EU Brexit thread

[Aberlour10]

Bad blood starts to flow around Gibraltar.

[Zelandakh]

The EU has no say in sovereignty. I say that if that question is raised the UK should simply walk away from the negotiations and put up massive protectionist tariffs against EU goods such as cars. This is not the way friends and allies should deal with each other. It is not dissimilar from the UK demanding a veto on trade deals with Calais, Normandy or Malta!

[Cyberyeti]

The EU has no say in sovereignty. I say that if that question is raised the UK should simply walk away from the negotiations and put up massive protectionist tariffs against EU goods such as cars. This is not the way friends and allies should deal with each other. It is not dissimilar from the UK demanding a veto on trade deals with Calais, Normandy or Malta!

 

I presume Spain will return Ceuta and Melilla to Morocco if they get their hands on Gibraltar - oh no I thought not.

[MrAce]

So much for the much-trumpeted domino effect!

 

[Al_U_Card]

So much for the much-trumpeted domino effect!

 

Perhaps the PIGS have to be "standing" before they can fall? ;)

(This theory didn't apply to communism in the 60s so why should it now...)

[Zelandakh]

Perhaps the PIGS have to be "standing" before they can fall? ;)

Britain was standing. Now it is down in the mud with the rest of the swine.

[Al_U_Card]

Britain was standing. Now it is down in the mud with the rest of the swine.

Not sure how defending national sovereignty lowers a country relative to becoming a small part of a whole that "enables" a bureaucracy that can sweep aside national concerns without the active participation of those affected...

[Aberlour10]

A couple of months have gone, I dont follow the devekopment in detail, so the question on the british members... does the goverment have a plan what to do at all? it seems for me they change their mind very often, but maybe I am wrong...

[Cyberyeti]

A couple of months have gone, I dont follow the devekopment in detail, so the question on the british members... does the goverment have a plan what to do at all? it seems for me they change their mind very often, but maybe I am wrong...

 

I don't understand exactly how this is proceeding. Apparently the EU side have said "We're not going to discuss anything you want to discuss until you concede these points we want" and have not budged an inch, so May is now openly talking about just leaving with no deal. People actually in the EU member states need to have the "Now let me explain" talk with Barnier and Juncker who are much more interested in what's good for Brussels than what's good for the member states of the EU.

 

There needs to be a deal, no deal is bad for everybody, but the EU negociators are backing Britain into a corner, and as most people other than them realise, that is the most likely way to cause us to stick two fingers up rather than to cave in.

[fromageGB]

Surely the answer is to leave on the original date, no extension, and start building customs posts / areas and staffing them and HMRC HQ. Normal international trading arrangements apply until countries / trading blocks create a mutual trade agreement (except of course a 300% tariff on Boeing aircraft). That will certainly cause a change of EU strategy, as an agreement is in their interests as well as ours.

 

Their current plan is to refuse to enter discussions until UK changes its mind about leaving. Problem solved, and a salutary lesson for other people thinking of abandoning the sinking ship.

 

So UK should announce that we are leaving, be seen to be getting prepared (why it has taken us 2 years to get nowhere beats me, as well as Corbyn) and then we have a decent chance of being treated seriously.

[WellSpyder]

"Give us everything we want, and then we'll think about whether to give you anything you want" doesn't seem to me to be how most negotiations are carried out, and with good reason. It is also unlikely to be something the UK gov't can afford to be seen to go along with, given how badly it worked out for David Cameron - who was essentially committed to supporting continued EU membership before he tried to renegotiate terms and therefore ended up with nothing.

 

So it does look like the chances of the UK leaving without a deal are increasing.

[shyams]

A couple of months have gone, I dont follow the devekopment in detail, so the question on the british members... does the goverment have a plan what to do at all? it seems for me they change their mind very often, but maybe I am wrong...

No one in power has any idea; they don't have a plan, and worst of all they are deluded into believing that the EU will eventually come with a begging bowl asking the UK to continue to trade freely with the EU -- simply because the UK exports more to the EU than it imports from the EU.

 

Guess what?! Perhaps the EU will stop bothering with British exports. If that happens, no one knows what sort of "Plan B" exists. In short, we're in deep doodoo and we're busy trying to determine whether it is real doodoo or simply brown-coloured mud that coincidentally smells like doodoo.

[The_Badger]

The problem with the EU is that they realise once the cash cow of Great Britain has left then there will not be any country to replace us. That's why they are making it so difficult for us to leave.

 

Most leftfield rational socialists like myself, including Jeremy Corbyn, who was vehemently against the EU before becoming Labour leader, could see the EU for what it was: jobs for the boys, hand in glove with big corporations and investment banks and bankers, backhanders and envelopes under the table par for the course.

 

I liked the idea of a Common Market, liked the idea of being more integral with Europe, but I do not like what the EU has become. A political, oligarchical hierarchy of senior politicians who think they know best for its citizens, when actually the citizens know what's best for them.

 

Most of the people who work within the EU are just thinkers, accountants, civil servants, analysts, lawyers, political and economic types who have never actually done anything in the field of actually working in corporate business and making things happen through real entrepreneurial enterprise. That's why the EU is stuffed silly with red tape and bureaucracy.

 

The EU were never going to make it easy for Great Britain to leave. Teresa May's handling of the issue has been atrocious. That's why we are still at an impasse over a year after the vote.

[Aberlour10]

Thanks for your opinions.

 

PS: If the Brits would know the plan for the future of the EU presented by french president lately....the number of leaving votes would be significant higher IMO

 

 

 

[kenberg]

I just wanted to say that I think I get a better feel for what's happening with Brexit by reading this than I do from typical US media.

It seems as if dysfunction is not just here in the US.

Best wishes on some sort of solution.

We pay our leaders in cash and in power, expecting them to get something useful settled. I would like them to earn their keep, and it sounds as if the same sentiment appears in this matter.

[cherdano]

A political, oligarchical hierarchy of senior politicians who think they know best for its citizens, when actually the citizens know what's best for them.

When I read this sentence, I thought: "I absolutely agree!! Exactly what I think about the English political elite!!"

[Cyberyeti]

When I read this sentence, I thought: "I absolutely agree!! Exactly what I think about the English political elite!!"

 

The vast majority of the political elite is/was pro-remain. The people have been much more Eurosceptic for a long time.

[Al_U_Card]

Does amalgamation ever lead to better representation? Here, the trend has been for small towns and villages to amalgamate into metropolitan areas with local councils but with an executive or regional council (one ring to rule them all...). The end result is more administrators, less efficiency and economic stagnation.

Each layer of political bureaucracy adds to the lethargy. Economies of scale are lost because small scale administrations are kept as well as the creation of new levels of foolishness. Replace 10 city councils with 1 mega-council? HAH!

[helene_t]

I am getting tired of my echo chamber. Some typical posts in my facebook feed (paraphrased):

 

- Immigration is stabilizing! Brexit is failing on its own terms!

- Immigration is drying up! Brexit leads to shortage of skilled labour!

 

OK, if there is no scenario (not even a hypothetical one) in which Brexit could not have been a disaster, what's the news value of Brexit being a disaster? It's just a tautology.

 

- Corbyn is stubonly stuck in his 1970's ideology!

- May just did her umpteenth u-turn!

 

Morton's fork, anyone?

 

- The stock exchange has lost trillions! Even the Toublerone has become smaller! Brexit is already ruining us!

 

If anything, it should be s surprise so little impact Brexit has had so far, given the political mess it has created. And measuring the economy's performance using the stock exchange is flawed. By that measure, the Trump presidency would be a bless to USA.

 

- The general election showed that people are fed up with Brexit! And opinion Polls now show the same! 51% are now against Brexit!

 

The GE was actually lost by LibDem and SNP. And the opinion polls just fluctuate around 50/50 and don't consistently show any difference since before the referendum, other than that a lot of (previous) remainers now believe the referendum result should be respected.

 

- The issue was way too complicated for ordinary voters to form an opinion about!

- We were conned!

 

OK. Since I grew up in Denmark where we had referenda all the time, I have heard this before. You will always hear the argument that this and that topic is not suitable for a referendum. And of cause it's true. People are stupid, Murdoch controls their mind etc etc. The fallacy of the argument is that since I am pro EU and therefore perceive leavers to be less competent than remainers, I will automatically deem whichever political body (be it the press, the public, parlament, courts) who is more pro-EU to be the most competent.

 

But actually, I don't think that the EU issue is more complicated than so many other political issues. Some people just don't like Eastern European immigrants, don't like the metric system, don't care about roaming charges. Yes I know that the referendum was not about the metric system but it was about making an effort to isolate the UK from continental cultural and political influence. We can disagree (needless to say I think that foreign cultural influence is by and large a plus) but I haven't seen evidence that leavers were particularly ill-informed. Yes, it's true that Europoll found that the British score somewhere between the Turkish and the Albanians on the know-your-European-institutions quiz, but I am not convinced that that scale is relevant for the Brexit decision.

 

There are some plus sides of referenda. Google reported that UK internet users actually starting asking questions about EU prior to the referendum. And even if it's true that voters are stupid, it's not a very democratic attitude that stupidity disqualifies them from making their voice heard.

 

Yeah, of course I agree that Brexit was a stupid decision. I am just fed up with silly arguments from my echo chamber.

[fromageGB]

Yes I know that the referendum was not about the metric system but it was about making an effort to isolate the UK from continental cultural and political influence.

No, you have it completely wrong. We like the cultural influence, and we do not mind political influence, but we object, strongly, to political control.

[cherdano]

No, you have it completely wrong. We like the cultural influence, and we do not mind political influence, but we object, strongly, to political control.

This post would be more convincing under a different user name...

[Cyberyeti]

This post would be more convincing under a different user name...

 

Why ? fromage is the definition of culture :)

[hotShot]

The EU has some problem with the Brexit.

 

A non member should not have better conditions than a member. The is such a non member: Norway.

 

Norway is not an EU-Member but it pays as if it was, accepts the EU regulations and allows EU citizens free access to work. For this it is granted access to the free market.

What Norway has given up as a non member is to be part of the EU decision making.

 

Britain's vote made it clear they don't want to pay , they don't want the EU regulations and they don't want EU citizens to come an work in Britain.

But they want free access to the common market.

 

There are about 60 Billion € that Britain had agreed on paying for future projects prior to the Brexit vote.

There are EU citizens in Britain and British citizens in other EU countries.

 

One would have expected that those who wanted the Brexit would have a plan or better a suggestion how to solve those issues.

 

A pessimistic EU would expect that a hard Brexit means no more money from GB, and lots of people coming home.

So they want that solved first.

[shyams]

Britain's vote made it clear they don't want to pay , they don't want the EU regulations and they don't want EU citizens to come an work in Britain.

But they want free access to the common market.

 

There are about 60 Billion € that Britain had agreed on paying for future projects prior to the Brexit vote.

There are EU citizens in Britain and British citizens in other EU countries.

 

One would have expected that those who wanted the Brexit would have a plan or better a suggestion how to solve those issues.

 

A pessimistic EU would expect that a hard Brexit means no more money from GB, and lots of people coming home.

So they want that solved first.

 

I suspect this might be the common perception of the situation in mainland EU. However, I feel some of it is not true.

 

A. ...they don't want to pay, they don't want the EU regulations & they don't want EU citizens to come an work in Britain. But they want free access to the common market.

The "don't want to pay" is not Govt policy (at least it wasn't until recently). Originally, the UK Govt seemed willing to pay in a reasonable price; for access to EU markets, and for previously committed EU projects.

The crucial issue is "how much?". The press quoted figures of EUR 120bn-220bn, allegedly "non-negotiable". The UK used to contribute approx EUR 16bn per year and UK institutions / regions got a variety of grants totalling EUR 6bn per year -- so in effect the UK is being asked to finance the next 12-22 years of net contributions as exit costs!

 

B. There are EU citizens in Britain and British citizens in other EU countries.

Again, not a problem in principle. As per my cursory study of the document on EU negotiating position

The EU wants for all EU citizens in the UK to get:

(a) Full settled rights -- No problem, this makes sense.

(b) To anyone coming over till the day of Brexit (29-Mar-19 or later if exit is delayed) -- Some may object but so far nothing weird about the request.

© And to any EU citizen who may have been resident in the past but no longer resides in the UK; to apply to resettle any time in the future. FYI, the law for non-EU nationals is: If a permanent residence visa holder leaves the country for two whole years, he/she automatically loses all rights given by the PR visa. While the principle behind EU's demand for resettlement is not totally unreasonable, it would have been sensible to permit UK the right to impose some limitations on what qualifies & what doesn't.

d) Also apply to spouses/partners, children and dependants regardless of when they arrive in future -- i.e. akin to saying "my Grandma was an EU citizen who lived in the UK between 2012-2018, so in the year 2030 I (a national of X) automatically have rights to live in the UK" -- Getting weird already.

(e) If there are any disputes, the final arbiter on whether some person can remain or not in the UK will be decided by the European Court of Justice & not the UK courts --- absolutely crazy!! This basically implies that UK courts are too easily influenced or not independent & so cannot be trusted to get the decisions right!

This is nothing short of haughty contempt and disdain of long-established British institutions.

 

 

I agree with your statement:

C. One would have expected that those who wanted the Brexit would have a plan or better a suggestion how to solve those issues.

It's evident that the UK is woefully under-prepared entering into these negotiations; and it is obvious to many that M. Barnier is more forceful and impressive in his press briefings.

 

I do want to add one small point: The strongly anti-EU Mr. Varoufakis once said on British TV "The UK will spend the next two years negotiating their right to negotiate". If I recall he said that EU will create so many hurdles and obstacles in the procedural matters that substantive matters will never come to the forefront of any negotiations.

[Cyberyeti]

I agree with most of what shyams said above.

 

I think the UK is happy to pay what they committed to up to 2020, so we don't disrupt this spending round. The issue is things like Ukraine and pensions which go way into the future.

 

The issue with the ECJ is that there is a feeling that they want to effectively MAKE law rather than just interpret it with some perverse judgments.

 

Barnier seems unprepared to give an inch, so it's not presently a negociation.