brexit

[Gtleighsr3]

its times like these we could do with the queen dying,then we would hear no more brexit on tv for at least 2 months as tv would just be wall to wall 24/7 queen progs.

[brightonr]

how can spain moan about Gibralter when they got a gaff over the water in Africa.

It’s just Northern Ireland mkII for when they start to shaft May during the future withdrawal surrender.

I wonder if it’s possible for us to stay in now.

Then get a new PM with a backbone and activate Article 50 again, just to irritate the EU. Would be quite funny, as well as enabling us to do it properly.

[Gtleighsr3]

how can spain moan about Gibralter when they got a gaff over the water in Africa.

[QPRDave]

[Gtleighsr3]

brexit has gone on almost as long as my mrs does.

[Fraggy]

May favourite Blue Jays catcher, always knew he was a hugger

[hal9thou]

Lets hug it out....as R's...... thank you

[brightonr]

Funny how the experts are so expert at getting things wrong Hubs.

[Hubble]

Excellent article, from the Guardian of all places. Here's an excerpt. You can rad the full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...e-left-economy "We overdo our respect for the EU. Britain can flourish outside it


Larry Elliott

Theresa May’'s mantra should fool no one. While the prime minister insists repeatedly that her Brexit blueprint will mean the UK controlling its borders, laws and money, the real aim of the government is to keep as close as possible to the status quo.

Whitehall, with the Treasury to the fore, was highly pessimistic about Britain’'s economic prospects outside the EU and hasn’'t changed its mind about the desirability of finessing the softest of all Brexits. Philip Hammond has been able to whistle up plenty of support from employers’ organisations which – unsurprisingly, perhaps – want as little disruption to business as usual as possible.

This pessimism is curious for two reasons. It suggests that the low-wage, low-skill, low-investment economy that existed on the day Britain voted in the June 2016 referendum is as good as it gets. What’'s more, the pessimism about the UK is mirrored by an optimism about the health of the EU that is unwavering, despite a plethora of evidence to the contrary.


The unwarranted gloom about the UK and the exaggerated respect for the EU are not new. Many of those who now say that Britain must stay as closely aligned to the EU as possible predicted disaster when the pound left the exchange rate mechanism in 1992; prophesied a decade later that Britain would rue the day that Gordon Brown gave the single currency a wide berth; and said with the utmost confidence in 2016 that a vote for Brexit would lead to an immediate and deep recession and a massive increase in unemployment. None of these things happened."

[UpperP]

why do we have to be in a club,i mean what really does the european union do for us. Then theres Nato . more people in more countries are getting nationalistic. Fed up with these clubs and unions. Trump is a loon but his policy of putting his country first is the way. Why should i help some p oxy Greek farmer or some German car maker. Rather we look after our own.

Exactly my thoughts. Can only see us being attacked by a terrorist organization and not another EU country. BJ this side of the pond and Donald Trump on the other would do for me.

[Gtleighsr3]

why do we have to be in a club,i mean what really does the european union do for us. Then theres Nato . more people in more countries are getting nationalistic. Fed up with these clubs and unions. Trump is a loon but his policy of putting his country first is the way. Why should i help some p oxy Greek farmer or some German car maker. Rather we look after our own.

[QPRDave]

I'll just Leave this here, no comment, just read it if you want to


Fraser NelsonVerified account @FraserNelson 10h10 hours ago

Martin Howe QC has been through the small print of May’s Brexit deal. His verdict: it’s not bad, it’s atrocious. Here’s his list of horrors

• FEATURES

May’s Brexit deal: the legal verdict

We will be bound as vassals to the EU indefinitely
Martin Howe QC
24 November 2018 9:00 AM
The most important point about the draft Brexit withdrawal agreement is that, once it is ratified, the United Kingdom will have no legal route out of it unless the EU agrees to let us out and replace it with another agreement. This makes it unique among trade treaties (including the EU’s), which always contain clauses allowing each party to withdraw on notice. Politicians who claim that this is just a bad treaty — one we can get out of later — are being ignorant or disingenuous.

Halfway through the 585-page document, we find Art. 185, which states a Northern Ireland Protocol ‘shall apply as from the end of the transition period’. Once the Protocol is in force, the UK cannot leave it except by ‘joint’ decision of the UK and the EU. This gives the EU a right of veto over the UK’s exit. In agreeing to this clause, the government has caved in over seeking a right to leave.

Indeed, the Protocol — which has become known as the ‘backstop’ — locks the whole UK into a customs union with the EU with no decision-making power. Annex 2 Art. 3(4) states that the UK shall be ‘informed’ of any decision by the EU to amend the Common Customs Tariff ‘in sufficient time for it to align itself with that decision’.

The EU has a huge (Ł95 billion) surplus in goods trade with the UK. This customs union gives the EU tariff-free access for its export goods into the UK market. It also forces the UK to maintain the EU’s high tariffs against competing goods from other countries. As one might expect, this is advantageous to EU exporters but catastrophically damaging to the UK. It prevents us from lowering tariffs if we want to in order to benefit our consumers. More importantly, it kills stone dead the possibility of forging trade deals with fast-growing economies around the world. They are not going to give us free trade in our services exports if we can’t offer concessions in return on their goods exports to us.

And since the EU can just sit back and force the UK into these terms by default, why on earth should it give us a better offer — namely the long-term trade deal that the government is banking on?

The government has negotiated a ‘political’ (i.e. not legally binding) declaration about the future relationship. This is thin gruel with only the barest outline of possible terms. Only three pages deal with trade. These talk of zero tariffs between the EU and UK, but notably omit any commitment by the EU that the deal would allow the UK to set its own external tariffs, as in a Canada-style Free Trade Agreement, or even under the Prime Minister’s Chequers dual tariff customs plan — which she has repeatedly claimed would allow the UK to conduct an independent trade policy.

On the contrary, the declaration states that there will be ‘customs arrangements that build on the single customs territory provided for in the Withdrawal Agreement’. This means that the EU will not even be under a moral, still less legal, obligation to agree a trade deal which allows the UK to conduct its own future independent trade policy.

Art. 184 says that the EU and the UK shall use their ‘best endeavours’ to negotiate a trade agreement in time for the end of the transition. The Conservative party chairman claims that this is ‘a high legal bar’ for the EU. But an obligation to try to agree is completely non-justiciable: you cannot pin the blame on either party if each pursues its own interests and a deal is not reached.

So the EU can easily slow down the negotiations — or just not agree to the kind of deal the UK wants. The UK will then be forced into the so-called backstop. Not only would this mean a customs union and onerous ‘level-playing-field’ obligations binding the whole UK, but also the annexation of Northern Ireland into the EU for laws relating to goods, customs procedures and taxes. The list of EU laws which will continue to apply runs to 68 pages alone — and that’s just the titles. Neither the UK Parliament nor the Northern Ireland Assembly would have any say over these laws or over changes to them by the EU in future.

The ‘transition’ period would see most EU laws continuing to apply in the UK, enforced as now by the Commission and adjudicated by the ECJ. The difference will be that under Art. 7 the UK is excluded from ‘the nomination, appointment or election of members of the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union, as well as the participation in the decision-making and the attendance in the meetings of the institutions’. This is true vassalage, during which we will be required to abide by laws which we have no vote in shaping. There are no legally effective safeguards in the Agreement against the EU making changes to its laws which actively damage vital UK industries such as financial services.

The transition period was supposed to end in 2020, but the Prime Minister now envisages extending it to 2022. Art. 132 actually says that it can be extended up to ‘31 December 20XX’. The likely extension of the transition coupled with the very thin political declaration means that it could run indefinitely, prolonging the turmoil of the past 18 months and uncertainty about the future. During all this time we would be bound by EU law; our fishing industry subject to EU boats in our waters and quotas and rules imposed by Brussels.

The second big legal point about this draft treaty is that the European Court of Justice, whose influence Brexit was supposed to end, is given wide-ranging jurisdiction over the UK, not just during the ‘transition’ but afterwards as well. Once we leave the EU, the ECJ will cease to be a multi-national court in which the UK is a participating member and will become an entirely foreign court. So why should the ECJ’s writ still run? Sovereign states generally never agree to be bound by the courts of the other treaty party. This is dictated by legal protocol and common sense. Even the agreements between the EU and the tiny landlocked states of Andorra and San Marino contain conventional bilateral arbitration clauses.

But not this agreement. A supposedly neutral ‘arbitration panel’ has been set up to decide general disputes between the UK and EU. But under Art. 175, disputed questions of EU law will be decided not by the panel but by the ECJ — and the panel will be bound by the ECJ’s ruling. So the ‘independent’ panel will simply act as a postbox for sending the dispute to the ECJ. And as a rubber stamp when the answer comes back.

This vassalage that the UK government now seeks is rare, but not unheard of. It is the system imposed on the former Soviet republics of Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine in their EU association agreements. What will the world make of Britain agreeing to such debasement? Carl Baudenbacher is a Swiss jurist who until recently was president of the Court of Justice of the European Free Trade Association States. He knows better than most how the EU system works and says, ‘This is not a real arbitration tribunal. Behind it, the ECJ decides everything. This is taken from the Ukraine agreement. It is absolutely unbelievable that a country like the UK, which was the first country to accept independent courts, would subject itself to this.’

Why is the Prime Minister so desperate for a deal that she is willing to humiliate her country in this way? This draft agreement will not take us closer to an acceptable final deal with the EU. Instead, it locks us down by throwing away in advance our two strongest negotiation cards: EU budget payments of Ł39 billion and the future access to our market for EU goods.

At present, the EU treaties give us the right to withdraw on two years’ notice — a right we are currently exercising. But this new deal would lock us in with no right to leave at all, and destroy any benefits of the freedom of action which Brexit should give us. It would not let us forge our own trade policy with other parts of the world. It would not make our economy more competitive. It would not give us back control of our laws. This is not a bad deal. It is an atrocious deal. MOST POPULAR

[brightonr]

I think both sides need to grow up and UNDERSTAND why people might have voted differently. I get why people wanted to leave. But this was always far too complicated to be a binary decision, yet it was presented to us that way.

Much more importantly, we're all hoops and I love all of you for that, come what may.

Well said Hal.

Been watching the commons debate about todays statement. In fact still am. Boring, aren’t I?

What I’ve maintained all along and today simply re-iterates, is that from day one we should never have agreed to allow the EU to dictate the process and timetable. A simple “we are leaving on x date” would have sufficed, along with an invitation to thrash out the details of our future relationship by that point. Sorted. No need for constant bickering, votes in the commons, EU summits etc.

I’d like to trust what Mrs May has to say, as in fact, it does resolve the situation from both a business point of view and leaving the EU, but am finding it very hard to do so. For two reasons .

Firstly, even if she has genuinely tried to act in the interests of us all, which she claims to have done, it was in fact her that agreed to the process and has only herself to blame for allowing herself to be pushed around by all sides. I feel a bit sorry for her in that regard, but she is, after all, supposed to be the strong one. The second one is blatantly obvious. How can we trust an organisation that has lied to us and misled us consistently for over 40 years? The common market has been allowed to morph into the EU of today, unchecked by UK governments of all sides of the political divide. They still won’t even honour their obligations towards their NATO contributions, with each country putting in various, but inadequate amounts, whilst the UK as usual, play by the rules.

Another thing that is really annoying me is the amount of MP’s pathetic enough to waste their valuable opportunities to speak, with repeated calls for this ridiculous “people’s vote”. Such a staggering lack of self awareness to persist in banging on about it, despite being told daily, it isn’t up for discussion. Not in the way they want it, anyhow. On the basis that we should all get a chance to vote on “potential outcomes” rather than the impossible to predict “actual outcomes”, perhaps any new vote should be allowed on wether we stay in, properly, adopting the Euro, a european army and everything else likely to come about within the United States of Europe, or just leave and go our own way.

I think what I would like to see now is parliament voting through this withdrawal arrangement, but to include an amendment, that unless a deal acceptable to the UK is agreed by no later than say March 2021, then we simply will leave on WTO terms, on the basis that it will have been proven that the EU are liars and cannot be trusted.

[QPRDave]

Dave no one had any idea as to how to leave. That's why we're in this mess.

Just to be honest about this, I voted remain out of self interest. Financial self interest. I thought long and hard, but no one made a sound enough economic case for leaving. For me, that remains the case.

And just for the record, I suspect other people on both sides voted for what they perceived to be reasons of self interest. So I don't feel bad about that.


I think both sides need to grow up and UNDERSTAND why people might have voted differently. I get why people wanted to leave. But this was always far too complicated to be a binary decision, yet it was presented to us that way.

Much more importantly, we're all hoops and I love all of you for that, come what may.

I knew I should've stayed out of this damn thread, good post Hal and your reasons are obviously very valid.

Lets hug it out....as R's...... thank you

[hal9thou]

No can Do??? , that's what was agreed.

Dave no one had any idea as to how to leave. That's why we're in this mess.

Just to be honest about this, I voted remain out of self interest. Financial self interest. I thought long and hard, but no one made a sound enough economic case for leaving. For me, that remains the case.

And just for the record, I suspect other people on both sides voted for what they perceived to be reasons of self interest. So I don't feel bad about that.


I think both sides need to grow up and UNDERSTAND why people might have voted differently. I get why people wanted to leave. But this was always far too complicated to be a binary decision, yet it was presented to us that way.

Much more importantly, we're all hoops and I love all of you for that, come what may.