Brexit discussion thread IV

Professor Moriarty

fash wrote: »

Yes, I agree with that - the EU slightly damaged its potential options. It would have been better if there was some way to burst the delusion bubble in private and at least have not been so personal in public (looking at you Donald Tusk).

Hang on. For 18 months the Tories have been mocking the EU, threatening the EU, mocking its leaders, blaming the EU and various leaders within the EU, lying about the EU, lying to the EU and essentially behaving like a tired toddler. In all this time, the EU has maintained a calm and polite stance.

May came to the EU, yet again, with a half-arsed plan that they had already rejected and which would be rejected by her own parliament, and demanded that it be accepted while threatening, yet again, to walk away if it wasn't accepted. To be frank, it's about time Britain was told to get stuffed.

kunst nugget

fash wrote: »

Yes, I agree with that - the EU slightly damaged its potential options. It would have been better if there was some way to burst the delusion bubble in private and at least have not been so personal in public (looking at you Donald Tusk).

I'd imagine there's been plenty that has been said in private already to burst the delusion bubble to no effect. The kid gloves had to come off at some stage and with only 6 months left to thrash out a deal and the UK not presenting any workable options, patience has to be running very thin.

Why blame the EU for the UK's utter incompetence in their negotiations?

Hurrache

kowtow wrote: »

It is an ambush in so far as it is a failure of diplomacy (on both sides, I suspect). Both the EU offer and Chequers have been well publicised, they could have been rejected quietly behind the scenes without grandstanding on the day or having an aide stage photographs of Donald Tusk attempting to press pieces of cake on a diabetic in order to make a point.

How can you insinuate something is an ambush when the other sides position was known since the opposite side voted for Brexit? Worse ambush ever. And the diplomacy failure was entirely on the British side.

fash wrote: »

Yes, I agree with that - the EU slightly damaged its potential options. It would have been better if there was some way to burst the delusion bubble in private and at least have not been so personal in public (looking at you Donald Tusk).

But the bloody bubble being burst was seen by everyone with a passing interest months ago.

fash

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

fash wrote: »

Yes, I agree with that - the EU slightly damaged its potential options. It would have been better if there was some way to burst the delusion bubble in private and at least have not been so personal in public (looking at you Donald Tusk).

Hang on. For 18 months the Tories have been mocking the EU, threatening the EU, mocking its leaders, blaming the EU and various leaders within the EU, lying about the EU, lying to the EU and essentially behaving like a tired toddler. In all this time, the EU has maintained a calm and polite stance.

May came to the EU, yet again, with a half-arsed plan that they had already rejected and which would be rejected by her own parliament, and demanded that it be accepted while threatening, yet again, to walk away if it wasn't accepted. To be frank, it's about time Britain was told to get stuffed.

All well and good, frankly, I'd have little sympathy if the Tories were all shot.
However while Barnier has been brilliant and diplomatic, brexiters have gone out of their way to paint the EU as evil inflexible bullies who want revenge on the plucky Brits for trying to escape.
Feeding into that narrative in any way unnecessarily impacts on any potential future referenda - and not in a pro-EU way.

kowtow

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Hang on. For 18 months the Tories have been mocking the EU, threatening the EU, mocking its leaders, blaming the EU and various leaders within the EU, lying about the EU, lying to the EU and essentially behaving like a tired toddler. In all this time, the EU has maintained a calm and polite stance.

May came to the EU, yet again, with a half-arsed plan that they had already rejected and which would be rejected by her own parliament, and demanded that it be accepted while threatening, yet again, to walk away if it wasn't accepted. To be frank, it's about time Britain was told to get stuffed.

And if that is the consensus from such a hotbed of europhile opinion as this thread - that the time has come for Britain to get stuffed, then you can well see that the opposite would apply on the other side of the "negotiation"

Which all swings us towards no deal / WTO

It's also possible that May could give more ground to the EU in weeks to come but I don't see how yesterday made that any more likely.

Sassygirl1999

It was a public dressing down by the EU 27 of a feeble old woman , she should have cried May Day,that's the only way she can get help
TM has been arrogant for many months now about her chequers plan! Though it was clear from the advent of this plan that the EU would reject it

Professor Moriarty

fash wrote: »

All well and good, frankly, I'd have little sympathy if the Tories were all shot.
However while Barnier has been brilliant and diplomatic, brexiters have gone out of their way to paint the EU as evil inflexible bullies who want revenge on the plucky Brits for trying to escape.
Feeding into that narrative in any way unnecessarily impacts on any potential future referenda - and not in a pro-EU way.

Agreed. However, there comes a point where the EU must ignore May and confront those very Brexiteers who are the hand in the May glove puppet - hence Tusk and Macron's attitude.. Time is running out. There is no longer any reason to make soothing noises to placate May and those who control her. It's necessary now to be very clear about the EU's position i.e. that these half-baked undefined wish lists aren't going to work and what is Britain going to do about it.

Imreoir2

J Mysterio wrote: »

Donald Tusk's instagram mocking May:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn8Luwbjzf9/?hl=en

For one, im surprised Tusk has an Instagram account. For two, this seems a little bit too 'cheeky' for a serious diplomat in the current conditions.

Wow, saw it referenced on Twitter and just assumed it was from a fake account, but it looks like the real thing. It's a bit much, if quite funny. TM's blood has not been washed off the streets of Salzberg yet after the beating she took there, too soon Donald.

Zubeneschamali

kunst nugget wrote: »

with only 6 months left to thrash out a deal

There aren't six. There is one. The EU allowed that they could maybe hold another summit in 2 months if there was progress in October, but that was real lastminutedotcom stuff - any proposed deal has to be ratified by umpteen national and regional parliaments, any one of which could throw a spanner into the works (looking at you, Wallonia).

And May said she'd have nothing in October anyhow.

Professor Moriarty

kowtow wrote: »

And if that is the consensus from such a hotbed of europhile opinion as this thread - that the time has come for Britain to get stuffed, then you can well see that the opposite would apply on the other side of the "negotiation"

Which all swings us towards no deal / WTO

It's also possible that May could give more ground to the EU in weeks to come but I don't see how yesterday made that any more likely.

Ah, come off it. Are you seriously suggesting that it's the EU's fault that Chequers is a silly letter to Santa? Are you suggesting that, with 18 months gone where Britain has essentially come up with no plan and where there are now only 6 months left, the EU should continue to indulge internal Tory party politics? May and her party have no plan and no hope of developing a plan. They have been indulged enough now.

kowtow

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Agreed. However, there comes a point where the EU must ignore May and confront those very Brexiteers who are the hand in the May glove puppet - hence Tusk and Macron's attitude.. Time is running out. There is no longer any reason to make soothing noises to placate May and those who control her. It's necessary now to be very clear about the EU's position i.e. that these half-baked undefined wish lists aren't going to work and what is Britain going to do about it.

Are you suggesting that precedent should be broken and foreign leaders should disregard the UK PM and enter dialogue directly with other public figures or politicians?

demfad

http://www.britishirishchamber.com/2018/09/07/sir-mark-ivan-rogers-kcmg-speech-at-british-irish-chamber-of-commerce-annual-gala-dinner/

This one may have been missed:

Excellent speech by Ivan Rogers at the British Irish Chamber of Commerce Annual Gala Dinner:

We are, fortunately, not in the world of 1918. But when a fine commentator like Simon Nixon refers to a “whiff of 1914” when talking about the current state of play on Brexit, he has a point. Liberal world orders can collapse. The first era of globalisation ended with the Great War. On most metrics, it took 80 years to get back to the level of global integration of the early 20th century.

And orders do collapse when the players in key capitals are so embroiled in domestic political crises that they can no longer think straight about the interests and incentives of those on the other side of the table, and can no longer take decisions requiring a vision beyond the next few months.

Self absorption and muddled thinking in London, of which there is plenty on every side , is met with dangerous complacency and an absence of much serious thinking about the “British question” on the EU side of the table.

But there IS a British question. It ought to, and will, matter, greatly to the EU. And it needs more than a smooth technocratic exit process to address it.

However tempting it is for capitals to think that, as the British have brought all this on themselves without much apparent thought or honesty as to what a post Brexit settlement could ever look like– an understandable accusation – any Brexit deal which was widely perceived as a humiliation, will not be a stable, lasting one.

And all sides need a stable, amicable post Brexit settlement, not an endless toxic running battle.

There is now, in my view, a higher risk than the markets are currently pricing of a disorderly breakdown in Brexit negotiations, and of our sleepwalking, into a major crisis, not because either negotiating team actively seeks it, but precisely because each side misreads each other’s real incentives and political constraints and cannot find any sort of landing zone for a deal, however provisional.

Professor Moriarty

kowtow wrote: »

Are you suggesting that precedent should be broken and foreign leaders should disregard the UK PM and enter dialogue directly with other public figures or politicians?

Nope. I'm suggesting that by firmly dismissing the latest letter from Alice In Wonderland rather than making accommodating noises, they are sending an implicit message to the entire Tory party that the game is up.

Imreoir2

kowtow wrote: »

She did the next best thing upon her return which is to call attention to the atmospherics, and present the bunch of EU suits as a load of automaton robots engaged in an ambush.

Perhaps, except of course it was not the EU suits who decided to turn it into an ambush, it was by all accounts the President of France, backed by all the other leaders of the EU 27 that did it. Tusk was only relating the decision of the European Council when he said that the Chequers proposal would not work. There were a string of EU leaders making statements dismissing the UK position and even supporting a second referendum in the UK.

If it was an ambush, it was an ambush that May herself forced, and one that was carried out by the elected heads of Europe.

Zubeneschamali

kowtow wrote: »

Which all swings us towards no deal / WTO

It's also possible that May could give more ground to the EU in weeks to come but I don't see how yesterday made that any more likely.

It make is more likely because "no deal/wto" is a bluff. The UK can't do it and the EU knows it.

May is stuck between giving ground and driving the UK economy off a cliff.

flatty

TM is, beneath the veneer of vulnerability, overwhelmingly arrogant. This needs to be born in mind when assessing her.
Whatever transpires will either be with her appearing to be at the helm, or over her political corpse. Her only interest is clinging to power. That is all. She (and I know this from an impeccable and well placed source) sees leaving the EU as her legacy.

swampgas

fash wrote: »

All well and good, frankly, I'd have little sympathy if the Tories were all shot.
However while Barnier has been brilliant and diplomatic, brexiters have gone out of their way to paint the EU as evil inflexible bullies who want revenge on the plucky Brits for trying to escape.
Feeding into that narrative in any way unnecessarily impacts on any potential future referenda - and not in a pro-EU way.

The be fair, up to now the EU have bent over backwards to TM to avoid making her look stupid at home. However that was based on an assumption that she would start moving to a realistic (i.e. non cake-and-eat-it) position behind the scenes. Instead she tried to twist the diplomatic ambiguity provided to her by the EU and use it to extract concessions that would undermine the foundations of the EU, and which are simply unthinkable. This was a huge diplomatic mis-step, she took the diplomatic cover provided to her and abused it very badly indeed. I'm not surprised at all that this was the last straw for the EU team.

IMO she is out of her depth and paralysed with indecision. She has been running from reality and from tough decisions for years. I think the EU finally decided that any further pandering to her would be counterproductive. Better to be direct and straight with the UK now, while there is some time left, rather than drift along allowing TM to keep kicking the can down the road towards an inevitable hard crash-out Brexit.

Professor Moriarty

swampgas wrote: »

The be fair, up to now the EU have bent over backwards to TM to avoid making her look stupid at home. However that was based on an assumption that she would start moving to a realistic (i.e. non cake-and-eat-it) position behind the scenes. Instead she tried to twist the diplomatic ambiguity provided to her by the EU and use it to extract concessions that would undermine the foundations of the EU, and which are simply unthinkable. This was a huge diplomatic mis-step, she took the diplomatic cover provided to her and abused it very badly indeed. I'm not surprised at all that this was the last straw for the EU team.

IMO she is out of her depth and paralysed with indecision. She has been running from reality and from tough decisions for years. I think the EU finally decided that any further pandering to her would be counterproductive. Better to be direct and straight with the UK now, while there is some time left, rather than drift along allowing TM to keep kicking the can down the road towards an inevitable hard crash-out Brexit.

Excellent post.

LuckyLloyd

kowtow wrote: »

And if that is the consensus from such a hotbed of europhile opinion as this thread - that the time has come for Britain to get stuffed, then you can well see that the opposite would apply on the other side of the "negotiation"

Which all swings us towards no deal / WTO

It's also possible that May could give more ground to the EU in weeks to come but I don't see how yesterday made that any more likely.

The UK position and negotiating position has been such a strange mixture:

- Starting out with talk of massive leverage and how easy it will all be;
- Trying to ignore the agreed structure of the negotiations;
- Making commitments at the end of the first phase of the negotiations then rowing back on them to internal media the following weekend;
- Constantly unprepared and late with submissions;
- Saying No Deal is better than a bad deal yet doing little or nothing to prepare for that eventuality;
- Eventual keynote proposal that is tearing apart internal political structures within the UK is completely unworkable from the EU perspective and undeliverable from the UK perspective;


So after the EU loses patience and calls out some of this nonsense in plain language we now get faux outrage over how they have been "ambushed" and disrespected. To be fair, your post above sticks with previous posts you have made here about hoping that Ireland would have made things easy for the UK. I can kind of understand it - talk tough and present a firm position and then cry wolf when it gets rejected. It's just more 'cakeism'.

Ultimately though time is ticking, the end approaches. Britain can get "unstuffed" if they put forward a workable backstop proposal and start asking for a free trade arrangement or regulatory structure that respects the four freedoms. Otherwise chaos in their economy that they cannot weather easily is their reward. But nothing has changed here: this was always the position from the start.

@bbclaurak)

'Chatter this morning about some kind of big statement from the PM - No 10 sources say this is NOT happening - getting on plane, who knows what will have happened by time we land....' Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak)
Gossip from this morning. Will she last the weekend?

Zubeneschamali

demfad wrote: »

Excellent speech by Ivan Rogers at the British Irish Chamber of Commerce Annual Gala Dinner:

I do not agree that this is excellent. He is simply doing the old "both sides are to blame". When one side in a negotiation demands 10 impossible things, the solution is not for the other side to compromise on 5 impossible things.

This is not on the EU, it is not on the UK, it is not on the Leave voters, it is not on Parliament or the Brexiteers - this is on May, her government and her negotiating team.

Inquitus

swampgas wrote: »

The be fair, up to now the EU have bent over backwards to TM to avoid making her look stupid at home. However that was based on an assumption that she would start moving to a realistic (i.e. non cake-and-eat-it) position behind the scenes. Instead she tried to twist the diplomatic ambiguity provided to her by the EU and use it to extract concessions that would undermine the foundations of the EU, and which are simply unthinkable. This was a huge diplomatic mis-step, she took the diplomatic cover provided to her and abused it very badly indeed. I'm not surprised at all that this was the last straw for the EU team.

IMO she is out of her depth and paralysed with indecision. She has been running from reality and from tough decisions for years. I think the EU finally decided that any further pandering to her would be counterproductive. Better to be direct and straight with the UK now, while there is some time left, rather than drift along allowing TM to keep kicking the can down the road towards an inevitable hard crash-out Brexit.

Agreed it is simply breathtaking how far she has kicked the can.

LuckyLloyd

Deleted User wrote: »

'Chatter this morning about some kind of big statement from the PM - No 10 sources say this is NOT happening - getting on plane, who knows what will have happened by time we land....' Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak)
Gossip from this morning. Will she last the weekend?

Who cares? It's moving deckchairs on the titanic so long as her potential replacements are equally lacking in national responsibility and a grasp of the magnitude of this moment. And so long as the citizens of the UK are not beating down the phone lines of their representatives looking for another referendum the current group of politicians in power will be allowed to lead the country off the cliff edge.

May's political future is massively inconsequential relative to the real economic chaos and loss of international standing about to play out.

Awesomeness

https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1042850460972056577

It is almost sad to watch this. I have a lot of friends in the UK who are all against this so hard to see them being lead by such shocking incompetence

LuckyLloyd

Awesomeness wrote: »

https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1042850460972056577

It is almost sad to watch this. I have a lot of friends in the UK who are all against this so hard to see them being lead by such shocking incompetence

They should be out protesting so. They should be turning up at their MP's local office and demanding action. The British electorate caused this.

Professor Moriarty

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Who cares? It's moving deckchairs on the titanic so long as her potential replacements are equally lacking in national responsibility and a grasp of the magnitude of this moment. And so long as the citizens of the UK are not beating down the phone lines of their representatives looking for another referendum the current group of politicians in power will be allowed to lead the country off the cliff edge.

May's political future is massively inconsequential relative to the real economic chaos and loss of international standing about to play out.

I'm afraid any hope that the next Tory leader would have any common sense or decency isn't shared by the bookmakers. Johnson, Mogg, Javid and Gove are the favourites.

LuckyLloyd

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

I'm afraid any hope that the next Tory leader would have any common sense or decency isn't shared by the bookmakers. Johnson, Mogg, Javid and Gove are the favourites.

Exactly! Which means the machinations of the Conservative party leadership is fully immaterial. It doesn't matter whether May survives or goes, hence why the EU cut her loose yesterday. For so many the party politics at play feel significant, but in the bigger picture they are not. What does the *UK* want? What has the *UK* proposed? That is all the EU can negotiate with.

The EU believed that she was a better option than those muppets Johnson et al, but she has not been able to deliver anything of note. She can not control the brexidiots, in her party, so there is only damage in further appeasement.
She's a lame duck and it's been publicly announced now.

lawred2

Awesomeness wrote: »

https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1042850460972056577

It is almost sad to watch this. I have a lot of friends in the UK who are all against this so hard to see them being lead by such shocking incompetence

and what are actively doing about it?

demfad

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

I do not agree that this is excellent. He is simply doing the old "both sides are to blame". When one side in a negotiation demands 10 impossible things, the solution is not for the other side to compromise on 5 impossible things.

This is not on the EU, it is not on the UK, it is not on the Leave voters, it is not on Parliament or the Brexiteers - this is on May, her government and her negotiating team.

But he does not say this at all:

It is also genuinely peculiar that those people whose strongest case against the UK’s membership has always resided in saying that the Union’s deepening integration had taken hold in every nook and cranny of UK life, primarily via the inevitably huge legislative programme entailed by any supranational Single Market, should then seem surprised that taking oneself deliberately out of the Single Market should entail the completely automatic re-erection of barriers to trade that had only been dismantled via that legislation.

I stress “automatic”. The EU’s position is not wilful, vengeful or a fresh voluntary decision. The barriers resume because we British have chosen that they should.

That is what Brexit means: Brexit.

And for a services-rich economy like the UK, as anyone who has conducted trade negotiations knows, liberalisation of trade in services cross border is much tougher and more complex than liberalising goods trade. Which is why the big strides have entailed precisely the sort of regional integration – with an inevitable political and juridical dimension – in which the EU has pioneered progress.

Is the Single Market perfect or complete? Of course not.

However, leaving the Single Market entails making cross border trade with its former partners within it much more difficult, and will diminish not increase trade flows. One cannot avoid that. One should not mislead the public by trying to suggest otherwise.

He is simply saying that the EU needs to be looking at where it wants the UK-EU relationship to be in a few decades time. We all know that economic cooperation was vital in ensuring peace and stability in Europe over the last 70 years. That does not mean that the UK gets to have it's cake and eat it. It should mean that the EU prizes a close relationship with the UK.
A continued running battle with the UK over decades or a UK economically tied to the USA is not in the EUs interest.

The EU is about more than trade after all.

If EU leaders now think, with Keynes type foresight, where THEY might want the EU- UK relationship to be in a decade or two, then they need to think hard this autumn about where we are heading. Chequers, whatever else, represents a Prime Minister who now recognises that across many key goods sectors, divergence on standards is a chimera which only sounds good to those who have not bothered to understand what friction free trade entails in the 21st century, have never read an FTA, and who privilege theoretical autonomy over real free trade, and who, as I say, have little or no understanding of trade in services.

The EU may have shown such foresight yesterday.