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UK General Election 8th June: Shake it all about?

Started by Vanadium Gryllz, February 23, 2016, 02:54:34 PM

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Cain

Yes, but probably a bad day to have any kind of accent.  The Daily Mail is arguing that we should expel all the estimated 3.8 million EU citizens who live here currently

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Cain on June 22, 2018, 10:11:24 PM
Yes, but probably a bad day to have any kind of accent.  The Daily Mail is arguing that we should expel all the estimated 3.8 million EU citizens who live here currently

Yes, in a similar vein, the majority of the US population wants to move 11.3 million people all at once.  The dumber you get, the more vicious you get.  Or maybe it's the other way around.
Molon Lube

Faust

So today May claimed Ireland is violating the Good Friday agreement by "trying to divide the United Kingdom", by... holding the UK to the obligations of the agreement they made? Ireland and Europe are making physical preparations for WTO scenario, lining up port expansions, extra ferries (which would still be a shambles for the republic cost of goods transport).
And speaking of WTO: Reese Mogg literally said he would "stare down Ireland in this game of chicken", and that the border issue is entirely demanded on our side and that in a WTO scenario the UK would just not have customs checks in Northern Ireland...

Under WTO there is the most favored  nation clause. If they have 0 tariffs with the EU, the max tariffs (and never mind freedom of movement needing to be maintained) in and out for any other WTO nation they could apply is 0.

I was at a wedding at the weekend in London, there were a few Tories there who seemed to think they had this magical ace card to play: "We wont have the NI issue because NI will have rejoined the republic".
I wasn't expecting that from a Tory, but they are out of their minds if they think that will work, firstly it requires a border poll north and south and there is a very strong chance one or both would reject it, never mind the fact that reunification would take years and likely lead to the republic needing to go to the IMF again because the North is one of the poorest places in Europe and could Bankrupt the republic.
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Cain

Not to mention the Loyalist terrorism blowback that would result from this (which would feed nicely into the Loyalist/mainland far-right links).

Quite frankly, the Tories are delusional when it comes to Northern Ireland.  Completely, 100% delusional.

Cain

Robert Peston has sources on the Brexit deal:

https://www.facebook.com/1498276767163730/posts/2093159307675470/

QuoteThis is one of the more important notes I've written recently, because it contains what well-placed sources tell me are the main elements of the Prime Minister's Brexit plan - which will be put to her cabinet for approval on Friday.

I would characterise the kernel of what she wants as the softest possible Brexit, subject to driving only the odd coach over her self-imposed red lines, as opposed to the full coach and horses.

And I will start with my habitual apology: some of what follows is arcane, technical and - yes - a bit boring. But it matters.

Let's start with the PM's putative third way on a customs arrangement with the EU, which has been billed by her Downing Street officials as an almalgam of the best bits of the two precursor plans, the New Customs Partnership (NCP) and Maximum Facilitation (Max Fac).

Last night I described this supposed third way as largely the NCP rebranded - which prompted howls of outrage from one Downing Street official.

But I stand by what I said. Because the new proposal of the PM and her officials, led on this by Olly Robbins, retains the NCP's most controversial element, namely that the UK would at its borders collect duties on imports at the rate of the European Union's common customs tariff.

The UK would in that sense be the EU's tax collector. And although the UK would have the right to negotiate trade agreements with third countries where tariffs could be different from the EU's or zero, companies in the UK importing from those countries would have to claim back the difference from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), much in the way they currently claim or pay different VAT rates when trading with the EU.

The reason why, from a bureaucratic if not economic viewpoint, the UK would in effect remain in the EU's customs union is that there is no other way of avoiding border checks between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Or at least that is what the PM and her officials now believe.

To be clear, this would be an asymmetric agreement with the EU: Theresa May may ask EU governments to collect customs duties on behalf of the UK from companies based in their respective countries, but she knows they will respond with a decisive no, nay, never.

Which may seem unfair. But actually this would only be a problem if there were an imminent prospect of a future British government wanting to impose higher tariffs than EU ones. And certainly the political climate now - outside of Trumpian America - is for lower tariffs.

Just to be clear, there will be some of Max Fac in this new synthesised customs plan: IT and camera technology employed to reduce the bureaucracy and frictions of cross-border trade.

But the True Brexiters won't be wholly relaxed (ahem) by what they are likely to see as NCP by another name.

And there's more, of course.

Because frictionless trade and an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic cannot just be achieved by aligning customs collection rates.

It also requires alignment of product standards, for goods and agricultural products.

Or at least that is what the PM will insist on with her Cabinet colleagues.

And that alignment would in effect replicate membership of the single market for goods and agri-foods.

Which would see European standards and law continuing, ad infinitum, to hold sway over British manufacturing and food production - though the ultimate court of appeal in commercial disputes. would, in May's and Robbins's formulation, be an extra-territorial international court, like the European Free Trade Area's EFTA court.

Given that the ECJ would still have a locus below this final adjudicating tribunal, I assume the True Brexiters such as Jacob Rees-Mogg will be unamused.

But maybe they would take comfort that a British parliament could always withdraw from the trading arrangement, if there were concerns that the rest of the EU was discriminating against the UK.

At this juncture you are saying, I am sure, "oi! what about services?" - given that the UK is largely a service economy (80% of our economic output, our GDP, is generated by service businesses).

Well there is an aspiration to maximise access to the EU's giant market for services by aligning professional and quality standards, for example.

But equally there is a pragmatic recognition that maximising such access would require minimising restrictions on EU citizens moving to the UK to live and work; there is a calculation by Robbins and his officials that, among the EU's so-called four freedoms, free movement of services and free movement of people are pragmatically connected.

And since the PM has pledged to impose new controls on the free movement of people from the rest of the EU, she accepts that the EU will insist on some new restrictions on the sale of British services in its marketplace.

But May and her ministers are hopeful there is a deal to be done here, a trade-off: preferential rights offered to EU citizens to live and work in the UK, compared to the rights available to citizens from the rest of the world, for improved market access in Europe for British service companies.

We'll see.

In the round, you may conclude - as I have - that Theresa May wants a future commercial arrangement with the EU that is not as deep and intimate as Norway's, but is not a million miles from Switzerland's.

From which there follow two crucial if obvious questions.

Will the EU - its chief negotiator Michel Barnier and the 27 government heads - bite or balk?

If Barnier's word was gospel on this, the plan would be dead at birth, because it does put a wedge between the four freedoms: May wants complete freedom of movement for goods (and capital), but restrictions on people.

May's bet is that his employers, the 27 prime ministers and presidents, will be less dogmatic.

But what about her own cabinet and parliamentary party?

If they are in the True Brexit camp, like Davis, Johnson, Fox, and Gove, won't they cry "infamy, infamy, etc", threaten resignation and launch a coup to oust the PM?

Well, what the PM will say to them is that her deal, she believes, is the only one around that stands even the faintest chance of being agreed in Brussels (though, to repeat, you would be right to be sceptical of that).

Which carries a momentous implication - namely that if they reject her vision of Brexit, the default option of exiting the EU without a deal would become the sole option.

And although many True Brexiters would say "hip hip for that", if a no-deal Brexit were to become the only game in town, there would be a revolt of MPs and Lords against the executive, against the PM and her government.

Parliament would - almost certainly - reject exiting the EU without a deal and could, probably would, vote for the UK to join the European Economic Area and remain in the EU's single market.

That would, for most True Brexiters, turn the UK into what they call a "vassal state".

So come Friday, Johnson, Davis, Fox and Gove face an agonising choice: agree to a Brexit plan from May which will stick in their craws like a rotting mackerel head; or reject it and take the risk that what follows is almost their worst nightmare, not a clean no-deal Brexit, but the detested "Brino", or Brexit in name only.

Of course there is always a chance that if they shout and scream loudly enough, May will buckle - and will allow the cabinet to agree on obfuscation for the White Paper on her Brexit negotiating position, to be published 12 July, rather than a clear and unambiguous plan to be put to the EU, of the sort I've described.

If that were to happen, her authority would be undermined, perhaps fatally. And the possibility of there being no deal with the EU, on divorce and future relationship, would become a serious, potentially catastrophic probability.

Junkenstein

So the general election is when? Next Thursday?
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

Quote from: Doktor Howl on June 22, 2018, 10:14:41 PM
Quote from: Cain on June 22, 2018, 10:11:24 PM
Yes, but probably a bad day to have any kind of accent.  The Daily Mail is arguing that we should expel all the estimated 3.8 million EU citizens who live here currently

Yes, in a similar vein, the majority of the US population wants to move 11.3 million people all at once.  The dumber you get, the more vicious you get.  Or maybe it's the other way around.

They both feed into the other; that's why they call it a vicious cycle
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Doktor Howl

Molon Lube

Cain

I'm still pissed we haven't hit back harder at Russia for this.

Of course, gutting the entire civil service probably didn't help....anyway, Brexit position has been decided on by the Cabinet, and it's pretty much exactly as Peston called it.  Naturally, this pisses off both the Remainers and the Leavers, and it also has the added benefit of directly running counter to at least one EU red line (free movement of goods and services requires free movement of people).

Junkenstein

I've started to assume the reason there is no major pushback or impetus to russian investigations is due to having to admit that a significant percentage of the voting population is open to manipulation. Being able to say for certain that XX% of a nations population are open to nearly any damn fool idea you care to shove in front of them turns the world into a very strange place in short order. The more the educated guesses turn into hard data and facts, the closer we get to somewhere just being bought by Pepsi. Which is a fucker to speak, but if you know Mcdonalds you can get by.


As for the ongoing brexit shitshow, what, another couple of days for the EU to formally reject, Mogg froths the day after, another emergency 12 hour meeting to repeat at the weekend? Everyone involved in this should just be fucking embarrassed as I strongly doubt any one person has half an idea about a practical solution for even a tenth of the problems. The nameless hordes of negotiators and translators on either side must be cringing every time they meet as it's becoming rather repetitive to say the least.
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

Cain

So, David Davis (Brexit Minister) has resigned, a woman has died from Novichok poisoning, and the Donald is coming here in 4 days time.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Cain on July 09, 2018, 02:52:15 AM
So, David Davis (Brexit Minister) has resigned, a woman has died from Novichok poisoning, and the Donald is coming here in 4 days time.

Apparently the Orange Colostomy Bag is limiting his visit to some ancestral piles, as he fears the blimp.
Molon Lube

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Junkenstein on July 08, 2018, 01:21:26 AM
I've started to assume the reason there is no major pushback or impetus to russian investigations is due to having to admit that a significant percentage of the voting population is open to manipulation. Being able to say for certain that XX% of a nations population are open to nearly any damn fool idea you care to shove in front of them turns the world into a very strange place in short order. The more the educated guesses turn into hard data and facts, the closer we get to somewhere just being bought by Pepsi. Which is a fucker to speak, but if you know Mcdonalds you can get by.


As for the ongoing brexit shitshow, what, another couple of days for the EU to formally reject, Mogg froths the day after, another emergency 12 hour meeting to repeat at the weekend? Everyone involved in this should just be fucking embarrassed as I strongly doubt any one person has half an idea about a practical solution for even a tenth of the problems. The nameless hordes of negotiators and translators on either side must be cringing every time they meet as it's becoming rather repetitive to say the least.

There wasn't even the bare-bones of a plan, was there?

This whole Brexit thing reeks of Russia.
Molon Lube

Cain

James Patrick was sounding that alarm bell well before the Guardian got its teeth into the Leave.eu investigation and Aaron Banks' Russia links.

Faust

#929
Quote from: Cain on July 09, 2018, 02:52:15 AM
So, David Davis (Brexit Minister) has resigned, a woman has died from Novichok poisoning, and the Donald is coming here in 4 days time.

Davis was no loss anyway, he was just parroting whatever he had been told to. A lot of resignations in the last year, at least he wasnt trying to make illegal arms deals with isreal like Pretty patel was.

Times running out, Cain I think you called it two years ago when you said the EU wouldn't budge an inch, be as punitive to the UK as possible and had no real intention of doing any deal, this is looking more and more likely. WTO results in the border in Northern Ireland so that is the last thing I want.

It does dawn on me that the brexit promise of "We will be able to make trade deals that we couldn't" is the crux of the matter. The UK wants that... But with the individual countries that make up a trade block that are the only ones it cant make a deal with. Soveirnty will allow the UK to make deals with the US with China, India etc but not any of the geographically closest nations to it, and thats what's killing the negotiations because May and the hardliners know without that, whats the point? Shipping, food and medicine become restrictive and expensive.
If the EU wont make a deal it's a choice between lost decades of trade and a much reduced economy, or loss of pride and having to stay in the EU. I strongly suspect they will go for the former but it may be the worst possible outcome.
Sleepless nights at the chateau