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BREXIT: Undoing (some of) the damage. Part 1: The Principles – politicalbetting.com
BREXIT: Undoing (some of) the damage. Part 1: The Principles – politicalbetting.com
Just a few weeks in, and the practical effects of re-erecting the trade barriers which the UK spent 40 years helping to dismount are becoming more obvious by the day. Remarkably, it seems to have come as a complete surprise to the government that the EU rules which it had itself been enforcing up until Dec 31st in respect of imports from ‘third countries’ now apply to us. Every day, new stories emerge of businesses cruelly throttled by the extra red tape and costs we signed up to – especially small, entrepreneurial businesses. Our exports are being badly hit. Importing costs have rocketed. We are now reduced to begging the EU to change its rules, or at least defer their application, in order to mitigate the chaos we have created in moving goods from one part of the UK to another.
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Starmer would do well to read the thread and create a trade policy out of Mr Navabi's narrative. Starmer would find it much more productive than wrapping himself in the Union flag.
And it's the experts / industry who are complaining while the general public can't see the issues.
I think SPS equivalence/LPF on the same basis as state aid (arbitrated by the UK/EU council) seems a no-brainer to me. I'd even pay a little bit of money in to sweeten the pill.
I also don't see much harm in temporary free movement for workers (on a 90-day basis, say) just as for tourists, which can cover most business/services trips and music tours.
My only bone of contention is that friendly relations work both ways. Some of the rhetoric coming out of the EU towards the UK has been reckless and appalling, including, insulting the AZN vaccine, sledging the UK, unilaterally triggering Article 16, insecure and thinly-veiled threats, and putting us in the same category as Russia (only weeks after doing a craven deal with China).
There's a quid pro quo for it. And it starts with respect, and ending their obsession with trying to stiff the UK.
Just disappointing that it needs to be written.
Oh and a correction - Brexiters absolutely did vote Leave in order to restrict the movement of musicians between the EU and the UK.
Good piece.
I would probably add - Ambassadorial Status for EU. Not a time to be flying that particular flag.
And I would note that the EU side are also going to need particular things, as for example they are not going to be able to ratify the FTA in current timescales.
So anything done cannot reopen the negotiation easily, as that will let the EP in there with their chopsticks. Though they may be trying to apply goldplating, if the leaked documents are anything to go by.
Have a good morning.
Before = no paperwork
Now = paperwork
A huge victory, according to many on this site.
I'm not a historian, although I've always been interested in the subject, and it does appear to me that, as I've posted before, we are in a similar situation to that which we were in the the 17th Century. The question is, are we in a situation where King Charles has been restored and we're trying to work out a modus vivendi between Europeans and Independents, or are we further back and his father has been beheaded and we have to cope with the Lord Protector? (I know Cromwell didn't take the job immediately after January 1649).
Continual bilateral renegotiations a la Switzerland I actually find to be the best solution and always have. It is the EU that have been against that more than the UK.
Bilateral cherrypicking is precisely what negotiations should do. Over time I expect that will evolve. That's a misrepresentation of my position. I have said I always expected issues. Some will indeed be teething problems but others as I have said will require adjustments. A new equilibrium I have said a few times. If it was just minor short term inconveniences there'd be no need for a new equilibrium.
Currently some business models that worked for five years ago won't work anymore and will need to change.
Change and evolution is a part of life.
However, the EU is vast and proximate market. It was about 80% of my sales and 60% of my purchases so it's gone from very easy to a pain in the dick. A lot of the deals have moved off eBay on to Facebook and Vkontakte groups so a price can be settled and fraudulent declarations of value made. I'm just buying, not selling, as a result and I'm doing all that through my French eBay account.
Quite depressing.
We're all on the right lines, peeps.
It's amazing how quickly the cluster**** of a couple of weeks ago has been forgotten.
Interesting question, how many people give a **** about Northern Ireland? I certainly don't.
Insisting that they show us the requisite respect first would not be a good start.
My only concern is that to restoring friendly relations with the EU is a two way street and it will need the EU itself to come to terms that we have left, and recognise that good relations is mutually beneficial
The only criticism I'd make of Mr Nabavi's proposals is that the EU more than the UK arguably has been the one standing in the way. They're the ones who have been against Swiss negotiations. They're unhappy with us and acting like a jilted ex lover.
The UK as friendly neighbours of the EU is what most Brexiteers want. The EU though has to adjust to recognising the UK as sovereign equals and a friendly neighbour instead of being bitter or imperial seeking to make us a subject in their sphere of influence - a concept that really ought to have been eliminated from the West after WWII.
It takes two to tango.
Sadly you didn't think about that at the time. We've found local suppliers and worked around the problem. Sorry about those UK jobs.
"Two World Wars and One World Cup....."
Plus your response (liked by @BigPhil) rather does beg the question of what party should one support if one is in favour of the Union as it stands?
That should tell all of us - Leavers and Remainers - that the EU is far from the omnipotent superpower some seem to think it is, and is actually weak and rather fragile. It suffers from its own creation myths and delusions of grandeur.
And new round of negotiations needs to keep that in mind - it will be a negotiation of equals, and the UK will not be a supplicant.
Ep Pais has the second highest circulation of any paper in Spain and its political stance is centre-left and we have a centre -left government.
A very interesting read on the accuracy of Spain's figures for both infections and deaths from Covid.
I thought that I'd made myself clear that I find the EU to be sclerotic, rigid and slow moving.
I think the UK can more easily make changes than the EU can ... and businesses themselves can more easily make changes than the UK can ... and people can more easily make changes than businesses can.
The smaller you are, the fewer people making decisions, the easier it is to change course and adapt.
The EU's chronic inability to make changes is one advantage of being outside of the organisation.
Also the publicity of high profile people getting jabbed has been beneficial. There is an issue though with the comparative lack of update in the BAME community. For the sake of everyone this needs to be fixed. I am not sure who the best people would be to front a campaign for this but they need to find them quickly. I know a few MPs have made a video but more is required.
Or in the words of HYUFD "not a real Conservative" despite having been an active member and activist for seventeen years (excluding May's tenure as leader).
But it's a bit of an odd one. What we have now is a prelude to Northern Ireland leaving the UK. I thought the comments of Mary Lou McDonald were interesting:
https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-sinn-feins-mary-lou-mcdonald-says-disruption-shouldnt-come-as-a-surprise-12211582
Sinn Fein can't really get too upset about this situation. They can rub salt into the Unionist wound, and I certainly don't begrudge them enjoying the pain of the DUP. But they can't get upset with a country that they ultimately don't want to be a part of.
My problem with the Northern Ireland situation is the sense that Brexit shouldn't have been allowed to happen because it's an inconvenience to the island of Ireland (Mary Lou McDonald rightly points out this affect the whole island).
Just as Britain has to accept that it is smaller than the EU, Ireland will always have to accept that it is considerably smaller than Britain.
If so that seems like big news, could be fewer uncontested seats and more candidates generally.
You seem to be stuck in a zero-sum view of establishing precedence and moral dominance.
The EU isn't China. Showing respect does not mean being craven. We just have to cut out being actively disrespectful.
If they don't reciprocate at first then we just have to wait it out until they come to their senses. It shouldn't stop us acting respectfully ourselves.
Cameron could have negotiated a very comfortable associate membership had he so desired. We could never have got rid of FOM, but he could have packaged it in enough benefits restrictions (that were within his powers anyway) to please most people. He didn't want to do that.
His failed renegotiation was one of the factors that pushed me over the edge, it showed the EU was incapable of serious reform. His suggested reforms were excellent but what he came back with was a plaster not real reform.
Had the EU taken Cameron seriously then we wouldn't have left.
Now, some might question why Scotland will be doing 1.2 million vaccinations per day but that's not for me to say, I just report the numbers.
After a further 9 week Scotland will be delivering 6 covid vaccines per day to every person in Scotland. England, needless to say will be lagging behind not even able to vacciante everyone in the country in a single day.
Cold hard facts.
"We’re going to work as hard as we possibly can to reach our objective so that by the end of the summer at least 70% of the population will be vaccinated," she says.
But Von der Leyen admits that right now “we’re still not where we want to be".
"We were late to authorise. We were too optimistic when it came to massive production, and perhaps too confident that what we ordered would actually be delivered on time.
"We need to ask ourselves why that is the case and what lessons we can draw.”
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We all know the answer will be more EU in an ever closer union.
The simple fact is that was our one credible chance of getting real reform and it failed. Doesn't matter why it failed (and indeed Cameron does deserve some of the blame) the simple fact of the matter is it did.
It's not all Cameron's fault though. It is hard to reform any institution let alone one as scelerotic as Europe with then 28 very different sets of interests to account for each with a veto on reform.
The choice was ultimately stay in an unreformable Europe, or leave and control our own destiny.
But I also agree that the level of denial is such that it suits people such as yourself to say it was a "bad deal" because that makes it easier to dismiss it and feel ok about it.
Saying it was a bad deal is illogical and you are many things, Philip, but illogical is not one of them.
So it was a wholly democratic decision. And as mentioned to @Philip_Thompson, his (Dave's) deal was a good 'un.
https://twitter.com/JamesDelingpole/status/1359443490162245635?s=20
And wouldn't you want a satanic shrine, if one of the lawyers appearing before you is one of the undead, and the other a witch's familiar ?
It makes sense to stop exports of vaccines to a country you're competing with; it doesn't make sense to do that to a country where you want the native population to see you in a positive light. It makes sense to unilaterally put up custom checks on a land border, after insisting custom checks would reignite civil unrest, with a country you're competing with; it doesn't make sense to do that with a satellite state where you want domestic stability. It makes sense to publicly undermine confidence in the vaccination strategy of a country you're competing with; it doesn't make sense to do that to a tributary whose economy you want to recover as quickly as possible.
I'd compare this with Donald Trump. From a geopolitical perspective, Trump was dangerous because he saw US foreign policy as purely transactional. For Trump, strategic interests became strategic competitors, because Trump did not want to pay material costs (money, manpower) for immaterial benefits (influence, containment); in fact, he saw this as 'competitors' taking advantage of the US.
Worryingly, the behaviour of the EU mirrors this Trumpish approach. The EU appears to be unwilling to make pay material costs, such as making favourable economic deals with the UK or not undermining vaccination efforts to conceal failings at home, to receive the benefits of keeping the UK within the EU sphere of influence.
Even more worryingly, while Trump was eventually removed by the American electorate, there's no comparable mechanism to remove EU leaders. So rather that this being an unfortunate 4 year blip in EU foreign policy, we have to operate on the assumption that the EU's approach is unlikely to change in the near future.
It might end up there anyway, but don't start with it because that is doomed to failure.
Each side (in exchange) should give away stuff that has greater value to the other side, it then becomes a win/win.
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1359443700397584386?s=20
We've had a long frosty spell at around 0C, at least here in the centre of the country, for what - 6 weeks? - that will do wonders for killing bugs that it is useful to have killed. Especially the exotic imports and slugs (I hope). 2021 may be a good year for Hostas.
Just have to watch out for more people declaring that gardening is racist due to a preference for the native.
https://twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/1337692740268777473
It will be a notable winter here when I have to drive the car through single lane routes through snowdrifts that are higher than the car both sides. I think the last one was early 1990s.
It would be fun to walk straight over 2m garden walls on the snow.
AFD - 3% to 7%
I could hardly contain my surprise at which figure Gooders finds significant.
We already had all of that before Cameron started talking! If you're seeking reform then coming back and saying "we have achieved reform: we have maintained everything as it was" is not reform!
Reform is actually changing thing. Changes with teeth and legally enforceable not warm words. None of the changes I was looking for, like the UK being protected from being outvoted QMV by the Eurozone acting as a bloc, ever arrived.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/09/sturgeon-johnson-scottish-exit-snp-brexit
"There are swaths of England where the same faith is bestowed on “Boris” – more mascot than man: redeemer of the people’s mood with powers of jollification that transcend boring politics. That tune doesn’t carry in Scotland. Posh Anglo-Tory insouciance strikes all the wrong cultural notes. Sturgeon has mastered the less showy brand of charisma that seduces its audience into believing it is coolly rational and has not been swept up in a charismatic movement at all."
Anti-charisma equals charisma in a Scottish context.
As it happens, the law firm DLA Piper hosted a virtual event with Lord Mandelson yesterday, which covered some of the same ground and was very interesting indeed. Unfortunately I don't think a recording of it will be made available to the public. Much of what he said was very much along the same lines as I've proposed, in particular about not seeking to rejoin the EU in the foreseeable future. He made the very good point that if we were ever to try to rejoin, we shouldn't do so as a supplicant; we must concentrate now on building up our economic and international strength as a non-EU member.
He also had some very interesting things to say about how the government's laudable aim of attracting businesses to 'Global Britain' risks being undermined by some of their other proposals. In particular he was scathing about the proposal to make company directors liable for audit failures, and also about the proposed legislation to give the government draconian powers to intervene in company takeovers even up to five years afterwards. Those aren't issues which have received much attention, but they deserve more. We're trying to attract businesses with one hand, and pushing them away with the other.