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UK Politics - summer edition


Maltaran

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3 hours ago, Maltaran said:

He probably saw all the hype about Rees-Mogg and thought "hey, buffoon who thinks he can be PM is my job!"

If it came down to a choice of Rees-Mogg or Boris as PM I think I would prefer Rees-Mogg.  Although this is not something I've actually thought about before and really really don't want to happen.

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What an absolutely horrifying thought.

 

I'd have to agree though, of the 2 then JRM seems mildly safer, as I think Boris might be the more competent. A bit like Trump being better than Pence (were it not for the risk of him ordering a nuclear strike by accident)

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18 hours ago, Werthead said:

As interventions go, Johnson's today was as bizarrely self-defeating as I've ever seen. And the "£350 million a week for the NHS" horseshit is a bewilderingly stupid hill to die on.

Scary anecdotal evidence though:

My Daily Mail reading aunt still thinks that Boris is a Great Man who would make a superb prime minister, and has swallowed his comments whole and taken them as evidence that Brexit was a good idea after all. She now confidently expects the NHS to get all this extra money and to be sorted out. (She had some personal experience of it recently that forced her to admit that it is somewhat stretched, though her main complaint seems to have been how low class most of her fellow patients were.)

Still it does serve to give some insight into how western democracy has got in its current state. And hopefully there are not that many people like her left.

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9 hours ago, Maltaran said:

He probably saw all the hype about Rees-Mogg and thought "hey, buffoon who thinks he can be PM is my job!"

I suppose we can hope Rees-Mogg and Boris are going to be the Michael Gove and Boris of the next Tory leadership contest and will manage to try to backstab each other and ruin any chances both of them might have

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I think Boris is, as usual, just attempting to stick himself in some vaguely advantageous position, without necessarily harbouring specific ambitions at the moment. I honestly have no idea at this point whether a deal involving some kind of continuance in the single market would be popular or not but it's definitely something that's easy to take a position against.

JRM, otoh, is a worse kind of scumbag, one who is generally against equality and the rights of women but is apparently happy to serve a country that thinks those views are despicable. Yeah, right. He is quite good on Have I Got News For You though.

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So let me see if I got this right.

May had a field trip with her fellow tories and the British press to Italy, where she held a speech about her vision of Brexit and repeating "creative solutions" quite a bit, while no EU representative or even Italian goverment official was present? Now that's some well spent tax payer money, if there ever was one.

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As a german I don't understand any of the UK insult policy and negotiation red lines that effectively block any negotiation. Just troll the UK already ... the talks will never result in anything. 

Concerning florence: I read somewhere that the foreign office choose the location. And everything I take from that is the message: 

"Haha, we stand here in florence, the home town of machiavelli. And you are all corrupt politicans."

It's the continuation of the insult policy. Nothing more. I mean the bridges are already burned ... what else do you want to burn ?

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What exactly is the EU supposed to do?

There are some (supposedly) self-evident truths that seemingly have not reached every Briton.

Namely there are legal and politically limits to what the EU can offer, and thus Brexit can't be a success. In simpler words, Britain can't be better off as a third country than a member state.

First point of Brexit negotiations must actually be Brexit, a more or less orderly withdrawal, and not some future relationship stuff.

That the EU feels Britain should at least offer some (workable) ideas with regards to Ireland (Republic and Northern Ireland), the issue of monetary commitments made by Britain as an EU member, and citizens rights, is also not terribly absurd (at least imo).

I haven't seen Barnier throwing a tantrum over his negotiation counterpart not being able to really provide a concrete position on 2 of those issues (Ireland and the divorce bill), but instead talking some stuff about flexible and creative solutions must be found. Noto mention BoJo the bozo and his sideshow with occasional snipes. Or May trying to use Brexit as a way to deliver the coup de grace to Labour, and delivering strong woman speeches on the campaign trail and thus squandering months of a rather tight negotiation schedule.

So I really find Barnier's patience rather admirable.

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The other problem is that for Britain, Brexit is the dominant political issue of the day, but for the EU it's quite some way down the list of priorities behind their economic issues, the immigrant crisis, rising tensions with Russia, handling a less-reliable American ally and so on. It was always going to be the case that Britain was going to be negotiating with a weak hand from an inferior negotiating position, so it's baffling that people are getting worked up on realising this now.

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53 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It was always going to be the case that Britain was going to be negotiating with a weak hand from an inferior negotiating position, so it's baffling that people are getting worked up on realising this now.

If only we could find a large group of countries that we could team up with to collectively increase our bargaining power.

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1 hour ago, Liffguard said:

If only we could find a large group of countries that we could team up with to collectively increase our bargaining power.

That's some kind of sick crazy talk right there.

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6 hours ago, Notone said:

What exactly is the EU supposed to do?

There are some (supposedly) self-evident truths that seemingly have not reached every Briton.

Namely there are legal and politically limits to what the EU can offer, and thus Brexit can't be a success. In simpler words, Britain can't be better off as a third country than a member state.

First point of Brexit negotiations must actually be Brexit, a more or less orderly withdrawal, and not some future relationship stuff.

That the EU feels Britain should at least offer some (workable) ideas with regards to Ireland (Republic and Northern Ireland), the issue of monetary commitments made by Britain as an EU member, and citizens rights, is also not terribly absurd (at least imo).

Well, for a start there's really no point in the UK paying a 'divorce bill' if there's not going to be any kind of trade deal and without any sort of arrangement with the EU for future relationships non British citizens right of abode in the UK really isn't something they have any say in. So basically having the things the EU wants solved as a prerequisite for negotiations on future relations isn't exactly a neutral position.

Obviously the Northern Ireland border is something the UK needs to resolve but the EU sticking it's oar in isn't helping the situation. It's really not something any side wants to get swept into acrimonious UK/EU negotiations which clearly seem to be very confrontational and is better left to bilateral negotiations between the UK and Ireland.

The EU clearly has a rational incentive to be punitive with the UK leaving but lets not pretend that isn't what they're doing.

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Well, the UK agreed to pay those bills before, if the Tories want not to pay, they'll have to concede other points. Also, there's stuff like EU pensions for EU officials from the UK and similar stuff at stake at the same time.

The UK position on Ireland is entirely self-serving. You want out of the EU? Fine. But then you can't expect to have one massively open border there unless you make a proposal how that's supposed to work. Again, it's not the EU, bringing up the subject so much as Britain having decided to leave and not having thought about the implications of leaving beforehand.

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55 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Well, for a start there's really no point in the UK paying a 'divorce bill' if there's not going to be any kind of trade deal

The EU seem quite amenable to there being a trade deal of some kind. They also seem to believe that these two issues are not linked, in that the principle of the bill is not negotiable - it represents honouring commitments already entered into. The amounts are negotiable but the linkage of the two in the way you're presenting it seems to confuse the EU negotiators, rather than anything else.

55 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

and without any sort of arrangement with the EU for future relationships non British citizens right of abode in the UK really isn't something they have any say in.

They think they should have a say, just as we believe we should have a say in the fate of British expats. We're hypocrites about this, as with a number of other things.

55 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

So basically having the things the EU wants solved as a prerequisite for negotiations on future relations isn't exactly a neutral position.

It's not an unreasonable starting position.

55 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Obviously the Northern Ireland border is something the UK needs to resolve but the EU sticking it's oar in isn't helping the situation. It's really not something any side wants to get swept into acrimonious UK/EU negotiations which clearly seem to be very confrontational and is better left to bilateral negotiations between the UK and Ireland.

But Ireland is an EU member state and that border is therefore an EU border. That's the very core of the problem. It's plainly not just a bilateral issue.

55 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

The EU clearly has a rational incentive to be punitive with the UK leaving but lets not pretend that isn't what they're doing.

'Punitive' is a term loaded with value judgment. Is losing a benefit a punishment?

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16 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

Well, the UK agreed to pay those bills before, if the Tories want not to pay, they'll have to concede other points.

The UK signed off on EU budgets and agreed to make a contribution while the intention was for the UK to remain in the EU and benefit from those expenditures. That the UK would continue to pay into the EU budget while not receiving any benefit from it really isn't a given.

What other points are they going to concede on? If the EU and UK are just going to trade under WTO guidelines then what points are there? Of course the UK could continue some contributions as a quid pro quo but then of course you're negotiating the future relations alongside the divorce bill.

26 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

 Again, it's not the EU, bringing up the subject so much as Britain having decided to leave and not having thought about the implications of leaving beforehand.

Well it is the EU, in the form of Macron and Barnier, bringing it up. Notably Barnier publicly expressing skepticism about an open border which really isn't useful.

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Well, they might as well have decided to stay in until the end of the current budget period. It's not the EU that determined that timing; it's all on the Tories.

 

The EU never had any intentions of closing that border. The UK wanted out of the EU, and is hence about to close that border. Now they want to keep it open without considering the ramifications of that. For example, this would directly circumvent any way for the EU to keep the UK out of the Common Economic Area, which the UK simply can't stay in without concessions, ro it would end up in a better position wrt the EU than before (being a de facto member of the Area while not paying membership fees...). This issue has to be regulated, and the British position on it is entirely self-serving.

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19 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Well it is the EU, in the form of Macron and Barnier, bringing it up. Notably Barnier publicly expressing skepticism about an open border which really isn't useful.

Of course they are expressing scepticism. How is an open border supposed to work? Britain wants to restrict the freedom of movement for natural persons from the EU into it's territory. So how are they gonna control emmigration, if EU citizens can freely travel to the Republic of Ireland? The most practical solution would probably be border checks on mainland Britain for travelers from the Island of Ireland, but that would also involve British citizens from Northern Ireland. How happy the DUP would be about this, and how legally sound that would be, if challenged in court, that is a question for British lawyers I guess.

On the other side, the EU has an interest to control the influx of goods from Britain (Northern Ireland) into it's territory. When Britain comes up with all those fancy new trade agreements with Disney Land, they don't want Disney Land products to be shipped into the EU through an Irish backdoor, particularly when those goods don't meet EU standards for stuff like food and consumer safety standards. E.g. those chloride chickens from the US. We're totally cool if you want those in British supermarkets, that's none of our business -  just don't you dare to ship them to us through Northern Ireland. So there will be some sort of customs check needed for goods passing from Northern Ireland (Britain) to the Republic of Ireland (EU).

So now try to work that one out, and no "we must find creative and flexible solutions" will not do. And pretending there are no problems with the suggestion of an open Border, doesn't make those problems go away.

Same argument applies to

19 hours ago, ljkeane said:

What other points are they going to concede on? If the EU and UK are just going to trade under WTO guidelines then what points are there? Of course the UK could continue some contributions as a quid pro quo but then of course you're negotiating the future relations alongside the divorce bill.

The UK wants to enter a trade relationship with the EU, fine. But first the current relationship between the UK and the EU must be settled. And the bill is mainly commitments made by the UK. Just beause you don'T go the gym anymore, doesn't mean you don't have to pay your membership fees.

And as for the future relationship there still seems to be some confusion of what the UK actually wants, and what's realistic. If the UK wants to negotiate free trade agreements on its own, that's cool. But then it can't be a member of the single market. The reasoning is the same as above. Britain can't (reasonably expect to) take advantage of the single market membership and use that as bargaining chip for its other trade deals to serve as a backdoor to the single market (and thus undermine the rules and regulations of the EU single market). 

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