As the EU does not want to do a deal on our future relationship anytime soon the UK must leave in March 2019 without signing the one sided and damaging Withdrawal Agreement they propose. We can then proceed to negotiate a free trade agreement with them if they want to. Many Conservative MPs are making it clear to the government that we will not support legislation seeking to prolong transition, nor will we support 21 months transition and large payments for no good reason. So far there is no sign of any deal better than just leaving. Extending our period under their control would take us into another 7 year spending period where the EU would not doubt want even more money from us.
294 Comments
Comments are closed.
October 18, 2018
The UKIP leader Gerard Batten was right all along, we should have by-passed Article 50 and simply repealed the European Communities Act 1972. We would have been out and able to negotiate trade deals around the world two years ago without interference from Brussels, and they would have then had to negotiate in good faith from a WTO base position. Mrs May has played right into their hands (deliberately, it seems). The sooner you hand her a P45 the better, same goes for Comrade Hammond and Mr Carnage.
October 19, 2018
I seem to remember this was Mr Redwood’s policy on exit too.
October 18, 2018
Mr Redwood,
Honestly, why not? There must be good reasons for the government to ignore your advice. Might there be a problem? None whatsoever?
October 18, 2018
It’s fine for those from elsewhere to say there wouldn’t be a problem with an extension, they’re not paying the extra money that would entail! There are plenty of far more deserving causes right here in the UK rather than just tipping it by the lorry-load into the EU’s bottomless pit!
October 18, 2018
It’s so sickening that the majority of the British political and media classes are more than happy to see this country completely humiliated by the European Union.
October 18, 2018
I think if there is a failure to submit 48 letters to rid the country of toxic May then thenTories do not deserve to be ever in power again. Stewart Jackson made the point in his article how she should go.
JR, you and colleagues need to deliver the letters or go. Your party will not be of any use to anyone, ever.
October 19, 2018
It’s a matter of timing. They only have one shot of a no confidence vote.
October 18, 2018
There is no serious problem, certainly not with the Irish border.
The reason is simply that the government, Parliament, the Civil Service, the Governor of the BoE, the corporates, the EU itself, the EU funded CBI/BBC/IMF, the HoL etc. (viz the “deep state”) are all remainers and are attempting to seize power unlawfully and use it to overturn the referendum result.
Never has Parliament been so unrepresentative of the people they are supposed represent. The referendum result in MPs constituency terms was 64:36 to leave.
We should simply be leaving end of March 2019 as specified by the EU treaty.
October 18, 2018
Indeed, MPs witters on about representation in terms of race , gender, ethnicity etc, but forget the one and only thing Parliament is supposed to be representing is the political will of the people, and that they currently aren’t .
October 18, 2018
On the N-S Irish border:
1) JRM & others have said that if Barnier believes MaxFac works E-W on the irish Sea, then it must equally work N-S.
2) The Good Friday Agreement doesn’t specifically discuss the border at all. https://facts4eu.org/news_octb_2018.shtml#gfa
3) David Davis: “the heads of both the British and Irish customs authorities have told us that a hard border is not necessary. Jean-Claude Juncker, Leo Varadkar and Theresa May have all said that they would never enforce one.
There will be no hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. It’s that simple.” https://order-order.com/2018/09/20/dd-will-no-hard-border-simple/ https://order-order.com/2018/10/18/juncker-varadkar-guaranteed-irish-parliament-no-hard-border-event-no-deal/
October 19, 2018
The Irish PM has stated in their parliament (clip on Guy Fawkes blog) that they are not making any preparations for a hard border because there won’t be one. Even if there is no deal there will not be a hard border. I don’t understand why the MSM still promote the idea of a hard border. We are being conned bigtime!
October 18, 2018
JR, May has proven to be untrustworthy and that no one can beleive a word she says. She is a liar. She broke her red lines, alancaste speech points and following comments. It is difficult to understand why she thinks the public would trust or beleive her. What is more difficult is why Tory MPs would either!
Any suggestion of an extension to an extension should have been firmly dismissed not considered and promoted on TV! It is a bad deal according to her tests as it leaves the U.K. in the EU without a voice or veto, paying vast sums of money, with the EU able to act against our nations interests. Also giving them our territorial waters and fishingmstocks. Not even half in as she decried, or reamining in parts which she determined was not leaving. Yet her dishonest KitKat policy tries to hide true costs and ties to EU even for the U.K. to come under control of EU for aspects of security and defense!
I would rather have Corbyn than this vile toxic woman. Corbyn would not be able to implement his plans under EU vassalage. Although the EU might loosen the reigns to make the U.K. redundant as a competitor.
Tory MPs bring it on themselves by keeping May in office each day.
October 18, 2018
Reason…let alone good reason is a stranger to this government. Let’s just leave….”twere to be done, best it be done quickly……”
October 18, 2018
JR, what you should be considering is what the EU are planning while this farcical delay continues. They will be our competitors!
The EU have decided it does not want a deep and special partnership it wants UK servitude.
October 19, 2018
They have always been our competitors, EU membership has simply given them more control to constrain our freedom of action.
October 18, 2018
Rein
Surely, surely you can’t be that naive? The government want us to stay in the EU. Just like the Norwegian, French, Irish, Greek and Dutch governments who all lost referendums but ignored the result.
Its the modus operandi of the EU, ignore the demos.
October 18, 2018
Maybe you do not deserve good government.
October 19, 2018
Rien
Lol is there such a thing as “good government” ?
October 18, 2018
Rien, Remains in the UK convert solvable problems into insuperable problems and then claim that – because the problems are “insuperable” – Brexit is impossible. You go along with their dodgy rationale, though usually advising us to exit. Which advice is pointless because we’ve already decided on Leave.
We want our country to be independent, as independent as New Zealand or Japan or India. We are well aware we are a second tier nation, and that their are bullies like the EU, the USA, China, in the world. We fully intend to play our part in international organisations that do not make new laws without our direct consent.
We also know that Remain (like you) lied to us about the extent of EU control over us. And that this control will take effort and time to unwind. But none of the problems actually are insuperable. We know that the EU has zero goodwill towards the UK. But none of that need stop us becoming independent. You could join us.
October 18, 2018
Who is :”We”?
October 19, 2018
Who are you?
October 18, 2018
It is almost as if it is politics by leak/pronouncement as a way of finding out what she can get away with or not?
Why does she keep asking the EU for their ideas? We know what they want, to maintain their status quo/defend the Union. Delay/overturn/force another referendum etc supported by a succession of self important well past their sell by date ex politicians.
It is about time we had some leadership explaining clearly and on an ongoing basis what we want, the strengths we have to insist on it and very clearly the negatives for them, of failure to agree.
I am getting fed up with this tirade of the problems for us in the event of failure, which incidentally I think is BS, coming from no 10, the Treasury etc all giving oxygen to the Remain rabble.
October 18, 2018
The Conservatives are already on a razor thin margin.
It appears to me May would rather be in the EU with Corbyn than out the EU with the Conservatives.
October 18, 2018
Well said, I have been thinking this for Months and have never found the right words, The only thing to do John is drop the Union and re Unify England from the nine imposed EU Regions, its quite clear the Cackling Celts are in it for themselves the British Irish Council being a prime example.
October 18, 2018
When thinking of May, we also need to think ‘can’ ‘kicking’ and ‘down the road’, not to mention ‘boot-licking’ ‘cringing’ ‘sickening’ and ‘subservient to her true masters’.
Why haven’t the Tories got rid of her and Oily Robbins long ago, surely they can see that to have a strong and decisive leader rather than a weak and wobbly nonentity is a vote-winner?
Maggie had a word for them – it’s because they’re ‘frit’!
Yet the Tories need to take just one look at the opposition benches to see what might come along in their stead because of their indecisiveness. No wonder the electorate are so dissatisfied with those who are supposed to represent us!
It’s pretty obvious to most people that a good 90% of MPs really are low-grade and the stables need clearing out!
Tad
October 18, 2018
Indeed and she and Hammond are halfway to following his mad economic policies anyway.
How many Conservative MPs are making it clear?
October 18, 2018
It’s beginning to look like having a general election and getting Corbyn is the only way we are going to rid us of this odious woman.
There seems to be no end to her mendacity, the woman is a total fraud posing as a Tory.
What happens at the end of 2021, do we get yet another extension and how do you sell that in your next manifesto. five and a half years to get out of a political union and only 5 to prosecute the Second World War.
October 18, 2018
Ian – It would appear the establishment on both sides of the channel will “do what it takes” to keep us in.
We are witnessing the slow agonising death our so called democracy.
What would be the point of voting again.
October 19, 2018
old salt
If you dont vote thats EXACTLY what they want
Vote, vote tactically . I might stand for the SNP in England, that could be fun
October 18, 2018
Mr. Corbyn will vote on all Brexit issues in a way that brings down the government and leads to a GE.
However, if he were to win a GE, we can be sure that Brexit will follow as he knows there is no way that the corporate run EU would allow him to implement his manifesto.
As a result he has also always voted against all of the EU treaties.
October 19, 2018
OR
Exactly correct.
Thats why I’m voting Corbyn at the next election
October 18, 2018
Javelin, This Conservative government is a complete shambles. They have not controlled the civil service but been controlled by them. That has been easy because most Ministers, especially the two at the top, are Remains. The HoC is mostly Remain or only here-for-the-beer. Leave Ministers have been undermined, and stymied, and when they have persisted, their work has been trashed. I regard the civil service as institutionally corrupt. And most MPs are not much better.
October 18, 2018
Not sure the likes of Raab, Mordaunt, Leadsome, Grayling, Gove, McVey have been stymied so much as they seem to be enjoying the trappings of power and their Ministerial salaries and chauffeur driven cars too much. All their Brexit principles seem to have gone out the window.
October 18, 2018
It’s clear that the EU are working as hard as they can to prevent us leaving while giving UK voters the impression that it’s so hard to leave we should abandon the idea. The only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to them. Our spineless government should be making firm plans for leaving with No Deal. There may be a little disruption initially when we leave but we will be better off in the long run. In any case the usual EU mode of operation when faced with strong opposition is to complete a deal at five minutes to midnight before the deadline.
October 18, 2018
No one is stopping you from leaving. The EU has simply said that you can not have all the benefits you do now. The frictionless, bureaucracy free trade. The right to live, work and study in more than 30 countries. Shared medicine regulation. The most open aviation market in the world. Galileo. Shared crime fighting tools.
Mr Redwood and the Daily Express told you to Leave all of these things. They did not tell you there would be negative implications. Shame.
October 18, 2018
The EU has simply said that you can not have all the benefits you do now. The frictionless, bureaucracy free trade.
Actually it’s the EU who are insisting on us keeping the “frictionless, bureaucracy free trade”. What do you think all this NI border backstop nonsense is about.
October 18, 2018
Andy
With every post you make yourself look more ignorant.
October 18, 2018
Andy, That’s one of the many ways you don’t get it – we do not see most of these “benefits” as being actually, well, beneficial. That’s your propaganda. Most of your “benefits” tend to benefit the EU, or possibly large corporations, but seldom European nations, and certainly not us.
The supposed “right” to live work and study in the EU has been stolen by the EU from the European nations, which have lost the right to decide who, and how many, come to live in their country. You may remember that was an important issue at the Referendum.
EU trade is certainly not “frictionless” as any exporter will tell you. And as for “bureaucracy-free” you are surely joking. Other EU programs which don’t involve direct governance from the EU are often open to non-EU nations, Galileo being an example.
October 18, 2018
nick, that is such a good post.
October 18, 2018
“beauracracy free trade”…andy you plainly have never actually manufactured goods and sent them into Europe for sale.
October 18, 2018
The EU knows we’ve got poor leadership and a Prime Minister who doesn’t really want to leave the EU anyway, so it’s little wonder they keep turning the screw.
It’s like playing a faulty one-arm bandit that keeps on giving. The EU keeps pulling the lever, all the time getting richer and richer and they cannot believe that no-one is going to stop them. Well I’d bloody stop them! The b*st*rds would know they were in a negotiation if it were down to me!
The people have given their instruction to the government. All sides knew what the referendum was about, the government even gave every household a booklet to that effect so there is no excuse for anyone to cry foul. We must leave. If the EU want to prevaricate, then we walk away and keep our £39 billion. We simply cannot have inadequate people negotiating on our behalf and we need someone with the guts to stand up for the UK. School prefect goody two-shoes types are clearly not up to the task and need not apply.
Tad
October 18, 2018
Thames Trader has it nailed.
October 18, 2018
The Government is only giving the impression of being spineless.
In reality, our Prime Minister is resolutely and courageously pursuing a policy of making herself look weak and vacillating, sacrificing her reputation in fact, to ensure that BREXIT is abandoned.
That, surely, MUST be correct? After all, no one could be as stupid as she appears.
October 18, 2018
Correct sir. May is simply an establishment pawn, put there by the establishment and controlled by the establishment.
The question is can those who voted to leave in the referendum find enough votes in parliament to defeat the establishment.
October 18, 2018
In your opinion Sir, how long is “a matter of months”?
October 18, 2018
As the Everly brothers used to sing – “until the twelfth of never – and that’s a long long time “.
October 18, 2018
Months or years? So it will be extended one year and we carry on paying in and follow all the EU rules etc. without any influence. No solution to the Irish border question? Have another year, and another, why not another five or ten? Business is really getting concerned and that will have a growing impact upon our economy in multiple ways. The only way to get May out is for the Brexiteer MPs to get that letter in. If it is thought that there are insufficient votes to get May out there is only one other option. Country before party. The budget will have to be voted down to cause a crisis for May to realise the game is up. If there is a general election following that and Corbyn (a lifelong Eurosceptic) gets in he won’t be able to pursue much of his socialist agenda inside the EU. Drastic I know but better out than in.
October 18, 2018
Indeed. Delay solves nothing. However it is May’s standard way of operating.
It really is a question of removing her now. Otherwise Brexit will not happen and all that will occur is voter revenge at the next general election.
October 18, 2018
Peter,
I agree with you (and John’s post as well).
October 18, 2018
There are a lot of us out here that share your frustration but we are not in a position to do anything about it .
October 18, 2018
You could join the Conservative party thereby getting a say in who the next leade will be.
October 18, 2018
You could join UKIP which will influence the Tory hierarchy much more.
October 18, 2018
Nick, I already have.
October 18, 2018
Don’t you just love it . . . . . . .
TM this morning saying “What we have proposed……”
NO, it’s what you have proposed, we the 17.4 million proposed leaving not kicking the can further down the road.
This is another ploy to water down Brexit, get rid of TM and get on with the job.
October 18, 2018
Gary C, I think Theresa May is operating under the illusion that we will believe anything she says.
October 18, 2018
Does it matter if we believe it or not? She will carry on anyway. Theresa May “works well under supervision” Under the supervision of the corporate and the Tory elites. The electorate and the referendum result are of no consideration.
The only thing that is surprising is that she hasn’t declared the referendum result invalid. Perhaps that is something Olly Robbins is working on.
October 18, 2018
For goodness sake John please help get rid of this absolutely useless Prime Minister and her advisors.
These so called negotiations have now become an absolute farce of gigantic and humiliating proportions, with no future vision and endless indecision.
Do those in Parliament and outside who are trying to delay this process not understand that the EU are deliberately playing the long game so that they can suck the life out of us, and also out of the Companies based here.
For goodness sake get in someone who has some vision, is a strategic thinker, has some real understanding of negotiation skills, and who will deliver what the people voted for.
We do not need a general election, just a new leader who simply must be a true Brexit supporter.
I was hoping we would not have to talk about Brexit today, but this farce just continues.
The backstop is WTO terms, set the Tariffs NOW and concentrate the bonds of everyone involved, business then knows what the so called worse outcome will be on both sides of the Channel.
October 18, 2018
“Bonds” should be minds.
October 18, 2018
Why would the EU ever want a transition period to end? They would always be able to engineer project fear at tHe end of the period to persuade the UK to have a further extension. On and on it would go with the UK in limbo with control over nothing that matters
October 18, 2018
At £55m a day – they don’t want an end to it at all.
October 18, 2018
They say, Theresa May can’t progress a plan to extend the transitional period because it will upset Tory Brexiteer MPs.
What about the upset to the democratic majority who voted to leave the EU? I’m neither Tory nor an MP, why does the MSM ignore what I feel about it?
October 18, 2018
Was watching Peston on ITV last night with McDonnell and him giving the labour bile that the government must meet there 6 tests and for us to stay in the custom union, the 6 tests we all know is just a excuse to vote against any deal because the test are aunachievable and we all know that labour would keep us in the Eu given half the chance, then he had Mr Farage on who said what most people are thinking is for you Mr Redwood to ditch Mrs May and put in place a Brexiteer for the sake of our country and not your party who can stand up to the Eu and tell them enough is enough we will leave with no deal unless we get what we want with no strings or back door dealing that some future government can us to get us back into the federal state of Europe at a later date
October 18, 2018
No McDonnell doesn’t want us to stay in the EU. He wants us to stay in the CU because he doesn’t want UK-specific free trade deals with the USA etc. because he sees these as potentially damaging workers rights and standards or whatever – plus he hates the USA. However, he certainly doesn’t want UK to stay in the SM as that would prevent him implementing a lot of his nationalisation and state aid plans, and he doesn’t want freedom of movement to continue as he (rightly) sees that as damaging to wage growth in the low skills sector. So really he just has another set of cherry picking proposals that the EU wouldn’t like. They would like UK in the CU because it addresses their stated fear that the UK would be able to compete against them on tariffs outside it, but they could never agree to UK subsidising (say) the steel industry.
One questions I haven’t heard asked of Labour is that as they wish to keep the exact same benefits of the Single Market as it exists now does that include free movement ? That’s a benefit, right ? So they want to keep it ?
October 18, 2018
Sadly she reminds me of a ‘wounded animal’ surrounded by hyenas and jackals, making a few feeble gestures to delay the inevitable.-
October 18, 2018
Stop posting these rants and DO SOMETHING, man
October 18, 2018
My thoughts precisely.
October 18, 2018
He can’t. The ERG can’t. Rant is all they have ever done and will do. It’s why Davis and Johnson ran away from their positions of responsibility, they cannot actually do anything except rant and posture.
If you think they were ever anything else, you have been duped.
October 18, 2018
Charles V, “Davis and Johnson ran away from their positions of responsibility” because what they wanted and were working on was binned by Theresa May. Staying would have been seen as support for the Chequers revolving-door Remain.
October 18, 2018
what about the months before that when there were in post and accomplished the square root of dilly squat. Had they actually done ANYTHING then there would have been no chequers.
October 18, 2018
Voted Leave. Agree. I must admit I am becoming a little tired of hearing how good it will be if we actually leave when we know nothing is happening and no MP’s are brave enough to change the situation. I don’t think I could be bothered to carry on with the debate for a further year. Yawn. John, why do you still continue to support Mrs May when you can clearly see what a cock up she is making of Brexit and indeed many other policies too? I hear that some on sick pay who have not been paid correctly are to receive sums of between £5000 and £20,000! Can this government get anything right?
October 18, 2018
With the greatest of respect to Mr Redwood, he can’t. That’s the point of the PM surrounding himself with sycophants and wasters who all do as she wants them to.
Mr Redwood is as powerless and as excluded from democracy as the rest of us.
Frankly, Mrs May is either appallingly advised (and she will be by the civil service and her SPADs are probably morons) or she is mendacious and affronting. In either case, playing to the EU as if it matters is wrong. It doesn’t. It’s just a giant bureaucracy of overpaid, feather bedded, lazy pen pushers.
October 18, 2018
Even deluded Brexit fanatics, accept that in the short term, to leave with no deal would be a prodigious problem. It would be a disaster for Companies around the UK, citizens in the EU and UK, and for a thousand reasons ranging from contract , to accreditation of professional qualifications, to customs infra structure, quotas under WTO etc. ad infinitum. Quite how we deal with 90% of our trade without any supporting treaties is unclear, prior agreements having lapsed.
Can I remind you that the Brexit prospectus now supported by only a minority, included an outright bonus to the exchequer of about £17billion, trusted by most leave voters, it included the easiest negotiations ever, no loss of access.
I will admit that the outbreak of violence in N Ireland was quite publicly treated as acceptable but no mention was made to the good people of Grimsby that their fish processing industry would be lost , Nissan workers were nt told to prepare for unemployment , City workers to pack of Paris or Dublin
For god’s sake if you must inflict this “Nativist” nonsense on us all do it in the least harmful way , gradually . You are behaving like a child.
Some of us who have children of our own to look after , cannot afford your tantrums
October 18, 2018
A) Violence is never acceptable
B) Brexit voters are not and will not engage in violence.
Are we to be forced into giving up home rule by terrorists ? It seems to me that you’re excusing certain fanatics and blaming us for those who might turn to violence.
October 18, 2018
First of all ot is not 90% of out trade.
Over 80% of our gdp is generated inside our own border.
So 20% is externally generated.
Of which, and I am being generous here, about half is generated via Europe.
October 18, 2018
“Some of us who have children of our own to look after , cannot afford your tantrums – do so gradually”
It really is tough to hear that coming from a Tory boy.
October 19, 2018
Newmania
Calm down dear you’ll have an aneurysm
Some actual real facts for you
1) 82% of UK economic activity is within the UK
2) Of the 18% that is external only 9% is with EU countries
3) Nissan are HIRING workers in UK
4) No City organisation has moved their operations out of the city
5) City job vacancies rose 13% in the last year
6) There are 5.8 million businesses in UK less than 400,000 do any overseas trade at all
Quote from David Folkerts-Landau
Chief Economist of Germany’s biggest bank on Brexit: “The UK will do just as well or better outside the EU… the UK economy has it in its genes to do well, to be innovative, it doesn’t have this bureaucratic construct that the Europeans struggle with and it’s got flexible exchange rates!”
I have no idea why you think your kids will be impacted by Brexit , were you thinking of packing them off to school in Romania? Do you think that your kids are too dumb to attend one of the worlds top six UK universities and you need to send them to one in Lithuania?
Maybe you are thinking further ahead to when your kids enter the job market. Youth unemployment across the Euro zone averages 22% . Youth unemployment in the UK is at the LOWEST figure it has ever been . We have 860,000 unfilled jobs in the UK
I think you need to up your parenting skills
October 18, 2018
This has been badly handled from the result of the referendum onwards. What do you expect when our chief negotiator was undermined by a PM and a Civil Service dedicated to remain. The PM has outdone Machiavelli in her duplicity with the UK electorate, all those positive leave speeches and then Chequers, a product of someone who has no knowledge of how international trade works and the way borders are dealt with. From day one she has allowed the EU to dictate both subject and timing with the result that she is now viewing a bucket of worms.
Apart from safeguarding the future of EU/UK citizens wherever they reside, I tend now to see what has been achieved to date to be of little significance. I take the view that no deal and reversion to WTO rules is the only clear way forward. It is financially advantageous to the UK providing that our Chancellor can be brought under control in his desire to hand £39 Billion to the EU for no good reason. WTO trade should be firmly established from April 2019 and the Irish border left untouched by the UK. If the EU want border posts stuffed with jobsworths that is their problem.
Having done this the EU can snipe away as it has been doing or submit proposals for a free trade treaty while we continue collecting duty from existing trade and finding alternatives around the World. For the EU it is lose lose lose, or the price of intransigence.
October 18, 2018
‘No more delays – just get on with it’…
The same message should be emailed to every single Tory MP regarding the removal of May as the leader of our party
Please someone save the Tory party from itself, the threat of liberal left infection and the nation from the sclerotic grip of the EU
October 18, 2018
Duncan, you are so right. The so-called rail privatisation was botched. The whole system including the railway stations needs to be properly privatised and sold off to the highest bidders, and don’t let politicians anywhere near it.
October 18, 2018
Anglophile Grybauskaitė (black-belt Lithuanian president) said it best, during her “doorstep” comments:
“We do not know what they (UK) want, they do not really know themselves what they want” And “It’s very difficult to negotiate with someone who has no strong mandate”
So somehow, the UK first has to come together as a nation.
October 18, 2018
PvL, I know what I want and 17.4 million people ticked the “Leave” box on the referendum ballot paper.
But clearly our Prime Minister is trying to please everybody and ending up please none…
One of the reasons I voted leave was to make our MPs, Civil Servants etc. answerable to the people and not hide behind the EU smoke and mirrors.
October 19, 2018
I doubt all of those 17.4 million (about 800K who are no longer with us) had the same idea of what brexit would mean for them. Now it looks like the parliamentary Conservative Party will not be able to authorize government to conclude anything the EU will find acceptable, we may be entering a situation where the UK car industry will shrink considerably, among a raft of foreign owned employment opportunities that will be lost. I doubt the Brexit proponent in Sunderland wants to pay that price for some abstract notion of sovereignty, freedom, own laws or whatever rhetorical label politicians may invent. A trade deal with the US will not bring those jobs back and, will make BMW SUVs cheaper (they are made in the US). Nissans would come from Tennessee or Mississippi. Hondas from Canada, etc. And the UK managerial class would continue to drive Audis, BMWs and Mercs, alongside Jaguars that would be manufactured in Slovakia..
You cannot be serious that all these people voted for something that would incur very high adjustment costs, precisely in areas of the UK that are already depressed.
October 20, 2018
Straight out the the Project Fear 2.0 handbook.
October 18, 2018
Was any western democracy ever genuinely ‘together as a nation’? Was it not far more likely that the government controlled the levers of information and ‘informed’ the citizens what their (the citizens) collective decision had been? We live in an age now where all may speak to all. Perhaps the Brexit referendum and it’s consequences are a harbinger of politics to come in the western countries.
October 18, 2018
@GnarthAgain: “Referendums are the tools of demagogues and dictators” (Margaret Thatcher, Clement Attlee).
Countries do come together against a perceives outside enemy (as in war).
What I fear is a spoiling of relations by painting the EU as the ultimate enemy. We’ve seen a fair bit of it already (over decades) by the tabloid media, but this tendency could gain strength among politicians as well.
October 18, 2018
PeterVL
The freest, wealthiest, healthiest country on the planet is……. Switzerland a country ruled by referendum
October 19, 2018
The wealthiest country on the planet is not Switzerland, it is Abu Dhabi, ruled by the leaders of an Arab tribe.
October 18, 2018
PVL. Nothing less than the parasitic EU deserves.
October 18, 2018
That is an odd qoute.
Give us lots of examples of dictators and demagogues giving their people referendums.
October 18, 2018
Dear Peter,
We do know what we want and there is the strongest mandate there has ever been: the biggest vote for anything ever, the referendum, backed up by a general election in which 85% of the electorate voted for parties which promised in their manifestoes to honour that referendum and to come out of the single market, customs union, and subjugation to the ECJ. What more evidence do you want?
Unfortunately, we are being betrayed, on the pretext of seeking a “deep and special relationship with the EU” which we didn’t vote for. We want to be friends with the nations of Europe, including those in the EU, but we do not want a special relationship with the Commission. We want to leave the Commission and all its works. We are happy to go to WTO but if the EU wants to trade freely and fairly with us, they have only to say so. They haven’t so far.
We should have left straight away on this understanding and not hung around being insulted and humiliated by people who only want our money and to hobble our economy. We should never have offered billions of our money for talks, when the EU already had a terrible reputation for the way in which it talks.
October 18, 2018
The largest ever vote cast in the UK was to Leave the EU.
That we have a dithering, hopeless leader is not the fault of the UK nor of those 17.4 million. Granted it is also not the fault of the EU, but it is the fault of the majority of Tory MPs who, for some obscure reason, won’t send her packing. So your (and your black-belt president’s) ire should be directed at Soubry, Morgan, Grieve et al. who keep this woman in place. I believe our host would have her gone by lunchtime along with 90% of the UK population.
October 18, 2018
@Sir Joe Soap: your vote would not affect just 17mn people but would affect the lives of 65mn people in actually quite a fundamental way.
No attempts to build bridges, no atempts to seek a cross-party broad based consensus early on, no attempts to (like on the continent) to try a “grand coalition” or even a government of “national unity” after the 2017 elections.
The “winner takes all” system and the adversarial political culture in Britain aparently don’t are not suited for this.
October 18, 2018
You know babies, toddlers, children and all those under 18 cannot vote.
You know many who can vote choose not to vote.
You know those who do are not UK citizens vannot vote.
So stop quoting the whole population figure of 65 million
October 19, 2018
More deceit–and particularly foul in view of the farce that is labelled “democracy” in the EU.
October 19, 2018
P vL
You mean like ignoring them when this happens?
Dutch voters overwhelmingly rejected a Ukraine-European Union treaty on closer political and economic ties, in a rebuke to their government and to the EU establishment
October 18, 2018
Ha! Come visit. There is zero chance that this will happen.
I had dinner with some Remainer friends the other night.
All highly successful, high tax paying 40 somethings.
Politically we have two things in common.
Firstly, we loathe Brexit.
Secondly, we loathe the Conservative party which has imposed Brexit on us even more than we loathe Jeremy Corbyn.
The Tories are finished. They have negligible support among future generations and never will.
October 18, 2018
Odd. I likewise know lots of highly successful high tax paying 30 40 and 50 somethings. they all have one thing in common. Although there are mixed views on Brexit, no-one in any responsible position in business thinks Corbyn will be anything other than a disaster. Europeans are interesting on this – they don’t generally like Brexit, but don’t have strong views about whether its likely to be a success or not. but they won’t be hanging around for so much as a day if it looks like Corbyn is getting in.
Looks like your friends aren’t typical. not a surprise. judging by the tone of your posts i should think your friends are carefully selected to agree with you, in a righteous echo-chamber!
Opinion polls suggest that, even with Mrs May as leader, the Conservatives will win.
October 18, 2018
Andy
Hit the nail on the head old boy.
Half a dozen of you, with no experience of ordinary people think you know whats best for everyone. When in fact you can’t even keep your own company going
Pathetic and deluded
October 18, 2018
Ooh, get you, Andy !
How many press ups can you do ?
You do realise that you’re officially old as far as a millennial goes ? All that counts is that you LOOKED like someone who might have voted Brexit.
How you gonna change that ?
Ponce around in a silly blue beret for the rest of your life ??? (dining with your over privileged and lucky non-millennial chums isn’t going to cut it.)
October 19, 2018
“Andy” has no friends. Just remainiacs playing lets pretend.
October 18, 2018
@Andy: But you still have to respect the result of this referendum, or decide as a parliament that these matters are too complex for a referendum, or reach some other national consensus position, or have elections or . . .
The genie is out of the bottle.
October 18, 2018
Yes – true. People like me have to live with the mess the Brexiteers have imposed on us. But we have demographics on our side and they do not. Brexit will be overturned. The question is not if – it is when.
Mr Redwood and his chums have an audience in the UK – but it is mainly an elderly audience who are completely irrelevant to younger people. I am middle aged and everyone I know who is younger than me rejects Brexit and the Tories. The Conservatives at flattered on the polls only because Jeremy Corbyn is awful. A decent Labour leader would wipe them out at the next election.
October 18, 2018
@Andy: I just think that turning around, back to join the EU may take 1 or 2 decades. I may not be around but am optimistic that this may happen.
October 19, 2018
Sold your expensive house yet? Translation fees will drop when we leave and the market is opened up to laptop workers. Geriatric advice from experience.
October 19, 2018
Andy doesn’t like it because it upsets Andy , it makes his translation business difficult. Andy lacks the nouse to grow his business into other markets, Andy is too ignorant to see the opportunities of opening up world trade and the need for even greater translation services ( I’ve just made a small investment into a business that offers a range of services to new exporters including translation services )
Oh and Andy it would pay you to actually research the UK demographic, you might be quite shocked at how wrong you are
October 19, 2018
Andy
I had lunch with a French business colleague last week. He said I have no idea why you lot ( the UK ) keep worrying about EU trade , theres nothing worthwhile happening here , the markets of the future are all China and Africa
October 18, 2018
I’ll give you another quote, this time from a high-ranking wartime US admiral – When in command, Command!
The inference being that a true leader gets on with the job in a direct and forceful no-nonsense way, and insists their instructions are carried out, not dither and fart around making concession after concession. The so-called ‘leader’ we have right now is a national disgrace and an embarrassment. Just imagine her leading troops into battle and pandering to the enemy. We’d be overrun in no time!
As for the people of the UK not knowing what they really want, I disagree. Please don’t confuse what we want with the Prime Minister’s indecisiveness and ineptitude. In the first instance, we want to be out of the European Union and we made that clear, but they keep throwing obstacles in our way. In the second instance, we want a leader to say to the European Union, if you keep throwing obstacles in our way, we are just going to up sticks and leave. That couldn’t be clearer, and someone with the right skills would appreciate and understand that.
Maybe the Lithuanian president ought to get out more and talk to the right people in order to know what the citizens of the United Kingdom really want. Leaving the EU would be quite high on their list of priorities, as would getting rid of people like Theresa May who cannot or will not execute a simple, clear instruction.
Tad
October 18, 2018
I’d say most of those posting here know what we want; it probably resembles free trade and the ability to trade with others. Defence under NATO umbrella, control of our own immigration policies. No payment to trade.
October 18, 2018
@Wessexboy: You can’t really suggest that the postings on this website are representative for the UK as a whole. And even in the government party there are deep divisions.
October 19, 2018
Yes he can because they do. And you can neither recognise nor tolerate the truth.
October 18, 2018
It’s been a refusal by one side to accept a clear result by referendum and then for them to insist that the winning side was unclear about what they wanted, which is completely untrue.
OK. Remain wins. (It’s very clear that our host and others can’t do anything.) No re-run of the referendum. We won’t be going back in on the same terms anyway so let it be Brino.
This needs to be seen for what it is. A surrender.
October 18, 2018
@Anonymous: Agreed that it was a knife edge referendum result? What naturally would follow would be a national or political discussion to broaden the base for a UK position.
That base would probably have been soft. But instead there was a lurge towards the extreme (lots of red lines) which hardened the positions of the losers.
October 18, 2018
“What naturally would follow…”
Except had the result been Remain by the same margin. It would have been done and dusted and full-steam-ahead integration in the EU would be underway by now.
We were warned in advance of the referendum that this would happen.
October 18, 2018
It wasnt a knife edge result.
In the biggest election turnout in uk history and over a million more people voted to leave than remain.
Converted into parliamentary constituencies we would have had a government with a majority of over 150
October 19, 2018
A 52-48 result is what professional pollsters would consider a knife edfe result, surely. That one million might chnage sides within a day. But no need to be defensive of these comments. When appr half of the country wants to turn left and the other half, right, a wise government recognizes the need to not respond to such a weak signal. And as you may have seen time and again, no poll shows a UK-wide preference for a “no deal” outcome. Peter is right, the bias on theis forum is very clear and not in line with what polls indicate as the majority opinion. Nothing unusual about that, politicians’ blogs attract syncopants and a few interested hobbyists and researchers. Not everyone who wathes a football game is a member or even a fan of one of the competing teams. Brexit is simply the most interesting political phenomenon in Europe since the 70s and highly layered. Thanks to mr Redwood there is an opportunity (much better than the Express) to observe fringe opinions in real time and add a contrarian one.
October 19, 2018
nonsense.
You cannot describe it as a knife edge result.
Ridiculous propaganda.
October 18, 2018
It matters not what the UK Government want or consider necessary. They had a clear instruction over 2years ago that requires timely execution. There are dire consequences for them (and politicians in general) if they fail to carry out the democratic will. The EU have declined to dicuss trading arrangement until we are no longer a member so a ‘no-deal’ exit is the default arrangement. Is the EU prepared to alter their stance? It appears not.
October 18, 2018
@Jagman84: The EU has simply applied the rulebook of article 50, all known in advance. The UK chose to define lots of red lines. Already in 2017, latest March 2018 it was clear that a Canada or South Korea FTA could be offered.
The UK chose to ignore that. Why? Doesn’t it respect EU27 red lines? Why did it try this divide and rule approach to individual EU27 countries?
October 18, 2018
Does South Korea or Canada agree to freedom of movement?
October 18, 2018
@Edward: if course not, they are “third countries”as you will be post-Brexit.
October 19, 2018
My point is that whilst the EU refuses to
allow any deal with the UK they have made deals with other nations which enables trading to take place.
October 18, 2018
Very well put. Mrs May is trying to negotiate for our country, and all the while the likes of Rees-Mogg and Redwood are undermining her, so the EU does not believe she can deliver.
October 18, 2018
@Len Grinds: And not just from the ERG’s side she faces opposition.
And also she “got in bed” with the only party which campaigned against the peace agreement in N. Ireland (Good Friday Agreement). That is not building a broad base for such an important matter.
October 18, 2018
Peter,
Please don’t call it a peace agreement. It was an abject surrender by Tony Blair to defeated terrorists. Even so, it doesn’t make any mention of the border, and the EU had nothing to do with it. The DUP’s judgement was correct, as it was over the December Joint Report.
October 18, 2018
@Edward2: then try, as I have done, to take a small cake and cut it in half with a knife, and then weigh the halves. You’ll expect how difficult it is to get 50% 50% . In my case the result was both times further away from that equilibrium than the referendum result.
(don’t forget to eat your cake! :). )
October 18, 2018
@Rose: the whole world calls it a peace agreement! And the situation has improved, although not enough as yet.
The despiced EU has actually spent a few bn euros in peace programs to help the two communities (protestant and catholique) get on better. The PEACE IV programme runs until 2020.
October 18, 2018
Len Grinds
Theresa May cannot be trusted, and must go now.
October 19, 2018
Your cake metaphor is silly Peter.
October 18, 2018
Opinion is divided in all democracies, including the Netherlands. There is nothing surprising about this. Mrs May’s convoluted Chequers model does not carry support in the Country, but polls suggest a Canada plus deal would do so.
October 18, 2018
@Richard1: I believe that in such an important matter a broader government coalition would have been sought in the Netherlands, e.g. a “grand coalition”. The UK system is too adversarial for that. A Canada deal (why plus?) would of course be possible, but takes time to negotiate.
October 19, 2018
Well you run your own country and mind your own business as to ours. Having seen the declining and ever more leftist/elite controlled state of Holland you have nothing to be boasting about.
October 20, 2018
@Mr Ecks: Sorry, but that is nonsense, the Netherlands has made a considerable move to the right, not the left. It is far less “elite controlled”than the UK. We’re growing more than 2.5 times faster than the UK, so if we’re declining . . . what about your country?!
October 18, 2018
The referendum was clear for the 17.4 million who want out of all the EU’s institutions, the single market, the customs Union, and any influence from the EU Courts and control over who comes to our homeland. We want control back here with our own elected officials who we can remove if they don’t please us. In a nutshell all of our sovereign democracy returned
October 18, 2018
@ Timeaction
The problem is our own elected officials are ignoring the will of those that voted to leave and in doing so have destroyed the trust and respect of the electorate.
The next election voters will be looking at ABC!
October 18, 2018
@Timaction: 17.4 million is not the country as a whole, it was a knife edge result. More effort could have been put in building a broader base right after the referendum or right after the 2017 elections.
October 18, 2018
You are being silly.
It was not a knife edge result.
October 19, 2018
Its not your business. Remain lost in a referendum where the whole of the political elite, the alleged great and good all told us we should stay. The British people spoke and leave we will. You can stay in the EU dictatorship Mr EU. Good luck with that!
October 18, 2018
She has a strong mandate. She has the clear, obvious and commanding mandate to remove us frmo the EU by any means necessary. By trying to suggest we are not united is merely fluff.
It does not matter what stay chained want. They lost. May should be obeying her masters and taking us out of the EU. That she and her officials don’t want to is irrelevant.
October 19, 2018
I see to remember that the French only approved the Maastricht Treaty by 51% to 49%. When challenged on this, Leon Britton said “A yes is a yes”. So what is invalid about a vote by 52% to 48%. It is ridiculous to assume that the UK will ever be united on this issue. I note in passing that the 48% Remain vote included Northern Irish Republicans, Scottish Nationalists and immigrant groups that don’t want to integrate. None of these three have the UK’s interests at heart.
October 18, 2018
may must go
October 18, 2018
Yesterday it was the EU telling Theresa May to come up with creative ideas to solve the (largely fabricated) problem of the Irish border; according to the Telegraph today she is returning the favour by making the same demand of them; both only need to look at this article in the FT on May 10th 2018:
https://www.ft.com/content/4e3d830a-52dc-11e8-b24e-cad6aa67e23e
“Land of fairytale castles offers Brexit inspiration”
“UK looks to Liechtenstein in search of creative solutions to EU trade conundrum”
“But the Alpine state’s place inside two separate regimes — the Swiss customs union and the EU-linked European Economic Area (EEA) — has made it a laboratory for Brussels-compliant, hybrid solutions to vexing trade problems.
Britain is exploring its system of “parallel marketability”, a legal fix agreed by the EU in 1995 that allowed Liechtenstein to straddle two distinct economic spaces with conflicting standards on goods.
One senior Whitehall official described it as “a very interesting idea”, with relevance to the effort to avoid a hard Northern Ireland border. “It is a good answer in theory,” said the official. “We need to look at how it would work in practice.”””
That was five months ago, SO WHY HAVE WE HEARD NOTHING SINCE THEN?
And why should Theresa May now think that staying under the thumb of the EU for an extra year would give her favourite euromaniac civil servant Olly Robbins and his officials the time to find a solution when they haven’t even bothered to follow up this promising potential solution over the past five months, and instead have wasted everybody’s time on a crackpot customs scheme which they already know the EU will not accept?
October 18, 2018
Denis – Just because the establishment on both sides of the channel “will do what it takes” to keep us in for ever and a day with pay and no say.
October 18, 2018
Denis – We are witnessing the slow agonising death our so called democracy.
What would be the point of voting again.
October 18, 2018
May and Hammond are indicating they are hard line Remainers, the show is over EU, we are off should be obvious to all bar that group.
October 18, 2018
@A.Sedgwick: so nobody to negotiate with?
October 18, 2018
If you and we can see this then why can’t the government and the cabinet? It defies belief that they might even consider a transition period especially when it will cost so much money. No need to raise taxes if we kept this money to spend at home. I despair.
October 18, 2018
Fus – -Please don’t say you “despair” – they’ll start a Despair Tax and raise billions with what TM is deliberately doing.
October 18, 2018
We are all despairing. She was on the news today saying that she wants an extension to the extension where nothing changes, with no right to change or vote on anything. She is a clown of the highest order and foolish to boot for putting our country at risk from a foreign power who could legislate against us! She must go and go now!
October 18, 2018
Mrs May has no idea what to do next. It’s time for you all to put her out of her misery.
October 18, 2018
Ian – Mrs May KNOWS EXACTLY what she intends to do next.
It is important to understand what we are seeing. It is planned, deliberate and absolutely intentional
I believe May is as dangerous as is Corbyn. She possesses authoritarian tendencies and that sends a sinister shiver down my spine. Her predilection for social control legislation is truly disturbing and a wake up call for all those British citizens who believe in individual freedom, freedom of speech and the sanctity of the private over the interventionist State
It breaks my heart to see what’s happened to the Tory party
The Tories have always been the bulwark against the rise of an all powerful, all consuming, anti-democratic State. It seems they have failed in their mission
October 18, 2018
Wish she was put out of OUR misery.
October 18, 2018
May and the Remainers are trying their best to keep us in. Lots of backhanders and EU gravy train jobs could be lost to them, they’re desperate.
October 18, 2018
Actually….out of OUR misery…
October 18, 2018
What can be agreed in 5 years of talking that can’t be agreed in 4? The proposal for an extension is a nonsense, the whole dither and delay , extending the time when we continue as a zombie country, is costing our country dear. Perhaps that’s the whole aim of it, suck the life out of our country in the hope we recant from our heresy to leave the EU.
Conservative MPs have to find the courage to end this nightmare. May does not have the wherewithal to negotiate our exit from the EU. Please find somebody who does.
October 18, 2018
Iain Moore. On the other hand why can’t the ‘bloody difficult woman’ just resign and let someone who can deal with it all take her place?
October 18, 2018
In law, justice delayed is justice denied. Brexit delayed is freedom denied.
Might Conservatives agree to appoint a Quick Exit PM to replace Theresa May rapidly, solely to conclude our leaving the EU now? The chosen person could pre-accept having to resign soon after, enabling selection of a full-term replacement to be voted in without disruption to the presently-crucial process.
October 18, 2018
The ball is in Conservative MPs court, you and your colleagues are the only ones that can oust Weak & Wobbly now…
Just get on with it…
October 18, 2018
Mrs May has turned negotiations into a total bloody farce, one can only assume this has been intentional. Either way she needs to go now, and take Hammond with her, who insanely wants to pay the EU £39bn for nothing.
I and many others are at a loss as to how Conservative MP’s continue to support her, unless it is due to TM threatening you all with a GE as stated by Andrea Jenkins on the Peston show,
Time to call her bluff.
October 18, 2018
The Cons could win a GE with a landslide if they had a truly committed Brexiter MP at the helm, with an utterly dedicated team, and if they dropped the outdated “progressive” (always a misnomer) Conservatism agenda, and adopted grassroots Conservatism. The problem is that you have lost all the trust that voters once had in your Party. If the Cons keep May, then I think they will lose the next election, and become largely irrelevant.
October 19, 2018
Would that truly committed brexiteer know what brexit means? For instance, what trade bloc to belong to: US or EU (you cannot have both), how to deal with the Irish problem (there is a treaty between Ireland and the Uk that is completely separate from UK ERU membership, etc.? I really would like to see that person.
October 20, 2018
We can trade with USA and with Europe.
We don’t have to join any trade blocs nor choose between them.
There is no difficult for N Ireland, it will remain part of the UK.
If the Republic of Ireland’s wants to construct a border wall then it is free to do so.
October 18, 2018
It is vital that sensible MPs hold their nerve and vote down the Withdrawal Bill.
No more money for nothing. No more dragging things out.
I assume the Withdrawal Bill cannot also be delayed?
October 18, 2018
We’re fast reaching the point where Leave politicians need to prepare their supporters for disappointment and to tell them that Brexit cannot be delivered.
What is as clear as day is that we do not have the personnel nor the will to extract ourselves from the EU.
No second referendum.
A People’s Vote is device by which to hand the EU back its mandate – under duress.
We will be peaceful and orderly (as we always have been) but we must not do what other nations in the EU have done before and give the EU legitimacy. There is widespread disharmony throughout the EU.
October 18, 2018
I’m not sure about your “peaceful and orderly” line. We are slow to rise but we are bloody angry. Since the many internal wars of the middle ages we have decided as a nation to vote for things via the ballot box. knowing that we will not always win, but we accept the will of the majority. If we don’t get the full brexit that we voted for then democracy is dead in this country. There will be those that will then revert to other means.
400,000 country people marched peacefully against the hunting act and the government took no notice.
1,000,000 marched against going to war with Iraq and the government took no notice.
100,000 rioted against the poll tax and the bill was lost along with Mrs Thatchers job.
The so called “slim majority” of leave voters is 15 times a capacity crowd at Wembley stadium.
I have voted at every opportunity in local Eu and general elections since I was old enough to vote. I am in my 60’s now but if this Brexit issue is not sorted as 17.4 million people voted then I will never vote again. I don’t care if we get Corbyn. It could not be much worse and at least it might generate a proper conservative party in this country once more. I doubt I am alone in feeling this way.
October 18, 2018
I will just add that Michael Gove is my MP. I have voted for him in the past but I now view him as part of the sell out. I don’t know what his differences are with Boris but I do know that if Boris was leading the negotiations we would be out by now. I have no one to vote for.
October 19, 2018
I would be interested in John Redwood,s view of Boris. Does he perhaps view him as an unpricipled charlatan, quite likely to perform a volte face and keep us in the EU once he gets to be PM, the only thing that matters to him?
October 18, 2018
Apologies for being grumpy, but the EU has never, ever had a mandate for anything. It has been given power and control over our nation by successive governments, the most egregious of which was Gordon Brown who cheated the people out of a referendum through changing a name from European Constitution to ‘Lisbon Treaty’ in phenomenal cheat, all to get Blair closer to being European president.
The EU is a river full of poison, and that poison has been flooding our economy and society for decades now.
October 18, 2018
There is a deal better than all forms of leaving – membership.
This has always been blindingly obvious to sensible people.
In the meantime I am enjoying Brexit.
The incompetence of your mob is beyond staggering.
October 18, 2018
It’s your mob that’s deliberately incompetent.
October 18, 2018
You love coming out with this bollocks all the time just to wind people up. You don’t make any significant contribution to the debate. Take a day off man!
October 18, 2018
Membership better ?- two question Andy. What would the Daily Subscription go up to once they had control of everything? £100m a day? £200m a day – whatever figure they come up with? . . . . and with no borders what so ever – what would you do with say 10m or 20m immigrants a year arriving, contributing nothing positive, wanting a house, benefits, NHS, their multiple offspring teaching etc etc – -ALL on the UK taxpayer .
October 18, 2018
The EU already has rules on this. There’s a 3 month rule already in existence.
If you move to another member states and can’t support yourself (in the EU’s own words, you “become an unreasonable burden on the social assistance system of the host Member State”), you can be sent back.
October 18, 2018
Peter Parsons
Sent back you say? We can’t even deport known, convicted terrorists
I agree though that our establishment bubble bought this on themselves, if our civil servants hadn’t “gold plated” every EU directive and had actually listened to the fears of the people they wouldn’t have got themselves in the mess they are in.
October 18, 2018
They could be if the UK government implemented the rule, something the UK has failed to do. Responsibility for that failure sits entirely with the UK government.
October 18, 2018
And how many are, exactly?
October 18, 2018
In the UK, none, but that’s because of Westminster’s failure to apply the rule.
October 19, 2018
very few in europe too.
October 19, 2018
What other member states choose to do has nothing to do with the UK’s government’s own failure to implement this rule.
October 20, 2018
The efforts to apply the rule is frustrated by legions of lawyers, endless appeals processes, and human rights laws.
October 18, 2018
You dismiss 17.4 million people as a mob?
October 18, 2018
Only it wasn’t a ‘mob.’ It was an orderly vote by people who have remained orderly despite two years of prevarication.
They will remain orderly – in spite of failure to deliver Brexit – if the likes of Redwood tell them extrication from the EU is undeliverable and that we must accept Brino or even Remain.
What is completely unnecessary is a People’s Vote. Just accept our surrender.
If not then why ever not ? Perhaps to continue the pretence that we live in a democracy and that we are in the EU as volunteers ?
October 18, 2018
“There is a deal better than all forms of leaving – membership.” – Andy
Unless you are a fisherman hit by the fishing rules, a farmer hit by the CAP rules, an IT firm hit by EU Digital VAT, a small company blocked from trading with the single market due to the same VATMOSS mess, a gardener or farmer who had to fight the 2013 seed rules mess…
I could go on, but the EU is very much anti-small business.
October 18, 2018
Wrong as usual, I’m afraid Theresa May and Hammond are ‘your’ mob.
October 18, 2018
Your mob lost.
October 18, 2018
@Andy,
The evidence to me looks like the UK would do just fine out of the EU (but in fairness, would/will take a few years to get there, i think).
But I don’t think this is the main reason for leaving. Or even immigration (I think Brexiters will struggle with immigration just as previous governments have). I think the real reason is sovereignty. That British people are in charge of their own affairs, ultimately. For reasons of democracy but also because the British know their country best.
Saying that, I also think if the UK does achieve full sovereignty, that it needs to make a big effort to have excellent relations with Europe, in terms of trade, security and culture. I would also support Brexit a lot more if its leaders came out more denouncing negative-style nationalism as opposed to positive-style nationalism (or patriotism). I think this is why some people don’t like Brexit – they don’t like SOME of its more negative-style nationalism (whilst many Brexiters are patriots in the good/positive sense of the word as well, and there are some Remainers who aren’t patriots at all – who don’t believe in patriotism).
October 18, 2018
Even with the govt, the opposition, the BoE the CBI the TUC etc etc promulgating Project Fear it wasn’t possible to get a majority in the referendum for remain. In any new vote remain would not be able to use a project Fear as it’s been shown to be nonsense. So the remain argument would need to go: ‘ the CAP and the CFP are good policies because…the euro has actually been a great success because….it’s good to have uncontrolled immigration from the EU but restrictions against the rest of the world because…..it’s better not to have an independent trade policy like successful economies large and small because….’. You’d have to fill in the blanks next time.
October 18, 2018
Andy
The person who STILL is unable to tell us WHY he wants to stay in the EU and why whatever he wants can’t be achieved outside it
Andy the person who is rude, grizzly and cries on here every day yet, every piece of good news posted he runs and hides
Andy
You are the perfect example of the type of person that the majority despise and a major reason they voted how they did
October 18, 2018
I think he actually lives in his mum’s basement. When I had kid’s his’s age and a business I wouldn’t have spent a whole Sunday on the Redwood site !
October 20, 2018
Libertarian
Andy goes too far and you just keep digging with him rather sad
October 18, 2018
‘Former’ Prime Minister Theresa May has form.
She stated ‘Leave means Leaving the EU’ & was right then.
She acts as if Leave means ‘Accept an EU Withdrawal Agreement’ & remains wrong now.
We don’t need her or their agreement to Leave. We just Leave.
If they want our business they can compete for it at a price we accept, just as we as a free nation shall do in the other parts of the world with higher values.
October 18, 2018
To Adam,
“We don’t need her or their agreement to Leave. We just leave.” This is the biggest thing this government has concealed.
Yes, a thousand times Yes. And it would be infinitely cheaper. And we need to go now.
October 18, 2018
Yes the extension would mainly have the effect of increasing the bung and leaving us for even longer in vassalage. I imagine what will happen is a deal will be agreed at the last minute, after a pantomime of brinkmanship, and Conservative Brexiteers dared to vote it down. I wonder whether Labour might not abstain in the event, that way they can claim they aren’t either blocking Brexit or allowing the UK to ‘crash out’ over the ‘cliff edge’? Presumably that would mean the eventual Chequers Minus Minus deal will go through. Then I guess it’s a question of ditching Mrs May ASAP after 29 March and having another crack at Re-doing the whole thing next year with a new PM.
October 18, 2018
How on earth did the Tory party come up with this woman to lead this negotiation? This is now capitulation moved into yet another dimension of time, prolonging the uncertainty and agony totally unnecessarily. She talks meaningless drivel. Please take her away from our TV screens and our lives.
October 18, 2018
She’s a different type of person Joe, from a limp-wristed and airy fairy liberal sub-class. She’d be better off in the Snowflake Party. Not what we need at all – especially at this time.
How the hell these people got into the Tory party in the first place baffles me. Somewhere along the line, the party lost its identity. Gone were many of the born leaders with strength of character and moral purpose, to be replaced with people who either hadn’t got a clue about leadership, or who used being an MP merely as a stepping stone to social advancement. And I know, because I have seen them first-hand. And if anybody ever wants anything to make them physically sick, I could supply names that would do the job just fine!
If only the Tories could get back to the party they should have been all along – moral, ethical, caring, patriotic, prudent, against criminals, for a strong defence, providing a low-tax economy, and adequately funding essential public services. But what we presently have is so clearly different to that. We effectively have a liberal leader who promotes those of her own kind to her inner sanctum. Little wonder then, we have a disaffected electorate who wants to see the back of her.
Tad
October 18, 2018
And it could have been all so very different had we offered them EEA / Norway + as a transition arrangement. Yes they may have refused. But why, when we meet all the criteria. Everything could have been arranged.
Personally I still believe an 11th hour deal / EU-Lite will be struck. The EU love a drama.
October 18, 2018
So how would you have arranged to overcome the absurd extreme and intransigent opposition of the Irish government to any measures which would even imply a border on the island of Ireland, including even the kind of “light touch” customs controls that operate between Norway (EFTA/EEA) and Sweden(EU/EEA)?
Repeated again only yesterday:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/10/17/the-uk-after-brexit/#comment-967182
““Is the Norway-Sweden border a solution for Ireland?”
Would something like this be good enough for the Irish government?
Nope, from 03:12 in, they reject:
“anything that would imply a border on the island of Ireland”.”
It is not even worth asking, they have made their position crystal clear.
October 18, 2018
Denis
This would have been my opening gambit. As I said in my original post above; “They may have refused” But that would be against their own rules as you well know.
But let us say they did, then we would have no choice but to go for WTO.
The border with the RoI is, as we both know, a manufactured one. I was first here to state that this could be used as an issue whilst others were going on about; “They sell more that us” nonsense.
The border is a shared thing yet, our PM, as you yourself have pointed out, took it upon herself to be the sole provider of the solution. This woman you voted for.
Remember. I have had previous with our PM when she was leader of my former council. She was loathed even then. So none of this comes as a surprise to me.
October 19, 2018
I did vote for her in 2017, I broke with my longstanding normal practice and put my trust in her to carry out the wishes of the electorate as had been expressed in the referendum. I will never do that again, not for her in the unlikely event that she seeks re-election as our local MP and nor for any other Tory candidate in any election.
October 18, 2018
Plus:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/10/14/mrs-may-damages-the-union-she-wants-to-defend/#comment-966524
“Interestingly the previous UK ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, has recently given a speech in the course of which he dismissed any notion of joining EFTA and staying in the EEA as an intermediate stage … “
October 18, 2018
The same man who demanded we hold EU nationals who we allowed to settle here in good faith as hostages in some negotiation. A man that was sacked from his job.
Nothing tried, nothing gained. We should have at least asked for it. If they said no, then it would have settled the argument long ago.
October 19, 2018
Yes, the same man who made that vile suggestion which Theresa May alone accepted, her first mistake of many. Nonetheless in this case his arguments are sound. We cannot unilaterally decide to move over to EFTA and stay in the EEA as some unthinkingly assume, and why should all the other countries agree to that? Especially when we said it was only to be temporary, and while we were in it we intended to abuse safeguard provisions on the free movement of persons, etc?
October 18, 2018
The EU has not refused a Norway model. They would gladly give us one. But Norway crosses Brexiteer red lines. They are your red lines, nobody else’s.
Norway also accepts freedom of movement – and as immigration was the biggest issue for many of the pensioners this would upset them. It really is not the EU’s fault that Brexiteers are so clueless about the basics.
October 18, 2018
JR,
interesting perspective and observation on which you have made your comments and judgements on what the future might potentially look like, but y0u do not actually know yet, but yu have still made a judgement.
So, what ahs actually changed in your judgement or lack of it in the past 20 years?
thank you
October 18, 2018
Andy
The people of Norway voted twice, to not join the EU
October 18, 2018
If anybody here still believes that the present Irish government may be open to the possibility of sensible negotiation then I would urge them to just look at these two articles in today’s Irish Times:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/backstop-a-matter-of-trust-as-well-as-principle-taoiseach-says-1.3666924
“Backstop a matter of trust as well as principle, Taoiseach says”
Note how he insists that the so-called backstop must remain in place
“… unless and until we have an alternative agreement that also assures us that we will have no border on the island of Ireland.”
continuing with their silly pretence that there is no border on the island of Ireland at present, a pretence which our own weak-kneed government does not dismiss as the obvious fiction that it is; and note:
“Mr Varadkar brought a copy of Wednesday’s Irish Times, which featured a story on an IRA bombing of a border customs post in 1972, into the summit dinner to stress to EU leaders the importance of the Border issue for Ireland.”
The front page of which is also pictured here:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/taoiseach-uses-copy-of-the-irish-times-at-brussels-dinner-to-emphasize-border-issue-1.3667789
“Taoiseach uses copy of ‘The Irish Times’ at Brussels dinner to emphasize Border issue”
Basically they are threatening a renewal of terrorism if they do not get their way, and it is time that our government denounced that despicable tactic.
October 18, 2018
No he is not threatening anything. He is merely warning people. Stop being so dramatic.
The Irish are looking after themselves and their economy. They know that the UK out of the CU would be able to by cheaper produce than that which comes from the RoI. They also know that the UK would lower its corporate taxes and attract business away from them. They are really scared !
The above and more is why I voted to leave the EU. Immigration was way down on my list.
October 19, 2018
So just before an EU summit the Irish government arranges for what is close to being its house newspaper, the Irish Times, to produce an issue with a lurid front page splash on a 1972 IRA bombing at a customs post in which nine people were murdered, which front page the Irish Prime Minister then waves around at the EU meeting, as duly reported in the next day’s issue of the Irish times, while the Deputy Prime Minister tweets that everyone should read an article headlined:
“What if Brexit brings the violence back?”
and
“Fears that re-emergence of Border will lead to return of Troubles”
– note the “re-emergence of Border” – and yet there is no hint of any threat in that and I am being “dramatic”.
October 18, 2018
Denis – Could it be just a negotiating tactic following the visitation of a certain MEP.
October 19, 2018
They’ve been saying it for over a year now, but for some reason certain people in the UK refuse to believe it. That is why I said nearly a year ago that there was no point in even trying to negotiate new arrangements at the border with these people, the UK government should unilaterally declare that it would be making no changes at all at the border but to be helpful it would pass and enforce a new UK law to control what could be exported across it.
October 18, 2018
The government’s negotiation strategy has clearly failed. There is total impasse on the backstop and the EU will never accept Chequers as it does not respect the four freedoms.
Why doesn’t May replace her negotiating team and handover overall responsibility to someone else? Surely this is a better outcome for her than facing a leadership challenge? If a small group of lesser known eurosceptic MPs were to quietly give her this ultimatum, this would change the dynamics of the whole process.
October 18, 2018
Apparently, it is more important for the Tory Party to keep Nigel Farage out of Parliament than to get the UK out of the EU. The Tory Party is what you get if you do not have representative democracy; instead of a duo of competent patriots running the country we have the May/Hammond freak show which replaced the Cameron/Osborne freak show. We need our own Salvini/Orban here; that’s why we need a new electoral system that respects the will of the people. Instead, we have a Tory/Labour pantomine horse with no sense of direction nor intended destination.
October 18, 2018
It beggars belief that a Prime Minister could behave in this way.
Surely her dismissal must be number one priority!
October 18, 2018
Not only her – Cameron said he would trigger Art 50 if it was a Leave vote – he resigned and walked away to cause a delay ( and carry on handing £50m a day to them ). May is carrying on his treachery.
October 18, 2018
More power to you and your Leave colleagues for representing the expressed political wish of the voters.
October 18, 2018
This is as predicted. Kick the can down the road. Furthermore getting locked into another seven year spending period would give the EU the excuse to add another £40 billion plus to pay on top of the current £40 billion bill. MPs should not touch it with a barge pole. The UK should, at most stand pat and let the clock run down. But May will not do that; she will scrabble around looking for a solution. In the absence of any initiative from Conservative MPs it looks as though she will be left stew in her own juice. Quite how she leaves office is unclear. Everyone will want to be sure she takes the blame for a No Deal Brexit. Indeed that may now be her best route forward and salvation – sit tight, let the clock run down, let the EU stew in their juice and proclaim “No deal is better than a bad deal”. That would present the EU with choice of either compromise or No Deal. Somehow I doubt she has it in her to do that.
October 18, 2018
I hear the Tory whips are telling renegades to support Mrs May or there will be a general election. I would call their bluff.
The country is in desperate need of a strong leader who has very powerful communication skills, and the moral strength to insist the whole country – including Keir Starmer, Thornberry, even Mr Grieve – pull together and back the clean decision to leave, leave on 29-3-19, leaving the Single Market, Customs Union. No backstop. No NI border controls.
If there is a backstop of any kind, EU customs membership on their terms, the UK will have NO negotiating power whatsoever. The EU will have NO incentive to negotiate a trade deal. We will be trapped, permanently.
If there is a general election, there is a problem of Brexit representation – it won’t help much if there is no pro-Brexit choice.
Then there is the question of what the different parties’ manifestos will look like on brexit … But I would still call the whips’ bluff. Taking the wind out of their sails might reduce their general thunder too?
October 18, 2018
So, the Tory ‘Army’ conscripts and promotes a Conscientious Objector to the role of Leader. A Conscientious Objector who does not agree with leaving the EU.
Exactly how many ‘battles’ did they expect to win…with this person in charge?
……………..
If May ever wanted to be seen as a great PM…in the same way as history judges Thatcher…she has achieved notoriety and will be seen as the polar opposite of Thatcher. Somewhere beneath the status of Neville Chamberlain.
…………….
The opinion polls are apparently showing the Conservative’s vote is holding up well.
I believe that within weeks, polls will start to reveal the Tidal Wave of electoral anger, against May’s U-turn, and her sell out to the EU.
……………..
May has almost certainly secured a rewarding future role in her beloved EU.
The rest of us…without an escape ‘parachute’ like May…desperately need our Country to be saved…and to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
May has dragged the name of Brexit through the mud…such that Remainers can say Brexit has been a failure.
Brexit has not even begun…May is the FAILURE.
Who will step up and save our great Country from KAMIKAZE May?
October 18, 2018
Pro-Brexit people within the Tory party seem to be wasting their efforts, because they are outnumbered by remainiac colleagues who will vote them down at every turn. This country is no longer about choosing Tory or Labour; it’s about Leave or Remain. Whilst pro-Brexit folk remain locked inside the Conservatives, nothing will happen. Meanwhile UKIP, the only party actually committed to leaving the Eu properly, is growing as folk realise they are wasting their time on the red-blue-red-blue pendulum elections. The democratic result of the referendum has been sneered at, spat on, and the leaving process is now constipated by Mrs May’s bumbling. It needs an enema.
October 18, 2018
Do I understand correctly that, in the event of no deal, M. Macron intends to make it more expensive and difficult for British people to visit the graves of their relations, who died to help liberate France on two occasions?
October 18, 2018
It seems clear that the plan to keep us in the EU, despite our wishes as expressed in the referendum, is moving to the final stages. We have been betrayed by current and former MPs and PMs who have visited Brussels to encourage delay and help reverse our decision.
It must be said that Mrs May is one of the worst, most duplicitous and mendacious PMs in our history. Just why you and your colleagues have let her remain in office is a mystery and I fear you intend to do nothing or leave it too late to remove her and save Brexit.
October 18, 2018
You did read Article 50 before you started did you Mr Redwood ?
So how is your easy Bexit going now ?
Reply Yes I read it and often quoted it at referendum meetings, where I always said leaving with no deal would work just fine
October 18, 2018
May now suggesting an election – she is weak, she can’t get a brexit bill through parliament that is already acknowledged. There will be an election anyway soon, so with May as leader the Torys are out, leave voters will see to that. Tory MPs only chance of staying in government is dump May now and install Boris, no leadership contest, no Hunt, Javid, Leadsom, Gove. We will get our true Brexit eventually it may take some time. Remainers may disrupt brexit but they will not go unpunished.
October 18, 2018
John
I completely support everything you say but I have one or two concerns
1. What obligations have we heaped up on ourselves in the Joint Report. Theoretically there shouldn’t be any until the withdrawal agreement is signed but that doesn’t seem to be the way the EU or even, in some areas, David Davis sees it.
2. We do still need to ensure that the people of NI are able to continue their daily lives with as little disruption as possible. There needs to be a carefully thought out plan for a post Brexit NI. Given the government’s recent record I’m not optimistic.
Reply We owe them nothing unless we sign the Agreement. There is no need to put new barriers on the border.
October 18, 2018
The EU side is only pretending they want a deal with us when they really want us out. Thinking is that we are far too much trouble for them, so it’s best if we spend a few years out while we make our minds up and decide on how we want to go- this is why the EU think the backstop is so important because when it comes back to negotiations again in five or ten years time they will not allow the Irish border become a bargaining chip. However things work out we are never going to be allowed to have a privaliged position again. ie.cherry pick and have our cake and eat it..the 39B Will be paid because it is part of the divorce also as is the movement of people..these things will have to be settled, if not before March 2019 then at some other time in the future.
October 18, 2018
Typo read in the first place
October 18, 2018
I have had enough of May/Hammond etc. I have enough of so called democracy!
My placard will be outside Downing Street tomorrow. NO DEAL. NOW!
We desperately need some politicians with guts enough to challenge the establishment!
October 18, 2018
After you then, Michael. The job’s open to all of us.
October 18, 2018
Mrs May must go
How much longer are we going to have to put up with this nonsense?
For heavens sake!
October 18, 2018
And when nothing is settled at the end of the extra transition year, there’ll be another and another and another. We will probably never leave.
October 18, 2018
The EU’s prime concern at the moment is the Euro, threatened by Italian Govt’s proposed actions. Then immigration-caused ‘populists’ not obeying diktats.
The longer they can keep us paying in by stalling….
October 18, 2018
Surely even a blind May can see that all the EU wants is the Money, and an extra £19 billion for that extra year will help on top of the £39 billion, if we can not solve the NI backstop in 2 years why on earth does she think an extra year will sort it, the EU have no intention of accepting any solution to the backstop why should they as under thier rules it will keep us in the EU for ever. We should just leave with no deal and not pay then argue for whatever we want from the EU in exchange for all or part of the money
October 18, 2018
The Trap is set. Once we sign the Withdrawal Agreement, it will be sprung and we will lose all ability to negotiate and get trapped inside the EU in perpetuity. It doesn’t matter if the delay is some months, one year, or many years; after the Withdrawal agreement is signed, it’s game over. With your business background, Mr Redwood, can you possibly imagine any business leader allowing themselves to get into such a position? Neither can I. Over my lifetime, our country has improved out of all recognition – from the run-down post war ‘lazy man of Europe’ to a vibrant, successful economy. This has been mainly because the leadership of our small, medium and to some extent large companies has improved significantly from the sclerotic 1950s and 1960s. The sad truth is that over the same period, the quality of most of our politicians has massively declined (regardless of party). I’ve run multinational businesses, and I wouldn’t employ any of those involved in this national humiliation, on either side of the joke described as a ‘negotiation’.
October 18, 2018
John, have you sent the letter to the 1922 committee? Is there still not enough Conservative MPs in favour of removing her? If she carries on much longer, every single one of you will be at risk of losing your seat.
October 18, 2018
Addendum to earlier post:
This being the result of applying visa restrictions to all visitors from Britain
October 18, 2018
Given the current febrile and cowardly state of the parliamentary conservative party, I can understand that many brexiteers don’t want to trigger a no-confidence vote because they believe TM might win that and would be in a stronger position for the next year. The priority must be to exert pressure on members of the Cabinet since their resignation(s) appears to be the best route for removing TM from office.
This whole affair is acquiring an ‘end of days’ feel to it. Parliament is not fit for purpose. I fear that some form of extra-parliamentary action, along the lines of civil disobedience, may be the only thing our mendacious, duplicitous, cowardly and venal MPs might heed.
October 18, 2018
Have just read a headline which says that Merkel and Macron spent more time in a pub than listening to Mrs May. This totally sums up the EU attitude to Brexit. They obviously think they hold the aces as well as all the trump cards and believe they can simply sit back and wait for us to capitulate.
October 18, 2018
Brexit is never going to happen while the appeaser May is leader of your party.
October 18, 2018
@Captain Peacock
Very true but the idea is to call this idiotic charade Brexit regardless. In reality, as has been pointed out so often that it’s becoming boring to reiterate it, the Chequers deal is a joke and an insulting betrayal of the referendum vote which was clearly to get out of the EU, lock, stock and barrel on the spot. In fact that is precisely what Call-me-Dave promised the country to do at the time. Still if you install a mediocrity and a traitor in the driving seat and let her have her head what do you expect?
October 18, 2018
Further addendum to previous posts:
I have since read that the claims have been misinterpreted by the media. Well there’s a surprise! Thanks for your positive posts today and yesterday.
October 18, 2018
Enough now, May has to go, 17.4m people never voted for a transition period of a day, let alone nearly three years. How the hell do you think you could possibly win an election in 2022 if we are either kept in after Jan 2022 for a further extension or leave then without a deal, having paid over an unnecessary fortune, or on a deal that looks anything like Chequers, having handed over north of £50bn?
October 18, 2018
What’s the plan for the Irish border question?
From what I understand, Mr Redwood simply doesn’t think there is much of an issue.
I can understand he doesn’t trust the EU, but why does most of his party disagree with him?
October 18, 2018
Surely Conservative MPs must now act to bring this tragi-comedy to an end ?
We now have Mrs May and Barnier calling for a year’s extension of the “transition” period which. in reality, we all know is nothing of the sort. It’s just another year of membership. Remainers in the establishment only need to engineer one more short extension to ensure we are still effectively in the EU at the time of the next General Election in which, of course, a cynical Labour Party will campaign to stay in permanently.
An extension will achieve precisely nothing other than be a device by which May hands over much more than an additional annual £10bn net contribution. More, because we are extremely unlikely to get much back other than our rebate as Brussels is unlikely to agree to fund any new projects in a country that is leaving.
Small wonder that the 27 leapt at the idea !
The utter humiliation Robbins and May have heaped upon our country is unforgivable. I cannot think of a worse case in our history other than 1066 or perhaps Suez.
October 18, 2018
Humiliation yes…probably like Suez.
Not so much like 1066.
King Harold fought and won a battle in the North of England (on 25 September) before marching South to face William the Conqueror in yet another battle
(14 October).
Harold made a brave attempt to save England…but lost and ended up with an arrow in his eye (allegedly).
Compare that performance with Theresa May’s, who makes no attempt to defend England…and then walks across the ‘battlefield’ to join the other side…maybe preferring that to an ‘arrow in the back’?
October 18, 2018
In business it’s often a good idea to delay. Why not the same with Brexit?
For example, it might be that a new product is too new to introduce to the market. The market isn’t ready for it. And/or a lot of works needs to be done to introduce it to the market, successfully.
Same can be said for Brexit. That our businesses need time to build up business outside the EU. Business is hard. This can take years. But I strongly believe possible. Also, this would give us time to build up our own economy in general. The success or failure of Brexit ultimately rests on how strong our economy is and how much we’re exporting outside the EU.
So why the rush? The evidence all points to Brexit still having lots of support. Also, with time, the EU is just going to get into more and more trouble, and so the British public will be even more opposed to being a part of it a few years down the line.
And it might be, that over a transition period, the rest of Europe might think that the British have got it right. That the whole of the EU should break up – but slowly and carefully, and instead just be a group of nations that have close ties – in terms of trade, security and culture – but full sovereignty.
Lastly, I support Brexit for practical and moral reasons (although I respect others who disagree and I also think there are many, many other things that Parliament needs to focus on not just Brexit). But not Brexit at any cost or the ends justify the means. I support a well-planned, orderly departure as opposed to a rushed, disorderly one (which could have dire unintended consequences) – affecting our country and Europe, one way or another, for the next 100 years or so.
October 19, 2018
“Same can be said for Brexit. That our businesses need time to build up business outside the EU. Business is hard. This can take years.”
EU VAT’s lack of threshold or publicity cut most small businesses off with no notice at all. We were one of the ones that managed to survive. In this case, there has been a two year lead-up (more time than companies have to respond to changes in the annual budget) and more than sufficient notification. I would suggest any business that has not made contingency plans for the exit options, has problems not caused by Brexit.
October 19, 2018
Al,
No offence, but you make business sound really easy!
It’s NOT. Especially when you need to do something radical like find customers outside the EU instead of inside the EU.
Finding new customers is ALWAYS challenging. It’s probably one of the main things that keeps most people in business awake at night. But then to give up your customers in Europe for new ones abroad, that’s a lot harder! You have to go to geographical areas far away. Different languages / culture. And so on.
I’m very sympathetic towards Brexit politicians. I totally get Sovereignty as the main reason why we should leave (that it’s more democratic and we know our country better than foreigners!). But having worked in business for some years, I’m also very sympathetic towards people in business! In particular those who say (forget me and you) who are really, really worried about Brexit. Not in the long term. But the short to medium term (and who might well support Brexit in the long-term, not for economic reasons, necessarily – I think long time, things will be about the same economically – but for reasons of National Sovereignty).
BW
October 19, 2018
Lastly, don’t forget, it’s the Survival of the Fittest out there. The Strong will survive in the short term. But the not-so-strong and those just making enough profit to continue could be really shaken by the inevitable strong winds that will come with Brexit, as these companies have to find new customers outside the EU.
All I’m saying is give these weaker companies (still essential to our economy) the time to build up their exports outside the EU (whilst we build up our own economy in general as well). Because a big, controversial political project like Brexit needs as much economic fuel in the tank as possible. And we need to be driving as much as possible outside the EU, instead of the EU – battle-ready then for Brexit. And I just think we need a few years to make ourselves battle-ready if we’re to win the war (regaining National Sovereignty – and how this will effect the UK for the next 100 years or so). Also, if we give Europe time, as well, then they too can get properly prepared as well so that we can then make a great trade deal (as well as close relations in security and culture).
October 20, 2018
The UK cannot sign any trade deals with non EU nations until we actually leave the EU
Therefore you have reduced your chances of gaining new non European customers by delaying leaving.
October 20, 2018
@Edward2
Fair enough. But it’s sill a bit of a Catch 22 then. Because you still have the problem of businesses that depend on EU trade.
Again, I’m with Brexiters why we should leave (for reasons of Sovereignty). But there is still the problem of businesses that depend on Europe on the short to medium to term. If things go wrong, then we could end up back in the EU under even worse conditions. That’s all (also with time, might be that EU slowly breaks up anyway and/or they look for a solution that works best for both whilst the UK prepares to leave the EU, properly).
October 18, 2018
Mr Camaron and his advisers with civil servants who recommended a referendum with legal advice told him he could leave the EU the next week with no problems, Mr Camaron was made to leave office at once by unknown people and forces.
The advice is still good today as it was back from 2015 up to 23 of June 2016 the day of the referendum why because of countries that are not at war have to give legal notice of changes to other countries and people of what they will be doing differently to how they do it now, usually about 6 months to 1 year notice, just like your council or gov has to give you legal notice in the newspaper and by other ways to let people know of changes, otherwise the bills for compensation can run into millions and billions of pounds, so everything you have heard since is mostly rubbish and just stories about nothing.
Thing like the planes will not able to fly the next day or your pet not being to enter the EU the next day tariffs and so on.
October 18, 2018
Article 50 is a legal notice that the UK sent to the EU that the UK will be leaving the EU on the 29th of March 2018, that two years notice of changes, till the UK start to receive legal notices from countries inside of the EU and the EU itself of what changes they are making and when they will be making them with dates of when the changes will take place with signage where needed and paperwork sent to your government so the gov can inform business and people, there is nothing they can do to change anything, falling off a cliff is complete rubbish.
October 18, 2018
This week the Maidenhead Advertiser has published a letter from a Tory councillor calling on people to write to Theresa May and urge her to deliver the Brexit people voted for. It’s about time that her party woke up and either got her under control or got rid of her.
Anyway that is what I have now done, by forwarding her a copy of my latest submission for publication which reads as follows:
“Dear Sir
In 1995 it was confirmed that after 358 years of effort by mathematicians Oxford Professor Andrew Wiles had finally solved the abstract problem of Fermat’s Last Theorem.
And at the rate she is going, it may take Prime Minister Theresa May a comparable period to come up with a solution to the similarly abstract problem of the Irish land border.
Not that she would worry if we did spend the next three and a half centuries under the thumb of the EU in her oxymoronic “standstill” transition during which nothing changed.
Now we have the EU telling her to come up with “creative” solutions to this largely fabricated problem, while she demands that they must come up with “creative” solutions.
Yet on May 10 2018 the Financial Times reported:
“UK looks to Liechtenstein in search of creative solutions to EU trade conundrum”,
referring to the principle of “parallel marketability” which allows the border between Liechtenstein and Switzerland to remain just as open for the free passage of goods as the Irish border is at present, despite differing product standards on either side.
And the article specifically said:
“One senior Whitehall official described it as “a very interesting idea”, with relevance to the effort to avoid a hard Northern Ireland border. “It is a good answer in theory,” said the official. “We need to look at how it would work in practice.””
That was five months ago; so why have we heard nothing since then?
Yours etc”
October 18, 2018
There is a thing called international law which is there to prevent wars between countries, that so a country cannot impose something on another country without formal legal notice if it does it can be seen as an act of war and mobiles its army to protect its goods and people to make sure that they can carry on as before.
October 18, 2018
I think what most people here want to know Mr Redwood is, have you sent a letter to the 1922 Committee, if not, why not, and when might you.
I have great respect for you, you are completely sound on Brexit but if you allow May to Remain in place that is not much good.
October 18, 2018
For pities sake just put us all out of our misery. Just leave on WTO rules on the 29th March. If we tell them we are going without a deal and they can do what they want with the Irish Border as we are going to honor the Agreement. If we just cut off negotiating with them and focus on getting ready for WTO. I am sure that it would focus their minds a lot clearer. Uncertainty for Businesses would end, sure there would be chaos for a short while but it would all fall in to place. I am sick of hearing how much we pay. Especially for slap up dinners and booze yet they treat us like rubbish. We are the 5th largest economy yet they treat our Prime Minister with such disrespect. Dragging her to their meetings at 4 am in the morning. Leaving her out of meals that we are helping to pay for. I do believe she is bringing it down upon herself, but having them laugh and treat our Country with disrespect. Lets just close the tab at the bar and walk away.
October 18, 2018
I think the real problem isn’t the Border but Business (and our economy) not being ready to leave right away.
Once our businesses and economy are ready, then let’s leave (and to those who argue this is a ploy to keep us in the EU, then consider 1. Support for Brexit is still strong 2. Things are surely only to get worse in the EU, not better, which means Brits will want to support Brexit even more. Although, I do accept the argument, too, that some people will be fed up of all this in a few years time, and that many of the older Brexiters will have died, but then whose to say young Remainers won’t turn into Brexiters in their older age?).
It’s certainly not black and white and easy to call.
Lastly, I changed to Brexit, mainly because of people in business, in particular Sir James Dyson. But then I heard that he originally supported joining the Euro years ago. So how much can we even trust people in business.
I don’t know. I think we need to pray (seriously).
October 18, 2018
Quentin Letts writes in the Mail that Tory MPs do not attend PMQs in any numbers now as they do not want to be on camera yawning or “sticking their fingers in their eyeballs”. It really has got that bad with May, and it is time she was gone. To me she is robotic, never answers the question, and does not tell the truth. Trust in her has completely evaporated, what there was of it.
October 18, 2018
Instead of thinking that the Irish Border is holding things up I prefer to think that the border is saving our necks..the transition period will very probably turn into a longer transition period until eventually when a lot of the old deluded have died off we can return to our senses..but it will take a little while.
October 18, 2018
Still waiting for those 500,000 jobs losses in the year immediately following a Lave vote James.
October 18, 2018
@James,
Or maybe it’s delusional to think foreigners should rule one’s country and that they know best how to do it. I think Brexiters are the sane ones on this count.
However, I just think it’s fantasy to think Project Brexit can work without being properly aligned to the needs of business in general. Business simply needs time to re-adjust to a new economic model. Business is really hard. And it can take years to do this, in particular find new customers outside the EU to replace existing ones in it at the moment (Plus we have the additional problem of our economy being vulnerable, at the moment, anyway, after coming out of the one of the biggest recessions in decades). Anyone who thinks this is easy or straightforward simply doesn’t understand business or digging head in the sand.
October 18, 2018
Those so called ‘old and deluded’ are wise, informed and grounded in common sense. The real danger to the UK are the naive, impressionable and intellectually retarded youth. Like lambs to the slaughter.
No wonder there are politicians who embrace the idea of reducing the voting age. How easy it is to pull the wool over the eyes of people who are hopelessly idealistic
Direct democracy is our only bulwark against EU autocracy and the expansion of German economic imperialism. Without it we are little more than a piece of land in the Atlantic ocean
Take that ring out of your nose and realise that the real enemy is politics. Democracy affords us the only, if rather stunted, mechanism to limit the spread and poison of politicians whose only intent is to deceive
October 18, 2018
So frictionless immigration it will be.
No borders no country. The abolition of Britain, though that may come to pass with Brexit too.
Have you told our young that the whole project is to share what they have with the rest of Europe ? Especially the poorer regions ? For most it will equate to loss as we are richer. (Andy’s kids are safe though. Nice schools, rich dad.)
October 18, 2018
This article by Farage is absolutely right, and May should go.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/10/18/chucking-chequers-not-enough-time-tories-chucked-mrs-may/
Farage quite rightly states that the damage was done last December. Furthermore, Charles Moore called the Dublin meeting a “complete capitulation” by May, as indeed it was. Boris Johnson and David Davis have questions to answer on why they supported May then. They only have themselves to blame for Theresa May carrying on with her charade. She won that first round against her own Brexiters very easily, and so she just carried on, and on, and on…..
October 18, 2018
I see that Peter Foster in his article in the Telegraph about “May’s Brexit Shambles” says that without trust you cannot lead. I have a bit of a bone to pick with him on that. I’ve always trusted May to shaft us and she’s never let me down. In fact she always exceeds my expectations. And she’s certainly doing her idea of leading. The only problem is I know exactly where we’re going to end up under her “leadership” and I don’t like the prospect, to put it mildly.
October 18, 2018
Although you garner a lot of comments, believe you me there are thousands of us who could post but don’t, if only to save you time and energy moderating large numbers of posts.
I don’t think you can have any concept of the degree of frustration and exasperation in the country. You know, we all know, that the PM couldn’t negotiate her way out of a paper bag. And then to see how she was treated today by Macron, Merkel et al! What an insult! I was born at the end of the 2nd WW but my family was fully engaged in both conflicts. To see a war mongering nation like Germany, which initiated two world wars and terrible suffering, and our erstwhile allies of France et al treating a proud nation such as ours with such contempt bordering on ridicule, makes my blood boil.
Let us turn on backs on these people and Make Britain Great Again (actually Make England Great Again makes a better acronym, MEGA, but I am trying to be inclusive).
October 18, 2018
Christine – “the PM couldn’t negotiate her way out of a paper bag” because she doesn’t want to, she could if she wanted to, simples.
October 18, 2018
Christine – It would appear the establishment on both sides of the channel will “do what it takes” to keep us in.
We are witnessing the slow agonising death our so called democracy.
What would be the point of voting again.
October 18, 2018
If the transition is extended and we have to pay more into the EU budget then shouldn’t our divorce payment be reduced by precisely the same amount as that was supposed to cover all future commitments beyond the exit date ?
October 18, 2018
If we leave under WTO then under WTO rules the EU have to implement the same border and customs policies in Ireland as they do with other third countries they have borders with, like Russia I suppose. Bit of a problem for them eh ? Still, May isn’t one to use any negotiating advantage like that is she.
October 19, 2018
That is not true.
If you believe it is true then cite chapter and verse of the relevant WTO rules, and see how they stack up against Article 7.4 of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/09/24/the-contradiction-of-the-moaners-about-brexit/#comment-963077
4.4 Each Member shall base risk management on an assessment of risk through appropriate selectivity criteria. Such selectivity criteria may include, inter alia, the Harmonized System code, nature and description of the goods, country of origin, country from which the goods were shipped, value of the goods, compliance record of traders, and type of means of transport.”
Note there:
“Such selectivity criteria may include … country of origin, country from which the goods were shipped …”
October 19, 2018
The EU has 40 internal land borders it already deals with, the Croatia and Bosnia border, I think, is a mirror for Ireland becoming number 41. Good read at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/17/ireland-brexit-headache-border
Also the EU has a paper on the subject, “Boosting growth and cohesion in EU border regions” http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docoffic/2014/boosting_growth/com_boosting_borders.pdf 😉
October 18, 2018
John am I missing something here?
The line from Barnier has consistently been that there can be no transition deal agreed until a legally binding backstop to the Irish border has been signed along with the other withdraw issues. Now we’re hearing that the transition is going to be extended to sort out those issues?
Is the can about to kicked? If so we need an absolute guarantee that we can’t be locked into an endless transition unless and until we sort the border out to the EUs satisfaction.
October 18, 2018
Yes, just get on with it, and please have on 30 March 2019 a Brexiteer only government so that we can all see how the whole group (from Boris to JR) will be doing, how we will all benefit from retrieved sovereignty and all these newly signed trade agreements.
October 18, 2018
hefner
At last , sense prevails. Yes lets do that
October 18, 2018
Nigel Farage says today in the Telegraph that: “chucking Chequers is not enough, it’s time the Tories chucked Mrs May”. I can’t say I’ve heard there’s even the remotest possibility of the Tories chucking the Chequers betrayal out. But even if they did and sent letters to the 1922 committee for Mrs May to go, what is the prospect that she’d take any notice and not carry on as if nothing had happened? If she can blithely ignore the votes of 17.4 million people in the referendum as if they don’t exist how likely is she to listen to a handful of votes from Tory MPs? After all Common Purpose, beloved of Cameron and May advocates “leading beyond authority” does it not? We are already in a constitutional crisis without that as well.
October 18, 2018
(I also changed to Brexit after reading some theology that said political systems should be as simple as possible and that power should be as representative as possible – the EU isn’t, it adds layers of complexity – plus it’s not as representative as possible, the UK Parliament is. However, there is also the moral argument that the end does not justify the means – not just the moral argument but the unintended consequences that flow from this in practise – so I support Brexit, but only if it is done in a planned and orderly way as opposed to chaotically – i think a big % of people in the country think something similar, including many Brexiters, and in particular Business, and without Business and a strong economy any big political project, in particular one like this, simply doesn’t have the legs).
October 18, 2018
May is a traitor and is making us a laughing stock in the process. She is deluded and arrogant to press on, someone has to make her see she is not up to the job. It’s her way or no way no matter what Tory MPs and voters think. It wouldn’t surprise me if she called a General Election out of pure spite if she doesn’t get her own way and we all know how badly that will go with her in charge. It’s lose lose, either she keeps us shackled to the EU for years to come or we end up with Corbyn. Not that she’ll care, unlike all the other women in their 60’s like me who she’s happy to see robbed of their pensions, she’ll just walk away into oblivion with her £100,000 plus pension. Failed Prime Ministers, traitors at that, should not receive one penny from the taxpayer.
If you don’t get the men in white coats to come and take her away soon John, your party will be destroyed.
October 18, 2018
The government, primarily Mrs May as self proclaimed Chief Negotiator, has got itself into a problem of Logic concerning Ireland with seemingly irreconcilable requirements, something like wanting a square circle. Another year of supposed contemplation while costing us over fifteen billion pounds is certainly not going to solve this logical conundrum. I have a better suggestion which would only cost £100,000. Convene without delay a panel of five of the best academic thinkers (from different academic disciplines) from Oxford and Cambridge Universities and get them all to take two weeks leave of absence from those Universities to form a panel and see if they can come up with any way (which I doubt) of satisfying these apparently conflicting demands in this logical conundrum.
If they fail one side or the other will have to cede, and considering we (despite your valid objections) are being silly enough to offer huge amounts of money to the E.U. when we leave, I suspect the E.U. will cede if they have to. If not, we should leave without any trade agreement with the E.U. and they will still have their ‘problem’. Or of course if the Irish were genuinely so concerned about this border issue, they could leave the E.U. alongside us (and we should be telling them so).
Incidentally, just after Mrs. May has unilaterally said all the E.U. expatriates in the U.K. can stay, the supposedly moderate, centrist government of France while welcoming ‘refugees’ from other continents says it plans to expel expatriate Britons. It is clearly a mistake to believe in the goodwill or decency of E.U. countries as Mrs. May clearly delusionally did – shouldn’t she resign or be kicked out by her party over that, the latest of her many, many miscalculations?
October 19, 2018
There is no need to ask the five best brains to come up with a new answer until the answer which has already been identified, that based on the agreed arrangements pertaining to the open border between Liechtenstein and Switzerland, has been properly studied as the Financial Times said was about to happen in May.
I will also just mention that the solution adopted there as reported five months ago is basically the same solution as was previously suggested in a comment on here in December 2017, ten months ago:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2017/12/15/parliamentary-votes-on-the-eu-withdrawal-bill/#comment-907596
“Another side to this would be that if our government could persuade the EU to accept a continuing guarantee, backed up by UK legislation and by its efficient enforcement as now, that in the future all UK exporters to the EU will still be compelled to maintain their present compliance with EU rules then that could avoid creating any new need for checks at the EU entry points, including at the Irish land border.”
October 18, 2018
Before this latest trip by TM to Brusselles her fudge was on the might never be used, it would be temporary, not for ever, but she cant say how long, backstop. Now in addition to that fudge she has added to it we might have to extend the transition period but only for a few months. This addition she didn’t even preface with an ‘ahem’ or cough to hide her embarrassment.
Donald Tusk seems very content with these outcomes.
The Conservative brexiteers have meantime become a faced down, outmanoeuvred, toothless lot who have been entirely exposed as all talk and do nothings.
October 18, 2018
There is not enough of them to mount a successful leadership challenge. All that would do is cause another distraction and delay.
We are not leaving. Get used to it.
October 18, 2018
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE JOHN, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH JUST GET RID OF HER.
There is only so much the country can put up with
She will trash the country and destroy our party.
October 18, 2018
I propose that the UK signals a clear decision to be FREE by 29/03/19.
I further propose that all UK trading entities, and government departments including local authorities close for Christmas on 22/12/18, return to work 27/12/18 and spend the following 13 weeks completing their arrangements to EXIT
Monday31/12 & Tuesday 1st be Bank holidays. Scotland to suit itself regarding 2/1/19.
Anybody disagree?
October 19, 2018
Who would pay for that?
October 18, 2018
Another 10 billion!. This sort of delay seems to infiltrate into all our daily lives . We have periods of organisation and efficiency and then it is as though someone paints the country with a different colour and the confused snails take over .
What someone says or does becomes doubled up and then switched and the copier takes the credit and we all are left with the dregs of these devious deals. Sorry if this is vague, but I cannot get the message over being direct or else it would not be published.
October 18, 2018
Ignore democracy and pay a bung, the UK is not looking like a shining example of decency.
October 18, 2018
The Prime Minister should not have entered the negotians, she should have sent Robbins to negotiate with the Frog, Barnier. When they cobbled together a deal acceptable to the Leave voters, she would just fly into Brussels and sign.
October 18, 2018
Apologies, Mr Redwood, for all my boring comments.
Hope things go well.
BW.
October 18, 2018
Mrs May and her mentors from the Back Office in Number 10 do not understand that we voted to leave the EU because we merely wanted OUR Country back. A simple case of walking away. Then let EU Nature take its course.
She, under the guidance of her Civil Service Mandarins, decided to to take the longer route to the exit door. And as is the Norm for ALL the Civil Service, everything takes time. Thank God they are no longer able to run the old Nationalised Industries. BUT! We are no lumbered with a Civil Service dominated Number 10 of whom not one person was elected and it is way past time that democracy was re-established in the corridors of Downing Street.
That is now down to you Back Benchers to SAVE OUR COUNTRY. Please do it – we need help to save our country and its Independence.
October 18, 2018
You do all realise we are not leaving. Not now. Not in March. Not ever. Almost the whole establishment is against it. And they have the power. We are not leaving.
October 18, 2018
Mike, you are correct I fear.
October 18, 2018
The warning about entering another seven year EU accounting period is very serious. Remember the problems David Cameron and George Osborne encountered when presented with a big retrospective bill just after December 2013!
October 19, 2018
Quite so, but the time is fast approaching when you will need to back your words with votes in parliament. I urge you once again to approach Corbyn with a view to opposing any timetable motion to limit discussion on any Chequers based Treaty that may be presented to the house. The Treaty could then be talked out with a filibuster.
Yes, it would be an unholy alliance. Most of the parliamentary Labour Party want us to join the EEA. Conservative Eurosceptics want a divorce from the EU. Chequers is neither fish nor fowl, so is hated by both parties. Above all, it is hated in the country.
At the next General Election, we Eurosceptics need to prevail. This will involve drawing up a Brexiteers’ Manifesto, a practical proposal for Government covering anything between two and five years, and designed to appeal to all Eurosceptics from Boris Johnson to Frank Field. Only by this means can we tap into the 52% who voted Leave.
October 19, 2018
Political Coup d’état cometh!
Dear John, I have been away for a while, busy busy busy, and returned to your blog and thought I was back in 18th Oct 2017…….the same ranting and uneventful dialogue, but still no decisive action?
Are you all still holding fire with your “no-confidence vote” until T. May finally issues a paper detailing what has been dastardly agreed with Brussels (so obvious as to be painful), then bang, you all go for the jugular with a strong belief she will be removed and a pro-Brexit PM installed…with your jobs remaining safe?
Let’s forget the ranting and non-eventful dialogue (monotonous) and await the real show to begin when T. May delivers to the Nation an official unacceptable Brexit position…..I guess timing is all, correct?
I am also guessing T. May is trying to avoid “the Ides of March 60” at all costs, to the detriment of UK citizens.
We await the Coup d’état with glorious anticipation!