Brexit discussion thread VIII (Please read OP before posting)

Calina

The UK voted for all the benefits and none of the costs or obligations. The costs and obligations concerned and varied by voter. for some it was money for the NHS and for others it was nasty foreigners. A number expected that they could ban FOM into the UK but UK people would still have FOM outbound.

The ones who yammer on about trade and WTO rules demonstrably do not know what they are talking about.

As for sovereignty, what they get back will leave them less influential than what they shared.

As to what will happen this week, I do not know. They have shown themselves unable to even define an implementation process.

kalych

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

The problem with a custom union is that it isn’t out. Many leavers won’t be happy.

Can we talk about when this Brexiter nonsense became a thing? Turkey is in the customs union, EEA means being in the single market. If neither of those is acceptable then TM's deal or hard Brexit it is. There are no other deals.

prawnsambo

Peregrinus wrote: »

The bottom line is that (a) no particular model of Brexit was specified on the ballot paper, while (b) every possible model of Brexit was offered to voters by the Leave campaigns (along with a few impossible ones). The result of this is that while there is a general mandate to pursue Brexit, there is no specific mandate to pursue any particular model of Brexit in priority to other models, and almost certainly every feasible model of Brexit is rejected by a majority of voters - the Remain voters, plus those Leave voters who think "that's not the Brexit I voted for".

This is the kind of post-truth truth of brexit. As the days and months passed and the reality of what was available met the fantasy of what was promised, the options narrowed down to the point that many leavers now insist that they voted to leave the customs union, the single market and all the treaties enshrined in EU law. Hard brexit became the unicorn just out of sight behind the sunlit uplands. There are those who will insist that a hard brexit is what they voted for until yiou ask them who exactly campaigned for this and have they any examples of the literature that said so. None of this is helped by the fact that the government is split into as many factions aa flavours of brexit and the opposition also.

Peregrinus

prawnsambo wrote: »

This is the kind of post-truth truth of brexit. As the days and months passed and the reality of what was available met the fantasy of what was promised, the options narrowed down to the point that many leavers now insist that they voted to leave the customs union, the single market and all the treaties enshrined in EU law. Hard brexit became the unicorn just out of sight behind the sunlit uplands. There are those who will insist that a hard brexit is what they voted for until yiou ask them who exactly campaigned for this and have they any examples of the literature that said so. None of this is helped by the fact that the government is split into as many factions aa flavours of brexit and the opposition also.

I don't mind leavers insisting that they themselves voted for their favoured kind of Brexit . What gets my goat is leavers insisting that that all the other Leavers also voted for that kind of Brexit. It takes a fair degree of cognitive dissonance to complain about arrogant Remainer elitists and at the same time to issue pronouncements about what other people meant by the votes they cast.

MrFresh

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

Interesting projection here suggests a customs union would prevail in the indicative votes:

http://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1109843870165155842

Why is 2nd referendum in there? Is this not a projection of what people would choose in a second referendum? There's really only three choices now. No deal, May's deal or Revoke. Whether they come to the agreement by referendum or not is really irrelevant.

Peregrinus

MrFresh wrote: »

Why is 2nd referendum in there? Is this not a projection of what people would choose in a second referendum? There's really only three choices now. No deal, May's deal or Revoke. Whether they come to the agreement by referendum or not is really irrelevant.

No. This is a projection of how MPs will vote in the indicative votes which will, or may, be held in the Commons this week. MPs can vote to hold a second referendum but of course if they make that choice they can't then say what the outcome of that second referendum would be - that will be up to the citizens.

prawnsambo

Peregrinus wrote: »

I don't mind leavers insisting that they themselves voted for their favoured kind of Brexit . What gets my goat is leavers insisting that that all the other Leavers also voted for that kind of Brexit. It takes a fair degree of cognitive dissonance to complain about arrogant Remainer elitists and at the same time to issue pronouncements about what other people meant by the votes they cast.

It's very difficult to insist truthfully that you voted for a hard brexit when no campaign group was offering that as a choice. In fact they were insisting that any suggestion of such an outcome was scaremongering and 'project fear'. But there's been a consistent moving of goalposts as time went on and you even get statements like this one (although not often as easily proven a lie):

Panrich

Here is what was being said prior to the vote.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0xGt3QmRSZY

There’s quite a bit of revisionism since May went mental and started drawing red lines where none existed.

Peregrinus

It's called gaslighting. Brexit campaigners mount a sustained effor to persuade you that everything you remember about what was said during the Leave campaign, and about the positions that various people took, is wrong.

Or, as George Orwell put it in 1984, "we have always been at war with Eastasia".

Russman

I think they're really struggling to come to terms with the fact that the Brexit they want or the Brexit they voted for (at least in their own heads) - essentially all of the benefits of membership and none of the costs/drawbacks, is simply not something they can have. Even if 100% of them voted for it, they still can't have that.

prawnsambo

Russman wrote: »

I think they're really struggling to come to terms with the fact that the Brexit they want or the Brexit they voted for (at least in their own heads) - essentially all of the benefits of membership and none of the costs/drawbacks, is simply not something they can have. Even if 100% of them voted for it, they still can't have that.

In shorthand, it's caused by the breakdown in the fantasy/reality interface.

Peregrinus

prawnsambo wrote: »

In shorthand, it's caused by the breakdown in the fantasy/reality interface.

You can fix that if you have sonic screwdriver, I believe.

BonnieSituation

Peregrinus wrote: »

You can fix that if you have sonic screwdriver, I believe.

As we all know, sonic screwdriver won't work with a flux capacitor. Sheesh.

MrFresh

Peregrinus wrote: »

No. This is a projection of how MPs will vote in the indicative votes which will, or may, be held in the Commons this week. MPs can vote to hold a second referendum but of course if they make that choice they can't then say what the outcome of that second referendum would be - that will be up to the citizens.

But the EU have already said there will be no renegotiation. So why is customs union and free trade area still there? Those are no longer options.

54and56

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

By the way, were I the EU I’d say WA or no deal.

That’s generally how negotiatons work.

The WA isn’t just May’s deal it’s actually the EU’s deal. That should be it.

I disagree. Stated ultimatums can be very counterproductive.

The EU doesn't need to say "WA or no deal" because short of an exceptional event (UK requests long extension or it revokes A50) WA or no deal are the only options.

If the EU came out with a stated ultimatum it would give oxygen to the hard Brexiteers and might even result in some wavering moderates to support no deal in protest at perceived EU bullying.

Zubeneschamali

The fact that the British public has not turned on the Brexiteers, and that No Deal is now more popular with the public than ever, suggests to me that wreckers like Boris and Rees-Mogg are going to be in or near government in the UK for a while yet.



So I think the best deal for the UK would be a Norway one, precisely because these eejits would have no input into EU rules, and what's good for the EU is good for its future trading partner, the UK.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Je_suis_Jean wrote: »

I disagree. Stated ultimatums can be very counterproductive.

The EU doesn't need to say "WA or no deal" because short of an exceptional event (UK requests long extension or it revokes A50) WA or no deal are the only options.

If the EU came out with a stated ultimatum it would give oxygen to the hard Brexiteers and might even result in some wavering moderates to support no deal in protest at perceived EU bullying.

However people are talking about the parliament voting for a customs union or a single market that is not now offered by the EU, on the assumption that if the U.K. vote for either a teary eyed EU would immediately clasp the U.K. to its bosom. That’s not how negotiations normally work.

Peregrinus

MrFresh wrote: »

But the EU have already said there will be no renegotiation. So why is customs union and free trade area still there? Those are no longer options.

I think they are. It's the Withdrawal Agreement that can't be renegotiated. But the Customs Union/FTA options don't require renegotiation of the WA - they can be addressed in the Future Relationship Agreement, which hasn't yhet been drafted. And if the UK intended to negotiate an FRA with options like this, the way to signal that would be to amend the Political Declaration, which isn't set in stone the way the WA is, and which in any case is a political rather than legal document.

Remember, what the EU has said is that, if the WA isn't approved by Friday, then the UK has another two weeks to come up with a plan for progress. I wouldn't entirely rule out the possiblity that it's a plan which might involve changes to the WA (and an extension of the Art 50 period to allow those changes to be made. The EU would not bee keen on making changes, as you point out, but they have always said that the WA has the form it does because it is constructed around the UK's red lines, and if the UK were to relax or abandon some of its red lines then all kinds of good things might be possible.

So if the UK were to commit to a permanent customs union, and/or participation in the Single Market, and wanted the WA amended to reflect that commitment and to make changes resulting from it, I think the EU would find it hard to resist. I think the EU would still say that there should only be minimal changes to the WA, and most of the rest of the UK's pivot should be reflected in the yet-to-be-negotiated Future Relationship Agreement, but the EU would also see merit in stating at least the bones of the UK's new-found commitment to the CU or the SM into the legally binding Withdrawal Agreement.

Water John

Anything the Parliament wants that's softer then the WA is acceptable to the EU.
They even said last week, tell us what you want.

LuckyLloyd

Headshot wrote: »

Or ERG want total control over the second phase of negotiations

Those guy's should be thrown out of the Tories but unfortunately they won't be

It won’t matter who takes control of the second phase in the context of the WA. The EU has all the leverage on services and with the Irish insurance policy the UK has nothing substantive to counter that with. They’ll end up slowly making concessions on fisheries, agriculture, data, equivalency so as to maintain access where they absolutely need it: services.

If the ERG went for this - May out in exchange for WA + hard Brexit PM - then they aren’t the great adversaries we thought they were. I suspect JRM is smart enough to see that.

briany

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

So I think the best deal for the UK would be a Norway one, precisely because these eejits would have no input into EU rules, and what's good for the EU is good for its future trading partner, the UK.

As has been stated many times, Brexiteers seem to regard a Norway deal as worse than being in the EU precisely because they're taking rules without having any input on their creation.

The implication of this line seems to be that Norway are a bunch of dummies for having the deal they do.

Peregrinus

Water John wrote: »

Anything the Parliament wants that's softer then the WA is acceptable to the EU.
They even said last week, tell us what you want.

That's not "Tell us what you want, and you can have it!"

It's more "For the love of God, just work out what you want and tell us! We're done with trying to guess."

briany

Peregrinus wrote: »

That's not "Tell us what you want, and you can have it!"

It's more "For the love of God, just work out what you want and tell us! We're done with trying to guess."

It's not "Tell us what you want", it's "Tell us what you want that's mutually agreeable".

When entering into negotiations, it's like the UK never stopped to think that the EU might have red lines of its own. That was some prime, juicy, succulent British arrogance.

LuckyLloyd

May interpreted Leave as a vote based primarily on immigration over all else. Her deal achieves an end to free movement. Now Leavers are trying to say that interpretation is completely incorrect and insulting - that ‘it’s the view a remainer like May would have had of leave voters’.

The thing about it is that I don’t think May is wrong. The issue of immigration was key to Leave getting over the line. The problem is obviously that in the reality of negotiating with the EU you can only ‘take back control’ one or two things in mutual exclusion of other things.

My guess is that had she prioritised some other form of control in her deal, like standards, it would have come at the expense of free movement: and then immigration would have been the current rallying cry. In the final analysis the deal is bad because she locked her government into a position of negotiating weakness after setting completely unrealistic expectations in the jingoistic period before triggering A50, i.e. any deal they get will be bad when compared to the present situation.

The conversion around ‘what people really voted for’ relative to the WA is therefore a doomed exercise.

Zubeneschamali

briany wrote: »

Brexiteers seem to regard a Norway deal as worse than being in the EU precisely because they're taking rules without having any input on their creation.

They say that now, but that is not what they said to the public before the referendum, when Farage often pointed out that Norway and Switzerland do well outside the EU, and Hannan is on video saying "Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market."

No-one voted for a No Deal brexit, because the Leave campaign guaranteed there would be a most excellent deal: "The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and can choose the path we want" - that was Michael Gove, who, let's remember, is still being talked about as a future Prime Minister.

From voteleave's flyers:

We love Europe – the problem is the EU
• There is a free trade zone from Iceland to Turkey and the Russian border and we will be part of it
• We don’t need to accept the control of the EU Court to trade with Europe
• Countries around the world trade with the EU without accepting the ultimate control of the EU court
• Taking back control is a careful change, not a sudden stop - we will negotiate the terms of a new deal before we start any legal process to leave

This lurch towards no deal is because their planned Cake deal was never happening, and they would rather double down on disaster than admit that they were lying.

LeinsterDub

prawnsambo wrote: »

It's very difficult to insist truthfully that you voted for a hard brexit when no campaign group was offering that as a choice. In fact they were insisting that any suggestion of such an outcome was scaremongering and 'project fear'. But there's been a consistent moving of goalposts as time went on and you even get statements like this one (although not often as easily proven a lie):

It turns out she changed her mind before the vote.
https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1110107439746174976

AbusesToilets

Can someone clarify for me, is May obligated to refer a revocation of A50 to a vote, or is that a unilateral decision she can make?

kalych

AbusesToilets wrote: »

Can someone clarify for me, is May obligated to refer a revocation of A50 to a vote, or is that a unilateral decision she can make?

There isn't a direction from the EU, it's a UK internal question. Current consensus seems to be that she needs a parliament agreement, but obviously with no written constitution only the UK courts can make this call.

prawnsambo

AbusesToilets wrote: »

Can someone clarify for me, is May obligated to refer a revocation of A50 to a vote, or is that a unilateral decision she can make?

It has to go to a vote. The same as invoking A50 did.

Water John

Liam Fox still in La La Land.
'Liam Fox has indicated the government could ignore MPs’ views from indicative Brexit votes this week if parliament’s stated choice goes against the Conservative manifesto, insisting the real choice is still between Theresa May’s deal and no deal.' Guardian

The Conservative election manifesto trumps the opinion of Parliament.