Brexit discussion thread XIII (Please read OP before posting)

Padre_Pio

prawnsambo wrote: »

It's not even specific to the EU as a whole either. There are products that some EU countries will accept and others won't. Nightmare for them.

Sh*t.

All clothes, nearly anything animal related, and vehicles too.

prawnsambo

Padre_Pio wrote: »

Sh*t.

All clothes, nearly anything animal related, and vehicles too.

If the expletive is related to any desire to import goods from the UK, well I just wouldn't. Far too messy and potentially too expensive at the moment. And the usual 'speedy delivery' from the UK is no longer the advantage it used to be. It's dog slow.

dresden8

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Fair point

Anyway it's right beside the port so perfectly suited for bulk export.

Until Kilkenny leaves the EU. Do people never learn?

sondagefaux

prawnsambo wrote: »

If the expletive is related to any desire to import goods from the UK, well I just wouldn't. Far too messy and potentially too expensive at the moment. And the usual 'speedy delivery' from the UK is no longer the advantage it used to be. It's dog slow.

And only going to get slower.

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2021-01-15/stuck-in-kent-how-brexit-red-tape-strangled-cross-border-trade

View

Lumen wrote: »

There's a much shorter version of why Corbyn was pro Brexit:

Freedom of movement reduces the bargaining power of labour (small "l").

This is unarguably true, but the wider argument is about rising-tide-lifts-all-boats vs tell-that-to-the-people-on-zero-hour-minimum-wage-contracts.

There is no evidence to back up your claim about FoM.

If anything the opposite is probably true since a person who moves country under FoM can exercise their labour related rights secure in the knowledge that their FoM rights protect them, whereas an unscrupulous employer can always threaten to fire a non-EU worker thus putting their work visa in jeopardy.

Also, zero hours contracts are illegal in many EU countries, all of whom also have and continue to have FoM.

prawnsambo

View wrote: »

There is no evidence to back up your claim about FoM.

If anything the opposite is probably true since a person who moves country under FoM can exercise their labour related rights secure in the knowledge that their FoM rights protect them, whereas an unscrupulous employer can always threaten to fire a non-EU worker thus putting their work visa in jeopardy.

Also, zero hours contracts are illegal in many EU countries, all of whom also have and continue to have FoM.

The FoM argument was certainly to the fore among Labour party brexiters at the time of the ref. There was plenty of shouting about Polish plumbers and Romanian truck drivers 'tekking ur jobs'. But Corbyn's big bugbear was state aid rules. His promised land included lots of nationalised or re-nationalised companies and he didn't like the idea of having to jump through EU law hoops to achieve that.

breezy1985

prawnsambo wrote: »

The FoM argument was certainly to the fore among Labour party brexiters at the time of the ref. There was plenty of shouting about Polish plumbers and Romanian truck drivers 'tekking ur jobs'. But Corbyn's big bugbear was state aid rules. His promised land included lots of nationalised or re-nationalised companies and he didn't like the idea of having to jump through EU law hoops to achieve that.

Is that on record or something you came up with yourself as an observation. I don't ever remember any labour people pointing to any EU anti nationalisation red tape.

UK law is by far the biggest blocker of nationalisation

prawnsambo

breezy1985 wrote: »

Is that on record or something you came up with yourself as an observation. I don't ever remember any labour people pointing to any EU anti nationalisation red tape.

UK law is by far the biggest blocker of nationalisation

It was well known. Here's Andrew Adonis saying it.

sondagefaux

breezy1985 wrote: »

Is that on record or something you came up with yourself as an observation. I don't ever remember any labour people pointing to any EU anti nationalisation red tape.

UK law is by far the biggest blocker of nationalisation

Corbyn himself cited it as an issue, and was supported by the far left.

And he struck a distinctly Eurosceptic note by again highlighting Labour’s concerns about the state aid rules that form part of the architecture of the single market.

“I think the state aid rules do need to be looked at again, because quite clearly, if you want to regenerate an economy, as we would want to do in government, then I don’t want to be told by somebody else that we can’t use state aid in order to be able to develop industry in this country,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/21/jeremy-corbyn-labour-policy-leaving-eu

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/27/four-reasons-jeremy-corbyn-wrong-eu-state-aid

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/why-jeremy-corbyn-right-state-aid

breezy1985

sondagefaux wrote: »

Corbyn himself cited it as an issue, and was supported by the far left.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/27/four-reasons-jeremy-corbyn-wrong-eu-state-aid

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/why-jeremy-corbyn-right-state-aid

Ya I've been doing a bit of googling and found a fair few bits about it. Don't ever remember it coming up at the time

ancapailldorcha

The left wing state aid argument for Brexit doesn't stack up for me. All over the place here you have a huge amount of state outsourcing to the private sector from running hospitals to railways to broadband infrastructure (or lack thereof).

Surely, just ending this and using the public sector for these sorts of things would have been fine. It's not like Labour wanted to nationalise Superdry.

prawnsambo

breezy1985 wrote: »

Ya I've been doing a bit of googling and found a fair few bits about it. Don't ever remember it coming up at the time

It was actually not the issue he seemed to think it was anyway. Here's the Commission answer to a question on the subject from Margrethe Vestager in 2015:

Article 345 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) enshrines the principle of neutrality of the Treaties as regards the system of property ownership in the Member States. It follows that the Treaties are also neutral as regards public or private ownership of undertakings.
In light of this, EC law does not prohibit the nationalisation of undertakings. It has to be pointed out, however, that a Member State nationalising a private undertaking has to act like a private market economy operator as regards both the purchase price and the management of the nationalised undertaking. Otherwise, State aid rules (Articles 107 and 108 TFEU) would apply.

The same is true as regards privatisation of public undertakings. If a Member State privatising a public undertaking does not act like a private market economy operator when setting the price, State aid rules would apply. A private market economy operator would, in general, be assumed to try to achieve the highest price possible for the undertaking in question. Market conditions can in general be assumed if an undertaking is privatised through the sale of shares on the stock exchange, for example, or if an open, transparent and unconditional tender has taken place and the undertaking has been sold to the highest bidder. For further details, the Commission would like to refer the Honourable Member to the 23rd Competition Policy report of 1993 as well as the Guidance paper on state aid compliant financing, restructuring and privatisation of state-owned enterprises.

So it's actually possible under EU law, although with some pre-requisites. Maybe Corbyn didn't like the idea of the state paying market price for them, but that's not exactly a good reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Also, the notion that UK law would be harder to surmount, doesn't really stand up. A majority in the Commons basically means you can re-write any law you like. Or tear them up altogether. No constitution means that parliament has the ultimate power. Johnson is in that position now and we're going to see exactly how robust the soi-disant "UK constitution" really is.

Nody

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

The left wing state aid argument for Brexit doesn't stack up for me. All over the place here you have a huge amount of state outsourcing to the private sector from running hospitals to railways to broadband infrastructure (or lack thereof).

Surely, just ending this and using the public sector for these sorts of things would have been fine. It's not like Labour wanted to nationalise Superdry.

I'm not an expert but I think the problem lies in EU regulation. Assuming it's not something claimed as a state defence requirement etc. they would need to tender it in Europe rather than simply give it to a new state company to do it and those tenders are a royal pain in the behind. Hence rather than Corbyn being able to let's say take over BT again and tell BT go build fibre to every house he could take over BT (barring the legal fights etc.) but he'd then need to tender the work for rolling out the fibre with clear rules on how the scoring for each category is done etc. This in turn would prevent him from being able to ensure the state companies do the job with all the benefits of being a state run company to buy voters etc.

prawnsambo

Nody wrote: »

I'm not an expert but I think the problem lies in EU regulation. Assuming it's not something claimed as a state defence requirement etc. they would need to tender it in Europe rather than simply give it to a new state company to do it and those tenders are a royal pain in the behind. Hence rather than Corbyn being able to let's say take over BT again and tell BT go build fibre to every house he could take over BT (barring the legal fights etc.) but he'd then need to tender the work for rolling out the fibre with clear rules on how the scoring for each category is done etc. This in turn would prevent him from being able to ensure the state companies do the job with all the benefits of being a state run company to buy voters etc.

That's kind of a complex two stage issue though. Say he wanted to re-nationalise the railways. First step would be to buy them back. So long as he's paying full market price, that's fine by my reading of the Commission answer above and then follows the rules on management. Now if the newly nationalised railway company wanted to buy new rolling stock, that's got to go through the procurement process. Unless he also had a newly nationalised rolling stock manufacturing company that he wanted to do the job, I can't really see the issue.

FrancieBrady

The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0115/1190022-northern-ireland-steel/

rock22

But surely that is an intended consequence to protect EU steel manufacture.

Padre_Pio

rock22 wrote: »

But surely that is an intended consequence to protect EU steel manufacture.

The EU's so-called "safeguard measures" were designed to prevent large quantities of steel from around the world, which were shut out from the US, landing on the European market.

Seems to be. RoI factories can source from elsewhere, but NI seems to get caught from both sides.

Cheensbo

Padre_Pio wrote: »

Seems to be. RoI factories can source from elsewhere, but NI seems to get caught from both sides.

It's a struggle at the moment, British steel have put serious price increases in place too.

schmoo2k

FrancieBrady wrote: »

The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0115/1190022-northern-ireland-steel/

I assume they are only affected by steel imported from GB? The article says also the rest of the world - but how has that changed?

prawnsambo

schmoo2k wrote: »

I assume they are only affected by steel imported from GB? The article says also the rest of the world - but how has that changed?

A byproduct of Trump's protectionist measures on US steel production. The EU have reciprocated and added a 25% tariff to all imported steel. So GB now falls foul of that having become a 3rd country.

schmoo2k

prawnsambo wrote: »

A byproduct of Trump's protectionist measures on US steel production. The EU have reciprocated and added a 25% tariff to all imported steel. So GB now falls foul of that having become a 3rd country.

GB I understand but the "rest of the world" comment in the article doesn't make sense (mind you it is RTE).

The Raging Bile Duct

schmoo2k wrote: »

GB I understand but the "rest of the world" comment in the article doesn't make sense (mind you it is RTE).

Mind you it's Tony Connolly. That guy has always been on the ball. Any steel coming through the UK from another country to the EU will be slapped with the tariff immediately. Any steel produced in the UK will be slapped with the tariff within months.

Cheensbo

The tarriffs (& CE marking) are there to keep chinese, russian & turkish steel out - Now featuring the UK.


This is a pain for the Irish steel industry, most of it is supplied from the UK, by stockholders based in NI.

NI fabricators are effectively goosed for now as they are feeling the tarrifs. The Irish ones will be in trouble in a few months once the quotas are hit - that's if supply chains aren't redirected to the EU by then...

There is also the issue of standard section sizes of steel used in Ireland, we typically use UK sections - the EU doesn't, not a big deal as EU mills do produce the UK sections, but they'll only be making them for the Irish market soon - so we will need to change to EU sections I reckon - structural engineers are going to need to refocus to specify steel in line with available sizes.

*Edit - Turkish steel doesn't need to be "kept out", but there are quotas...

An Ciarraioch

Eurostar is on the brink of collapse:

https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/eurostar-very-critical-state-warns-144214737.html?__twitter_impression=true

timetogo1

Leave.eu is down.
Not sure if it's because of Neale Richmond. Hopefully.

https://twitter.com/LeaveEUOfficial/status/1350130454402392066

Seth Brundle

It is working for me unfortunately via work VPN.
Not working on phone.

I note that it is now based in UK (details last changed today)...
https://whois.domaintools.com/leave.eu

Dead for me.

Tell me how

timetogo1 wrote: »

Leave.eu is down.
Not sure if it's because of Neale Richmond. Hopefully.

He doesn't suggest it was his doing, but he does get a dig in at them.

https://twitter.com/nealerichmond/status/1350133638499868676

gaming_needs90

Tell me how wrote: »

He doesn't suggest it was his doing, but he does get a dig in at them.

https://twitter.com/nealerichmond/status/1350133638499868676

These snipes back totally cheapen his commentary here. Absolutely have issue with the fact that they moved the site to Ireland but this is a bit childish. Where has having the upper ground gone?

ambro25

gaming_needs90 wrote: »

These snipes back totally cheapen his commentary here. Absolutely have issue with the fact that they moved the site to Ireland but this is a bit childish. Where has having the upper ground gone?

There's been enough high ground and tongues held for the past 4+years, to thoroughly enjoy a well-timed dig delivered smack between the eyes like that one, every now and then.

Solid 10 from me, Neale