There is no chance of the government securing a legally binding agreement that implements all the proposals in the Chequers paper. The EU has made that clear, and the government itself has said it will need to make more compromises. This implies it will give the EU more wins over and above those included in the Chequers draft.
We need to remember what the EU has in mind and what Chequers glosses over in the negotiations to date. The EU wants the UK to sign a Withdrawal Agreement before we leave. This would bind us in to the EU for a further 21 months, require us to pay an estimated £39bn, much of it over the next two years, and would prevent us from exploiting any of the benefits of Brexit in terms of UK legislative change from EU laws, and deny us new trade deals with non EU countries. I have never seen the rationale for such an Agreement from the UK point of view. Delay is particularly frustrating. What could we agree in 21 months that we have been unable to agree in the 33 months from the vote until official exit day? Why is more business uncertainty after March 2019 a good thing, when Remain tell us it is bad thing prior to departure?
The UK government has in mind a Future Comprehensive Partnership. The EU sees this as meaning the UK will have to sign an EU Association Agreement, normally reserved for countries wanting to join the EU to bring them more formally into line with EU legal requirements. No-one thinks there will be a full Association Agreement ready to sign before March 2019 so it would be a promissory note of a possible Agreement. Why would any government wish to sign away so much money in a Withdrawal Agreement when the prize it says it wants will not be properly defined or legally binding at the same time?
Many people including me think an Association Agreement would be a bad idea. It would bind us into the rules of the single market – just for goods under the Chequers model but for the whole thing according to Mr Barnier. The EU would then want budget contributions, powers for the European Court and the rest of their mantra that you have to observe all the rules and pay the bills if you want to remain in the single market.
Understanding this Vote Leave campaigned to leave the single market and customs union as part of leaving the EU. Dressing up belonging as some new Partnership will not wash with Leave voters, and will not wash in its Chequers form with the EU. The one thing many people can unite behind is in ruling out signing the Withdrawal Agreement, as that on its own is very clearly a bad deal.
September 4, 2018
We are now entering the critical months. How it all pans out is anybody’s guess.
Most on here have no time for Chequers, paying the £39 Billion etc.
Knowing how those in parliament will react is a different matter. Uncertainty and fear of the consequence of a general election help Mrs. May stay in power.
We know she likes to keep her colleagues and the general public in the dark. We know she likes to pull strokes at the last minute.
Whether she can get away with this again remains to be seen.
September 4, 2018
No 10 is flying a kite about calling an election if Chequers is voted down. Bearing in mind that over 170 of the 316 Conservative MPs are on the payroll vote, they must be rattled about the rest.
September 4, 2018
The Summer break has not mollified those who were angry beforehand. I think Leave MPs can still throw a spanner in the works.
After that it gets more complicated. I had thought Leave could run the clock down until WTO by default. However, some claim it could also lead to No Brexit, though I have not seen convincing evidence for this case.
Further hardline statements from Barnier could also help Leave. Silence or encouraging noise from him during the conference period would help May.
Delay seems a better option for those who want some sort of negotiated agreement between the EU and UK. Not sure how that could be arranged though.
I think both sides will keep their powder dry until the actual Tory conference. May could use postponement of EU meetings to avoid further embarrassment during October.
I thought there were a hundred payroll MPs not 170 and they might not all be swayed by short term financial considerations.
September 4, 2018
MP s who wish to honour their manifesto must make it plain that they will resign and stand as Conservative for Independence. Start finding new candidates now from the 70 per cent of members who are against May’s sell out.
September 4, 2018
Good article by Goodman in conhome explaining the position and choices to MPs.
There is still a favoured one that would force the hand, oust May. She might think with her cohorts she will get away with her underhand rotten betrayal. Wrong.
September 4, 2018
May surely has to go in short order. She is wrong on almost everything not just on the EU (where she has been totally incompetent and wrong headed). Wrong from her tax to death chancellor (now trying to retain the incompetent remainer Carney for even longer), to her endless interference in markets, attacks on the self employed, her prices and income controls and all the rest. Some daft socialists grow up as they age, alas not May.
Why did she ever join the Tories with her let’s be ruled by the EU bureaucrats and tax, borrow, overregulate and piss down the drain views?
September 4, 2018
Lifelogic, May has no views. She is merely Hammond’s p.a. and spokesman.
September 4, 2018
Mrs May peddles deceit and delusion that will end in disaster. This is either deliberate intent or she is a clueless duffer. A case can be made for either explanation. Either way she scores D-.
Quite how the Conservative party navigates a way through the utter shambles she has contrived remains to be seen. In the circumstances the Brexit people voted for would be a good outcome even though a free trade agreement would have been better. May has sunk that option.
September 4, 2018
A clueless duffer, totally out of her depth I tend to think. Any politician who thinks you go into a voluntary general election with a vote for me and I will punish you is surely clueless? Anyone who put tax to death Hammond in number 11 and retains him likewise.
September 5, 2018
Lifelogic, Theresa May is far from “a clueless duffer”. She has engineered the predicament this country is now in.
We know she has lied to her own Ministers, her party, and the country, because of the two WPs – the DExEU WP being written openly, but the Robbins (Chequers) WP produced in secret. We know she gave the Robbins WP to the EU before the Cabinet had it.
She has cleverly salami sliced Brexit, and each capitulation has been swallowed by the Tory Brexit MPs as the last – until the next time. She has delayed and prevaricated to remove the possibility of alternatives to her plan.
September 4, 2018
May could be replaced without the need of a General Election. A vote of no confidence in her management of our withdrawal from the EU in Parliament would set the tone, win or lose, for conference and perhaps give the membership the guts to leave her in no doubt that they are less than impressed.
September 5, 2018
Agricola, Not going to happen. There are only about 100 Brexit MPs in Parliament (80+ Tories; 15 or so others). Mrs May will therefore win about 500 to 100 to keep us in her revolving-door Remain, provided Labour are intelligent enough to realise they can cause civil war in the Tory party. Any protests by Brexit Tory MPs will be silenced by the threat of another GE. Tory Remain MPs know that means they would be unseated, so they will oppose the Brexit Tory MPs. It’s all over bar the theatre. Vote Tory, get Remain.
September 4, 2018
An agreement to make our country a vassal state without a voice or,veto. Raab had the temerity to lie in parliament to say it kept faith with the referendum and vote. You all should have ripped him and his presentation to shreds and it made it clear on that day. Dishonest May’s Kitkat policy to hide true costs and ties to EU. No more. No punishment extension, leave March 2019 as we voted and trade on WTO terms working out a better term if the EU wants thereafter. It is not are to grasp.
May and Hammond are actively working against the national interest and must be stopped. This is an utter betrayal of the people. For Fox to claim Parliamentary arithmatic does not add up is a disgrace. What he should have said is MPs who thwart or try to thwart the electoral democracy of the country must resign or be forced out from every party. The fact of the matter is that MPs are trying to overthrow the will of the people thinking we cannot do anything about it.
Crime is now an epidemic in London because of direct policies from May. Police cuts 20,000 lost, police stations shut, stop and search curtailed. People murdered or maimed because of her policies. Hundr do of thousands of illegal immigrants lost under her! All the police stations are gone, going or shut! Empty fire brigade headquarters still unused but paid for by the taxpayer under PFI at an estimated cost of £500 million a year! This for the last 8 years. The pure incompetence is beyond words.
Highest taxation for fifty years, pisses £14 billion down the drain on despots, and exotic fishing mating programmes, Lear jets for dictators etc, each year on overseas aid, another £3.75 billion hidden off the books for the EDF equivalent overseas aid for EU! With NO input whatsoever from any UK politician! Presumably part of May’s dishonest Kitkat policy to hide true costs and ties to EU. Tory govt is fiscally incompetent especially when we add a chancellors acting against our own economy on cars etc.
September 4, 2018
Parliament wants their cheap servants.
They will not only pay the EU billions, they will agree we are forced to pay the massive subsidies to their low paid EU [and non EU] migrants.
A min wage earner pays £13.11 a week in tax.
Cost of a family of 4, one min wage earner, £54,000 a year.
So MPs get their cheap servants, we get the bill.
If we don’t pay, there’s no right of consent. MPs will use violence to force us to pay.
Consent matters. Not that MPs care
September 4, 2018
The government has made it repeatedly clear that the £39bn covers existing liabilities. It has NOTHING to do with future arrangements. Why do you keep misrepresenting the government’s position? Where is your party loyalty?
September 4, 2018
Look at this using the ‘EU Rules’ that Mr. Barnier likes so much. We have complied with the rules for leaving the EU, Article 50 notice, discussions about leaving and the possible new relationship. there is nothing more. We DO NOT have any legal obligation to pay over any sum on leaving. Those are the rules, we have complied. We need do no more, simply depart on 29-3-19.
September 4, 2018
What about the £ Billion investment in Galilao Britain has put in?
Government could take over the EU pensions of British people
I expect its swings and roundabouts and Britain doesn’t owe anything
September 4, 2018
The way I perceive it is that the £39bn is in addition to the existing liabilities. The government also made various other things ‘clear’ in the manifesto, in the Mansion House speech and in other press, public, national and international releases, including the biggest commitment of all; the referendum…we have yet to see evidence of planning, implementation or timetable in the shadow boxing that passes for negotiation. From the meagre detail filtering down it appears that the EU has been permitted, unchecked, to lead at every step – that’s the very same EU that is making life soviet-hard for the majority of its member states. The overall system and the unitary processes of the EU are heaving with designed obsolescence and sadly, we have a prime minister and, in part, a cabinet and parliamentary party, that cannot understand either Britain’s strengths or the EU’s guile-based weaknesses. Theresa May’s intentions are transparent in the make-up of her cabinet, the people she has sidelined and the people she has promoted. I’m also a Tory, a Tory with little tolerance for deception.
September 4, 2018
There are no legal existing liabilities. So your point is utter rubbish. Furthermore the U.K. assets are not included in this number why do you and others keep reiterating a grossly exaggerated low number where the figure is at least £100 billion! This is a bribe, not a liability. It is describe as a liability where it is fact to extort money the EU is not entitled to.
Robbins and whoever negotiated this should have been sacked for this incompetence alone. The talks should always have been parallel not sequential to end up where we are. This was contrived and I suspect by those on both sides of the negotiating table.
Where has May got off thinking it is okay to have regression clauses on a host of other EU policies! Nor is there a requirement for unconditional commitment for security, intelligence, defence, police etc. We voted leave to be free from all of this. Certainly the EAW needs to be out of the equation without a second thought.
September 4, 2018
Yes this £39bn is banded about but never explained. Is it for past signed contracts so must be paid or is it a withdrawal bill having no connection with past commitments?
Also I have read that it is payable over 40 odd years so if most in 2 years what is the arrangement for the rest?
I doubt very much if JR will enlighten us. He has made no comment on twice asking about the FT article about 759 trade agreement which it allegies will stop next April which seems to imply that he knows this to be true but daren’t mention it.
Reply I disagree and have set out these matters many times
September 4, 2018
You should rear the Treaty. We owe nothing.
September 4, 2018
Because there are NO ‘existing liabilities’. The EU has Legal Personality, so it is responsible for its ‘liabilities’. All teh UK is required to do is pay the annual membership as per the Treaties. If there were a case for a ‘divorce bill’ that had the slightest bit of legal merit Barmy Bariner would have produced that legal opinion. To date he has produced not one line and nor has anyone else, you included.
September 4, 2018
Staffy Tory
Where is your party loyalty you ask. Its in the manifesto that you stood on at the last election thats where . Wheres yours?
September 4, 2018
Where is your loyalty to the UK? Why should the UK pay for future EU security and subsidizing new members, decided after we voted to leave?The Commission has carried on as though they still had 500m citizens when 67m are leaving.
September 5, 2018
The UK government remains very keen that that gaggle of impoverished west Balkans statelets join the EU(almost certainly for geopolitical reasons)
Someone has to pay for them!
September 4, 2018
The government has not promised any sum. Nowhere in the December 2017 Joint Agreement with the EU is any such financial obligation even mentioned.
Quote or cite any such undertaking in any official document. You will find it nowhere.
May keeps on talking about it, but it is merely her (i.e. Robbins’s) informal figure, and that ‘commitment’ that will vanish into space the moment May and Robbins do.
And the sooner the better.
September 4, 2018
Article 50 makes no mention of having to pay for existing liabilities. Paying the £39 billion is a gesture of goodwill but unless the EU reciprocates, which it has not done so far, it should not be paid.
September 4, 2018
Staffordshire Tory
“The government has made it repeatedly clear that the £39bn covers existing liabilities. It has NOTHING to do with future arrangements. Where is your party loyalty?”
What liabilities ?, Europe would only exist geographically if it wasn’t for the UK. We owe that ungrateful bullying pariah nothing.
As for our host’s loyalty, nothing wrong with it.
September 5, 2018
“The government has made it repeatedly clear that the £39bn covers existing liabilities. It has NOTHING to do with future arrangements.”
So what did Dominic Raab mean by this yesterday, at Column 52 here:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-09-04/debates/3F1F8363-0A4B-4DB6-B8C0-CC8D64DBF150/BrexitNegotiationsAndNoDealContingencyPlanning
“While it is not what we want, a no deal scenario would bring some countervailing opportunities … and, while we are mindful of our legal obligations, a swifter end to our financial contributions to the EU.”
And again at Column 67:
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the nature of the financial settlement, as set out in the withdrawal agreement, is contingent upon us agreeing the deal as a whole, and it could not be guaranteed that we would provide the same amount of money if we left the EU without a deal. We will abide by our legal obligations, but I think my hon. Friend can safely say that that would be open for consideration.”
The clear implication is that we may not be legally obliged to make some part of the proposed payments so they cannot all reflect “existing liabilities”.
September 6, 2018
It means that Dominic Raab is preparing to put a pistol to Mrs May’s head ……………. No more concessions or else. Mrs May cannot afford to lose a second Secretary for Exiting the EU.
September 4, 2018
It is terror of the cliff edge that will get the withdrawal agreement through Parliament presumably.
It is indeed difficult to see any reason why the withdrawal agreement period is any better than EU membership. If it’s the case that we are not in a position to leave and go to WTO terms In March 19 because insufficient preparations have been made, I think the best thing would be to forget the withdrawal period, postpone article 50 – or cancel it and re-issue it – extending EU membership for this period. May and Hammond would clearly then need to go and new leadership be put in place to do what should have been happening for the last two years – offering the EU a comprehensive FTA and, failing agreement on that, getting to a position where we can go to WTO terms by Jan 21 at least.
September 4, 2018
“I think the best thing would be to forget the withdrawal period, postpone article 50 – or cancel it and re-issue it – extending EU membership for this period.”
Richard1, are you sure you have landed on the right planet?
September 4, 2018
Thank you for saying what many have forgotten – leaving the ‘single’ market and customs union is PART of leaving the EU. They are core elements but all I’m seeing from this remain Govt & its remain negotiators keeping us attached to their control through other elements. Not just that but May has been signing over control of our military (& twice failing to notify the House) SINCE the referendum.
The ‘mess’ that we are in is the inevitable consequence of remainers negotiating our ‘leaving’. No-one is being fooled by the soundbite mantras. The purpose is to keep us in. It is clear with every step in the dance of illusion of democracy. The fact that this has gone on for so long, with many putting party before country, shows the level of corruption & wilful ignorance in our Parliament (with a few honourable exceptions).
What we are seeing is that the Conservative party is not ‘conservative’, just as the Liberal Democrats are neither liberal nor democratic. As each day passes, it becomes clearer that we no longer are living in a democracy & our constitution is being set aside. The deliberate failure to leave the EU properly, a clear instruction, will be the final proof for many that democracy does not exist here any more. If the ballot box no longer works other means to effect change will be found.
The Party will not survive this as it stands. The only thing that will is having committed leavers as 1, 2 & 3 with a cabinet 100% committed to leaving (no-one will believe anything from faux leavers who supported May/Chequers). Just leave on 29th March 2019 on WTO terms. Not only will it save the country from the dire EU ‘projekt’ but the Party will win at elections as hopefully you will campaign FOR positive changes as opposed to the standard ‘vote for us or else you get…’
The alternative is difficult to contemplate, but looking more likely as each day passes.
September 4, 2018
Anything, but anything, except the full leave we voted for. When we voted to leave it meant a FULL re-establishment of national sovereignty and leaving all the EU institutions.
If May cannot or will not grasp that, then she should step aside and nominate someone else who will deliver the mandate given.
We vote ministers into office to actually fulfill such an obligation, not to endlessly theorise about possibilities.
September 4, 2018
Good morning
One needs to read the second section of Article 50. It requires the EU to conclude an agreement with the UK setting out the arrangements for our withdrawal from the EU. It is in the treaties we have signed in good faith and have to follow.
As I stated before, I voted to make the UK a Third Country. I do not care if the EU imposes tariffs on good and services we export, I will not be paying it the EU nationals like PvL will 😉
I do not want us to sign any Association Agreement. I want to leave. But I want us to leave by the least damaging route possible.
In short, I want us to be like all the other countries outside the EU. Warts and all.
September 4, 2018
Actually what Article 50 says is that a country can leave inaccord with its own Constitutional arrangements. There was and is no need for the UK to negotiate. It si for the EU under Article 50(2) to do that. We can just leave.
September 4, 2018
Theresa May has said she will refuse to be forced into agreeing compromises on her Brexit plan that are not in the national interest.
Since what is in the “national interest” is subjective, and because Mrs. May is a remainer who still believes that the UK should remain in the EU, we can read this to mean that Mrs. May will declare it is in the “national interest” to cave in to all EU demands, the first of which will the payment of the EU’s £39bn withdrawal bill and the continued acceptance of all EU laws, regulations and directives with no representation after March 2019 and no agreement on the future relationship.
It will all be claimed as necessary to avoid an economic collapse brought about by EU and corporate threats.
If Parliament agrees to this subjugation of the UK by the EU, totally the opposite of the referendum and GE results and even worse than EU membership, it will be a Parliamentary coup d’etat against the people of the UK.
Parliament will have acted anti-democratically and illegally given away our freedom and sovereignty without a mandate.
No-one who believes in democracy should be considering voting for any Parliamentary candidate who votes for such a Withdrawal Bill.
September 4, 2018
Mrs May has said she will only make further compromises to the EU “if they are in the national interest”. This leaves it open to her to make any number of compromises because she believes that ANY agreement with the EU, however bad, is in the national interest.
September 4, 2018
Being in a vassal state s not in the national interest. May has escaped to notice this fact already.
September 4, 2018
The mantra coming from no 10 and the pro EU media is that no alternative has been shown by those like Boris and other leavers, who of course are ‘hard right nutters. A BBC presenter who has a new programme on LBC even expressed surprise that David Davis had been tricked by Theresa
. The sooner that the trade deal that was intended from the department for exiting and with the ERG is produced, the better.
September 5, 2018
The alternative to having a new special or preferential trade treaty with the EU would be not to have a new special or preferential trade treaty with the EU and instead just default to the terms of the WTO trade treaties which already exist and are already in force. It is reasonable to expect that overall the WTO terms of trade would not be as good economically as having the special or preferential treaty but it is also reasonable to expect that the difference would be marginal and not worth bothering about for the moment. When you have the EU itself boasting that its Single Market has been worth just 2% added to the collective GDP of its member states, and another study agreeing with that average one-off gross gain but saying that for the UK the benefit has been only half of it, about 1%, and when you have other studies showing that CETA and TTIP would squeeze out GDP increases of less than o.4% over and above WTO terms, then there is no reason to believe a Treasury forecast that defaulting to WTO terms would cost us 5% – 10% of GDP, and even more so when they have been wrong by about 10% of GDP since the dire prediction they made in May 2016 before the referendum:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/07/20/lets-thank-the-irish-pm-for-showing-us-how-absurd-project-fear-will-become/#comment-949201
“The worst prediction was for a 6% loss, but there has been a gain of nearly 4%.”
September 4, 2018
I didn’t realise that when you were PM you had a mandate to destroy your own country. This is what May is doing. The EU are being handed an advantage on a plate regarding trade with the rest of the world and it stinks. Traitor doesn’t come into it! When is someone in the Tory party going to come to their senses and get rid of this walking disaster? I just hope we don’t see any cheering at the Tory party conference because the sick bucket won’t be big enough.
September 4, 2018
Heath took us in to what the EU became. Robbins has tampered with Brexit.
That’s why Chequers is Heath Robinson.
September 4, 2018
I agree it’s about time this perfidious PM is removed, she has done nothing but roll over to the EU’s demands disregarding those that trusted her with their vote to deliver on the referendum result.
How much longer have the electorate got to suffer this woman humiliating our once great country?
I say ‘once’ because she has made us a laughing stock in the eyes of the world.
September 4, 2018
May is poison. We know Corbyn and his coterie of Marxist backers are dangerous and destructive but they don’t mind that we know that. They enjoy and revel in the fear they incite. But, with May she’s a far more conniving poison in politics. She shifts around as she has always done in her career using capitulation to any determined opposition to minimise the threat to herself. Her recent African parade is laced with inferences and helps to cement her liberal left credentials
What happens next is of no significance. The Tories sold out many years ago as did Labour. The UK is now governed by a political and administrative elite that is utterly immoral, ruthless and shameless. Principle and morality are unfashionable and must be swept aside.
The liberal left have succeeded in imprisoning the majority of the British people in a legal handcuff that they can never escape from
September 4, 2018
Withdraw, propose comprehensive free trade agreement based upon current arrangements. No free of movement for people. No further payments except realistic contributions to initiatives in which we continue to participate. Pension payments only to UK recipients whose loyalty clause passes to the UK in order to continue to receive such pension.
Why does Parliament and your government wish to make it so complicated?
September 4, 2018
If as a Remainer one were to step back from this process and ask oneself how, under the circumstances would I best navigate the country back in to the EU, the answer is most evident in the events that we have witnessed unfold since the Referendum. These ‘complications’ to which you refer need not have existed, but have been made so.
September 4, 2018
This makes a lot of sense to sensible people – but NOT to Remainers who seem to be in charge.
September 4, 2018
How long before the EU commissioners are laughing so much they fall off their thrones?
September 4, 2018
@ Fedupsoutherner
They already are 🙁
September 4, 2018
The withdrawal agreement is probably the most important document since WW2. Apart from not understanding why we need such an agreement, there is absolutely nothing in it for the UK.
Everything about it is for the benefit of Brussels and Barnier is desperate to get it signed.
Accepting the conditions Imposed in the document to date is an act of supreme treachery and will destroy anyone who votes for it.
September 4, 2018
What alarms is why no minister walked out of Chequers when this daft proposal was supposedly agreed – the mind boggles. For the umpteenth time May has to go – she is the liability of liabilities.
September 4, 2018
They had to read it first and were told that they would have to walk back if they were difficult.
September 4, 2018
Sorry but I conclude that we are led by dishonest idiots. Only yesterday we had May moaning that Boris has no alternative to Chequers for our withdrawal from the EU. She only wants him to elucidate an alternative so she can attempt to pull it apart. Boris should keep his powder dry until conference and then blow her Withdrawal/Association Agreements out of the water. Those that organise the conference will not let him speak, such is the openness of politics in the UK. I do not anticipate your presence on the conference platform either, just the usual procession of nodding donkeys. Those who do not swallow the May /Robbins path will not be heard. Just make sure the off piste meetings get more air time than the conference.
September 4, 2018
Idiotic May forgets she gave her a Lancaster speech and white paper that followed which was accepted by the people of this country. We voted leave there need not be any other idea needed or warrranted. Trade on WTO terms then agree a trade deal. You do not go back to a worse position that May is now touting for. She is underhand, a liar and betrayed the nation.
September 4, 2018
Or – -in short – they want to punish us for daring to leave and cut their money off.
September 4, 2018
Cut what money off? The EU made us and voting Brexit is going to unmake us.
September 5, 2018
margaret howard
Er the money that we pay in each year that is MORE than the 19 smallest countries combined . Blimey remainers are ignorant
September 6, 2018
Margaret Howard
Hot air as usual.
Please eruditly explain how exactly the EU made us, if you dare…..I need a really good belly laugh today?
September 4, 2018
The Withdrawal Agreement is a bad deal – but it is what you voted for. An entirely predictable mess.
Eventually you will all have to accept that ANY Brexit is worse than what we currently have.
Ironic that after 30+ years of whinging about the EU none of the Eurosceptics can figure out better ways of doing things than the EU does.
Perhaps you should all have done the necessary due diligence before June 2016 so you actually knew what you were voting for?
September 4, 2018
In order of preference:
1) An FTA with the EU (Canada ++ etc)
2) No deal and WTO
3) Stay in the EU
4) Chequers proposal
So that’s two Brexits better than staying in, in my opinion, and only one that’s worse than what we currently have.
September 6, 2018
Dave Andrews
Sorry but “won’t listen Andy” will not understand your logic…..you will need to grossly simplify your answer! WTO usually does the trick!
September 4, 2018
Remember that the deal we have – at the moment out of the Eurozone , but for how long would this be sustainable if we stayed in? – is due entirely to the persistence of Conservative eurosceptic MPs during the Maastricht treaty and subsequently. Had it been left to any of Blair, Heseltine, Kenneth Clarke etc, we’d have been in the euro with a massive bust in the crisis. At the time those eurosceptics had the same kind of derision heaped on them as flows through all your posts. We saw the same thing during the ERM debate. Perhaps in 5 years time when Brexit has proven a great success, a free trading U.K. has re-elected a Conservative Govt etc, you will be one of those many who deny having been such a virulent remainer, just as it’s difficult now to get people to admit that they did support ERM and euro membership.
September 4, 2018
Bit this isn’t what we voted for at all andy.
We voted to leave.
This is, still in.
September 4, 2018
Nonsense – we have been clear all along about what we voted for. The problem is we have a remainer incompetent as PM who deludes herself that she is doing the best for her country. It is worse than awful, and the who le process has been deliberately thwarted. We must have someone who can impement a clear, clean Brexit in line with the referendum vote and not this serial incompetent (delaying ed)capitulator!
Zorro
September 4, 2018
Once again you pretend to know what Leavers voted for. I doubt you know any. I. Tied to leave the EU immediately, so WTO, that requires no withdrawal agreement at all, it is all your Remainer politicians who want it apparently. Anyway, not too late for you to take advantage of freedom of movement etc ed
September 4, 2018
Andy
Deluded there are dozens of better ways of doing things than the EU
I see you haven’t commented on the independent enquiry findings into Selmyr appointment. Makes grim reading for you dictatorship lovers
September 5, 2018
Libertarian,
Using words like dictatorship in this context is most unfortunate and unnecessary
September 5, 2018
He was given his very powerful post without any vote by the MEPs or any vote by any citizen in the whole of Europe.
It has also been found to be against the correct procedures.
Sounds like a dictatorship of the unelected to me.
September 5, 2018
Hans, What do you call an invented political ideology that imposes universal rules concocted entirely by technocrats, but dictatorship?
September 6, 2018
hans
I suggest you take it up with the independent commission then, because that was their findings !!!
It is a dictatorship based on every dictionary definition of the term.
Thanks for your non contribution.
Now have you got anything to say on the report itself which is scathing about the behaviour of the commission?
September 6, 2018
Libertarian
The behaviour is totally wrong but you just do not know how to use your definitions, this is power misrule and bad judgement on top of it.
September 6, 2018
Hans, are you deliberately being obtuse or genuinely ignorant of the proceedings? Which is it?
September 4, 2018
The problem is Remainers in charge trying to stay in the EU, not leaving it. Like a fundamentalist vegan being put in charge of your hog roast.
September 4, 2018
Due diligence.
So you know the mechanisms of the EU and the big players in it. The long term goals.
September 4, 2018
Andy
“The Withdrawal Agreement is a bad deal – but it is what you voted for.”
We did not vote for any agreement or deal, we voted to leave and most of us want nothing to do with Europe. We owe them nothing – they owe us, we don’t want them in our fishing waters, and we’re completely intolerant of any suggestion that our country should ever again come to the defence of Europe, especially France.
And we absolutely will not accept payments to Europe.
Cliff edge, Hard Brexit call it what you like but you do appear to have a unique interpretation of facts, which I would not rule out as being caused by you having some kind of hypercritical association with delirious phenomena.
September 4, 2018
Andy,
You cannot blame the leave voters for the Withdrawal Agreement being a bad deal.
The negotiations are currently in the hands of hardened remainers who will gladly sell out the country in order for it to remain under the control of the EU, even (especially?) if it means we have no representation at the EU.
We may be about to see see a PM and Parliament instigating a coup d’etat by seizing power and totally ignoring the referendum and GE election manifestos.
September 4, 2018
And I daresay, Andy, that YOU thought you were voting for a status quo. At least WE knew we were voting for change. Haven’t you even noticed that your much-admired EU has change a whole lot since mid 2016? I simply cannot believe you are as blinkered as you make yourself out to be.
September 4, 2018
We urgently need to replace the prime minister
September 4, 2018
Wikipedia has a page titled, “Pacta sunt servanda“, which, it explains, is Latin for “agreements must be kept”. The article illustrates this principle with the following statement:
“With reference to international agreements, ‘every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith‘.”
No doubt, the Government would appeal to such a principle in the event that it signs on the dotted line with the EU.
The Government, however, made a pact with the British people that it would “implement what you decide” in the EU referendum. From what appears in this blog post, the proposed Withdrawal Agreement with the EU would constitute a breach of the Government’s referendum pact.
September 4, 2018
The PM and her band of ardent Remainers are out of their mind to go any where near a Withdrawal Agreement or any botched Association agreement. The EU has been spending money for years like it is going out of fashion and they will do anything to get their hands on our £39bn as well as getting us to contribute in the future.
The EU is not far away from collapse (ten years or so) and their aim is to lock us in which won’t prevent the collapse in the long term. It will just be a long drawn out process (20 to 30 years) that will drag us down with it.
We have this one opportunity to get free and as soon as those self-opinionated MPs who think they know better than the electorate and understand the damage they are causing this country in trying to screw up Brexit the better
As has been evident for a long time, EU industry needs us just as much as we need them and possibly more so. Can you see Airbus flying without wings?
The ‘Rule Book’ and the Irish border are no more the No10 smoke screens in an effort to get us to believe that Chequers is the only deal possible. Absolute rubbish.
Any country in the world wanting to sell goods to the EU will follow the appropriate directorates for the product but they don’t have to adopt them for all other markets or be bound by any associated rules that the EU has for its own purpose. The EU states that we must conform to rule book so as to sort out any disputes. Again absolute rubbish as all that happens is that they don’t buy the product.
The so called border problem is a myth as there has been a working border for years long before the South joined the EU and it is still working well today.
The last sentence of Boris’s article in yesterday’s Telegraph is the real truth. We haven’t failed (in the negotiations) we just have not tried.
September 4, 2018
For Gods sake just leave. No deal is by far the best deal. If parliament actually represented the people instead of the elite’s we would have never joined in the first place and would certainly not be attempting to give everything away now. No excuses are acceptable. Any MP or bureaucrat that will not carry out the weill of the people should resign or be kicked out without their massive pension.
September 4, 2018
The EU is a disagreeable entity. We want to be rid of it & wash our hands of its sticky nuisance & stench of stagnant incompetence.
September 4, 2018
JR
Please, kindly present your full alternative as we all know Chequers will not fly
September 4, 2018
Canada plus. Please keep up.
No ,FoM
No ECJ
No annual payments it’s not difficult.
September 4, 2018
Hans. John has been doing just that on this diary for as long as I can remember. You must pay attention.
September 4, 2018
hans
Let me do that for you
1) Fully leave everything, all of it and trade on WTO terms for the transition period
2) Then negotiate a FTA with EU, if not then carry on trading just like everyone else
You’re welcome
September 5, 2018
How do you get a transition period if you “fully leave everything, all of it”. That’s no Withdrawal Agreement I assume you mean?
Thereafter, to get an FTA, you would have to apply via Article 49.
September 5, 2018
Acorn, No transition, just leave.
No Art49 because an RTA is not accession.
September 6, 2018
Sorry, 49 was the wrong number, more later.
September 6, 2018
acorn
Indeed
The EU boast about negotiating FTA’s on behalf of their members, so why would they not try to negotiate one with the Worlds 5th largest economy?
September 6, 2018
Libby, because, when we left the EU, we didn’t pay the 39 billion divorce bill that is part of Art 50.
Any country that depends on trade with the EU, is not going to risk upsetting the EU, by dallying with an ex EU member, that was a pain in the EU arse from day one. They will want some comforting words from the EU; and, won’t move until they get it.
September 5, 2018
Libertarian,
The fall in the value of the pound as part of your so-called solution will cost much more than what we gain on the tariffs and that will mean misery for UK households in terms of falling purchasing power, so no, not a good idea
September 5, 2018
Great boost for UK businesses as people switch to UK produced goods.
And great for exporters too.
September 6, 2018
Only great for UK exporters if they don’t have a large import component in their export products. For instance, it is becoming clearer that the total import component of UK assembled vehicles is close to 74%.
That entrepreneurial UK “down-stream-over-the-fence” SME; that makes the mechanicals for the dashboard heater controls; also imports a lot of the bits to make it.
September 6, 2018
Edward ”
This is only the case if they are competitive in a new market or else it will be import substitution.
September 5, 2018
Hans, You’re guessing. And you’re not very good at it.
September 6, 2018
hans
If you are that certain I would expect you to be a Soros type billionaire by now. You’re not, so just guessing at market reactions is pointless
September 6, 2018
I am not guessing I have made a lot of money on the continued falling pound but thank you for asking so kindly
September 6, 2018
Hans, the biggest Brexit worry for UK Treasury techies, is the volatility of Sterling FX to brexit media comment. As I said previously, M Barnier can shift the Pound faster than the BoE base rate can.
The UK is not self sufficient in food or energy and never will be again. UK imports of basic life support commodities, will require the exchange of Sterling for foreign currencies to pay for such.
The UK will be dependant on the likes of the ECB and the US FED, to support the purchasing power of the Pound Sterling. Let’s hope they think it is worth doing for old times sake; and, keeping their own citizens employed making stuff for the UK citizens to buy.
September 5, 2018
And expect to lose a little economically with 1), maybe equivalent to the natural growth of the UK economy over a few months, and then regain a similar little with 2, and then carry on growing at the trend rate or a little more in the long term until even the eurofederalists have stopped lamenting that we would have been a lot better off if only we had listened to them and stayed in the EU.
September 4, 2018
Uncertainty is what will do more short and long term damage than whether we Leave or Remain in the EU.
Chequers always was a foolish plan and never would have been accepted by the EU in its entirety, let alone the fact that it tied the UK to a strategy that would not enable us to negotiate the best trade deals.
Mr Redwood, it’s up to you and your colleagues to now make sure that even the most ardent Remainer MPs are brought on-side and realise the damage that THEY are doing to this country by prevaricating over this process.
Clearly Chequers is a BAD deal that is much much worse than “No Deal”.
September 4, 2018
I’ve just seen on Sky News a newspaper reviewer claim that we weren’t asked about leaving the single market etc. Did nobody read what the govt of the day said and broadcast, disseminated leaflets…. This was in the context of a second referendum.
I clearly remember knowing what I was voting for; please make it happen!
September 4, 2018
Yet this inept woman still believes in it. Your party is dead if this carried on for six more months. She has to go. Totally discredited.
September 5, 2018
She thinks if she keeps saying the same rubbish often enough we’ll believe inb her. The latest poll in Conservative Home shows a hardening of views against the capitulation of Chequers obeying EU rules!
September 4, 2018
The country is not behind her but she will only realise that when she leaves Downing S t.
September 4, 2018
Leave campaigned on the basis of increased prosperity, no significant trading disadvantage closed borders, avoiding millions of Syrians flooding towards form Turkey , which was about to join, and and easy quick agreement with the EU to a deal where by we got everything we had before and was not a member of the EU.
The claim that remain invented a crisis based on the sheer fear of leaving the EU ( so as to make it appear it was dirty but equal fight) is largely lies .
The Brexit promised cannot be delivered because it does not exist and could never have existed. The “new trade deals” is a rhetorical device and has no reality.
September 5, 2018
Leave campaigned on becoming an independent nation taking back control of its money law making and its borders.
September 5, 2018
The Referendum wasn’t an election.
Mine was a rejection of Remain’s ideas, not an acceptance of Leave’s.
I did not vote for prosperity. I voted to stop my country being stolen from me.
September 5, 2018
Newmania, We specifically did not want “everything we had before”. The Brexit promise was to Leave. As in, not Remain. At. All. Only Remains here are preventing us from achieving the Leave outcome, because the EU cannot prevent us leaving.
I for one specifically said that the EU would not be reasonable, on here, and elsewhere. I was not the only one. Most Leaves felt (yes, I know, against all the evidence) that the the EU would behave in a grown-up way. Instead the EU seeks to punish the UK, dictate the course of the negotiations, and demand money with menaces.
The Treasury and Osborne (who was supported by Cameron) specifically forecast that a vote to leave would “cause an immediate and profound economic shock”, a rise in unemployment, a reduction in foreign investment, an increase in the bank rate, and a recession. So terming it project fear is not a lie.
September 4, 2018
The EU is desperate for cash.
Meanwhile the Tories are going to screw the public and force us to bail out incompetent Eurocrats who demand a bail out for their pensions fiasco.
Mind you, unlike the Tories they do report their pension debts in the accounts.
September 4, 2018
NHSGP
“Desperate for Cash” what a load of nonsense £ 39 billion over a number of years is a drop in the ocean
September 5, 2018
Hans, If it is only a drop in the ocean of cash ladled out to the EU, then your EU masters won’t notice if we don’t pay it.
September 5, 2018
NIckC
I just got new masters, how did that happen?
September 6, 2018
By stealth over the last few decades of the EU
September 4, 2018
The PM’s Chequers proposals have been rejected by Leavers and Remainers alike and has been condemned by the EU itself; yet she still persists with it. What is wrong with the woman?
September 4, 2018
Brexit won’t happen until 29 March 2019, but already now the UK has lost 2% of its output according to UBS Group AG, which works out as about 40bn annually. Is UBS Group AG another messenger to condemn as fake expert or remoaner collaborator?
Reply No evidence to support that. The UK growth rate was good for the first year after the vote, and slowed thanks to a monetary and fiscal squeeze in the second year
September 4, 2018
I believe ItL, France and Germany are technically in recession.
September 5, 2018
@Ian wragg: I could even help you, take this example:
From tradingeconomics data you could conclude that Britain’s GDP growth has recently improved 8% (from 1.2 to 1.3% !) while the Netherlands GDP growth improved only less than 4% (from 2.8 to 2.9%) 🙂
September 5, 2018
Oh, you are a card… 🙂
September 5, 2018
PvL, A report about “what might have been” is just as much guesswork as any forecast. The fact is that we have experienced growth when Remain forecast a recession. So your Remain forecasts are on a rocky foundation already.
September 6, 2018
Ian,
You really have no idea look it up
September 4, 2018
For anybody interested in these doppelgänger thingies, the original paper explaining the methodology (in that respect much more open than anything that has been produced for the Minford model for public consumption) and presenting results is:
Born, Mueller, Schularik, Sedlacek, 2017, The Economic Consequences of the Brexit Vote, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 12454, 28p.
September 4, 2018
Is UBS AG urging Switzerland to join the EU? If not how do they think Switzerland achieves such prosperity – the highest in Europe? Weren’t UBS one of the many financial institutions assuring us that a vote to Leave would mean a recession?
September 4, 2018
PvL
That would be the UBS that has just opened a brand spanking new HQ building in Broadgate would it?
UBS compiled the figures by comparing the U.K.’s current economic data with that of a “doppelganger” made up of the data from other countries . Wow it must be accurate then
Peter
You carry on believing , some of us just operate in the real world
September 5, 2018
@libertarian: I just reported, the “believing” entity here is UBS. So basically you’re suggesting here that UBS, which just opened a new HQ building in London, is not, like you (! 🙂 ), operating in the real world.
Interesting . . .
September 6, 2018
Ian
Libertarian,
If your perception is one you think it is , is the real world then fortunately my successful real world looks different thanks god
September 4, 2018
PVL. It will be in your interest; admittedly, much more in ours; that you keep the faith in the Pound Sterling, post Brexit. The Benelux countries along with the rest of the Euro currency states, – and the other eight non-Euro states in reality- have an interest in keeping the Sterling exchange rate up, so that the UK can afford to keep buying your exports, including Benelux sea port services for UK vehicle exports at least.
This means the ECB (the Euro currency issuer), has to buy Sterling if it drops to far – which is quite likely. The ECB – like every other fiat currency issuing Central Bank-Treasury – has an unlimited capacity to do this.
Remember that the UK’s large trade deficit with the EU, is effectively importing EU, would be, unemployment. As long as the EU 27 are happy getting paid in Pounds Sterling and SAVING in Sterling denominated assets; no problem.
Fortunately, the UK has never been conned into taking out large foreign currency borrowings, or pegging our currency to US Dollars; like Argentina; Venezuela and Zimbabwe. We did try pegging the Pound to the Deutsche Mark for a while; disaster.
Alas, eighteen EU states continue to peg their own currencies to the Deutsche Mark (DM). Euro governments HAVE TO BORROW by issuing Gilts to get some cash DMs to spend. The UK has its own currency, it does NOT HAVE TO BORROW its own currency from anybody. It can, if it wants, and it does, issue Gilts as interest paying savings certificates for Pension Funds and Insurance Funds.
September 7, 2018
@acorn: When there is hope for a Brexit-deal the pound goes up, as we have witnessed the last few days. I expect that (at the very last moment?) some deal will be struck and thus I’m not to worried for the pound’s value.
These 18 countries are the other euro-members? Before the euro, the Netherlands guilder was sort of pegged to the DM (very closely followed the DM) with no say. Now we’re on the ECB board deciding together. We have a balanced budget, a shrinking government debt (56.7%) and still a healthy growth (2.9%). After the Brexit deal (how about “Norway” to give you time to negotiate “Canada+” ?), this 2.9% won’t take too much of a dive (IMF says that no-deal could cost us 1%)
September 7, 2018
Your government budget is actually in surplus, which is why government debt is coming down. The little matter of having a 10% of GDP current Account surplus, makes all that possible.
Netherlands, like Germany has the advantage of Club Med keeping the Euro currency anchored down and your exports flying high. Brexit will give you a hit; but, just tell your government to spend the budget surplus for a while to stabilise the ship.
If the Netherlands were an A Level student, I would grade you A*.
September 4, 2018
Mr. Van Leeuwen,
The Brexit vote wasn’t about the economy.
It was about freedom, sovereignty and deciding who rules our country.
A recent poll of 44,000 people in Tory marginals, commissioned by Global Britain and shared with the Telegraph, found that Brexit was seen as more important than the NHS and the economy – with 45% putting Britain’s exit from the EU ahead of 17% on the health service and 7% who say the economy.
September 5, 2018
@Original Richard:
Maybe that poll shouldn’t surprise us. Compare it to polls of some 5 or 10 years ago, when anything about the EU ranked very low on any priority list. Now the public has been bombarded (in the media) with Brexit as an issue for some 2 ½ years, and even now the country hasn’t come together and is in internal dispute. That frustration would lead to exasperated exclamations of “please let’s get out now and have it over with!!!”
I assume that your “freedom, sovereignty and deciding who rules our country” all three describe a similar feeling of liberation. How that will actually feel in practice still has to be experienced at some stage in the future. I hope it will not be disappointing for you. Interdependence and globalisation will still be there I expect.
September 6, 2018
The only reason that Brexit negotiations have been troublesome is M Barnier’s bloody minded protectionism and intransigence. The central idea of the European Commission – an idea that has been around since the 1940s – is that what is now the EU will unify given common external tariffs. The idea is total crap and always has been.
September 6, 2018
@Lindsay McDougall: Actually, Barnier is solely doing what he is being told by his 27, democratically elected bosses (the European Council in its transparently published guidelines to him).
By now it must be clear that the EU27 are more unified than the UK, which has taken years to come up with a detailed, government approved proposal, the Chequers document, which may have positive proposals in it, but also forgets to respect the EU red lines (like integrity of the Single Market).
The EU DID respect the UK red lines and has stated already in December 2017, that this could lead to a FTA like it has with Canada of South Korea. No lack of clarity.
September 5, 2018
It was actually 500 people in 44 Tory marginal constituencies multiplied by the big red bus factor.
September 4, 2018
Not sure that T May and most of her cabinet understand the word leave. We did not vote to partly leave. The definition per any dictionary is as follows ” depart from, go away from, go from, withdraw from, retire from, take oneself off from, exit from, take one’s leave of, pull out of, quit, be gone from, decamp from, disappear from, abandon, vacate, absent oneself from, evacuate”. Most of us ordinary voters thought that “leave” meant leave. We should have known better.
September 4, 2018
Leave was not on the radar before the referendum. It was a cynical attempt by Cameron & Osborne to silence, once and forever, our host and fellow EU-sceptic travellers. It backfired spectacularly and is why we are bereft of planning for the ‘unthinkable’. May is simply reaping the whirlwind.
September 4, 2018
Iain. Yes, we all thought leave meant leave because that is what Cameron and then May told us. I wonder why we don’t trust politicians>
September 4, 2018
Nearly half of us voted Remain. Mostly the young and wealth providers.
EXIT BREXIT!
September 5, 2018
Nearly half voted for Corbyn, but the fact is in a democracy he lost and is in opposition. Teams lose 1-0 only by one goal, one wins one loses. Are you really that dull?
September 5, 2018
Margaret Howard, More than half of us voted to Leave. Mostly the young, the middle-aged and the elderly, so that we can be independent again.
September 5, 2018
What utter tosh Margaret.
September 5, 2018
margaret howard
Hold on a minute… Remainer sleep telling us that its the rich elite that wanted Brexit , make your mind up
63% of UK businesses ( wealth providers) are in favour of leaving
FYI NEARLY half is LESS than half, thats why you lost, because MORE than half voted to leave
September 5, 2018
Libertarian,
This quote is as reliable as your comments on what comes out of the Treasury.
Hans Christian
September 4, 2018
You Leavers have certainly got the grey hairs…but, unfortunately not the grey matter. You can’t just walk out of a highly complex single market and everything else, after 40+ years of membership, without proper binding agreements. This requires negotiation…and because Brexit has weakened us, we’re negotiating from a position of weakness.
September 5, 2018
Simon Coleman
It always makes me laugh when dim people with no experience call those of us that have “lacking in grey matter”
There is NO single market in services, 80% of our economy is services. Yes we can walk out of a single market in goods. The EU has no agreement with the USA yet an awful lot of Europeans appear to own iPhones, Apple computers and Microsoft tablets etc etc etc
September 5, 2018
Oh libby, a business legend in your own mind.
https://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/services_en
September 6, 2018
no it just works like one market in practice lIbertarian
September 5, 2018
The various WTO treaties are already “proper binding agreements” which have already been negotiated and have already come into force, to which the EU and all of its member states including the UK are already parties.
September 6, 2018
Simon, we can do whatever we damn well like. It’s called sovereignty. And it’s clear that the various forms of No Deal are ALL better than the Chequers proposals.
September 4, 2018
It seems then that no-one bar the present Cabinet wants the Chequers Betrayal, not voters, not the Evil Empire itself. There is something touching about Mrs. May’s belief that there is no alternative. When will she be gone?
September 4, 2018
Mrs May and the government are not too concerned about how it plays out because if she gets a reasonable deal then that might be ok..if she does not get a deal then that will be ok too.. it will be just as the people voted for. We are not going to get an equal partnership deal with them or anything like it as a lot of well intentioned brexiteers are beginning to see so we can forget about it- they don’t see us as equal partners for anything like it- or comprehensive as JR calls it. Even Canada Plus will not be acceptable to them it seems and if we don’t settle the withdrawal agreement before we leave then it will only have to be settled at a later stage..in a few years time or whenever we get back to talking again.
Next year is going to be busy for them with the EU Parliament elections coming up and also there are a lot of other EU actors being changed out- Junker maybe Verhofstadt etc. If we don’t square things off before Christmas then I’m thinking it will be to WTO rules. WTO rules on the face of it are ok but do not take into account JIT and with most of our goods by then entering and leaving through Felixstowe and other container ports like Southampton because of routing through Rotterdam and Antwerp for EU Customs inspection there is bound to be disruption on some fronts- but that is what we voted for
September 4, 2018
NO, NO, NO. When oh when will TM stop this time wasting and JUST LEAVE the EU?
September 4, 2018
May must go.
September 4, 2018
The UK must NOT be allowed to be a beacon for national sovereignty when the agenda is further political globalization. Therefore I do hope you realize you have fail (and be seen to have failed), but… you will be free.
September 4, 2018
Chuck Chequers and Chuck the December Joint Report.
Interesting how Boris has managed to unite so many different sorts of people behind his Chuck Chequers movement. He seems to have a knack for that. Yet the MSM tell us he is toxic and divisive. They must be alarmed.
September 4, 2018
rose
If Boris could get in front of the electorate he would win by a country mile
Sadly The Tory party have engineered their leadership elections to steer clear of actual members , voters or the public
September 4, 2018
rose,
Too bad Boris does not have a knack for being minister like foreign secretary where he was embarrassing to say the least
September 5, 2018
Hans, Too bad that Boris was an excellent foreign secretary, because now you have to make up embarrassing fake news about him to say the least.
September 5, 2018
NickC
If he was an excellent foreign minister then Mrs. May is doing an even better job than I imagined
September 5, 2018
He was such a good Foreign Secretary that people who aren’t fans said he was. People who should know: Davis and Duncan. The coalition of countries he got up in record time against the Russian poisoning was unprecedented. It didn’t happen with the two previous poisonings.
September 6, 2018
rose
Let us just mention Ratcliffe, Kiplin poems in Burma and talking about President Holland as a WW1 whatever. One gaffle after the other. No,not very good
September 4, 2018
I read here this morning:
http://www.eureferendum.com/Default.aspx
“Nor even is Efta/EEA an option. Those who have taken the trouble to explore what is needed to deliver on that will know that it is neither a swift nor easy option. To deal with the formalities would take a far longer time than we have left.”
And that is assuming that the UK would even want to take that route – and probably get stuck in it forever with unfettered freedom of movement of persons and swathes of our laws still controlled by the EU and ultimately under the jurisdiction of the ECJ and with continuing vast and increasing monetary contributions to European solidarity – and that the EU and all its other member states would even consent to it, and that all four of the EFTA member states would also be prepared to go along with it knowing that some in the UK were proposing to treat EFTA as no more than a temporary convenience.
September 4, 2018
If we had just agreed 2 years in EFTA followed by the Canada deal it could have been resolved before lunch on the first day with zero uncertainty.
If there is another general election I’d say for conservatives to have a hope of winning they will have to abolish tuition fees – as Germany did last year. This single issue scuppered Gordon Brown and boosted the chances of previous no-hopers Nick Clegg and Jeremy Corbyn.
September 4, 2018
How to get TM out of her self made hole and stop digging…
Get rid of Ollie Robbins and get her to make another of her public speech’s without the bullshit and rhetoric of Lancaster House. She can get Brexit back on track and possibly keep her job going into next year. There is still enough time for her to appoint another PRO BREXIT civil servant to replace him and focus on a preferred EU Canada+++ deal!! Even the EU prefer this option for Christ’s sake!!!!!!
September 4, 2018
Dear Mr. Redwood,
The Prime Minister says “she is in it for the long haul !”
The Governor of the Bank of England hints he could well stay on “to smooth Brexit” and says he has told the government of his “willingness to do what I can to support the process !!”.
When their tenures come to an end at least Mrs. May and Mr. Carney should be able to continue their careers – as comedians.
September 4, 2018
Who can disagree with this: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/09/04/eu-says-theresa-mays-brexit-deal-dead-urges-adopt-canada-style/ ?
Maybe Theresa was smart enough to know in advance that this would be the result and planned for it, who knows? The important thing is to move forward now. Canada++ or no deal.
September 4, 2018
I have some experience of EU Directives and Regulations, and the philosophy of the Single Market. In its own way, it’s an impressive edifice of post WW2 and post Cold War political reconstruction. Its no wonder to me the EU cannot compromise.
I believe Mrs May has done her best within the restrictive brief she adopted – but as we are now seeing, it was mission impossible (as it also proved with Cameron). Any other approach was, and remains, unthinkable to the many who concede Brexit in principle, but cannot accept its reality in practice. Of course, the reality is indeed challenging – but I am glad that’s what 17.4m British people boldly opted for, confounding the pundits one again.
But now, is it too much to ask that we can say ‘No, Prime Minister’, without the unseemly personal attacks, that do not do our already divided and troubled country any good?
September 4, 2018
It’s worth watching this 5 minute extract from this morning’s proceedings of the Exiting the EU Committee during which Tory MP Craig Mackinlay calls into question the validity of Treasury economic forecasts for various Brexit scenarios, and the DexEU Permanent Secretary Philip Rycroft replies that it is only economic modelling and while the analyses are of excellent quality and getting even better – they are still a “work in progress”, as Theresa May also put it – they have never been intended as predictions or forecasts.
Well, you could certainly have fooled me on that, as they always seemed to be presented as predictions or forecasts not only by the media but by politicians, and of course as far as some people are concerned conclusions such as “Going to WTO terms of trade would lose us 8% of GDP over the next fifteen years” can be regarded as certainties.
I suppose we must now ask what is meant by “estimated” and “expected”; if an analysis does not produce any “prediction” or “forecast” what does this sentence mean?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/735881/180823_CX_to_Chair_of_TSC_Nicky_Morgan_.pdf
“This January provisional analysis estimated that in a no deal/WTO scenario GDP would be 7.7% lower (range 5.0%-10.3%) relative to a status quo baseline. This represents the
potential expected static state around 15 years out from the exit point.”
September 4, 2018
The extract is here:
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/5c0e416f-ec9f-4ae1-8766-40086626929a?in=11:37:03&out=11:42:00
September 4, 2018
Yes, John. Almost everyone posting here believes that everything you have been saying for the last two years is absolutely correct.
BUT
Remainers are in charge of the levers of power in Government and the relevant Select Committees and a majority in both houses wants nothing to do with Brexit. There is no possibility of May achieving a majority in the current House of Commons for any kind of deal that leaves us as a properly independent Nation State.
May is weak and ineffective and does not have the strength of character or the desire to deliver Brexit along the lines of her Lancaster House speech. It’s why she has given up trying.
You and your colleagues, including my own MP, Chris Chope, might be able to vote down the cobbled together, bastardised deal that May will sign up for, as long as Labour joins you in voting against it, but will we then be able to win the resulting General election with a new leader on a manifesto whose principle policy will be to Leave on WTO Terms ?
May has completely and utterly failed to negotiate properly from day one when for some inexplicable reason she insisted David Davis signed up for Barnier’s phased negotiation proposal.
The disaster that has followed stems from that first catastrophic error, the effect of which has been compounded by giving in over the money Brussels so desperately needs to buy off trouble with their next budget round.
In short the worst PM in modern times, yes, even worse than Gordon Brown, has got Brexit and your party into a cataclysmic mess from which there appears to be no satisfactory outcome.
In my view, she will be wasting the next crucial months “negotiating” because the 27 will never agree to any deal that will leave us as the properly independent nation we voted for.
So, it’s now make or break time in the last chance saloon.
You and your colleagues would be best advised to send in your letter to the Chairman of the 1922 now and get May out at the earliest opportunity. You might not succeed in getting a proper Brexiteer as Prime Minister and even if you do, he or she might not be able to get WTO through parliament.
But at least you will either have done everything humanly possible and achieved a satisfactory outcome or crashed and burnt in the attempt.
Carrying on as you are is not an option.
September 4, 2018
Her Majesty said some years ago something along the lines that there are dark forces at work in the country that we are barely aware of.
I would suggest that we can see this now in the behaviours and activities of the Prome Minister and her close cabal.
September 4, 2018
In answer to a question from the Tory MP Jeremy Lefroy in the Commons this afternoon Dominic Raab confirmed that no deal would be the worst outcome, so the EU now knows that we will accept any deal as being better than no deal.
September 5, 2018
That exchange was at Column 68 here:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-09-04/debates/3F1F8363-0A4B-4DB6-B8C0-CC8D64DBF150/BrexitNegotiationsAndNoDealContingencyPlanning
“I agree with his basic point that no deal would represent the worst-case scenario and the worst outcome from the negotiations.”
Madness.
September 4, 2018
I can add little to what JR has said. Except to say, as do others here, that May’s treachery – like that of those MPs who voted and even spoke for Article 50 with their fingers crossed behind their backs, and the firm intention to countermand our leaving the EU – will never be forgiven.
September 4, 2018
We make the great mistake..it is not up to the EU to make offers for the UK..the EU side can hardly know what the UK wants when the UK itself hasn’t a clue. The EU is standing still..it is up to the UK to make the correct moves to resolve this..that is if we want to resolve it..some think we voted to leave and that is what we should just do..without agreement..i’m inclined to think that this would be to WTO rules and very probably set us back a good bit.
We are not going to get a future comprehensive agreement either..what brexiteers mean by this, I presume, is some kind of equal partnership so as to cherrypick the best parts and ignore the rest..some think we can make it up as we go along but we have been told loud and clear that this is not going to be acceptable.. the way things are now it looks like Canada plus will not be acceptable either becausr of the Irish border problem.
They have their four freedoms, we have our red lines so realistically there can be no meeting of minds on any of this and am afraid we are heading for a quick exit..29 March..but not the end of the world
September 4, 2018
It’s quite interesting to hypothisise how this will all pan out.
May insists her Chequers plan is best for both EU and UK, but EU condemn it as do most who voted leave.
May and the EU want the UK to sell out our souls, we will not allow that to happen.
In short, May wants to make further capitulations, but dare not. Consequently there exists a stasis in government, with leave and remain polarised.
May has well and truly screwed this government and every MP knows it.
Perhaps, and hopefully so, leave and remain will stay deadlocked and we’ll just drift into no deal exit from the EU. That would be the best scenario because it would be shown that it is possible to leave the EU and do rather well without it. Other countries would then also find the courage to leave, and the franco german walloon empire will fragment very fast.
I think this could certainly propagate civil uprising, potentially the likes of which this country has not seen for hundreds of years. Particularly if the government tries to quell objection with EU laws dressed as UK laws.
It’s the only situation I can see developing. The government dare not offer the EU any further capitulations, so the choice is hard brexit or mass civil unrest.
September 4, 2018
Parliament today. Less than half-full after the first day back at work.
JR was there!!!!!!!
Maybe he had to dash around a bit to make it look like Labour bench persons had come to labour.
Install a L.Party clocking-in machine checked by their Chief of Economics Abacus Comrade.
Shock and Awe! Remoaners condemned no Customs Union, etc etc etc . Nearly three years of sterile repetition of voted and passed, issues by all parties.
The House must stop this phonograph cylinder scratchy-bump parroting.
Repetition, became Cliche then and always Potboiler then will it be a Seven-Year Political Itch? Should it go into The Parliament Book of Records until the nation passes out with boredom?
We voted Leave.Enough!
September 4, 2018
Trump is our friend. Bigly. Believe me! I do know, somehow 🙂
September 4, 2018
Nothing has been agreed in 33 months because May signed up to your interpretation of the Referendum result…and ruled out EEA, Customs Union, a new customs union, freedom of movement. In fact everything. So she had no room for manoeuvre…and then discovered that No Deal would be a disaster. So what’s your alternative – I mean a proposal that could command majority support in the Commons? The only option you’ve come up with is No Deal which won’t be accepted by MPs. That is the real betrayal – you’ve offered nothing while doing all you can to destabilize the government. Yet you claim that people voted for No Deal. Prove it. I’ve told you before – a Conservative government is the only vehicle that can deliver Brexit…and you’ve semi-wrecked it before negotiations have entered the critical phase.
September 5, 2018
I’m amused by the idea of Theresa May suddenly, belatedly, realising that no deal would be a disaster … I don’t know how old you are but for a good two decades we’ve been hearing from a variety of its advocates how economically beneficial it is to be in the EU and how disastrous it would be to leave.
September 4, 2018
I have been considering the future of politics. We need to replace politicians with a computer. Obviously talented people like JR will add input into this computer. But computers do not deceive, do not lie and do not need to virtue signal. Instead we can just get rational decisions based on the best available parameters. We need to push this agenda on a global level.
Perhaps we could all vote for two computers. A Left wing computer program or a right wing one.
September 5, 2018
Back in the 19th century, Mikhail Bakunin,the Russian anarchist theorist,predicted that “when all the other classes have exhausted themselves,the state becomes the patrimony of the bureaucratic class and then falls-or,if you will rises-to the position of a machine.”(Statism & Anarchy 1873)
We are almost there.
September 4, 2018
It is now absolutely clear that what is popularly known as No Deal is now immeasurably better than the Chequers proposals. It could start off using WTO tariffs and move step by step to a Canada plus plus plus deal. The key step is to tell the EC that they will get NONE of the negotiated exit fee unless we are treated nicely – e.g. NO non-tariff barriers etc. And cancel the transition period and all backstop agreements.
Do you not feel, Mr Redwood, that you should be making a major speech in the House of Commons arguing precisely that? You may get into trouble with the Whips Office but so what? I do hope that you are not under any illusion that the Conservative Party is re-electable if a Chequers based deal goes through and Mrs May stays. So why stay loyal?
Reply I have made quite clear my support for leaving without signing the Withdrawal Agreement and will do so again if there is a suitable debate opportunity
September 5, 2018
“There is no chance of the government securing a legally binding agreement that implements all the proposals in the Chequers paper. ”
Andrea Leadsom and Michael Gove expressed on TV directly after the Chequers Draft that,and I paraphrase without losing accuracy, “that every single point must be agreed in full by the EU”
Now, what action will they take?
September 5, 2018
I find reluctantly I’m in agreement with one or two pointed remarks against Mr Raab’s speech in the House today. Generally, that no real progress has been made in negotiations.
No matter which Minister it starts, seeming every two months, with
” We have made great progress in agreeing that EU migrants living in the UK will have a right to stay here”…followed by five minutes of repeating the fact in different ways , and any Minister then searches his notes for something…..anything….to bulk out the rest of his “progress”.
“Concluding, well, I’ll go over next week and wait until Mr Barnier wishes to see me as I sit on one of a row of wooden school chairs outside his room. Hopefully he will return from a hunting trip in ten South American countries where he is also making EU courtesy calls to inspect their new tree-leaf compressing machines which comprise twenty of their people clapping hands in unison in a village compost heap.
September 5, 2018
My “Once Upon a Time” is an old literary device to tell the reader that everything following is a fairytale. Oh I wish!!!!!
Well in fact I am back here thank God! Interesting experience. I would not walk again into Hell. I didn’t know it was Hell before I entered and lived about a bit. Hell can look pretty from the outside. It did for me, then
I’ve never fought as a soldier in battle. So I should not feel sorry for myself even though it has felt like I did day in day out. Well its over. Soldiers I have learned, who live through and past their battles must have the mental strength of giants even afterwards or I am very small indeed.
September 5, 2018
Hi John,
A couple of points. Firstly, it is not just £39 – £44 billion. There is also approx £20 billion of transition fees and approx £6 billion of Customs Duties or Tariffs making a total of £65 – £ 70 billion we will pay to E.U. for Brexit!
Secondly, There is an error in the Chequers Document regarding the requirements for the UK/Ireland Border. The Chequers document says that the Good Friday Agreement requires that travel between the UK and Rep of Ireland must be possible without showing a Passport. This absolutely wrong!!! The Good Friday Agreement requires the honouring of the Common Travel Area Treaty. The CTA requires that citizens of the UK and Rep of Ireland be able to travel freely between areas in the CTA without need for a visa.
If you fly from a UK airport to the Rep of Ireland, the Irish authorities require a passport. This is the only proof that you are a UK citizen. If you fly from Dublin to Heathrow, the UK authorities ( i.e. Border force ) do not do a passport check. This is fine because the UK is usuing less strict rules than the CTA treaty requires. This is also true of the land border crossing between Northern Ireland and the Republic, where neither side check passports.
None of this says anything about Goods crossing the border which the CTA says nothing. So the issue of a hard or soft border for goods is non-existent with respect to the Good Friday Agreement.
/ikh
September 5, 2018
I am curious as to why my comment yesterday posted around 0730 is still awaiting moderation? Is it something I have written or has it just slipped off the ‘to-do-list?