Off Topic The Politics Thread

We go around the houses on this. Cameron and Osborne both stated that leaving the EU meant leaving the SM and CU. How on earth you know that they knew it wasn't necessarily so beats me. But then, how you know I deliberately over-simplified beats me too. Until now, you've never claimed to be psychic. Boris Johnson and Gove both said exactly the same thing as Cameron and Osborne. Those four are the most senior politicians on both sides. In the past, you've relied only on the fact that Farage had mentioned Norway some time before the referendum vote, and on an MEP called Daniel Hannon. There's the balance.

 

I'm yet to hear of any positives from a no deal scenario, even that freak of a man JRM says we wouldn't see any benefits for half a century! Seriously what's the ****ing point of it all. The so called experts/economists don't paint a good picture, who is out there countering these people.......oh yes JRM and the loony brigade with the 50 years!! The only blessing to come out of all this mess is the demise of the conservative party. It will take them just as long as JRM,s forecast to rebuild themselves. Mrs May and her party are doomed and Thank God for that. Never has there been a more ****ed up government.

 

I am hideously predictable, it’s part of my charm. And as trim as a twig. No comfort eating for me. I need to be fighting fit for the civil war.

No renegotiation. May locked in her car. Now in a game of chicken.

 

You're day and mine appear identical, so far.

 

Stroller yesterday I gave you a complement about some of your posts…. however, you seriously let yourself down sometimes.

Only yesterday I was reading an article on the late MP Jo Cox and how that freak who killed her, said, "My name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain”. Now I know that her husband was very diplomatic and said, “Brexit wasn’t to blame” However,there were still links.

I also remember a post from you a while back regarding the racist attacks on EU subjects after the vote in 2016.

I have given you 2 pieces of fact confirming that there are people out their intent on causing trouble. I have also heard some idiots on the radio saying they would go out and cause trouble.

Other than your YouGuv poll you give me your evidence that there will not be trouble? Thing is, you can’t. To dismiss it is naive.

 

I think there will always be people in society that will go out and cause trouble. And you're right that it shouldn't be dismissed. Anyone who considers actions of this sort is obviously wrong in the head to start with.

 

I've seen nothing that suggests that WTO would not apply immediately (even in doom laden articles in the Guardian etc). Set out below is an article in the Spectator over the summer. I think what has to be borne in mind is that, while we would have to treat the EU on tariffs in the same way we treat all the other countries around the world that we trade with on WTO terms, there are many ways the UK and EU can "manage" the transition e.g. in relation to services, which is hardly covered by WTO, by agreeing that banks and other financial institutions can carry on as before either side of the English Channel.

Why a no-deal Brexit is nothing to fear

A viable alternative to an EU trade deal is ready and waiting

The World Trade Organisation HQ (image: Getty)

David Collins

4 August 2018

Warnings by Remainers about the consequences of a ‘no deal’ Brexit are beginning to resemble a game of oneupmanship worthy of Monty Python’s Yorkshiremen. Not content with claims that the M20 to Dover will be gridlocked with lorries waiting to undergo customs checks and that the North Ireland peace protest will break down, Doug Gurr, Amazon’s chief in the UK, apparently told Dominic Raab at a recent meeting that there will be ‘civil unrest’ within a fortnight of Britain leaving the EU without a deal. Next, they will have us living 150 to a shoebox.

Those who peddle this relentless doom-mongering fail to understand the protections which will remain in place for the UK under international law. Far from ‘crashing out of the EU’, failing to secure a free trade deal with the EU simply means that the UK will trade with the EU on terms set out by the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The pundit class tends to scoff at the WTO option. They dismiss it as a recipe for chaos. But that is to ignore the huge progress that this body has made in promoting global trade over the past two decades. The government should from the beginning have presented the WTO option as a viable counterpoint to the EU’s hardline, all-or-nothing stance.

The WTO oversees a system of trade rules for its 164-member countries, which together account for no less than 98 per cent of all global trade. Under the WTO General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the GATT), tariffs on most manufactured goods between the UK and the EU would stay quite low, averaging around 3 per cent.

While EU leaders like to threaten us with hints that our exports would be unsellable in the EU, the fact is that non-tariff barriers such as arbitrary health and safety inspections and borders would be prohibited under the WTO’s Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary (SPS) and Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) agreements. The UK intends to retain conformity with EU regulations following Brexit, at least for the time being, meaning that the existing low levels of health and safety risks to the public in UK products will not change in the days after Brexit. There would, as a result, be no grounds for the EU to exclude our goods from its markets.

The WTO’s new Trade Facilitation Agreement obliges the EU to maintain borders which are as frictionless as possible, using modern technologies such as pre–arrival processing of documents and electronic payments. Discrimination against foreign products through all sorts of internal regulations is forbidden. These rules are enforced by a well-respected international tribunal which has a high rate of compliance and cannot be overruled by the European Court of Justice.

While tariffs on some EU goods — agricultural goods and automobiles in particular — would be higher than 3 per cent, economic gains secured from an independent trade policy and a more pro-competitive environment should compensate UK consumers.

The WTO’s coverage of services is incomplete and would not grant UK firms the level of EU market access they enjoy under the single market, but the UK is well placed to take a leading role in developing the new Trade in Services Agreement, due to resume over the next few years, as well as multilateral negotiations for services at the WTO. Roberto Azevedo, the director general of the WTO, announced that he is looking forward to having the UK back as an independent champion of free trade.

Breaking free of the EU customs union will enable the UK to boost trade with other countries around the world, taking advantage of WTO rules which allow countries to offer preferential trading arrangements to nations with which they negotiate a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). In charge of its own trade policy, the UK should be able to roll over many of the EU’s 60-plus FTAs with third countries, some of which have already indicated that they intend to offer the UK terms as good as they did to the EU.

Canada has even suggested that the UK may get a better deal than that which was offered to the EU under the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) two years ago. The UK Department of International Trade has already begun discussions with several countries with which the EU has failed to do trade deals, most notably the US. Since 90 per cent of world GDP growth in the coming decades is expected to be outside the EU, it makes sense that the UK looks beyond this region, which now accounts for less than half of its overall trade. The UK will no longer be required, as it is at the moment under EU rules, to impose tariffs on products which it does not produce, such as tropical fruit — reducing prices for consumers and giving us leverage when it comes to negotiating trade deals. The country will be in a strong position to do trade deals faster than the EU has managed because it will not be encumbered by a long-winded ratification process involving 27 member states.

Why, then, has the government damaged its negotiating position by seeming to exclude the WTO option and giving the impression that it is desperate to extract a trade deal with the EU at all costs? The UK has approached the EU as a supplicant, or worse, a wounded animal. Theresa May’s Chequers deal would have us clinging to a weak version of the single market and customs union, which would deprive us of the freedom we ought to win through Brexit. Even that is not enough for Michel Barnier.

Yet it is the EU which has more to fear from these negotiations, being nervous about having a large, liberated, pro-competitive economy on its doorstep. The government should have initiated this process, proposing an FTA based on CETA but better, with deeper access for services such as finance, and lower tariffs on a broader range of products. At the same time, the government should have been making parallel arrangements for a no-deal WTO option.

Thankfully, there are signs that UK negotiators are now moving in this direction. The UK government announced recently that it has submitted its schedule of tariff commitments for certification by the WTO. The UK’s new Trade Remedies Authority — set up to regulate international trade disputes — will shortly be up and running and the ports are being built up to handle the minimal extra customs checks which will be needed.

In any negotiation, there is no strategy worse than giving the impression that you are desperate for a deal at all costs. With the WTO option as an entirely acceptable, workable alternative to a trade deal, the UK is truly in a position to walk away. And that’s a good place to be.

David Collins is a professor of International Economic Law at City, University of London.

 

Totally agree.Ths sort of thing is the fuse for some. To dismiss something this serious is naive.

 

Bloody hell Goldie! do you have an audio version?

 

Afraid not, Ellers but it's an interesting article, don't you think? There's a lot to be gained by WTO in most areas. The sensitive areas are agriculture and automobiles, but this is where government can come in to help these industries. Using WTO and then making free trade agreements around the world can make us highly competitive.

 

I am just popping out but will read when I return.
On another note
May has just spoken to Sky from Brussels saying she has had great chats with Merkel/ the Dutch bloke and they understand blah blah blah.
She is seriously deluded and needs to go now. I think she is on something.

 

She will get nothing. No one but her thought she would. I'm hearing the number of letters of no confidence in her is very close to the 48 required.

 

Have you morphed into Kiwi?

 

nah
hes only a beginner with his short pieces

heres one you might like so go get a cuppa or a beer

Former MI6 chief tells MPs to vote down May’s agreement
BY Iain Martin |

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iainmartin1 / 7 December 2018

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MPs should vote down the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal, says the former head of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove. The former intelligence chief – “C” – and Falklands hero Major-General Julian Thompson, along with other former senior military and security figures, have warned that the government has during Brexit negotiations embedded the UK in EU defence and security structures, without seeking proper parliamentary oversight or approval.
The group has been warning that the Prime Minister’s deal constitutes a threat to national security, putting UK forces and intelligence and security interests under the emerging superstructure of EU policy. They claim: “Transferring defence sovereignty and compromising the crown jewels in our Intelligence relationships is a bridge far too far in the Cabinet Office’s stealthy efforts to lock the country into perpetual alignment with the EU.”
In highly unusual terms, Number 10 reprimanded Dearlove, and he now hits back. Tonight, Dearlove and Thompson have released the text of a letter sent to MPs.
7 December 2018
To – Members of Parliament
On 29 November, with others, we published a letter to the Prime Minister. It explained that the Withdrawal Agreement, on which you will shortly be called to vote, threatens to change our national security policy by binding us into new sets of EU controlled relationships.
Buried in the Agreement is the offer of a ‘new, deep and special relationship’ with the EU in defence, security and intelligence which cuts across the three fundamentals of our national security policy: membership of NATO, our close bilateral defence and intelligence relationship with the USA, and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
Number 10’s immediate response to our letter showed we had touched a raw nerve. However their rebuttal indicated a worryingly poor understanding of the issues. We repudiate their arguments and their criticism (see below).
The first duty of the state, above trade, is the security of its citizens. The Withdrawal Agreement abrogates this fundamental contract and would place control of aspects of our national security in foreign hands. Vote against this bad agreement.
Sir Richard Dearlove
Major-General Julian Thompson
Dearlove and Thompson have also issued a twelve point rebuttal of Number 10’s claims, published below.
1. The ‘deal’ surrenders British national security by subordinating UK defence forces to Military EU control. No 10 reveals complete failure to understand the legally prescribed general principle of EU association and Military EU documents
2. The ‘flexible partnership’ is not on offer: only subordination to the inflexible pooled law of the EU. The defence documents show that if the UK participates in EU defence it accepts 3rd country associated status. Officials have been caught acknowledging in private that the Government has known about these strict EU participation criteria since Theresa May authorised joining the Military EU defence frameworks between November 2016 and June 2017. These participation criteria include adherence to the full scope of EU defence policy plus structural engagement as a rule-taker on intelligence, space, financial contributions and the European Defence Agency. Understanding this, Sam Gyimah MP resigned as a Minister, prompted by his engagement with the Galileo satellite programme.
3. The EDA’s Dirk Tielburger confirmed that there would be ‘no flexibility’ in the participation rules for the UK if it took part in the European Defence Fund. The MOD’s head of science and technology Dr Bryan Wells said in early 2017 that the UK would require a proximity to EU rules and structures which ‘resembled that of Norway’ if the UK were to stay involved in EU Defence Fund projects
4. Norway voted clearly not to join the EU. The Norwegian elite therefore engineered de facto membership as a rule-taker only. The UK Government has consistently said that the UK aim was for a relationship even more restrictive than Norway’s. On 29 November 2018, Government called for ‘the broadest and most comprehensive security relationship the EU has ever had with another country’. The “Kit Kat Tapes” reveal that the UK Government seeks ‘no gap’ in its application of obligations under the Common Foreign and Security Policy after the UK has let the EU.
5. Paul Johnston, the UK’s representative on the Political and Security Committee, said “We’ve deliberately been more descriptive than prescriptive. What we hear from the other side is sometimes rather – sort of – technical, legalistic: ‘Well you don’t understand about third country relationships’.”
6. The idea that the Government will be able to create a ‘flexible framework’ is contradicted by the principles of EU defence autonomy. The clear, binding and published obligation to submit to CSDP alignment has been deliberately obscured. Under the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK can be only a rule-taker in defence and security. Cyprus sought confirmation from the EU Commission that the proposed UK involvement in CSDP did not permit a decision-making role. The EU Commission wrote to Cyprus reassuring that UK involvement would not involve decision-making. The UK would be involved solely as a rule-taker.
7. Most serious of all, while knowing the truth, the Government has, for more than one year, refused to confirm that the UK would be subject to a structural and institutional relationship with the EU on the sharing of intelligence. However, the Government’s paper on security produced by Cabinet Office on 28 November 2018 finally confirms that this structural, institutional relationship would in fact be created. American and Five Eyes allies are quite clear that a structural relationship with the EU in the intelligence area will harm our key alliance, contrary to No 10’s assertion otherwise.
8. No 10 states:”The UK is leaving the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, the European Defence Agency and all other EU defence structures. There will be no subordination. We will retain full sovereign control of our armed forces, and will decide when and where we wish to cooperate”. This is complete and dangerous nonsense. The insistence on UK involvement in the EU’s defence programmes stated throughout the exit agreements, plus four separate Government policy papers before them, mean that the Government is putting the country into a position where EU participation criteria are inescapable. On the European Defence Agency, Government has said it wants a ‘cooperative accord’ placing the UK into ie under EDA programmes and initiatives.
9. In contrast to the alternative offered by the WTO, the Withdrawal Agreement will disadvantage UK defence industries and the UK Government as Europe’s largest purchaser of defence equipment. If we leave on World Trade Rules, WTO will grant the UK entry to the Government Purchasing Agreement exemption for defence equipments which will give both global free trade and greater certainty to the UK defence sector. No 10’s stated position is the opposite of the truth.
10 The EU has developed new frameworks and programmes which have the potential to duplicate and detract from NATO in 20 separate areas from science and technology to logistics, airlift and eventually emergency chain of command. President Macron’s Verdun interview in particular, and Mrs Merkel’s European Parliament speech, make plain that Military EU is intended as a rival to US power and therefore to NATO. Any institutional, structural relationship with the EU on the sharing of intelligence brings the risk of breaking the Five Eyes Alliance and therefore an inevitable threat to British national security. The Technical Note on Exchange and Protection of Classified Information of 25 May starkly displays the danger, revealing that, on its misguided misunderstanding of what it implies, the Government places intelligence exchange at the core of its offer to “build a new, deep and special partnership with the EU…fundamental to cooperation across the future partnership” (Cls 1-2). Given that, unlike Canada or the USA, the UK will be compelled to apply the EU’s CSDP, the EU Global Strategy (the EU’s flagship document that was agreed by the UK at EU Council) will rule. This document calls for a hub-and-spoke intelligence arrangement between the EEAS, EU INTCEN and the intelligence capabilities of the CSDP states. Although the Government’s 28 November Security paper indicates the potential for non-classified information to be shared on an ad hoc basis, it is silent about the sharing of classified information. It conceals the expectations of the EU institutions with respect to the growing and gathering intelligence environment of the CSDP participant states. These structural relationships threaten the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance that is the bedrock of western security. The Government has to choose between the anglosphere and wider world and structural subordination to Military EU. It has chosen Military EU which is absolutely the wrong choice. It is therefore an inescapeable fact that the Withdrawal documents pose a real and present threat to UK national security.
11. A minimally competent negotiation over the last two years should have hammered out a free trade agreement but did not do so. Therefore leaving on 29 March 2019 on World Trade Rules is now the only way. The UK Government passed up the opportunity to obtain a free trade deal with the EU by spending months messing around with the concept of a joint rulebook and common customs areas, being ambushed and bogged down by the entirely artificial Irish border issue and ceding the £39bn ransom without conditions.The way this deal and set of promises and future agreements has been composed is actively in conflict with the UK’s interests. In defence, foreign policy and intelligence, the EU finds itself given an unconditional de facto pledge preemptively by Mrs May to continue as a rule-taker only with a level of UK commitment which resembles the current relationship but without membership. The Technical Note of 24 May (Clause 25) states that a defence treaty containing the administrative agreements, intelligence deal and association agreements will be signed as early as possible in the transition as an international treaty under prerogative powers provided the EU believes that deal adequately commits the UK to the EU defence rulebook.
12. The EU will use defence industrial cooperation as a lever to coerce the UK via instruments which have scope to grow beyond recognition. The wider industrial and trade relationship can be used by the EU to force the hand of the UK to submit to incrementally increased levels of policy transfer in all other areas since everything is linked to everything else. There is absolutely no commercial or industrial gain for the UK from being in these structures since the WTO offers superior terms without need for negotiation or ransom.
Just as the EU will be empowered to demand concessions to escape from the ‘transitional period’ customs union once the UK has ceded sovereign power to do so to EU institutions – Macron has already spoken of access to our fishing grounds as his price – so the EU could demand yet deeper access to our defence and security assets as the price of release from the ‘backstop.’ Mrs May has already pre-emptively surrendered leverage from the UK’s defence and security assets as well as from the ransom payment and over independent escape from the transition period. Transferring defence sovereignty and compromising the crown jewels in our Intelligence relationships is a bridge far too far in the Cabinet Office’s stealthy efforts to lock the country into perpetual alignment with the EU.
Less than 50% of our export economy is linked to the EU, with which we run a £95 billion annual trade deficit. Only 10% of UK businesses actually trade with the EU. Most of the British economy has nothing to do with the EU and the people will not sell themselves into a colonial vassalage for the convenience of the 8% of the economy represented by ‘just-in-time’ manufacturers. As we stated the people are even less open to a transactional offer now than in 2016. World Trade Rules are to be welcomed, and there is nothing to fear in this. As we stated in the Message to the Prime Minister: “No risks are greater than Mrs May’s terms of surrender”. It is well established that the UK has no legal obligation to pay anything, especially not for nothing. It is therefore correctly named as a ransom and ransoms should not be paid.
Amid the whirlwind of the Brexit crisis, with the Prime Minister’s deal facing criticism on multiple fronts, too little attention has been paid to the security and defence aspects of what officials have agreed. But it is remarkable. Figures who served their country at the highest levels are appalled by what the government has, by stealth, signed away.

 

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Yes as it stands it has taken 7 years but yes apart from London it’s a ****ing **** hole plus the people have lost their balls

Just had surgery on my eye so not with it

 

Not at all but I have asked you to condemn the antisemitism several times. Somehow you miss that

 

See me on the battlefield,really !! is that supposed to worry me ffs grow up.
My viewpoint is a minority, again Really !! What do you base that on, oh I forgot your arrogance, AGAIN !!
And if you believe the EU is not a corrupt organisation with no thoughts of European statehood then not only are you a fool but you are a blind fool.
Our government wether we like it or not is elected every 5 years, by the people they will represent for good or bad,
The EU commissioners are elected by themselves in a closed ballot run by them for them, the millions of people in the EU who they represent ( allegedly ) have ABSOLUTELY NO SAY, not even the MEP’s they elect to the European Parliament have a say in whom the commission elect to the top table, Last time I looked that is not a democratic system, that is to all intents and purposes a a one party system in other words nothing more than a dictatorship.
In many people’s opinion that is corruption at the highest level,
So if anybody on here is stupid it’s you, you arrogant horses ass.

 

classic!

 

You truly are a knob.

Please post where you asked me (several times) specifically to condemn antisemitism and where I ignored your request.....

If you want to insinuate that I hate Jews then that’s up to you, but if you can’t back up your suggestions then stop being a twat....you wouldn’t know a true Nazi if he bit you on the arse....