It's very amusing, in a grim way, to see various Leavers' indignation at the fact that the EU is following the approach which the Leavers advocate for the UK - no deal better than a bad deal, sovereignty, sticking to their principles, holding and being prepared to use the cards, being prepared to walk away...
Quite so. I'm not sure why so many on here make it seem more complicated than it really is. We chose to leave the EU club. Now we want an FTA with them. The EU says - well, you've left the club so these are our conditions for an FTA. Like it or lump it. We say - that's not fair. The EU says - well we didn't ask you to leave, you chose to. So, if you want an FTA with us that doesn't jeopardise the single market, these are our terms. You choose. Isn't it as simple as that? The fact that the EU may be cutting off its nose to spite its face is neither here nor there. We made the big choice in 2016.
No, it isn't that simple, because now the EU is saying if we don't sign up for an FTA with them (or an agreement with all the obligations of one) they prevent our airlines etc. from operating on the continent - something that no other country, FTA or otherwise, is subjected to. Hardly 'take it or leave it' - it's 'take it or take it'. We should thank them for demonstrating what utter bullshit they are, and get on with life outside.
No Deal is not just some abstract concept. It means the absence of a deal. Hence airspace, widgets, financial services, you name it.
We don't get to have just a few things because they are in a state of non-existence until they are negotiated. We don't get them because we are British damnit.
No deal means our trading relationship is not there and the two countries are approaching this from scratch. Of course we have agreements which might or might not be used as a basis for any future agreement.
That is what no dealers want.
And they might get it. Good and hard.
Those actively wanting no free trade agreement are I would say on the fringe. This does not mean that people would rather sign up to ludicrous demands just to get one. Dynamic regulatory alignment and giving up 80% of fishing resources for example.
The gross miscalculation Macron is making is that he thinks come April the UK will come crawling back for a deal on punitive terms it won’t accept now and that a deal can be signed off in 2022 on any terms the EU likes. This wouldn’t make any sense for the UK, given any disruption to supply chains and relocation of staff / headquarters would already have occurred and likely not be reversed even with a deal implemented. And it also misunderstands the British psyche and more importantly that of Conservative Party members, who faced with such provocation are more likely to replace the PM with an ultra Brexiteer than one of the few Remainers left in the Parliamentary Party.
Agreed. I think if it's No Deal, that's it. We'll acclimatise politically and economically and won't have any interest in coming back to this. Their leverage will diminish, not increase. And I think that even applies to Starmer if he wins in GE2024 - our interests and advantages as a nation will have shifted decisively by then.
This really is last chance saloon for the EU if they want us to be in anything like a symbiotic relationship with them.
No interest in coming back to a trade deal with Europe?
Aren't we Brexiting to be able to negotiate trade deals?
Absolutely, and we've replicated and started to go beyond almost all of our existing ones in less than 11 months, and have several new ones in play.
If the EU want to play fair then that door will always be open. Else, nope.
Also, one of the reasons why the LPF matters is that the EU want the deal to cover all areas of the UK/EU relationship. So they can unilaterally make the terms of trade worse for the UK (the bit we're interested in) but leave the wider deal unaffected including security cooperation, fishing rights and shipping from all of which the EU benefits a great deal more than the UK.
This is why the LPF/Governance combination is unacceptable.
The EU wants something much wider than a trade deal but simultaneously wants the unilateral right to worsen the actual trade terms with us without the right of retaliation by the UK other than deciding we've had enough and abrogating the treaty. Sounds familiar.
But if they unilaterally worsen the terms of trade we can tell them to sod off.
We are a sovereign nation. (Always were, obvs.)
Yeah we already did it once, but I think building a relationship where we don't need to use the nuclear option is a better long term foundation for a relationship. Otherwise we're just waiting for the day where we tell to get fucked again.
So we tell them to fuck off now in order to avoid the possibility of maybe having to tell them to fuck off at some unspecified time in the future? Makes sense, great!
Yes because the reality will be that we will accept their stupid proposals for a long time before we decide to fuck them off, all the while it makes the whole economy uncompetitive which is essentially what the LPF is designed to do, to ensure that the UK economy never becomes competitive with the EU for a larger share of global trade.
LPF is designed to prevent the EU being forced into becoming a deregulated low wage shithole in just because the Tories decide that's what we deserve. It's a sensible precaution.
Except that it was the Tories that introduced the national living wage and a whole host of employee protections. It's a Tory government that signed us up to various climate agreements and the net zero pledge. Get off your high horse.
Anyway, the UK has agreed to baseline standards and non-regression clauses wrt to the baseline and binding arbitration for it. The level of the baseline is up for debate but I'm sure a suitable one could easily be found if the EU dropped the future alignment crap.
I don't understand the problem with the ratchet clause version of alignment. If it's sensible to not regress from current shared standards now, surely it's also sensible to not regress from future shared standards. Norms change over time, after all.
Perhaps because its up to the people of this country what they want in terms of legislation on workers rights not some foreign civil servant. If for example people wanted to vote for a party that reduced vat on electric and gas to 0% then they should be able to and not be told they can't.
This was part of the issue with the EU we could only vote for things they approved off. A lot of labour's manifesto in 2019 would have had the eu saying no you can't do that for example.
But the point of the ratchet clause is the new non regression point is based on *our own laws passed by our own parliament* and if we then choose to regress *we can* but the EU can defend itself using tariffs. Without that right, the EU might be forced to lower its regulations to match ours or face its firms going out of business. So all they are doing is protecting *their* right to set their own laws. It seems like a reasonable protection of their sovereignty that leaves ours intact. It's a strange hill to die on.
It is not a non regression thing though. If it was an agreement purely that neither would lower standards below that at the point of the deal I think it would have been done. What the EU is wanting though is that if they increase standards or introduce new ones that we have to implement them too....it is that which is unacceptable
No, we don't have to implement them too. If our standards diverge too much over time and either side thinks that is harming their economy then the affected party can apply tariffs. That is in order to protect their sovereign right to set their own laws in the future without that leading to them being undercut. It doesn't seem that outrageous a demand.
And yet these terms aren't applied to trade deals with Japan or Canada by the EU.
Actually, I kind of understand and accept the EU wanting and needing a bit of it (we are a very large competitor right on their doorstep) but that should be confined to a common baseline of standards with "parameters" for joint and equitable review if and when we or they decide to diverge. That's what friendly partners do.
There's no excuse for them to be quite so cunty about it, which they are.
You remind me of a former colleague who appeared in court as an expert witness and was shocked by how unnecessarily hostile the opposing counsel was while cross-examining him.
I think the point is this ultimately is about "what kind of a country are we." There is an analogy with the Falklands (I know, I know) which didn't really make any economic sense and was hugely risky, and which wise heads warned against. But we simply were not prepared to be nationally humiliated. I think this may be what this comes down to now if, indeed, there is a No deal.
Alternatively there's Suez, where we did end up being nationally humiliated, and ended up spending the rest of the 20th Century doing what we were told by the entity doing the humiliation.
National character changes - sometimes overnight. No national character, not ours, not anyone elses, is wrought in stone. Ask a Vietnam vet about his experiences coming home compared to those of his father's generation.
It's very amusing, in a grim way, to see various Leavers' indignation at the fact that the EU is following the approach which the Leavers advocate for the UK - no deal better than a bad deal, sovereignty, sticking to their principles, holding and being prepared to use the cards, being prepared to walk away...
Quite so. I'm not sure why so many on here make it seem more complicated than it really is. We chose to leave the EU club. Now we want an FTA with them. The EU says - well, you've left the club so these are our conditions for an FTA. Like it or lump it. We say - that's not fair. The EU says - well we didn't ask you to leave, you chose to. So, if you want an FTA with us that doesn't jeopardise the single market, these are our terms. You choose. Isn't it as simple as that? The fact that the EU may be cutting off its nose to spite its face is neither here nor there. We made the big choice in 2016.
No, it isn't that simple, because now the EU is saying if we don't sign up for an FTA with them (or an agreement with all the obligations of one) they prevent our airlines etc. from operating on the continent - something that no other country, FTA or otherwise, is subjected to. Hardly 'take it or leave it' - it's 'take it or take it'. We should thank them for demonstrating what utter bullshit they are, and get on with life outside.
No Deal is not just some abstract concept. It means the absence of a deal. Hence airspace, widgets, financial services, you name it.
We don't get to have just a few things because they are in a state of non-existence until they are negotiated. We don't get them because we are British damnit.
No deal means our trading relationship is not there and the two countries are approaching this from scratch. Of course we have agreements which might or might not be used as a basis for any future agreement.
That is what no dealers want.
And they might get it. Good and hard.
Those actively wanting no free trade agreement are I would say on the fringe. This does not mean that people would rather sign up to ludicrous demands just to get one. Dynamic regulatory alignment and giving up 80% of fishing resources for example.
The gross miscalculation Macron is making is that he thinks come April the UK will come crawling back for a deal on punitive terms it won’t accept now and that a deal can be signed off in 2022 on any terms the EU likes. This wouldn’t make any sense for the UK, given any disruption to supply chains and relocation of staff / headquarters would already have occurred and likely not be reversed even with a deal implemented. And it also misunderstands the British psyche and more importantly that of Conservative Party members, who faced with such provocation are more likely to replace the PM with an ultra Brexiteer than one of the few Remainers left in the Parliamentary Party.
Agreed. I think if it's No Deal, that's it. We'll acclimatise politically and economically and won't have any interest in coming back to this. Their leverage will diminish, not increase. And I think that even applies to Starmer if he wins in GE2024 - our interests and advantages as a nation will have shifted decisively by then.
This really is last chance saloon for the EU if they want us to be in anything like a symbiotic relationship with them.
No interest in coming back to a trade deal with Europe?
Aren't we Brexiting to be able to negotiate trade deals?
It depends on the terms of trade, doesn't it? We've negotiated a pretty decent deal with Singapore, for example. That has mutually beneficial terms of trade, if the EU offer mutually beneficial terms I'm sure whoever is in charge will listen to said offer. If it includes a bunch of bullshit about LPFs and ratchet clauses designed to make the UK economy uncompetitive then they won't and we'll just live with WTO terms.
As I've been banging on about all week, once the UK gets back its territorial waters, the ability to diverge standards and regulations and post-action arbitration under WTO rules none of that will be given up again. Any future trading arrangement with the EU will have to abide by all of these principles.
Your first big go at negotiating a trade deal ends in no trade deal.
Not a ringing endorsement of your negotiating ability is it?
Depends who is on the other side.
Fantastic. Too tough to handle we walk away. Singapore? Piece of p*ss. Japan? Worse than the deal via the EU we already had. Large economic bloc such as the EU? Run a mile.
The EU have a very strong motivation to play hardball. It's more politics than economics with this deal.
And we have a strong motivation to play hardball. We will shortly find out who was more justified in doing so. I think with our pocket aces we should be fine. But nothing's certain of course.
Apparently the UK-Canada deal may not be ready by Jan 1st, so we will end up trading with them on WTO terms... We can't even get a Canada style deal with Canada, it seems.
It has been agreed and signed.
Not ratified by Canada yet.
It's been laid before parliament today but it won't complete the legislative process until 2nd week of January, I think.
Both the UK and Canada are agreeing temporary mitigations and arrangements to span the 10-14 day gap - because they are friendly countries.
Aside from the very conservative broad brush statements from the likes of Witty and Wear A Mask Next Winter Valance, has anyone come up with a sensible forecast of when the vaccination schedule will make a material hole in R and more importantly the hospitalisation data?
If the rollout goes to plan (and I've heard some interesting stories about that) we should make a huge dent in R by Easter.
I thought the more excitable forecasts are that pretty much all over 60s and vulnerable groups would be done by then? Maybe it takes to Easter for R to come down to a tiny number but I’d have hoped given the focus on doing the over 80s this calendar year, we’d have very good news on hospitals numbers before then wouldn’t we?
The government unfortunately have got this arse backwards.
They really should have vaccinated NHS and care home staff and key workers first.
Cunard have just cancelled our planned transatlantic crossing for early May
Hardly a surprise but depressing nevertheless. Time to start planning 2022 holidays?
I hope it's up and running by the end of next year/start os 2022. Covid permitting we intend to move back to Connecticut and I want to take our two elder dogs (touch wood they're still around) on the QM2. I don't think they can fly.
Things may be more fluid in these days of COVID, but in the past I've seen on the British Expats board I'm on people reporting the QM's pet slots filling up a couple of years in advance!
It's very amusing, in a grim way, to see various Leavers' indignation at the fact that the EU is following the approach which the Leavers advocate for the UK - no deal better than a bad deal, sovereignty, sticking to their principles, holding and being prepared to use the cards, being prepared to walk away...
Quite so. I'm not sure why so many on here make it seem more complicated than it really is. We chose to leave the EU club. Now we want an FTA with them. The EU says - well, you've left the club so these are our conditions for an FTA. Like it or lump it. We say - that's not fair. The EU says - well we didn't ask you to leave, you chose to. So, if you want an FTA with us that doesn't jeopardise the single market, these are our terms. You choose. Isn't it as simple as that? The fact that the EU may be cutting off its nose to spite its face is neither here nor there. We made the big choice in 2016.
No, it isn't that simple, because now the EU is saying if we don't sign up for an FTA with them (or an agreement with all the obligations of one) they prevent our airlines etc. from operating on the continent - something that no other country, FTA or otherwise, is subjected to. Hardly 'take it or leave it' - it's 'take it or take it'. We should thank them for demonstrating what utter bullshit they are, and get on with life outside.
No Deal is not just some abstract concept. It means the absence of a deal. Hence airspace, widgets, financial services, you name it.
We don't get to have just a few things because they are in a state of non-existence until they are negotiated. We don't get them because we are British damnit.
No deal means our trading relationship is not there and the two countries are approaching this from scratch. Of course we have agreements which might or might not be used as a basis for any future agreement.
That is what no dealers want.
And they might get it. Good and hard.
Those actively wanting no free trade agreement are I would say on the fringe. This does not mean that people would rather sign up to ludicrous demands just to get one. Dynamic regulatory alignment and giving up 80% of fishing resources for example.
The gross miscalculation Macron is making is that he thinks come April the UK will come crawling back for a deal on punitive terms it won’t accept now and that a deal can be signed off in 2022 on any terms the EU likes. This wouldn’t make any sense for the UK, given any disruption to supply chains and relocation of staff / headquarters would already have occurred and likely not be reversed even with a deal implemented. And it also misunderstands the British psyche and more importantly that of Conservative Party members, who faced with such provocation are more likely to replace the PM with an ultra Brexiteer than one of the few Remainers left in the Parliamentary Party.
Agreed. I think if it's No Deal, that's it. We'll acclimatise politically and economically and won't have any interest in coming back to this. Their leverage will diminish, not increase. And I think that even applies to Starmer if he wins in GE2024 - our interests and advantages as a nation will have shifted decisively by then.
This really is last chance saloon for the EU if they want us to be in anything like a symbiotic relationship with them.
No interest in coming back to a trade deal with Europe?
Aren't we Brexiting to be able to negotiate trade deals?
Yes that's exactly correct. But it's clear the EU is not offering a trade deal, it seems intent on only offering a supplicant political and regulatory relationship.
By end of 2023, we might be full members of TPP, with Biden's administration working to joining too. It will prove an historic miscalculation if the EU forces the UK out of its economy and political orbit and quite a sad one. But not much we can do about that.
I mean it's called a negotiation.
A negotiation only succeeds if all parties feel they want to sign it.
Right now that's not the case. We have fundamentally different objectives. OK fair enough, the mature thing to do then is to shake hands and walk away. Maybe in a couple of years they'll want to resume talks more to our liking.
Absolutely. And we are about to see whether the UK govt thinks it is possible to walk away.
Thing is, the EU's position hasn't changed much if at all over the past few years. Why didn't we realise that earlier on and walk then. And also (which @MaxPB is fond of pointing out, rightly) if we were ever going to walk away or think of walking away why haven't we prepared to walk away?
Also, one of the reasons why the LPF matters is that the EU want the deal to cover all areas of the UK/EU relationship. So they can unilaterally make the terms of trade worse for the UK (the bit we're interested in) but leave the wider deal unaffected including security cooperation, fishing rights and shipping from all of which the EU benefits a great deal more than the UK.
This is why the LPF/Governance combination is unacceptable.
The EU wants something much wider than a trade deal but simultaneously wants the unilateral right to worsen the actual trade terms with us without the right of retaliation by the UK other than deciding we've had enough and abrogating the treaty. Sounds familiar.
But if they unilaterally worsen the terms of trade we can tell them to sod off.
We are a sovereign nation. (Always were, obvs.)
Yeah we already did it once, but I think building a relationship where we don't need to use the nuclear option is a better long term foundation for a relationship. Otherwise we're just waiting for the day where we tell to get fucked again.
So we tell them to fuck off now in order to avoid the possibility of maybe having to tell them to fuck off at some unspecified time in the future? Makes sense, great!
Yes because the reality will be that we will accept their stupid proposals for a long time before we decide to fuck them off, all the while it makes the whole economy uncompetitive which is essentially what the LPF is designed to do, to ensure that the UK economy never becomes competitive with the EU for a larger share of global trade.
LPF is designed to prevent the EU being forced into becoming a deregulated low wage shithole in just because the Tories decide that's what we deserve. It's a sensible precaution.
Except that it was the Tories that introduced the national living wage and a whole host of employee protections. It's a Tory government that signed us up to various climate agreements and the net zero pledge. Get off your high horse.
Anyway, the UK has agreed to baseline standards and non-regression clauses wrt to the baseline and binding arbitration for it. The level of the baseline is up for debate but I'm sure a suitable one could easily be found if the EU dropped the future alignment crap.
I don't understand the problem with the ratchet clause version of alignment. If it's sensible to not regress from current shared standards now, surely it's also sensible to not regress from future shared standards. Norms change over time, after all.
Perhaps because its up to the people of this country what they want in terms of legislation on workers rights not some foreign civil servant. If for example people wanted to vote for a party that reduced vat on electric and gas to 0% then they should be able to and not be told they can't.
This was part of the issue with the EU we could only vote for things they approved off. A lot of labour's manifesto in 2019 would have had the eu saying no you can't do that for example.
But the point of the ratchet clause is the new non regression point is based on *our own laws passed by our own parliament* and if we then choose to regress *we can* but the EU can defend itself using tariffs. Without that right, the EU might be forced to lower its regulations to match ours or face its firms going out of business. So all they are doing is protecting *their* right to set their own laws. It seems like a reasonable protection of their sovereignty that leaves ours intact. It's a strange hill to die on.
It is not a non regression thing though. If it was an agreement purely that neither would lower standards below that at the point of the deal I think it would have been done. What the EU is wanting though is that if they increase standards or introduce new ones that we have to implement them too....it is that which is unacceptable
No, we don't have to implement them too. If our standards diverge too much over time and either side thinks that is harming their economy then the affected party can apply tariffs. That is in order to protect their sovereign right to set their own laws in the future without that leading to them being undercut. It doesn't seem that outrageous a demand.
And yet these terms aren't applied to trade deals with Japan or Canada by the EU.
Exports from the EU to the UK are 5x those to Japan and 8x those to Canada, might explain it.
No it doesn't explain it. They have 5x to 8x the benefits from agreeing a deal then. 🤷🏻♂️
Doesn't change it from being a net positive to a net negative.
There should be a notification clause for termination of the agreement. If the EU feel that we have sufficiently diverged from them that they wish to end the agreement and start putting in tariffs they ought to be able to invoke the termination clause of the agreement - the Article 50 so to speak. No need for an in-built ratchet.
So you are not OK with them being able to apply selective tariffs but you are OK with them applying tariffs on everything? It's a view, as they say...
I'm OK with them being able to apply tariffs because we haven't (yet) reached a deal.
I'm not OK with them being applying tariffs pre-arbitration when we have a deal.
The whole point of a deal is to get rid of the threat of tariffs. Its like suggesting that getting married with a partner who promises to commit adultery less often if you're married is better than them being single and free to sleep with whoever they want. If we're not committed I don't care what they do but if we make a committment I want it honoured.
It's very amusing, in a grim way, to see various Leavers' indignation at the fact that the EU is following the approach which the Leavers advocate for the UK - no deal better than a bad deal, sovereignty, sticking to their principles, holding and being prepared to use the cards, being prepared to walk away...
Quite so. I'm not sure why so many on here make it seem more complicated than it really is. We chose to leave the EU club. Now we want an FTA with them. The EU says - well, you've left the club so these are our conditions for an FTA. Like it or lump it. We say - that's not fair. The EU says - well we didn't ask you to leave, you chose to. So, if you want an FTA with us that doesn't jeopardise the single market, these are our terms. You choose. Isn't it as simple as that? The fact that the EU may be cutting off its nose to spite its face is neither here nor there. We made the big choice in 2016.
No, it isn't that simple, because now the EU is saying if we don't sign up for an FTA with them (or an agreement with all the obligations of one) they prevent our airlines etc. from operating on the continent - something that no other country, FTA or otherwise, is subjected to. Hardly 'take it or leave it' - it's 'take it or take it'. We should thank them for demonstrating what utter bullshit they are, and get on with life outside.
No Deal is not just some abstract concept. It means the absence of a deal. Hence airspace, widgets, financial services, you name it.
We don't get to have just a few things because they are in a state of non-existence until they are negotiated. We don't get them because we are British damnit.
No deal means our trading relationship is not there and the two countries are approaching this from scratch. Of course we have agreements which might or might not be used as a basis for any future agreement.
That is what no dealers want.
And they might get it. Good and hard.
Those actively wanting no free trade agreement are I would say on the fringe. This does not mean that people would rather sign up to ludicrous demands just to get one. Dynamic regulatory alignment and giving up 80% of fishing resources for example.
The gross miscalculation Macron is making is that he thinks come April the UK will come crawling back for a deal on punitive terms it won’t accept now and that a deal can be signed off in 2022 on any terms the EU likes. This wouldn’t make any sense for the UK, given any disruption to supply chains and relocation of staff / headquarters would already have occurred and likely not be reversed even with a deal implemented. And it also misunderstands the British psyche and more importantly that of Conservative Party members, who faced with such provocation are more likely to replace the PM with an ultra Brexiteer than one of the few Remainers left in the Parliamentary Party.
Agreed. I think if it's No Deal, that's it. We'll acclimatise politically and economically and won't have any interest in coming back to this. Their leverage will diminish, not increase. And I think that even applies to Starmer if he wins in GE2024 - our interests and advantages as a nation will have shifted decisively by then.
This really is last chance saloon for the EU if they want us to be in anything like a symbiotic relationship with them.
No interest in coming back to a trade deal with Europe?
Aren't we Brexiting to be able to negotiate trade deals?
It depends on the terms of trade, doesn't it? We've negotiated a pretty decent deal with Singapore, for example. That has mutually beneficial terms of trade, if the EU offer mutually beneficial terms I'm sure whoever is in charge will listen to said offer. If it includes a bunch of bullshit about LPFs and ratchet clauses designed to make the UK economy uncompetitive then they won't and we'll just live with WTO terms.
As I've been banging on about all week, once the UK gets back its territorial waters, the ability to diverge standards and regulations and post-action arbitration under WTO rules none of that will be given up again. Any future trading arrangement with the EU will have to abide by all of these principles.
Your first big go at negotiating a trade deal ends in no trade deal.
Not a ringing endorsement of your negotiating ability is it?
I don't think you can make that judgement. The UK has got free trade deals with a pretty decent number of countries now. As of today its 28 deals with over 30 countries.
I think what it shows is that politics trumps economics for both the UK and EU. Their desire to keep us in their orbit is more important to them than ensuring they can still easily sell us wine, (our own) fish and cars and our desire to be fully independent of the EU means that we're willing to live with not being able to easily sell them financial products and other services.
What's interesting is that we're actually in a reasonably good position wrt non-EU trade. I've only got a bit of insight into the continued talks between Japan and the UK but it's quite ambitious from what I've heard. I'm also sure that we're going to continue talking to Canada to extend the existing terms.
I think the international view is that the UK has played a fair game, at least that's what the management view is from Japan.
It's very amusing, in a grim way, to see various Leavers' indignation at the fact that the EU is following the approach which the Leavers advocate for the UK - no deal better than a bad deal, sovereignty, sticking to their principles, holding and being prepared to use the cards, being prepared to walk away...
Quite so. I'm not sure why so many on here make it seem more complicated than it really is. We chose to leave the EU club. Now we want an FTA with them. The EU says - well, you've left the club so these are our conditions for an FTA. Like it or lump it. We say - that's not fair. The EU says - well we didn't ask you to leave, you chose to. So, if you want an FTA with us that doesn't jeopardise the single market, these are our terms. You choose. Isn't it as simple as that? The fact that the EU may be cutting off its nose to spite its face is neither here nor there. We made the big choice in 2016.
No, it isn't that simple, because now the EU is saying if we don't sign up for an FTA with them (or an agreement with all the obligations of one) they prevent our airlines etc. from operating on the continent - something that no other country, FTA or otherwise, is subjected to. Hardly 'take it or leave it' - it's 'take it or take it'. We should thank them for demonstrating what utter bullshit they are, and get on with life outside.
No Deal is not just some abstract concept. It means the absence of a deal. Hence airspace, widgets, financial services, you name it.
We don't get to have just a few things because they are in a state of non-existence until they are negotiated. We don't get them because we are British damnit.
No deal means our trading relationship is not there and the two countries are approaching this from scratch. Of course we have agreements which might or might not be used as a basis for any future agreement.
That is what no dealers want.
And they might get it. Good and hard.
Those actively wanting no free trade agreement are I would say on the fringe. This does not mean that people would rather sign up to ludicrous demands just to get one. Dynamic regulatory alignment and giving up 80% of fishing resources for example.
The gross miscalculation Macron is making is that he thinks come April the UK will come crawling back for a deal on punitive terms it won’t accept now and that a deal can be signed off in 2022 on any terms the EU likes. This wouldn’t make any sense for the UK, given any disruption to supply chains and relocation of staff / headquarters would already have occurred and likely not be reversed even with a deal implemented. And it also misunderstands the British psyche and more importantly that of Conservative Party members, who faced with such provocation are more likely to replace the PM with an ultra Brexiteer than one of the few Remainers left in the Parliamentary Party.
Agreed. I think if it's No Deal, that's it. We'll acclimatise politically and economically and won't have any interest in coming back to this. Their leverage will diminish, not increase. And I think that even applies to Starmer if he wins in GE2024 - our interests and advantages as a nation will have shifted decisively by then.
This really is last chance saloon for the EU if they want us to be in anything like a symbiotic relationship with them.
No interest in coming back to a trade deal with Europe?
Aren't we Brexiting to be able to negotiate trade deals?
It depends on the terms of trade, doesn't it? We've negotiated a pretty decent deal with Singapore, for example. That has mutually beneficial terms of trade, if the EU offer mutually beneficial terms I'm sure whoever is in charge will listen to said offer. If it includes a bunch of bullshit about LPFs and ratchet clauses designed to make the UK economy uncompetitive then they won't and we'll just live with WTO terms.
As I've been banging on about all week, once the UK gets back its territorial waters, the ability to diverge standards and regulations and post-action arbitration under WTO rules none of that will be given up again. Any future trading arrangement with the EU will have to abide by all of these principles.
Yes, we're not going through the pain barrier and adjustment for nothing, only to give the powers away again later.
I imagine @ydoethur will be simultaneously pleased and stressed out about online learning coming back from Monday. Hancock also just announced mass testing for all London schoolchildren.
It's very amusing, in a grim way, to see various Leavers' indignation at the fact that the EU is following the approach which the Leavers advocate for the UK - no deal better than a bad deal, sovereignty, sticking to their principles, holding and being prepared to use the cards, being prepared to walk away...
Quite so. I'm not sure why so many on here make it seem more complicated than it really is. We chose to leave the EU club. Now we want an FTA with them. The EU says - well, you've left the club so these are our conditions for an FTA. Like it or lump it. We say - that's not fair. The EU says - well we didn't ask you to leave, you chose to. So, if you want an FTA with us that doesn't jeopardise the single market, these are our terms. You choose. Isn't it as simple as that? The fact that the EU may be cutting off its nose to spite its face is neither here nor there. We made the big choice in 2016.
No, it isn't that simple, because now the EU is saying if we don't sign up for an FTA with them (or an agreement with all the obligations of one) they prevent our airlines etc. from operating on the continent - something that no other country, FTA or otherwise, is subjected to. Hardly 'take it or leave it' - it's 'take it or take it'. We should thank them for demonstrating what utter bullshit they are, and get on with life outside.
No Deal is not just some abstract concept. It means the absence of a deal. Hence airspace, widgets, financial services, you name it.
We don't get to have just a few things because they are in a state of non-existence until they are negotiated. We don't get them because we are British damnit.
No deal means our trading relationship is not there and the two countries are approaching this from scratch. Of course we have agreements which might or might not be used as a basis for any future agreement.
That is what no dealers want.
And they might get it. Good and hard.
Those actively wanting no free trade agreement are I would say on the fringe. This does not mean that people would rather sign up to ludicrous demands just to get one. Dynamic regulatory alignment and giving up 80% of fishing resources for example.
The gross miscalculation Macron is making is that he thinks come April the UK will come crawling back for a deal on punitive terms it won’t accept now and that a deal can be signed off in 2022 on any terms the EU likes. This wouldn’t make any sense for the UK, given any disruption to supply chains and relocation of staff / headquarters would already have occurred and likely not be reversed even with a deal implemented. And it also misunderstands the British psyche and more importantly that of Conservative Party members, who faced with such provocation are more likely to replace the PM with an ultra Brexiteer than one of the few Remainers left in the Parliamentary Party.
Agreed. I think if it's No Deal, that's it. We'll acclimatise politically and economically and won't have any interest in coming back to this. Their leverage will diminish, not increase. And I think that even applies to Starmer if he wins in GE2024 - our interests and advantages as a nation will have shifted decisively by then.
This really is last chance saloon for the EU if they want us to be in anything like a symbiotic relationship with them.
No interest in coming back to a trade deal with Europe?
Aren't we Brexiting to be able to negotiate trade deals?
Yes that's exactly correct. But it's clear the EU is not offering a trade deal, it seems intent on only offering a supplicant political and regulatory relationship.
By end of 2023, we might be full members of TPP, with Biden's administration working to joining too. It will prove an historic miscalculation if the EU forces the UK out of its economy and political orbit and quite a sad one. But not much we can do about that.
I mean it's called a negotiation.
A negotiation only succeeds if all parties feel they want to sign it.
Right now that's not the case. We have fundamentally different objectives. OK fair enough, the mature thing to do then is to shake hands and walk away. Maybe in a couple of years they'll want to resume talks more to our liking.
Absolutely. And we are about to see whether the UK govt thinks it is possible to walk away.
Thing is, the EU's position hasn't changed much if at all over the past few years. Why didn't we realise that earlier on and walk then. And also (which @MaxPB is fond of pointing out, rightly) if we were ever going to walk away or think of walking away why haven't we prepared to walk away?
Perhaps because we thought that the EU would move?
Just because they said they wouldn't doesn't mean they wouldn't. There's still hope they might in the next four days.
Honestly, the analogies are more irritating than a gross of Twitter re-posts.
At least they are being used to grapple some fairly complex issues in this thread. Unlike our daily digest of being told we're hurtling toward a cliff edge whilst shooting ourselves in the foot and trying to have our cake and eat it.
Analogies have been deployed here in order to explain aspects of Brexit since before the referendum itself. Invariably they obfuscate rather than explain.
Yes, they make it hard to see the wood for the trees.
Or indeed the sausages for the chipolatas.
This analogy is going from bad to wurst.
I think Brexit is best thought of as the bread bit of a Frankfurter hot dog. In a wurst case scenario.
It's very amusing, in a grim way, to see various Leavers' indignation at the fact that the EU is following the approach which the Leavers advocate for the UK - no deal better than a bad deal, sovereignty, sticking to their principles, holding and being prepared to use the cards, being prepared to walk away...
Quite so. I'm not sure why so many on here make it seem more complicated than it really is. We chose to leave the EU club. Now we want an FTA with them. The EU says - well, you've left the club so these are our conditions for an FTA. Like it or lump it. We say - that's not fair. The EU says - well we didn't ask you to leave, you chose to. So, if you want an FTA with us that doesn't jeopardise the single market, these are our terms. You choose. Isn't it as simple as that? The fact that the EU may be cutting off its nose to spite its face is neither here nor there. We made the big choice in 2016.
No, it isn't that simple, because now the EU is saying if we don't sign up for an FTA with them (or an agreement with all the obligations of one) they prevent our airlines etc. from operating on the continent - something that no other country, FTA or otherwise, is subjected to. Hardly 'take it or leave it' - it's 'take it or take it'. We should thank them for demonstrating what utter bullshit they are, and get on with life outside.
No Deal is not just some abstract concept. It means the absence of a deal. Hence airspace, widgets, financial services, you name it.
We don't get to have just a few things because they are in a state of non-existence until they are negotiated. We don't get them because we are British damnit.
No deal means our trading relationship is not there and the two countries are approaching this from scratch. Of course we have agreements which might or might not be used as a basis for any future agreement.
That is what no dealers want.
And they might get it. Good and hard.
Those actively wanting no free trade agreement are I would say on the fringe. This does not mean that people would rather sign up to ludicrous demands just to get one. Dynamic regulatory alignment and giving up 80% of fishing resources for example.
The gross miscalculation Macron is making is that he thinks come April the UK will come crawling back for a deal on punitive terms it won’t accept now and that a deal can be signed off in 2022 on any terms the EU likes. This wouldn’t make any sense for the UK, given any disruption to supply chains and relocation of staff / headquarters would already have occurred and likely not be reversed even with a deal implemented. And it also misunderstands the British psyche and more importantly that of Conservative Party members, who faced with such provocation are more likely to replace the PM with an ultra Brexiteer than one of the few Remainers left in the Parliamentary Party.
Agreed. I think if it's No Deal, that's it. We'll acclimatise politically and economically and won't have any interest in coming back to this. Their leverage will diminish, not increase. And I think that even applies to Starmer if he wins in GE2024 - our interests and advantages as a nation will have shifted decisively by then.
This really is last chance saloon for the EU if they want us to be in anything like a symbiotic relationship with them.
I think the point is this ultimately is about "what kind of a country are we." There is an analogy with the Falklands (I know, I know) which didn't really make any economic sense and was hugely risky, and which wise heads warned against. But we simply were not prepared to be nationally humiliated. I think this may be what this comes down to now if, indeed, there is a No deal.
The EU feels humiliated about us simply approving a vaccine "early".
Also, one of the reasons why the LPF matters is that the EU want the deal to cover all areas of the UK/EU relationship. So they can unilaterally make the terms of trade worse for the UK (the bit we're interested in) but leave the wider deal unaffected including security cooperation, fishing rights and shipping from all of which the EU benefits a great deal more than the UK.
This is why the LPF/Governance combination is unacceptable.
The EU wants something much wider than a trade deal but simultaneously wants the unilateral right to worsen the actual trade terms with us without the right of retaliation by the UK other than deciding we've had enough and abrogating the treaty. Sounds familiar.
But if they unilaterally worsen the terms of trade we can tell them to sod off.
We are a sovereign nation. (Always were, obvs.)
Yeah we already did it once, but I think building a relationship where we don't need to use the nuclear option is a better long term foundation for a relationship. Otherwise we're just waiting for the day where we tell to get fucked again.
So we tell them to fuck off now in order to avoid the possibility of maybe having to tell them to fuck off at some unspecified time in the future? Makes sense, great!
Yes because the reality will be that we will accept their stupid proposals for a long time before we decide to fuck them off, all the while it makes the whole economy uncompetitive which is essentially what the LPF is designed to do, to ensure that the UK economy never becomes competitive with the EU for a larger share of global trade.
LPF is designed to prevent the EU being forced into becoming a deregulated low wage shithole in just because the Tories decide that's what we deserve. It's a sensible precaution.
Except that it was the Tories that introduced the national living wage and a whole host of employee protections. It's a Tory government that signed us up to various climate agreements and the net zero pledge. Get off your high horse.
Anyway, the UK has agreed to baseline standards and non-regression clauses wrt to the baseline and binding arbitration for it. The level of the baseline is up for debate but I'm sure a suitable one could easily be found if the EU dropped the future alignment crap.
I don't understand the problem with the ratchet clause version of alignment. If it's sensible to not regress from current shared standards now, surely it's also sensible to not regress from future shared standards. Norms change over time, after all.
Perhaps because its up to the people of this country what they want in terms of legislation on workers rights not some foreign civil servant. If for example people wanted to vote for a party that reduced vat on electric and gas to 0% then they should be able to and not be told they can't.
This was part of the issue with the EU we could only vote for things they approved off. A lot of labour's manifesto in 2019 would have had the eu saying no you can't do that for example.
But the point of the ratchet clause is the new non regression point is based on *our own laws passed by our own parliament* and if we then choose to regress *we can* but the EU can defend itself using tariffs. Without that right, the EU might be forced to lower its regulations to match ours or face its firms going out of business. So all they are doing is protecting *their* right to set their own laws. It seems like a reasonable protection of their sovereignty that leaves ours intact. It's a strange hill to die on.
It is not a non regression thing though. If it was an agreement purely that neither would lower standards below that at the point of the deal I think it would have been done. What the EU is wanting though is that if they increase standards or introduce new ones that we have to implement them too....it is that which is unacceptable
No, we don't have to implement them too. If our standards diverge too much over time and either side thinks that is harming their economy then the affected party can apply tariffs. That is in order to protect their sovereign right to set their own laws in the future without that leading to them being undercut. It doesn't seem that outrageous a demand.
And yet these terms aren't applied to trade deals with Japan or Canada by the EU.
Exports from the EU to the UK are 5x those to Japan and 8x those to Canada, might explain it.
No it doesn't explain it. They have 5x to 8x the benefits from agreeing a deal then. 🤷🏻♂️
Doesn't change it from being a net positive to a net negative.
There should be a notification clause for termination of the agreement. If the EU feel that we have sufficiently diverged from them that they wish to end the agreement and start putting in tariffs they ought to be able to invoke the termination clause of the agreement - the Article 50 so to speak. No need for an in-built ratchet.
So you are not OK with them being able to apply selective tariffs but you are OK with them applying tariffs on everything? It's a view, as they say...
I'm OK with them being able to apply tariffs because we haven't (yet) reached a deal.
I'm not OK with them being applying tariffs pre-arbitration when we have a deal.
The whole point of a deal is to get rid of the threat of tariffs. Its like suggesting that getting married with a partner who promises to commit adultery less often if you're married is better than them being single and free to sleep with whoever they want. If we're not committed I don't care what they do but if we make a committment I want it honoured.
No, it's like saying it's better to marry someone, knowing that marriages sometimes have problems, than spending the rest of your life masturbating in your basement.
The current proposals are if the EU decides they want to change regulations, either the UK changes or it gets slapped with tariffs.
No they are not. They are proposing that IF the UK diverges substantially from EU levels of protection, and in a way which distorts competition, then they will have option of going to an independent adjudication panel (the members of which will have been agreed with the UK), and if that panel rules that the divergence is a substantial divergence affecting fair competition, then it will be possible for the EU to impose some selective tariffs. Of course, those hypothetical selective tariffs, in the unlikely even that they ever happened, would be massively less damaging than the Jan 1st across-the-board tariffs which the UK seems to prefer to this mechanism.
Pretty standard stuff for a trade agreement, TBH. The UK is making a mountain out of a molehill.
If that were true we'd be signing a deal now, and I'd support it.
Now what was I just saying about a month not being long enough....and we are going to go balls to the wall with the Christmas hall pass....
Yeah if they wanted to do the Christmas thing they needed to keep the lockdown in play until Dec 23rd. It’s another mistake in a litany of mistakes. Meanwhile Scotland’s numbers seem to be falling less dramatically but are still coming down (Zoe shows it in a gentle decline). I suspect that might be due to the L4 restrictions being in place across half the population so we’ll see what happens when Glasgow comes out into T3 on Friday.
It will be interesting. Our local authority just scraped into tier 3. We were slightly surprised we weren't in tier 4. Our numbers reduced gradually until last week, since when they have gradually increased. However the tier 4 areas have reduced faster, and many are now lower than us (not helped by visitors from tier 4 areas).
Now what was I just saying about a month not being long enough....and we are going to go balls to the wall with the Christmas hall pass....
Yeah if they wanted to do the Christmas thing they needed to keep the lockdown in play until Dec 23rd. It’s another mistake in a litany of mistakes. Meanwhile Scotland’s numbers seem to be falling less dramatically but are still coming down (Zoe shows it in a gentle decline). I suspect that might be due to the L4 restrictions being in place across half the population so we’ll see what happens when Glasgow comes out into T3 on Friday.
It will be interesting. Our local authority just scraped into tier 3. We were slightly surprised we weren't in tier 4. Our numbers reduced gradually until last week, since when they have gradually increased. However the tier 4 areas have reduced faster, and many are now lower than us (not helped by visitors from tier 4 areas).
If you're on the West Coast, as an earlier post implied, would that not be connected to the outbreak in Faslane?
The current proposals are if the EU decides they want to change regulations, either the UK changes or it gets slapped with tariffs.
No they are not. They are proposing that IF the UK diverges substantially from EU levels of protection, and in a way which distorts competition, then they will have option of going to an independent adjudication panel (the members of which will have been agreed with the UK), and if that panel rules that the divergence is a substantial divergence affecting fair competition, then it will be possible for the EU to impose some selective tariffs. Of course, those hypothetical selective tariffs, in the unlikely even that they ever happened, would be massively less damaging than the Jan 1st across-the-board tariffs which the UK seems to prefer to this mechanism.
Pretty standard stuff for a trade agreement, TBH. The UK is making a mountain out of a molehill.
If that were true we'd be signing a deal now, and I'd support it.
Are people in Wales just getting unlucky in the shops, or is it half a scotch egg with 10 pints of lager that's infecting them all ?
Ironically, the Scots don't seem to be getting infected by scotch eggs, with or without 10 pints of heavy, to the same degree. Something different yet again. Steady application of established tiering?
I actually agree with you and that is Drakeford's big failure together with not having some restrictions when we came out of lockdown
Drakeford has been a disaster for Wales and not just on covid
Eloquent on the restrictions though.
"Don't just ask whether you can do something. Ask yourselves whether you should do it."
Very important message, that. Johnson & Co should take a leaf.
Shame no-one in Wales (south Wales especially) is listening to him.
We have our winter varieties of onions and garlic growing in our organic Ayrshire allotment. Although we are not below sea level, we are close enough to be able to use seaweed as fertiliser.
Unfortunately our allotment is very close to sea level (being in the Flatlands) and was submerged this year because some Dutch engineers did a terrible job in the 17th century.
We have lots of apples though. No (tasteless) French imports needed for those...
Also, one of the reasons why the LPF matters is that the EU want the deal to cover all areas of the UK/EU relationship. So they can unilaterally make the terms of trade worse for the UK (the bit we're interested in) but leave the wider deal unaffected including security cooperation, fishing rights and shipping from all of which the EU benefits a great deal more than the UK.
This is why the LPF/Governance combination is unacceptable.
The EU wants something much wider than a trade deal but simultaneously wants the unilateral right to worsen the actual trade terms with us without the right of retaliation by the UK other than deciding we've had enough and abrogating the treaty. Sounds familiar.
But if they unilaterally worsen the terms of trade we can tell them to sod off.
We are a sovereign nation. (Always were, obvs.)
Yeah we already did it once, but I think building a relationship where we don't need to use the nuclear option is a better long term foundation for a relationship. Otherwise we're just waiting for the day where we tell to get fucked again.
So we tell them to fuck off now in order to avoid the possibility of maybe having to tell them to fuck off at some unspecified time in the future? Makes sense, great!
Yes because the reality will be that we will accept their stupid proposals for a long time before we decide to fuck them off, all the while it makes the whole economy uncompetitive which is essentially what the LPF is designed to do, to ensure that the UK economy never becomes competitive with the EU for a larger share of global trade.
LPF is designed to prevent the EU being forced into becoming a deregulated low wage shithole in just because the Tories decide that's what we deserve. It's a sensible precaution.
Except that it was the Tories that introduced the national living wage and a whole host of employee protections. It's a Tory government that signed us up to various climate agreements and the net zero pledge. Get off your high horse.
Anyway, the UK has agreed to baseline standards and non-regression clauses wrt to the baseline and binding arbitration for it. The level of the baseline is up for debate but I'm sure a suitable one could easily be found if the EU dropped the future alignment crap.
I don't understand the problem with the ratchet clause version of alignment. If it's sensible to not regress from current shared standards now, surely it's also sensible to not regress from future shared standards. Norms change over time, after all.
Perhaps because its up to the people of this country what they want in terms of legislation on workers rights not some foreign civil servant. If for example people wanted to vote for a party that reduced vat on electric and gas to 0% then they should be able to and not be told they can't.
This was part of the issue with the EU we could only vote for things they approved off. A lot of labour's manifesto in 2019 would have had the eu saying no you can't do that for example.
But the point of the ratchet clause is the new non regression point is based on *our own laws passed by our own parliament* and if we then choose to regress *we can* but the EU can defend itself using tariffs. Without that right, the EU might be forced to lower its regulations to match ours or face its firms going out of business. So all they are doing is protecting *their* right to set their own laws. It seems like a reasonable protection of their sovereignty that leaves ours intact. It's a strange hill to die on.
It is not a non regression thing though. If it was an agreement purely that neither would lower standards below that at the point of the deal I think it would have been done. What the EU is wanting though is that if they increase standards or introduce new ones that we have to implement them too....it is that which is unacceptable
No, we don't have to implement them too. If our standards diverge too much over time and either side thinks that is harming their economy then the affected party can apply tariffs. That is in order to protect their sovereign right to set their own laws in the future without that leading to them being undercut. It doesn't seem that outrageous a demand.
And yet these terms aren't applied to trade deals with Japan or Canada by the EU.
Actually, I kind of understand and accept the EU wanting and needing a bit of it (we are a very large competitor right on their doorstep) but that should be confined to a common baseline of standards with "parameters" for joint and equitable review if and when we or they decide to diverge. That's what friendly partners do.
There's no excuse for them to be quite so cunty about it, which they are.
You remind me of a former colleague who appeared in court as an expert witness and was shocked by how unnecessarily hostile the opposing counsel was while cross-examining him.
It's a tough old world.
We are two friendly Western powers that should be negotiating a constructive trade agreement together.
The current proposals are if the EU decides they want to change regulations, either the UK changes or it gets slapped with tariffs.
No they are not. They are proposing that IF the UK diverges substantially from EU levels of protection, and in a way which distorts competition, then they will have option of going to an independent adjudication panel (the members of which will have been agreed with the UK), and if that panel rules that the divergence is a substantial divergence affecting fair competition, then it will be possible for the EU to impose some selective tariffs. Of course, those hypothetical selective tariffs, in the unlikely even that they ever happened, would be massively less damaging than the Jan 1st across-the-board tariffs which the UK seems to prefer to this mechanism.
Pretty standard stuff for a trade agreement, TBH. The UK is making a mountain out of a molehill.
If that were true we'd be signing a deal now, and I'd support it.
What this means in practice is if the UK wants a trade deal that involves no tariffs and no quotas (no limits on the amount of goods that can be traded), the EU will expect it to sign up to stricter rules than those set out in other recent EU trade agreements with countries such as Canada or Japan.
In other words, it is a special case because there is far more trade involved and the stakes are higher.
It's very amusing, in a grim way, to see various Leavers' indignation at the fact that the EU is following the approach which the Leavers advocate for the UK - no deal better than a bad deal, sovereignty, sticking to their principles, holding and being prepared to use the cards, being prepared to walk away...
Quite so. I'm not sure why so many on here make it seem more complicated than it really is. We chose to leave the EU club. Now we want an FTA with them. The EU says - well, you've left the club so these are our conditions for an FTA. Like it or lump it. We say - that's not fair. The EU says - well we didn't ask you to leave, you chose to. So, if you want an FTA with us that doesn't jeopardise the single market, these are our terms. You choose. Isn't it as simple as that? The fact that the EU may be cutting off its nose to spite its face is neither here nor there. We made the big choice in 2016.
Yes, exactly. And to make it worse, if we didn't want a reasonably comprehensive trade deal, we could have said so four years ago, or even one year ago, and concentrated on negotiating an orderly transition to WTO terms, over a reasonable timescale, instead of the maximum-chaos version we're currently heading for.
This is a big point. The EU core position is utterly predictable, as is the fact they will not budge from it. Around the margins, yes, fish and the like, but not on LPF and SM. So if we were not going to play ball on that central issue, a No Deal should have been clear to us ages ago and could have been planned for and to some extent mitigated. Two possibilities flow from this -
(i) Rank incompetence from this Boris Johnson government.
(ii) We WILL be accepting LPF and doing the deal.
I say (ii).
I see no problem with a LPF but absolutely not dynamic alignment
It won't be dynamic alignment. That means if they pass a measure we HAVE to pass it too. No way is this compatible with any reasonable meaning of Brexit. It would be like being a member but without a say.
No, it will be stay aligned for now and agree that we can diverge in the future - but if we do there may be a price to pay on market access if that divergence means us falling behind them on stuff like worker and environment and consumer protections.
With same applying the other way.
You'd go for that, I'm sure, reasonable person that you are. So imo will Johnson after a bit more tumbling around the ring.
I absolutely would but as I understand it that is not the EU position.
If it is confirmed than a deal should happen quickly and I would be delighted
It is the essence of it. Divergence that = lower standards is possible but not free of charge. We eat the cake or we keep it. That's always been the case.
The current proposals are if the EU decides they want to change regulations, either the UK changes or it gets slapped with tariffs.
No they are not. They are proposing that IF the UK diverges substantially from EU levels of protection, and in a way which distorts competition, then they will have option of going to an independent adjudication panel (the members of which will have been agreed with the UK), and if that panel rules that the divergence is a substantial divergence affecting fair competition, then it will be possible for the EU to impose some selective tariffs. Of course, those hypothetical selective tariffs, in the unlikely even that they ever happened, would be massively less damaging than the Jan 1st across-the-board tariffs which the UK seems to prefer to this mechanism.
Pretty standard stuff for a trade agreement, TBH. The UK is making a mountain out of a molehill.
If that were true we'd be signing a deal now, and I'd support it.
I imagine @ydoethur will be simultaneously pleased and stressed out about online learning coming back from Monday. Hancock also just announced mass testing for all London schoolchildren.
It's very amusing, in a grim way, to see various Leavers' indignation at the fact that the EU is following the approach which the Leavers advocate for the UK - no deal better than a bad deal, sovereignty, sticking to their principles, holding and being prepared to use the cards, being prepared to walk away...
Quite so. I'm not sure why so many on here make it seem more complicated than it really is. We chose to leave the EU club. Now we want an FTA with them. The EU says - well, you've left the club so these are our conditions for an FTA. Like it or lump it. We say - that's not fair. The EU says - well we didn't ask you to leave, you chose to. So, if you want an FTA with us that doesn't jeopardise the single market, these are our terms. You choose. Isn't it as simple as that? The fact that the EU may be cutting off its nose to spite its face is neither here nor there. We made the big choice in 2016.
Yes, exactly. And to make it worse, if we didn't want a reasonably comprehensive trade deal, we could have said so four years ago, or even one year ago, and concentrated on negotiating an orderly transition to WTO terms, over a reasonable timescale, instead of the maximum-chaos version we're currently heading for.
This is a big point. The EU core position is utterly predictable, as is the fact they will not budge from it. Around the margins, yes, fish and the like, but not on LPF and SM. So if we were not going to play ball on that central issue, a No Deal should have been clear to us ages ago and could have been planned for and to some extent mitigated. Two possibilities flow from this -
(i) Rank incompetence from this Boris Johnson government.
(ii) We WILL be accepting LPF and doing the deal.
I say (ii).
I see no problem with a LPF but absolutely not dynamic alignment
It won't be dynamic alignment. That means if they pass a measure we HAVE to pass it too. No way is this compatible with any reasonable meaning of Brexit. It would be like being a member but without a say.
No, it will be stay aligned for now and agree that we can diverge in the future - but if we do there may be a price to pay on market access if that divergence means us falling behind them on stuff like worker and environment and consumer protections.
With same applying the other way.
You'd go for that, I'm sure, reasonable person that you are. So imo will Johnson after a bit more tumbling around the ring.
The current proposals are if the EU decides they want to change regulations, either the UK changes or it gets slapped with tariffs.
I know. I think the deal will be along those lines. Bit more subtle than that, but in essence.
Or I'm all wrong on this and it really is No Deal. It's possible, I suppose.
It's very amusing, in a grim way, to see various Leavers' indignation at the fact that the EU is following the approach which the Leavers advocate for the UK - no deal better than a bad deal, sovereignty, sticking to their principles, holding and being prepared to use the cards, being prepared to walk away...
Quite so. I'm not sure why so many on here make it seem more complicated than it really is. We chose to leave the EU club. Now we want an FTA with them. The EU says - well, you've left the club so these are our conditions for an FTA. Like it or lump it. We say - that's not fair. The EU says - well we didn't ask you to leave, you chose to. So, if you want an FTA with us that doesn't jeopardise the single market, these are our terms. You choose. Isn't it as simple as that? The fact that the EU may be cutting off its nose to spite its face is neither here nor there. We made the big choice in 2016.
No, it isn't that simple, because now the EU is saying if we don't sign up for an FTA with them (or an agreement with all the obligations of one) they prevent our airlines etc. from operating on the continent - something that no other country, FTA or otherwise, is subjected to. Hardly 'take it or leave it' - it's 'take it or take it'. We should thank them for demonstrating what utter bullshit they are, and get on with life outside.
No Deal is not just some abstract concept. It means the absence of a deal. Hence airspace, widgets, financial services, you name it.
We don't get to have just a few things because they are in a state of non-existence until they are negotiated. We don't get them because we are British damnit.
No deal means our trading relationship is not there and the two countries are approaching this from scratch. Of course we have agreements which might or might not be used as a basis for any future agreement.
That is what no dealers want.
And they might get it. Good and hard.
Those actively wanting no free trade agreement are I would say on the fringe. This does not mean that people would rather sign up to ludicrous demands just to get one. Dynamic regulatory alignment and giving up 80% of fishing resources for example.
The gross miscalculation Macron is making is that he thinks come April the UK will come crawling back for a deal on punitive terms it won’t accept now and that a deal can be signed off in 2022 on any terms the EU likes. This wouldn’t make any sense for the UK, given any disruption to supply chains and relocation of staff / headquarters would already have occurred and likely not be reversed even with a deal implemented. And it also misunderstands the British psyche and more importantly that of Conservative Party members, who faced with such provocation are more likely to replace the PM with an ultra Brexiteer than one of the few Remainers left in the Parliamentary Party.
Agreed. I think if it's No Deal, that's it. We'll acclimatise politically and economically and won't have any interest in coming back to this. Their leverage will diminish, not increase. And I think that even applies to Starmer if he wins in GE2024 - our interests and advantages as a nation will have shifted decisively by then.
This really is last chance saloon for the EU if they want us to be in anything like a symbiotic relationship with them.
No interest in coming back to a trade deal with Europe?
Aren't we Brexiting to be able to negotiate trade deals?
Yes that's exactly correct. But it's clear the EU is not offering a trade deal, it seems intent on only offering a supplicant political and regulatory relationship.
By end of 2023, we might be full members of TPP, with Biden's administration working to joining too. It will prove an historic miscalculation if the EU forces the UK out of its economy and political orbit and quite a sad one. But not much we can do about that.
I mean it's called a negotiation.
A negotiation only succeeds if all parties feel they want to sign it.
Right now that's not the case. We have fundamentally different objectives. OK fair enough, the mature thing to do then is to shake hands and walk away. Maybe in a couple of years they'll want to resume talks more to our liking.
Absolutely. And we are about to see whether the UK govt thinks it is possible to walk away.
Thing is, the EU's position hasn't changed much if at all over the past few years. Why didn't we realise that earlier on and walk then. And also (which @MaxPB is fond of pointing out, rightly) if we were ever going to walk away or think of walking away why haven't we prepared to walk away?
Stupidity , like we see on here with "we hold all the cards"
Also, one of the reasons why the LPF matters is that the EU want the deal to cover all areas of the UK/EU relationship. So they can unilaterally make the terms of trade worse for the UK (the bit we're interested in) but leave the wider deal unaffected including security cooperation, fishing rights and shipping from all of which the EU benefits a great deal more than the UK.
This is why the LPF/Governance combination is unacceptable.
The EU wants something much wider than a trade deal but simultaneously wants the unilateral right to worsen the actual trade terms with us without the right of retaliation by the UK other than deciding we've had enough and abrogating the treaty. Sounds familiar.
But if they unilaterally worsen the terms of trade we can tell them to sod off.
We are a sovereign nation. (Always were, obvs.)
Yeah we already did it once, but I think building a relationship where we don't need to use the nuclear option is a better long term foundation for a relationship. Otherwise we're just waiting for the day where we tell to get fucked again.
So we tell them to fuck off now in order to avoid the possibility of maybe having to tell them to fuck off at some unspecified time in the future? Makes sense, great!
Yes because the reality will be that we will accept their stupid proposals for a long time before we decide to fuck them off, all the while it makes the whole economy uncompetitive which is essentially what the LPF is designed to do, to ensure that the UK economy never becomes competitive with the EU for a larger share of global trade.
LPF is designed to prevent the EU being forced into becoming a deregulated low wage shithole in just because the Tories decide that's what we deserve. It's a sensible precaution.
Except that it was the Tories that introduced the national living wage and a whole host of employee protections. It's a Tory government that signed us up to various climate agreements and the net zero pledge. Get off your high horse.
Anyway, the UK has agreed to baseline standards and non-regression clauses wrt to the baseline and binding arbitration for it. The level of the baseline is up for debate but I'm sure a suitable one could easily be found if the EU dropped the future alignment crap.
I don't understand the problem with the ratchet clause version of alignment. If it's sensible to not regress from current shared standards now, surely it's also sensible to not regress from future shared standards. Norms change over time, after all.
Perhaps because its up to the people of this country what they want in terms of legislation on workers rights not some foreign civil servant. If for example people wanted to vote for a party that reduced vat on electric and gas to 0% then they should be able to and not be told they can't.
This was part of the issue with the EU we could only vote for things they approved off. A lot of labour's manifesto in 2019 would have had the eu saying no you can't do that for example.
But the point of the ratchet clause is the new non regression point is based on *our own laws passed by our own parliament* and if we then choose to regress *we can* but the EU can defend itself using tariffs. Without that right, the EU might be forced to lower its regulations to match ours or face its firms going out of business. So all they are doing is protecting *their* right to set their own laws. It seems like a reasonable protection of their sovereignty that leaves ours intact. It's a strange hill to die on.
It is not a non regression thing though. If it was an agreement purely that neither would lower standards below that at the point of the deal I think it would have been done. What the EU is wanting though is that if they increase standards or introduce new ones that we have to implement them too....it is that which is unacceptable
No, we don't have to implement them too. If our standards diverge too much over time and either side thinks that is harming their economy then the affected party can apply tariffs. That is in order to protect their sovereign right to set their own laws in the future without that leading to them being undercut. It doesn't seem that outrageous a demand.
And yet these terms aren't applied to trade deals with Japan or Canada by the EU.
Actually, I kind of understand and accept the EU wanting and needing a bit of it (we are a very large competitor right on their doorstep) but that should be confined to a common baseline of standards with "parameters" for joint and equitable review if and when we or they decide to diverge. That's what friendly partners do.
There's no excuse for them to be quite so cunty about it, which they are.
You remind me of a former colleague who appeared in court as an expert witness and was shocked by how unnecessarily hostile the opposing counsel was while cross-examining him.
It's a tough old world.
We are two friendly Western powers that should be negotiating a constructive trade agreement together.
We are not opponents.
You are in fantasy land, they set out their stall years ago , just our dummies thought they were kidding so went with theoven ready / we hold all the cards / easy peasy we are world leaders / dastardly surrender monkeys will fold options
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If the EU want to play fair then that door will always be open. Else, nope.
It's a tough old world.
National character changes - sometimes overnight. No national character, not ours, not anyone elses, is wrought in stone. Ask a Vietnam vet about his experiences coming home compared to those of his father's generation.
https://twitter.com/Keynesianism/status/1336999359439892481
Both the UK and Canada are agreeing temporary mitigations and arrangements to span the 10-14 day gap - because they are friendly countries.
Thing is, the EU's position hasn't changed much if at all over the past few years. Why didn't we realise that earlier on and walk then. And also (which @MaxPB is fond of pointing out, rightly) if we were ever going to walk away or think of walking away why haven't we prepared to walk away?
I'm not OK with them being applying tariffs pre-arbitration when we have a deal.
The whole point of a deal is to get rid of the threat of tariffs. Its like suggesting that getting married with a partner who promises to commit adultery less often if you're married is better than them being single and free to sleep with whoever they want. If we're not committed I don't care what they do but if we make a committment I want it honoured.
I think what it shows is that politics trumps economics for both the UK and EU. Their desire to keep us in their orbit is more important to them than ensuring they can still easily sell us wine, (our own) fish and cars and our desire to be fully independent of the EU means that we're willing to live with not being able to easily sell them financial products and other services.
What's interesting is that we're actually in a reasonably good position wrt non-EU trade. I've only got a bit of insight into the continued talks between Japan and the UK but it's quite ambitious from what I've heard. I'm also sure that we're going to continue talking to Canada to extend the existing terms.
I think the international view is that the UK has played a fair game, at least that's what the management view is from Japan.
This is last chance saloon for the EU.
Just because they said they wouldn't doesn't mean they wouldn't. There's still hope they might in the next four days.
I have my head held high.
I
I understand it very much isn't.
NEW THREAD
We have lots of apples though. No (tasteless) French imports needed for those...
We are not opponents.
https://www.bbc.com/news/51180282
What this means in practice is if the UK wants a trade deal that involves no tariffs and no quotas (no limits on the amount of goods that can be traded), the EU will expect it to sign up to stricter rules than those set out in other recent EU trade agreements with countries such as Canada or Japan.
In other words, it is a special case because there is far more trade involved and the stakes are higher.
Or I'm all wrong on this and it really is No Deal. It's possible, I suppose.