Brexit discussion thread X (Please read OP before posting)

McGiver wrote: »

Which Eastern Europeans? What reform?
If you mean Central Europe, Hungary or Poland - they don't want any reform. Even if you take the Visegrad Group (CZ, PL, SK and HU), they don't agree on anything amongst themselves on any EU reform, except of NO to asylum seekers redistribution, all of the 4 countries are different with different political situations, although PL and HU are quasi-authoritarian but either are of a very different hard right flavour, CZ and SK are generally centre-left.

They have agreement on the idea broadly of great prominence to national sovereignty (sovereignty as it was commonly used in the sense of the word before 2016 when some weird attempts at re-framing it occurred)

McGiver wrote: »

UK doesn't and didn't want any reform, they wanted special treatment, more opt-outs and generally doing what they wanted and bossing others around (as they used to in the Good Old Empire you know).
.

One thing I have learned (not from here), is that when people start getting angry about the various British opt exceptions they have a gut dislike of British politics anyway.
How come when the UK gets an opt out its special treatment yet when France or Germany straight up block things as they did its the EU functioning as it should.
The opt outs weren't that strange, less economically important countries like Denmark have some, are you saying the UK should have just blocked all the things it has opt outs in or just never joined, after it joined was the UK somehow less an important member than France.

McGiver wrote: »

"EU reform" is a eurosceptic cliché with no basis. Anything to anyone - a bit like Brexit i.e. a unicorn.

The EU badly needs reform, its face is going to be a failed minister with thats possibly corrupt who was put into the role out of nowhere, with the european central bank being headed by somebody that was found criminally financially negligent a couple of years ago.
If these were national politicians this could be said about we would hold the system in the regard of Italian politics or Irish 90's politics.

Melanchthon wrote: »

Nancy Pelosi is important but she doesn't rule without consensus, if she goes through with a threat to veto a US UK trade deal which requires politicians with manufacturing in their districts its just giving Trump ammunition. This view of Irish - Americans as a Democratic stronghold and an intense interest in Northern Ireland went out of the way with Bill Clinton.

Yes, and Ireland is just not that important. If UK is really quite desperate after a no deal Brexit + gives the US corporations and wealthy interests a lot of what they might want from a trade deal, it would be unlikely they would turn that down.

I think it is probably just as foolhardy for the Conservative Brexiteers to depend on Trump/US republicans. It's impossible to predict what is going to happen with the US. IMO the situation is very fluid.

Building up the likes of NATO and the EU was the US's foreign policy for Europe post WW2. There was tension/stain on that policy under Bush due to the Iraq war but it was nothing like today. Trump has thrown the whole thing in the bin (with what seems like general support of Republican party and [edit: a section of their voters]). They've have decided their European allies are really "foes" to use Trump's word and cheating the US somehow.

I think any other US president would have been quite exasperated with UK over what it has been doing post 2016 (likely giving Theresa May an earful). Trump just says that Brexit is a "good thing" but of course he would have done it better. The minions he appoints deliberately try to damage/sabotage the EU [and also NATO] whenever they can.

He could win again and he will definitely try to finalise a trade deal with the Tories if they are also in power in a post crash-out UK. Or he could lose, and US foreign policy will undergo a sharp 180. The Conservatives sucking up to Trump in hopes of a trade deal after a crash out Brexit will then find themselves with their pants down!

I suppose in brief, things seem very unstable in the US politically (just like the UK).

Melanchthon wrote: »

Nancy Pelosi is important but she doesn't rule without consensus, if she goes through with a threat to veto a US UK trade deal which requires politicians with manufacturing in their districts its just giving Trump ammunition. This view of Irish - Americans as a Democratic stronghold and an intense interest in Northern Ireland went out of the way with Bill Clinton.

Its not just Pelosi and the Democrats though. It was Republican Paul Ryan (last Congress Leader) whose last act in Congress was to try and put a Bill through that gave Ireland 5,000 extra work visas (from those unused by Australia). It was defeated by 1 person's vote (it had to be unaminous by both Senate and Congress). The Irish-American causus is bi-partisan (co chairs of it are Richard Neal and Peter King (republican) who has said:

Pete King, the Republican co-chair of the Friends of Ireland group, said the threat to abandon the backstop and endanger the open border was a “needless provocation”, adding that his party would have no compunction about defying Trump over the issue.


“I would think anyone who has a strong belief in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday agreement the open border would certainly be willing to go against the president,” King said.

Richard Neal - Chair of the Ways and Means Committee.


“We oversee all trade agreements as part of our tax jurisdiction,” Neal, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, said in a phone interview. He pointed out that such a complex trade deal could take four or five years, even without the Northern Ireland issue.
“I would have little enthusiasm for entertaining a bilateral trade agreement with the UK, if they were to jeopardise the agreement.”


https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/31/brexit-mess-with-good-friday-and-well-block-uk-trade-deal-us-politicians-warn


There are 54 members of Congress who are members of the Irish American caucus. You might find Peter Kings bio interesting, particularly his involvement with the Irish Republican Movement.

King compared Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn F, the political wing of the Irish republican movement, to George Washington, and asserted that the "British government is a murder machine".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_T._King

Originally Posted by Melanchthon View Post

UK may reduce tarrifs for some stuff but what's going to happen with autos is that it will be a quick trade deal with the US and a possible deal with Japan in relation to this in relation to cars. Tarrifs on other countries cars e.g Germany could be much much higher.

Sectoral trade deals are not legal under WTO.
Trade deals must cover substantially all trade.

McGiver wrote: »

TLDR; typical eurosceptic waffle - 40% nonsense, 40% cliché, 10% valid related to transparency (everyone agrees with that) plus the remaining 10% good old German bashing (it's just tiresome 75 years after the ww2)....

Sorry for OT but EU is my area of interest and many of the eurosceptic clichés are common in the Brexiteers narrative, so mods will forgive me my OT.

Irish Praetorian wrote: »

Just for my own edification; so does this mean the UK would not be able to knock together a free trade deal with say NZ which says no tariffs on NZ lamb and no tariffs on UK cars and - such a deal would need to include more sectors and services?

Yes a Trade Deal must cover substantially all trade.
You cannot have a sectoral deal between countries for just lamb, or just autos.

McGiver wrote: »

But looks like you want to cede more sovereignty to the EU to give it more competency with regards to education and social policy (currently not EU competencies) and also increase EU's economic policy competency (currently very limited)

I think there's a problem with the word "competency", probably as a result of a translation error a long time ago. In ordinary speech it means ability e.g. the ability to sort out EU's economic problems. But in EU speech it means power or remit regardless of ability. So we can transfer "competencies" to the EU but it does not mean they are competent in the use of same.

3 out of 5 in north back "border in Irish Sea" according to tomorrow's Sunday Times.

Melanchthon wrote: »

McGiver wrote: »

Which Eastern Europeans? What reform?
If you mean Central Europe, Hungary or Poland - they don't want any reform. Even if you take the Visegrad Group (CZ, PL, SK and HU), they don't agree on anything amongst themselves on any EU reform, except of NO to asylum seekers redistribution, all of the 4 countries are different with different political situations, although PL and HU are quasi-authoritarian but either are of a very different hard right flavour, CZ and SK are generally centre-left.

They have agreement on the idea broadly of great prominence to national sovereignty (sovereignty as it was commonly used in the sense of the word before 2016 when some weird attempts at re-framing it occurred)

I know Czech politics extremely well, Slovak very well and I observe Polish + Hungarian politics with a great interest.

No, they don't.

Slovaks are the most federalist of these 4, hence they have the Euro. Their sense of national sovereignty comes from the fact that they are independent only 26 years as a country, after 1200 years of existence. But despite that and being only a 5M nation they want to belong to the EU core and do understand pooling sovereignty is necessary in today's world.

The Polish are under a basically clerofascist regime aiming at eroding the rule of the law and Liberal democracy who obviously don't want the EU to expose their hand (full of crap) hence they conveniently play the "sovereignty" card, they don't want a supranational, rule based oversight, it goes against their interest of stealing money and controlling the population (in this matter they are somewhat like the DUP, both parties are power hungry, illiberal Christian bigots). Whilst vast majority of the population are strongly pro-EU, however being a large nation there is some degree of national pride and perhaps something akin the English - we're a large nation, we could walk alone (this "weakness" is promptly and conveniently leveraged by the clerofascists of course).

The Czechs, currently under Centre-left populist "apolitical" government, are naturally sceptical as people and that applies to the euroscepticism as well. It's mostly down to the historical experience - Austrian counter-reformation (it was the Czechs who started reformation first in early 1400s) and oppression for 250 years, followed by short-lived success after the WW1, followed by UK/French betrayal before WW2, then German oppression during WW2, then Soviet aided coup d'état after the WW2, then 20 years of Soviet aided Communist destruction, then few month long attempt of reforming/softening the Soviet communist model quickly followed by a Soviet invasion and 20 years of Soviet occupation and interference. National sovereignty or nationalism is not the point - general scepticism, cautiousness and wariness due to historical experience is the point. Plus certain general conservatism similar to the Austrians (with whom they share loads culturally).

The Hungarians, currently under quasi-dictator Orbán attempting de facto one party system by messing with the constitution, using illusion of external (migrants, the EU) and internal (Soros, Jews, liberals) threat to get even more power and deconstruct liberal democracy. Being in the EPP helps a bit but the time's going to be up soon. Somewhat similar to the Polish regime in the sense that supranational oversight could reduce his power and expose the corruption. Hence "national sovereignty" is a good excuse too. And they also skilfully leverage the Hungarian historical sense of grievance of how bad Hungary ended up and how all are bad to them - Hungary was quite important power in central Europe since Middle Ages up to 150 years ago, their territory got reduced to half since then. They are of different ethnic origin (Uralic), surrounded by Slavic, Germanic countries, and are somewhat special in that sense, hence have very strong sense of nationality. Again, this is skilfully leveraged by the regime.

Note that apart from the local scheming mentioned above, Russian disinformation campaign and intelligence activity is extremely high in these countries and plays a huge part in the eurosceptic tendencies, supporting populist, fascist, authoritarian parties, moods, tendencies, generally trying to destabilise liberal democracy, erode the rule of law and disrupt strong ties to the EU. Making people believe the EU is a separate entity trying to subjugate and destroy the member states. While in reality this is what the Russians did and the EU is the exact opposite. The EU is non-different from the member states - member states are the EU and member states control it.

In fact, none of the Visegrad countries presented any EU reform - ever. They only marginally agree on what they don't want but not what they do want. And they are quite different from each other and don't really agree on many things. Politically they are each different, CZ and SK are centre-left and socially free. PL is hard right and socially regressive. HU is hard right but socially quite free.

McGiver wrote: »

UK doesn't and didn't want any reform, they wanted special treatment, more opt-outs and generally doing what they wanted and bossing others around (as they used to in the Good Old Empire you know).

One thing I have learned (not from here), is that when people start getting angry about the various British opt exceptions they have a gut dislike of British politics anyway.
How come when the UK gets an opt out its special treatment yet when France or Germany straight up block things as they did its the EU functioning as it should.
The opt outs weren't that strange, less economically important countries like Denmark have some, are you saying the UK should have just blocked all the things it has opt outs in or just never joined, after it joined was the UK somehow less an important member than France.

Because Germany and France don't have comparable opt-outs!?
UK had by far the most opt-outs and cherry picking, with huge impact. No other countries have that many opt-outs or opt-outs with significant impact. Danish euro opt-out is a show and has no impact as DKK is pegged to the Euro. I'm not aware of any significant French or German opt-outs of a similar calibre. There's simple no comparison. RoI has an opt-out from migration policy, I believe.
UK has always clearly been exceptionalist and a non-committed half EU member you could say. So no surprise it is criticised in relation to this. That's not a big revelation,is it.

McGiver wrote: »

Italy's problems are due to Italy's inability to govern their own country, get rid of extreme bureaucracy and Balkan level corruption. And educate their population. And modernise the economy. Nothing to do with EU. Next.

It functioned on a much more comparable level until the currency linkages of the early 90's with possibly higher levels of corruption, in terms of education Italy could have done better but the difference in trajectory is to large to be down simply to this. 12,7% of French population, 12.3% of UK, in tertiary education compared to 9.3% in Italy
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Tertiary_education_statistics#Participation_of_men_and_women_in_tertiary_education

McGiver wrote: »

Cliche. What exactly it is? And how it will work exactly?

A slower speed remains as is or functions more similar the EEC as was

McGiver wrote: »

Sounds great... on paper. And it's another cliché.


Firstly, EP's powers have been steadily increasing over the subsequent treaties, especially Lisbon.
Secondly, giving EP the leading power would mean the larger states would really call the shots due to much larger population and hence more MEPs, smaller countries and especially Ireland with just 11 MEPs would be marginalised. Whereas in the Council, each country however small has equal, 1/27th of vote.

Whats the point of the European Parliament then in your view and as you said this is already the direction it is heading in, so presumably you oppose this?

McGiver wrote: »

Yes, more transparency is always good. But this is hardly a reform. In any sense, whatsoever. So again a nice cliché.

This is a cosmetic measure, in grand scheme of things, it's an improvement aimed at more transparency and increasing credibility of the EP as an institution.

It would be a step in the right direction of having a more functional EU parliament with more principled MEP's, the fact this was blocked previously was a disgrace and the lack of outcry highlights how disengaged Europeans are from the Parliament

McGiver wrote: »

No EU27 country elects ministers. That's what Commissioners are in the EU equivalent. There's a reason for it.


Why should that be the case on EU level where the Executive is even more specialised and hence needs experienced people? How does general public can make a call on who should be the minister? By looking at their faces if they look pleasant or the like? So elect populists, good looking or well lying people? Please no! Another cliché.

Balls to that its not like current commissioners tend to be the cream of the crop in being experts tends to be a patronage appointment, your making an argument against democracy as a whole there, in many countries ministers are selected from politicians who have stood in election and that functions as a system.

McGiver wrote: »

Already in place when new members join. Called transitional provisions. Total restriction of freedom of movement for up to 7 years (2+3+2).
Note, Germany used 7 years for A8 countries, whereas UK, Ireland and Sweden allowed freedom of movement from day 1 of A8 - it was their free choice.

Thereafter restrictions on FoM is a nonsense and against the core principles of the EU, can't and won't work. Can NY restrict workers coming from Nebraska?

Lower in the your reply you argue that the EU is not a federation/con-federation why are you using an example of an actual country here? No law written by man is unchangeable, we have had significant constitutional changes yet Ireland remains Ireland, why can this not be the case for the EU.

McGiver wrote: »

How? And why? To bankrupt farmers and let cheap, low quality food transported half of the world having huge environmental impact to be imported into the EU?

Go to google there is plenty of good analysis of the flaws of CAP and you know it if your as interested in the EU as you say.

McGiver wrote: »

This makes little sense and is non coherent. Every EU country is different, different issues, different workforce etc.

But looks like you want to cede more sovereignty to the EU to give it more competency with regards to education and social policy (currently not EU competencies) and also increase EU's economic policy competency (currently very limited) - so you're a federalist like myself, excellent

The EU already has a lot of competencies, I am talking about the institution/bureaucracy making a non - ideological assessment of its performance since 2008, why has it performed poorly since then.

McGiver wrote: »

Not a EU reform. And also it's a nonsense. Have you heard about Bundesrepublik Deutschland? You know Federal Republic of Germany, consisting of, you know, 16 states with rather large autonomy, mostly roughly copying the areas of you know....the historic Kingdoms.

That was clearly tongue in cheek

McGiver wrote: »

German political system is in fact clearly the best democratic system in the world for the ordinary man based on the results - a social market economy, social democracy with no extremes, generally low corruption, very resilient to populism and extremism, with great balance between regional and national governments, economically extremely successful, industrious, high investment in infrastructure, with very low levels of poverty, with very high employment, with compromise/balance between unions, government and business, with high levels of education and literacy and very high political stability, whilst maintaining very high human rights standard. You would struggle hard to find another system like that, with these results.

Ok a couple of things, Germany actually has low investment in infrastructure and its causing issues, again something you would know if your as knowledgeable as you say, in fact with its current slow down there is talk of using badly needed infrastructure projects as an stimulus package.

There is plenty of corruption in Germany it just tends to function in the interests of big business, look at Siemens,look at the union reps bribery thing, look at diesel gate, look at the allegations against the former defense minister.

Anyway to the wider thing if your going to look at the results for the ordinary man the Swiss system is clearly better in terms of delivering all the things you talk about, 15% poverty rate vs 7, less social tensions, more wealth in general. Yet the Swiss system places far more power in the hands of its citizens.
Its good to see though the view point your coming from.

McGiver wrote: »

What's the evidence for this?
And even if it was not popular then there's no need to act - the EU is not a federation, it's a confederation at best. Or do I hear you want to make it less than confederation, basically back to EFTA? Well, that's not a reform, that's a roll-back of the EU as we know it. And no one wants that. If you don't like it, quit the EU and join the EFTA. And hope the Swiss accept you (they don't like competition and foreigners on their VIP club much alright).

Reform can be rolling back you know Does nobody want it, I seem to remember the French voting down some treaty in the early 2000's and the fact that where there has been referendums on EU topics they have generally done badly at least the first time around?
Your getting very personal there with all the you's?

McGiver wrote: »

TLDR; typical eurosceptic waffle - 40% nonsense, 40% cliché, 10% valid related to transparency (everyone agrees with that) plus the remaining 10% good old German bashing (it's just tiresome 75 years after the ww2)....

McGiver wrote: »

Sorry for OT but EU is my area of interest and many of the eurosceptic clichés are common in the Brexiteers narrative, so mods will forgive me my OT.

Of course the mods will forgive you don't worry about that your on their side of the argument and I am at most quasi- Eurosceptic.

prawnsambo wrote: »

The 'failed' minister had a pretty stellar career up to then. Apparently you're only as good as your last job. And if failure is such a bar to high office, how do you explain Chris Grayling or even Boris Johnson?

Man she failed bad and is a poor choice, she had patronage for her career before that, even r/Europe on Reddit thinks she is a awful appointment and thats a very very strongly pro-EU place. If your arguing she is actually a ok choice ask yourself are you just doing it because it was an EU decision because thats crazy, plenty of very pro-EU people think it was a bad move.

Bit cynical wrote: »

I think there's a problem with the word "competency", probably as a result of a translation error a long time ago. In ordinary speech it means ability e.g. the ability to sort out EU's economic problems. But in EU speech it means power or remit regardless of ability. So we can transfer "competencies" to the EU but it does not mean they are competent in the use of same.

it's no "translation error" nor "EU speech" - it is a legal word.

For example, an arbitration happens because of a clause in a contract. There has to be a dividing line between what disputes can be decided by the arbitrator and what cannot. The arbitrator gets to decide most of his limits - called the "competence-competence"

riddles wrote: »

You can live in cookoo land all you want but the fact is Ireland with a gdp of 1.2% of the EU total has paid over 40% of the cost of the banking crisis. I’m not trying to defend the fact we are a nation of morons. The fact remains German and belgium banks who could not avail of the credit party in their own countries poured money in here.

[Offtopic]
I assume you accept that Ireland had no obligation to guarantee all bond holders and did so without prior approval by or even prior notification of the EU bodies/other EU countries - a real "I'm alright Jack" all approach.
I assume you also accept that there was no necessity to do so, that Ireland did it entirely voluntarily and that even if Ireland felt it important to do so to ensure funding of banks, a state guarantee could have been limited to future bond holders - which would have been far more effective and cost a fraction of the bailout
[/Offtopic]

Stop moaning ffs wrote: »

Yellowhammer apparently is an anagram of Orwell Mayhem.
Can’t be accidental can it?


With Cummings now involved it’s hard to take any of the stories coming out at face value. Between things like this and Boris leaving his script in a pub, it’s just seems rather staged in my view.

You could make an argument that if all of this was staged that Johnson should not have promised to leave by the 31st October if he knew what the damage would be. I think it is more likely that forces outside of No.10 is working hard to try and get it through to the papers and the people how crazy this would be. That is why you get leaked documents and talking points "left" behind.

riddles wrote: »

You can live in cookoo land all you want but the fact is Ireland with a gdp of 1.2% of the EU total has paid over 40% of the cost of the banking crisis. I’m not trying to defend the fact we are a nation of morons. The fact remains German and belgium banks who could not avail of the credit party in their own countries poured money in here. They lost but still won. We have this debt nationalised now and are only staying afloat on borrowed dime.

I think it’s a fact we have never had more people in employment. Even with that we are borrowing 14 million a day.

Brexit offers no potential upside for us. Anyone delusional enough to think otherwise needs to grow up! Tax harmonization will be a big topic post brexit. Add in the decline of the beef industry there are a lot of challenges. Staying out of debt is the key. Something as a nation we are too stupid to realise.

I won't bother with the rest (you are so egregiously misrepresenting what happened that I don't see the point - you can lead a horse to water and all that). Anyway people have already pointed out problems with your post.

However just on the bit in bold above: while the Thatcherite notion of running a country's economy just like a family's income is intuitively pleasing, it fails on examination - because a family which borrows in order to spend more is always at risk of storing up trouble for itself, since the money spent is lost to that family. Whereas a country which borrows to spend on its economy can get much of that back through increased spending by its citizens. A trickle-up effect if you like, or maybe trickle-around . (Unlike the trickle-down effect, which has been shown not to work.)

My point being that staying out of debt is not in itself a solution for a country, because an urban family doesn't have the means to invest in its own production.
For a country, it all depends on how the borrowing is used. All too often (not just in Ireland) it has been exploited by politicians to "buy" popularity and thus votes. That's why the Keynesian view was discredited, not because it was fundamentally mistaken.