Getting brexit done!

[Dahnsouff]

 

 

 Sadly, I can believe that 

[Nalis]

3 hours ago, Dahnsouff said:

 

 

 Sadly, I can believe that 

Yep - CNN article is here:

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/uk/uk-supports-eu-four-years-after-brexit-intl-gbr

 

Interesting to see Norway and Switzerland's survey results too.

[Silebyfox_89]

The government has published its UK trade tariffs from January 1st 2021, it was mentioned in our morning meeting today: 

 

www.gov.uk/check-tariffs-1-january-2021

 

worth a look 

[Spudulike]

Almost decision time for the EU. Do they drop their insistence on no FTA without a fisheries deal or risk losing hundreds of thousands of EU jobs?? 

 

Not surprising they're getting twitchy. 

 

[Kopfkino]

2 hours ago, Spudulike said:

Almost decision time for the EU. Do they drop their insistence on no FTA without a fisheries deal or risk losing hundreds of thousands of EU jobs?? 

 

Not surprising they're getting twitchy. 

 

I'm not sure how you're come to the conclusion the EU is getting twitchy. There's a distinct problem for both side in that they both say 'Brexit means Brexit' and then proceed to try to make Brexit not mean Brexit without giving much to the other side. Think the EU is just resigned to the fact there'll be no deal and the UK government doesn't really seem to care. The lack of political intervention is a bit weird.

[Spudulike]

14 hours ago, Kopfkino said:

I'm not sure how you're come to the conclusion the EU is getting twitchy. There's a distinct problem for both side in that they both say 'Brexit means Brexit' and then proceed to try to make Brexit not mean Brexit without giving much to the other side. Think the EU is just resigned to the fact there'll be no deal and the UK government doesn't really seem to care. The lack of political intervention is a bit weird.

Perhaps you missed the French Foreign Ministers rant about the 'intransigent and frankly unrealistic' UK or the EU Chief Negotiators comments about being 'worried and disappointed'. Sounds a bit twitchy to me. 

 

@grebfromgrebland : why the haha? Are you not concerned about the thousands of job loses 

[Finnaldo]

5 hours ago, Spudulike said:

Perhaps you missed the French Foreign Ministers rant about the 'intransigent and frankly unrealistic' UK or the EU Chief Negotiators comments about being 'worried and disappointed'. Sounds a bit twitchy to me. 

 

@grebfromgrebland : why the haha? Are you not concerned about the thousands of job loses 

If you’re job was EU Chief Negotiator and your job was to secure a trade agreement post-WA, you’re going to be worried about failing to get a deal aren’t you? His instruction from Brussels is much more indicative of their attitude and seeing as there’s been no budging I wouldn’t describe them as ‘twitching’.

 

What does the French Foreign Minister’s opinion have to do with anything? Pre-referendum would you have took the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs’s opinion of EU matters as official? Some country’s foreign minister’s opinion is totally irrelevant as far as I can see. 
 

Realistically, no one’s made any noises suggesting concessions or budging and there’s certainly no action on that front. Beside any bluffing it looks like both sides, rightly or wrongly, aren’t fussed enough about a deal to start moving goalposts, as Kopf said.

[Spudulike]

1 hour ago, Finnaldo said:

If you’re job was EU Chief Negotiator and your job was to secure a trade agreement post-WA, you’re going to be worried about failing to get a deal aren’t you? His instruction from Brussels is much more indicative of their attitude and seeing as there’s been no budging I wouldn’t describe them as ‘twitching’.

 

What does the French Foreign Minister’s opinion have to do with anything? Pre-referendum would you have took the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs’s opinion of EU matters as official? Some country’s foreign minister’s opinion is totally irrelevant as far as I can see. 
 

Realistically, no one’s made any noises suggesting concessions or budging and there’s certainly no action on that front. Beside any bluffing it looks like both sides, rightly or wrongly, aren’t fussed enough about a deal to start moving goalposts, as Kopf said.

ADJECTIVE

nervous, worried, and ill-at-ease

 

I've heard many comments from EU State officials that fit this adjective. The French Minister being one but, like you say, so what. 

 

Plenty more twitching to come over the next few weeks. 

[Kopfkino]

6 hours ago, Spudulike said:

ADJECTIVE

nervous, worried, and ill-at-ease

 

I've heard many comments from EU State officials that fit this adjective. The French Minister being one but, like you say, so what. 

 

Plenty more twitching to come over the next few weeks. 

 

But Barnier has said exactly the same thing for the last 9 months, so they're not getting twitchy but instead just repeating themselves. Nobody on either side really wants no deal, that the EU vocalises this isn't them getting twitchy, it's just strategy. In fact, I think the words coming from the EU now are more just exasperation at what they're having to deal with on the opposite side of the table, and what they're dealing with is a bunch of people living a fantasy and unable to govern like adults which is to the detriment of us all far beyond Brexit. 

Edited 3 September 2020 by Kopfkino

[Strokes]

The fact that the differences in negotiating position between them is still so far away, just shows we should never have been in a political union in the first place.

We should never have let it get this far.

[Innovindil]

45 minutes ago, Strokes said:

The fact that the differences in negotiating position between them is still so far away, just shows we should never have been in a political union in the first place.

We should never have let it get this far.

Hear hear. 

 

Though to me this current impasse seems silly. We're told we can't get the same benefits as being in the club when outside of it, fair enough, but we have to follow the rules of the club outside of it, when clearly other countries outside of it don't. Don't understand how anyone could find that acceptable. And on our side we're standing firm over fishing waters that mean absolutely sod all to us in the grand scheme of things. 

 

Weird shit tbh. Hopefully they find a way, but looking doubtful. 

[Strokes]

11 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

Hear hear. 

 

Though to me this current impasse seems silly. We're told we can't get the same benefits as being in the club when outside of it, fair enough, but we have to follow the rules of the club outside of it, when clearly other countries outside of it don't. Don't understand how anyone could find that acceptable. And on our side we're standing firm over fishing waters that mean absolutely sod all to us in the grand scheme of things. 

 

Weird shit tbh. Hopefully they find a way, but looking doubtful. 

It’s quite important to them though....

But yeah it’s all become a bit of a farce now. It’s probably time to pack up and go home.

[Innovindil]

31 minutes ago, Strokes said:

It’s quite important to them though....

But yeah it’s all become a bit of a farce now. It’s probably time to pack up and go home.

Absolutely. That seems to be the only reason we're standing firm on it. It's important to them, but I doubt it's going to tip the scale simply because they know it's not that important to us. 

[bovril]

I think 'let's call the whole thing off' is a rather simplistic view. As far as I understand, trade deals usually involve some kind of relinquishing of sovereignty in some areas, which is presumably seen as worth it in the grand scheme of boosting trade and the economy. This will be particularly true with the UK and the EU as a) we're a former member and b) you can ****ing swim from Britain to France. So in order to have any kind of deal to trade with our biggest market we'll need to have some kind of 'political union' with them. Maybe not as much as before but they'll still be the biggest trading bloc in the world and we'll still need to trade with them, considering it is an objective fact that we are not going to come close to replacing their trade with anything else. We won't be much freer than we were pre-February 2020, and we'll have less influence on how trade rules are made. At the moment the government seems to be willing to risk serious economic hardship for the right to subsidise domestic businesses, when it's debatable we'll even be able to do that under the terms of the W.A. and the NI protocol.

 

I think some posts on here have used the season ticket analogy - at the moment it's like giving up your season ticket because you want to be able to take an SLR camera into the ground, then asking the club to sell you individual tickets for the same price and still let you take the camera into the ground, before giving up and listening to the match on the radio. I'm not one for Cadwalladr-esque conspiracies but the government's position seems so absurd I'm starting to wonder if they prefer the destruction of a 'clean break'. 

 

The fact that people are posting in here stuff like "well maybe a clean break is what we need at the moment" suggests that none of us (including myself) really know much about the intricacies and nuances of the trade and that boiling it down to a simple in/out question in 2016 was probably the stupidest moment in Britain's recent history. 

Edited 4 September 2020 by bovril

[Kopfkino]

5 hours ago, Strokes said:

The fact that the differences in negotiating position between them is still so far away, just shows we should never have been in a political union in the first place.

We should never have let it get this far.

Isn't that convenient, 'present situation confirms what I thought anyway'

 

26 minutes ago, bovril said:

I think 'let's call the whole thing off' is a rather simplistic view. As far as I understand, trade deals usually involve some kind of relinquishing of sovereignty in some areas, which is presumably seen as worth it in the grand scheme of boosting trade and the economy. This will be particularly true with the UK and the EU as a) we're a former member and b) you can ****ing swim from Britain to France. So in order to have any kind of deal to trade with our biggest market we'll need to have some kind of 'political union' with them. Maybe not as much as before but they'll still be the biggest trading bloc in the world and we'll still need to trade with them, considering it is an objective fact that we are not going to come close to replacing their trade with anything else. We won't be much freer than we were pre-February 2020, and we'll have less influence on how trade rules are made. At the moment the government seems to be willing to risk serious economic hardship for the right to subsidise domestic businesses, when it's debatable we'll even be able to do that under the terms of the W.A. and the NI protocol.

 

I think some posts on here have used the season ticket analogy - at the moment it's like giving up your season ticket because you want to be able to take an SLR camera into the ground, then asking the club to sell you individual tickets for the same price and still let you take the camera into the ground, before giving up and listening to the match on the radio. I'm not one for Cadwalladr-esque conspiracies but the government's position seems so absurd I'm starting to wonder if they prefer the destruction of a 'clean break'. 

 

The fact that people are posting in here stuff like "well maybe a clean break is what we need at the moment" suggests that none of us (including myself) really know much about the intricacies and nuances of the trade and that boiling it down to a simple in/out question in 2016 was probably the stupidest moment in Britain's recent history. 

Let's talk about how the whole thing is treated a bit simplistically and then rehash a stupidly simplistic analogy.

 

As for whether the vote was stupid, well that goes for any vote. Nobody really understands the intricacies and nuances of tax policy, but we still vote for a preferred approach to tax policy every general election. Economists don't really have a good grasp on where the incidence of corporation tax falls but it doesn't stop it being a centrepiece of the discussion of tax policy at general elections. Not many people really understand the intricacies and nuances of health policy and the NHS, doesn't stop arguments about funding it being central to general elections. The point is democratic politics and voting asks people that don't necessarily have knowledge of every last detail to make decisions and so it's not clear why that shouldn't extend to simply asking the people subject to EU influence whether they want it or not. Why is the vote any different to any other vote, to argue the simplism of the EU vote means it was stupid is to argue that giving the people the chance to choose a direction in any vote is stupid. 

[bovril]

10 minutes ago, Kopfkino said:

Let's talk about how the whole thing is treated a bit simplistically and then rehash a stupidly simplistic analogy.

Know your audience and all that 

 

11 minutes ago, Kopfkino said:

As for whether the vote was stupid, well that goes for any vote. Nobody really understands the intricacies and nuances of tax policy, but we still vote for a preferred approach to tax policy every general election. Economists don't really have a good grasp on where the incidence of corporation tax falls but it doesn't stop it being a centrepiece of the discussion of tax policy at general elections. Not many people really understand the intricacies and nuances of health policy and the NHS, doesn't stop arguments about funding it being central to general elections. The point is democratic politics and voting asks people that don't necessarily have knowledge of every last detail to make decisions and so it's not clear why that shouldn't extend to simply asking the people subject to EU influence whether they want it or not. Why is the vote any different to any other vote, to argue the simplism of the EU vote means it was stupid is to argue that giving the people the chance to choose a direction in any vote is stupid. 

That's true, but I don't think the two examples are entirely the same. Tax and health policies are exactly that - policies, which people can evaluate. Distilling our future relationship with the EU into a binary choice and assuming that the UK government has complete control over that is something else. I think you're being a little disingenuous if you say that, for example, a vague suggestion we can ditch free movement but stay in the single market is similar to a manifesto policy. We don't have to use the word 'stupid' if you don't like it, but the referendum and its aftermath hasn't been the greatest example in pragmatic, long-term planning by the UK. 

[Kopfkino]

1 hour ago, bovril said:

Know your audience and all that 

 

That's true, but I don't think the two examples are entirely the same. Tax and health policies are exactly that - policies, which people can evaluate. Distilling our future relationship with the EU into a binary choice and assuming that the UK government has complete control over that is something else. I think you're being a little disingenuous if you say that, for example, a vague suggestion we can ditch free movement but stay in the single market is similar to a manifesto policy. We don't have to use the word 'stupid' if you don't like it, but the referendum and its aftermath hasn't been the greatest example in pragmatic, long-term planning by the UK. 

You can evaluate whether you wish the UK to be in the EU or not as well as you can evaluate tax policy. Essentially your decision about tax policy is whether you want taxes to be higher or lower, or probably more specifically whether you think redistribution should be higher or lower. Not many people in the general public really understand what that tax policy actually means, who really pays it, what it will really do for the UK fiscal position, how people will respond to the tax changes, what its downstream effects are on the economy in terms of investment, jobs, spending, productivity, let alone what it might mean for migration. No, people decide at roughly what level they think taxes should be and vote for the party that will get closest to that. Extrapolate that out to all policy areas and the question at an election is essentially, who do you want to make decisions for the country. Exactly the same as asking people whether they want to remain in the EU or leave the EU. 

 

 

[Alf Bentley]

6 hours ago, Innovindil said:

Hear hear. 

 

Though to me this current impasse seems silly. We're told we can't get the same benefits as being in the club when outside of it, fair enough, but we have to follow the rules of the club outside of it, when clearly other countries outside of it don't. Don't understand how anyone could find that acceptable. And on our side we're standing firm over fishing waters that mean absolutely sod all to us in the grand scheme of things. 

 

Weird shit tbh. Hopefully they find a way, but looking doubtful. 

 

But the EU isn't saying that "we have to follow the rules of the club outside it" - and doesn't have the power to do so.

The UK can opt for No Deal and can trade on WTO terms, accepting all the tariff and non-tariff trade barriers & logistical disruption that would occur.

Plenty of Brexiteers have argued that would work out fine....and it looks increasingly as if we might get to find out whether they were right!

 

This is a simplification, but it is essentially a binary choice on trade, isn't it?

- Sign up to a "level playing field", follow some club rules (not as many as before) and gain some club benefits (not as many as before) so as to enjoy better trading terms than under WTO rules

- Don't sign up to "level playing field" or club rules and enjoy more freedom on policy (e.g. to cut regulation or increase state aid beyond EU rules) but face more barriers to trade

 

As for other countries, the one that is always raised is Canada - why can't we have identical terms to Canada?

- Firstly, the EU already does 10 times more trade with the UK than with Canada, so we're already a much bigger competitor:  https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2006/september/tradoc_122530.pdf

- Secondly, the UK is only 20 miles from the EU, whereas Canada is across a large ocean, so there's obviously much greater potential for the UK to undercut the EU (on goods, at least) than there is for Canada to do the same.

 

As another simplification, if a factory in Canada is able to cut pay and health & safety, increase working hours or get bigger handouts from Govt, it will still have to ship its goods across the Atlantic before competing with EU firms in EU markets.

If UK firms are able to do that (a big fear for the EU), they're just next door and much better placed to compete with EU firms. It's understandable that the EU see UK firms as more of a threat to their own economies and societies - potentially gaining sales, profits, jobs and investment at the expense of EU firms/workers, if they're allowed generous trade terms without having to commit to a "level playing field" on regulation, state aid etc.

[Strokes]

3 hours ago, Kopfkino said:

Isn't that convenient, 'present situation confirms what I thought anyway'

 

 

Yeah possibly but in all honesty, I couldn’t give a shit what they do or don’t do anymore. I’ve got way too much going on my life to spend much time going over old ground and tired arguments, when there are so many merits and flaws to both sides.

[Kopfkino]

So now the government is apparently about to bring forward legislation to enable it to break international law. Might deck myself out in EU paraphernalia and become a full federalist

[bovril]

So either they didn't read the agreement, or they lied. 

[Alf Bentley]

3 minutes ago, bovril said:

So either they didn't read the agreement, or they lied. 

 

Or maybe they think that threatening to break international law will cause the EU to make concessions?

 

Or maybe they think that threatening to break international law will cause the EU to crash the negotiations, so that the Govt can blame the EU for the negative impacts of No Deal?

 

Or maybe they think defying the world will be a form of nationalist populism that will go down well with the electorate and provide a useful distraction to a series of incompetent fiascoes and an impending economic crisis? 

 

[Kopfkino]

On the other hand, The Telegraph say that Barnier is being sidelined and there's finally going to be some political intervention

[bovril]

Just now, Kopfkino said:

On the other hand, The Telegraph say that Barnier is being sidelined and there's finally going to be some political intervention

Don't tell me the head of VW has finally picked up the phone....

[bovril]

20 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

Or maybe they think that threatening to break international law will cause the EU to make concessions?

 

Or maybe they think that threatening to break international law will cause the EU to crash the negotiations, so that the Govt can blame the EU for the negative impacts of No Deal?

 

Or maybe they think defying the world will be a form of nationalist populism that will go down well with the electorate and provide a useful distraction to a series of incompetent fiascoes and an impending economic crisis? 

 

All of those would suggest lying in some way.