Brexit discussion thread V - No Pic/GIF dumps please

Imreoir2

Theresa May is on the brink of officially triggering contingency plans for a no deal Brexit with the chances of negotiators in Brussels agreeing on a withdrawal deal looking increasingly precarious.

Thursday, November 15 is reportedly the deadline for the UK government to confirm no deal measures like the hiring of boats for importing vital products plus the stockpiling of medicines and pharmaceutical goods.

This means that unless May is unable to put a provisional Withdrawal Agreement before ministers at the Cabinet's next meeting on Tuesday, there almost certainly won't be an EU summit this month to finalise the UK's exit.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/theresa-may-trigger-no-deal-plans-unless-there-is-a-brexit-deal-this-week-2018-11?utm_source=reddit.com

Seems this week will see yet another deadline coming up. I wonder will this one be any different to the others we have passed along the way? Brexit is going to start getting much more expencive for the UK the longer this goes on. These shipping contracts will presumably still have to be payed even if they get a deal in December?

LuckyLloyd

Telegraph continues to push the 'withdraw the £39B and that will soften their cough' fallacy:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/11/12/theresa-may-running-options-deepening-brexit-mess/

It is right on one point: previous deadlines have been sailed through by May without any decisive course of action. I'm sure she'd love to do that this week if at all possible.

EdgeCase

I think you also have to remember in the French situation, the imperial period goes very heavily against their notions of being a very human rights and natural law based modern republic and it was quite contrary to the ideals of the revolution. There’s a sense of conscience about what the French empire was and why it’s not something to have pride in. So, after WWII they were able to distance the modern republic from what had gone before it. It gives them a sense of perspective that I don’t think the UK has. The British Empire, despite its grand scale fizzled out relatively unspectacularly with the country morphing into modernity in the mid 20th century.

The EEC membership in 1974 economically represented a step away from the empire and into modernity as a post-war Northern European country.

In some ways what happened in Britain with the empire has parallels with what happened in Spain with the end of their dictatorship, it just faded away without any political discussion about what it was or why it was such a deeply negative period.

The Republic of Ireland is the only part of these islands that actually went through a clear, totally unambiguous political deimperialisation and in many ways has more in common with most of continental Europe as a result of that.

I just think the British still have a very confused relationship with their own relatively recent history. There really isn’t any sense of “imperial” being a bad word in England and there’s lots of rather oddly misplaced pride in what that was in a way you really don’t see in France.

It’s also often like people are taking pride in something that they don’t even understand. I find it’s often a very sanitised and filtered version of history. It would be a bit like if we pretended the whole era of institutional abuse never happened and only remembered the mid 20th century in Ireland through some kind of lovely green tinted lens that only saw the pleasant bits.

I’m not saying that nobody in England is aware of their history but a large % most certainly don’t seem to be.

Imreoir2

EdgeCase wrote: »

I think you also have to remember in the French situation, the imperial period goes very heavily against their notions of being a very human rights and natural law based modern republic and it was quite contrary to the ideals of the revolution. There’s a sense of conscience about what the French empire was and why it’s not something to have pride in. So, after WWII they were able to distance the modern republic from what had gone before it. It gives them a sense of perspective that I don’t think the UK has. The British Empire, despite its grand scale fizzled out relatively unspectacularly with the country morphing into modernity in the mid 20th century.

The EEC membership in 1974 economically represented a step away from the empire and into modernity as a post-war Northern European country.

In some ways what happened in Britain with the empire has parallels with what happened in Spain with the end of their dictatorship, it just faded away without any political discussion about what it was or why it was such a deeply negative period.

The Republic of Ireland is the only part of these islands that actually went through a clear, totally unambiguous political deimperialisation and in many ways has more in common with most of continental Europe as a result of that.

I just think the British still have a very confused relationship with their own relatively recent history. There really isn’t any sense of “imperial” being a bad word in England and there’s lots of rather oddly misplaced pride in what that was in a way you really don’t see in France.

It’s also often like people are taking pride in something that they don’t even understand. I find it’s often a very sanitised and filtered version of history. It would be a bit like if we pretended the whole era of institutional abuse never happened and only remembered the mid 20th century in Ireland through some kind of lovely green tinted lens that only saw the pleasant bits.

I’m not saying that nobody in England is aware of their history but a large % most certainly don’t seem to be.

The difference with France is possibly that while their first Imperial stint under Napoleon was able to stir feeling of national pride even after it ended. Their second stint as an Empire under Bonapart III was a bit of a disaster that ended in the humilation of the Franco-Prussian war. The notion of imperialism was widely discredited as a result. While France still had it's colonies, the Republican government was more inclined to incorporate them into the unitary French state than treat them as a far flung Empire. Examples like Vietnam and Algeria show that differences in the ideological basis for colonialism did not necessarily result in a better outcome for the colonies in question, though.

trellheim

One point I see bandied about is that you cannot bind Parliament ( the UK one). However, how does that relate to treaties and the like ? Surely it can bind itself to abide by treaties.

McGiver

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

German Foreign Minister saying SM integrity is non negotiable.

What that means is the NI situation must be 100% watertight and by extension, if no land border, checks must be firm between NI/UK to protect SM.

Yes, there is no compromise on this one. Also trust in HMG is approaching zero.

The irony is that UK created the SM (their specialty) and then the Germans are adamantly sticking to its rules (their specialty), and the UK now has a problem with that. Hilarious.

McGiver

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Telegraph continues to push the 'withdraw the £39B and that will soften their cough' fallacy:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/11/12/theresa-may-running-options-deepening-brexit-mess/

It is right on one point: previous deadlines have been sailed through by May without any decisive course of action. I'm sure she'd love to do that this week if at all possible.

Yeah don't pay what you owe/committed to and then good luck negotiating WTO schedules

prawnsambo

trellheim wrote: »

One point I see bandied about is that you cannot bind Parliament ( the UK one). However, how does that relate to treaties and the like ? Surely it can bind itself to abide by treaties.

Well you can't bind any government. That's what sovereignty means. You see it with Trump repudiating the Paris accord and other treaties like the Iranian one. The thing is, it's not something governments should make a habit of, as then no-one will trust them and treaties will get harder to make.

An Ciarraioch

Brown proposing that Scotland should be able to negotiate a separate treaty with the EU - the obvious problem being that if they're allowed such treatment then Catalonia, Corsica, Flanders etc will seek the same deal.

Kermit.de.frog

UK govt has already accepted special treatment for the north. No surprise Wales and Scotland will expect same.

Brexit will go some way to breaking up the UK.

McGiver

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

Brown proposing that Scotland should be able to negotiate a separate treaty with the EU - the obvious problem being that if they're allowed such treatment then Catalonia, Corsica, Flanders etc will seek the same deal.

Only if they exit the UK during the transition period. They could apply for the EU membership and I'm quite sure they would be quickly admitted. It's different situation than Catalonia. Totally. Spain is quasi-federal state, it shows itself as unitary but it's de facto a federation. If the Scots had that much autonomy as the Catalonians do, they would be OK staying with the Union I guess.

EdgeCase

It’s hard to know tbh. The main reason Catalonia’s membership was shrugged off was because Spain could have vetoed it. If Scotland were to join, the Former UK wouldn’t be a member and wouldn’t have any influence to block Scotland or any fast track process, which we could potentially lobby for.

charlie14

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

Brown proposing that Scotland should be able to negotiate a separate treaty with the EU - the obvious problem being that if they're allowed such treatment then Catalonia, Corsica, Flanders etc will seek the same deal.

I imagine that if another independence referendum was allowed by Westminster and carried their would be no problem for the EU accepting a Scottish application for members, but they would not automatically be accepted solely on the fact that they were part of the previous acceptance of the then UK as a whole.
Like any other country applying for membership they would have to pass the criteria for acceptance

EdgeCase

They'd meet most of the criteria straight off but they'd have to establish a proper state first and also they could not just join with all the UK's existing or legacy opt outs. There's no cake-and-eat-it for Scotland either.

The biggest challenge would likely be getting an independent economy running, establishing a temporary currency and then converging with the Euro.

Sam Russell

charlie14 wrote: »

I imagine that if another independence referendum was allowed by Westminster and carried their would be no problem for the EU accepting a Scottish application for members, but they would not automatically be accepted solely on the fact that they were part of the previous acceptance of the then UK as a whole.
Like any other country applying for membership they would have to pass the criteria for acceptance

Scotland would have a problem because they would have to campaign for independence based on the joining the EU based on the Euro, SM, CU, and possibly a republic, although that last part might not be a requirement.

It would depend on when they got the vote.

EdgeCase

They'd have no requirement to be a republic. The Queen could easily remain as figure head of state. She's in that position in Canada, Australia, NZ etc all of which are totally independent of the UK.

I'm not saying they shouldn't, rather they don't need to of they don't want to.

judeboy101

EdgeCase wrote: »

They'd have no requirement to be a republic. The Queen could easily remain as figure head of state. She's in that position in Canada, Australia, NZ etc all of which are totally independent of the UK.

I'm not saying they shouldn't, rather they don't need to of they don't want to.

Actually, since a monarch can be removed by the HoP, those countries are technically not independent since they would have no say in their own head of state.

Kermit.de.frog

Barnier saying treaty text almost ready!

charlie14

EdgeCase wrote: »

They'd meet most of the criteria straight off but they'd have to establish a proper state first and also they could not just join with all the UK's existing or legacy opt outs. There's no cake-and-eat-it for Scotland either.

The biggest challenge would likely be getting an independent economy running, establishing a temporary currency and then converging with the Euro.

It certainly would not happen overnight for Scotland, but if a referendum there was passed to leave the UK and establish an independent economy then they could at least apply to join the EU.
They would be doing that on a clean slate basis. Same as any other country and no existing or legacy UK opt outs would be applicable I would imagine.

Kermit.de.frog

https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1061982443568332801

Confirmed....

EdgeCase

judeboy101 wrote: »

Actually, since a monarch can be removed by the HoP, those countries are technically not independent since they would have no say in their own head of state.

Except that the Head of State has almost no power at all. They could also easily just declare republican if the UK House of Parliament started causing issues.

EdgeCase

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1061982443568332801

Confirmed....

Now for the fun bit - actually getting it through cabinet and then past the DUP.

Kermit.de.frog

EdgeCase wrote: »

Now for the fun bit - actually getting it through cabinet and then past the DUP.

Big test for the Irish govt as well as to how far the solidarity actually went...

https://twitter.com/DomWalsh13/status/1061983689654132736

charlie14

Sam Russell wrote: »

Scotland would have a problem because they would have to campaign for independence based on the joining the EU based on the Euro, SM, CU, and possibly a republic, although that last part might not be a requirement.

It would depend on when they got the vote.

If there is a hard Brexit, or even a softer one, that is hitting the ordinary Scottish voter in the pocket with no signs of improvement I`d say that a referendum ran then that nobody would have any doubts that after gaining independence the application to join the EU would be as soon as possible.

EdgeCase

I would strongly suspect this will just morph into UK political chaos. There's no consensus and a huge desire amongst the Brexiteers to just crash out.

I would give it until Thursday to have backfired.

Hurrache

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1061982443568332801

Confirmed....

They've also been told that Wednesday evening is the latest for a November summit, I doubt it's going to happen.

McGiver

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1061982443568332801
Confirmed....

Not until Connelly confirms it. And Barnier and/or Weyand.

blanch152

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1061982443568332801

Confirmed....

He is either doing that to pressurise May on the issue or with her agreement, to pressurise the Cabinet.

McGiver

Hurrache wrote: »

They've also been told that Wednesday evening is the latest for a November summit, I doubt it's going to happen.

And frankly, UK is engaging in a lot of legal fudging at the moment. Their proposed solution may render the text difficult to comprehend and won't be accepted by EU27. Backstop, backstop to a backstop, review mechanism, it's all too complicated. They are still trying cakeism. Coming up with the UK wide backstop (with attachments for NI so that it stays in the SM) is a big complication for both the EU27 but doable, but it's a much bigger complication for the UK, they are cornering themselves really, I don't understand the benefit they are looking for here. Time limit won't be accepted, and any unilateral withdrawal clause for the UK either. Review mechanism is fair enough, but who would make the final decision if agreement can't be made as part of the review? A third party, which one? It's all too convoluted.

Kermit.de.frog

So it seems the parameters of a deal are ready, nitty gritty just left to finalise and then on to the UK clown cabinet to consider.

https://twitter.com/DailyFXTeam/status/1061992842955014145