Topic: Brexit Negotiations.

[EddieRUKiddingVarese]

Just increase the width of the English Channel, that should do it 

[Mr. Minnow]

Would you believe it - it seems that Bertie Wooster and his chums are finally about to publish a Brexit plan of their own:

Update to the above:

https://twitter.com/Andrew_Adonis/status/1038528269132484608

https://twitter.com/ianbirrell/status/1038689473347891201


So, as you were then. No alternative plan after all.

Why not? Well the article in the first link says some MPs were concerned that publishing a plan of their own would give "ammunition for Downing Street and pro-European groups to attack their proposals", while the second tweet says that "some of the chapters, which have been studied by a wide range of Eurosceptics, are said to be riddled with factual and legal errors".

Put the two tweets together and roughly translated they appear to mean: "if we publish a plan of our own we'll be advertising the fact that we're a bunch of clueless fuckwits who have no idea how to make our mad ideas work, which means there would be a serious risk of being rumbled by the people we conned into voting for this train wreck. It's a lot easier to just carry on doing what we've been doing since before the referendum - attacking everyone else's plans by repeating the same vacuous slogans ad nauseam and screaming "betrayal!" at the drop a hat. We're really good at that."

[JBS]

Meanwhile Mr. Minnow's horde of fellow Remoaners sabotages the Proms
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1014968/Last-night-of-the-proms-EU-flags-anti-Brexit-campaign-sabotage-British-brexit-news

If this be sabotage make the most of it!

[Mr. Minnow]

Meanwhile Mr. Minnow's horde of fellow Remoaners sabotages the Proms
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1014968/Last-night-of-the-proms-EU-flags-anti-Brexit-campaign-sabotage-British-brexit-news

If this be sabotage make the most of it!

It's not easy being an Enemy of the People^TM. We have to grab whatever opportunities come our way.

[Pat B]

Update to the above:

https://twitter.com/Andrew_Adonis/status/1038528269132484608

https://twitter.com/ianbirrell/status/1038689473347891201


So, as you were then. No alternative plan after all.

Why not? Well the article in the first link says some MPs were concerned that publishing a plan of their own would give "ammunition for Downing Street and pro-European groups to attack their proposals", while the second tweet says that "some of the chapters, which have been studied by a wide range of Eurosceptics, are said to be riddled with factual and legal errors".

Put the two tweets together and roughly translated they appear to mean: "if we publish a plan of our own we'll be advertising the fact that we're a bunch of clueless fuckwits who have no idea how to make our mad ideas work, which means there would be a serious risk of being rumbled by the people we conned into voting for this train wreck. It's a lot easier to just carry on doing what we've been doing since before the referendum - attacking everyone else's plans by repeating the same vacuous slogans ad nauseam and screaming "betrayal!" at the drop a hat. We're really good at that."

The first tweet seems to be the relevant one. Have factual or legal errors stopped them before? Especially in a proposal that they don’t expect to actually be implemented.

[Mr. Minnow]

Have factual or legal errors stopped them before? Especially in a proposal that they don’t expect to actually be implemented.

You're right of course, such errors have never stopped them before and won't stop them now. Whenever an inconvenient fact about Brexit is pointed out their standard response is to cry "Project Fear!" in much the same way that Trump cries "fake news!". By this logic, "Project Fear" includes everyone from the civil service to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

I'm not so sure that they don't expect this nonsense to be implemented though. If reports this evening are to be believed, the ERG's latest meeting saw MPs openly discussing how to oust May and replace her with someone more to the ERG's liking - presumably Johnson or Rees Mogg. It won't happen before the Tory party conference and maybe not immediately after that, but there's a pretty good chance it will happen at some point in the next few months. If it does, they are more than mad enough to try implementing this madness. 

[Mr. Minnow]

The government has released another batch of impact notices on the effects of leaving with no deal (or as the Brexit ultras would have it, a "World Trade Brexit"). They are apparently hoping that these notices will convince Tory MPs to back Chequers as it's the only plan on the table - it's Chequers or nothing. Since the EU has already rejected the central planks of Chequers, our options would appear to be somewhat limited. 

[Que]

The lack of a substantial swing towards "remain" seals the fate of any 2nd referendum IMO....



https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45520517

Q

[Iota]

If those polls truly reflect wider opinion (and as we've often seen they can be wide of the mark), then in the face of overwhelming evidence that Brexit is an enormous and pointless act of self-sabotage, it just seems like we're confronted with a stubborn ideological blindness. All other considerations are sacrificed to a completely quixotic notion of a free and independent homeland, an emotional issue beyond the interrogation of logic or pragmatism. These are feelings which of course can be easily stoked by media-spinning figures with their own/other agendas, and I can't help but feel Remain would benefit from some kind of demagogue figure to redress the balance.

To be fair it is an emotional issue for me too (a Remainer) but at least I feel that Remainers have some kind of logic on which to base their preference.

[Mr. Minnow]

What will Brexit look like? If the ultras get their way, something like this:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/18/rightwing-thinktanks-unveil-radical-plan-for-us-uk-brexit-trade-deal-nhs

You won't see any of this stuff on the side of a big red bus any time soon.

[JBS]

What will Brexit look like? If the ultras get their way, something like this:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/18/rightwing-thinktanks-unveil-radical-plan-for-us-uk-brexit-trade-deal-nhs

You won't see any of this stuff on the side of a big red bus any time soon.

Foreign competition in legal services?
What is that supposed to be? Letting US attorneys practice in England?

[Que]

We are heading for a Blind Brexit (The New European)



Q

[Mr. Minnow]

We are heading for a Blind Brexit (The New European)



Q

Marvellous stuff:

It would offer nothing concrete on, say, the single market and customs union, and save everything for the transition – which would probably last a minimum of five years, and even then require an actual implementation period once everything that had been negotiated was finally actioned.

In the final fudge, then, Brussels would allow our exhausted government to squeak past the finish line, declare Brexit ‘delivered’, and kick every major decision affecting British jobs and the economy into the long grass of near-interminable negotiation.

[....]

Third, it would gravely damage the Remain cause, and specifically the campaign for a People’s Vote. The entire premise of the vote is to empower the British people to evaluate the prime minister’s deal against the option of staying in (and, as some advocate, leaving with no deal at all).

That means clarity and transparency about our future economic status and influence over decision-making. But if nobody knows what that is, we cannot vote on it.

If May tries this I hope it gets voted down in the Commons. It would be a disgrace to present parliament and the country with a largely blank piece of paper and ask for the right to fill in the details in whatever way they see fit when/if they can think of something. The opposition parties would probably vote against it, but as for the Tory rebels, who knows. Most of them don't have much of a backbone.

In any case, while the EU doesn't want a no deal scenario, it should also be aware of the danger of signing up to a deal at any price. Gove's comment that any deal we agree could be unpicked by future governments should be a warning of just how untrustworthy these bastards are.

[Mr. Minnow]

If those polls truly reflect wider opinion (and as we've often seen they can be wide of the mark), then in the face of overwhelming evidence that Brexit is an enormous and pointless act of self-sabotage, it just seems like we're confronted with a stubborn ideological blindness. All other considerations are sacrificed to a completely quixotic notion of a free and independent homeland, an emotional issue beyond the interrogation of logic or pragmatism. These are feelings which of course can be easily stoked by media-spinning figures with their own/other agendas, and I can't help but feel Remain would benefit from some kind of demagogue figure to redress the balance.

To be fair it is an emotional issue for me too (a Remainer) but at least I feel that Remainers have some kind of logic on which to base their preference.

The Leave voters I know still don't believe that Brexit will cause any of the problems they've been warned about. I was in a discussion about Brexit recently and the topic of disruption to just in time supply chains came up. The evidence is that even very short delays at customs will cause huge tailbacks that will go on for miles, but the only answer to this from the Brexiters present was, "they won't let that happen. It'll get sorted somehow. It'll be fine." That's it. No logic, no evidence, just a blind faith that it will somehow work out.     

[Sydney Nova Scotia]

Just Ask Donald for advice- I'm sure he will give it 

Simple...............

[vandermolen]

Seems to be total meltdown.

[Mr. Minnow]

Seems to be total meltdown.

Today's laughable display of infantile histrionics stirring display of standing up for Britain will probably get May through the party conference, but that's about it. Especially odd was her claim that the EU 27 had suddenly sprung their objections to undermining the single market on her at this late stage, when they've been telling her that for the last two years.

Naturally the Brexiters are delighted. They're now pushing her to go for a Canada-type FTA, which doesn't replicate the frictionless trade we have in the single market or do anything to solve the problem of the Irish border, or crash out with no deal at all. Operation Clusterfuck is right on track. 

[Que]

I have to agree with these gloomy comments...

The EU stands it ground on the integrity of the internal market, which means the basic options on trade relations remain the same.
The UK will have to pick one, be it Canada or Norway. I'm sure some extras can be negotiated, on defence and security for instance. But only if the jurisdiction of the ECJ is accepted.

But the trade deal is of later concern, and will probably be negotiated by a different UK government.
What we need right now is an exit deal that will provide a transitional period.
And the main stumbling block for that was and is Northern Ireland.....

It seems the UK govt. assumed that Ireland would stand alone on this at the moment of truth, but the EU 27 have firmly closed their ranks.  I don't think they are going to blink, will the UK? 

Chances of a hard, no deal, cliff edge Brexit are rising significantly - the Pound has plummeted...
We're going to know pretty soon: the planning is for a basic agreement in October, signed of in November.... after that time has run out.. and it's time to prepare ourselves. I'm pretty sure the European Commission will already have some emergency regulations on the shelf to deal unilaterally with some of the immediate issues that will arise. Several member states - particularly those with strong (economic) ties with the UK -  are doing the same.

Q

[vandermolen]

My brother (retired parliamentary lawyer) has been asked back to work as they are desperate for pre-Brexit legislators.

[Iota]

I cannot think of anything in my lifetime that compares with Brexit (I'm in my fifties) and keep hoping that there'll be some indication that we'll pull back from this madness (at the very least from a hard Brexit), but I haven't seen any yet, and the nightmarish trudge forwards/downwards continues.
I'm somewhat nonplussed by the vox pop interviews where people say they're bored and just want the whole thing to be over, without seeming to care too much which way it goes, it seems extraordinary that people can have such a que sera, sera attitude to such a tectonic and potentially disastrous shift. But then perhaps it's me and people like me who are actually in the minority in being so concerned about Brexit being a bringer of doom, in which case the chances of some kind of reversal seem even more remote.

One of my hopes is that a hard brexit *is* off the cards behind the scenes, and is only obscured because it would affect negotiating leverage. But there is such a gallery of shifty, ruthless rogues wandering around the corridors of power at the moment, that that may well be a very forlorn hope.