BREXIT! BREXIT! BREXIT!

[Scot Dutchy]

Jealous Jim?

[Scot Dutchy]

Not looking good for normal minded people:

Brexit: Barnier gives EU diplomats 'very gloomy' assessment of progress in UK-EU trade talks – politics live

Latest updates: EU’s chief Brexit negotiator says gaps on level playing field, governance and fisheries are still not bridged

Brexiteers including Johnson are getting what they want. The red herring is still swimming.

[Scot Dutchy]

As if he cares:

Brexit: Boris Johnson warns securing deal is 'looking very, very difficult'

PM says he wants an agreement but people need to be ready for changes on 1 January

Boris Johnson has warned that securing a deal at an imminent Brexit summit in Brussels will be “very difficult” but backed “the power of sweet reason to get this thing over the line”.

The prime minister, who agreed during a phone call on Monday to meet the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, in the Belgian capital, said he wanted an agreement.

“You’ve got to be optimistic, you’ve got to believe there’s the power of sweet reason to get this thing over the line,” Johnson said. “But I’ve got to tell you it’s looking very, very difficult at the moment.

“We’ll do our level best, but I would just say to everybody – be in good cheer, there are great options ahead for our country on any view. But the key thing is, on 1 January, whatever happens there’s going to be change and people need to get ready for that change.”

Asked if he would try to do a deal right up until the wire, Johnson told reporters: “Yeah, of course. We’re always hopeful but you know there may come a moment when we have to acknowledge that it’s time to draw stumps and that’s just the way it is.”

[rainbow]

Simpler, more innocent times...

[Scot Dutchy]

You really have to laugh at them. Going to do this and that in the UK but when it comes to it they are fleeing rats off the sinking ship.

Ineos boss opts to build 'British' heir to Land Rover Defender in France

Vocal Brexiter Sir Jim Ratcliffe vowed to make new Grenadier 4x4 in Bridgend but has now bought car plant at Hambach

Billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe has chosen to build the “British” successor to the Land Rover Defender 4x4 in France, rather than Bridgend in Wales.

Ratcliffe, who has built up an estimated £12.15bn fortune from petrochemicals company Ineos, announced on Tuesday that the Ineos Grenadier vehicle will be built at a former Mercedes-Benz factory in Hambach, close to the French-German border. The deal will “safeguard” 1,300 jobs at the factory, but dash hopes for an automotive revival in south Wales.

Ratcliffe, a vocal Brexit supporter who recently left the UK for tax-free Monaco, said Hambach had presented the company with “a unique opportunity that we simply could not ignore”.

Fucking typical.

[Brian Peacock]

Yep. Ratcliffe is a non-dom too - hasn't paid tax in the UK for years. He's not the first. Reese-Mogg moved his hedgefund's HQ to Dublin to ensure his finance and investment business still had access to EU markets after telling his clients that Brexit represented 'considerable uncertainty' in the investment market. Dyson moved his business and his residence to Singapore after donating and campaigning for Brexit. Prominent Brexiteer Nigel Lawson has now taken up residence in France, but he's still popping up on the news complaining about the EU, and masks and lockdown etc. And that other high-profile tax-dodging non-dom Tory-donor, Brexitarian, and former Tory Chairman Lord Ashcroft advised business to move to Malta before B'day in order to do business with and in the EU.

Rats. Ships. Sinking.

[Scot Dutchy]

The climb down and going into a U turn has started by Johnson.

Brexit: Northern Ireland firms will have to fill out forms to send goods to Britain

Boris Johnson makes climbdown a year after saying companies could throw paperwork in the bin

Businesses in Northern Ireland will be required to fill out Brexit paperwork when sending their goods across the Irish Sea to Britain, Boris Johnson has conceded, a year after he told them they could put export forms in the bin.

The concession was made as part of a package of arrangements hammered out in the UK-EU joint committee in exchange for the UK dropping its law-breaking Brexit clauses in the internal market and taxation bills.

They will be unveiled in the House of Commons by the committee’s co-chair and cabinet minister Michael Gove later on Wednesday.

It is understood the paperwork will be minimal and involve simple exit declaration forms part of a safety and security certification system the EU requires for all goods leaving the bloc into a third country.

However it is represents a climbdown by Johnson who last year sought to reassure voters and businesses in Northern Ireland there would be unfettered access to markets in Great Britain. Johnson said any business asked to fill in such paperwork should telephone him “and I will direct them to throw that form in the bin”, he told them in an exchange caught on video.

[Scot Dutchy]

Further climbdown:

UK drops plans to break international law as Northern Ireland deal is reached

Threat to disapply Northern Ireland protocol lifted as UK and EU agree Brexit deal on goods crossing Irish Sea

The government is dropping controversial plans to break international law in relation to Brexit, following a behind-the-scenes deal between the UK and the EU, it has announced.

But EU diplomatic sources warned that while the U-turn was a “reset moment” for relations with the UK, it was not a gamechanger for trade talks, which remain deadlocked.

On Tuesday, the government said it would abandon all the Brexit clauses relating to Northern Ireland in the internal market and finance bills following in exchange for promises by the EU to minimise checks and controls due to be imposed on food and medicines going into Northern Ireland from Great Britain from 1 January.

Details on the checks are expected to be disclosed on Wednesday, but the cabinet minister, Michael Gove, and the European commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, announced they had sealed an agreement “specifically for checks on animals, plants and derived products, export declarations, the supply of medicines, the supply of chilled meats, and other food products to supermarkets”.

They have also agreed agriculture and fish business would be exempt from state aid rules, and drew up the long-awaited list of goods “not at risk” of being smuggled across the border into the Republic of Ireland.

[Scot Dutchy]

Talk about back-pedalling. Biden is causing problems so the US-UK trade deal is not looking rosy either.

[Brian Peacock]

I think it's good that Johnson is taking the Good Friday agreement serious now the orange baboon has left the White House. Trump was making Bojo look almost normal. Now he'll have to try harder.

[NineBerry]

[pErvinalia]

What a fucking boof head.

[JimC]

He's just having a bad hair day...

[pErvinalia]

Everything about him is dishevelled.

[JimC]

Everything about him is dishevelled.

I didn't realise that you were such a neat freak...