Hard Brexit or Hard Brexit

[rainbow]

and lack of action against illegal immigration.

I still can't believe that you're stupid enough to believe that lie.

The UK controls its own borders, not the EU.

[Scot Dutchy]

and lack of action against illegal immigration.

I still can't believe that you're stupid enough to believe that lie.

The UK controls its own borders, not the EU.

And did not do it very well. Failed to implement the EU regulations regarding EU immigrants and then blames EU immigrants.

[Brian Peacock]

Scott, you do realise that most Leave voters don't give a fuck about any of those promises, don't you? All they want is Fortress Anglo. They think that will fix everything, at least eventually. When it does not, which is inevitable, they'll come up with all sorts of external factors that sabotaged their construction of an ethnically cleansed Arcadia..

And, somewhat ironically, chief among those 'external sabotaging factors' will be the EU. I predict a new kind of, well, sectarianism between post-Brexit UK and the EU, in the sense that sectarians always blame the other side for their own failings.

[JimC]

I expect Britain to start buying a hell of a lot more from Oz, so that our poor struggling farmers can finally buy that second BMW...

(sorry, make that a Jaguar)

[rainbow]

(sorry, make that a Jaguar)

If you want to buy a Tata, get it directly from India.

[mistermack]

Jags are now much more competitive against BMWs because of currency movements.
Every cloud has a silver lining.

Nicer cars too. BMs used to be stylish, but now look very ugly-American in style.
Jags are generally beautiful, inside and out.
Out of the Hi volume German stuff, only Audi make a good looking car these days.

[Brian Peacock]

Nick Cohen of 'fantasy brexit' ...

Cowardice is a progressive disease. Leave it untreated and it can kill. Everyone should know by now that the big lie of Brexit was not that it would deliver £350m a week to the NHS – although that was as brazen a political lie as Suez – but that Brexit would be easy. Everyone should know but not everyone does. Political cowards will not force the public to confront the unpalatable truth.

That the electorate was deceived is certain. “The day after we vote we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want,” declared Michael Gove in April last year . The voters should not worry their silly little heads because “there will continue to be free trade and access to the single market”, Boris Johnson continued. Brexit will free us, added David Davis. “Be under no doubt, we can do deals with our trading partners and we can do them quickly.”

Instead of the promised utopia, we are in our weakest negotiating position since Munich. Far from skipping away down whatever path we want, we are doomed to trudge into a mire. Craig Oliver, David Cameron’s spin doctor, said that Brexit represented the defeat of “complex truth in the face of simple lies”. Britain is about to be taught that the trouble with complex truths is that you cannot deny them forever.

But who will do the teaching? Despite its recent shift in policy, Labour has displayed a cowardly unwillingness to hold the Tories to account by throwing the false bill of goods Leave campaigners offered back in their faces. But however deplorable Labour’s timidity has been, the cowardice that matters is Theresa May’s.

She made the horrendous mistake of endorsing every false promise the Leave campaign made when she took power. She might have said she would respect the referendum result but had to warn the public that leaving the EU would be hard and that there would have to be compromises if Britain was to avoid needless suffering. Instead, she made the propaganda of Farage, Johnson and Gove her own. Our hapless diplomats were instructed to work on the assumption that there would be little cost in leaving the EU – no restrictions on access to the single market or customs checks at the border – because it was in the EU’s interests to let us have our cake and eat it.

It is easy to see why she had to block out the thought that the EU’s prime interest was, funnily enough, the protection of the EU. The right destroyed the previous two Tory prime ministers. Unless May, a Remain supporter, bent the knee, she would meet their fate. In terms of party management, her servility has been a success. Rightwing MPs and the Mail and the Telegraph still cheer her on, despite her catastrophic election campaign....

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ng-us-dear

[mistermack]

If Brexit isn't easy now, then it will get worse over time.

So now is the best time.

And who would want to remain in a club that issues threats and demands for money, if you decide to leave?
It's surely cowardice to knuckle under in response to the threats.

If I was French or Spanish, I'd be asking myself if it was worth staying inside such a nasty Cosa Nostra.

[Brian Peacock]

I find it interesting that an obligation to fulfil the terms of an agreed contract is cast as a threat. What are the EU threatening the UK with exactly? The possibility of not compromising on another kind of contract. And what does the UK want out the negotiations? For the EU to compromise on the first contract as a condition for compromising with the UK on the second. Seems to me that the 'threats' are going in both directions here - and they're not even 'threats' at all.

[mistermack]

Well actually, the British side are simply saying, "let's pay what we are legally obliged to pay".

But that doesn't include what the EU commissioners are claiming.
On day 1 of Brexit, we are not legally obliged to pay anything. There is no legal obligation on non-members.

I don't see any offers to pay the UK for their share of the assets of the EU.

[Brian Peacock]

The terms of Article 50 were agreed by all EU signatories. There's an agreed framework and fiscal obligation right up until the withdrawal. The UK are disputing that obligation, not some imaginary post Brexit non-membership obligation. If the UK haven't met their fiscal obligations by day 1 of the new post-Brexit era they will still owe the EU the money - you don't stop owing the money on your unpaid utility bills when you move house do you? This dubious 'We're not going to let the EU put one over on us' sketch is a political slight-of-hand which acts as a massive distraction. The success of the post-Brexit project will not be down to whether the EU managed to persuade us to pay our bills or not.

[mistermack]

The terms of Article 50 were agreed by all EU signatories. There's an agreed framework and fiscal obligation right up until the withdrawal. The UK are disputing that obligation, not some imaginary post Brexit non-membership obligation. If the UK haven't met their fiscal obligations by day 1 of the new post-Brexit era they will still owe the EU the money - you don't stop owing the money on your unpaid utility bills when you move house do you? This dubious 'We're not going to let the EU put one over on us' sketch is a political slight-of-hand which acts as a massive distraction. The success of the post-Brexit project will not be down to whether the EU managed to persuade us to pay our bills or not.

That's not what I've heard. I've heard the UK side say that they are happy to meet their legal obligations.
If it's as simple as you claim, then all the EU need to do is to stick to that.
All they have to do is say, "here is where it says you owe X amount" and the UK have already agreed that they would pay it.

[Scot Dutchy]

The terms of Article 50 were agreed by all EU signatories. There's an agreed framework and fiscal obligation right up until the withdrawal. The UK are disputing that obligation, not some imaginary post Brexit non-membership obligation. If the UK haven't met their fiscal obligations by day 1 of the new post-Brexit era they will still owe the EU the money - you don't stop owing the money on your unpaid utility bills when you move house do you? This dubious 'We're not going to let the EU put one over on us' sketch is a political slight-of-hand which acts as a massive distraction. The success of the post-Brexit project will not be down to whether the EU managed to persuade us to pay our bills or not.

That's not what I've heard. I've heard the UK side say that they are happy to meet their legal obligations.
If it's as simple as you claim, then all the EU need to do is to stick to that.
All they have to do is say, "here is where it says you owe X amount" and the UK have already agreed that they would pay it.

That is not what Johnson said. The UK just does not want to pay. By saying it will pay a certain amount it is causing a dispute which means it wont pay anything. That is the only way the UK "negotiates". Anyway if it does not pay it will be taken to the International Court of Justice here in the Hague.

[Svartalf]

Well, if UK doesn't pay, its holdings abroad will be frozen and seized until the amount due is paid... 'twill take years or decades, but that's what will eventually happen... as I just don't expect the tories to comply with any rulings from the hague...

[Brian Peacock]

It has all the hallmarks of a faux, manufactured dispute. Basically trolling on an international scale. The reason I actually think the Tories are pulling this one stunt is because withholding the money will give the UK government an excuse to maintain contact with the EU...

David Davis denies Theresa May will agree €50bn Brexit divorce bill

David Davis has denied Theresa May is preparing to approve a Brexit ”divorce bill” of €50bn, saying UK negotiators would not allow time pressures to force Britain into paying vast sums.

The Brexit secretary insisted there was no legal obligation for the UK to pay sums for EU projects after leaving the bloc, even those approved while the UK was a member, but conceded there were “moral or political” reasons to reach a financial settlement.

No 10 sources also denied May was preparing to agree a bill of around £46bn at current exchange rates, which the Sunday Times reported was set to be announced after the Conservative party conference. Under Whitehall plans,the UK would pay between £7bn and £17bn a year to Brussels for three years after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019, the paper said.

Davis said the story was “nonsense ... completely wrong” and that the UK position was not yet settled. “They have set this up because they are trying to play time against money,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, though he declined to repeat the international trade secretary Liam Fox’s description of the negotiations as blackmail.

“Time is not running out. We have a two-year process,” he said. “Every time we come to something serious there will be a pressure exercise of this sort. Money is incredibly important, it is the thing that frightens them most.”

Davis’s remarks came after a bruising press conference in Brussels after the latest round of talks with the EU, during which its chief negotiator Michel Barnier said there had been “no concrete progress”....

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... vorce-bill

...but what The Brexit Bulldog, Johnson, Gove, Mogg, and the rest just aren't getting is that now Article 50 has been invoked the EU just wants a clean break divorce and to move on, not to maintain an ongoing abusive relationship with someone who blames them for everything that's wrong in their life. "If you're going just go!"