The UK must negotiate an extension to Article 50 bilaterally, but the UK can revoke Article 50 unilaterally as I understand it.
Breath easy, friend. Don’t let the bastards get you down.
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As it stands currently, based on a court ruling. But that can be changed. There’s a potential point where the EU and its members decide that forcing the UK out and making the process as harsh as possible is the best pathway towards mitigating damage to EU members. The longer Britain dicks around and proposes insulting nonsense like this the more likely that becomes.
Most of the people I know in the EU are already pretty pissed and sick of it. Fuck the UK seems an increasingly common take on Brexit over there.
The EU court ruled that UK can revoke article 50 unilaterally, but with the condition that it is made in good faith with the sincere will to stay in EU and not just to buy more time.
Since UK courts have ruled that any agreement must be approved by the Parliament I think EU should not take into consideration “Boris” agreement before it has been approved by the UK Parliament.
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That’s a fair bit of perspective.
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The Tory mindset, no free movement of people. From the Tory Congress:
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Yet another kapo who’s happy to betray her own (the anti-Semitic dog whistle is a nice touch, Priti). If anyone doubts what a nasty place a Tory Britain after a hard Brexit will be, they haven’t been paying attention.
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I keep hearing people say that, but practically speaking, it still harms the EU if the UK leaves. Brexit is lose-lose, and the people who run the EU still mostly put the good of the union members (especially the economic good) over childish spats.
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Well that’s the point. If Brexit is going to happen (and it is) and a recalcitrant UK is bound and determined to make it worse (which they seem to be) by stringing it out. Then the best way to do those things may very well be to take a hard line on the subject.
Right now the EU is actively feeling the negatives of some one else’s childish spat. And at least one EU member state (and an important one at that) is at rather severe risk regardless of the outcome. Letting that spool out endlessly, to a point where the damage happens regardless of outcome is not a solution to that.
Yes (and neither do I!) but it’s not as simple as that. Quite apart from the opportunities for horrendous mistakes to happen (either making by things contradictory or making them illegal by accident), I believe that the act involved was amended to provide for potential scrutiny meaning that a committee has to agree that a particular issue is uncontentious. As a result, there are hundreds of Statutory Instruments that have had to be listed and examined (and, potentially, be debated, although I believe that so far, only a few have actually reached that point. It’s still not clear how this process is going to shake out later on, either. Just because we’ve incorporated them, or not, into statute doesn’t necessarily mean anything if future governments try to change them.)
And, of course, the whole devolution problem still exists, in that the assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are supposed to be required to consent to changes; the Scottish Assembly refused to assent to the granting of the powers but I don’t think this has yet been tested in court.
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It’s worth repeating this because it’s not even a debating point, there cannot be a border in northern ireland under any circumstances. The way they are treating this issue in such a cavalier attitude is nauseating when we’ve already started seeing violence again.
Yup, i think that was his plan all along. Go along with the motions for securing a deal but happily drive us over a cliff edge whereby the majority of us will be poorer off but the richest will prosper in our little tax haven.
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People keep trying to remind Ms Patel and our chancellor, Mr Javid, that their parents would have had difficulty qualifying for immigration status under these proposed rules…
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Quantify. “Uncertainty” isn’t itself a negative outcome when certainty means taking damage. The fact is that MANY supply chains in the EU are all tangled up in the UK and other countries, and untangling that mess, regardless of the form of Brexit, is going to be a clusterfuck. It remains better for the EU for the UK to Remain.
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I wish for that, too, but England has partisans in Northern Ireland, just like Russians have people in Estonia. I believe it’s the same playbook.
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This is definitely an ignorant position but does anyone know why it wouldn’t be theoretically possible (not that they should,) to establish the border controls on Britain? There’s a town in Alaska where you need to go through a US border crossing if you go to the only other town accessible to it. No border in Ireland, mild inconvenience for the Northern Irish. I guess the DUP wouldn’t allow it?
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Having the border in the Irish Sea was essentially the original proposal. It would almost certainly have been the accepted position had it not been for the 2017 General Election, when everything went tits-up and the Tories were stuck with the DUP as effective coalition partners (although by a different name.)
Not only did this give the DUP a veto position on the NI proposals, it also led directly to the position where we are dangerously undermining the Good Friday Agreement which was predicated on the notion that the British and Irish governments would be neutral arbiters. A British government that only functioned because of support from one specific Northern Irish bloc is not neutral by any stretch of the imagination… (That situation is not really applicable any more because the government is practically a minority now even with their support. But they still wield a lot of power.)
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And the increased nonsense with the IRA has also included increased activity in Ireland, which is an EU member state.
There’s also been a lot of evidence pointing to uncertainty over Brexit negatively impacting European (and the global) economy. Recent news stories. But suffice to say that Brexit, both the insane back and forth over when out and if and its eventual arrival is one of the commonly cited pegs in the whole “we about to have a recession” thing.
In all likely hood its already negatively impacting Europe’s economy. And it’s sure as shit already destabilizing the Irish border. The longer the UK dicks about the more of that’s gonna happen.
Sure. But I’m not seeing any plausible reason the UK will remain. I’m seeing continued omnishambles and infighting leading to an eventual messy, damaging Brexit. And in the event of a Brexit where the UK either won’t or can’t get its shit together enough to handle that whole untangling thing. What response should the EU take? Just hand the UK its preferred form of soft Brexit (oh right they can’t even decide on that).
If the EU has to move to insulate itself from impact unilaterally they will. The more obvious that Brexit is a forgone conclusion, and that a bad Brexit is the likely format the more likely it is they’ll do that by dumping the UK hard.
That’s all Brexit negative, not uncertainty negative. Rushing Brexit by declining a revocation of Article 50 sure as hell isn’t going to make any of that better. The EU has a chance to be rewarded for patience. Impatience only multiplies the damage at this point.
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So the stuff that’s already happening due to uncertainty is Brexit Negative not Uncertainty Negative? And the way its been escalating under further uncertainty is not down to uncertainty? And continued, endlessly spooling uncertainty won’t have further impacts in that direction.
There have already been bombings. I’m sure proposing the most extreme format for a hard border won’t lead to more.
The EU stands no chance of seeing any sort of improvement to it’s circumstances vs where it was before Brexit made the scene. The best case scenario is a return to the status quo of pre-2016. If Brexit is called off tomorrow the economic downward pressure seen to that point would still have taken place. And there still would have been bombings.
This is not a reward. They don’t have an opportunity to be rewarded for tapping their foot while a member state played Russian Roulette with the lives of another member state’s citizens. They may, may have an opportunity to neuter further problems. I for one do not trust that the UK can keep its shit together long enough for that particular opportunity to actually come up.
The EU can’t force the UK to stay. And they can’t force them to take a path that mitigates the damage on everyone. If the UK won’t do either of those things on their own, and thus far they can’t. Literally can’t find a way to do it. Then its Hard Brexit one way or the other, and in that case the EU protecting it’s own interests likely means ignoring the UK’s. The escalating issues rolling out of all this nonsense just put a time line on the EU side. At a certain point pulling the trigger and actually working out the details is a more effective way to mitigate damage than just waiting while problems get worse. If we hit that point, or fears of that point become high enough. They’ll give the UK a push.
Asked and answered, dude. No need to exchange walls-o-text over it. The EU has no reason not to leave the door open for Remain at this point, and every reason to want to avoid Brexit.
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This is just tragi-comedy to the EU, who holds the whip hand.
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