Brexit: Now What? Part III

[Belgian thought]

May fudged the issue of whether the UK will still be ruled by the European court, and whether or not the UK will be allowed to register people entering the UK from the EU during the transition period.

I'm sure the EU, assuming it agrees to the transition period, will insist that the EU court will remain supreme and that EU nationals won't be registered. That is unlikely to be acceptable to some members of May's cabinet.

Whatever her speech tried to achieve, it showed to the EU that the UK is not ready at all - the clock is indeed ticking.

It was pitiful. We want to leave the party but, can we have two years more please?

The EU can now decide the terms even more.

A sad farce for the UK.

 

[ceptimus]

That analogy doesn't hold. When you're part-owner of a company, you can sell your stock to someone else. It's more like the UK is member of a cooperative and decides to quit their membership. There's nothing to refund when you decide to walk away.

ETA:
And really? Consistency is not your style, it seems. What has been built up in those decades is a European Parliament and Commission and Council you have post-in, post-out denied the legitimacy of. What has been built up is a corpus of law that you want done away with. There's nothing of value there you can complain of.

Besides that, what has the UK contributed to the construction and the keep-up of the bar? Whenever the rest argued that the bar should sell a fine assortment of single malts, the UK has every time said the bar should brew its own moonshine.

You don't seem to be able to think clearly on this issue and your increasingly stretched analogy is simply confusing you further.

A better analogy is a divorce: everyone keeps talking about, "the divorce bill." When a marriage partner petitions for divorce and walks away from the marriage home, they don't give up their share of the financial value of that home.

All analogies are wrong to some extent. The reality here is that we're leaving the EU and will only pay the legally required minimum to do that. Anything we pay over and above that minimum will be because of perceived benefits going forward - and the benefits we're seeking are good trading terms that require negotiation. The EU have stalled the process by insisting that we agree to pay more than is legally required before trade negotiations start.

 

[ceptimus]

Whatever her speech tried to achieve, it showed to the EU that the UK is not ready at all - the clock is indeed ticking.

It was pitiful. We want to leave the party but, can we have two years more please?

The EU can now decide the terms even more.

A sad farce for the UK.

Quite right. As you know, I've consistently stated that the UK has no hope of achieving its goals by persisting with negotiations in which the EU set all the negotiation rules. The UK would be better served by simply walking away from the negotiations and concentrating on getting its own house in order ready for the post-Brexit conditions. If the EU ever decided that it was in its own interest to negotiate without preconditions then the UK could return to negotiations, but if not then so be it.

 

[Craig B]

The UK would be better served by simply walking away from the negotiations and concentrating on getting its own house in order ready for the post-Brexit conditions.

What in that case will happen as regards the border in Ireland, to cite but one obvious problem?

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Quite right. As you know, I've consistently stated that the UK has no hope of achieving its goals by persisting with negotiations in which the EU set all the negotiation rules. The UK would be better served by simply walking away from the negotiations and concentrating on getting its own house in order ready for the post-Brexit conditions. If the EU ever decided that it was in its own interest to negotiate without preconditions then the UK could return to negotiations, but if not then so be it.

Thank God you aren't in charge of negotiations then. You'd make Davis look competent.

You seem to be grossly underestimating the damage no deal would do.

 

[ceptimus]

What in that case will happen as regards the border in Ireland, to cite but one obvious problem?

No one wants a hard border in Ireland: the EU doesn't want one, the Irish don't want one, the Northern Irish don't want one, and neither does the UK.

When everybody agrees that they don't want a hard border, what exactly is the problem?

The UK also wants trading conditions to remain exactly as at present following Brexit - in which case there would be no requirement for a hard border anyway. It's one of the absurdities of the EU's negotiation rules that they want to reach agreement on the "Irish border problem" before they are even prepared to discuss what the Irish border will be for.

 

[ceptimus]

Thank God you aren't in charge of negotiations then. You'd make Davis look competent.

You seem to be grossly underestimating the damage no deal would do.

As May repeated again in Florence, "No deal is better than a bad deal"

You can't say that no deal will be so damaging that it's worse than the possible damage from any other conceivable deal - at least you can say that, but it would be an absurd position to take on a critical thinking forum.

In any case, my point is that the present negotiations are achieving nothing whatsoever other than wasting time and money. No deal will be the inevitable result of such negotiations. I said that I would walk away from such time-wasting negotiations but be prepared to return to negotiations if and when the EU remove their absurd preconditions.

 

[Strawberry]

No one wants a hard border in Ireland: the EU doesn't want one, the Irish don't want one, the Northern Irish don't want one, and neither does the UK.

When everybody agrees that they don't want a hard border, what exactly is the problem?

The UK also wants trading conditions to remain exactly as at present following Brexit - in which case there would be no requirement for a hard border anyway. It's one of the absurdities of the EU's negotiation rules that they want to reach agreement on the "Irish border problem" before they are even prepared to discuss what the Irish border will be for.

International law is the problem. If two countries are not in a customs union with each other the rules of the WTO demand customs checks between them. The UK is declaring that it wants to leave the customs union and have no customs checks, which is so blatantly unachievable its an insult to the intelligence of everybody listening.

 

[Craig B]

No one wants a hard border in Ireland: the EU doesn't want one, the Irish don't want one, the Northern Irish don't want one, and neither does the UK.

When everybody agrees that they don't want a hard border, what exactly is the problem?

I take it you're not being serious, and my answering that with a straight face would expose me to deserved ridicule. So I won't.

But you have proved the point of Archie Gemmill Goal's observation, made in his last post, about your unsuitability to act as a negotiator.

 

[ceptimus]

I take it you're not being serious, and my answering that with a straight face would expose me to deserved ridicule. So I won't.

But you have proved the point of Archie Gemmill Goal's observation, made in his last post, about your unsuitability to act as a negotiator.

That was a content-free reply, with an insult tagged on the end.

I was being serious and yes, I do want you to answer with a straight face what the Irish border will be for, and who wants it. Doing that will help you to understand why it's ridiculous for the EU to want to reach agreement on the Irish border before they're prepared to begin negotiations on trade.

 

[Strawberry]

That was a content-free reply, with an insult tagged on the end.

I was being serious and yes, I do want you to answer with a straight face what the Irish border will be for, and who wants it. Doing that will help you to understand why it's ridiculous for the EU to want to reach agreement on the Irish border before they're prepared to begin negotiations on trade.

It will be for customs checks which Britain has made necessary by leaving the customs union. And pretty soon it will be for security too after people start shooting at the customs checks.

 

[Craig B]

That was a content-free reply, with an insult tagged on the end.

I was being serious and yes, I do want you to answer with a straight face what the Irish border will be for, and who wants it. Doing that will help you to understand why it's ridiculous for the EU to want to reach agreement on the Irish border before they're prepared to begin negotiations on trade.

That has been answered in #3128 and #3131, which I commend to your attentive perusal.

A more general point. Do you really believe that political structures exist only if people want them to? That we can say: here is a border that separates two different political or economic areas, but hey nobody wants any frontier structures or formalities here, so we don't have 'em. We don't want smugglers or illegal entrants, so there aren't any, even though we don't want any frontier agencies to detect and deal with them.

This "voluntarism" is the acme of pure silliness.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

No one wants a hard border in Ireland.

I thought the whole point of leaving the EU was to stop the uncontrolled flow of swarthy foreign types entering the UK? How exactly do you propose achieving control of the UK/EU borders without actually having border controls between the UK and EU at its only land border?

 

[ceptimus]

I will read those posts, providing they're visible to me, but I'll first respond to your general point.

Yes. Political structures only exist when people want them to. I'm, including in my interpretation of "want them to" the sense that people see disadvantages and advantages of the thing in question, and come to the conclusion that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Illegal entrants can be tracked by means other than hard borders - via housing, jobs, benefit claims, bank transactions, and so on.

Smugglers exist even with hard borders, and for those that build the borders it's a compromise between the harm caused by the smugglers versus the harm caused by the borders.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I will read those posts, providing they're visible to me, but I'll first respond to your general point.

Yes. Political structures only exist when people want them to. I'm, including in my interpretation of "want them to" the sense that people see disadvantages and advantages of the thing in question, and come to the conclusion that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Illegal entrants can be tracked by means other than hard borders - via housing, jobs, benefit claims, bank transactions, and so on.

Smugglers exist even with hard borders, and for those that build the borders it's a compromise between the harm caused by the smugglers versus the harm caused by the borders.

While neither side may wish a border unfortunately in the absence of an agreement a border is exactly what will have to be in place. And if the UK act like petulant children and refuse to talk a border is exactly what will be the result.

And that's just one of the dozens if not hundreds of impacts no deal will result in.

Trying and failing to reach a deal will be a disaster, not even trying because you throw a temper tantrum and storm off would be worthy of a Darwin award.

 

[ddt]

I thought the whole point of leaving the EU was to stop the uncontrolled flow of swarthy foreign types entering the UK? How exactly do you propose achieving control of the UK/EU borders without actually having border controls between the UK and EU at its only land border?

Illegal entrants can be tracked by means other than hard borders - via housing, jobs, benefit claims, bank transactions, and so on.

That's no answer to Archie's point.

If you leave the border between NI and the Republic open for personal travel, a Romanian can take the plane to Dublin, the bus to Belfast (there's one every hour) and then a plane to London.

They can work for cash, pay their boarding in cash and no-one finds them. And they can be anywhere in the UK.

 

[ddt]

You don't seem to be able to think clearly on this issue and your increasingly stretched analogy is simply confusing you further.

A better analogy is a divorce: everyone keeps talking about, "the divorce bill." When a marriage partner petitions for divorce and walks away from the marriage home, they don't give up their share of the financial value of that home.

All analogies are wrong to some extent.

That's why you come up with another failed analogy, which has the same problem(s) as your previous, which had already been pointed out. There are (at least) three failures with this analogy:
(1) there's a tangible asset involved, viz., the house
(2) that house can be sold on the open market to a third party
(3) you're discussing two equal partners.

The UK is not an equal partner to the EU. It's a member of the club, that's not two equal partners. There is no tangible asset involved. The main assets of the EU are the laws and regulations it has made, and you've made clear that you want none of that. Furthermore, there's the intangible asset that as a club, the EU has goodwill and negotiating power. You, meaning the UK, cannot sell your "share" in those assets to a third party, so their value is zero.

Besides that, the EU has some minor assets like the fissionable material it owns. The EU has made a concrete proposal on that: the UK gets to keep the fissionable material that's now on her soil and we call it even. The UK hasn't even made a concrete (counter) proposal on that, only some waffle like "huh, we have to somehow split that material".

The reality here is that we're leaving the EU and will only pay the legally required minimum to do that. Anything we pay over and above that minimum will be because of perceived benefits going forward - and the benefits we're seeking are good trading terms that require negotiation. The EU have stalled the process by insisting that we agree to pay more than is legally required before trade negotiations start.

If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys. You understand that the more the UK skimps on the divorce bill, the less inclined the EU will be to give a good trade deal after Brexit? And no, the EU has not insisted you pay more than legally required. Barnier knows what he's talking about, the UK government still has no clue.

 

[ceptimus]

That's no answer to Archie's point.

If you leave the border between NI and the Republic open for personal travel, a Romanian can take the plane to Dublin, the bus to Belfast (there's one every hour) and then a plane to London.

They can work for cash, pay their boarding in cash and no-one finds them. And they can be anywhere in the UK.

There are already loads of such immigrants in the UK, including London. There are plenty of illegal ones too from Afghanistan, African countries, and so on. They come over by stowing away on lorries and also by small boats crossing the channel or other sea and dropping them off on beaches away from customs facilities.

So the Irish border may be one easy route for them to get as far as Belfast or Derry, but they'll mostly want to get to England which will involve purchasing tickets for planes or ferries where they may be discovered - the other routes may still be easier for them.

 

[ceptimus]

If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys. You understand that the more the UK skimps on the divorce bill, the less inclined the EU will be to give a good trade deal after Brexit? And no, the EU has not insisted you pay more than legally required. Barnier knows what he's talking about, the UK government still has no clue.

The EU won't discuss trade (what we want) till we agree to pay a sum acceptable to them. They've carefully avoided talking about what is legally required and instead talk about moral obligations and such. Both the House of Lords and the European court have said that such payments are not legally required.

I agree with you that we'll have to pay to get what we want. What we can't do is agree to pay an unspecified sum before the EU will even begin to talk about what we want. That's why the negotiations are currently stalled.

By agreeing to continue payments during the transition period, which will go some way to filling the EU's requirement for money in the period to 2021, May is hoping to unlock the negotiations. If negotiations are unlocked by the EU we can negotiate what we'll get in return for any "divorce bill" payments. But I expect that the EU will continue to stall the negotiations in the hope that we'll sign a blank post-dated cheque.

Signing a blank cheque is something that May might be stupid and desperate enough to do, but there are some members of her cabinet that won't stand for it, and such an action would doubtless trigger a leadership challenge.

 

[Belgian thought]

I agree with you that we'll have to pay to get what we want. What we can't do is agree to pay an unspecified sum before the EU will even begin to talk about what we want. That's why the negotiations are currently stalled.

It makes sense to ask for the payment first. If it is deemed not enough, the EU can then impose tariffs in the trade discussions to ensure that in the long term they get the amount they wanted in the first place.