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so, back on topic, rumoured that a post Brexit trade deal is to be announced tonight. Triumph for Johnson to emerge!
Weeping and gnashing of teeth to be heard coming from the direction of chateau rA, not doubt it will be a crap deal come what may (although I wont necessarily disagree as, if it is one, its going to be a last minute hotchpotch)
Mind you, this is probably right up there with the bin Derby announcement we were expecting by now
Pourquoi? Surely I’m one of those who’s always been in favour of a deal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoff Parkstone
My problem is similar to the one you mention. If the ‘deal’ isn’t as good as what we had as members of the EU...what’s been the point?
Sovereignty, if you are pro brexit
My bag-carrier friend (or rather his dad) put an interesting spin on the negotiations when we spoke on Sunday, and that is that the fishing issue is so thorny because EU have worked out it isn't a sovereignty issue as such, it is a Scottish independance issue. I hadn't realised until he explained that the 'UK' fishing industry is 3/4 the Scottish fishing industry (certainly by location of the catch. and using nominal sea area) and capitulating will be a massive 'win' (in electoral, not real) terms for the Independance brigadeQuote:
Originally Posted by ramAnag
Haha, you caught me red handed!Quote:
Originally Posted by macstheman
Ah yes...you mean like control over our own borders which apparently, as EU members, we didn’t have and the Brexiteers really wanted...until the French started to implement it over lorry drivers entering France from a Tier 4 area of the UK, when suddenly it was a really bad idea.Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoff Parkstone
Seems all the EU nation’s have control over their borders after all.
Relating to nothing in particular but everything in fact, I've just returned from one of the most terrifying places I've been to in the past 10 months. Asda. I only ventured in because they are the only local stockist of a product I needed (they had no stock). Mask wearing compliance was as poor as I've seen anywhere, maybe 5-10% - whole families, people wearing them but on their chins, one couple taking theirs off in turn to speak, plus very poor social distancing and 'touch' compliance (especially the booze). Funny how you get conditioned about things, I felt dirty when I came out.
Dantes Inferno, Asda style
Leavers started from a position of denial that sovereignty had any price at all – that Brexit was all upside. That case rested on two principles. First was the idea that EU membership was a drag on Britain, an unwanted subscription service that could be cancelled and the money redirected to better causes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoff Parkstone
Second was the belief that Europeans would be so sad to lose access to British markets that they would agree to continue something like the old service without charge. Those things were not true, but the Brexiteers believed they could be made true by force of conviction and a more aggressive negotiating stance.
Meanwhile, remainers saw the whole deal as a scam. The price was too high and the sovereignty being bought was worthless. It could not make Britain hefty enough in the world to rival Washington or Beijing. There was more global leverage available from a seat at EU summits in Brussels. The best deal on sovereignty was therefore the one that invested the whole pot in the European project.
But that argument has never had traction with leavers. The claim that Brexit has no value is palpable nonsense to tens of millions of people who, by the act of voting, bestowed it with profound emotional significance. Sovereignty sounds like independence which is something people want for themselves and their country. Many could also think of concrete benefits from autonomy in law making. Often those things were Eurosceptic mythology – freedom to do things that Brussels had never stopped Britain from doing – but not always. Anyone who wanted a tougher immigration regime, for example, will get one from Brexit. For liberal remainers, that is just another cost.
Leavers and Remainers measure the issues on completely different scales, and will continue to do so. Pro-Europeans will be disappointed if they anticipate some definitive moment of vindication, when the bill lands for the hollow monument to sovereignty that Johnson is erecting at vast national expense.
Restricted access to European markets will take a toll in jobs and forgone growth. But there will be foreigners and a pandemic to blame. The political furnaces will fire up, incinerating the evidence presented by economists and pumping out the same polluting cloud of specious argument.
The trickier part will be converting regulatory sovereignty into material payback to leave voters. Johnson’s shiny monument cannot be melted down and minted into coins for people whose jobs have vanished because the supply chain in which they worked has been rerouted via Slovakia. Autonomy from EU rules affords some leeway to subsidise industry, but most Tories are ideologically repelled by the idea of government picking economic winners.
The Eurosceptic instinct tends the other way, applying market forces as the remedy to any malaise, cutting taxes and regulation to purge the body politic of state-induced lethargy. Strategists in Downing Street know that such medicine would be poison to voters in former Labour strongholds that make up the prime minister’s new power base.
In reality of course, we never had lost sovereignty by being in the EU and we won't gain it by leaving, every trade deal, every cross national deal on anything such as defence for instance, means giving up some element of control.
Those Eu laws that were "imposed" on us? Well the Uk devised most of them and probably, with the exception of perhaps the Germans, no country has "policed" EU rules more than the UK. Now most of those laws are enshrined in UK law, think they will be repealed? No.
That buffoon Johnson has damaged Britain’s reputation as a level-headed, pragmatic country and reliable ally, just to purchase a few more ounces of sovereignty. Which in reality is just an illusion, ask any Brexiteer and they will be unable to actually define what we have gained in sovereignty with Brexit. Ask them, I have and to date nobody has been able to give coherent answer that has any fact in it!
Well it is sounding, at this stage, as if the deal we have got is better than I for one was expecting. Tariff free access to EU market seems to be a result. But the devil will be in the detail and obviously not yet gone thru all of it. No doubt there are trade offs, some areas where people will be disappointed amongst both the remainers and hard leavers, some bits that will need refining and amending, but it sounds like a bit of a winner, especially when compared to the no deal option.
Cautious optimism here and cautious positivism towards the architects, which sort of suggests that the "taking it to the wire" approach may have worked well for us. BUT lets see