Brexit discussion thread IV

J Mysterio

trellheim wrote: »

So Simon Coveney has confirmed backstop texts will only be in the negotiating room. Like that's not going to leak.

Seems to me that ol' Theresa has decided to 'screw' her friends in the DUP on the sea border (or some variation of), leaving NI in the single market. I think she believes the deal can be done with the EU and then be presented to parliament last minute: deal or no deal. The DUP would be against, but a cross party coalition would come together. Possibly.

Imreoir2

J Mysterio wrote: »

Seems to me that ol' Theresa has decided to 'screw' her friends in the DUP on the sea border (or some variation of), leaving NI in the single market. I think she believes the deal can be done with the EU and then be presented to parliament last minute: deal or no deal. The DUP would be against, but a cross party coalition would come together. Possibly.

Maybe she thinks she can bounce the DUP into supporting her deal, poor woman.

Junkyard Tom

Good to see the British media focusing on this bunch.

Arlene Foster is asked by Channel 4 News Europe Editor Matt Frei if she is prepared to see a Brexit deal "go up in smoke because of your red lines".

twitter.com/Channel4News

flatty

It's treasas red lines that are the problem. Arlene is just a scapegoat really, like Amber rudd was. Treasa is a vicious and ruthless person

Econ__

The deal is done.

All UK Customs Union backstop. NI Single Market for goods backstop. No end dates.

Agreed between UK & EU negotiators. Not yet signed off by Number 10. All attention now on how the agreement will be publically choreographed and presented to the HoC to maximise chances of passage.

BonnieSituation

Econ__ wrote: »

The deal is done.

All UK Customs Union backstop. NI Single Market for goods backstop. No end dates.

Agreed between UK & EU negotiators. Not yet signed off by Number 10. All attention now on how the agreement will be publically choreographed and presented to the HoC to maximise chances of passage.

Links?

Also, what was the point of the last 2 years and having all those red lines so?

It's a farce. I know we all know that, but it just can't be stressed enough.

LeinsterDub

Econ__ wrote: »

The deal is done.

All UK Customs Union backstop. NI Single Market for goods backstop. No end dates.

Agreed between UK & EU negotiators. Not yet signed off by Number 10. All attention now on how the agreement will be publically choreographed and presented to the HoC to maximise chances of passage.

The art of the deal has always been the easy part. Remaining PM while getting it through parliament was always the issue. Also I'm not seeing this on Twitter so pinch of salt until I see anything semi official

Econ__

BonnieSituation wrote: »

Links?

Also, what was the point of the last 2 years and having all those red lines so?

It's a farce. I know we all know that, but it just can't be stressed enough.

It's not in the public media domain but the source is a good one.

The UK-EU future relationship is still an unknown beyond staying in the Customs Union via the backstop. UK can still end FoM, budget payments, law making outside customs etc., so not all red lines are crossed.

BonnieSituation

Econ__ wrote: »

It's not in the public media domain but the source is a good one.

The UK-EU future relationship is still an unknown beyond staying in the Customs Union via the backstop. UK can still end FoM, budget payments, law making outside customs etc., so not all red lines are crossed.

Source eh?

Roger_007

Econ__ wrote: »

The deal is done.

All UK Customs Union backstop. NI Single Market for goods backstop. No end dates.

Agreed between UK & EU negotiators. Not yet signed off by Number 10. All attention now on how the agreement will be publically choreographed and presented to the HoC to maximise chances of passage.

If that is the deal it would sail through the Commons because it would satisfy Labour's six conditions. However, the Rees-Mogg faction will be outraged and a leadership challenge against May will be made.
(May's days are numbered anyway because she would have crossed her 'red lines'.)

Spook_ie

Leroy42 wrote: »

And who makes the rules for this trading pack? Any deal requires the given up of something, as they are finding out in terms of Brexit.

Brexit, at least from the EU side, has shown how important political union is. The UK were very quick (rightly too, I merely am using it to make a point) to ask for European countries to back them, politically, with regards to the Russia chemical attacks in the UK. Was that a loss of sovereignty for Germany & France?

Really
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-fails-to-back-uk-kremlin-culpability-salisbury-attack/

Spook_ie

jm08 wrote: »

And the UK has a veto (as does Ireland and everyone else) on a closer union. It was never going to be forced on them.

Give it time, give it time

Rhineshark

Econ__ wrote: »

The deal is done.

All UK Customs Union backstop. NI Single Market for goods backstop. No end dates.

Agreed between UK & EU negotiators. Not yet signed off by Number 10. All attention now on how the agreement will be publically choreographed and presented to the HoC to maximise chances of passage.

What is the advantage to the EU of this? Why would the EU suddenly drop it's red lines?

BonnieSituation

Spook_ie wrote: »

Give it time, give it time

Well in the infinity of the universe things will eventually happen

jm08

Spook_ie wrote: »

Give it time, give it time

I think you need a bit more than time. Consent would be needed. Since that would involve a change to the Lisbon Treaty, it would more than likely would require a referendum in this country (and a few more like Denmark and the Netherlands).


Do you seriously think that countries like Hungary or Austria would agree to closer union? And if so, how much time would it require to convince them.

prawnsambo

Econ__ wrote: »

The deal is done.

All UK Customs Union backstop. NI Single Market for goods backstop. No end dates.

Agreed between UK & EU negotiators. Not yet signed off by Number 10. All attention now on how the agreement will be publically choreographed and presented to the HoC to maximise chances of passage.

If TM signs off on it, she's gone. It doesn't satisfy Labour's six tests - SM for NI only, doesn't look like services are included, so not the same benefits. Hard to work out what else it fails, but it's a divergence for NI as well.


Can't see that getting through the HoC. Or the ERG obvs.

LeinsterDub

http://www.itv.com/news/2018-10-09/itv-news-exclusive-progress-made-in-irish-border-brexit-negotiations/

The most important development would be that the EU seems close to agreeing that the backstop would apply to the whole UK and not just to Northern Ireland, as it originally demanded - or at least it would apply to the whole UK for customs.

That would represent a big victory for the PM - although there is a nightmarish tinge for her, because her Brexiter colleagues see this backstop as a backdoor to keep the UK in the customs union forever and thus prohibited from doing trade deals with other countries

ITV reporting similar rumours

Hurrache

No such thing as a special relationship with the US
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-09/u-s-is-said-to-mull-blocking-u-k-from-global-procurement-pact

The U.S. is threatening to block the U.K. from a 46-nation public procurement agreement, a move that would deny British companies from accessing a near $2 trillion-dollar marketplace after leaving the European Union, according to two officials with knowledge of the situation.

The U.K. will apply to rejoin the Government Procurement Agreement, a $1.7 trillion trade accord that governs global appropriation rules, since it will lose its membership after Brexit in March. U.S. negotiators have told their British counterparts that their application is outdated and needs to be revised, said the officials, who asked not to be identified because talks are ongoing.

Larbre34

Ollie Robbins making every bit of the running here. If Dominic Raab had any self respect he would resign, he literally has no function and DExEU is a pointless entity. No. 10, No. 11 and the Foreign Office are doing this.

Peregrinus

Rhineshark wrote: »

What is the advantage to the EU of this? Why would the EU suddenly drop it's red lines?

Which red line has the EU dropped?

speckled_park

So backstop comes into play if there is no deal? And even if there is a deal ni still in cu and the sm regardless?

How will that uk wide cu backstop work? Say the uk gets deal before end of transition. 5 years later for whatever reason deal breaks down. They revert to this backstop? Will that affect any new deals the may have made with countries like us/nz?

Peregrinus

speckled_park wrote: »

So backstop comes into play if there is no deal?

No. This was never going to happen. How could it? Backstop is a term of the Withdrawal Agreement. If there's no Withdrawal Agreement, there's no backstop.

speckled_park wrote: »

And even if there is a deal ni still in cu and the sm regardless?

Not necessarily. If UK can, to the satisfaction of the EU, square the circle of devising free trade terms which are not CU+SM but which still enable an open border, this new trade terms will replace the backstop. But, in the real world, don't hold your breath.

speckled_park wrote: »

How will that uk wide cu backstop work? Say the uk gets deal before end of transition. 5 years later for whatever reason deal breaks down. They revert to this backstop?

No. If a future trade deal does replace the backstop, the backstop is dead and gone. Which means that EU should agree to future trade deal unless it delivers open border as reliably, effectively and permanently as the backstop does.

The same, of course, is true of the backstop. If there's no future deal, and the backstop continues indefinitely under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement, at some point the WA could "break down" and the backstop would cease to operate. Nothing man-made is truly eternal.

Trick is to frame the withdrawal agreement/future deal in a way that confers real benefits on UK, so that UK will not want it to "break down" and will do everything it can to avoid this, for fear of losing benefits.

speckled_park wrote: »

Will that affect any new deals the may have made with countries like us/nz?

Almost certainly, yet. If whole UK remains in Customs Union under backstop, this severely limits the trade deals they can do with third countries.

(Which is the reason why we can't assume that, even if HMG does agree to a WA on these terms, Parliament will approve it.)

speckled_park

Peregrinus wrote: »

No. This was never going to happen. How could it? Backstop is a term of the Withdrawal Agreement. If there's no Withdrawal Agreement, there's no backstop.

Apologies i misunderstood the backstop. I though the backstop would only come into play after the withdrawl agreement was agreed and transition period was over but no future trade deal had been agreed.

I also wasnt aware a future deal would make the backstop redundant. I thought it would always be there in the backround if that trade deal broke down. Thanks for info.

Peregrinus

speckled_park wrote: »

Apologies i misunderstood the backstop. I though the backstop would only come into play after the withdrawl agreement was agreed and transition period was over but no future trade deal had been agreed.

That's right, as far as it goes. The backstop will be agreed in the WA, but it won't be relevant during the transition period, since the transition period arrangements will lead to an open border anyway. At the end of the transition period, if there is no future trade agreement ready to roll (and there pretty certainly won't be) the backstop kicks in. And it continues unless and until replaced by a future trade deal or other agreed arrangments. But if and when it ever is replaced by one of those, that's it; it has served its purpose. and become history.

speckled_park wrote: »

I also wasnt aware a future deal would make the backstop redundant. I thought it would always be there in the backround if that trade deal broke down. Thanks for info.

I think not. Even if the WA said "if the future trade deal ever ends, the backstop is revived", the UK could pretty well ignore that. The sanction for breaching a term of the WA is that the whole WA collapses, but in the distant future, after there has been a trade deal which has broken down, after the UK has paid its divorce bill, after brexit has happened, after the transition period has expired, would it bother the UK if the withdrawal agreement broke down? At that point they would have no great interest in the withdrawal agreement; it would provide them with no benefits.

In the long term, we do want a state of affairs in which (a) it's in the UK's ongoing, permanent interest to keep the Irish border open, and (b) the UK recognises this. That's the only real foundation for a permanently open Irish border.

Zubeneschamali

Peregrinus wrote: »

At the end of the transition period, if there is no future trade agreement ready to roll (and there pretty certainly won't be) the backstop kicks in. And it continues unless and until replaced by a future trade deal or other agreed arrangments.

The EEA was created as a temporary agreement for EFTA countries planning to join the EU. Austria, Finland and Sweden have done so, Switzerland rejected the EEA in a referendum.



24 years later, Norway is still in the EEA.

Peregrinus

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

The EEA was created as a temporary agreement for EFTA countries planning to join the EU. Austria, Finland and Sweden have done so, Switzerland rejected the EEA in a referendum.

24 years later, Norway is still in the EEA.

Oh, yes, the backstop could continue for a very long time, potentially indefinitely.

But consider for a moment; assume we are at a point some years into the future. The transition period has expired, and the backstop is in operation. The UK's divorce payments have been paid. The rights of EU citizens who were settled in the UK on Brexit day are preserved under UK law. The UK and the EU have failed to agree a free trade deal and the UK economy has gone through a painful adjustment as a result, but that's now in the past.

What happens if the UK decides that it will no longer operate the backstop? The withdrawal agreement immediately collapses, but that doesn't harm the UK in any signficant way, since (apart from the backstop) the WA had largely exhausted its effect already. There is no existing trade deal with the EU whic can be jeopardised by this conduct. Sure, there's a certain reputational hit to the UK's standing as a treaty partner, but as we see every day politicians are often willing to for their country take that hit if it can secure some domestic political advantage.

In this scenario, there's no great cost to the UK in simply walking away from the backstop.

So, while the backstop can continue indefinitely, there can be no guarantee that it will. As regards keeping the border open, Ireland is much better off if that's part of a larger deal under which the UK derives continuing advantage. So, as unlikely as a square-the-circle FTA that takes the UK out of the CU and the SM yet keeps the border open may be, if the UK does come up with a plausibly functional model Ireland will (and should) support it warmly.

The other hope we can cherish - and this may be a bit more realistic - is that the present political climate in the UK, in which the Tory party is effectively the subject of a reverse takeover by Ukippers, will pass in time, and the UK will start to exercise a greater degree of rationality and self-interest on the matter of its relationship with Europe. They'll become more sensible of the many advantages of a relationship with the EU which either is CU+SM, or looks strikingly like it. The red lines will soften, and the UK will enter into a Norway-type arrangement with the EU, with broad political support domestically. Extreme brexitry will retreat to the margins of British politics once more.

MrMusician18

Roger_007 wrote: »

If that is the deal it would sail through the Commons because it would satisfy Labour's six conditions. However, the Rees-Mogg faction will be outraged and a leadership challenge against May will be made.
(May's days are numbered anyway because she would have crossed her 'red lines'.)

If it doesn't include SM membership for the whole of the UK it would fail labours six tests.

Rhineshark

Peregrinus wrote: »

Which red line has the EU dropped?

The whole UK being in the Customs Union with the advantage of not following rules that the members follow? It had been a fairly solid red line that NI was small enough to get special treatment but not the whole UK.

MrMusician18

Rhineshark wrote: »

The whole UK being in the Customs Union with the advantage of not following rules that the members follow? It had been a fairly solid red line that NI was small enough to get special treatment but not the whole UK.

You are confusing the customs union with the single market

Peregrinus

Rhineshark wrote: »

The whole UK being in the Customs Union with the advantage of not following rules that the members follow? It had been a fairly solid red line that NI was small enough to get special treatment but not the whole UK.

I don't know that that was ever a red line for the EU. The Customs Union long predates the Single Market, so it was always the case that states could be in the CU without having to all apply uniform rules as regards goods regulation, etc. And Turkey, right now, is in a Customs Union with the EU but is not in the SM, so doesn't have to apply SM rules. Conversely Norway is in SM but not in CU. So the two things are clearly separable in principle and in practice. The UK being in the CU but not the SM isn't unprecedented, impossible or a violation of what the CU is about.

(Plus, from RoI's point of view, this is an unqualified good thing. All UK being in CU is much better for us than just NI being in CU.)

I think the red line for the EU relates to the SM. They are - and have all along - been willing to allow NI to cherry-pick; it could be in the SM for goods (to the extent necessary to preserve all-Ireland economy, etc) but not for free movement, etc. Given their concern about cherry-picking, that was a big concession and they made it early. Their fear was that the UK would "pocket" this concession and seek to extend it to GB also, on the basis that if its possible in NI it can't be impossible elsewhere. So EU's red line has been "no cherry-picking of single market features beyond Northern Ireland". And reports suggest that line is being held.