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Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

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  • Registered Users Posts: 17,841 ✭✭✭✭Strazdas


    For sure, but one would have thought that Brexit might have been a bit of a game changer. In times past, if the Scottish anthem had been booed at Wembley, nobody would even have batted an eyelid but for it to happen in the year when 'the United Kingdom' left the EU to go it alone on the world stage is quite striking.

    In other words, it could have been dismissed in the past as a bit of banter or sporting rivalry but to be happening now against the backdrop of Brexit and the quest for Scottish independence means it takes on a different significance.



  • Registered Users Posts: 18,921 ✭✭✭✭BonnieSituation


    And back to war to justify the State's existence.



  • Registered Users Posts: 6,594 ✭✭✭eire4


    Scotland is a country not a province. All of England itself and Wales except the London area and the south of England are a financial drain.


    New figures show how London and the south subsidise the UK | Financial Times (ft.com)



  • Registered Users Posts: 23,374 ✭✭✭✭Kermit.de.frog


    Very interesting from Dominic Cumming's today. I've long argued our place in the single market is fragile and it's quite likely we'll be out of the SM within months.

    What Cumming's says has also been eluded to by Tony Connelly in his reporting particularly in recent months.



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,441 ✭✭✭Dave0301


    But that has no relevance to what actually happened? Cummings when you look at the tweets beforehand is saying this may/may not have happened if "we'd taken over No. 10." It isn't that interesting at all. It is a Twitter exchange on a hypothetical situation that didn't happen.



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  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 35,726 CMod ✭✭✭✭pixelburp


    Unless you're willing to back up these connections of "eluding" with Connollys actual words, you're just throwing out the same grasping hyperbole as you have done months prior, on multiple occasions. Dominic Cummings is an out of work advisor of poor repute, not a source in Versailles. Here we go again though. Any minute now, out Ireland will go from the EU without consent. Cos that's basically what you're (gleefully) "predicting", every time and to be blunt, we all see it.



  • Registered Users Posts: 23,374 ✭✭✭✭Kermit.de.frog


    Unfortunately Ireland's future looks once again to be decided by Britain.

    If they don't respect the deal (and the EU continues to take no action as they are and I have warned about appeasement of the tories) I don't see any other option. We'll be defacto out of the single market.

    We won't even be asked. France and the Netherlands will put in the checks at their ports to uphold the integrity of the SM.

    That's my view and the reason it's so emotive for some is because I suspect they know it's true.

    Next you'll say "but the EU are taking legal action"

    The Tories don't care.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 35,726 CMod ✭✭✭✭pixelburp


    I don't think it's emotive, I think it's baseless fantasy. Again, show the Tony Connolly sources you feel backup the spit-balling of Cummings instead of talking of this outcome that would fundamentally undermine the core tenets of both the EU and SM, essentially putting any small nation on edge for the same result. Show something other than the opinions of a man nowhere near the halls of continental power.

    This is the same series of bold prediction you made months ago, again cheerfully ignoring reality in favour of what's obviously a preferred outcome than some resignation or fear (though happy to recant that suspicion).

    Your entire notion is built on the idea the EU would simply have had enough of the hassle and turf out a member on a whim, just cos. Undermining its own structures while essentially confirming to the UK - and any other aggrieved 3rd party that sticks in the mud enough - the EU will literally destroy its own systems to accommodate. Again. Fantasy stuff, tinged with projection from bias.



  • Registered Users Posts: 23,374 ✭✭✭✭Kermit.de.frog


    Tony Connelly wrote explicitly about this outcome in a recent RTE blogs post. I posted it in the thread before with the link. I'll look for it.

    I don't see a search.



  • Registered Users Posts: 4,755 ✭✭✭fly_agaric


    Kermit, I do recall that mentioned in one of his columns (haven't dug it out either). You gloss over the fact that afair that article said it was a **possible** outcome some distance down the road in this process (not certain, and not just over the horizon which I think was always your contention about it).

    Also, Ireland will have to choose that outcome somewhere down the line, basically by refusing to meet obligations as an EU member and prioritising maintenance of our open border with a 3rd country (UK) over EU membership. It won't ever be done to us, there will always be option(s) there to avoid it. That is what you always leave out when you fantasise about this outcome.

    I wonder though, even you as someone who loves this country must see that such an outcome would be quite...er...bad for Ireland longer term in terms of our "sovereignty" (real, not imagined).

    Even if it brings about your biggest desire of permanently locking Ireland out of any deeper EU integration efforts, it will IMO likely replace that potential future you dislike with the the potential of becoming just England's personal larder & food security emergency store instead, which is not attractive to most Irish people I'd imagine.

    Well, maybe we'll be treated a bit better "this time over" + allowed to rule our own affairs somewhat, once we keep enough of that grub flowing Eastward at good prices. 



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  • Registered Users Posts: 23,374 ✭✭✭✭Kermit.de.frog


    There is another option though.


    That is for the EU to draw up a range of trade or economic sanctions against the United Kingdom and let be known that if they unilaterally deviate again such sanctions like tarriffs will be put in place.


    That is the only thing the Tories will understand. We are dealing with a govt in London that is engaged in gangster politics and the EU has been far too weak thus far.


    The approach needs to harden considerably.



  • Registered Users Posts: 7,861 ✭✭✭Christy42


    People have predicted that the EU would abandon Ireland to appease the UK any day now for 5 years. We are still waiting.


    The approach is fine. The UK has had a lot of bluster but hasn't actually done anything except remove itself from decisions that govern its rules at the moment. A lot of bluster about this deal or that deal but they have managed to change very little in practical terms and just meekly ask for another extension every few months.



  • Registered Users Posts: 635 ✭✭✭farmerval


    I had a funny thought today. The UK has really isolated itself. The current Whitehouse is not close to the current UK government, obviously they are pushing themselves away from Europe. When Covid is over and normal international relations return I think the UK will begin to realise that they have successfully made themselves irrelevant.

    When the next world crises appears and European leaders are meeting to agree a response etc. where will the UK be? at home looking on, too small to go alone on anything, pretending to belong to some bigger club but not. I think it will be a huge shock.

    Time I believe will show the disaster of Boris sucking up to Trump (and May before him). They are stuck with three more years of Biden and presumably a less friendly US.



  • Registered Users Posts: 17,841 ✭✭✭✭Strazdas


    A lot of the German press coverage describes Johnson and the Brexiteers as deeply untrustworthy, almost heading up a rogue state. It's going to be very hard to turn any of that around soon.



  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    No, if the UK repudiates the deal we won't be de facto out of the single market. The UK cannot force that to happen.

    We'll have a hard border in Ireland. The UK can force that to happen.



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,267 ✭✭✭fash


    The UK is well aware of what levers the EU will pull to force the UK into line.

    Ireland's priorities will always be to remain in the single market above keeping an open border - if UK imposes a hard border unilaterally, Ireland's only course of action is to do what it did the last time: erect the border. (Ireland would always have been able to outlast the UK in waiting for an acceptable UK solution. Brexit only has 50% UK support at all- Tories needed deals to trump as wins - economic sanctions in the past or even in the future will damage them politically, a trade war with the EU causes border & supply chaos in UK, puts them in a place of massive negotiating weakness vis a vis all third party countries and makes every deal they subsequently agree ( if they can at all) precarious and even more expensive for the UK, and and no matter what they'll be thrown out of government long before Ireland's priorities change)

    Otherwise, if Ireland gave up the single market to keep the border open, Ireland becomes a simple UK vassal - doing whatever the UK wants plus the UK gets to dictate Irish food standards and forces Ireland to compete for access to a small UK agricultural market with a bunch of zero tariff hormone injecting countries like Australia, US etc.

    That's aside from the fact that even in order to do so legally/permanently, Ireland would need a referendum - which the population would reject and who exactly would campaign in favour of it? Nigel Farage? The Irexit people? Sinn Fein? Someone who wants to beat Sinn Fein?



  • Registered Users Posts: 5,516 ✭✭✭Enzokk



    Lots of Deja vu, the EU will respond when it is appropriate. This is not when you want them to do, before the UK has ripped up the TCA and WA and NIP. It will be after this happens, and only after they have consulted with the UK to make sure they want to proceed with the path they have set.



  • Registered Users Posts: 4,857 ✭✭✭dogbert27


    It feels like Groundhog Day whenever Kermit posts



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,410 ✭✭✭KildareP


    What makes you think they don't already?

    And what makes you think the UK actually intends to breach anything now when it quietly backed down all of the many other previous times it blustered and bluffed?

    The Tory party are not stupid, they know where the money really lies, which is why you see stuff like this quietly being brought in:

    UK government orders councils to display EU flag as condition of receiving Covid high street cash | The Independent



  • Administrators Posts: 53,127 Admin ✭✭✭✭✭awec


    Are you the same Kermit.de.frog that whinged the last time the EU got tough with the UK?



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  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 35,726 CMod ✭✭✭✭pixelburp


    Well exactly. A hard border is the most likely, realistic "apocalypse" scenario, Ireland wouldn't simply jettison its own economic stability for NI, nor would the EU endanger its own standing. It'd likely fast track a return to the Troubles but that's another matter. Otherwise globally, it'd be open season for China, Russia and any other rival with more competent political machines to push the EU into abandoning its internal mechanics. While Ireland would become beholden to British political or economic whims. Maybe that's Kermit's preference.

    And that's leaving aside the idea Ireland and its people would simply accept this change. As fash speculates, would it require a referendum? In which case, no chance it would pass and the Irish people self-destruct their stability for an open border.



  • Registered Users Posts: 66,311 ✭✭✭✭FrancieBrady


    Oh sure that's alright then. Just have regular wars and the Union will survive.



  • Registered Users Posts: 15,442 ✭✭✭✭Leroy42


    Arlene Foster was on GB news lately saying that the plan with Johnson was that the NIP was always only a temporary thing, to get Brexit done. Cummings has pretty much said the same thing.

    So Johnson has tied a weight around the UK neck on the basis that he had his fingers crossed the whole time.

    So the only person messing about with NI is clearly Johnson. The EU saw this agreement as the solution to a problem created by the UK, and have now found that the 'solution' was nothing more than a stroke pulled by the UK.

    It is quite the price to pay to 'get Brexit done'. Internationally seen poorly, although apart from the US I don't see it as a major impediment to future trade deals. Though it will likely mean that trade deals are either much smaller in scope or come with much tougher (read less beneficial to the UK) conditions. He also agreed the finance settlement, for what again could be little more than a few months or extra transition.

    I really do not understand why the UK populace is not more agitated about the clear failure on Johnsons part. I know the media are working hard to cover for him, but even Brexiteers must acknowledge that Johnson has made a bad situation even worse.

    The EU are not going to be in any rush to 'save' Johnson at this point. To save the UK. They will be asking that the protocol be implemented and then they deal with the issues as they arise. Simply claiming that the conditions have been met to trigger A16 is not enough, there must be clear evidence. And many do not seem to understand that A16 does not rip up the agreement, it is a way to deal with specific issues in a collaborative manner. It might temporarily help to overcome some limited and specific issue, but is in no way designed to suspend the entire agreement.

    The NIP was agreed on the basis that a comprehensive trade deal would be agreed, one that would render many of the probable issues as irrelevant. SPS alignment being one area. But Johnson, having agreed the NIP, then went on to sign a very thin deal and as such is left facing the issues he is.



  • Registered Users Posts: 4,755 ✭✭✭fly_agaric


    It's a big step to proceed to sanctions on the UK. The can has been kicked for a few more months now. 

    Even though the EU could take that decision itself as far as I understand (?), it won't happen without more discussion + broad agreement between EU leaders on what to do 

    This includes Martin. He will be opposed to it IMO, will want to do nothing and only agree if enough of the other governments have finally had it with the UKs nonsense, want the EU to respond more harshly, and press Ireland.

    If it happens, it won't be till after the German election + a new government there, and the sand running out on extensions/grace period again with no movement by UK.



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,267 ✭✭✭fash


    Best/most minimalist option is to levy penalties - and if UK refuses to pay, then escalate trade sanctions until UK breaks.



  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    First, you can't impose sanctions on a state for treaty violations that you think they are going to commit - only for violations that they have actually committed.

    Secondly, where - as here - a treaty provides its own dispute resolution and enforcement mechanisms, you have to use them.

    Kermit is demanding that the EU do things which would be stupid, unlawful and counterproductive because, when they don't do it, in his mind this enables him to say "Look! The EU is abandoning Ireland!"



  • Registered Users Posts: 25,907 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    A hundred years ago we fought a civil war over the question, basically, of whether Ireland would put its sovereignty in jeopardy rather than put up with a British-imposed partition. The answer was no, we won't. And since then that position has only intensified; those who were on the losing side in 1922-23 have nearly all, over time, accepted the outcome.

    If the UK thinks we will allow them to force us out of the Single Market rather than accept a UK-imposed hard border, they are wrong. We will not be forced out of the Single Market, even if the UK's actions result in a hard border.



  • Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,963 Mod ✭✭✭✭Podge_irl


    The fact that you have "long" argued that we'll be out of the SM within months is why no one takes your view very seriously.



  • Registered Users Posts: 7,639 ✭✭✭54and56


    The EU (including Ireland) can afford to play the long game here, BoJo and Co can't.

    We've seen the swift improvement in international relations since Biden took over from Trump and 12 months ago not too many people really believed Biden could actually do it but he did.

    Keir Starmer may not be at the level of a Tony Blair but relative to Corbyn he's miles ahead and has a fair chance of winning the next election particularly if BoJo & Co have driven the UK economy into the ground, are having barriers and tariffs applied by the EU due to reneging on the NIP, Biden giving them the cold shoulder for the same reason and even their much coveted membership of the CPTPP will be blocked by NZ's Jacinda Ardern who recently warned that countries aspiring to join must adhere to the rules based order. I wonder what aspiring member she was referring to?

    Come the next UK election unless things have normalised the electorate are going to be fed up of BoJo's empty promises, lies and pure dishonesty along with the constant blaming of the EU for all the woes which are and will increasing flow from the hard Brexit BoJo & Co chose to pursue. Starmer by then should have developed enough rapport with key EU decision makers to be able to sell an alternative based on co-operation with not antagonization of the EU and the EU for it's part will give plenty of indications that it will be open to hitting the reset button if a new govt is elected in the UK.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 23,374 ✭✭✭✭Kermit.de.frog


    You have not read what I have been saying, as usual. You read what you want to see.

    I crystal clearly said the EU should make it known that sanctions will be applied the day the UK breaks the treaty. I never said anything should be done in advance.

    I take it you will apologise for intentionally misrepresenting my position.



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