Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis part 2 - Ireland

[Jason]

You are quoting me out of context there, and are deliberately conflating issues.

The WA interpretation is agreed.

Whether the UK subsequently repudiates the WA following no deal is, again, an entirely separate issue.

No wish to take you out of context. Yes the WA is agreed. If there isn't a TA the ERG within the Conservative Party will certainly want the WA repudiated. Whether their view will become Conservative policy and therefore government policy is another issue.

 

[g0nz0]

In the short term I imagine the UK will tell everyone "if you bring Irish goods into NI you must fill in six forms in triplicate and jump through lots of hoops. But if you don't we won't do a thing".

In the medium term I think you are right that the EU will see this as a problem for trade through Ireland and NI not just to UK but to other nations the UK has agreements with. Potentially some Canadian product will be landed in Belfast and taken in a lorry through Ireland and by boat to France or Spain. It will cause all sorts of legal disputes.

You're half right. The EU will see goods in as a problem, but won't care about goods out. UK partners will see goods out of Ireland into (and eventually back out of) the UK as a problem.

Both side will need customs.

 

[g0nz0]

Michel Barnier said he believes ‘no-deal’ with Britain at the end of the year is now more likely than agreement on a trade deal, despite Boris travelling to Brussels tomorrow...

 

[g0nz0]

Brexit-backing Ineos boss confirms new cars will be built in France instead of Wales

This is just so funny and bizarre that it is bordering on ridiculous...

 

[Jason]

Both side will need customs.

I think this misses the point.

The UK intention is to have no barriers to imports from EU. There may be a few exceptions, but only a very few, and policed back from the border. The UK intention is to have no restrictions on what goes out. The UK doesn't need customs between any part of UK and Ireland (or France, or anywhere else in the EU).

 

[g0nz0]

I think this misses the point.

The UK intention is to have no barriers to imports from EU. There may be a few exceptions, but only a very few, and policed back from the border. The UK intention is to have no restrictions on what goes out. The UK doesn't need customs between any part of UK and Ireland (or France, or anywhere else in the EU).

I think you are missing the point.

It actually doesn't matter what the UK wants. If it does trade deals with other, it will need to respect those trade deals and police its borders.

Trade deals are incompatible with completely open customs borders.

Otherwise, what is the point of the deals? just go WTO with everyone. This will be enforced on the UK by its trading partners or else they will undoubtedly look for legal redress.

 

[Drifterwood]

Brexit-backing Ineos boss confirms new cars will be built in France instead of Wales

This is just so funny and bizarre that it is bordering on ridiculous...

It would be too easy to call Ratcliffe a Rat. No. Another Brexiteer cunt.

Try driving a Grenadier in Wales........

 

[chrisrobin]

We can but hope. We're all so frightfully weary of this Make Britain Great Again Empire 2.0 shit show, now going on 4+ years.

Fingers crossed this is the end of it.

My bet, sadly, is that irrespective of what happens, the UK will continue to blame the EU for its own self-induced woes well into the next decade.

I do find it a little odd that in fact its not the UK leaving the UK that upsets you but the British people as a whole. At least once we are out of the rather boring over large club you can continue to fester and plot and leap about like so many demented Leprechauns.

 

[g0nz0]

I do find it a little odd that in fact its not the UK leaving the UK that upsets you but the British people as a whole. At least once we are out of the rather boring over large club you can continue to fester and plot and leap about like so many demented Leprechauns.

The UK left the UK? My goodness, things are worse over there than I thought!

I assure you that I have nothing whatsoever against most British people. Boris and his populist cronies and the foaming at the mouth Brexiteers being the exception.

Once a Brexiteer mentions leprechauns to vainly attempt to denigrate an Irish man, you know he's lost all semblance of a cogent argument.

 

[g0nz0]

The new agreed understanding (regarding the implementation of the WA customs checks) from a day or so ago is funnily enough the exact same agreement that Boris and then Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar had agreed October 2019. In the interim, we had all these funny shenanigans about ignoring international law, and Downing Street claiming all sorts of disingenuous moves and manoeuvers by the EU -- all of which seem to be British tactics or strategies in some way or other... Although what these British strategies are achieving, nobody in the EU is quite sure.

Boris recently said that there would be an Irish Sea Border "over my dead body." Well, now there is. The Tories are trying to spin it as something else, but that is just semantics. An interesting segment on Sky News this morning asked a logistics professional if it constitutes a customs border and he said absolutely.

'Boris said over my dead body!' Michael Gove squirms as Brexit deal surrender exposed

You gotta hand it to Gove. He's utterly useless, but he's at least still able to argue black is white.

Separately, there is great suspicion in EU that Boris' visit with Ursula von der Leyen is more of the British theatrics we've seen so many times from the UK government over the past 4 years, and that effectively Boris is laying the grounds to return and say "look, I tried! Its those pesky Europeans who won't accept how Great we are in Great Britain"... The EU isn't interested in playing that blame game.

It has to be said that a deal looks increasingly less likely. This is nothing more than Boris' metaphysical conundrum of having a cake and eating it coming to fruition... Eventually the laws of physics were going to win out.

Having cake and eating it: how a hyperbolic metaphor framed Brexit

 

[michael_3165]

Am I the only one that reckons a deal is near to sealed up already and they will drag this out til the 11th hour as the EU tends to do?

 

[g0nz0]

Am I the only one that reckons a deal is near to sealed up already and they will drag this out til the 11th hour as the EU tends to do?

I think you might be. I am not at all convinced that there is a deal.

I don't think Boris is a rational actor, and as such is impossible to predict, as his calculus is often willing to inflict self harm for the purposes of jingoism.

It is widely reported that he is the most hard-line of the Brexiteers, which is funny when you think the flip of a coin (as to which was a better outcome for brand Boris) decided his viewpoint prior to the referendum.

 

[chrisrobin]

"Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, has said the major obstacle to a Brexit deal is not access to British fishing waters but future regulatory standards in the UK,"
If this is the case then why bother to leave the EU in the first place. Does the EU expect the UK to remain a vassal state?
Just why is it that EU leaders fail to understand the meaning of the words, Sovereign State.
(by the way Angela, tell Macron that the fishing rights aren't important)

 

[g0nz0]

"Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, has said the major obstacle to a Brexit deal is not access to British fishing waters but future regulatory standards in the UK,"
If this is the case then why bother to leave the EU in the first place. Does the EU expect the UK to remain a vassal state?
Just why is it that EU leaders fail to understand the meaning of the words, Sovereign State.
(by the way Angela, tell Macron that the fishing rights aren't important)

You seem to be having a few problems with the fonts there...

Why bother to leave in the first place? Interesting that you ask, as we're all wondering that, chief!

Of course the UK is sovereign. One of the competencies with being sovereign is the ability to trade a freedom for another.

The UK gets to decide if it wants tariff free single market access or not. If it does, there are conditions.

You don't have to take it. That's what sovereign means.

It does not mean that you get to dictate terms to third parties, including the EU. What bit of that do Brexiteers not get?

 

[Drifterwood]

"Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, has said the major obstacle to a Brexit deal is not access to British fishing waters but future regulatory standards in the UK,"
If this is the case then why bother to leave the EU in the first place. Does the EU expect the UK to remain a vassal state?
Just why is it that EU leaders fail to understand the meaning of the words, Sovereign State.
(by the way Angela, tell Macron that the fishing rights aren't important)

When you buy anything that has been exported, it has to conform to the standards of the UK or any other country that imports it for that matter, nothing has ever changed in this regard. Free trade does not mean no standards.

At the moment, we don't let people import chlorinated chicken for example. But if you want to make the UK the US' little bitch, then you will drop your pants and bend over.

Try importing something and selling it that doesn't conform to our standards. This is why we have customs and trading standards. I manufacture and sell to countries all over the globe. I have to meet their standrds. It's not difficult. If the UK wants to do business with the EU Bloc, it will need to conform to their standards like everyone else does. It's not difficult.

 

[g0nz0]

Little appetite on streets of Brussels for drama of crunch Brexit dinner

It may have been billed as the dinner that will decide the fate of Brexit, but on the half-frozen and almost wholly deserted streets of Brussels’ windswept European quarter there were few who seemed to know, and even fewer who cared.

“Are they really?” asked Emma Delprez, 37, a PR consultant, informed that the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, and Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, were due to meet later in a do-or-die attempt to break the impasse.

“I had no idea. I’ve kind of given up following it, to be honest. It seems to have been going on for ever. I don’t understand the ins and outs of it but the English do seem to be causing a lot of trouble. I hope whatever they get is worth it.”​

 

[chrisrobin]

When you buy anything that has been exported, it has to conform to the standards of the UK or any other country that imports it for that matter, nothing has ever changed in this regard. Free trade does not mean no standards.

At the moment, we don't let people import chlorinated chicken for example. But if you want to make the UK the US' little bitch, then you will drop your pants and bend over.

Try importing something and selling it that doesn't conform to our standards. This is why we have customs and trading standards. I manufacture and sell to countries all over the globe. I have to meet their standards. It's not difficult. If the UK wants to do business with the EU Bloc, it will need to conform to their standards like everyone else does. It's not difficult.

Who says the standards set by the EU are at a high enough bar.
You know and I know its not about setting or maintaining standards but of CONTROL.
Will the EU adhere to any standards the UK sets - for example the exporting of live animals!
You import and export according to the demands knowing that the wellbeing of people depends on it.
And lets face it over the years Greece had dropped its pants and bent over to accommodate the EU.

 

[g0nz0]

Who says the standards set by the EU are at a high enough bar.

Who cares? If the UK wants to clear the bar with margin, even better!!

These are minimum standards for sale into the single market.

You know and I know its not about setting or maintaining standards but of CONTROL.
Will the EU adhere to any standards the UK sets - for example the exporting of live animals!
You import and export according to the demands knowing that the wellbeing of people depends on it.
And lets face it over the years Greece had dropped its pants and bent over to accommodate the EU.

The problem is the UKs desire for cheap foods, and the long unwillingness of the Tories (despite, it seems for once, popular opinion) to rule out chlorinated chicken etc. etc. which the EU will not accept.

Government ready to open British markets to chlorinated chicken for US trade deal

MPs urge UK ban on chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef

Commons defeat for Brexit food standards amendment despite warnings | ITV News

Ministers plot to allow chlorinated chicken in UK supermarkets | Daily Mail Online

If the UK wants to set higher standards, great Right now it has the EUs standards. And there is a mechanism in the 1600 odd pages of proposed text to allow either side ratchet up standards, so yes the EU would have to agree to UK standards to sell into the UK.

Are you actually paying attention to any if the details of this, or is it all just an emotive response ? It's not like the details haven't been covered ad nauseum by UK media for the past year/number of years.

 

[Drifterwood]

Who says the standards set by the EU are at a high enough bar.
You know and I know its not about setting or maintaining standards but of CONTROL.
Will the EU adhere to any standards the UK sets - for example the exporting of live animals!
You import and export according to the demands knowing that the wellbeing of people depends on it.
And lets face it over the years Greece had dropped its pants and bent over to accommodate the EU.

As Gonzo says, it doesn't matter what the standards are.

Standards are used for many things. In the EU they are about minimum standards and protection of Bloc members' companies. The UK has chosen not to be a member of that club and therefore not to be protected by it.

The EU will adhere to the UK standards if it wants to do business with the UK and the UK will set the standards to suit its own goals. Hence your chlorinated chicken etc.

I have to admit, I don't really understand your next point.

Greece has been playing the same game since its full independence.

 

[g0nz0]

Michael Gove criticised for wrongly claiming EHIC and Erasmus will survive ‘for a period’ after no-deal Brexit

Yep, there is yet another an example of a coubtry patently unprepared for the cluster fuck that will arrive on 1st January.

Give the Tory track record in handling the Covid-19 crises, I fear for what is going to happen over the next year, irrespective at this stage of whether a deal can be reached or not...