INFORMATION

This website uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some of these cookies are essential to make our site work and others help us to improve by giving us some insight into how the site is being used.

For further information, see our Privacy Policy.

Continuing to use this website is acceptance of these cookies.

We are not accepting any new registrations.

In or out?

...on serious topics that don't fit anywhere else at present.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2301 Post by Alan H » September 8th, 2017, 11:22 am

Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2302 Post by Alan H » September 8th, 2017, 2:55 pm

The Tory fallacy: that migrants are taking British jobs and driving down wages
At the heart of the politics of immigration is the belief, repeated by Theresa May as a fact, that immigrants, especially unskilled immigrants, depress wages. At first sight the argument seems plausible – and undeniably there is low-wage competition in some places. But there is no evidence that this is a general problem. When the coalition embarked on its review of EU competences in 2013, I commissioned a range of reviews and studies to establish the facts. They showed that the impact on wages was very small (and only in recession conditions). By and large, immigrants were doing jobs that British people didn’t want to do (or highly skilled jobs that helped to generate work for others). This research was inconvenient to the Home Office, which vetoed the publication of its results. I have now written to the prime minister to ask her to publish them as part of the current public debate.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2303 Post by Alan H » September 8th, 2017, 5:14 pm

David Davis MP in the House of Commons on Tuesday:
Nobody has ever pretended that this will be easy; I have always said that this negotiation will be tough, complex and, at times, confrontational.
Seems loads of people pretended it was all going to be easy and wanted to tell us all (ignore the annoying Buxxfeed banner that inserts itself in various places):
screenshot-www.buzzfeed.com 2017-09-08 16-57-50.png
screenshot-www.buzzfeed.com 2017-09-08 16-57-50.png (4.81 MiB) Viewed 1979 times
Can we add David Davis to the lengthening list of Tory liars?
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2304 Post by Alan H » September 8th, 2017, 6:52 pm

This Brexit thingy is all going tickety-boo, isn't it? Brexit and Chemicals: A Chain Reaction
The Chemicals Industry Association (CIA – no, not the American one!) represents chemical and pharmaceutical businesses in the UK and its membership ranges from multinationals through middling-sized companies and to small ones.

In a pre-referendum survey of its members conducted by the CIA, there was 0% support for leaving the EU, with 70% wanting to remain – a measure of how important it is to this sector.
Trade and tariffs

The preferred option for the chemicals sector is for the UK to stay in the single market and to avoid customs tariffs, but if we don’t the sector will require a long transition of at least two to three years after we leave the EU to adjust. Indeed, the CIA is of the view that such a transition is ‘inevitable’ and would involve ‘staying in the single market’ for at least that time so as to ‘help support trade, investment, jobs and overall economic growth’.

The worst case scenario is, of course, crashing out without deal. Falling back on WTO rules would mean tariffs being imposed immediately on both sides, impacting not only exports and imports, but also re-exports, as many UK distributors buy in chemical and pharmaceutical products from the rest of the world and then sell these into the single market.

For the chemicals industry, this would mean tariffs on goods going from from 0% to, on average, 4% to 6%. For a company like BASF, who have a plant in my constituency in the city of Bradford, this could add £50 to £55 million a year to the cost of their operations. Overall, the cost of tariffs to UK chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturers could be in excess of £350 million.

Because of these considerable extra costs, UK chemicals companies headquartered elsewhere in the EU could decide to transfer some or all manufacturing to other EU countries to avoid the higher customs costs and bureaucracy. Indeed, 20% of the 126 companies represented by the Chemical Business Association are already investigating such moves.

Staying in the customs union would avoid some of this damage, but the government seem intent on pretending that they can have a separate customs arrangement with the EU that is exactly the same as the existing one!
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2305 Post by Alan H » September 8th, 2017, 7:46 pm

Theresa May to lay out Brexit transition plan in Europe speech
Theresa May, UK prime minister, is planning to use a major speech in Europe this month to set out her proposals for a “no cliff-edge” Brexit transition deal, with ministers saying any interim agreement must be “as close as possible” to current relations.

While that message will resonate well with business and Brussels, Mrs May will deliver a much tougher missive to the Conservative party conference a few days later, promising Eurosceptics that her end goal is still to deliver a “clean” Brexit.

About 35 Eurosceptic Tory MPs signed a letter this week warning against a transition deal that keeps Britain in the EU “by stealth”. The letter was intended to send a clear signal to Mrs May not to take their support for granted.

The prime minister’s decision to address Brexit in two different speeches — and to two very different audiences — reflects her two-pronged political challenge to protect the British economy from a difficult exit while holding her fractious political party together.

Although Downing Street says no final decisions have been taken on the timing or location of her first Europe speech, the prime minister’s team is scoping out different European venues, and have pencilled in September 22 as a possible date.

Whitehall officials expect Mrs May to use that speech to make overtures to Brussels to start negotiating a transition deal that would reflect existing customs union and single market membership for a period after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.

Mrs May has often talked about an “implementation phase”, but has never fully explained how it might work. Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, noted this week that the issue has barely been discussed in formal Brexit talks.

David Davis, Brexit secretary, has talked of staying “as close as possible” to current arrangements — even if Brussels demands Britain carries on paying into the EU budget, accepting free movement and European court rulings.

He told MPs this week that while the UK would legally leave the single market and customs union upon Brexit in 2019, during a transition “we may well seek a customs agreement for that period and a similar arrangement on the single market provisions”.

But according to several Conservative party officials, the prime minister will use a “robust” Tory conference speech in Manchester on October 4 to reassure party activists she remains committed to making a clean break from the EU.

Mrs May wants her conference speech to focus on domestic reforms, but her Brexit comments will contain “plenty of red meat” on Europe, according to one party insider.

Mrs May is expected to tell party activists that she has not deviated from the promise she made in her Lancaster House speech in January that Brexit will ultimately allow the UK to take control of its laws, money and borders.

Iain Anderson, co-founder of Cicero, the financial consultancy, said: “The danger is that if she makes two speeches, business and the City will ask: ‘Which is it?’”

Tory officials say the Manchester speech will reprise some of the themes of Mrs May’s Eurosceptic speech to last year’s party conference, and caused a slump in the pound.
Downing Street declined to comment.

Mats Persson, a former adviser to Number 10 on Europe and current head of international trade at EY, said that his former boss, David Cameron, often struggled to write Europe speeches that simultaneously appealed to two different audiences.

He said delivering a separate speech first to a European audience could be a sensible approach.

“Using Europe-compatible language would create some goodwill,” he said. “The tone matters tremendously.”
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

Zeff
Posts: 142
Joined: August 6th, 2016, 2:13 pm

Re: In or out?

#2306 Post by Zeff » September 9th, 2017, 11:23 am

This might be of interest:
http://vip.politicsmeanspolitics.com/20 ... rexit/amp/

(Sorry if my intermittent attendance causes non-sequitur or interruption).

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2307 Post by Alan H » September 9th, 2017, 7:27 pm

[urlhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global- ... story.html]All the worst lies about Brexit are about to be revealed[/url]
Because they didn’t expect to win that campaign, they didn’t expect either their ignorance or their dishonesty to be revealed. But then they won — and now it’s happening.

The most egregious lie was about money. During the campaign, leading Brexiteers drove around the country in large red buses, emblazoned with a slogan: “We send the EU 350 million pounds a week, let’s fund our NHS [National Health Service] instead.” This was a very influential argument, as the Brexit campaign managers have admitted. It was also an invented number — Britain does not send the E.U. 350 million pounds a week, as fact-checkers showed over and over. Some of those on the winning side admitted as much after the campaign.

But now, instead of receiving “350 million pounds a week,” negotiators are trapped in an argument about how much money Britain owes Europe — for budgetary promises not kept, for agreements signed and not honored. More ominously, the British government is just now realizing that leaving the European single market, which is far more than an ordinary free-trade zone, will cost it in other ways, too. Jointly designed European agencies and arrangements may now have to be re-created, at vast expense, from scratch: pharmaceutical and nuclear regulators, for example. It is possible that a vast new customs service, complete with parking lots at the border, computer systems and customs agents, will be needed to cope with new tariff regimes once Britain is outside the European customs union. In the long term, Britain will have more bureaucracy, and less money to spend on the NHS.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2308 Post by Alan H » September 9th, 2017, 7:48 pm

"We are being told we will survive Brexit. I don't want to survive; I want to thrive!" James O'Brien Dismantles The Final Arguments From Brexiteers
Indeed, even Leave voters have gone from saying Brexit would be great to saying "We'll survive", he said.

Responding to reports that the government had asked FTSE100 bosses to sign a letter backing the government's negotiating strategy, James boomed: "That's North Korean, isn't it?

"It would be like me saying please give me a ring and tell me that I'm brilliant and then we can use it to prove that I'm brilliant. It doesn't prove anything of the sort, it just proves I've asked lots of people to tell me that I'm brilliant.

"Writing to FTSE100 chief executives, saying "Please, please approve of our Brexit strategy". Do you know how I'd reply?

"Dear Mrs May, I am unable to sign the letter praising your Brexit negotiating position because I agree with everything you said about the European Union during the referendum campaign. Lots of love, Chief Executive Officer, FTSE100 company."

James also discussed how Brexiteers are complaining that the EU are tough negotiators, who are ruthlessly defending the interests of the other EU countries - and suggested that's the opposite of what they said during the campaign.

Watch his epic monologue above.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2309 Post by Alan H » September 9th, 2017, 8:20 pm

Brexit: Senior Tories attack ‘astonishing monstrosity' of Theresa May's EU Withdrawal Bill
Prominent Conservative backbenchers laid into the Government’s EU withdrawal legislation as it started its journey in the Commons, with one describing it as an “astonishing monstrosity” of a bill.

The comments came during the first round of debates regarding the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill – often referred to as the Repeal Bill – which will overturn the 1972 act that took Britain into the European Economic Community.

Its aim is to transpose relevant EU law onto the UK statute book when the UK formally leaves the EU in March 2019.

While describing the bill as “vital”, the former Conservative Attorney General Dominic Grieve said that in its current form – an “astonishing monstrosity” – he “will be in no position to support it at third reading”.

Mr Grieve went on to call the situation with the so-called Henry VIII powers – allowing the executive to bypass normal parliamentary scrutiny to transpose EU law onto the UK statute book – as “frankly ridiculous”.

Nicky Morgan, the former Conservative cabinet minister, added there is “no sign of taking back control” in the bill, adding on Twitter: “The ‘Repeal Bill’ is actually a ‘Re-introduction’ Bill – making the UK rule-takers not rule-makers.”

She added that the “true saboteurs” of Brexit are those opposed to Parliament having a role in scrutinising the process. “Parliamentary scrutiny is not an affront to democracy,” she said. “It is its very essence.”

“And if the Government isn’t going to move in the next two days of debate, well I think we may have to force it to go back to the drawing board and try again.”
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2310 Post by Alan H » September 9th, 2017, 11:38 pm

‘EU needs us more than we need it’ untruth unravelling fast
During the referendum Brexiters peddled the falsehood that the EU needs us more than we need it. They said Brussels would be falling over itself to cut a trade deal with us since EU countries sell us more than we sell them. In particular, they claimed that Germany’s Angela Merkel would be desperate to reach an agreement so BMW could sell us its cars.

It’s not clear whether the Brexiters were dishonest or just willfully ignorant. But it is now dawning on even die-hard Leavers that we need the EU more than it needs us. David Davis is pleading for the EU to be “more imaginative and flexible”. Liam Fox has accused the EU of “blackmail”.

If the other countries really needed us more than we need them, it would be the EU that was pleading with us to show flexibility and accusing us of blackmail. As Nick Macpherson, the top civil servant at the Treasury until last year, tweeted: “‘Blackmail’ is the perpetual cry of the smaller negotiator with the weaker hand.”
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

Nick
Posts: 11027
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 10:10 am

Re: In or out?

#2311 Post by Nick » September 10th, 2017, 9:19 am

So they are blackmailing us, Alan.

Cairsley
Posts: 28
Joined: July 4th, 2014, 2:25 am

Re: In or out?

#2312 Post by Cairsley » September 10th, 2017, 10:50 am

I was impressed by the demonstration in London in favor of reversing the decision to leave the EU, about which I have been reading on line. Britons are changing their minds as it becomes ever clearer that they were cynically misled by all too many of their politicians, and that the concerns they thought would be best dealt with by leaving the EU can in fact be sensibly dealt with without leaving the EU and losing all the advantages thereof. My favorite quote from the report in the Independent on line is:
"As his “Stay Angry and Fight Brexit” placard suggested, Mr Vickers, formerly of the Royal Engineers, from Newbury, Berkshire, was indeed cross: “But not with the poor sods who voted Leave. They were lied to, and those poor sods are going to get poorer – while the rich politicians who led the Leave campaign, the ones with dosh, are going to be okay."
That pretty well sums up the situation, despite all the attempts to obfuscate and conceal the reckless wilfulness and irresponsibility of the politicians who have brought it about. Another quotation from the Independent article bears witness to the phenomenon taking place in the UK — that people who were swayed to vote to leave are now recognizing the deception and changing their minds about the UK's EU membership:
“Anything could happen,” said Mr Currie, 50, an accountant. “Eighteen months [until the end of Brexit negotiations] is a very long time in politics.

“Once people realise the deal they will get is nowhere near as good as what they were told it will be, as more and more small businesses go under because of the falling value of the pound, things might change very quickly.

“They are already changing. The local paper in Sunderland [which voted strongly for Leave] recently published a poll which showed Sunderland would vote Remain now.”
I, a Britannophile New Zealander, hope the plans for the UK to leave the EU will all fall apart, as they seem to be doing in any case on account of their own delusional recklessness and incoherence, so that the only course remaining for any sane government to take will be to decide to stay put in the EU. But . . . will there still be any sane politicians in Westminster to make that decision within the next eighteen months?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2313 Post by Alan H » September 10th, 2017, 11:12 am

Nick wrote:So they are blackmailing us, Alan.
What? Who? How? Where?

PS What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2314 Post by Alan H » September 10th, 2017, 11:27 am

Cairsley wrote:I was impressed by the demonstration in London in favor of reversing the decision to leave the EU, about which I have been reading on line. Britons are changing their minds as it becomes ever clearer that they were cynically misled by all too many of their politicians, and that the concerns they thought would be best dealt with by leaving the EU can in fact be sensibly dealt with without leaving the EU and losing all the advantages thereof. My favorite quote from the report in the Independent on line is:
"As his “Stay Angry and Fight Brexit” placard suggested, Mr Vickers, formerly of the Royal Engineers, from Newbury, Berkshire, was indeed cross: “But not with the poor sods who voted Leave. They were lied to, and those poor sods are going to get poorer – while the rich politicians who led the Leave campaign, the ones with dosh, are going to be okay."
That pretty well sums up the situation, despite all the attempts to obfuscate and conceal the reckless wilfulness and irresponsibility of the politicians who have brought it about. Another quotation from the Independent article bears witness to the phenomenon taking place in the UK — that people who were swayed to vote to leave are now recognizing the deception and changing their minds about the UK's EU membership:
“Anything could happen,” said Mr Currie, 50, an accountant. “Eighteen months [until the end of Brexit negotiations] is a very long time in politics.

“Once people realise the deal they will get is nowhere near as good as what they were told it will be, as more and more small businesses go under because of the falling value of the pound, things might change very quickly.

“They are already changing. The local paper in Sunderland [which voted strongly for Leave] recently published a poll which showed Sunderland would vote Remain now.”
I, a Britannophile New Zealander, hope the plans for the UK to leave the EU will all fall apart, as they seem to be doing in any case on account of their own delusional recklessness and incoherence, so that the only course remaining for any sane government to take will be to decide to stay put in the EU. But . . . will there still be any sane politicians in Westminster to make that decision within the next eighteen months?
+1

But what are these plans for the UK to leave the EU of which you speak? As someone said recently, we can't switch to Plan B: there isn't even a Plan A. The UK have made a load of different demands, claims, promises in the last 14 months (never mind pre referendum). The papers they have published so far are little more than some rather obvious statements of a few facts and a whole dose of wishful thinking. Out of all this, they still have nothing that could qualify as a vision of what, precisely, they want out of the negotiations nor how the fuck we might get there or what the price we will have to pay will be. Oh, yes, they demand all sorts of things from the EU but with scant regard to what is practical, permissible, allowable or legal. They are acting like someone wanting to leave his squash club, refusing to pay the fees for the rest of the contract he signed up to, demanding they cancel his membership, but who still wants 7-day unfettered and free access to the courts. And the bar, of course.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

Cairsley
Posts: 28
Joined: July 4th, 2014, 2:25 am

Re: In or out?

#2315 Post by Cairsley » September 10th, 2017, 1:24 pm

Alan H wrote:But what are these plans for the UK to leave the EU of which you speak? As someone said recently, we can't switch to Plan B: there isn't even a Plan A. The UK have made a load of different demands, claims, promises in the last 14 months (never mind pre referendum). The papers they have published so far are little more than some rather obvious statements of a few facts and a whole dose of wishful thinking. Out of all this, they still have nothing that could qualify as a vision of what, precisely, they want out of the negotiations nor how the fuck we might get there or what the price we will have to pay will be. Oh, yes, they demand all sorts of things from the EU but with scant regard to what is practical, permissible, allowable or legal. They are acting like someone wanting to leave his squash club, refusing to pay the fees for the rest of the contract he signed up to, demanding they cancel his membership, but who still wants 7-day unfettered and free access to the courts. And the bar, of course.
I actually do not understand how politicians like Theresa May, David Davis and Boris Johnson think they can be taken seriously when they state their proposals for UK leaving the EU. These have amounted to no more than your description here. Sane people with some competence in such matters see immediately how ridiculous the UK's proposals made so far, yet Mrs May, who was before the referendum a moderate advocate for remaining in the EU, is now trying to insist that the UK's only worthwhile and viable option is to sever all formal ties with the EU but still have access to the single market and other financial goodies, because, after all, we Europeans have got so chummy with each other these last few decades. There is a recent photo (which, sorry, I cannot find now) of Angel Merkel and Theresa May shaking hands and smiling at each other, the latter with rather desperate earnest of fellow feeling and sisterly affection and the latter with polite and calculating comprehension. It conveyed the impression that Mrs May was well out of her depth, and that her German counterpart was well aware of it. Likewise with regard to the UK's fanciful efforts so far in negotiation with the EU — various versions of wanting to eat one's cake and have it. If the UK government cannot come up with anything more constructive in the negotiation and popular demonstrations and statements clearly indicate an unequivocal swing of public opinion in favor of remaining in the EU over the next year, then there must be hope that this change in the "will of the people", made possible by their disabusal of lies, will have to be recognized by the government even as a mandate to reverse the decision to leave the EU. Hopefully, that will put an end to the delusion-seeking nonsense to which the present UK government is committed and will leave UK voters a little wiser in their choice of representatives in future.

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2316 Post by Alan H » September 10th, 2017, 2:14 pm

Cairsley wrote:Sane people with some competence in such matters see immediately how ridiculous the UK's proposals made so far, yet Mrs May, who was before the referendum a moderate advocate for remaining in the EU, is now trying to insist that the UK's only worthwhile and viable option is to sever all formal ties with the EU but still have access to the single market and other financial goodies, because, after all, we Europeans have got so chummy with each other these last few decades.
It may be just the way you've phrased that, but I'm not sure May is saying that leaving the EU is the UK's only viable and worthwhile option. I think she is saying that, because we apparently voted for it, we must leave the EU, and our only option is to leave, come hell or high water, And even though she may want us to believe we will be OK afterwards, she can't - for the reasons you gave - seriously think we are going to be. I think May is careful with words and her 'Brexit means Brexit' slogan is as inspired as it it vacuous.

However, it's that line of thought that leads many - including me - to conclude that May is not doing this to fulfil the wishes of that narrow majority in a non-binding referendum with no specified threshold, after a campaign of lies, but to fulfil some longed-for Tory dream of a low regulation, low rights, tax haven. Theresa May (or even Cameron) could have chosen to say, right, you lot voted to leave the EU, let's now seriously look at how that could be done and set her ministers to work at looking at the options an implications and later, after gathering evidence and putting forward various (costed) proposals, either made the decision herself, 'delegated' it to MPs or had another referendum on whether we, knowing the implications and costs either way, now wanted to leave. If that had been done, we might not be in this unholy mess. That she didn't, I find telling.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2317 Post by Alan H » September 10th, 2017, 2:35 pm

Behind a paywall, unfortunately, but this, written by David Davis, surely is the definition of irony and chutzpah? Back this Repeal Bill, or we face a chaotic future
"Empty vessels make the most noise”, the saying goes. And one thing’s for sure — this week has been a noisy one.

Accusations of a power grab have flown around Westminster as the Repeal Bill entered its Second Reading. And fantastical conspiracies about “watering down” workers’ rights, and health and safety legislation, led to heated debates over the airwaves.

Those vacuous charges – made by opposition members who should know better – do not reflect the realities that underpin the Government’s concerted effort to prepare the country for the day we leave the EU. Because without this Bill the country’s statute book simply would not work after Brexit – causing chaos for businesses, consumers and investors right across the UK. By converting EU law into UK law, wherever practical, at the point we leave, the Repeal Bill offers legal continuity. And it delivers a legal guarantee that the UK can set...
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

Nick
Posts: 11027
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 10:10 am

Re: In or out?

#2318 Post by Nick » September 11th, 2017, 8:59 am

From the Sunday Times

Yanis Varoufakis: The EU wants Theresa May’s total surrender — I should know
Britain must make a radical move if it is to avoid the snare set by Brussels, which wants Brexit to fail, writes Greece’s former finance minister

Yanis Varoufakis
September 10 2017, 12:01am,
The Sunday Times

Brussels’s cheerleading journalists are at it again. Their mission? To aid and abet the EU negotiators in winning the blame game over the failure of Brexit negotiations that Brussels is doing all it can to guarantee.

That Michel Barnier and his team have a mandate to wreck any mutually advantageous deal there is little doubt. The key term is “sequencing”. The message to London is clear: you give us everything we are asking for, unconditionally. Then and only then will we hear what you want.

This is what one demands if one seeks to ruin a negotiation in advance.

Ever since Theresa May embarked on her ill-conceived journey towards an ill-defined hard Brexit, I have been warning my friends in Britain of what lies ahead. The EU would not negotiate with London, I told them. Under the guise of negotiations it would force May and her team to expend all their energies negotiating for the right to . . . negotiate.

Meanwhile, its media cheerleaders would work feverishly towards demeaning London’s proposals, denigrating its negotiators and reversing the truth in ways that Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of.

Right on cue came the leaks that followed the dinner that the prime minister hosted for Jean-Claude Juncker in 10 Downing Street on April 26 — their explicit purpose being to belittle their host. Then came the editorials by the usual suspects — the journalists that Brussels uses to leak its propaganda — deploring the “lack of preparation” by the British — using Berlin’s and Brussels’s favourite put-down that “they have not done their homework”.

As I promised on the day I resigned from Greece’s finance ministry, after my prime minister’s capitulation to that same Brussels-Berlin cabal, I wear their loathing with pride.

But I worry that Brussels and Berlin may succeed in damaging Britain, as they previously succeeded in damaging my people.

Reading between the lines, the message to London from the EU propaganda machine is fourfold:

● The EU will not budge. Brussels’s worst nightmare is a mutually advantageous economic agreement that other Europeans may interpret as a sign that a mutiny against Europe’s establishment may be worthwhile. To ensure that there will be no such deal, Barnier and the European Commission have not been given a mandate to negotiate any concessions to Britain regarding future arrangements such as a free trade agreement.

● Angela Merkel will not step in to save the day. The only national leader who is capable of intervening therapeutically did not do this for Greece and she will not do it for Britain.

● London must not try to bypass the rule of EU law. Every time London makes a proposal, Brussels will reject it as either naive or in conflict with “the rule of EU law”; a legal framework for exiting so threadbare that it offers no guidance at all regarding the withdrawal of a member state from the union. In this light, when they speak of the “rule of law” what they really mean is the logic of brute force backed by their indifference to large costs inflicted on both sides of the English Channel.

● Prepare your people for total capitulation — that is your only option.

None of this is new. It springs out of the EU playbook that was thrown at me during our 2015 negotiations. I had bent over backwards to compromise on a deal that was viable for Greece and beneficial to the rest of the eurozone. It was rejected because being seen to work with us risked giving ideas to the Spaniards, the Italians, indeed the French, that there was utility to be had from challenging the EU establishment.

To kill off any prospect of a mutually beneficial agreement, we were forced to negotiate with Barnier-like wooden bureaucrats lacking the mandate to negotiate, while Merkel turned a blind eye to the impending impasse. As for the “rule of law”, or the “rules” that German officials always appealed to, it was nothing but an empty shell that they filled with whatever directives suited them.

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2319 Post by Alan H » September 11th, 2017, 11:40 am

Tory-DUP £1bn payment needs parliament's approval after Gina Miller challenge
Parliament will need to approve the release of £1bn in funding for Northern Ireland promised to the Democratic Unionist party by Theresa May to secure its support after the general election, the government has conceded.

Challenged by the campaigner Gina Miller about the legal basis for releasing the funds, which have not yet been made available, the Treasury solicitor, who heads the Government Legal Department, said it “will have appropriate parliamentary authorisation”, adding: “No timetable has been set for the making of such payments.”

Replying to a legal letter from Miller and the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), Jonathan Jones said the government intends to use “long-established procedures, under which central government requests the grant of money by the House of Commons” in order to pay out the funds it promised the DUP in the controversial agreement in June.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2320 Post by Alan H » September 11th, 2017, 2:29 pm

This Brexit thingy is all going tickety-boo, isn't it? Britain's chief trade negotiator backs scrapping UK regulations to get deals
Mr Falconer was a member of the The Legatum Institute think-tank’s “special trade commission” which drew up a report calling for Britain’s regulations to be “on the table” in negotiations with other countries.

The report, which bears Mr Falconer’s name, said the UK would have to leave the European Economic Area so that its regulations would be able to differ from those of the EU if required by the UK's future trade partners.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: In or out?

#2321 Post by Alan H » September 11th, 2017, 3:34 pm

The UK’s faith in a ‘sweet Brexit’ isn’t just deluded – it’s dangerous
s the UK political class zigzags towards the abyss, saying one thing about Brexit today and another thing tomorrow, any illusions in EU capitals that the summer holiday may have brought British MPs to their senses must now be put to rest. Indeed, the daily British displays of hope for a sweet “soft Brexit” deal illustrate not only the tenacity of British self-delusion. More than that, they lay bare a persistent and dangerous ignorance of the internal logic of the EU.

Talk in British media and politics is still too often of the need for a “tough negotiator” who can deliver a great deal for Britain, keeping the benefits of single market membership without any (or many) of the obligations and costs. What is required, so the thinking goes even in most remain circles, is an acceptance on the part of the EU that it is in nobody’s interest to “punish Britain” in order to “discourage other countries from leaving”.

The first problem here is the term “single market”. Brexiteers and remainers alike seem to cling to a 19th-century notion of separate nations making their own products and trading them with other countries. The chief political project is then to lower or ideally abolish tariffs so that the so-called comparative advantages of free trade kick in.

Last week chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier called this view “nostalgic”, and for good reason. The EU is rapidly evolving into something far more ambitious than just a free trade area: it is in the process of becoming one huge economic zone governed by a single set of rules and standards and overseen by a single European court of justice, striking trade deals with the rest of the world and deriving its logic and coherence from the four famous freedoms of goods, capital, services and labour. Products such as cars, computers or aeroplanes are now built from components made in factories and production units scattered across the EU, with employees moving seamlessly between them. For this reason “single economy” is a far better term than “single market”.

The refusal or inability to see this goes a long way towards explaining the British misreading of the EU’s position on Brexit. It is true that in the context of Brexit, EU member states want to discourage one another – but not from leaving the EU. There is not a single other EU country that wants to leave, because each believes the benefits of membership to far exceed its costs. But this is not to say that each member state would not love to tweak a few rules it finds irksome, to claim a few extra benefits and rebates for itself, and to shirk some obligations.

What EU countries as well as EU officials in Brussels therefore do want to prevent at all costs is member states using a sweet deal for Britain to claim their own version. With 27 countries demanding exceptions, special arrangements and opt-outs, the unravelling of the single market or economy would be all but assured.

This is what the EU means when it insists that the “integrity” of the single market trumps all else. The EU’s refusal to cut Britain a deal and protect it from itself is not about punishment. It is about self-preservation. For this reason most European business groups support the EU’s position, with the loudest voices in this camp often coming from the German car industry – the very sector that Brexiteers promised would push like no other for Britain to get a sweet deal.

Brexiteers are right to argue that the EU will let political considerations be trumped by economic self-interest. Where Brexiteers go hopelessly, disastrously wrong is to think that EU countries’ economic long-term self-interest is served by a special deal for Britain.

The fact that on a rainy day in June 2016 millions of British citizens voted for a “have our cake and eat it” option that simply isn’t on the menu is terrible. But it is not the EU’s fault. Britain’s political establishment failed those voters miserably by never laying out for them the options that were actually on the menu before asking them to vote. Yes, doing so would have meant open war with the billionaire-owned press. But then again: what is a politician worth who does not dare to speak truth to tabloid power?

To be sure, the EU will be damaged if in 18 months Britain crashes out of the EU, the way your suit is ruined with blood stains if the person standing next to you decides to shoot themselves in the foot. But does the British political class genuinely believe that EU member states are going to jump in front of that bullet and undermine the very existence of their single economy in order to safeguard the privileges of a country that over the past decades has lost no opportunity to disparage, undermine and blackmail them? Britain already had a sweet deal – it’s not getting any sweeter.

In spite of its recent bout of ignorant irrationality Britain still has many friends and admirers across the continent, and friends don’t let friends drink-drive. But what if the inebriated party insists that you are no longer friends in any case?
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

Post Reply