Brexit.

[seafoid]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx4AF-3Rd44

Try that - very illuminating with regard to the real position vis a vis trade, WTO rules etc.

Britain is in a very, very bad position.

Great link

There is also this

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7slP5a0dHZU

[Applesisapples]

There has been deals. The brits have been going about sorting deals. Isn't may in S.Africa at the minute, deals are being done

On the same terms as th EU accounting for 0.07% of UK trade.

[Insane Bolt]

The Brits leaving is the tip of the iceberg for Europe. The EU is afraid of the domino effect, the rise of the far right in many countries and the inevitable Italian bailout.....one that is about 5 times worse than Greece😳 Anyone booking holidays for next summer.....hope you are flying from Dublin.

[Milltown Row2]

The Brits leaving is the tip of the iceberg for Europe. The EU is afraid of the domino effect, the rise of the far right in many countries and the inevitable Italian bailout.....one that is about 5 times worse than Greece😳 Anyone booking holidays for next summer.....hope you are flying from Dublin.

Holidays? I'm surprised with the way pre Brexit has been anyone can afford a holiday never mind how its going to be once brexit kicks in.. may close down the holiday thread

[seafoid]

The Brits leaving is the tip of the iceberg for Europe. The EU is afraid of the domino effect, the rise of the far right in many countries and the inevitable Italian bailout.....one that is about 5 times worse than Greece😳 Anyone booking holidays for next summer.....hope you are flying from Dublin.

Holidays? I'm surprised with the way pre Brexit has been anyone can afford a holiday never mind how its going to be once brexit kicks in.. may close down the holiday thread

The DUP don't believe in climate change and they want a hard Brexit. Mencken said the art of democracy is giving voters what they want good and hard.
Anyway the recent summer was lovely so who needs Spain when you can have Portstewart in 27 degree sunshine?  Next thing there will be vineyards. Shangri La , only with the DUP.

[Insane Bolt]

Britain has still to negotiate an open skies deal with the EU for after Brexit, so flying from Belfast direct to Europe may not be as easy as now.

[seafoid]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/30/brexiters-future-crashing-out-hard-soft-brexit-dominic-raab

When I almost (but not quite) voted for Brexit in 2016, I assumed it would be something like this. I never dreamed a British cabinet would go for "hard". There was not a shred of evidence that the hard option was what Britons wanted. They did not want imports and exports impeded at borders, food prices rising, or their holidays ended with a "hostile environment" at ports of entry. Their concern lay in controlling immigration. Even then, polls showed that few wanted to see care workers, plumbers, builders or hospital staff driven back to Poland. The priority always was immigration from non-EU countries, a concern shared by all EU countries. If only May's negotiators had accepted the customs union and stuck to discussing migration, they might have found common ground and a deal already.

Somewhere at the messy end of customs union is, I am sure, where Brexit is going to culminate. It is towards this goal that rumours of compromise between May and France's President Macron seem aimed. Negotiations are likely to default to the "backstop position" of a customs union, as advocated for Northern Ireland by the EU's Michel Barnier and now called "Chequers minus". It makes pragmatic sense.
Advocates of hard Brexit, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson, are deep into reality denial. They drink the Kool-Aid of Daily Mail confirmation bias. Nothing I have heard or read since 2016 explains how hard Brexit is remotely in Britain's interest. Special status – heads we win, tails you lose – was never going to wash with the EU. Hard Brexit would therefore mean shifting to World Trade Organisation tariffs, a customs wall and detailed border inspection. The UK would have to find a surge in trade with the rest of the world that made up for lost EU business. This was glaringly, idiotically implausible.

Yet desperate not to seem anti-immigrant (and Johnson instinctively is not), the hard Brexit lobby was forced back on to trade as the be all and end all of their cause. The cry of "we must make our own deals" never had specifics attached. It is meaningless as long as the UK trades half its food with Europe, and needs to integrate its car and aero industries with the continent. Besides, other EU nations do deals with Africa and China, as does the EU with Egypt, Turkey and Morocco. All trade is a barter of sovereignty. "Taking back control" of trade is waffle.
Experts warned from the start that hard Brexit would take years to deliver. There would be a chaos of dismantling regulatory harmonisation, a hard border in Northern Ireland and long delays at ports of entry. That is why mad Brexit – "crashing out" – has risen so fast up the political agenda. Hard Brexiters have been forced to admit: "Let's just do it and see what happens." They show a touch of hooligan exhilaration in punching a chunk of the economy in the face – with other people's livelihoods getting hurt.


As the forces of soft Brexit prepare for the end game, mad Brexit is what cabinet Brexiters are seeking to sanitise, at a staggering cost of a reported £3bn in administration alone. Raab is implying that all will be well with no deal, so long as private businesses tool up to carry the bureaucratic burden. Like Rees-Mogg, he believes they should bear the short-term cost as it is supposedly to the nation's long-term advantage. It's a dystopian, Blade Runner Brexit.
There was a case for Brexit to traumatise the politics of a hesitant and ill-led European community. There was no case to destroy the vitality of a common market that had served Britain well for decades. There is no other Brexit but soft. May must seize control of her party and lead it in that direction.

[Applesisapples]

Had to laugh at the clown from Norn Iron, presumably Kilkeel or Portavogie complaing at being attacked by smaller French scallop boats as the fish French waters, denied to the french themselves for the summer months to protect stocks. He wanted the British Navy to come to their aid. So much for taking back control of British waters. If the fishing industry gets its way he won't be able to fish there at all next year. f**king cake and eat it Brexiteeer mentality.

[johnnycool]

Had to laugh at the clown from Norn Iron, presumably Kilkeel or Portavogie complaing at being attacked by smaller French scallop boats as the fish French waters, denied to the french themselves for the summer months to protect stocks. He wanted the British Navy to come to their aid. So much for taking back control of British waters. If the fishing industry gets its way he won't be able to fish there at all next year. f**king cake and eat it Brexiteeer mentality.

The fishing industry must be full of short sighted morons more than most.

They're complaining about French and Spanish boats fishing in UK waters and can't wait till Brexit to put a stop to this, but in the same breath UK fishermen export 75% of their catch into the EU.

How are they going to manage that?

[maddog]

Had to laugh at the clown from Norn Iron, presumably Kilkeel or Portavogie complaing at being attacked by smaller French scallop boats as the fish French waters, denied to the french themselves for the summer months to protect stocks. He wanted the British Navy to come to their aid. So much for taking back control of British waters. If the fishing industry gets its way he won't be able to fish there at all next year. f**king cake and eat it Brexiteeer mentality.

Same as the Kilkeel fishermen at the time of the referendum wanted out of EU but still wanted to be able to hire the cheap foreign workers on the boats.

[Dubh driocht]

Tony Connelly on the money again;

According to Reuters, the Polish minister Konrad Szymański, who was the first to speak, told the meeting that the EU may have to choose between Ireland and no-deal.
According to a number of sources present, there was a stunned silence when he made the intervention.
Ironically, the effect was to stiffen the resolve of other member states in supporting Ireland, so that ministers from countries like Lithuania – who had not intended to intervene – decided to do so.
"I think in the end from an Irish perspective it worked out pretty well," says the (non-Irish) Brexit negotiator from one member state who was present.
"The Polish minister started to make his comments, and then all the others said no, we're all behind Ireland, particularly the French and German ministers.
"In the end it reinforced the message that Ireland could count on our solidarity and I think also for the Polish themselves, they probably felt they could have expressed themselves a little differently."
As we enter the final critical phase, Dublin will increasingly rely on such support holding firm.
But given the potential for so many things to go wrong, and the fact that no matter which artful, elaborate formula is agreed – if indeed there is agreement – Theresa May will struggle to get it through the House of Commons.


This is the start of the endgame. The Polish minister cracked when the pressure came on. Impressive resolve from the other 26 but can it survive? A time for cool heads and firm resolve, particularly from Leo and Simon. If they let down the wee six they will never be forgiven. If they do get a deal which May supports and the DUP object to then SF are going to have to seriously consider their abstentionist policy. Forget about precedent, forget about 'they were elected on an abstentionist platform'- these are unprecedented times and we need Irish women and men to stand up

[Rossfan]

That right wing Polish Govt would love to leave the EU.
They plus the Hungarian one seem to be nasty extreme rightist of 1930s mould.

[armaghniac]

That right wing Polish Govt would love to leave the EU.
They plus the Hungarian one seem to be nasty extreme rightist of 1930s mould.

Which means that the rest of the EU couldn't care less what they think.

[heganboy]

There's a piece in today's guardian today which is interesting in itself but I loved this comment:


BrianO_Blivion
2h ago


I have a suggestion. How about if, post-Brexit, we make the necessary constitutional amendments so that the whole of what was formerly known as the UK becomes part of Northern Ireland. This would fix a whole load of problems at a stroke. The whole of the former UK would have an open trade border with the EU; all former UK residents would, as residents of Greater Northern Ireland, have the right to an Irish passport and could therefore travel and work freely in the EU; and the DUP can't complain because the former NI is treated exactly the same as the former NI.
Obviously the new Greater Northern Ireland government wouldn't want to work in some distant, peripheral provincial town like London; I would imagine that they'd relocate to somewhere more central, like Liverpool.

[Ronnie]

And then there's the report prepared for the National Police Chiefs' Council that can't rule out the possibility of a bit of martial law if the cliff-edge Brexit becomes a reality.  What can't the government's economists rule out?  £1 = 1€?  How many times can a currency be devalued?

The only certainty that I see is that NI will still be a hole.