Categories
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Disastrously successful. The EU’s Brexit negotiation
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Disastrously successful. The EU’s Brexit negotiation
I’m going to go all Godwin on you. Sorry. When people talk about the causes of World War Two, they often mention how Hitler was emboldened by his early success remilitarising the Rhineland without any real consequence, showing that the Treaty of Versailles was violable. This was not, however, the first occasion on which the settlement of the First World War was set aside by the losers.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Everton, ref. Absence of VAR. Cricket, May, EU, Corbyn Trump
Hence the significance of Juncker's comments today that the EU would agree to a permanent Customs Union membership for the UK which 301 MPs have already voted for
Though of course the irony is it's the EU that won't let our people go.
At this stage, the EU would surely rather negotiate with Corbyn/Labour. The latest statement that a customs union would remove a backstop is sailing pretty close to an open admission they'd rather have Labour in charge.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/26/juncker-may-backstop-eu-customs-union
And yet manufacturing has been moving abroad for years as a member of the EU. But only now when you might be personally affected does it become an issue. Got it.
Brexit is a disaster for the EU entirely of their own making?
What?
We are going to treat them just like Russia does.
What?
This crisis needs the man Cameron to come and solve it.
What? its the man Cameron whose caused it. And much else besides, tribalizing EU membership in British politics, hastening break up of UK, and as time passes in the post brexit world, increasing strain and both Labour and Tory parties to split over what EU policies to put in future manifestos, so probably destroyed both those parties and possibly first past the post too.
It was a horrible read. 😟
I also don’t think May’s deal is at all dead, let alone a skeleton. I think May’s deal will pass in a few weeks, largely unchanged.
What a weird end to the PB day.
Oh, is that a no deal witticism 😐. sorry 😐 😐 😐
BJO promised us interesting polls last night?
Shooting people in the streets?
Come on this is getting silly now.
He lives here in North Wales under Welsh labours appalling health care
Much worse than anything in England's NHS
Obviously not worried about excess deaths in Wales then.
With respect, you astound me
Cam the Man for a crisis of the EU’s own making? Wow. Really?
Mr Meeks has been on the Mezcal.
Incidentally, despite living in W Wales, I had treatment and surgery in Wrexham Maelor 3/4 years ago.
A brilliant caring consultant who I could contact anytime and excellent treatment that I could not fault. Could not have had better if I'd paid for it.
The real error of the post WWI settlement was not the treatment of Germany, but the way France and the U.K. went land-grabbing, so that a bit more of the world could look blue and pink on maps.
Nice bit of "whataboutery" but it's a by-product of globalisation that jobs move and I suspect that more have moved outside of the EU than inside. Up to now though we haven't actually be stupid enough to adopt a stance that actively encourages companies to leave.
Person who told me got the 6pt YG Tory lead one right before it was published. I didn't believe him on that one but he was correct.
So was expecting perhaps a YG with Lab ahead.
Oh well.
https://twitter.com/AllieHBNews/status/1089280642171527168
Goodnight.
Has Yvette’s ammendment got Front Bench support yet, or is it on its way into the waste paper basket of history?
This is pure middle england, early evening viewers. Marginal catnip.
Good luck Labour.
You talk a lot of sense, by which I mean I agree. Though while I liked Cameron I'm not sure many would go for your last sentence in your header!
The EU is currently taking the line that it is for Britain to come up with a new position. Certainly Britain needs to do that
Thing is, while I don't see much hope in passing the deal sans backstop and expecting the EU to accept that, it is technically us coming up with a new position, just not one more favourable to the EU. But as much as I do blame May for not coming up with an actual plan B, if parliament were to pass the deal sans backstop she would be acting on instruction from parliament, the EU would be well within their rights to refuse but it is not as though May would be going off without backing.
I certainly share much of Mr Meeks' concern both at the prospect of a no deal on relations, for both sides (which makes the occasional person's glee that the EU is not sorting out our mess rather misplaced, since the point is not that it is good for us, but good for them for there to be a deal) and that even if the deal scrapes through it will be a long and bitter legacy.
But I see no solution. Remaining takes away the immediate problem of how to leave, by definition, but hardly addresses all the problems that caused it to win in the first place, as well as the problem of how parliament would feel comfortable cancelling Brexit, but in terms of flexibility the EU seems to have lost its much vaunted love of a last minute fudge and is behaving no different than any petty nationalist, willing to lose it all rather than concede, especially on a point no one seems to actually want to go through with. But they are not about to throw Ireland under the bus.
Is it made by shamans from cactus water?
But with major caveat - we do not yet know the outcome.
Like, yeah, lay off the Mezcal.
That certainly seems the case with some of May's stupider ideas, in that someone leaks them, they are shot down, then a spokesman claims it was never even suggested. Cam is not the man to solve this mess. And who caused the mess is really immaterial to the question of getting a deal through now. The key for me is that the EU are the only ones really with the ability to significantly change the parameters of this high stakes game everyone is engaged in - yes, parliament could eventually swing behind remain, or permanent customs union, and the EU could respond to that, but we all know the EU are in a more powerful and thus potentially flexible position, and they could, if they wanted, stay in their powerful position but do something which alters the dynamic here and helps get a deal through.
They could, instead, choose to sit back and act superior about how this is not their fault and how this is a mess we've made, and they'd be mostly right, but that doesn't help them either. Sadly, expecting the EU to come to the rescue has been part of the May plan since Chequers, and they have made very clear that they are not prepared to do that. For all their vaunted wisdom, they'd rather see no deal just because it would prove we would be hurt worse.
If they cared about avoiding no deal they could get creative, not to save May, frankly who gives a shit about her now, but to save a deal of any kind. Winning won't do any good if there is no deal, so even if they think it unfair of them to concede more, it would see it through and still result in them being on top, and having ably demonstrated that leaving the EU is something others will not want to try.
It’s genuinely debatable what got 17.4 million leave voters to the polls, but it done the trick and we will brexit.
Lord Justice Judge Dots will have a go at summing up. [you can tippex the Dots bit out and put Meeks in]
Leave voters believed EU membership is far too expensive and most still do, they would like to see money freed up and a brexit dividend spent here in UK on health, education, affordable housing etc. also a key driver for leave votes was a genuine belief we have surrendered far too much sovereignty and control, control to prevent entry and to kick criminals out the country in particular, must take back control, return democratic control and decision-making to our own courts and parliament.
However that alone isn’t enough to account for 17.4 million voters. EU membership was simultaneously in minds of voters not just wishlist above they would like to see happen, but there needs to be change on what they don’t like, the more negative impacts of globalisation, disconnect between political elites (London) and their own run down communities, immigration, the scary slide to post industrial society, that super boosted to the 17.4 million voters and ensured UK married Miss hard brexit.
Once we marry brexit perceptions will change, the other half in this marriage isn’t going to live up to expectations and the marriage will be rocky, because
how does brexit help with the more negative impacts of globalisation,
How does brexit heal disconnect between political elites (London) and leave voters in run down communities
How does brexit ensure voters concerns for immigration are met
How does Brexit stop or mitigate the scary slide to post industrial society
The bottom line is it really doesn’t tackle any of those things. And the promised dowry for the marriage, the brexit dividend, there wont be much of one, will there?
My big fear is that both sides are now being dishonest. The Cooper crowd want remain but are too afraid to just say so so are seeking delay for now, and May may have given up on the deal even as she appears to be reviving it, since passing it without a backstop or with time limited backstop could just be an attempt to shift no deal blame onto the EU. That seems quite possible to me because the plan for ages has seemingly been to hope the EU can make some positive noises before a vote to enable it to pass, and it hasn't worked, and so they'll just pretend the EU will play ball and worry about it later.
My general feeling is that Cooper's kick the can plan will work, because it's just easier all around for MPs to avoid a decision, which works for Corbyn and co too for just a start.
But tomorrow I can look away from Brexit for once and focus on something else - I'm planning to see Schindler's List in the cinema.
I guess if they'd got really clever they could have put something extra outrageous in their to absorb the outrage then get conceded, but the EU has too many parties involved to bring off grand bluffs like that - something would leak or people who weren't in on the trick would publicly undermine it.
The UK will survive, and doubtless the EU will do, but it is a tragedy given the possibility for setting UK/EU relations on a new and better basis. Hopefully in a decade we can revisit whatever settlement we end up with and move it on to a more constructive basis.
The wisdom of the Swiss and others in never joining, but negotiating various forms of close relationship, is clearer and clearer.
Some people, when faced with a crisis, a deadline, a seemingly insurmountable challenge, rise to the occasion. Cameron was able to do that. May is not. I think that @AlistairM is referring to this quality in his delightfully provocative last paragraph. After all, wouldn’t we all prefer a leader with such an ability at a time like this?
What we need to ask is, "what were the goals of the EU in the negotiation?" We hear a lot about the EU wanting to make sure that the UK doesn't get a better deal outside of the EU - something which I've always been curious about because surely the EU and its supporters think that there is no price to being in the club - but I actually think the aim of the EU has always been to stop Brexit. No doubt they'd planned for this scenario many years ago and came up with the Northern Ireland border as the best mechanism for preventing the UK from leaving.
Now, the EU may get their way and Brexit may be cancelled - though that may be an even worse outcome for them in some ways. But I wonder if the potential for no deal is being underestimated by many in Brussels. Presumably they've worked out what they will do in a no deal scenario. Whilst I don't wish to see a no deal outcome, I am curious to see if the EU would insist on RoI patrolling the NI border. I suspect they wouldn't.
The problem the EU has now is that they have to give the impression that there will be a properly policed hard border if there’s no deal - otherwise why the need for the backstop in the first place?
This game of chicken could well end with no deal and no border - so we start negotiating again from a much more equal position. That’s not what the EU want at all.
It would have been a much better approach to have better quantified the Leave option in the referendum before the vote, but the government rushed the renegotiation and referendum, and hadn’t prepared for the possibility of a Leave vote.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-parliaments-38402140
David Cameron's famed "good in an essay crisis" reputation is forged on such a misunderstanding.
Therefore I don't buy Alastair's lead at all. Although the historical stuff about Turkey, about which I was broadly aware having read the Mandolin guy's other books, is interesting and little known.
May on the other hand adopted another, but equally doomed technique. Submitting the same essay for every question. Eventually it doesn’t quite fit and you don’t have the smarts to think of something new.
Meanwhile Corbyn hasn’t attended lectures, writes what he and his mates talk about and gets wildly hurt when he doesn’t get the marks he thinks he deserves.
Your historical analogy is interesting and you make a good point. In my own baby way, I think it's could be the more recent history that has caused this problem. I was 25 in 1975 and my knowledge of politics peaked then. (not that it was ever high). I remember the lies of that referendum at the time and now in retrospect.
Despite assertions by what was then the hard-left, the idea of a United Europe had no traction. It was actively mocked by the Europhiles. A common currency?, Laws coming from Brussels not related to trade? Figments of a paranoid imagination. Anyway, if any major changes are made, we'll have another vote.
The people who deny this are either political fanatics who read every word of the 1957 treaty or people not born then. Those who lived through the times often remember those blatant lies. Trust in politicians has suffered badly aa a result. When it comes to Europe, politicians lie, because they want to be in control.
Seeing Parliament demanding meaningful votes (control) brings back those memories. It's no longer about the facts of the argument, it's about who is in charge of the country. The people have a choice between a self-selected representative of one of two major parties who will vote for party gain or for their own pet project. Many voters see a choice between two candidates with an identical opinion on Europe. The referendum helped to break that logjam.
It's why Project Fear lost, and despite its continuing remorseless assault is making only small gains. As Mandy (not that one) said … "He would say that, wouldn't he?"
Of course, as the hard-left now favours the EU, we could all have false consciousness.
We have had all this stuff going on for over a year, with nondiscernable effect on polling, so repulsive as it is, it doesn't shift votes.
Good article, Mr. Meeks.
https://infacts.org/mythbusts/voters-werent-conned-1975-referendum/
Recently I have been reading this excellent book, which gives an excellent review of the issues of the time on both sides, and why we joined:
https://twitter.com/redhistorian/status/974230659525902336?s=19
At some point we would have arrived at a referendum come what may, the EU has a clear direction of travel that wasn’t supported by a majority of voters - even if it was supported by a majority of politicians.
Not a good look for the Tories among the younger crowd and women voters.
If our supposed target FTA destination is to have no hard border, that requires us to remain so closely in step on CU and SM, that one wonders what the point of Brexit is. If we want to deviate from this, then Irish Sea customs are perfectly viable once the DUP return to their usual obscurity rather than being coalition partners.
Good news, thanks to new front and rear wings there’s going to be less of a problem with differential front end grip this season.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.f1-rules-and-regulations-what's-new-for-2019.2DIt7TEs9YqI8IY6mEcwsM.html
I fully support the right of women to have abortions, and think it's sad that women in Northern Ireland don't have that. However, laws must be enacted by the relevant political bodies. There's no point devolving power if you're just going to override it.
Of course, as you say, this is 'not a good look' politically, which I'm sure never crossed the minds of the parties pushing for the reformation (NB I'm sure it's not their only motivation).
On reformation: the EU will continue to change, but it'll just be ever more integration
You may well have been a smarty-pants at 11 when it came to politics (and I'm glad you went on to a more fulfilling career elsewhere) but at 25, I had more of only a passing interest in the subject, and I suspect I represented the majority.
There were discordant voices but they were generally mocked. We were all Europhiles then. I read the Daily Mirror, the BBC was also Europhile and Tony Benn was the original swivel-eyed loon.
I should have remembered the old quotation. "Put not your trust in Prrinces."