Brexit: Now What? Part III

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The Don said:
A key official is moving from the Brexit department to Number 10 apparently due to falling out with David Davis. This is being interpreted in some quarters as Theresa May taking more control over the Brexit process.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41308081

IMO, one indication of an ineffective leader is an unwillingness or inability to delegate and instead attempting to take control of everything personally.
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To be fair to May she has controlled nothing with regard to Brexit up to this point. This latest change is akin to jumping into the drivers seat of a car that's gone off a cliff and frantically turning the wheel and stamping the pedals as you plunge to your doom.
 
quadraginta said:
Better to be Captain even if you have to sink the ship to get the job?
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Apparently so, though there is some evidence that at least some of the Brexiteers are confident/optimistic/naive/stupid (delete as necessary) to think that Brexit will be a great thing moving reliance on export growth from the slow-growing (but still largest in the world) economic block* towards the fast growing (though uncertain and more volatile and wanting a much narrower range of goods and services) developing economies.

There are others still who think that a certain amount of economic turmoil is a price worth paying for being able to sell ham in ounces, smoke in pubs and sell bendy bananas in pairs**

* - The fact that the EU accounts for a shrinking proportion of UK exports and that other EU members outperform the UK in developing economies demonstrates that EU membership isn't an insurmountable barrier to exporting outside the EU
** - Except none of this would happen in any case because people can do these things already, the move would be unpopular or it's not an EU-related ban
 
quadraginta said:
Better to be Captain even if you have to sink the ship to get the job?
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"A good election to lose" springs to mind. Grab the Tory leadership by fair means or foul, lose the next general election (as soon as possible?) and sit back as Labour are tarnished for years when they have to deal with the poop-storm that follows.

Odds to be the next Tory leader (and may the FSM preserve us) :

5.0 Davis
7.5 Rees-Mogg
8.0 Hammond
9.0 Johnson
11.0 Rudd
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
And no the EU did not clarify.
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Which bit of this don't you understand:

"[European commission’s head of representation in the UK, Jacqueline] Minor said the commission’s position on Scottish membership had not changed since the independence referendum in 2014, when it repeatedly said Scotland could not automatically take up separate membership just because it was part of an existing member state."

And no there certainly was equivalence between the two referendum outcomes since it was clear that one required hitching our cart to a horse that was agitating to leave and that had expressed clear anti rule sentiment repeatedly and consistently while the other would have been led by a group possibly the most pro Europe in the UK.
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Orwell would admire your re-writing of history. At the time of the Scottish referendum, Brexit was not seen as even a remote possibility, notwithstanding the fact that Farage et al were whinging about it. If Brexit was as sure a thing then as you now claim it to have been, you could have cleaned up at the bookies.
 
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Archie Gemmill Goal said:
Lying to defend lying isn't good form.
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I seem to have lost track of your multiple post facto accusations of "lying." Which ones are you referring to now?

Public opinion in the UK was pro-Leave consistently more or less right up to the Indyref. It was clear there was a far greater risk of England voting to leave the EU than of Scotland being excluded.
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No, what that graph actually shows is that polls were progressively coming out more pro-EU, with overall opinion flipping in that favour in the April of 2014. By the time of the Scottish referendum in the September, pro-EU polls were in the majority, a trend that continued right up to the EU referendum in June 2016. As an aside, it shows that Remain opinion was largely unchanged, whilst Leave benefited from a surge of Undecideds from the beginning of 2016 onwards.
 
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Seems that despite the government's rhetoric, the UK may not be preparing for the "no deal" as diligently as we might:

Here is a small list of the stuff in ports we need to have sorted in March 2019 if we are to walk away from a negotiation:

We would need to buy actual space in ports for immigration officers, customs facilities and sanitary checks to make sure imported food meets whatever standards we set. Dover should be humming - soon, at least - with bulldozers and cement mixers as we prepare for a new world with an independent customs policy.

There have been estimates of a need for 3,000 to 5,000 extra customs officers to cope with the extra traffic inherit in Brexit. Defra will also need to increase staffing and capacity at ports, to allow for the testing of agricultural products and livestock entering the country. We will need new border agents. All these people need recruiting and training.

The new customs computer system - CDS - is going to need to work. We will also need to replace the EU's Trade Control and Expert System (known as TRACES), the tool for tracking livestock and animal products - a new IT system. And you need both of these things to be in place in time before Brexit, so we can demonstrate it works.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41271028

The BBC correspondent suggests that this is good evidence that there will be a deal. I think it's an indication as to the incompetence, laziness and complacency of David Davis
 
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The Don said:
Seems that despite the government's rhetoric, the UK may not be preparing for the "no deal" as diligently as we might:



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41271028

The BBC correspondent suggests that this is good evidence that there will be a deal. I think it's an indication as to the incompetence, laziness and complacency of David Davis
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This is just not a fair comparison. That BBC journalist works 5 days a week, Davis only 3. It's little wonder the journalist knows more about the consequences of Brexit than Davis.

I predict it will be fun, for some value of the word, to stand outside a supermarket in April 2019 and point a camera. Images that evoke the faint memories of Soviet times.
 
More UK government assumptions over Brexit - we will stay in, or at least continue to enjoy the benefits of membership of Europol.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41240643

Probably won't happen soon though.....

Prime Minister Theresa May has previously said she wants the UK to retain its security co-operation with Europol post-Brexit.

And a number of countries that are not part of the EU, such as Norway, Switzerland and the US, have operational agreements with Europol that allow access to intelligence.

But Europol itself say this does not equate to formal membership, which means these countries do not have a say over operations and decisions.

Europol also points out that such agreements take a number of years to negotiate.
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It's OK though, because these will be the easiest negotiations evah :rolleyes:
 
Information Analyst said:
I seem to have lost track of your multiple post facto accusations of "lying." Which ones are you referring to now?
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When you claim things I haven't said. That's lying.


No, what that graph actually shows is that polls were progressively coming out more pro-EU, with overall opinion flipping in that favour in the April of 2014. By the time of the Scottish referendum in the September, pro-EU polls were in the majority, a trend that continued right up to the EU referendum in June 2016. As an aside, it shows that Remain opinion was largely unchanged, whilst Leave benefited from a surge of Undecideds from the beginning of 2016 onwards.
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Wonderful denial of reality. What it clearly shows is that in the lead up to the Indyref it was the intention of the government to hold a referendum on a subject on which the opinion polls showed the country favoured one outcome. Anyone claiming that a vote to leave the EU wasn't a remote possibility in 2014 is lying. Simple as that.

Anyone who claims that Scotland was more likely to end up outside the EU as an independent country than being tacked on to a bigger country where the majority actually wanted to leave is lying.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
When you claim things I haven't said. That's lying.
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Such as, specifically?

Wonderful denial of reality. What it clearly shows is that in the lead up to the Indyref it was the intention of the government to hold a referendum on a subject on which the opinion polls showed the country favoured one outcome. Anyone claiming that a vote to leave the EU wasn't a remote possibility in 2014 is lying. Simple as that.
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More Orwellian rewriting of history. The Scottish referendum was in 2014. Although some were agitating for an EU referendum, it was not a certainty at the time due to the impending 2015 general election. Since 2010 Labour had ruled out a referendum, while the Tories and the Lib-Dems proposed one in the 2015 election manifestos.

You clearly do not understand the graph you yourself cited. As I pointed out, it actually shows that the majority support shifted toward staying in the EU and away from leaving before the Scottish referendum, a trend that consolidated throughout 2015, and did not significantly fall even after the general election resulted in the certainty of an EU referendum. If you can't properly interpret statistical information that actually undermines your claims, you probably should avoid drawing attention to it.

Anyone who claims that Scotland was more likely to end up outside the EU as an independent country than being tacked on to a bigger country where the majority actually wanted to leave is lying.
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Are you laying the groundwork for a future job in an independent Scotland's Ministry of Truth? I'll walk you through this in simple steps:

1) Scotland votes to leave the EU. As per the stated position of the EU, an independent Scotland will be out of the EU, and will have to apply to join. A number of countries might make that tough, as they don't want to encourage their own secessionist movements (e.g. Spain and Catalonia). A independent Scotland being out of the EU is therefore a high probability - if not a certainly - and subsequent admission is only a possibility.

2) Scotland votes to stay in the UK. The likelihood of an EU referendum happening is still a toss-up between whether Labour or the Tories win the 2015 general election. By the time of the Scottish referendum and subsequently, the polls are clearly favouring a Remain vote. Scotland being out of the EU depends on, a) an EU referendum actually happening, which was not a certainty, and b) a clear trend favouring Remain being reversed at the last minute. In other words, something improbable following something that was only a possibility.

The EU outlook in 2014 does not retrospectively change just because actual events panned out the way that they did.
 
Information Analyst said:
1) Scotland votes to leave the EU. As per the stated position of the EU, an independent Scotland will be out of the EU, and will have to apply to join. A number of countries might make that tough, as they don't want to encourage their own secessionist movements (e.g. Spain and Catalonia). A independent Scotland being out of the EU is therefore a high probability - if not a certainly - and subsequent admission is only a possibility.
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I wonder if those groups are likely to feel differently to a secessionist Scotland seeking admittance into the EU after the UK leaves.
 
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