Brexit deal

[Glyn_Wigley]

  We have had another vote since the referendum in the General Election with both major parties manifestos stating they were willing to deliver the out vote.
  Even Billy canvassed   for the Labour party knowing that, so if you voted for any of the major parties you backed the will of the people in the referendum, or did you not Know what you were voting for?
  You should have voted Liberal, green SNP etc. to oppose Brexit.

And those MPs that were democratically elected for in 2017 can quite legitimately do whatever they like about Brexit, including having a second referendum or even scrapping it.

[BillyStubbsTears]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47110641

Jesus wept, this is like one of the threads in here on this topic.

EU: If you're leaving the CU and want a trade deal with us, you have to tell us how you plan to ensure the Irish border remains open.

Brexiters: Technology.

EU: What technology, precisely.

Brexiters: Really, REALLY clever technology.

EU: Does this exist yet? Is it operational anywhere in the world?

Brexiters: *mumble*

EU: Right, so we'll need a backstop then, whereby the entire UK stays in the CU for as long as it takes.

Brexiters: Not fair! Not fair!

EU: OK then, tell us what you are proposing instead

Brexiters: Technology.

That's a bang on accurate summary of the past year of negotiations.


Round and round the f**king hamster  wheel. A bunch of second rate spivs like Barclay and Javid playing to the Tory party faithful when we need proper statesmen. It is crushingly f**king humiliating to be playing this out in public.

[bpoolrover]

Bst who do you propose as going off the latest you gov poll tories are even further ahead now, whatever you say about the tories does that not show you that no matter how bad may does Corbyn will never get in power?

[Jonathan]

I must admit the proposal of a technological solution to the Irish border has long since puzzled me.

Working in an internal audit environment we would get (rightly) lambasted for recommending vague and unhelpful solutions to an issue that we identify. Maybe a technological solution is the new answer! Until that dreaded question raises its head; “what do you mean?”

I’d be really interested to know how technology could be deployed to avoid a hard border. Where would it come into play and what would it do? I gather there’s been some suggestion we could copy the USA / Canada model. But isn’t that a hard border?

What a shambles.

[Donnywolf]

Certainly was when I crossed it several times in a few visits

Stayed at Niagara Falls and crossed 3 times into Canada in a day and was grilled each time - and some Daytime Telly progs are dedicated to that "crossing"

By hard border I mean you cant just drive across BUT it is also the longest undefended Border in the World as well meaning you can walk from one to the other all day long. In some spots it is just a 50 yard wide "gap" (approx) made through thick forest and is clearly visible from Plane as you fly over it

[RedJ]

I must admit the proposal of a technological solution to the Irish border has long since puzzled me.

Working in an internal audit environment we would get (rightly) lambasted for recommending vague and unhelpful solutions to an issue that we identify. Maybe a technological solution is the new answer! Until that dreaded question raises its head; “what do you mean?”

I’d be really interested to know how technology could be deployed to avoid a hard border. Where would it come into play and what would it do? I gather there’s been some suggestion we could copy the USA / Canada model. But isn’t that a hard border?

What a shambles.

And I gather they stop vehicles for around 15 minutes, which would be disastrous.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I was stuck at the border at Niagara Falls for 2 hours 15 years back, while they interviewed a bloke on our Greyhound bus with a PLO flag on his rucksack...

[BillyStubbsTears]

The NI/Ireland border arrangement is a masterpiece of compromise that underpins the peace process.

The Unionists are satisfied because there IS a border and NI remains part of the UK in law.

The Nationalists are happy because there isn't a border and NI might as well be part of Ireland in practice.

It is a genius arrangement that satisfies two mutually irreconcilable standpoints. 

Any change that tipped the balance either way would be a disaster. It would tell one side, "You're opinions are being downgraded and sacrificed." Apart from the moral aspect, that's how you push people into supporting the men with guns.

Plus of course, anything that makes trade across the border harder will hit the economy of Ireland. And why should they have to suffer because of our juvenile emotional spasm of Brexit?

Or, more to the point, if we insist on an arrangement that hurts Ireland, why should we then expect a favourable trade deal from the EU.

But hey! Instead of dealing with these issues, a bunch of chinless wonders from the Tory ranks are currently sat in a room talking about unicorns and fairy dust technology solutions.

[Boomstick]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47110641

Jesus wept, this is like one of the threads in here on this topic.

EU: If you're leaving the CU and want a trade deal with us, you have to tell us how you plan to ensure the Irish border remains open.

Brexiters: Technology.

EU: What technology, precisely.

Brexiters: Really, REALLY clever technology.

EU: Does this exist yet? Is it operational anywhere in the world?

Brexiters: *mumble*

EU: Right, so we'll need a backstop then, whereby the entire UK stays in the CU for as long as it takes.

Brexiters: Not fair! Not fair!

EU: OK then, tell us what you are proposing instead

Brexiters: Technology.

That's a bang on accurate summary of the past year of negotiations.


Round and round the f**king hamster  wheel. A bunch of second rate spivs like Barclay and Javid playing to the Tory party faithful when we need proper statesmen. It is crushingly f**king humiliating to be playing this out in public.

b*llocks.
Brexiteers want GUARANTEES that we can leave the backstop when the technology is up and running.
It will probably be a form of GPS tracking.

[Jonathan]

With a plan as clear as “will probably be a form of GPS tracking” I think you could comfortably enter the negotiating arena right away and provide all the assurances the EU are looking for.

[IDM]

GPS tracking of what.??

[RedJ]

The unicorns on board.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Oh aye. Silly me.

This GPS tracking of stuff that is being used or planned for use in frictionless borders precisely nowhere on the planet.

Eee, them bas**rds in Brussels, eh? Not listening to reason and just deliberately giving us shit.

[Boomstick]

Christ.
It's not about the technology currently available.
It's about leaving the backstop WHEN it becomes available.

[Glyn_Wigley]

Christ.
It's not about the technology currently available.
It's about leaving the backstop WHEN it becomes available.

Stop just regurgitating 'technology, technology' and tell us what this wonderful technology is actually going to DO to make a border disappear.

If I was the EU, the first question I'd ask of it is 'How will this technology stop contraband from crossing into the Single Market?'

Well, what would you tell them?

[BillyStubbsTears]

No. It's not BS.

 The problem the ERG has is with the very concept of the backstop.

The mechanism for leaving is straightforward. The backstop keeps NI in the CU until a mechanism is found for making the border frictionless outside the CU.

When that happens, the backstop terminates.

If there is disagreement between the UK and EU over the issue, the Withdrawal Agreement allows for either party to take the issue to an entirely independent arbitration panel.

So. If folk were so certain that the fairy dust high tech solution was around the corner, what problem would they have with the backstop?

The problem, d'oh! is that there isn't a mechanism for making the border frictionless. Either now or off into the far distant future.

So if you sign up to the backstop, you are in it for a long time. So the ERG are against the backstop as a matter of principle. Because even though they are the ones saying technology could sort out the border, they know that it won't. So instead, they say that the UK and the UK alone should have the right to decide what the co ditions at the border are.

Which is fine. Just don't expect the EU to play ball on a future trade deal if we reserve the right to f**k all over one of their members.

THAT is what the issue is. Once again, we've got folk on here passionately supporting the Leave side of the debate whilst not even knowing what the bleeding debate is about.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I do understand why Leave supporters don't want to engage on this. It's because 5 mins of thought on this issue utterly destroys the central argument of the Leave side.

The Leave side has consistently told us we can have:

1) A departure from the CU that gives us the right to negotiate our own trade deals with countries outside the EU.

And

2) A trade deal with the EU that mitigates the worst of the economic effects of leaving.

Some of us have spent a good chunk of the past three years trying to point out that you can't have both. Because of the NI border.

That is an inescapable fact. If the EU sticks to its principle of supporting a member who would be hammered by 1, we don't get 2.

We were told to ignore Ireland. We were told that the EU would be begging us for a deal. We were told we held all the cards.

b*llocks. Every word of it.

What the process has done, is to expose the way in which Leave mislead the electorate. And it's also exposed the myth of us having the power to call the shots. In some ways it's the final act of the end of the British Empire. We're having to face up to the fact that we don't carry much weight any more. And for some folk, that's traumatic. So I understand them going into fingers in ears la-la-la mode.

It's a simple as that. It's the refusal to engage with that, by Little Englanders who think the world jumps to attention when we snap our fingers that means we are f**king about discussing non-existent technology, 7 weeks before we leave.

[MachoMadness]

I don't understand why our current position is "please amend this clause to give us the right to completely f**k you over whenever we feel like it". It's the Denis Souza of negotiating tactics. Why would the EU want to sign up for this?

[BillyStubbsTears]

MM

You missed the follow up.

"And when you've done that, we want a Trade Deal with you that ensures we don't lose out too badly."

It is childishness of monumental proportions.

[selby]

  Billy, what are you trying to say?that when you were on the door step you ignored your parties proposals in the published manifesto, because nothing mattered but the single issue of getting back in power, in spite of the parties published intentions of how they were  to govern the country.
   

[BillyStubbsTears]

Of course nothing matters but getting into power. That's the entire point of a General Election campaign. It's not some sort of Oxford university debating society.

As it happened, the issue of Brexit didn't come up once in any of the discussions I had on the doorstep. It was a non-issue, because it had effectively been put to bed by the Tories. It's exploded again since then, because the bullshit we were fed by the Leave campaign about how we could have our cake and eat it, how the negotiations were going to be the easiest ever, how we held all the cards etc has been shown to be the bullshit that some of us always knew it was. And now we're in the biggest political crisis since the War. So whatever anyone has said previously matters not one jot. What matters is how we avoid the looming catastrophe NOW.

[wilts rover]

There's probably a reason that the NI backstop never came up on the doorstep during the 2017 GE. It was invented for & by Mrs May when she put down her red lines and then signed up to 'regulatory alignment' for NI in December 2017.

[selby]

  And the situation now Billy, are you really interested in what happens to Brexit? or would you take any situation of that problem for Labour to use the situation to gain power?

[Bentley Bullet]

Selby, when you think about it, the only way forward for a party so inadequate that it has Diane Abbott as shadow home secretary, there's little wonder that rather than struggle to portray its own strengths it finds gaining smartie points from ridiculing the opposition is the only way to progress!

[Filo]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47124058

An apt name for the legal firm don’t you think?

😂😂

[BillyStubbsTears]

Selby

I've written my ideas on here several times for what they are worth. I care deeply for the future of places like Donny. It is going to be a grim future after Brexit. I've said several times that no Lab govt could make a difference to the hit that a place like Doncaster will get if we have a hard Brexit.

Given the choice between a hard Brexit and a Lab Govt or no Brexit and no Lab govt I'd take the latter every time. Because I'm interested in the future of our kids, not some sectarian fight.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I think it's time we all clubbed together to get BB a cat to kick. It'd be therapeutic.

[Bentley Bullet]

I imagine it'd be more therapeutic than flogging a dead horse.

[albie]

Interesting letter in the Murdoch Times, so called paper of record (behind a paywall);
https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/IMG_20190203_135002.jpg

Treeza and John Mann breaking rocks in the hot sun....now there's a thought!

[albie]

It gets worse....it looks like there may have been some fast and loose with EU State Aid rules:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/04/government-letter-to-nissan-reveals-brexit-promise-to-carmarkers

M'learned friends will be chomping at the bit!