Brexit discussion thread XII (Please read OP before posting)

20silkcut wrote: »

Yes but they love Europe they just hate the EU.

Apart from (European) Russia, Belarus and about 3% others the rest of Europe is the EU/UK or countries closely related to the EU and EU rules.

The UK can try 'splendid isolation' - it will not be pleasant nor will it last very long.

The EU is Europe and Europe is the EU

Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Crown Dependencies, the Vatican are tiny 'toy-countries' which are very much part of Italy, France, Spain and the UK.
They may one day get an offer they can't refuse if/when the EU gets the time to act. Greenland and the Faroe Islands are parts of the Kingdom of Denmark.
Note: The EU has no intention long term to allow any tax-heavens - sovereignty or not and over time independently of citizenship.

Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein is EEA/EFTA/SM.
Switzerland has 100+ deals/EFTA/de facto SM.

Moldova, Ukraine, North Macedonia, Albania has deals, association deals or are ready to negotiate EU membership.

Turkey is an Asian country with a small land area in geographical Europe - and yet it is in a CU with the EU for most products.
It will never (50+ years) be part of the EU, but may get better trade deals with a new political system, I think.

Lars

Being a member of the European Aviation Safety Agency is not compatible with the UK having genuine economic and political independence.

Is being compliant with it incompatible too? Do the UK think they will be able to fly into airspace governed by the rules of the EASA without abiding by them just because they created their own regulator?

Leroy42 wrote: »

They will be almost complete alignment, just instead of EASA it will be CAA approved. It is nothing more than a paper exercise extra bureaucracy.

But, and this is the important point, it doesn't matter how much it costs or how much it actually does. Taking back control is enough for the brexiteers. Even on here, ask any of those that support Brexit and they can never give actual reasons apart from Taking Back Control and Sovereignty. The costs, or benefits are not important, simply being seen to be doing it is enough.

There is no economic rationale to Brexit. There never was. There never will be.

But until enough Brits connect the 3 inter-depending dots of socio-economic development, economical well-being and EU membership in a globalised context, under the lynchpin of national governance in the best shared interests, Brexiters will just continue with their wanton destruction, the same as for the last 4 years.

FWIW, I don't think that connection by a critical British mass is coming any time soon. On the contrary, I fear that a coronavirus-prompted slowdown may just push it that much further out of reach: the popular choice for Brexit arose from the misery caused by the 2008 GFC, exploited by opportunists as it was, in exactly the same way as older opportunists exploited the misery caused by the 1929 GFC.

It's a historically-repeating pattern, and the next GFC could be just around the corner if the markets lose their heads enough. In that context, many socio-economic indicators in the UK have yet to get back to pre-GFC levels, a decade on.

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

On the subject of the Coronavirus, it could prove an interesting dress rehearsal for a no deal Brexit or an Australian-style deal or whatever the Conservative party are calling it now. If the liberal side can convince the public of the difficulties posed by interruptions in supply lines then that might force the government to align with the EU at least in the short term.

All indications currently, are that the UK government is treating the coronavirus in the exact same way as they are treating Brexit: with the most abject lack of due diligence, joined up thinking, forward planning and resource allocating.

People feeling fearful, anxious, miserable, angry, etc. serves their political purposes just fine. Covid19 is an unexpected but welcome feature in that context, not a bug. 4 years and 10 months is amply long enough to redirect any misgivings at the government's handling of it by the time of the next GE, given the political attention span of the average Brit, as last demonstrated this past December.

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

True but the second that this affects people's day-to-day lives in a tangible manner is the day that it hits the fan. This is the country that called the emergency services when KFC ran out of chicken after all.

How is it hitting, or would it hit, the fan?

How often have commenters expected Brits to emulate the Gilets Jaunes once things get bad enough? To organise national strikes when Brexit happens or the price of a pint exceeds £x.xx? To paralyse the country with artics when petrol goes over £x.xx a litre?

So no. Nothing will hit the fan. At the most, a million (est.) might eventually march in London. Like last time. For all the good it will do. Like last time.

They have no collective fight in them.

Well the Telegraph aren't wasting any time pushing the Blitz Spirit: "Coronavirus could be the start of a historic comeback for British stoicism".
(https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/08/coronavirus-could-start-historic-comeback-british-stoicism/)

If it ends up being a no-deal Brexit I expect it will be portrayed as Britain's Finest Hour (Part II).

Seeing as things are going slowly, Brexit related at least, here are a couple of stories that makes me wonder how anyone in the UK thinks it will end well with this government in charge.

Remember the Russia report and how most people are eager to see the findings on interference in UK politics? I doubt you will get much from it now, Chris Grayling is being touted to head the Intelligence and Security Committee by Johnson. Grayling was a big supporter of Johnson's leadership bid and he is also so incompetent he would make a rock look competent to run a department in the UK.

Conservative anger as Boris Johnson makes Chris Grayling chair of intelligence committee

The Sun reports that Boris Johnson will order Tory members of the powerful body - which scrutinises the work of the UK's intelligence agencies - to elect the former Cabinet minister its new chairman.

The move could raise eyebrows because of Mr Grayling's association with a string of controversial government projects, including a now-scrapped shake-up of the probation service and his stint as Transport Secretary during the botched rollout of new railway timetables.

The former Cabinet minister was also among the most high-profile backers of Mr Johnson's Conservative leadership campaign.

One Tory MP told the paper: "Giving Grayling the ISC job is going down very badly, and is being seen as a blatant ‘jobs for the boys’.

"There were some eminently more qualified candidates to chair it, but clearly Boris owes him one."

For a smattering of Graylings achievements, this quote sums up how well he has done as minister for the last 5 or so years,

At the latest count he has cost the country £3bn in the past five years. That means we could have paid him £1bn to stay at home, doing nothing but watch TV and mowing the lawn, and still have been £2bn better off. Just by diligently turning up to work each day, Grayling has prevented two hospitals from being built.

Exit Failing Grayling: the £3bn master of disaster bows out

Some of his work include,

What makes Failing Grayling even more of a collector’s item is that he hasn’t just wasted £3bn on one bad call. It wasn’t just a rush of blood to bet the house on a no-deal Brexit. Rather he has worked assiduously to squander the money at regular intervals over a prolonged period: £2bn on the Virgin Trains East Coast franchise in 2018, £437m on a botched privatisation of the probation service in 2014.

Nor does he neglect to sweat the small stuff, pissing away £72,000 on a failed legal challenge to his plans to stop prisoners reading books.

...

Yet all this paled into insignificance over his decision to offer a £13m contract to a ferry company that didn’t have any ferries for services to ports that had no facilities to receive them.

Let us not forget the company he awarded the ferry contract to had their terms and conditions lifted from a food delivery company.

As for some more depressing reading, seems like the hostile environment has not been stopped and with the "moderate" Javid now out of the cabinet his promises to, "right the wrongs that have occurred" at the Home Office long forgotten. With the right wing Patel in charge now expect things to get worse long before they will get better,

England rugby players’ ex-soldier father stuck in Fiji because of immigration rules

A former British army sergeant whose two sons are English rugby internationals is stuck in Fiji, prevented by immigration rules from returning to the UK to rejoin his wife as she undergoes cancer treatment.

Ilaitia Cokanasiga, who over almost 14 years in the armed forces served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, told the Guardian that his immigration difficulties had stopped him from travelling to see his 22-year-old son, Joe Cokanasiga, play for England in the World Cup in Japan last year. He is devastated at being stranded 10,000 miles away from his family, unable to support his wife as she waits for an operation on a brain tumour.

This story is as much a failure of the armed services as the Home Office, but you would think they would apply some sympathy for those who were willing to give their lives for the UK.

IAmTheReign wrote: »

Sure they do, the London riots back in 2011 showed that. If it gets to the point where supermarkets are running empty I think it's extremely likely that we'll see widespread civil unrest. That's assuming it gets that bad but the way the UK government is carrying on it's not an unlikely scenario

I don't doubt that many Brits have the capacity for collective violence, like the London Riots you mention, or e.g. hooliganism. I lived there for 20 years, ooop North an'all, and IMHO they certainly are a more violent (-prone) society, than many others on the Continent.

But that sort of wanton violence (moreover opportunistic in its looting guise) is not what I meant by 'collective fight'. Neither would 'widespread civil unrest' borne from fear/survival/opportunism.

The miners, farmers, siderurgists and assorted other Gilets Jaunes strike movement is what I meant: mass movements opposing political measures and trajectories, mostly peacefully but not always, through coordinated and enduring civic disobedience, in pursuit of alternative socio-economic and/or political outcomes.

I haven't seen Brits do that in any scale apt to influence a 'hard' government like Johnson's. Ever. It's just not in them or, if it ever was, then it hasn't been since Orgreaves in the 80s (and even then, that was still not widescale anyway, just local/regional).