Saturday 30 March 2019

Is Brexit impossible?

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Since December [2017], I must have written it ten times over: the EU will force us to choose between Northern Ireland, a Brexit in name only (with free movement) and no deal.
From an article from October 18 2018 headlined This Government has made a fool of our great country  by Juliet Samuel, who voted Remain and remains a Remainer but one who, so she rightly says, lost gracefully.

Of the three possibilities she enumerates, no deal is the best or least bad but needed very carefully preparation by the Tory government over years. The backstop in perpetuity has its advantages, as Juliet Samuel said elsewhere, but means Brexit is Brexit in name only. 

To be honest, staying starts to have certain attractions, so long as it means staying in to prepare for a second escape bid. And to make things as difficult as possible for the people in power in the EU and help Europe do something to staunch the flood of migrants into Europe.

As I keep saying, no deal or the Norway deal are fine at this stage - even Norway Plus provided we can change it into Norway or into no deal in the future without the EU's permission and without the pain of the Article 50 process.

Meanwhile it seems the EU thinking we may leave without a deal and - hey presto! - the Irish border problem has magically disappeared.

Juliet Samuel writing today says she knew as soon as she knew the result of the 2017 general election that the Brexit negotiations were doomed. Brexiteers, however, did not realise this.

3 comments:

  1. To be honest, staying starts to have certain attractions, so long as it means staying in to prepare for a second escape bid.

    But the demographics are against Brexit. With each passing year more of the fiercely eurosceptic older generations die off, and more of the insane europhile Millennials are eligible to vote. 2016 was probably the last time there was still a chance of a majority for Brexit.

    You won't convince Millennials to vote for Brexit. They're thoroughly indoctrinated. They not only think Brexit would mean economic ruin, they also think it means fascism and white supremacism. They think Brexit is evil and wicked and all their friends on Facebook agree with them. They've been indoctrinated to hate Britain.

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  2. An extremely confused post.

    A “Norway deal” i.e. an Efta/EEA Agreement tailored to the UK’s requirements would still take many years to negotiate. Thus for this even to be an option again we would still need to agree to the Withdrawal Agreement and a prolonged transitional period.

    If we crash out of the EU then we will only end up back where we are now but in a far worse position. We will still need to re-open trade talks with the EU which they will refuse to do without first signing off on a financial settlement and installing the proposed backstop as it currently stands. They will then drag their feet while UK market share is eaten up by the EU and we get frozen out from multiple sectors. We will by then be the very sick man of Europe and have little choice but to submit to being raped in future EU trade talks. So no, it’s really very far from fine.

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  3. Yes, the Withdrawal Agreement if it passed Parliament could lead on to the Norway option but only if we have customs levied in some way on goods moving across the Northern Irish border. The picture of no deal that you paint is Hell imagined by Gustave Doré but Lord King, the last governor of the Bank of England, who knows more than I do and is very clever, thinks leaving with no deal would not be a big problem. So does Nigel Lawson.

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