Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

This. The UK has been moving towards "privatised" border control for several years.

Lots of people are admitted into the UK who have no right to settle there, take up jobs there and they police this by (effectively) requiring employers to check your visa status before hiring you, requiring schools to check your visa status before enrolling your children, requiring NHS providers to check when treating you, etc.

They can take the same approach to non-Irish EU citizens crossing via the Irish border. There will be effectively nothing to stop them crossing without the appropriate permit - no checks at the border itself, no systematic spot checks by police within NI. That means that non-Irish EU citizens will, in practice, be able to move freely in and out of NI (and from there to GB) without the supposedly required permit. This doesn't bother the authorities. But they will face difficulties if they attempt to settle in NI or GB, to reside there, to make use of education, health or other public services, to take up employment.

The problem is that the Irish authorities issuing ID cards to enable people to cross the border looks like accepting/co-operating with a hardening of the border. The Irish position is very strongly that you shouldn't need an ID card to cross the border. If the UK were to introduce measures to make an ID card necessary or useful the Irish government would not respond by issuing ID cards; they would would respond by pushing back against the measures.

But note that this is all hypothetical. Nothing the UK has said or done suggests that they are going to be checking people crossing the border, or conducting random checks looking for people in NI who have crossed the border.

Ya but the piece of Brexit pie they are splitting is a tiny little cupcake compared to the giant black forest they use to share

Reads like they bowed to whatever the banks wanted. Threatening to move to new York...

Honestly, it doesn't matter. The end result is the same.

Instead of a short sharp shock, they'll see a slow decline. Which pretty much sums up Brexit.

No, you're thinking like a Brexiter there. That's always a mistake.

To the Brexiter, the whole point of Brexit, and the whole implementation of the Brexit project, is about autonomy from the EU. To the extent that the UK is dependent on the EU for anything, that's inherently bad for a Brexiter.

Brexiters tend to assume that the EU feels the same way, and that EU institutions doing euro clearing in London is inherently a failure. Not so. For the EU, managing Brexit is about harm minimisation. The downside of having euro clearing done in London (which is not very great) is set against the downside of disruption that would result from very rapid relocation. The harm-minimising course, in the EU's judgement, is a slower relocation. Hence the extension.

You say that the EU has had since 2016 to prepare. In one sense that's correct, since the EU knew from 2016 that there would be changes happening. But in another sense it ignores the chaotic nature of the UK's implementation of Brexit. Until the UK decided what it wanted, continued recognition of the UK's financial regulatory regime was still very much a possibility. It wasn't at all inevitable in 2016 that euro clearing would need to be relocated from London; had the UK made less destructive choices it wouldn't have had to be. And the harm-minimising course would be not to relocate euro clearing unless it had to be relocated; hence, you don't need to act on this until you know how you have to act.

I saw a video interviewing a business owner in the UK talking about how he started his business in the mid 1970s(so post the UK joining the then EEC) so he’d been used to trading with the rest of Europe as if it was nothing. It was obvious his business has taken a hit as it was a small business and I did feel for him. BUT then he started on about sending a product to Germany and the courier company added import charges to the cost of the product, and he then complained about “unexpected and unjustified” charges as he sees them. The problem is that through a vote the UK is no longer a part of the EU so while these charges may be unexpected, they aren’t unjustified.

I wasn’t sure whether this gentleman somehow expected things to carry on as before in-spite of the vote to leave the EU, or he realises the mess and is too stubborn to admit it on camera. My point is it’s hard to try and have sympathy for their plight when there’s a shocking level of confusion and lack of understanding of the consequences of brexit nearly six years on.

I saw someone in the Guardian comments last night suggesting that the English electorate are 'the' problem. It's not just their attitude to Europe and European people that is off, it's their attitude to just about everything. Electing Johnson, giving the Conservatives an 80 seat majority, worshipping at the altar of the Tory / Eton elite and toffs, turning against the Scots and the Northern Irish etc. Brexit may well have been a mere symptom of something much bigger.

The common belief I encountered was that the UK would negotiate with the EU from a position of power and would dictate the treaty's. Nothing could be said to change this fantasy notion.

Something that stuck out was the absolute shock when the likes of Barnier were taking the pass out of the Brexit negotiations. That level of bare faces insolence towards the great empire is something they really struggle with

I saw on a video that you can actually see the line of trucks on google maps and yep sure enough: https://www.google.com/maps/place/51°06'22.3"N+1°15'33.4"E/@51.1062014,1.2581757,487m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x5786d6c06d008e89!8m2!3d51.1061997!4d1.2592727

Big contrast between the satelite photos from 2022 and the streetview which is from july 2021.

Though the port itself looks quite empty.

I saw that (saw the same video!) but they are saying 30km/ml (?) tailbacks at Calais too, and I could not see any at all, the port looked deserted. Depends on the day and time it is filmed I suppose

I checked it yesterday, but the photography would not be up to date to 24 hours I think? I suspect we are way OT!

The ones I looked at had 2022 on them.

Yeah - "Map data Copyright 2022"

Said "Map data Copyright 2021" last year....

The pro-Brexit media in the UK especially has gone really quiet over it. There just aren't any good news stories to report. Brexit isn't bringing the sunlit uplands. Just a slow and steady decline like the one that brought the UK into the "Common Market". Thank God their economy was in a heap back then otherwise we would never have joined either. Best thing that ever happened to Ireland was aligning itself to the economies of Europe beyond Britain.

I think Brexit will be de facto if not de jure stone dead before I am. The UK will rejoin in all but name, being a rule taker for many years until the rest of the EU is satisfied it has grown up enough not to throw a big tantrum again. This will require major political reform within the UK and the introduction of PR in some shape or form to get the extremism under control (not get rid of it because there will always be a minority who vote UKIP, AfD, FN etc. but they should only get as much representation as their vote base dictates. They should never be able to infiltrate a centre right or left party and dictate their extreme views to the rest of us and FPTP is what caused that in the UK).

The 2 last 2 posts celebrate lots of jobs available, and more money on offer. Neither acknowledge the dearth of talent that left the UK opening up these opportunities and wage hikes and also totally ignores the knock on effect of price rises across the board to offset these rises. Inflation = higher and once again, it's the worse off that will suffer