Brexit now = CETA +/-?

[The VFM Addict]

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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[The Duke]

So we can have sticked border controls, yet you think the EU having them is them being difficult?

I don’t understand this double standard logic. You should want the EU to have tighter borders.

[Ed P]

Graham – please do a bit of research on smuggling and the Irish border. Elements in Eire made huge sums of money at the expense of the EU by exporting (iirc butter) to Ulster claiming the VAT rebate then smuggling it back in to Eire to round-trip it again. This went on the whole time that there were differences between the UK and Eire over the treatment of VAT.

The Moggites yen to turn the UK into a tax-free zone sends shudders down the backs of the EU authorities. They understandably fail to see why they should allow this to impinge on their economic structure, hence the threat.

[The VFM Addict]

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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[The Duke]

But you surly want a hard border between the two, otherwise any immigrant could pass  easily in to the uk.

The EU are in the right to protect their boarders. Just as leavers want the uk borders protected. You can’t pick and choose where you have protection. It’s rather all or noting. This is what you leavers can’t decided on.

For the remain it’s simeple, stay as it is, cos it works well as it is. We don’t have a bad illegal immigration issue, and we definalty don’t have an legal immigration issue. The stats back up they are net contributors.

So we would loose that from are economy, and we add bags of red tape to our current friction free set up, and it creates this Irish border issue no one wants. There is no up side. Not one thing any leaver can come up with. Even if there is one of two positives to leaving (I can’t think of one) there are many times more negatives.

As Bob alludes to the word Great in Great Britain is becoming a dirty word, soon after we leave, we’ll nave to drop it altogether as it won’t be a dirty word, it will become a joke of a word. Sadly.

[Ed P]

TBLiar was prescient when he introduced a set of coins showing a fractured nation. It just needed a Conservative party trying to heal their own internal rifts and external (US & Russia) pro-Brexit funding  to bring it about.

[The VFM Addict]

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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[Dave Rice]

AS I understand it under WTO rules if you have no border controls in Ireland then you can have no border controls anywhere as it would be discrimination.

Irish apples come through the border, no checks. American apples come through Dover, checks. Discrimination.

There is some talk of invoking some sort of National Security excuse (I can’t follow the argument) but that would put the border down the Irish Sea.

As with all these things there are rules to abide by and we cannot just say we won’t implement this or that without consequences. But those consequences are never mentioned.

[Ed P]

Seems to me Graham that you make some great arguments for totally abandoning Brexit to the relief now of the majority of the population.

[The VFM Addict]

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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[Dave Rice]

It’s the unstoppable force and immovable object and it’s the DUP in the middle of all this again. It seems the only solution is to extend the thinking period until someone sees some sense and a way is found. I support locking them in the Palace of Westminster with I’m a Celebrity style catering and dunny until white smoke is seen.

Have you seen the statement from the food retailers on no deal? I suppose they can just be ignored like Airbus and the car manufacturers as another aspect of Project Fear?

BTW Graham Dearsley is the Graham Ed is referring to.

[The VFM Addict]

Dave Rice wrote:

……….. 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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[Dave Rice]

I’m sure he does know what he’s on about, but a solution is required not another blockage. If no solution can be brought about in time then time must be extended. We cannot leave with no deal, the consequences will not be good. Of course if your ideology is such that any price is worth it then you won’t agree.

If the DUP cannot be bothered to administer their own region why are they interfering in the wider picture? If it was Sinn Fein I suspect the spin would be very different, you can imagine the rabid headlines in the Mail and Express. If TM didn’t need them to cling to power I suspect we wouldn’t be here either.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

[Ed P]

Btw Allen my apologies for my bad mistake. I was posting in a hurry, unlike our MPs who as usual believe in kicking things into the long grass and to hell with the economic consequences of dithering.

The EU have made it perfectly clear that they are not the ones leaving the club, and as we made the mess it is our job to sort it.

[The VFM Addict]

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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[Ed P]

I’m afraid you are out of touch with what the Irish say. link

[Dave Rice]

I think everyone has lost sight of the fact that this isn’t the final deal, it’s the deal to get us into talks about the future. I’m not surprised the Irish want a backstop given the way the likes of the ERG talk. Wasn’t it also Gove who said just vote for it and we’ll tear it up later?

We keep hearing that the Brexiteers are so tough that they’ll put up with no deal, bulldog spirit and all that. Well why won’t the EU be exactly the same for what they passionately believe in? We will both be hurt but we will be hurt more than them.

Is this the way we’re showing the world how we negotiate? Starting by refusing to pay our debts if we don’t get what we want and then threatening to trample all over peace agreements? Prepared to sacrifice our economy for some ideology. We look right Charlies and I think other nations will be rubbing their hands waiting to make the most of our desperation to get any sort of deal done. Liam Fox (remain constituency) can’t even get the existing agreements sorted in 2 years.

Chris Grayling (remain constituency) is wasting millions employing shipping companies without ships.

David Davies (remain constituency) and Dominic Raab (remain constituency) refuse to take any blame for their spell as Secretaries of State for Exiting the European Union.

Still they can be voted out at the next General Election, except they are all in safe seats with more than 50% of the vote so that won’t happen. They may be peed off that their MPs are ignoring their wishes but they’re more frightened of the bogeyman Corbyn. Ironically that may be what changes the ERG and DUP’s mind too.

[The VFM Addict]

@Dave

I think Dave you may well have missed that the political dynamic has changed fundamentally in the UK.  People now define themselves by their position on Brexit rather than by party allegiance.    Brexit passions one way or the other are now the driving force and I think the posts in this thread make such quite clear.   I guess, but perhaps I am wrong and you can clarify, that you would vote Corbyn as fearful you may be of his politics if he was definitely keeping us in the EU but May was going No Deal Brexit.   Likewise, if May were keeping us in I would take the chance of voting Corbyn knowing what his ‘own’ desires are rather than his party’s.

You are right about what Gove said.  And for that matter Mervyn King also wrote that were the unlimited backstop in place a future government would be likely to renege on it because it was unacceptable.  I tend to agree so either way an unlimited backstop would never endure anyway.

@Ed

I think you miss the point Ed.   Why stick to the backstop if the consequences of doing so are a No Deal Brexit?   Isn’t that a case of saying one is so fearful of a hard border that one is going to make it happen; assuming that Eire insist that without a backstop that is what would happen.    Of course if that would not happen then there is no need for the backstop anyway, is there.   The EU/Eire position is flawed of itself, is it not?   As much as a No Deal Brexit may hurt us or the EU it would destroy the Irish economy entirely.   We are both the vast percentage of their entire export market – and – their land bridge to pretty the entire percentage of their other export markets.   Eire’s position is to hold a gun to its own head and threaten they will pull the trigger unless we do as they say.    It is nonsense.   And if we go No Deal the EU is going to be in no financial position to render the sort of assistance Eire would need to survive.

Things are changing.   Our hand gets stronger by the day and I suspect we will now start to play it.   Today’s news that Nicky Morgan and other Remainers are working with JRM on a plan for a managed No Deal Brexit moving towards a normal FTD provides conclusive proof of that.   If she sees the writing on the wall there can be no doubt it is there.  Former Remainers including government ministers Stephen Hammond and Rob Buckland, have it seems also been working with Nicky Morgan,  JRM and Steve Baker on this new plan.   That truly is ‘working across the Brexit aisle’.   Who would ever have anticipated that.

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[Ed P]

Do not count your chickens – wait until all the votes are cast. Today is the day that Parliament gets back some control in our broken democracy ruled by an  elected dictatorship.

[The VFM Addict]

Surely first its a case of which amendments Bercow will allow to be voted on?    I wonder if he is pondering whether he really wants a peerage or not because sure as heck he could kill off any possibility of one today.

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[Author]

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