@thevfmaddict
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May’s deal is far, far short of what Brexiteers wanted. For Brexiteers to be prepared to accept it – provided that the backstop is either time-limited or the UK can leave it unilaterally – is a HUGE compromise on the part of Brexiteers. The EU hold the key to the solution.
The reality is that the EU was not even a signatory to the GFA despite both the UK and Eire being EU members at the time. The EU made no binding commitment to upholding the GFA. The GFA was an agreement by the UK and Eire separate from and outside of any EU Treaty. Yet the EU now refuses to allow the two signatories to come to a separate agreement re a means of staying true to the GFA without EU jurisdiction. If the EU didn’t want to come to the party in 1998 it seems unreasonable for it to demand it now controls the mood music at that gig. Consider the following.
We end up in the backstop. Both us and Eire feel we have arrived at a solution that will solve the border issue. Problem sorted. Yet who decides if we have and whether we can leave the backstop? No it is not the two GFA signatories. Its up to 26 states who were not signatories to the GFA and all of whom have a veto. So Croatia, Estonia, etc., etc., all get to have a say over matters which in reality are GFA issues. That’s a loss of sovereignty not just for us but for the N.I. assemble and Eire also.
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……….. BTW Graham Dearsley is the Graham Ed is referring to.
I was aware of WoF’s name, Dave, but as WoF hadn’t posted for two days and Ed had posted several times in that period, it seemed far from being a remote possibility that Ed was replying to me thinking I had the same first name.
Regarding the rest of your post, if you read my last post and Lord Brew’s briefing note it linked to, the DUP are just being true to the GFA and Eire are acting contrary to both it and to the British-Irish Agreement of 1998. Lord Brew should know what he is talking about given he got his peerage for the work he did on the GFA at the time.
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Not sure if EdP thinks my name is Graham but for the record it is Allan.
Responding to Dave though there are rules and consequences; and Lord Brew (a Remain voter) who received his peerage for his work on the GFA has just come up with a corker. An Unlimited period Backstop violates the GFA because it is not with the consent of the Northern Ireland Assembly which it would have to be. Such consent is vital under the GFA. In driving for the current unlimited backstop the Irish Government is in violation of the British-Irish Agreement of 1998 which pledges a solemn commitment to the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement in international law.
You can read Lord Brew’s full briefing note to the Policy Exchange here. Its only about three A4 pages long but his 5 point executive summary at the start says it all in precis.
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I think you forget, Duke, that we had a free travel area with Eire since long before the EU had one. Leavers have never advocated that the Eire-UK free travel zone should be ended. We were always vulnerable to anyone crossing to the UK once they had entered Eire; us joining the EEC/EU membership did not change that. Therefore if it remains so after we exit the EU we are merely back where we were before we joined the EU as regards that ‘border’. One must also remember that Eire is not part of Schengren so the dynamic has not changed due to that either.
Looking at your points from a different perspective I note where you say one cannot pick and choose where you have protection (border-wise). We are not asking for that. We are happy simply to be put back into the border position we were before joining the EU. That is hardly picking and choosing. However, I think you would agree that the Eire/N.I. border is a unique dynamic due to the Good Friday Agreement. We seek not to negate any on its components. The right to select nationality, to cross the border without fetter, etc., will remain as far as we are concerned. We are quite happy and willing for the sake of the GFA to leave our own internal market a little bit vulnerable to smuggling. However, it is the EU that seems unwilling to move to that same extent to honour the GFA. Instead it uses our commitment to the GFA as a means of seeking to annex N.I. and/or shackling us. Truly who is it here that is refusing to compromise re the N.I. border? It is merely a small stumbling block that both we and the EU can step over moving equally to protect the GFA if we desire to. But I see no willingness on the part of the EU to do so.
Tell me if we No Deal Brexit, which by refusing to shift on the backstop the EU is forcing us towards how does that help there being no hard border?
I say again as I have over and over. The UK more than any other member state of the EU has the greatest motivation to stay in the backstop until a solution is found. Because if the troubles reignite it is UK soil that would suffer atrocities, no other EU state. No way if we had an free option to leave would we ever do rashly until reasonably viable. There is no reasonable basis to argue that a backstop which the EU alone controls is needed. The paradox is surely that it trying to force a one-sided backstop the EU is in reality making it more likely that the very problem the backstop seeks to prevent will arise. Drop the backstop we have a deal. Keep it in place there’s no deal and from what the EU say they will then be setting up border guard towers which we won’t be doing. That’s bonkers, is it not? To put it into one sentence, the EU are saying, “Unless you agree to a backstop to prevent the UK putting up a hard border that the EU don’t want then we will ourselves put up that hard border which we don’t want.” Thinking about it, its equivalent in sanity to a government saying, ” Unless you pay your taxes by next Tuesday we will shut our tax offices so you can’t pay them at all, so there. ?”.
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The N.I. problem (i.e. the cause of the troubles) was always historically a UK/Eire problem. The only other state with any other ‘involvement’ historically was the USA due to the US Irish lobby and NORAID. Were the troubles to reignite it would be us and perhaps to some lesser Eire. Moreover we have had free movement with Eire since long before the EU or even the EEC.
As I see it the border problem is one for us and Eire to sort out between ourselves. Neither of us want a hard border. So be it – or – so should it be. Yet it is the EU that are forcing the issues. Perhaps, just perhaps if the EU force Eire to do that which it does not want to do the Irish will recognise as have we how much the EU demands in effect sovereignty over so much already today; which is only a harbinger of where things are going in the EU.
I do wonder if the EU will seek to put the EGF on the border after forcing Eire to become a signatory of the Treaty of Velsen. I have no doubt the EGF will ultimately become the EU’s Gestapo or Stasi long term.
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How strange that you end your argument as to why we should stay in the EU by talking of the EU forcing a country (i.e. “making good their warning”) that it must do something it does not want to do. That says it all for me about why we must leave.
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I agree 100% with your last sentence; albeit that we disagree as to which it should be.
Addressing your point that there was no debate about this or that form of Remain that is true. But such is identical as it was with Leave. It is only when one debates in detail at a later stage that the meaning of each becomes clear. The debate re what Remain actually means short, mid and long term has, has as yet never been had. I truly believe that the consequences of Remain were we to do so would result in very bitter battles as the EU sought to bring us ‘into line’ which it would surely do as it would be confident that we would had no option but to conform having shown we had no guts to leave. Frankly, I perceive the battles would be even more divisive and vicious in the UK in those circumstances than may be the upset of some were we to No Deal Brexit now.
I discount the argument that in the EU we had a big say. I see no sign of that whatsoever. We couldn’t even thwart the Drunkard getting the Chair, could we? It is close to impossible to find a major matter on which we had truly significant influence. Of course in an EU superstate we would be one country. So I can’t see the rest of the world allowing the EU two permanent seats on the UN security council can you? In that respect we truly would have less influence in the world, would we not.
No, Dave, Remain is not a single entity because the EU is morphing so rapidly. Remember how Clegg was adamant that saying an EU army was planned was a fantasy. Look where we are now. And do you really see the EU being committed (i.e. 2% GDP) to NATO if it believes its own army is enough. Its NATO that kept the peace in the Northern Hemisphere not the development of the EU. The EU showed how committed it was to stop conflict during the problems in the Balkans and for that matter Ukraine. I’d side with the USA, no matter the problems I have with it, before I’d side with an EU Army overseen by a committee. But perhaps that’s just me.
If you think Remain is a simple one proposition offering then perhaps you have never truly considered all it likely facets or its predictable and as yet unpredictable consequences.
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Dave, couldn’t help but chuckle at your typo in you last paragraph where you described yourself as a Leaver. That aside there are a couple of issues raised by your post that I will address.
How much of our current exports to the EU do you believe we will lose in the case of a hard Brexit? And how many exports with the EU lose to us? My suspicion is very little. In reality the effect of tariffs overall is very little more than the cost variances from currency swings. As an aside – I do not buy into this argument that border delays would seriously damage JIT supplies because many of the items our manufacturers already use on a JIT model come from outside the EU currently and business allows for and copes with that. Its merely a case of adjusting lead times accordingly.
I do take your point that the EU Unity is not yet entirely shattered but equally it is true that cracks which the EU even denied existed a week or two ago are now shown to have been present and pressure will build on those and other weaknesses as No Deal becomes more of a possibility.
I reject totally the argument re Scot Ind. It is not as if the impetus from the SNP for Ind will vanish were we to remain in the EU. Other excuses will be found and their push continue unabated, won’t it?
Returning to your last paragraph with that unfortunate typo which I am certain you meant to read, “At least we Remainers are united in what we want” my previous post sought to show that such is not in reality so clear. Remaining opens many questions too. If we demonstrate by remaining that we will never leave believing we cannot then the EU will increase pressure for us to join the Euro, commit to closer political union, drop our veto, drop our rebate, commit to a full EU army, etc. Why would they not? We’d hardly be likely to threaten to leave, would we !!! What Remainers want is not as clear cut as you seem to suggest. I have spoken to many and what Remain means varies hugely once one talks of the consequences of what Remain means. It means in effect committing to the will of the other 27 far more clearly than have any of the other 27 have so far. Can you truly not see that?
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Yes, I guess I do look back at the past. I recall when we were a small insignificant little island that Julius Caesar walked all over very easily. Then a millennium or so later much the same when a Norman Duke did much the same. How small and weak we were. But look where we went after that by believing in ourselves. The trouble with Remainers is that they pick only that later point of reference to compare to. They forget that we weren’t always the British Empire. We started with next to nothing did we not. How come there resulted the Great British Empire across the world and not the a world encompassing a Spanish, Portuguese, French or German Empire of similar proportions? Surely it was our people, our ingenuity and our self belief that took us there. Yet in Remainers I see today not even the belief that we can even fend for ourselves. Is this the faith we have in ourselves and our off-spring. I note that that lack of belief must be contagious. Because our young seem more wedded to similar thoughts than do the young of most other EU states. In other EU states it is the young that are the most eurosceptic. It is the young that do not desire to tolerate all of the EU’s failings that Bob highlighted a few of his posts back but which he said he was prepared to put up with.
Frankly the writing is increasingly on the wall that the EU project is certain to fail. The North-South Financial Divides and the East-West Free Movement divides highlight that the different peoples of the EU want different things. Federalisation is simply not possible where states each have many centuries or even millenia of developing there own have attitudes and individual psyche. Are the states of the EU states and their peoples really very different from each other? Too true they are. Look at the way the French (just 22 miles from us) react when dissatisfied with their government. How different they are to us Brits. True we all share the same continent but is there really such a thing as a ‘European’ bar that geographical commonality? I think not. We are as different as are the nations of the Indian Sub-Continent and as different as are the nations of Asia one from another. If we forget that we sow seeds of conflict rather than negate the germination of such. The far right would and I am certain could never have risen again in Europe were it not for the EU. It is the EU that provides the fuel for a/the fire as folks desire their own full independence and unfettered nationality.
A European trading bloc makes sense and would/could work. But the political union that the ‘political elite and bureaucratic EU entity’ desires is nothing other than a ticking time bomb that it will be better to be as remote politically and fiscally from as is possible when it inevitably blows. Do not talk to me of EU unity. Heck the last week or two and the increasing visibility of entirely different views of how the EU should be dealing with Brexit have surely revealed that the United Face the Commission sought to have us believe existed was little more than a deception.
I do believe all here are doing and arguing for what they believe is best for their off-spring. But such is no different with Leavers. The only difference I see between the two sides is self (national self) belief. Sorry folks but it is surely so that in 1939 it would have been all too easy to argue that we had to go along with the Germans because we were to weak to do anything else. I’m sure the ‘Experts’ of the day would and indeed did give us no chance unless we did; far less chance even than today’s Experts give us in the case of a No Deal Brexit. To me there is a similarity with 1939. Such is not to frame matters in the same context as war. Rather it is simply to say that the EU is, as was Nazi Europe in 1939, fundamentally going somewhere we do not want to go; and the psyche of the British people is such that Britain can never go. The means of the divergence today may be different fro 39 but there remains a divergence inconsistent with the British psyche nonetheless. Let me ask you all a question and detach it partly from the usual Remain-Leave debate. If there were a Referendum about joining the Euro how do you think it would go (percentages)? If there was a Referendum about a EU army how do you think that would go? What about a Referendum where our foreign policy was not decided by us but by a vote of which we had just 1 say in 28? The reality is to my mind that the overwhelming majority of the UK do not want to go where the EU is going. To remain in a club the ultimate objectives of which are not one’s own is to me pretty damn close to the definition of insanity. Is it truly not?
Lastly, I note how folks talk of us having nothing to offer to the world. Nothing to export that anyone would buy etc. Makes one wonder why the EU even wants us as a member or where the heck it expects us to have the income to pay our subs if we remain. Get real. The EU wants us as customers for their goods and unless post Brexit the EU allows us to make money we sure as hell won’t be buying their goods with shirt buttons will we? The EU has to, for a multitude of reasons offer us a good free trade deal. The businesses of the EU (and the world) recognise that even though the self-interested ‘Bureaucratic EU entity’ for its own political survival desires to prevent such. If you can’t see its the EU entity against the peoples of Europe, such as the German automobile workers or French farmers, you sure as heck will see it if the UK holds firm to ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’. The peoples of the EU from the Spanish, Italian and Greek holiday resorts to those in the fields of France and Italy and the factories of Germany will see it too; and the EU dare not let that be seen with the EU elections coming up. Do we hold a strong hand of cards? You bet we do if played with guts and our, trade mark, stiff upper lip.
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As there was never a published Brexit manifesto, it is very difficult to say just what the ‘Leave’ voters actually voted for.
The whole thing, from both sides, generated Project Fear, Project Utopia and Project Bullsh1t. Everybody harps on about honouring the result of the Referendum, but after however many months of the above, I reckon a very small percentage of the population were actually making an informed decision, because all that went before qualified more as dis-information!! If ( when ) a second Ref comes about, they’ll be better informed, but a lot more confused!!
I agree with your last sentence 100%. I think though you miss out the word ‘angry’ because anger has been generated in volume by the last two years parliamentary gaming. Anger will always find a a means to vent and I am fairly certain that Joe Public thinks that government didn’t/couldn’t just get on and get it done because of those in parliament that wanted to reverse the result. I do expect a far larger turnout if there is a Ref2 and that the bulk of the increase will not be the young but those that want to vent their anger. Who that will also hit come the next GE will not be parties but individual MPs. Folks no longer divide along party lines they divide based on their position re Brexit.
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I have seen no sign of intolerance in your posts, Bob. I agree that polls are often wrong as are other predictions. To my mind the ‘margin of error’ is in reality far wider than pollsters consider it to be. Certainly polls where there is live interaction between pollster and subject seem to often be well off (many people keep only their own counsel).
I’m fascinated by your last paragraph. If you believe the first ref result should be respected how would you vote in a new ref were it not? This is the dilemma that many are wrestling with. I know two Remainers who are torn between standing by the democratic principle that the first ref must be respected and perhaps overturning it with a second ref vote.
As I see it we were all told in Cameron’s Leaflet that the result would be enacted – leave the SM and CU. I cannot see how until that has happened the first result have ever been respected.
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And here’s some food for thought re tolerance.
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Expanding on the above post, projections suggest that even had 16 year olds up have been allowed to vote last time Leave would still have won although only marginally. It is of course true that these voters would now be eligible and that many old Leavers have now passed away. However, there is a strong strength of belief in the middle age ranges, even among many Remainers, that the result of the first vote must be respected. All in all Ref2 if it occurs will be as much about whether Parliament listens to the electorate or not. This will give Leave a powerful cutting edge.
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I am not infallible but the young often say adamantly how they will vote and I don’t doubt they mean it; provided that they come out the day of the vote and get around to it. The latter proviso is the pivotal matter of that sentence.
You also have to remember that Ref 1 was in many ways a means for folks to stick two fingers up at the establishment. After the last two and a half years that “driver” has even more energy behind it. As one of Thatcher’s advisers said last week (I can’t recall his name), all Leave has to do is say that the establishment obviously doesn’t listen to the electorate so its time to teach them a massive lesson. This fits with the polls that say around 55% believe the first Ref result must be respected.
I’m, as I said, pretty sure Leave would win not least because it will also have even more activists pushing for it this time. In fact I’m far more certain than I was first time around.
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We are in full agreement re one point. That is that a second referendum would be a good idea. Parliament would not dare thwart another and even bigger resounding LEAVE and I am now pretty certain that would be the result. My only doubt derives of the fact that Daine Abbot agrees that Leave would win and she never gets her maths right…………..LOL
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It seems to me that Remainers fail to grasp what is the pivotal dynamic of the Brexit debate – Human Nature. Comments re Tony Blair are often that folks listen to what he says and dislike him so much that they elect for the opposite. In many ways such is the dynamic at its extreme. However, the disdain for Blair is mimicked on a smaller but still present scale re all politicians these days and it is a critical dynamic in the matter of Brexit. Parliament in the main is a Remainer house. All Remainers shout down No Deal on a mega scale and Grieve and Boles etc., seek to change parliamentary procedures to make sure it is killed off. How weird that none recognise that such simply fuels and strengthens the public desire for such.
The BBC’s Question Time has over the last eighteen months selected numerically Remain Biased panels each show. Is that driving more folk towards a hard Brexit? It certainly seems to be. The cheer in favour of No Deal was as loud as ever heard from a QT audience when No Deal was lauded on the show. Forget the polls. If there were to be a second referendum Leave would win by a far larger majority than before.
IF and it is a huge IF the EU recognise the dynamic and the writing on the wall – and – lay down the ‘Backstop Gun’ it seeks to hold to our head then May’s Deal will pass. If not then by either a General Election or a Second Ref the shout for and impetus for No Deal will make it a certainty. The GE will remove many Remainer MPs, a lot of whom have already stated they will not stand for election next time anyway.
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……………………… There isn’t a Remainer here who has said the EU is perfect and doesn’t need some sort of reform, although reading VFM’s spin you would think we did.
Fair enough, Dave, so perhaps you can list for me what you accept to be the current faults of the EU. I simply don’t recall you or any Remainer ever having listed or mentioning them. The floor is yours Dave…………
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So even allowing for tariffs out exports should still be cheaper than now for our foreign customers then. That will possibly lead to an export boom and safeguard a few jobs.
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Everyone seems to think the Pound will crash after a No Deal Brexit but currently with the threat of such it is rising.
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No, I don’t think No deal is best. But I do think currently that it is the only option.
Eire, the EU and us agree there must be no hard border in Ireland. Yet if there was and the troubles re-ignited it would be UK soil that would be bombed. Therefore if anything WE have the strongest incentive to avoid such, not Eire or the EU. I trust you agree so far. So why the need to put the ‘Backstop Gun’ to our head? Can you logically explain such. Macron made clear within minutes of the EU agreeing the deal that he would put that gun to our heads re fishing. That is the role of the backstop. Its a gun to our head once we move from the Withdrawal Agreement to the Trade Deal Negotiations. You may be willing to to submit to such I am not. Nor it seems are many others either. I’ll take May’s deal happily. It seems a great solution and compromise. BUT only without the backstop in it. I stress again we already have greater motivation for keeping the Ireland border open than do Eire and the EU. I will not hand them a gun to use against us when it is not logically needed. I’d rather take my chances with a cliff jump than stick around to be shot in the head during the Trade Negotiations Stages by a gun we handed to them !!! If you think that’s mad so be it. Either way we are in agreement about the word ‘mad’ being appropriate because currently I am mad as hell.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
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