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This is a Brexit topic so we’ll have none of your foreign folks here.
It’s a proper British deal/no deal scenario:
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It’s quoted in here:
but with digital artifacting. The report says
The EU and UK Government’s negotiating red lines served to place limits on the depth of any future relationship at an early stage. For example, the future relationship will be largely dictated by the UK Government’s stated red lines including ending freedom of movement and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. This was illustrated in a slide published by the European Commission’s Article 50 Taskforce in February 2018.
Essentially, the British Government has proposed so many “redlines” that it’s negotiated itself out of Europe entirely, and cast itself into the WTO snake pit with Canada and South Korea.
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Well, as the Leave campaign repeatedly pointed out (and was told was rubbish and Project Fear), that is the inevitable outcome of leaving the EU.
The WTO bit that is, not Canada and South Korea, both of which have trade deals. You don’t get to WTO terms until you go past Canada and South Korea.
The terrible graphic strikes again 
(I don’t think it’s that terrible.)
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Well, the interesting thing is that it’s possible to accept the May Deal and it gets the UK into a “Brexit in name only” situation in which we regain control of fisheries and agricultural policy, and can negotiate but not ratufy trade deals with non-EU nations.
At the same time, freedom of movement and so on continues until the end of 2020. If at that point, the UK has not negotiated a new relationship. we go into the Irish Border Backstop which as I understand it means we stay in the same situation until the border is sorted out. It takes agreement from both sides to end the backstop once it is activated.
You can see from the above why the May Deal is abhorrent to everyone. It’s like being stuck in the EU without MEPs and a seat at the high table. It’s worse than being a member, and it’s worse than being completely out.
All that is achieved by the May deal is an extra couple of years to negotiate. We could gain that simply by suspending Article 50 for a couple of years.
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And this time the electorate MUST include those of us who live overseas, since we are (and always were) the ones who are most affected by the outcome.
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That parliamentary ‘working days till brexit’ info-graphic is astounding.
Still taking weekends off eh? Just right up to the event horizon?
Urgency is lacking.
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I guess the upside to all of this is that this go round all of the fascists, regressives, racists and xenophobes seem horribly inept. Could you imagine if an organization as efficient as National Socialists was in power in the US or UK right now?
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It’s not even that really since there appears to be no way to avoid the backstop. As long as the commitment to no hard border is there, there seems to be no way to reach any kind of agreement with the EU that doesn’t involve pretty much full compliance with all the stuff people allegedly voted to get out of.
We can have our wonderful free trade deal future that Nigel keeps going on about but only if we’re prepared to agree that there may be a hard border in Northern Ireland and that we are prepared to deal with whatever consequences that causes because BREXIT!!!1111
So far very few people are prepared to say that. Nigel has got close but he mostly falls back on “The Irish have said they won’t have checks, we’ve said we won’t have checks. There is no border issue” which is of course just something to say before we get to the reality (sic) of “Thousands of migrants poised to cross N.I border” (translation: two people arrived on a ferry from France), “We must institute rigourous checks to stop cheese smuggling”, etc.
The DUP (bless 'em) have at least stated that they are quite happy for there to be a hard border (but if there were one, it would only be because the Republic put one in place).
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I hope I haven’t missed my cue to say “Fuck the DUP” mainly because of their outdated Catholic-plus attitude to LGBT and women’s rights.
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Amendment b is interesting:
At end, add “notes that the Northern Ireland backstop is intended to be temporary;
notes that the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties makes it absolutely clear
that a sovereign state can abrogate any part of a treaty with an international body
in case of a fundamental change of circumstances since the Treaty was agreed; notes
that making the Northern Ireland backstop permanent would constitute such a
fundamental change of circumstances; and therefore calls for an assurance from the
Government that, if it becomes clear by the end of 2021 that the European Union will
not agree to remove the Northern Ireland backstop, the United Kingdom will treat
the indefinite continuation of the backstop as a fundamental change of circumstances
and will accordingly give notice on 1 January 2022 to terminate the Withdrawal
Treaty so that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland shall become
an independent country once again.”
I have no idea how that would work.
It’s been selected by Bercow.
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The DUP really ought not to push their agenda too far.
I am sure I am not the only Briton who would be happy to see the North re-united with Eire if it helped get the rest of us out of the Brexit jam.
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Or even just anyway?
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It’s an interesting argument, but it seems to me that the Backstop comes into play if nothing has changed and remains in play if nothing changes to allow it to be abandoned.
From that angle, it’s hard to argue that a continuation of the existing conditions is a change of circumstances.
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It’s a fair cop.
I hold no torch for the DUP, but they are not the only inhabitants of the island of Ireland and everyone deserves a say.
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I am always amazed how devotedly Unionists cling to the belief in their Britishness in the face of constant and repeated evidence that the rest of the UK does not really think of them as British in the same way that say Cornwall is.
You’d think at some point over the last 90 odd years, they’d have realised that the rest of the UK just isn’t that into them and they’d move on.
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Careful what you wish for. During the negotiations the UK team kept insisting that they would manage just fine with a no deal exit. That was of course a bluff shared by the negotiators, but having perpetuated this through the media a significant proportion of the voting population have come to believe them.
Basically, in a choice between three choices some pollsters predict a majority for no deal…
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I believe the EU position, which it gets from it’s member state Ireland, is that there can never be a hard border between N Ireland and Ireland, so any agreement which includes a deadline where such a border will appear is out.
Seems like just more wishful thinking from the UK, the same wishful thinking they have engaged in for the past two years.
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It’s not just the EU’s position. It’s the UK’s too.
We just don’t like the consequences. Just like everything else in this sorry fiasco, somehow we want our cake even after we’ve eaten it.
Great isn’t it.?
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