Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

Team GB means team England in most minds and NI is a far away place in another country that doesn't concern them.

UK and GB are interchangeable to people the same way USA and America are because they have no understanding of the "and Northern Ireland" bit or it's significance

The UK and Ireland have a bilateral arrangement under which cars from either country do not need a national identifier in the other. This arrangement is unaffected by the UK's change of national identifier.

UK travellers taking their cars to countries other than Ireland are legally obliged to display the new national identifier. If you have one of those number plates with the GB identifier displayed on the left that's no longer good enough; you can still display those plates but, legally, you still have an obligation to display the UK identifier. If you don't want to buy a UK sticker (cost: about £1.50) you can ask the DVLA to issue you with replacement plates that incorporate the UK identifier instead of the GB identifier (cost: a lot more than £1.50).

It remains to be seen how strictly other countries will enforce the requirement for a UK identifier against UK motorists who display a GB identifier.

Yes, I know, but the bilateral agreement with the UK is much older than that.

What would be the fine for not having a UK sticker?

I read that this is being done solely for the optic of showing that Northern Ireland is part of the UK as GB only refers to England, Scotland and Wales.

AA complaining they are now stuck with 50,000 GB stickers as the government advised them that post Brexit there would not be a change.

I don't know what the penalty for not having the correct sticker would be. I presume it will vary from country to country (as may the rigour of enforcement). It's likely to be a fine broadly in line with whatever fines that particular country levies for similar infringements.

As for the reason for the change, it's not Brexit-related and the government isn't even pretending that it's Brexit-related. I think it's probably more that over the years the government has gradually moved from using "GB" or "Great Britain" as a shorthand for the state (which used to be standard) to using "UK" or "United Kingdom", and they reckoned things had reached a point where continuing with "GB" on the car plates was starting to look anomalous. It's just consistency of branding, really.

I think the AA asked whether Brexit would give rise to a change and were told - technically correctly - that it would not. My guess is that this was buried in a list of issues that the AA asked about in the context of Brexit. The change was decided upon subsequently, and for unrelated reasons, and probably in a separate process, and the coincidence with the implementation of Brexit is probably just that — coincidence.

After all that hard work it would be a real shame then if Scotland voted for independence and United Ireland came about from the Northern Ireland protocol! 🙂

The two parts of the UK that voted to remain part of the EU leaving the UK due to being steam rolled out the EU by an England dominated Brexit position.

Doubt there's much interest in policing these stickers outside of France maybe. The Germans don't seem to care, judging by the amount of Danish cars without a DK sticker (or at best an illegal one without the white background). The odd time you see yokes from the likes of Liechtenstein also not carrying any stickers.

If Brexit keeps "delivering" the way it has, then this change will need to be made again after Scotland and then later NI leaves as surely the name of the country will change to just England & Wales (if the English are feeling generous).

There's a European Agreement under which most EU/EEA member states agree to accept the designations embedded in one another's national number plates as sufficient. I'm pretty sure that both Denmark and Germany participate, so I think Danish cars aren't required to display Vienna Convention national identifier stickers in Germany (or vice versa).

(Ireland isn't a party to this Agreement, because it supplements the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, and only parties to the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic can join. Ireland, along with Spain, Cyprus and possibly one or two other member states, has yet to join the Vienna Convention; we still operate under the earlier Geneva Convention on Road Traffic.)

UK cars that travel to other countries (apart from Ireland) will, I think, have to have "UK" stickers. Even if they get plates with "UK" embedded in them, this may not be enough any more, since the UK is no longer an EU/EEA member state, and so has withdrawn from the agreements under which embedded designations are acceptable. (I could be wrong on that last point.)

There hasn't been a Queen of England since 1707, when Queen Anne stopped being Queen of England, Queen of Scotland and Queen of Ireland, and became Queen of Great Britain and Queen of Ireland. in 1800, George III stopped being King of Great Britain and King of Ireland, and became King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. That style continued to be used until, I think, they switched to "King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".

The Church of England will remain the Church of England; it has no presence in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland where instead there are sister Anglican churches - the Episcopalian Church of Scotland, the Church in Wales, the Church of Ireland. Likewise English Heritage does only operate in England; other parts of the UK have their own heritage agencies.

Bank of England, strictly speaking, should be Bank of the UK since its notes are legal tender throughout the UK and it serves as the central bank for the whole country. But for heritage reasons they will probably not change the name. When it was established, in 1694, it was just for England.

"Great Britain" isn't being dropped; it's still the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It's just no longer being used to the extent that it used to be as a shorthand for the entire kingdom. "United Kingdom" is the preferred shorthand now.

"British" is still the adjective meaning "pertaining to the UK" - the British Government, the British army. "Great British" never enjoyed much official use.

I think the trend away from official use of "Great Britain" and towards "UK" predates serious concerns in Westminster about Scottish indepence, but those concerns may have intensified the trend in recent years.

Pure belligerence and nothing more. Too insecure to realize they made a mistake

@Seth Brundle "How can someone think it is going well?"

Pounds and ounces, blue passports and other trivial stuff intended to be just for the optics.