Off Topic The Politics Thread

Oh FFS that tw2t Comedy Corbyn is going across to meet Barnier tomorrow That is all we need, that interfering muppet causing problems.

 

Anybody would think he’s an elected politician and leader of the opposition with a legitimate interest in the future of the country. Disgraceful.

 

Government actually doing something good by insisting that Universities uphold the right to free speech. It is of course a tragedy that this needs to be done.

Many universities are including ‘trigger warnings’ for lectures where content may upset students, like some of the more grisly Greek and Shakespearean plays. Hint to students - if the content of a subject offends you, don’t study it. Glasgow University allows medical students to skip a class on breaking bad news to patients and their families if they feel they can’t cope with it. FOR ****’S SAKE.

 

Finnish state secretary, Samuli Virtanen, says that the weakness of Theresa May's position in her own party is “one of the things that makes this [Brexit] process more difficult because it seems at the moment the EU27 is more unanimous than UK one”.

A good line, but sadly true.

 

Good and pragmatic opinion piece from the Times

Brutal Brexit
Politicians and, to be fair, journalists have fallen into a trap.

We all refer to 'hard' and 'soft' Brexit as if it were a binary choice: either we negotiate a comprehensive deal with the European Union covering trade, security and a range of other mutually beneficial issues or we crash out of the bloc in a storm of mutual recrimination.

In the latter scenario, the doom-mongers predict, planes don't fly, Dover grinds to a halt and Britain engages in a tariff and regulatory trade war with our closest neighbours.

The truth, however, is that as we stand today, neither of these two scenarios seems particularly plausible.

It is hard to see the UK and the EU negotiating a deal that can keep the Conservative party intact while at the same time being endorsed by the European Parliament.

But equally neither Britain or the EU have an interest in a zero-sum Brexit crash-out that will inflict painful and lasting damage on both our economies.

So what, as Tony Blair might have said, is the third way?

Well it's a nasty, brutish and last minute negotiation that probably begins around January 2019 and tries to salvage some vestiges of what has already been agreed.

It will satisfy no-one but could well be where we end up. It may end up looking a bit like this:

Citizens. Britain and Brussels are close to an agreement on the rights of UK and EU citizens and this will almost certainly come into effect regardless of where the negotiations end up. To do anything else would be to inflict political and economic self-harm on all concerned.

Flights. No-one wants to see flights grounded entirely but any 'open skies' agreement between the EU and the UK will be restrictive and reduce competition in the market. UK-based airlines (or some of them) will still be able to fly point-to-point to European destinations – but the number of carriers could be limited and the UK is likely to restrict EU airlines to flying from the country where they're registered. As a result prices are likely to rise.

Trade. A hard one to call. We could end up on WTO terms but with a tariff exemption for agriculture to satisfy the concerns of Irish (and British) farmers, who would be hit disproportionately if high EU tariffs were imposed. The EU would insist that service industries fell outside the scope of any agreement to damage the UK while Britain could seek revenge by attempting to relax state aid rules on strategically important industries.

Money. In such a scenario the UK would rip up any agreement in stage one of the talks to pay into the EU budget until 2021 and insist that all its liabilities were judged on strictly legal grounds. The government has known all along that money is one of our strongest negotiating cards – so every billion we agreed to pay in a 'brutal' Brexit scenario would be a quid pro quo for something we wanted from the EU.

Regulation. At a bare minimum both sides would almost certainly agree to abide by common safety standards in critical industries like nuclear power and chemicals. But beyond that it could be a free for all. The UK might aim to get competitive advantage by dropping cumbersome regulations in certain areas of the economy while the EU could retaliate by making it more difficult to sell goods into EU markets.

Customs. Even if no transition deal is arranged it might be in both sides' interests to agree a time-limited period during which new customs controls would be gradually introduced. This would prevent ports seizing up on day one and negate the impact it would have on the wider economy of both Britain and the EU. With even a little good will on both sides such a deal should be possible.

Security. Another area where some co-operation will probably be agreed. The European arrest warrant and formulaic intelligence sharing might go but there will be some sort of deal to protect the overarching national interests of both sides. One potential solution would be to extend the current co-operation for a time-limited period after Brexit to give negotiators time to reach a new agreement.

This is far from an exhaustive list – but it is indicative of where we might end up. The reality is that if broad agreement on a future Brexit deal cannot be achieved we will end up with a pick and mix of what common ground has been established in the talks up until the point they collapse. Not hard, not soft – but certainly brutal.

 

I just turned on the TV to watch Sky News Live and ye gods it’s a farce

I stand that any road any street any cul de sac in the U.K. couldn’t agree how to put on a Tombola event.

Tories all need one of those illnesses that I think of wishing upon

How did we get here

 

Apparently the EU wants more concessions from the UK before agreeing to move talks forward. Perhaps Mrs May should call their bluff and tell the EU to sod off until they become more flexible in their stance and withhold all money that she earlier promised.........after all the EU has a huge great black hole to plug once the UK leaves.

 

Exactly.

 

Well I for one find it very reassuring that The Times are so on top of all the facts. They must have someone on the inside on both sides and I will look out for their every word on this as it's clearly all fact.

Tell 'em to **** off!!

 

It’s an opinion piece Col and doesn’t pretend to be anything else. I put that in the post, as a kind of hidden clue to it being an opinion piece.

Even if we tell them to **** off the Government has to make sure the planes still fly, that goods can get in and out of the country, that the Irish can still sell us those revolting skinless sausages, that we have safety standards for nuclear power, that we can assess medicines to see if they should be available here etc etc. Or does your dislike of the EU absolve the government from telling us about these things?

No deal may be an economic risk and a genuine personal risk for some living here or in the EU, but no deal in the hands of these ****ers is a nailed on catastrophe.

 

It's not the going, it's the timing. He could go anytime. Presumably he'll insist on an armed cavalcade and motor-cycle side riders.

 

I sense a change in mood music coming from Brussels if reporting journalists (BBC and SKY) are to be believed. These journalists have been darkly pessimistic in the past, and there's a noticeable change. Apparently none of the 27 member states want a No Deal Brexit because of the damage to their economies and general valuable cooperation with the UK (the idea that flights might be grounded between UK and EU has surely been taken from George Osborne's 2016 booklet, How to Prevent Brexit). It's relevant too, that German business is beginning to put pressure on the German government to sort out a trade deal with the UK so that a highly valuable export market is not lost.

I suspect a commencement of Trade talks will be announced in December, because if not, once the UK starts preparing for a No Deal, it will start taking on a life of its own and may be hard to stop, to no one's benefit.

The biggest hurdle I see during Trade Talks is freedom of movement. The UK won't agree 100% freedom since we lose control of borders, so there will have to be a compromise from the EU on one of its four pillars. And that doesn't look that likely. I can't quite see a way around this at present.

 

I'm heartily sick of the whole thing. The tories are, in the main ****ing useless, with most of them putting their political futures ahead of the country. Labour are no better and just about everyone thinks they know what's going to happen.
The ****ing planes will still fly for Christ's sake!
The EU are petrified of what our lack of financial contribution will do to their project long term and so they are continuously stalling whilst trying to up the final amount we will pay.
To her credit May has at least made a reasonable offer with regards to our payments and the proposed transitional period.
This is as much ground as I want to see given until the EU stop the stalling.
There will inevitability be problems with this current generation of politicians having to implement all the necessary changes to regulations etc but we'll get there in the end.
We have been able to cope before we joined the common market.

 

You're heartily sick of the whole thing, Col? You wanted this **** - how do you think the rest of us feel?

 

If the EU had played ball from the start we'd be a lot further down the line now. Making everyone heartily sick of the whole situation is part of their strategy and it's working.
That is why we should tell them to **** off and call their bluff. They need our business more than we need theirs.

 

Have to disagree here, Col. If we don't buy from the EU, they will sell their goods elsewhere. We'll be in competition with them in some sectors and markets.

Call their bluff? Gambling only pays when you're winning.

The Conservatives know the truth, but they're more interested in jockying for personal gain internally than doing their jobs. They're relying on enough people believing their tosh.

 

We are Germany's biggest export market for cars. Where are they going to replace that?

 

Do they buy more from us or do we buy more from them? Who needs who more?
Plus...........see Goldie's reply above.

 

I’d have thought you’d delighted th this is Goldie, excellent propaganda ‘the enemy within plotting with the foreign enemy’. Corbyn is much more pro Brexit than May. His nationalisation plans and state support for industry don’t stand a chance under EU rules.

I think you are right about about freedom of movement post Brexit, which means we will have a trade deal a la Canada rather than a Norway/Switzerland type deal. Which will take an age to agree, hence the need for a transitional period.

You’re sick of it, I’m sick of it, everybody’s ****ing sick of it. I don’t know what May’s offer was apart from ‘meet our obligations’, we still have to agree what our obligations are so far as I know. I’m sure you are right that the EU is stalling, because the cash is the biggest bargaining chip we have, and the longer it goes without agreement the more desperate we will get. This has been an adversarial negotiation since day one, and May set the tone for that, though she has backed off since. Juncker has played his part too, and some of those idiots in the EU Parliament.

Someone has to do something to keep the planes flying, just because it is mind numbingly obvious that they should doesn’t guarantee that they will. Such is the lunacy of our times.

I’m watching a tv programme because it’s raining and some idiot is letting off fireworks so o can’t walk the dog. The programme is about people who defraud social housing by sub letting etc. It makes me want to smash something to bits.

 

They don’t have to Goldie. They just have to cut their margins a bit, which will more than cover the 10% WTO tariff. Given that BMW have just cut their margin to dealers in the US (where they sell under WTO rules) by 40%, they are obviously familiar with the concept. They probably want a deal more to stop a permanent devaluation of the £ which would really hammer their profits. Trade won’t stop with no deal, the terms of trade will change - we will either have to pay more or importers will have to cut prices to maintain volume. Or exports should be fine, except for agricultural stuff where the tariffs are huge, because the slump in sterling more than compensates for the cost of tariffs.

The car market is dying on its feet as people are stuck with massive depreciation on the diesels we were told to buy and can’t afford to trade on. My spy in JLR tells me they expect to sell more than 100,000 cars less worldwide in 2018 than they did in 2016 - nearly 20%.