Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

Actually if you go back in this thread as well as its predecessors you can see that many pragmatists myself including have always said a border was far better than leaving the single market.

The EU imposing a hard border is unthinkable. The EU will never impose a hard border in or around ROI.

@fly_agaric said "The UKs trade agreement will quickly vanish in a puff of smoke once they pass this law and they will get their nasty "No Deal Brexit" but I've always been sceptical that could ever force change if their politicians are set on this course of getting rid of the NI protocol." (Hate not being able to selectively quote in this version of Boards:-()

For me this NIP row is the logical conclusion of the following:-

• HoC pass the Benn (surrender) Act tying BoJo's hands and preventing him from going full No Deal Brexit.
• BoJo (ERG really) decides if it's going to be a no holds barred battle for Brexit they might as well propose the NIP, "Get Brexit Done" and as soon as they have purged the Tory party of non Brexit fundamentalists, won a decent HoC majority and can whip up Unionist opposition to the protocol (never going to be very difficult to achieve) they go all in on unilaterally ripping up the WA in the full knowledge that ultimately the EU may have to terminate the TCA if all other measures to get the NIP back in operational fail.
• BoJo (the ERG) get their No Deal Brexit and stick two fingers up to the HoC and the Benn (Surrender) Act whilst being able to say that they did in fact get a deal but the nasty old EU took it away from them just because they made a few minor tweaks to the NIP in order to protect the GFA which is so very important to them not because they are proud of the peace agreement but because it's a convenient way to justify being the duplicitous dishonourable people they are.

I lived and worked in London for 7 years and found most of my English colleagues to be fairly conservative (small c) and trustworthy. It amazes me how quickly a nation which had over centuries earned a reputation for democracy and rule of law etc has completely and utterly trashed that reputation and is becoming more and more isolated and insular.

The Bill is working as intended, it is keeping those quiet that the current UK Government wants to keep quiet.

It is very much correct that Ireland and the EU will never impose a border.

We have an agreement which negates the need for a border. If the UK break that they will impose a border.

Irexiters push the line that "the EU will impose the border" so that they can later point to the EU "punishing" poor little UK.

Under no circumstances will a border be created by the actions of the EU so stop victim blaming.

I don't misunderstand at all. Tho say Ireland or the EU is imposing a border is deliberate misinformation.

A border will have to go up because of the actions of Westminster. Caused and imposed by the actions of Westminster and no one else.

I don't disagree but before the advent of social media and a gazillion sources of news / info it was easy enough for the UK to behave quite tyrannically but PR and Charm their way to maintaining an image of trustworthiness and honesty etc as there was only a handful of influential newspaper owners / editors etc. Not only have BoJo and Co taken Perfidiuos Albion to new lows but the entire world gets to see it as the UK Govt spin doctors no longer dictate what is reported and discussed and what isn't.

You are completely wrong. This behaviour has been having a direct impact on this country since the Brexit vote. It's destabilising, it's introducing uncertainty and the clock is ticking on our membership of the SM. You are entitled to opinion, not fact. We won't go a week with the UK's policy should it pass before the end of the year without checks going up between us and the EU. Deny it all you like, it's as simple as that.

We have not gotten the support we need from Europe. The EU doesn't even take appropriate action against it's own members (Hungary and Poland) for totally breaking the law for goodness sake and yet they will take action against the UK?

Always jam tomorrow. We needed action before.

You should be the ones demanding a firm response to the UK's treatment of our own country, supposedly an EU member.

Answer me this. Do you think the EU would leave Belgium, to pluck one out, at the behest of a vote in the British Parliament that would decide their future?

Please answer that question and maybe you'll understand more fully my anger at the current state of affairs.

We need to demand more protection not have thumbs in our ears talking nonsense about EU greatness and 4d chess. It's a load of nonsense.

It won't need to be repeated much longer, sadly. Sirens everywhere. That's what's gas. I said before I'm the one trying to keep us in the SM and your the ones trying to get us out of it as quickly as possible!

I've repeatedly said I have no issue whatsoever with the the single market. Please quote where I've ever said otherwise.

What are you talking about ?

I've said nothing about wanting the EU to act.

@54and56

I'd agree with you on the history of it (in https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119262821/#Comment_119262821). It is about the Conservative party (hard anti-EU element that pushed through Brexit) doing the EU withdrawal agreement over because it wasn't done right as they see it. NI was left with some EU involvement in it (bad). The Ireland/NI border weapon wasn't whipped out for advantage + used to wound the EU as much as possible (a missed opportunity, and UK doesn't really hold much else over the EU to damage it). Their war with the EU is not over. It won't end when they finally get their way & UK reneges on the NI protocol (as the EU will still exist no matter what happens & that's their problem!).

Poland and Hungary are also still members so the politics are entirely different. The UK is a third country.

The EU’s reaction to the UK breaking the NIP is already long roadmapped, and conditioned on the actual breaking of the NIP, should the UK’s negotiation with itself of the past 6 years spill over into actual law-breaking.

Same as the EU’s reaction to Poland’s and Hungary’s respective nationalist policies, which is now unfolding for both members after they failed to take heed of repeated warnings.

I’m not “seriously trying to deny” anything: I’m pointing you to the double reality that the EU is neither belligerent with members and ‘non-member partners’ (3rd countries with agreements, like the UK is now), nor placid in the face of one-f**ckmanship by disruptive actors. A double reality demonstrated over decades by now.

If you’ve been expecting the EU to engage in May, Johnson, Orban <…> -like rethoric, maybe look at how the EU does things historically - and always gets its (members’) way in the end, because 27 Club making up a sizeable portion of the G20.

Feel free to get that memo, or to stay exercised about unlikely outcomes.

In fairness, nor do Brit farmers get paid out of CAP funds so it kind of evens out.

CAP is not about cheap food or even food security. Unless you consider that a mountain of powdered milk or industrial quantities of beef makes us food secure if the worst came to the worst.

It’s an entirely different animal more to do with the clout of continental farmers than anything else and much as I hate to say it the poster is right the Brits are getting a free lunch on this if you look at it with Milton Friedman spectacles, but then that totally ignores societal and cultural consequences of getting rid of the CAP. Consequences that are being felt in farming communities in Britain right now.

Yes France, Germany and the Netherlands and most of the EU 27 have huge Agricultural sectors. Protection of those sectors is a cornerstone of the EU. Milk quotas , Sugar beet quotas, intervention , (remember the wine lakes and butter mountains) subsidies etc were all tools used by the EU to protect those markets. This is one of the key differences between Britain and the EU 27. Britain was historically the workshop of the world not an Agricultural stronghold and never fully bought into the ideology of the CAP.

The big scare in farming circles 10-15 years ago was Peter Mandelson leading the EU negotiating team at the WTO. He was pushing a very British ideology in those negotiations.