Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

I agree that the EU policy should not be influenced by any internal wranglings in U.K. politics.

However there are plenty of examples in the history of international relations in the last 100 years at both extremes of appeasement and harsh treatment where ignorance and roughshod understanding of the internal political mood in a country produced a disastrous outcome. If there is one thing the EU is influenced by it is avoiding the disasters of history.

Being cognisant of the internal politics of the U.K. is pretty essential in figuring out how to deal with them.

If anything the last decade has demonstrated that taking a stealth like Vladimir putin type interest in a country can yield the most impressive results.

edit : not advocating that

The direct knock-on to that is that increasing wages increases costs which drives inflation.

So while you might be paid more to drive trucks in the UK, for example, the cost of logistics goes up as a direct result, which means the cost of the food on the supermarket shelf goes up. While you're seeing a better wage in your bank account each month, you're now also paying more for the same products than you did on the lower wage. Rarely will the increase in your wage cover the increased costs of the products as a lot of suppliers will look to plan ahead to cover against future increases.

And while automation might help bring costs back down, it also reduces the overall number of available positions in the job market. The biggest cost in most industries is wages, so in order to cut costs, you ultimately have to cut the wage bill. With the higher skills jobs demanding a higher wage, that means you have to cut comparatively more lower paid jobs to compensate. Jobs such as operating tills, picking and packing, stock management, all disappear with nothing to replace them with. What do all the people who would otherwise have held those positions do now for work?

Automation also means that the work can be mobilised and centralised - one example is the cinema industry. Before you'd have had 2-3 projectionists onsite at each of your cinema outlets to schedule, load up the physical film, prep it, start and stop the films at the correct times in each screen and perform routine maintenance. Now, the industry is moving towards having 2-3 people centrally at the head office (which may not even be in the same country as you) doing all of that remotely, the films download themselves automatically to each screen via the internet, the projectors turn on and off automatically, and the films start and stop according to a weekly pre-programmed schedule. You have another handful of mobile techs covering the country visiting each site on a rolling basis for scheduled maintenance. Those hundreds of projection rooms around the country (in the case of the UK or US) with 2-3 fulltime staff each in them, is now condensed to just 2-3 people based centrally in head office and a small mobile team based out on the road all day visiting sites in turn.

His tweets are delusional. They may truthfully reveal his own attitude to Ireland and that of the Brexiter leadership generally, but they assume that this attitude is shared by the EU and drives its decisions and actions. Like most Brexiter assumptions about the EU, this was based on a complete misunderstanding of what the EU is, what it does and how it works, and the events of the last five years have shown pretty conclusively that it was wholly wrong. Five years ago, Cummings assumption about this might have been explained by ignorance but now, as I say, it's delusional.

As for the UK being a bully, I have no doubt that the UK would bully Ireland if it could. But it can't bully the EU and, therefore, in the present circumstances there's a limit to which it can bully Ireland. It can bully us to the extent of forcing us to put up with a hard border, when that's not our choice. But it can't bully us by forcing us out of the Single Market when that's not our choice, which was Cummings's preferred strategy.

The protocol is not being fully applied yet to prove that it is unworkable and unacceptable. 🙄

The way UK is using situation in NI against the EU has a mild flavour of how Russia manipulates conflicts it helps to stir up in its "near-abroad" to pressure others and achieve its goals. The previous UK govt.s dealing with Brexit ran scared of this hard-edged approach, but current one seems to have no qualms and are ok in the end with possibly blowing up NI to get what they want here.

I doubt the EU, or the negotiatiors who worked on the Withdrawal agreement & are responsible for NI protocol ever expected things would get so bad so fast that someone could reasonably make the comparison above!

Unfortunately IMO, the EU given its nature has always been quite weak dealing with this kind of power politics. It is not what it is for really (although that might change under external pressures). I do get a bit of a sinking feeling watching all this play out and don't think anything good will come of it for anyone (incl. the UK).

Rob, it really isn't a problem for the EU. If the UK continue with their apparent strategy (although their failure to actually trigger Art 16 I think gives the lie as to what they really understand their position is) then the only option will be a hard border, by way of cancelling the WA. This was always the very likely outcome, the EU tried their best to avoid it but the decision always lay with the UK.

That carries huge issues for the UK if they go that way. If they think that NI businesses are having a hard time now, wait until every shipment, coming in and out of the UK needs to be checked, levied etc etc.

The reason the UK government are claiming the NIP won't work is that it will upset the Unionists, which don't even have a vote of any meaning. Wait until the vast majority of GB feel the force f a no deal Brexit.

The problems only get worse for the UK if they continue on this path, and they know it. Ask yourself why the UK didn't simply walk away with No deal rather than sign the WA? Sure, they are saying that they never intended to honour it anyway, or they didn't understand it, but either way the UK are no in a much worse position if they intend to go with No Deal that they were 9 months or so ago.

RobMc59 are you aware of the contents of Article 16?

It's not really the nuclear option the media narratives you subscribe to, say it is.

The EU were going to trigger Art 16 in the special case of vaccines. It would have, if they had gone through with it, had no impact on anything else and would have been a temporary measure.

The fact that the UK have claimed that it was within its rights to invoke yet but didn't, funnily has not been seen as yet another weakness by the UK. Yet any sense that the EU are willing to work with the UK is immediately jumped on by you and others as a sign that the EU is crumbling and weak.

The UK know that A16 is not the answer. It made lead to the full cancellation of the entire deal, but it isn't designed for that. What the UK government need if enough people like you to think they have a card to play when in fact all Johnson has done is paint the UK into an even smaller corner that they were in when he took over. He has taken a potentially bad situation and made it into a disaster.

Again, why did he bother signing the deal if, as claimed, he never intended to honour it? All it did was lose them all trust, destroy any hope of future concessions. They still have to get financial services sorted and how is this type of messing going to help?

And for what? Do you really think this is because the UK government cares about NI business having to fill out a few forms, or that certain products may not be for sale. They are firm believers in market forces, and as such the market will find a way.

All this is is that Johnson knows the utter crapfest coming the UK's way because of Brexit, and they need something, someone to blame. Ask yourself, if NI was so important, they why did they not just stop Brexit all together before even having a vote? Or take on board that the majority in NI didn't want it and run another ref?

Because NI isn't a concern, anymore than the Falklands are. It is a distraction. A way to make it look like the EU have done something to the UK, rather than truth that the UK did it all by themselves.

At this stage, Johnson, Front, JRM etc should all be out shouting from the rooftops about the benefits of Brexit. But instead they are talking about a tiny fraction of the UK as a whole and the extra hassle they will have.

If I was a farmer, fisherman, musician, student that wanted summer work etc, I would be pretty peed off that NI was getting such special attention when everyone else is being told to suck it up and get on with it.

They enter into a treaty with the UK under which the UK operates agreed processes to identify goods that will stay in NI so they can be exempted from Single Market controls. We call this treaty the "the Northern Ireland Protocol"

Rob has just reinvented the NI protocol. Now, presumably, he will follow through and criticise the UK for failing to operate the processes that he himself has identified as necessary, and that the UK has already committed itself to operate.

Yes that is dangerous because you can be sure there are dark minds among certain circles that will plot to damage Ireland's relationship with the EU and SM.

Which is why we should have our own dark plans to counter. For example using the border as a route into the UK for the undocumented.