Will Britain piss off and get on with Brexit II (mod warning in OP)

theological wrote: »

I voted for the Conservatives in December because it was the best chance to unblock parliament and get decisions made on Brexit. They do have a mandate to do this and to negotiate for the UK.

The political declaration does not require auto-copying of EU rules. Maintaining a level playing field can be done through an impartial arbitration mechanism with a third party observer.

So you voted for the Tories based on nothing more that getting Brexit done? There is almost nothing they can do therefore that doesn't meet that expectation. A mandate? You yourself have given them a blank check.

Do you agree that there needs to be checks on the NI/GB border, as per the WA?

Johnson has no mandate to move away from the WA, it was the very mandate he ran on, for which you voted for him.

Leroy42 wrote: »

Sure, but you still haven't addressed the issue that in this relationship the UK is the far smaller party, and much like England treat the smaller parts of their union, ie with no regard whatsoever, why do you think the EU should, or that the UK can, get the upper hand?

This is not apples and apples at all. The EU is fragmented and outsie of all the bluster on it's size it is frightfully weak. It have never in it's entire history everys shown strength and now it is about to be tested on the big stage,

The EU is like a fighter who climbed the rankings all on talk and bluster because it was a huge lump and as soon as it was put in the ring it dropped like a sack of spuds in round two.

theological wrote: »

The political declaration does not require auto-copying of EU rules. Maintaining a level playing field can be done through an impartial arbitration mechanism with a third party observer.

There are a variety of mechanisms used in trade deals for maintaining a level playing field, from the very weak to the very strong. The EU is currently pitching for a very strong mechanism, obviously. But it's certainly possible to envisage a "landing ground" between what each side starts out looking for where a deal might eventually be made. There can certainly be a trade deal which doesn't involve dynamic alignment in the way the EU is now seeking. Indeed, if I were a betting man, my bet would be on such an outcome.

But . . .

It seems to me that the UK is handling these negotiations very badly, repeating the errors it made in the Withdrawal Agreeemnt negotiation. Recall that the "landing ground" where the WA was finally made reflected about 90% what the EU had started out by seeking, and 10% what the UK started out seeking.

If the UK wants an, um, less vigorous mechanism for ensuring a level playing field, it needs to build up trust in the notion that it wants a level playing field and is committed to maintaining one. The more you think that the UK sees a level playing field as being in its best interests, the less you fell you need hammers, thumbscrews and the rack to threaten the UK with, should they not maintain a level playing field.

So, on the one hand, the UK is denouncing the idea that they should be expected to make enforceable commitments to dynamic alignment. On the other, it is doing everything it can to convince people that such a commitment is needed, because the UK can't be trusted, so the desired behaviour must be expressed in the form of an unambiguous obligation, backed up by sanctions to enforce it.

This is a repeat of the self-destructive behaviour we saw when the UK signed up to the Joint Report, and then immediately started bitching about it, stressing that it wasn't binding, and raising doubts about whether they intended to abide by it.

At the time some defended this as a negotiationg tactic but, if so, it was a very poor one. The UK ended up signing a Withdrawal Agreement which fully reflected the Joint Report. What did they get by trying to pretend they wouldn't? Nothing.

The political declaration which the UK has agreed with the EU and has signed says that both parties will uphold standards in the areas of state aid, competition, social and environmental standards, climate change and tax, and that there will be "appropriate mechanisms" to ensure effective domestic implementation, enforcement and dispute settlement, which will reflect "relevant Union and international standards" and will include "a robust and comprehensive framework for competition and state aid control".

The political declaration, of course, is not binding, but for the UK to stress this raises precisely the kind of fears that they don't want to be raising at this point - namely, that they are averse to implementing it, and if the EU wants it to be implemented they have to nail down the UK very unambiguously. And it creates precisely the kind of impression that the UK doesn't want to create - that they are not a serious negotiatior; that they don't negotiate in good faith, etc. The PD is not supposed to be legally binding, but it is supposed to be taken very seriously by the parties that negotiated and signed it.

So what the UK should be laying much more stress on is precisely what Theo has suggested - not "what we don't think should be in the FTA" but rather "what we do think should be in the FTA, to flesh out and give effect to what we have already agreed ought to be in it; this is how we suggest the parties should assure one another that they will maintain a level playing field".

Why don't they do this? I suspect for the same reason that they made similar errors when trying to negotiate the WA - there is no UK consensus on what Brexit is for or how it should be delivered, and they are afraid to try and build one (or, they fail to recognise that they need one). The intended audience for the bull-in-a-china-shop approach to negotiations is not the EU at all; it's hard brexiters in the UK, who need to be placated.

theological wrote: »

Here is the UK negotiating mandate on the Government website. It looks mostly good.

The UK is right to say it shouldn't accept any less than what Canada and Japan were offered by the EU. This is the EU's weakness in the talks so far. The UK won't accept anything that they haven't done.

This isn't particularly a weakness for the EU. Essentially, the UK is asking to be treated as it would be treated if it were much smaller than it is, and/or much further away. That's a somewhat artificial way to position the UK, and I don't think the EU will be embarrassed to point this out. Nor is pointing it out likely to lead the UK to collapse the talks.

theological wrote: »

Here's some snippets:

Competition law:


State ownership:


Labour:


Trade and Environment:


Dispute mechanism:

The snippets are good, and thank you for quoting them.

A common theme is that the UK requests treatment "in line with precedent, such as CETA". But there are, of course, precedents other than CETA, and some of the other precedents would seem more apt to the situation of the UK than CETA, etc. While the UK is free to suggest that the FTA should be based on precedents such as CETA, its paper makes no attempt to say why CETA should be the paradigm, or why the UK should have a prior right to decide which precedents should be treated as the paradigm. The EU is equally free to suggest that the FTA should be based on one or more of the other precedents, or should be a custom build.

In both cases, these are just opening positions; the horse-trading starts on Monday.

The horse-trading is very much framed and conditioned by the Political Declaration, which the parties have already agreed and signed. It's not legally binding, but it represents a good faith agreement between the parties as to what will be in the final FTA, and its taken very seriously. It can be departed from, but a party seeking to depart from it needs to make a good case, and will generally have to accept the need to concede a balancing departure on some other point in favour of the other party.

And, furthermore, the more the parties want to depart from the PD,the longer and more complex (and possibly more heated) the negotiations become. Johnson has already committed himself to a very short negotiation period, which means he either wants an FTA very much along the lines of the PD, or (less likely) he doesn't want an FTA at all, or (I express no view as to likelihood) he is utterly clueless and doesn't see the connection between the substantive content of the negotiations and the time available to complete them.

theological wrote: »

I don't see why proximity should change the UK position in these talks. The UK should be treated in a similar way to other third countries.

:eek: That must be one of the best expressions of isolationism that I've read since the start of the Brexit discussion.

theological wrote: »

I prefer not being willing to bend over to the EU because of an excuse they are making to try and treat Britain differently to any other country they have a third country free trade arrangement with.

So Switzerland or Norway, then. They're sovereign, independent and right next door. Sounds like a better starting point than Korea.

theological wrote: »

Again, it isn't absurd. The UK is right to push for its own interests in being treated as a third country outside of the EU or EEA or in Turkey's case the customs union as it limits control on UK law. Huge areas of policy need to be automatically copied in these scenarios.

There's no logical reason why the UK should agree to a worse deal than Japan or Canada from its perspective.

Is it being offered a worse deal than Japan or Canada? I thought the EUs point was that the UK was being offered a better deal so there are different conditions. You know, as there are different deals / conditions for every country.

I was thinking that the EU should say, you want the Canada deal, fine, you've got it. It doesn't cover half of what you want but at least you can't whinge anymore about being treated differently. The EU won't do that but it's like dealing with a toddler. I know the UK government blustering is all for the UK population but at some stage you have to cop on and behave like a real government.

theological wrote: »

Here is the UK negotiating mandate on the Government website. It looks mostly good.

The UK is right to say it shouldn't accept any less than what Canada and Japan were offered by the EU. This is the EU's weakness in the talks so far. The UK won't accept anything that they haven't done.

Here's some snippets:

Competition law:


State ownership:


Labour:


Trade and Environment:


Dispute mechanism:




Thanks for this. For others here's the article from Bloomberg.

I think the thing is that as more and more people see that the UK are offering the EU a deal which looks like others they have already agreed with other countries patience will begin to wear out.

I don't think the British are being unreasonable about this.

It's not like the others though- they want 100% access, zero tariffs or quotas - unlike Japan or Canada.
They want loads of concessions in relation to services - including in particular taking all of the benefits of financial access to the EU while imposing all of the risks onto EU citizens.
They want everything wrapped up by September - whereas Canada and Japan took (the usual) 10 years or so.
They also have an untrustworthy, mendacious and hostile government - unlike Japan or Canada.
That is aside from the fact that the UK is large and on the EU's doorstep with a huge volume of trade and consequentially has huge scope to undermine the EU's market - unlike Japan or Canada. Nor have Canada or Japan expressed as their stated aim that that was exactly what they intended to do - unlike the UK.

Furthermore, as you say, once something is conceded to one country, the next country will want the same thing - so any concessions made to the UK are permanent and
Finally, why should the EU grant it to the UK? The UK is a relatively small and (except for the EU) geographically isolated economy. Why should we give them anything? Even if they go no deal, eventually they have no other options but to seek a deal on the EU's terms. Geography and economics - I.e. reality- demands it.