2. But they do propose to lower or eliminate tariffs on a wide range of goods to try and offset the impact of no-deal Brexit on consumers. Obviously, the more they do this, the less tariff revenue they collect.

3. On the other side of the equation, what exporters customers in the EU would pay in tariffs is reduced to the extent that the customers respond to the tariffs by simply shopping elsewhere.

4. While these reductions may keep the two figures in balance - I'll take your word for that - it all adds up to a world of pain for the UK economy as (a) UK producers selling in the home market face new competition from (now tariff-free) imports from countries where the cost of production may be lower, and (b) UK exporters have to accept lower prices for their produce, and/or lose a signficant chunk of their market.

5. And none of this takes even a cent off the UK's divorce bill, which is going to have to be settled some day. It just reduces the UK's capacity to finance the payment of it.

brickster69 wrote: »

Also worth considering under MFN rules quite a large amount of goods would have zero or very small tariffs. Stuff like medicines and aircraft parts for example.

The truer this is, the less revenue the UK is going to raise from tariffs.

Of course, this cuts both ways. To the extent the EU has low or no tariffs for other third countries, it must do the same for the UK.

But, sadly for the UK, on balance this won't pan out well for them. Looking at the EU's goods exports:

- 93% will be unaffected by Brexit (because they don't go to the UK)
- 6% go to UK but (unless UK changes its tariff rules) won't attract tariffs because they are in tariff-free categories
- 0.85% will attract low- or medium-rate tariffs in the UK
- 0.35% will attract high tariffs (more than 10%) in the UK

But looking at the UK's goods exports:

- 48% will be unaffected by Brexit (because they don't go to the EU)
- 25% go to EU but won't attract tariffs because they are in tariff-free categories
- 24%% will attract low- or medium-rate tariffs in the EU
- 3% will attract high tariffs (more than 10%) in the EU

So it seems the "lots of goods attract zero or low tariffs" point, while valid, is going to deliver a lot more benefit to the EU than it is to the UK.

Peregrinus

McGiver wrote: »

All EU passports are scanned when coming from outside of the CTA.

Including Irish and UK passports?

Valhallapt

Peregrinus wrote: »

Including Irish and UK passports?

In Dublin airport, they scan every single passport. I don’t think they need to but it’s just the process they have in place. It’s mostly the same in the bigger airports in the U.K., I would guess I have my passport scanned 90% of the time On arrival in the U.K. occasionally get a wave through in stansted and frequently in the regional airports too, but mostly you get dumped into the international arrivals queue and get it scanned.

lawred2

Valhallapt wrote: »

This is a good article by David McWilliams, I think he had something similar on his blog a few weeks back.

https://amp.ft.com/content/eaae31b2-c004-11e9-9381-78bab8a70848?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6&__twitter_impression=true

Just highlights how Ireland is much better off in the single market, how much stronger she is than the UK, and it’s a bit of a two fingers to brexiteers.

It’s in the FT so hopefully some of the head bangers in Brexit land will read it.

Paywalled

Stop moaning ffs

lawred2 wrote: »

Paywalled

In your inbox.

Leroy42

All this talk of WTO and MFN rules, sectoral trade agreements etc.

But Trump has basically said, and in denying the appointment of new appeallent judges is effectively doing, that he wants to get rid of WTO.

With the UK clearly looking to hitch its wagon to the US isn't it likely that the UK simply ignores the WTO rules that people talk about? So a sectoral trade deal for Auto industry for example? Yes I get it that there is actually little upside to the UK in any deal like that, but it is a 'Win' for Johnson and the likes of IDS etc can gleefully exclaim that they were right all along.

Stop moaning ffs

It’s a fantastic read.

The uk exports more to Ireland then it does to China.

That puts exactly how screwed they are into very sharp relief.

ath262

Valhallapt wrote: »

This is a good article by David McWilliams, I think he had something similar on his blog a few weeks back.

https://amp.ft.com/content/eaae31b2-c004-11e9-9381-78bab8a70848?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6&__twitter_impression=true

Just highlights how Ireland is much better off in the single market, how much stronger she is than the UK, and it’s a bit of a two fingers to brexiteers.

It’s in the FT so hopefully some of the head bangers in Brexit land will read it.

has anyone come across a good summary version of this I'd love to read but ft version is paywalled. (thx)

prawnsambo

brickster69 wrote: »

This is true. However the UK will keep all it's tariffs and VAT coming in on all imports, instead of sending it to Brussels. Roughly this equates to twice as much as what exporters customers will pay in tariffs.

Also worth considering under MFN rules quite a large amount of goods would have zero or very small tariffs. Stuff like medicines and aircraft parts for example.

You'd have to break down all the commodities that are currently imported on a tariff free basis from the EU and do the calculations on that. You may be right, but it still causes an immediate inflationary effect. And MFN tariffs on meat and agricultural products are eye-wateringly high. Subsidising exporters for the cost of export tariffs will only affect the financial aspect of that trade, the NTBs cannot be as easily (if it turns out that it's financially viable) dismissed. And it's the NTBs that are going to cause the most chaos.

Interestingly, Lidl Ireland have said that their UK suppliers will bear the cost of any new import tariffs. This is apparently in their contracts.

Stop moaning ffs

Mod note:Per site terms of use, please respect other websites copyright

Enzokk

In a another example of blaming the leak instead of the message that was leaked, No.10 is furious that their own reports are out there for all to read.

No 10 furious at leak of paper predicting shortages after no-deal Brexit

What I found interesting is not that they are trying to distance themselves from the report, Gove is saying that in the 3 weeks that they came in things have changed because they are throwing £2bn at the problem. How throwing money at a problem that you cannot control, port checks in other countries, seems to have escaped Gove.

It is that some of the warnings has not been relayed to the associations that seems to think it is important for them to have this relayed to them.

The Freight Transport Association (FTA) also reacted with alarm to the idea of fuel shortages in particular, saying these possibilities had not been conveyed to them by the government.

“This is the first time the industry is learning of any threat to fuel supplies – a particularly worrying situation, as this would affect the movement of goods across the country, not just to and from Europe, and could put jobs at risk throughout the sector which keeps Britain trading,” a spokeswoman said.

So very much head in the sand stuff from the UK.

McGiver

ath262 wrote: »

has anyone come across a good summary version of this I'd love to read but ft version is paywalled. (thx)

This one works for me.

https://www.ft.com/content/eaae31b2-c004-11e9-9381-78bab8a70848

ath262

prawnsambo wrote: »

....Interestingly, Lidl Ireland have said that their UK suppliers will bear the cost of any new import tariffs. This is apparently in their contracts.

some interesting stats mention in a link included in that article, a UK Parliament / House of Commons Library report on EU trade published July this year, some key point include

The EU, taken as a whole is the UK’s largest trading partner. In 2018, UK exports to the EU were £289 billion (46% of all UK exports).
UK imports from the EU were £345 billion (54% of all UK imports).
Wales, followed by Northern Ireland and the North East of England had the highest percentage of goods exports going to the EU of all the countries and regions in the UK in 2018.

Sounds like the greatest impact will be on some of the poorest regions on the UK

allthedoyles

ath262 wrote: »

has anyone come across a good summary version of this I'd love to read but ft version is paywalled. (thx)

think this is it :https://amp.ft.com/content/eaae31b2-c004-11e9-9381-78bab8a70848?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6&__twitter_impression=true

Brexit has turned into a hostage situation. Boris Johnson is the kidnapper, Ireland is the captive and the backstop is the ransom. The British message to the EU is, “Drop the backstop or we’ll kill the hostage in a no-deal shootout”. Doubtless the UK could inflict much harm on Ireland, particularly in agriculture: near 70 per cent of UK beef imports come from Ireland, for example. And crashing out could badly interrupt Ireland’s global supply chain. Nearly half of the 475,000 freight containers of cargo per year going through British ports go to the EU.

That said, the Irish economy is much less dependent on the UK than many Brexiters imagine. Tactically, Dublin knows that “no deal” is only “no deal” for now. The UK must eventually do a trade deal with the EU because 46 per cent of UK exports go to the EU and 53 per cent of UK imports come from the EU. No matter how the hostage drama turns out, and no matter what the political and economic fallout, the UK will be back at the table soon. The more chaos at British ports, the shorter the self-imposed mercantile lockout.

In the meantime, London’s new Brexit strategy is to inflict as much commercial damage on Ireland as possible. Given that Ireland didn’t ask for, or vote in, the Brexit referendum and, in recent decades, has been an impeccable neighbour and a calm, dependable partner in the British-created tinderbox that is Northern Ireland, this new aggression seems unjustified. However British sensitivity towards Irish concerns has never figured highly in Anglo-Irish affairs.

Part of the new British approach has been a relentless campaign to paint itself as the victim of Irish inflexibility, simultaneously emboldened by a Rule Britannia assurance that Ireland can, and will, be brought to heel. This unstable combination of whingeing victimhood twinned with pompous self-regard has characterised much of Britain’s negotiations thus far. What has been absent are economic facts. Chart showing Ireland's accelerating economic growth relative to the UK in recent decades

ath262

McGiver wrote: »

This one works for me.

https://www.ft.com/content/eaae31b2-c004-11e9-9381-78bab8a70848

doesn't work for me - I was able to view a few article on FT over the last couple of weeks. Maybe you get a couple free and then run out - found David's article via google anyway thanks.

Tell me how

Enzokk wrote: »

In a another example of blaming the leak instead of the message that was leaked, No.10 is furious that their own reports are out there for all to read.

I'm convinced Number 10 was aware of the leak.

Allows them to react to (the inevitable ) EU disinterest this week by saying the leak undermined Boris's position.

Also allows them to gauge reaction to doomsday scenario.

No doubt in my mind, Cummings/Johnson/Give were aware what was coming.

They even set it up after the election by say leaks would not be tolerated.

prawnsambo

Just to return to the chlorine washed chicken debate, came across this in my travels.
Hope you've had your breakfast.

The thread is worth reading for the detail and back up articles.

ZeroThreat

ath262 wrote: »

doesn't work for me - I was able to view a few article on FT over the last couple of weeks. Maybe you get a couple free and then run out - found David's article via google anyway thanks.

someone was kind enough to c&p it onto reddit.