Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

I agree that Labour are doing the right thing... for Labour. If they want to go back to a tit-for-tat round-robin with the Tories, getting your "turn" in power every 5 or 10 years, they're doing exactly what they should. If the belief is that the UK's best future lies in a close relationship with the EU up to and including rejoining, it's a terrible approach. UKIP managed to shift the window on EU discourse so much that pro-EU viewpoints became an extreme position. The Remain campaign and subsequent anti-Brexit discourse was based around two foundational approaches:

• Being out of the EU would be really bad
• Being in the EU isn't that bad

It's an approach that didn't work in the referendum campaign, didn't work in the lead up to Article 50, didn't work prior to Johnson's ridiculous majority, and it won't work when Labour are in power. Until there are voices espousing, loudly, in public, a pro-EU argument (as opposed to an anti-Tory-Brexit viewpoint, which is the only thing we've heard from Labour), the window will not move from where UKIP shifted it to, and rejoin will stay an extremist position

First Lord of the Treasury. I think the First Lord of the Admiralty has been abolished

No.

It still can't be said out loud but realignment on the quite to help the UK economy is a realistic stand.

Clacton is also an interesting area. They had Douglas Carswell as MP and you can see by the audience they are mainly older people. The other interesting clip I heard was a gentleman saying that he knows and has seen migrants arriving and going straight to the benefits office to claim benefits. This went unchallenged by Bruce or anyone else so it is out there. We know it is sometimes the most deprived areas that would have gained the most from being in the EU that had the most distain for the EU. I can only shake my head how this happened, but changing it will most likely take the passing away of this generation and not them changing their minds. A sad state of affairs really.

So, there is little advantage for Labour to go running with rejoining at this point. winning the GE is there only focus. Probably upsetting a few of the puritans. I do wish they were a bit more vocal about more cooperation but I expect that to be a reality after the GE.

There's a theory that what united Red Wall voters and those in the southern counties in voting for Leave in 2016 and supporting Boris Johnson in 2019 was racism / xenophobia.

That's not just Clacton that's all over England. That's how practically every English person I know describes their town/city.

Numbers play a part in this. Cities like Limerick and Galway are vital parts of the Irish cultural landscape but in the UK they are "small towns". So the UK had an utterly crazy amount of "left behind" cities that have been fed the idea that the EU is the font of their problems. It's like Irish politics being weighted too much towards the Roscrea's of the world

The UK parties and their electorate have to come to terms with accepting all of the 'Copenhagen conditions' including the full EU acquis.

No UK out-outs, no rebates, plain vanilla everything.

I addition the UK can expect to a demand for some extra concessions e.g. No new A50, a positive accept of the current EU agenda - "Fit for 55" "anti tax evasion", time limit for the sick UK economy being ready for the Euro (like 10years). Likely internal UK reforms needed too.

The EU did not punish the UK for the A50 and Brexit, but it will surely not necessarily be sweet or nice and allow a wild and rogue like state into the union.

Lars 😀

I fully agree the UK will not vote for a rejoin right now even on 'the old conditions'. 

But implying - as many do - that there will be some easy paths for the UK into parts of the EU e.g. like joining EFTA, the EEA or ... are as much unicorns and sunny uplands as is Brexit. This must be told to the UK electorate.

The UK is not ready to join the EU before most of the electorate recognises by heart, that the position as the 'sick man of Europe' is not sustainable.

And the EU is not ready to allow the UK to come substantially closer before this has clearly happened.

The EU has in the case of the UK patience to wait a looong time.

Brexit-UK is not any urgent problem for the EU. Ireland and NI are thriving. EU's focus is on many other and bigger problems. 

We in the EU have 6-9 countries that must be given some hope for an EU future - e.g. Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, Moldova, Ukraine and possibly even Georgia. EU relations to Kosovo and Serbia must be negotiated too. Who knows what happens in Belarus after 2030?

Otherwise these countries may seek too close relations to other global powers.

Lars 😀

https://www.ft.com/content/f930a3f4-804a-417c-8e8e-3b99a76e244b

The bottom line here is that, from the EU’s perspective, Brexit is over. It’s done. It’s dusted. It was painful; it was regrettable; but we dealt with it, and we now have a relationship with the UK — the TCA — that, broadly, we’re happy with.   There’s no appetite on the EU side to reopen the TCA; fine-tuning is all that’s on our agenda for the foreseeable future. As Lars points out, we’ve got bigger fish to fry — Russia, Ukraine, enlargement, climate change.

Plus, it doesn’t seem that those in the UK who are advocating more profound changes to the relationship have put a lot of thought into it. The discourse in the UK is mostly about what the UK needs in order to remediate the harms of Brexit within the parameters set by the fact of Brexit and the bipartisan commitment to not revisiting the basic decisions the UK made in the Brexit process. Having identified various things that could be done by way of harm minimisation, people go on to argue in a hopeful, optimistic kind of a way that these things are in the interests of the EU too so, naturally, the EU will agree to them.

Not at all. As already stated, the EU is happy with the current relationship. Anyone who wants to see that relationship change needs to start by asking not, what would be attractive to the UK?, but what would be attractive to the EU? What would be so hugely attractive to them that they would put time, effort and resources into reopening the TCA? If you’re not starting from there, you’re not setting the stage for a process that will attract the EU.

But there’s more; there’s the question of timing. The EU was deeply, deeply unimpressed with the political process by which the UK first made, and then implemented, its Brexit decision. There’s a recognition that that worked out very badly for the UK but, to be blunt, we don’t care about that. We don’t manage our relationship with third countries with the primary object of benefiting those third countries; we expect that to be their primary object, and we’re not going to take on responsibility for pursuing their objectives as well as our own.

So, “this worked out badly for the UK” is not a consideration that would lead us to engage in negotiations that are still driven by the UK’s dysfunctional political process. A change of government from Tory to Labour doesn’t to anything to remedy the UK’s political process. The impulse to Brexit was able to do so much damage to the UK because of the defective political process, but reaction go the harms resulting from Brexit, mediated through the same defective political process, isn’t necessarily going to work out much better. The EU has no interest in an oscillating relationship with the UK which has to be reopened every time the more Europhobic party and the less Europhobic party swap in and out of government. 

So, the point about timing: it’s too soon. We’ve had the action of Brexit. We’re now in the reaction against Brexit harms. That needs to be let pass. The UK needs to spend time constructing some kind of realistic, non-partisan appreciation of its place in the continent and in the world, and thinking about its relationship with Europe, and its international relations more generally, in the light of that understanding. This has to be an understanding that will last more than a term of government. That will then provide a background against which a discussion of moving on from the TCA will be possible, if it is then seen to be in the EU’s interests to move on from the TCA.

To be clear, I’m not saying that the UK needs to find a great national consensus in which almost everyone favours EU membership, or almost everyone does not. What the Brexit referendum showed was that a very significant proportion of the population favours EU membership, and that a very significant proportion does not. It’s entirely possible that that will be an enduring state of affairs in the UK. If so, the challenge is to accept that, and to construct an attitude to, and a relationship with, Europe that reflects and accommodates that reality.

This isn’t impossible; other countries have managed it. But it’s something the UK has to do, and something I think the EU will wait for before they will engage in any significant development of the UK/EU relationship.

Ireland didn't join Schengen because the UK didn't join and the CTA was more important. Another UK opt out.

If the UK was joining the EU they could join Schengen and so could we.

Even better for us they would have to adopt the Euro.

Which is also probably one of the biggest stumbling bocks to rejoining. I'm sure the tabloids will be happy to add in some scaremongering about right hand drive cars or something as well.