Brexit.

[seafoid]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/09/08/irelands-new-commissioner-will-decide-city-londons-access-eu/

Ireland's new commissioner will decide on City of London's access to EU after Brexit
Mairead McGuinness is well-known in Brussels for her clashes with Nigel Farage in the European Parliament

ByJames Crisp, BRUSSELS CORRESPONDENT8 September 2020 • 10:58am

Ireland's new European Union commissioner is likely to have a pivotal role in deciding on British financial services' access to the bloc's markets after Brexit.
Mairead McGuinness was announced as the replacement for Phil Hogan, the trade commissioner who was forced to resign after breaking coronavirus restrictions, on Tuesday.
Valdis Dombrovskis, executive vice president of the commission and former prime minister of Latvia, will take on Mr Hogan's old role while Ms McGuinness assumes his duties at the heart of EU financial services regulation.
"She has great qualifications and my full trust for this post," said Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.

Ms McGuinness, 61, a vice-president of the European Parliament, will be influential in equivalence decisions for the City of London, as well as spearheading Brussels' efforts to lessen its dependence on London for raising funds on the international capital markets and for clearing.
Brussels insists that UK financial services will only be given access to the EU on the basis of equivalence, which is a form of regulatory recognition that can, in some cases, be unilaterally withdrawn by the commission at as little as 30 days notice.
The European Commission has rebuffed British demands for a system with greater consultation during the trade negotiations which continue in London this week.
The City loses its EU "passport" when the transition period finishes at the end of this year and trade negotiations are deadlocked and overshadowed by fears Boris Johnson plans to renege on the Withdrawal Agreement.
Ms McGuinness was a member of the European Parliament's Brexit steering group and had a role equivalent to deputy speaker where she regularly clashed with Brexit Party MEPs in Brussels and Strasbourg.
In one of the final sessions before Brexit in January, she told Nigel Farage and his party to stop waving their Union Jack flags, which breaks European Parliament rules "Put your flags away, you're leaving... and take them with you... goodbye,"  she said.
Mr Farage told The Telegraph his old adversary was "totally unsuited" to her new role.

Ursula von der Leyen announced the reshuffle of her commissioners in Brussels on Tuesday morning. CREDIT: Getty Images Europe
The last EU commissioner to hold the financial services portfolio, without it being combined with other duties, was Jonathan Hill, the UK's penultimate commissioner who quit soon after the referendum.
The post is more high-profile than was expected amid speculation that Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, would punish Dublin for forcing Mr Hogan to quit by giving the new Irish commissioner a less prestigious portfolio.
Mr Hogan's snaring of the trade post was widely interpreted as a show of solidarity with Ireland after the torturous Brexit negotiations over the Withdrawal Agreement. 
Ms McGuinness and Mr Dombrovskis must win the approval of MEPs in special hearings before taking up their new roles.
If approved, Ms McGuinness,a Fine Gael politician, will join another Irish national with a prominent economic role in Brussels.
Paschal Donahue, the Irish finance minister, is the president of the Eurogroup. He said he was looking forward to "close cooperation" with Ms McGuinness. 
The senior civil servant in the commission's financial services department is also Irish but is now expected to move, as it is traditional in Brussels to not have both the commission and their top official of the same nationality

[Sportacus]

Brandon Lewis confirms in Parliament that the UK Government does intend breaking International Law.  What a shower.

[johnnycool]

Brandon Lewis confirms in Parliament that the UK Government does intend breaking International Law.  What a shower.

But only a wee bit.

Shower of Charlatans.

[imtommygunn]

Has there ever been a more unscrupulous government in the UK? I know they've always been bad but this shower do seem next level.

[Franko]

A British minister is standing in parliament, openly admitting from the despatch box that they are going to break the law.

Of all the shenanigans that have gone on during the Brexit debacle (that we know of!), this is maybe the most incredible.

[Farrandeelin]

A British minister is standing in parliament, openly admitting from the despatch box that they are going to break the law.

Of all the shenanigans that have gone on during the Brexit debacle (that we know of!), this is maybe the most incredible.

Greatest shower of tosspots ever. If only they hadn't a part of this island under their jurisdiction I'd be all for a no deal to show up the shower of fools for what they really are.

[Rossfan]

The cnuts showing their true colours again.
In the good old days of Empah they'd send a few gunboats up the river and lob a few shells on Brussels.

[balladmaker]

Not the first time, and won't be the last, that an English government decides to break international law.  This is the calibre of people who have jurisdiction over the north, will be interesting to see the poll numbers in favour of unity in the coming few weeks.

If they go down a road that results in a hard border, do they really think the ordinary people on this island will accept it, I'd be expecting mass protests along the border at the first sign of infrastructure being put in place.  Surely Sir Jeffrey D. and his friends in the Tory party know this.

I do however think that Boris will roll over at the very last minute and sign whatever deal the EU put in front of him, can't see how he has any other option.

[imtommygunn]

I doubt they care about protests etc. A hard border would be exactly what the DUP want and then if or when the pesky catholics get uppety then they can stoke up tensions again and get their votes up. It will create more division and that's their bread and butter.

[five points]

It was the Irish government who were running a hard border 4 months ago, and several of its TDs wanted it fully sealed.

[93-DY-SAM]

The DUP don't care for tomorrow. They have no long term strategy except "never, never, never". It's all about clinging to the coat-tails of the Union and f**k everything else. They don't care what they have to do today to do that regardless of the consequences down the line. They are from exactly the same mould as Boris and his Tory cronies. Say anything today which suits the current agenda and renege on it when it doesn't.

[armaghniac]

It was the Irish government who were running a hard border 4 months ago, and several of its TDs wanted it fully sealed.

Yeah right, just like the one around Kildare and Laois.

[seafoid]

https://www.ft.com/content/9bae0a3a-e1d9-4205-88f1-bf7d91d62cd4

The party of Margaret Thatcher is now overseeing the unwinding of one of her biggest projects: the creation of a vast EU single market, where goods and services flowed unimpeded across national borders in Europe. Lorry parks and inspection points are being created to facilitate customs controls between Britain and the EU.



An "Australia-style" deal is the euphemism preferred by the Johnson government to describe a relationship with the EU that does not include a free trade deal. Unlike a "Canada-style deal", which abolishes tariffs but spawns a mountain of additional paperwork and customs checks at the new trade border, a no-deal Brexit would involve tariffs and quotas on British goods as well, making exports more expensive. Mr Johnson is reluctant to say how much this would cost the economy.


When asked why there have been no recent impact assessments of the government's trade options, Number 10 says: "The economic impacts of our trade deal with the EU has been much debated in the last four years and there are many economic studies on this issue."



The most recent official estimates in 2018 reckoned the UK would miss out on 4.9 per cent of future income over 15 years if it left the bloc with a basic trade deal. Under a no-deal scenario, that would rise to 7.7 per cent over the same period, compared with staying within the bloc.



Sam Lowe, a trade expert at the Centre for European Reform and an adviser to the UK government, says a no-deal exit would also complicate other aspects of Britain's dealings with the EU, tarnishing relations for years to come. But Mr Johnson insists this would nevertheless be a "good outcome", arguing that it would allow Britain to adopt its own policies free from meddling by the EU, which insists the UK must stay

One EU diplomat says: "Walking away from the table and going for a no deal will hit the UK economy and UK jobs much harder than the EU economy and EU jobs. One wonders whether this is really a negotiation or pure masochism."


Kim Darroch, Britain's former ambassador in Brussels and Washington, recalls how Treasury officials working for the Thatcher government in the 1980s designed the EU state aid rules precisely to foster fair competition and to stop other European countries engaging in a subsidy race. "



The problems encountered in trying to strike ambitious new trade deals with the US — or indeed with any other major economy — have delivered another blow to the post-Brexit dreams of the Eurosceptics. Efforts to secure a trade deal with Japan have revealed that Tokyo will not grant Britain a better deal than it currently enjoys through its membership of the EU.



Liz Truss, trade secretary, has tried to win special treatment for makers of British cheese — notably Stilton — to put a Union Jack stamp on what would essentially be a cut-and-paste of the existing EU-Japan deal.



Government insiders say that Mr Johnson now accepts this problem and is quietly shifting his post-Brexit rhetoric away from free trade to notions of sovereignty: a sort of "Britain first", go-it-alone approach which appeals to the populist and interventionist leanings of Mr Cummings and has echoes of the agenda sponsored by US president Donald Trump.



Others in Downing Street say the iconoclastic adviser is telling Mr Johnson that state aid and the principle of sovereignty are so important that a no-deal Brexit is a price worth paying to secure them.



most of the coronavirus economic losses would be recovered, while those from Brexit are permanent. "Covid-19 is likely to cause more job losses than Brexit and greater swings in output, but the economy in 2035 may bear more scars from Brexit than from Covid-19," he says.


Most macroeconomic models suggest the greatest advantage of EU membership is reducing regulatory burdens "behind the border". Even under a Canada-style free trade agreement — with customs controls but no tariffs — those new regulatory burdens would fall on British companies.



The difference with no deal is in the additional cost of tariffs, which are important for sectors such as agriculture, processed foods and carmaking, but not large in most other sectors.



British-made cars would see tariffs of 10 per cent imposed by the EU, while Michael Gove — now the minister in charge of no-deal planning — warned last year that British beef and sheep meat exports would be hit by tariffs of at least 40 per cent.


Mr Lowe argues that a no-deal outcome would probably also have negative knock-on effects. It might make it harder for Britain to secure side deals in areas such as financial services and data, or to agree bilateral "easements" agreements with third countries to reduce bureaucracy at the border



Although Mr Johnson calls a no-deal outcome an "Australia-style deal", Canberra has spent the past two years trying to negotiate a free trade agreement with the EU. Ultimately trade experts believe Britain would be back in Brussels, trying to do the same. '



One Whitehall official says: "A lot of this is theatrics. We're not yet at the final endgame when a deal is going to be done." Some believe that Mr Johnson has not yet made up his own mind whether to follow the advice of Mr Cummings and go for a hard Brexit, or whether to make the concessions to get a free trade agreement.



Failure to secure an amicable trade deal with the EU could also raise further questions about the prime minister's competence and increase support for independence in Scotland, which voted overwhelmingly against Brexit.



Some EU officials are not sure Mr Johnson has thought it through. "There's a reason why Australia is currently negotiating a trade deal with the EU," says one. Mr Barnier, speaking ahead of his latest visit to London, said simply: "Sometimes in the UK I hear people talking about the opportunity of a no deal. Good luck. Good luck."

[five points]

It was the Irish government who were running a hard border 4 months ago, and several of its TDs wanted it fully sealed.

Yeah right, just like the one around Kildare and Laois.

No, they hadn't Gardai on 24-hour vigils on the main roads between Kildare and Dublin. They had them on the Cavan-Fermanagh border though.

[Rossfan]

Difference between a pandemic and normal day to day trade and travel.