Looks tonight that the next round of talks are being put back. May is supposed to be telling us soon what she wants. That could clear up a few things
Denis Skinner never thought he would ever be called a 'scab' by so called Labour supporters. There does seem to be mighty large fissure in the party.
First of all our high power team want more talks, now they want to put the scheduled one off. What are they doing?
The very experienced Greek ex-finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has advised the UK Brexit team to just walk away. He has likened the EU's current attitude towards Brexit to his previous experience dealing with the EU on behalf of Greece. He states the EU have no interest whatsoever in securing a sensible deal, they just want to make an example of the UK. This sounds like good advice, it is increasingly obvious the EU have erected barriers on purpose. Their euro experiment is paramount, not a reasonable outcome with the UK.
I think you should read the evidence that Hammond gave to the Lords committee today. He said Dover would not be able to cope if it had to start imposing customs checks from March 2019. He is looking for staying in the customs union somehow. Seems as if he is getting very close to the Labour Party position.
The Labour Party have so many positions nobody knows what they are. We are quite happy to send any rotten produce back to France and Spain if there are hold ups.
"Anyone who’s visited Dover will know that Dover operates as a flow-through port and volumes of trade at Dover could not accommodated if goods had to be held for inspection even, I suspect, if they were held for minutes, it would still impede the operation of the port. Roll-on, roll-off traffic at Dover is predicated on trucks rolling off a ferry immediately, out of the port and the ferry reloading and departing pretty rapidly – Ryanair style turnaround times. Anything that caused delay in vehicles exiting the port, delay in vehicles offloading, would cause significant disruption to patterns of movement." So you don't want the UK to export anything through there?
Seems as if he also shot Liam Fox down while he was at it. "He also said he thought agreeing not to implement new trade deals during a transition deal would not be a great sacrifice, because it would take quite a lot of time to negotiate these deals anyway."
Any delays will hurt the EU more than the UK. I expect the increasing UK business dealing with non EU countries will dramatically increase and the diminishing amount of EU trade will decline more rapidly. The EU have no interest in solving these problems so why bother.
The chancellor has today blown apart one of the biggest delusions of the hard Brexiteers by admitting there is a real chance Brexit will create a worse trading environment between the UK and the EU. And he has made clear that leaving the customs union could cause significant disruption to our customs system, meaning chaos for our ports, exporters and businesses, if a good transitional deal is not agreed. Businesses and international investors are beginning to lose confidence in the government’s attitude to Brexit. Jobs and growth are on the line. It is vital that the ideological Brexiteers in the cabinet wake up to reality and put membership of the single market and customs union back on the table. Add to that the news that talks are being delayed and you can see a bit of a pattern developing. It is the start of a retreat I guess.
This is desperate and forlorn wishful thinking, not possible. Everybody knows the UK cannot be a member of the single market and control its borders and ditch the ECJ. These red lines will not be crossed. There was always a chance the intransigence of the EU would result in temporary or permanent damage to trading relations with the EU. Some things should be non negotiable whatever the outcome.
You have acknowledged that Britain will not have free access to the single market without compromise on what you call 'hard borders'. So why negotiate at all ? Surely the only thing which keeps Britain at the negotiating table is the hope of future trade. If you feel so confident then why not just walk away? The reason you don't is because you still want something. It will not be the intransigence of the EU. which damages trade between the EU. and the UK. but rather that European consumers may no longer want your products. After all, if you don't want them infesting your precious soil, why should they, in turn, give you their money ? If there is a comparable product anywhere in Europe then they will buy that instead.
About half of the EU do next to no trade with us, how is it going to affect them when our ports physical inability to cope with processing EU goods results in components, food, completed products etc etc etc being rammed up at our ports and grinding our commerce, food chain etc to a snails pace? Also how does more stuff coming in from non EU countries improve this potential situation? So many of the Brexiteers arguments are just wing and a prayer crap, that lack any form of analysis and substance. It'll all be grand honest ....simply doesn't cut it.
I have not been chosen to be the UK's negotiator, thankfully. I am beginning to think it is better to walk away now to give everybody time to prepare, we will then be able to legalise the present ongoing trade talks with non EU countries. I'm sure the intransigence of the EU will lead to many British people boycotting many EU goods, French wine etc, I have already stopped buying French produce. The UK will welcome those EU workers desperate for work as long as they are treated the same as non EU applicants. Thankfully the UK decided to leave the EU before Macron drags the EU members towards a United States of Europe, fiscally this is the only way the Euro can survive long term.
I find if difficult to make up my mind between The Chancellor' s view of trade and the customs union and that of SH who has made a deep study of the Express and Mail. If you watched and listened carefully you would see that the red lines are getting very pale. Seems today we now want to keep in more organizations that are under the control of the ECJ. Of course the government will try to dress it all up in words that mean little. Davis seems to be getting in practice with his ambiguous position papers. While it all unravels expect to see the EU getting the blame from the uninformed, but it is the UK that has got itself into this mess.
We can't leave until 2019, flouncing away from the talks now would give us no legal premise to break the contractual agreement that says we can't negotiate trade deals with other countries until we've officially left the EU. Walking away from our contracted financial commitments and flouncing out of a trade negotiation because the other side were being 'nasty', won't set us in great stead as a country you'd be falling over yourself to sign a deal with either.... Who are these countries btw, the might of Tonga or some random ex colonies?
Of course the UK are trying to play ball. I think it will dawn on everybody as time goes on that the EU were never seriously going to negotiate. As the former Greek Finance Minister has witnessed the EU strategy, they are only interested in capitulation by the UK. The EU are so desperate to save the euro project that they will damage trade for all, irresponsible.
There is no way the EU could stop the UK negotiating with new trade partners. Any legal proceedings would take years and have no effect. Other non EU partners realise how difficult it is dealing with the EU, that is why it takes years longer than it should to do trade deals with them.
