I am against us signing up to the draft Withdrawal Agreement. It is all take and no give from the EU. We do not owe them money after we have left. Why offer them £39bn for nothing?
Some in the government say they will only recommend signing the Withdrawal Agreement if there is at the same time a Future Partnership Agreement. Others in government accept under questioning that there will be no such Agreement drafted and ready to sign at the same time. The best they expect is some kind of Heads of Terms, or more likely an agreement to talk about such an Agreement. So why would anyone conducting sensible negotiations sign the Withdrawal Agreement without seeing a completed Future Partnership Agreement, or at the very least enforceable Heads of Terms which secure sufficient to justify the Withdrawal Agreement?
I do not see what in the proposed Partnership Agreement justifies the idea that we should pay them £39bn anyway. The essence of the Partnership Agreement is likely to be a Free Trade Agreement. That is in their interests more than ours given the imbalance of trade under the current tariff free model. No country pays another for a Free Trade Agreement. Canada did not pay the EU to sign its pretty full FTA with them.
The proposed Partnership from the UK side also ranges widely over Intelligence and Security, where we contribute more than the EU does, and over criminal justice co-operation where countries do not pay each other to enter into extradition agreements.
The debate about so called Deal or No Deal is a mis description on both sides. Deal as envisaged by the EU is not a deal. It is an insistence that the UK signs up to a penal Withdrawal Agreement, to be followed by 21 months more business uncertainty as the two sides haggle more about future trading arrangements. No deal is not no deal. It will be a series of decisions to carry on trading and working across the Channel using the World Trade Organisation, the Chicago Convention on aviation and other international agreements and bodies to ensure smooth passage under an internationally approved system of governance.
August 24, 2018
When we voted to leave, we meant leave there and then.
We did not vote in favour of any future relationship with the EU.
August 24, 2018
Steve, quite right and Cameron told us we would start the process the very next day. Huh! More like a lifetime away.
August 24, 2018
No withdrawal agreement. It is another fleecing by the EU. What is wrong with the Uk idiots? Scrap it. It is a trap to keep thebUKmin thebEU by another name to fool the public.
It is not needed nor warranted. It was. Stupid May idea in the hope to delay in changing our minds to stay. We voted leave. Marchb2019! Full stop. No punishment extension required. It creates uncertainty for everyone including the 6 percent of business who trade with the EU. The other 94 percent of business is ready waiting and able to get on and strike out in the world. Other countries waiting as well.
No more competitive of this nonsense. May delivers or goes it is as straight forward as that.
Sack Hammond he has gone rogue with EU stupidity.
August 24, 2018
Yeah – and that would be why Brexiteers are in such trouble today. It is simply not possible to not to have a relationship with the EU.
They live next door. They are the world’s biggest economic power. Millions of them live here and a million of us live there. Millions more have partners, friends, children, parents from each other’s countries. Millions travel from here to the EU and vice versa, we trade with each, we study together – it is a proper partnership.
And here are you, in all seriousness, suggesting we voted in favour of no relationship with the EU. How very dim.
It’s like you suggesting that, on getting divorced after 40+ years of marriage, you want no future relationship with your ex-wife (with whom you have 26 children and a dog). Your position is not possible. It is not credible.
Have a rethink, grow up, and get back to us when you have a better idea.
August 24, 2018
Can we have the same relationship nations like Canada USA India or China have with the EU.
August 24, 2018
According to wise men like Hammond, Starmer and the entire BBC paying 39 billionseuros or pounds or whatever for the Worst Possible Deal on the History of the Universe would be better than no deal.
August 24, 2018
Anything other than ‘No Deal’ is unacceptable.
We are being sold down the river.
August 24, 2018
Gary C
Indeed the intention is to sell us out. But the bizarre thing is they actually believe they’ll get away scot free when they do it. They need to think again, people are not going to be very happy.
They’re terrified of a no deal scenario, mainly because they fear other countries will gain confidence from our courage and success, causing the union to fragment.
Ours is not the only country wanting to regain sovereignty and freedom from foreign rule, and the EU knows it. The cracks are there.
August 24, 2018
Can someone kindly elaborate on what this mythical ‘deal’ would actually cover? If the Remoaners want a trade element (or for it to be all about trade) they will be sorely disappointed. The EU negotiating team will not discuss trade until we are no longer a member of the EU. Our exit will be to WTO by default. At least, that’s how I read it.
August 24, 2018
The UK has no legal or moral obligation to pay the EU anything.
The UK-EU goods trade deficit is currently £97Bn pa http://facts4eu.org/news_aug_b_2018.shtml#bot , so why would the UK wish to pay to trade? And
I thought that paying to trade is illegal under WTO rules?
Mrs May & her Cabinet are no doubt well aware that Heads of Terms / an agreement to talk about such an Agreement is a legal nothing.
So this ‘negotiation’ is an elaborate Con. For whose benefit? It is likely to do great harm to UK tax payers & UK SMEs. http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/08/04/beware-the-draft-withdrawal-agreement/#comment-952481 & http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/08/10/the-government-should-not-sign-the-draft-withdrawal-agreement-with-the-eu/
August 24, 2018
Well yes but unfortunately the PM, the cabinet and the majority of your colleagues in the HOC do feel this deal should be and needs to be signed.
In fact so desperate are they to sign it they are willing to place the UK at a permanent competitive disadvantage. Undermine the foundations of democracy and by the way put the Conservative Party at existential risk by doing so.
It raises some uncomfortable questions about why and for whom this country is governed.
August 24, 2018
Exactly!
Tad
August 24, 2018
Spot on. May/Hammond are representing their Masters in Brussels so must go! An election must be called to get representative democracy and remainers kicked out for good.
August 24, 2018
You have to hand it to the EU – they have played a blinder with May/Davis etc. They are now within sight of getting £39bn which legal opinion says they aren’t owed, and a 21 month period in which there will be full access to the UK market for EU exporters, complete control as now over the UK’s regulatory set-up, and with the added advantage that they don’t have to put up with the UK’s resistance to further EU harmonisation and integration! All they will have to ‘give’ to secure this is a vague commitment to talks on a future relationship. Using Lord Hague’s argument, Conservative MPs knew and chose Mrs May, with only alternative being the obviously inadequate Mrs Leadsom. I think you now need to choose between having a real crack at an FTA with the EU – which means ditching Mrs May – or putting up with BRINO, including the leaving present, and seeing whether it can be sorted out afterwards, as favoured by Michael Gove.
August 24, 2018
Nothing to with legal opinion- it’s all about politics
August 24, 2018
I am not so sure I would give the EU so much credit. As most who have followed this process closely will have discerned, there has been a connivance between the EU and those in power in the UK to ensure such an outcome. I am still convinced that the object here is to produce an agreement that is so poor for the UK that its inhabitants eventually decide to reverse the decision; either that or until such time that the demographics change opinion in favour of rejoining.
August 24, 2018
Got it in one. If there was the political will to leave we would be out already. with or without an FTA.
August 24, 2018
Mrs Leadsom may well have been ‘inadequate’ but I doubt that we would have been in such a self imposed paralysis,as we seem to be now. The present incumbent makes Mr G.Brown seen almost competent in comparison!
August 24, 2018
I agree. I used to despise Blair then Brown and Cameron in sequence for their lies and deceit. However, topping the list of liars and a traitor to boot is, Mrs May, who will go down in history as having sold out her Country to a foreign power. Her Chequers plan has been torn to shreds by Lawyers for Britain and Mr Rees Mogg in his letter to every Conservative Chair in the Country. Well done Tory MPs and the Conservative Party. Never to be trusted again near the centre of power. A few Brexiteers is not enough to unseal the Party’s fate.
August 24, 2018
No bad for a few overpaid bureaucrats from Brussels, hey ?
I remember fondly when Boris Johnson promised that him and the Foreign Office would run circles around the Commission and negotiate directly with the member states…. those were the days.
August 24, 2018
He probably would have done a better job than May.
August 25, 2018
He is too much of a coward to take any responsibility for the mess he helped create.
He chose to snipe from the sidelines so he will always be able to argue that “had Brexit been properly implemented, it would have worked”.
August 25, 2018
Maybe he is right if he says that in the future.
August 24, 2018
Or not bothering? And accepting that, despite its flaws, EU membership is clearly significantly better for Britain than any of the car crash alternatives the swivel eyed Brexit zealots have even come close to coming up with.
To misquote Lincoln, it is possible to fool 27% of the people (17.4m) some of the time.
August 24, 2018
Andy, its simple, the British people want their democracy restored:
“that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” (Gettysburg Address).
In future, I want to vote once again for my constituency MP knowing that he or she has the power and bears full responsibility for carrying out the wishes of the people of this country. The present arrangement where rules are agreed behind closed doors by the Commission, converted in to a legal format by civil servants and then rammed through our own Parliament as statutory instruments with minimal scrutiny has to stop.
August 24, 2018
Therefore it is just as possible to fool the 25% who voted to stay in the EU
August 24, 2018
The ones you classify as swivel eyed are the ones with a sensible and coherent vision – friendly relations with the EU and it’s member countries and a comprehensive FTA. What’s wrong with that? Mrs May’s BRINO by contrast would I agree be inferior to remaining a full member.
August 24, 2018
The Withdrawal Agreement is a surrender treaty intended to punish us for leaving the EU.
It is modelled on the Treaty of Versailles so we are basically ruled by the conquering party.
Signing up is a treacherous deed and you will be punished.
August 24, 2018
Good morning
I have mentioned this before, but did any of our former colonies sign us up to any post agreements ? And did we demand that they pay us for all the infrastructure we built ? No we did not.
I am reminded what happened to the Dominican Republic when it wanted independence from France. France blockaded them and demanded that they pay them reparations. Now look at the EU. They are demanding that we pay them for their losses as a result of a decision they knew may well be made by a member. Otherwise why put in a withdrawal article (Art. 50) ?
There is no so called ‘deal’. Nothing is mentioned in any of the Treaties on such. All there is is a requirement for the leaving member to agree a future relationship. This is simple. We voted to leave and make ourselves a Third Country like all the rest. What we needed was a path by which this could be achieved. This so monumentally simple only a complete moron or a Remainer, some would say that are the same thing, would contemplate trying to negotiate.
All the UK Government has been doing for the last two years or so, is to negotiate how best to negate the Referendum result without looking like they have. And as always they are making a dog’s breakfast of it.
August 24, 2018
Mark, spot on!
August 24, 2018
Good Morning,
Dr. Redwood, we know the situation, it is a very bad concoction created by the May government (for why we do not know) and some form of it is likely all we’ll get UNLESS like minded Tory MP’s take action. So the question is, what are you going to do about it?
No use complaining and just wringing your hands!
Reply I am not wringing my hands. I am explaining why Chequers is bad for us, and telling the government I and like minded MPs will not vote for it.
August 24, 2018
MPs should make clear that the £39bn will be paid if and only if there is a comprehensive FTA on the table for the period from January 21. Mrs Mays proposal for complete vassal statehood for 21 months from March 19 and then partial vassal statehood thereafter is worse than remaining in the EU. It is becoming clear that under the Chequers proposal the U.K. would not be able to run an independent trade policy, which is the main potential economic upside of Brexit.
August 24, 2018
We surely shouldn’t be paying any foreign entity to trade with us. Isn’t that bribery?
August 24, 2018
Especially when we have a £96 billion annual trade deficit which is why Hammond looks like a complete fool, as if the Europeans want to stop trading with us, duh!
August 24, 2018
Thank you for demonstrating so clearly why Membership was a better outcome than EFTA, Max fac, Chequers or No deal… etc. 27 other countries have actually decided to stick with it.
Isn’t it funny to see the UK spend hundreds of millions of pounds on developing a “frictionless” electronic border which will in any case do a poorer job than the current system of no checks ?
It was unexpected coming from you.
Reply We are leaving to take back control of our laws, our money and our borders. We are restoring our democracy. Why cant you understand that?
August 24, 2018
”Isn’t it funny….” At typical gleeful remainer comment. Wouldn’t it be funny to see the UK struggle in some way? Wouldn’t it be funny if Project Fear came to pass and we all suffered?
Isn’t it funny to see remainders doomed to disappointment?
August 24, 2018
Of the 27 ‘who have decided to stick with it’ most are freeloaders, so they would obviously not want to stop their gravy train. When we have left and stop paying, I doubt the Germans and the French will offer to make up the difference so the rest will just have to get by with less. Maybe, the German people will start wondering what is in it for them, paying out for all the poorer countries who I doubt buy Mercedes and BMW’s in great numbers.
August 24, 2018
Canada doesn’t have commitments to thousands of EU contractors until end 2020.
As anybody knows, the 39bn is unrelated to a future UK-EU relationship. In the grand scheme of budgets and GDPs it constitutes mere chicken feed, but it will likely haunt the UK for decades if it doesn’t pay for what is required for an orderly withdrawal from the EU. In a way it is not unlike Greece when it tried to be smart by cooking the books and making itself unreliable to the world.
August 24, 2018
You had the choice to accede to our earlier requirements for relatively minor changes which Cameron attempted. That and letting a million refugees through your leaky borders is where you cooked your goose.
August 24, 2018
@Sir Joe Soap: The goose comparison suggests that I regret the UK leaving, but that is not the case and has not been the case. It has been clear to me for years that the current UK doesn’t really fit inside the EU.
August 25, 2018
Too true, even Charles de Gaulle told us that, but we apparently though we were only joining a “Common Market” not the United Regions of Europe…
August 24, 2018
Either the money is owed or it is not under the treaties. If there is a sensible FTA on the table, UK taxpayers won’t mind a £39bn bung, after all it saves £12bn pa (and rising) in perpetuity. If there is not such an FTA then it’s a legal question as to whether it’s due. The U.K. govt’s clear advice is it isn’t. If the EU pursues such a demand, an international court will have to decide. (In the event it does go to court I hope the U.K. Govt will contemplate a counter-claim for repayment of misappropriated U.K. taxpayers’ money by the EU over recent years and even decades!)
August 24, 2018
@Richard1: You seem to forget that you’re part and parcel of that EU which uses (a little) UK taxpayers money. All your ministers have been involved over decades and yes indeed, that is all in the treaties.
Whether the 39bn is legally enforcable isn’t what will determine if the UK will be ssen as a reliable partner by the international community.
August 24, 2018
Quiite the opposite Peter.
It is entirely a question of what the EU can prove the UK owes legally under its treaty obligations.
I’m sure the UK will honour their legal obligation.
August 24, 2018
Utter nonsense. We have been nett contrtibutors for the last 40years and don’t owe a penny.
We are leaving and that’s that.
I see Brussels is floating the idea of expending Article 50 for an unspecicied time as long as we have another referendum. Typical EU playbook stuff.
August 24, 2018
@Ian wragg: you don’t always make the impression of quite comprehending what the EU is and how it operates.
August 25, 2018
We all know very well how it operates. That is why we are leaving.
August 24, 2018
Utter rubbish, the auK does not benefit one not from these ventures. Nothing stops the EU to get it other members stumping up the costs for which they will benefit. It does not wash. There are no commitments from the UK to the EU.
As you describe it a chicken feed there is bo need of a big issue if the EU wishes to continue to have a trade surplus with such a big customer. It would not wish to lose our custom, other countries would be grateful for the business!
We want our assets back or cash in lieu as well.
August 24, 2018
@Hope: You sound as competent as your current ministers! There is still hope indeed!
August 24, 2018
PvL, I would prefer that the £39 Billion feeds British chickens…
And on the chicken subject, hopefully Mrs May’s chickens will come home to roost in October 🙂
Greece made itself unreliable to the world, but I’m sure that the world will see the EU as the unreliable partner in this case.
August 24, 2018
@Know-Dice: We will know within a few years. The EU already has multiple trade deals with other (groups of ) countries, the UK still has to try and get some for itself.
August 25, 2018
You haven’t read the Treaty of Lisbon, evidently.
August 25, 2018
Mancunius
Peter, is actually right on this one and yes I have read it
August 25, 2018
Hans
Peter, is actually wrong on this one and yes I have read it.
August 26, 2018
Might be worth reading up on how the EU define a “Trade Deal” 🙁
Third article here – http://facts4eu.org/news.shtml
August 24, 2018
Chickenfeed? “Some chicken….some neck”….as “someone” once said
Or as a US Senator put it….”a billion here, a billion there…pretty soon you’re talking serious money”. The payment won’t be the last Danegeld the UK pays.
August 24, 2018
@mickc: With your national debt not too far from the 2000bn pounds, I do expect that sooner or later there will be some danegeld or other taxes to be paid by you.
August 24, 2018
Van Leeuwen
It took the UK 60 years to pay the US for their assistance during WWII. How much did your country, presumably Holland, pay the UK ?
Oh wait a moment, we liberated Europe from tyranny, naturally we wouldn’t charge any European country a penny for this.
Had we not done so, there can be no doubt Europe would be subservient to Moscow, or the nazis.
Yet you talk about us owing Europe? what for? We don’t owe Europe a damn thing, it owes us, seeing as you wish to talk along those lines.
Attitudes like yours just make us reflect that perhaps we should have not got involved in Europe’s liberation.
August 24, 2018
@Steve: Although the UK were a minor part in the allied forces (in your logic I should be paying the Russians much more) it are always the British who keep bringing up and inflating their role. I’ve never heard Canadians, Russians or Americans asking me to thank them for turning the table in WWII.
August 24, 2018
The Brits liberated no one. That was the Russians and the Americans
August 25, 2018
Steve,
Did you really think before you wrote this nonsense?
August 25, 2018
Or to look at it another way, if the Russians had not stood back and let Germany get a foothold in most of the western European countries, then there would have been no reason for the USA to join in and no reason for the millions of deaths of Russians and Jews.
August 24, 2018
How can you work out how much the UK owes? The UK has made commitments during its membership which it is bound to honour, but there again the UK has also made investments. Are the investments forfeit whilst the commitments remain?
The £39bn talked about is just a nominal figure. Working out what the UK actually owes is a nonsense idea, because it is always going to be arbitrary and debatable.
Let’s call it quits is just as valid a conclusion, and in fact what a responsible government should deliver to the UK taxpayer.
It might even be argued the EU owes us, but then I would have to concede that as being forfeit because of our decision to leave.
August 24, 2018
@Dave Andrews: There have been extensive talks between the teams on the base of detailed lists provided by the EU side and all the counter arguments you raise were also part of these discussions, which were concluded on 39bn as a mutually agreed figure last december.
Suggesting now that the 39bn would not be paid is not much more than pandering to some hardline brexiteers within the Tory party.
August 25, 2018
Nope – it has been discussed but it hasn’t been agreed. It formed no part of the 8 December Joint Agreement. Read through it and see – there is no such promise or figure. Not a sausage.
Nothing Is Agreed Until Everything Is Agreed.
‘Everything’ includes an agreement by the EU on the future relationship – as specified in Art. 50 (2).
And then the final agreement must first be ratified by Parliament. And MPs have recently been made painfully aware of the unrest among voters over any EU-bound payment at all.
August 25, 2018
@mancunius:
I’ll take your word for it. And indeed, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
But let me maintain that if the UK doesn’t pay this 39bn (or similar figure), it will, in the long term do it more harm then good. I expect to live long enough to witness that.
August 24, 2018
You are wasting your time. Mr Redwood’s side is losing the argument within the Conservative Party and quite porribly Mr Raad will achieve a little more than the EU is required to give. Then there will be a vote in the Coomons with some 60-90 Tories opposing but to no avail because the vast majority of Labour will support. Corbyn will be able to support because this will not constitute EU membership hence nationalisation is not out of the question. Since regulatory alignment (but with a neutral court of arbitrage involved) and tariff-free trade for goods will apply, the NI issue will no longer be valid. In that case an amicable settlement of all kinds of issues (financial services, avaiation etc) could be expected. And since the UK would no longer be a member, there would not be a conflict beween the direction desired by the political extremes in the UK (right and left) and the direction of the R27. Do not call it Norway though because that is not what it will be. Wonder what will happen next. And of course in the case of a deal there will be a payment. In the case of there not being a payment, as Mr Redwood suggests, the UK will be at Mr Trump’s mercy. Good luck!
August 24, 2018
What will happen next will involve the majority 17.4 million being a little upset with the outcome. Good luck with that in your rules based system!
August 24, 2018
@Rien Huizer: I also wasted my time in 2012 trying to convince some on this webside that the euro would not break up and the EU not implode. I don’t mind too much. It may go as you describe, with two caveats: How strong will Corbyn (as brexiteer) prove within his own party the coming months, and secondly, the EU27 is not going to imperil the integrity of its single market, in spite of the UK government pretending ignorance about any EU27 red lines.
August 24, 2018
We’re aware that there were SOME contractors but an awful lot more was still enacted AFTER we voted to leave. So why didn’t the EU stop signing those contracts? Because our leader and liar in Chief connived with the corrupt EU behind the scenes to come up with the Chequers BRINO plan to ensure we paid even AFTER we have left!
August 25, 2018
You are making a fundermental error: Please quote the exact article in the Treaties that requires a departing member state to pay anything. And further does this accord to usual practise regarding international bodies and does it accord with international law ??
If there was any legal basis for any payment whatsoever Barnier would have produced it by now. He hasn’t, so lets see you do it instead.
August 24, 2018
Hammond on the attack again traducing Raab. Is he worried the politics are going away from him or coordinating with the other Project Fear 2 leaks, credit card charges, sperm banks etc, to soften us up to accept the sell out in whatever initial agreement they are looking to sign.
The final deal has to have parliamentary approval, can you stop the interim agreement being signed?
Parliament can refuse to legislate for the Agreement, and many Conservative MPs are saying they will not vote for it on current terms
August 24, 2018
The daftest fear of the day was the idea that Brits living or working in the EU wouldn’t be able to receive their pensions, as EU pensions have to be paid into bank accounts in the EU.
All such people already have accounts in the country where they are living. Even I have an account in the EU. How can it be that civil servants and ministers do not know this?
August 24, 2018
Even if they haven’t, static bank accounts would mean no rent paid to EU landlord s
August 24, 2018
I thought the sperm imports from Denmark was even more ridiculous, but our Government is now the laughing stock in this Country and the world and must go!
August 25, 2018
Unfortunately it has nothing to do with civil servants and ministers. I would think better if you look at gov.uk “How to prepare if the UK leaves the EU with no deal”. You will be interested in the paper “Banking, insurance and other financial services if there’s no Brexit deal” and more particularly to the paragraphs under “Individual and business customers – EEA customers (including UK citizens living abroad) of UK firms operating in the EEA.”
In this particular case, I think worthwhile to get the information from “the horse’s mouth” and not from the donkeys in the tabloid press.
August 25, 2018
But not enough
August 24, 2018
Exactly but May and Hammond remain in place. We even have Hammond publishing a letter to the Treasury select committee warning that a no-deal Brexit could increase borrowing by £80billion a year by 2033.
The May and Hammond are totally economically illiterate. Hammond is a tax to death PPE graduate, a grim reaper and a massive electoral liability. He is wrong on almost everything he says and does. Just get rid of them before they give us Corbyn, Mc Donnall and the SNP. And get rid of all those idiots in the Treasury feeding his this pro EU and tax to death drivel. Carney too should have gone years ago he as cost the country a fortune with his gross ineptitude (PPE yet again I understand).
“As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7086572/gloomy-philip-hammond-blasted-no-deal-brexit-claims/
If the Treasury/BoE want to do something useful to do then sort out some real competition in UK banking. This so the large banks cannot get away with paying 0.1% on deposits yet charging anything from 35 to 700 time this on any lending (even on well secured lending to solid customers). The main banks are a complete and utter rip off currently, slow inflexible and totally incompetent too.
August 24, 2018
The margins the banks charge alone are clear proof of a massive market failure in banking. Mainly due to totally misguided goverment and EU regulations. What are the competition authorities, the BoE, the goverment and Hammond doing to correct this? It is hugely damaging to jobs, incomes, competitivity and the UK economy. Why should banking get away with such massive margins of up to 700%? They are totally ripping off customers and businesses both borrowers and depositors. Often customers who are a far better credit risk than the bank is itself.
August 24, 2018
actually up to 700 times or 70,000%!
August 25, 2018
OK, student Lifelogic: 700 times 0.1% is 70%.
Furthermore I wonder whether your accountant is taking you for a ride. There are 3-month deposit accounts serving 0.56%/year for £250k+ (a bank with a name starting by H) and another better one 0.75%/year for as low as £10k (bank M….).
August 24, 2018
Can’t we just go for a “Canada Plus” agreement. Settle this matter as soon as possible.
August 24, 2018
Of course we can. Canada means a hard border with Ireland – with a probably return to violence and, eventually, a united Ireland. Still want Canada?
August 24, 2018
That may be why he said “Canada Plus”, if you could have been bothered to read it before you jumped in feet first as usual.
August 24, 2018
There is no need for a “hard border” with customs/guards/military/police at the border.
There is already a border between Ireland & N.I. for currency, VAT, excise duty, corporation tax etc. and the necessary infrastructure for control, viz the high definition Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras with a high speed data link to police computers, are already in place and can be also used for customs purposes.
The EU’s weaponising of the Ireland/N.I. border is despicable.
BTW, if N.I. wants to become part of Ireland, this is not a problem for me.
Or, alternatively, if N.I. wants to become a separate nation in the EU it is also OK by me. It wouldn’t be the smallest country in the EU.
August 24, 2018
Robert, can’t we just go like Cameron promised. Oh, I forgot. Politicians have a habit of breaking promises.
August 24, 2018
Yes but the EU says it will only agree that if it excludes Northern Ireland. That is of course unacceptable to the UK – and grotesquely undemocratic, being opposed by the majority in Northern Ireland. A clever tactic by the EU, and a trap which our govt has jumped right into by agreeing the ‘backstop’.
August 24, 2018
Going for a “Canada Plus” agreement is hardly the way to settle it as soon as possible, and it would open the door for the government to make more concessions to the EU, and nor would it be of anything more than marginal economic value.
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2017/11/26/the-irish-border-with-northern-ireland/#comment-903362
“As with the UK, that small one-off 0.4% enhancement of GDP would be equivalent to the natural growth of the Canadian economy over a matter of some months.”
August 24, 2018
JR,
I am sorry I do not see your alternative scenario as viable. We will not have any significant deals in place unless we have 3 to 5 years, and working under WTO rules is much more than just one treaty, it is a lot of none-tariff deals that need to be sorted out as well, to have your so-called free-friction trade ( which will not be full free trade anyway).
In the meantime we are paying for this uncertainty by slipping from number one trading economy among the G7 to last over the past 18 months
August 24, 2018
For once I agree with you Mr Redwood. I am against us signing the withdrawal agreement too.
It is an appalling, it is awful. But it is also the reality of the Brexit that you, and others, told people to vote for.
Brexit means a subservient Britain. Brexit means an impoverished Britain. Brexit means a degraded Britain.
It has always meant these things. It’s just that the Leave campaign has some very good snake oil salesmen backing it. Oh and, probably, Russian help.
It really is time now for the grown ups left in politics – people like Philip Hammond, Ken Clarke, Vince Cable, Keir Starmer, Hilary Benn – to put an end to this sorry saga and to dispatch Brexit permanently.
August 24, 2018
The withdrawal agreement is the reality of Remainer politicians leading Brexit, not Brexit itself.
If the government had just listened to JR and followed his advice, we would have really great prospects ahead of us. Brexit certainly doesn’t mean subservience nor degradation, quite the opposite. Whether impoverishment ensues will be down to the industry of the British people, with very little to do with whether we are in or out of the EU.
The Remain campaign had equal measure of deceit compared with the Leave campaign. One just has to sift the data received and make up one’s own mind, which I think is what most people on this site do.
I expect grown-ups in politics to respect the direction of grown-ups in the electorate.
August 24, 2018
The 39 billion is the due payment for existing liabilities. It has nothing to do with any future deal. Our government has fully and openly accepted this. So why do you keep undermining Mrs May by misrepresenting the status of the 39 billion? You might not want to pay it but it is a scandal and a shame that you harm the Conservative party by telling your readers things that are simply not true.
August 24, 2018
I’ve never seen what these liabilities are – please inform – thanks.
August 25, 2018
@ Margot
Twaddle. Why don’t you read the EU treaties ? The ‘liabilities’ which you then fail to specify are the EUs and theirs alone. The EU has a legal personality and as such enters into contracts and agreements, BUT these have to be met out of its own budget. It is not allowed to borrow and by that same token it cannot impose any obligation to finance on member states other than is in the treaties.
What the government is doing is ‘buying’ a free trade agreement.
August 24, 2018
Sky News were making the much of their part in Project Fear yesterday with their headline that we would be ‘crashing out’ if we didn’t sign a deal for leaving. I hope that after we are free action will be taken against all the Project Fear architects and operators. Many people must lose their jobs for such activities. Their activities are and have been too serious to be glossed over and forgotten.
August 24, 2018
Secure the boundary changes to prevent Corbyn-McDonnell-McCluskey getting anywhere near the levers of government
Then hit May and Hammond with all you’ve got. True Tories are sick and tired of these liberal left pro-EU idiots
We want our freedoms, our privacy and our nation back from all political infection
And If I hear the term feminism and cultural appropriation ever again I shall scream
what the hell’s happened to the UK? Its entire population is under the process of total politicisation by a sinister political clique
Just leave us alone and let us live our lives without a constant stream of diktats
August 24, 2018
GIVE and TAKE????
So what should the EU, or specifically the Netherlands “give” to the UK for the damage the Brexit country will inflict on the Dutch economy?
Yesterday I pretended to be a Dutch company and went through the Dutch online platform which is there to prepare Dutch companies for any possible scenario. It looked all very well done and complete to me, but I was baffled by the sheer complexity of all the aspects that will have to be covered for all these companies.
Britain is causing Brexit and all its havoc. Even though the Netherlands has a balanced budget and a healthy euro based economy, still growing more than twice as fast as the UK, not a single Dutch company will take kindly to all this nuisance, caused by an internally feuding political party abroad.
August 25, 2018
PvL, Sounds like your country [gender neutral] people have realised the cost of the UK leaving without a deal in place.
May be more effort should be put in petitioning your MEPs etc. to make sure that leaving arrangements do not harm the Netherlands.
August 25, 2018
PvL, Perhaps you should have voted against the EU Constitution then? Oh, you did . . . .
August 24, 2018
I always thought the threat that air travel would end was silly but now understand that there is a real issue here that seems to highlight extreme incompetence from this government. It seems we would need bilateral agreements in place on leaving for flights to continue and that we have not started putting these in place yet presumably as we assumed we would get a deal. This means the threat is currently real as flights are not covered by WTO rules and as the impact on GDP of no air travel would be huge so the EU must know we can’t afford to walk away. Such incompetence pours petrol on the fires of project fear and also suggests remainers are right that we are incapable of running our own affairs. This government seems to be fiddling while Rome burns on this matter so when will they wake up? Hopefully long before Corbyn can gain power or before Brexit delivers the disasters the Remainers crave…
Reply Most of this is wrong. As BA has assured us,the planes will fly on 30 March 2019
August 24, 2018
Read Article 6 of the Chicago Convention (CC). Scheduled flights can fly over without being shot down; but landing and taking off again, needs individual States approval outside of the CC.
Reply Yes, and no member state of the EU has said it wishes to lose its landing rights into the Uk so none has said they are taking away our landing rights!
August 24, 2018
Then you Brexiteers better find someone who knows how to fill in the paperwork to make it happen.
August 24, 2018
Same applies to every EU airline that wants to fly into the UK
August 24, 2018
This entire negotiating process has been like watching a game of poker where there are seasoned players on one side (the EU), and ineffectual monkeys on the other (the UK). Even then, the monkeys are pre-trained to show their hands to their opponents at every turn, not for one moment realising that the cards they have are actually good ones, because they have an innate inability to see it.
These negotiations should be done and dusted by now, but that just goes to show how flawed the process is. It is hampered by indecision, ineptitude, and a lack of genuine commitment. Many a good, honest Brexit-supporting MP had their say recently and it is good to see them making a fist of it. We need them to continue and expose this subterfuge in order to save the UK from an embarrassing and costly capitulation.
Tad Davison
Cambridge
August 24, 2018
The negotiations are proceeding as if those who are supposed to be on our side are acting instead in the interests of the EU, & against us.
The UK govt is misguided & a sensible leader should be appointed to replace Theresa May & flush the other stagnant incompetents out of office. Instead of agreeing to pay the EU £39bn we could charge them £69bn for our leaving expenses & the nuisance their crazy processes cause.
August 24, 2018
I watched the select comittee proceedings yesterday and thought that Dominic Raab made a good fist of his performance despite Benns obvious remainer interruptions.
Raab and Robbins seem to have a good rapport which is a refreshing change.
Why is Hammond allowed the freedom to try to try to torpedo the present discussions? – he and his department have little credibility after the whole series of inaccurate forcasts he has produced and he needs raining in now. Why no intervention from May?
August 24, 2018
I mean Reining!
August 25, 2018
‘raining’ was not unapt, PC. Someone should p*** on him from a great height.
August 24, 2018
And what exactly IS happening on the Chicago Convention? Unless that IS tackled, aviation between EU and U.K. will be disrupted.
Reply The clue is in the name. The Chicago Convention governs international aviation and is nothing to do with the EU!
August 24, 2018
If Parliament refuses to sign up to this, what happens then? Is it an automatic default to WTO?
Siren voices are now calling for another referendum, which although May says she will not have one, I have no confidence in her not to back track, as she has done on her Lancaster House and Mansion House speeches and produced what is essentially the opposite of what she said was acceptable. Rather than another referendum I would prefer a GE so we can have a chance to clear out all the ‘honourable’ Members who think they can just ignore the referendum held in June 2016.
Reply If Parliament does nothing more from here then we leave on 29 March 2019 with no deal. If Parliament wants to sign up to a bad deal or wants to delay Brexit (which would need EU agreement as well) it will need new primary legislation to achieve that.
August 24, 2018
Reply to reply: Thank you JR for clearing that up for me. Appreciate it.
August 24, 2018
Why is our government even contemplating such a disadvantageous outcome as per Chequers or anything like the proposed Withdrawal Agreement. I don’t think they are stupid so I am left with the conclusion that they are mendacious and working to prevent the best opportunities that a clean Brexit would bring – presumably to prove their anti-Brexit credentials.
Mrs May and her government need removing (via a leadership challenge) before they inflict long term harm and future discord on our country – that vassal status and EU mission-creep would bring.
WTO is good.
August 24, 2018
May’s previous form suggests she will happily placate the sceptics about the Withdrawl Agreement, while simultaneously signing it anyway. The membership wants a change in direction away from Chequers, and a new leadership to do it, but even if the 1922 committee gets its 48 letters, could May reasonably lose a confidence vote? MPs, yet again, are showing their disconnect with the ordinary voters. By the time your party wants our vote, it’ll be far, far too late, Dr Redwood. For now all the Associations can do is keep hammering home how suicidal Chequers is for Conservative MPs in the hope some can see sense, but MPs like yourself can provide leadership in the form of a public voice for grassroots protests to rally behind. Standup4Brexit, perhaps? Going to the proles for change might be terribly un-Conservative, but it’s the only way I can see to stop this juggernaut from beaching on the Withdrawl Agreement.
August 24, 2018
Going for “Canada Plus” agreement doesn’t really happen overnight. It might take years as it took with EU-Canada deal. FTAs are complex things.
August 24, 2018
Do you think offering up the £39 billion and including provisions for tax exemptions and various immunities for EU officials, as well as promises to keep the EU’s secrets covered up in perpetuity, in the draft withdrawal agreement is because we, by which I mean our corrupt state, is being blackmailed by the equally or more corrupt EU?
Certainly the hysteria the idea of Brexit generates in those with clouds already hanging over their political reputations, such as ……………, seems particularly extreme and seems way beyond the kind of irritation a normal, competitive man might feel merely at being defeated in a battle of ideas.
Why do you think the mainstream media have refused to say anything about the tax exemptions and immunities being offered to EU officials. The left should theoretically rage about it more than the right, but everyone keeps silent, instead.
August 24, 2018
Well said John. I wish you could clean out the Cabinet.
August 24, 2018
“The essence of the Partnership Agreement is likely to be a Free Trade Agreement.”
I certainly hope not, because the economic value of any such free trade agreement to the UK would be too far low to justify the high risk that this pro-EU Tory government would make unnecessary and excessive concessions to secure the agreement.
I have said again and again on here, with sound supporting evidence, that CETA is of little overall economic value either to the EU or to Canada; in fact even less value than the EU Single Market has provided to the UK, about 1% of GDP gross benefit.
Why these comments either don’t get published or when published they get ignored, and people carry on saying “We want a deal like CETA”, is beyond me.
August 25, 2018
You should not look at the hypothetical benefit to Canada of CETA, but the hypothetical cost to Canada of leaving NAFTA. CETA has not have an integrative effect on the Canadian economy, NAFTA has.
August 24, 2018
Why would we want to pay the EU £39 Billions so that they can access our more lucrative market?
Our consistent EU Trade Deficit currently runs at £80 Billions per year. It sounds more than crazy or worse than incompetent to actually pay them to sell us their products.
Nowhere else in the world does this occur and for good reason. For it is the most insane business practice ever developed. But that is just the mad, mad, maddening world of the European Union, AKA EUSSR.
August 24, 2018
Wrong subject
August 24, 2018
The EU have proven themselves very slippery when it comes to honouring agreements.
The Chequers Plan actually assumes that the EU will actually stick to the rules. I say the designers of it, whoever they are in the back rooms of Number 10, are either too naive or too pro-EU to be of any help to the Leavers – the ones who actually won the Referendum.
Mrs May, with her grotesquely Remainer -biased Cabinet also enlists a band of avid EU fans from the Civil Service, who collectively believe that the people in this country are not able to decide what is best for themselves and certainly not what is best for their the country, so the faceless ones plan to overrule OUR decision
This cannot be permitted to happen in Britain else we forfeit OUR democracy.
Mrs May! Think first of the British people then of democracy, then of the Country. Put your country and its citizens first and you shall find favour with the electorate. Go against their wishes and you will suffer. Also damaging the Conservative party in the process. Have the guts to stand firm against the Brussels mafia, revert to the Lancaster House and Mansion House proposals and all shall be well.
August 24, 2018
“Brexit means Brexit”
“No deal is better than a bad deal”
I forget. Remind me who said that?
PS – Good performance on the breakfast telly, John – despite their attempts to cut you off…
August 24, 2018
@ John Redwood
“Reply We are leaving to take back control of our laws, our money and our borders. We are restoring our democracy. Why cant you understand that?”
Some people seem incapable of understanding anything. Nothing so strange as folk, as is often said.
I think what we’re seeing here, JR, is an indication of just how society is becoming rapidly polarised. May et al clearly don’t grasp just how serious this could get.
August 25, 2018
The irony is that the people who will call the shots in a no deal scenario do not sit in Westminster but in Brussels, Berlin or Paris.
It will be Juncker, Merkel and Macron who will have to decide how bad a no deal scenario will get for the U.K.
How long will the queue at Calais get ? Which EU legislations get waived or not ? Do insulin’s packages get a priority treatment ?… etc
The U.K. will have no say in the EU’s response to a no deal scenario and it’s response will have an impact.
In short, the U.K. is not getting back control of anything in a no deal scenario. It is the exact opposite.
August 25, 2018
Doesn’t sound like an organisation we should be part of.
Have they no concern for member nation’s economies and jobs, if trade is deliberately restricted to punish the UK?
August 28, 2018
What does May believe in order to pursue her chequers plan? Lancaster speech was sensible. The one-sided withdrawal agreement – where we pay in money and sovereignty and get nothing but the chance to keep talking for another two years – is absurd. Presumably she isn’t stupid, so what does she know (or think) that we don’t know that would explain what she is doing?