The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[LondonLax]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

 

May decided Brexit was basically about racism, so as long as she delivered an end to free movement anything else was fair game. It’s the possibly inevitable consequence of a Remainer trying to deliver something they never understood in the first place. 

 

 

This is also just rubbish. 

If ending FoM was her only red line then she would have jumped at the Customs Union version of Brexit that Parliament were close to approving. Being in a CU but outside the Single Market would be enough to end FoM.

However, she also wants to be free of being within the EU trade agreement so the UK can negotiate trade deals. 

It seems that the realisation that her (and your) ideal version of Brexit is incompatible with the Good Friday Agreement has only just dawned on some. 

[ml1dch]

58 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Sorted in a 'no deal' scenario? Since when?

Even if the Government had said that things were "sorted" (they haven't, obviously), it takes a remarkably trusting soul to look at a statement from the current Government and say to oneself  "well they've said this will all be fine, so why would I doubt them?"

Edited April 6, 2019 by ml1dch

[Enda]

9 minutes ago, Awol said:

Exiting without a deal forces a solution to be found in Ireland outside the WA. Once that’s done the threat of being locked into a customs union by the EU with no unilateral exit is gone. After that the remainder of WA is tolerable, so no-deal is effectively a device to force a solution to that problem outside the A50 framework. 

Leave without a deal and any goodwill from Ireland will be absolutely gone out the window. WTO terms it will be for the foreseeable. Off ye go.

[ChrisVillan]

You lost, get over it. But also deliver it, to ten different versions of very specific standards, none of which commanded a majority even within the leave vote, or it will be your fault even though you knew from the beginning that the whole thing was epically retarded.

[LondonLax]

44 minutes ago, Awol said:

 

If we were outside as a third country then the leverage of the A50 process disappears, the motivation of spoilers within the UK system is greatly reduced and the reality of no new treaty will force London & Dublin into finding a workable solution to the border outside the backstop arrangement. 

 

You and other ‘No Deal’ Brexiters still haven’t worked out that it’s the EU and not the UK that hold the cards. That false belief is why everything keeps going wrong for you during this process. 

As ml1dch says, when the UK is asking the EU for agreements on medicines etc after a no deal exit the first thing the EU will say is ‘sign the withdrawal agreement, then we’ll talk’.

[Awol]

16 minutes ago, Enda said:

Leave without a deal and any goodwill from Ireland will be absolutely gone out the window. WTO terms it will be for the foreseeable. Off ye go.

Honestly I’m happy with that, the idea of goodwill from Ireland towards the UK is pretty hilarious in any circumstance. Nevertheless, we’ll have to come to an agreement on managing flows of goods across the border that doesn’t involve Dublin building and manning border checkpoints. Through gritted teeth it may be, but we’ll still have to sort that out. 

[Enda]

4 minutes ago, Awol said:

Honestly I’m happy with that, the idea of goodwill from Ireland towards the UK is pretty hilarious in any circumstance.

Obnoxious arrogance aside, we'll see about that when there are bombs going off.

[villakram]

6 minutes ago, Awol said:

Honestly I’m happy with that, the idea of goodwill from Ireland towards the UK is pretty hilarious in any circumstance. Nevertheless, we’ll have to come to an agreement on managing flows of goods across the border that doesn’t involve Dublin building and manning border checkpoints. Through gritted teeth it may be, but we’ll still have to sort that out. 

Scummy British politicians acting scummily supported by...

[peterms]

17 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

You and other ‘No Deal’ Brexiters still haven’t worked out that it’s the EU and not the UK that hold the cards. 

No, that's quite wrong.

I distinctly remember someone saying that the day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and can choose the path we want.  A Mr Davis, was it?

[Awol]

25 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

This is also just rubbish. 

If ending FoM was her only red line then she would have jumped at the Customs Union version of Brexit that Parliament were close to approving. Being in a CU but outside the Single Market would be enough to end FoM.

However, she also wants to be free of being within the EU trade agreement so the UK can negotiate trade deals. 

It seems that the realisation that her (and your) ideal version of Brexit is incompatible with the Good Friday Agreement has only just dawned on some. 

She promised to leave the customs union, then insisted via Ollie Robbins that the backstop (a customs union with the EU) was extended to cover the whole of the UK. That would apply unless or until the EU chose to release the UK from it. 

It’s been engineered this way by London to avoid actually leaving the economic and legal order. 

I’m not going to argue the toss with you but having followed this process obsessively it’s been well explained by the professional commentariat. 

[peterms]

2 minutes ago, Awol said:

She promised to leave the customs union, then insisted via Ollie Robbins that the backstop (a customs union with the EU) was extended to cover the whole of the UK. That would apply unless or until the EU chose to release the UK from it. 

It’s been engineered this way by London to avoid actually leaving the economic and legal order.  

Isn't that because when the first oromise was made, the implications for NI hadn't been thought through, and then the DUP required a whole-UK solution, rather than that "London" was trying to end up in that place from the outset?

[Awol]

2 minutes ago, Enda said:

Obnoxious arrogance aside, we'll see about that when there are bombs going off.

Post 9/11 we’ve spent nearly 20 years smashing terrorist networks on an industrial scale and doing things very differently to the 80’s & 90’s. If Republicans go back to that kind of violence it’s going to end really, really badly for them. 

I sincerely hope they don’t. 

[Enda]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

Post 9/11 we’ve spent nearly 20 years smashing terrorist networks on an industrial scale and doing things very differently to the 80’s & 90’s. If Republicans go back to that kind of violence it’s going to end really, really badly for them. 

The man who believes the UK would out-fox the EU has an unshakable belief that the IRA won't do any damage. Quelle surprise.

[Awol]

1 minute ago, peterms said:

Isn't that because when the first oromise was made, the implications for NI hadn't been thought through, and then the DUP required a whole-UK solution, rather than that "London" was trying to end up in that place from the outset?

I guess we’ll be waiting 30 years for the papers (or two years if someone cashed in for their memoirs) to find out definitively, but I think what I said is correct. 

[chrisp65]

20 years of smashing terrorism?

yeah, absolute **** unqualified success that's been

 

and these are the same people that think they also understand economics and then threaten civil unrest when the glorious return to 1955 is delayed by snowflakes

absolute **** state of it

 

[Awol]

1 hour ago, Enda said:

The man who believes the UK would out-fox the EU has an unshakable belief that the IRA won't do any damage. Quelle surprise.

I didn’t say they wouldn’t do any damage, I said it would end very, very badly for them, because it would. As for being deluded you may well be right, be you haven’t actually responded to my arguments, which is interesting. 

So embarrassment aside: No-deal day +1, what does Dublin do on the border with Northern Ireland? 

[peterms]

7 minutes ago, Awol said:

I guess we’ll be waiting 30 years for the papers (or two years if someone cashed in for their memoirs) to find out definitively, but I think what I said is correct. 

I'm not clear why we would need to wait 30 years.  The sequence of events was plain to see, eg https://ukandeu.ac.uk/where-did-the-backstop-come-from/.

I think it's an example of things emerging from circumstances, as the implications of choices start to become clear.

Your interpretation implies that someone, somewhere, willed this all along, and manipulated May and the DUP and others into the steps which led to this.  That seems unrealistic, and out of step with reported events.  It also implies that no-one realised what the manipulators were doing, and so didn't call them out.  Again, that seems far-fetched without some supporting evidence or argument beyond "we'll see in 30 years".

Quote

17 January 2017. On this day, at Lancaster House, the Irish backstop was born. Not that we realised it at the time. It was the Prime Minister’s first major speech on Brexit. She mentioned Ireland only in a passing reference to the Common Travel Area.

Northern Ireland was only discussed in the context of the other devolved institutions. So far, so straightforward, it seemed. Not so.

The speech was an exercise in marking red lines. And the Prime Minister went to town. By baldly asserting her desire to leave the single market and the customs union, she was simultaneously creating the need for a harder border between the North and the Republic, though, of course, this wasn’t acknowledged.

And yet, in just her second week as prime minister, May insisted during a visit to Northern Ireland that ‘nobody wants to return to the borders of the past’. This was a message she reiterated in Dublin in January 2017, two weeks after the Lancaster House speech.

This position was formalised in the Joint Report in December 2017: ‘The United Kingdom also recalls its commitment to the avoidance of a hard border, including any physical infrastructure or related checks and controls.’

So how to square this circle? Thinking in London seemed to suggest that a mixture of technology and positive thinking could provide the answer.

A government position paper from August 2017 argued that ‘waivers from security and safety declarations, and ensuring there is no requirement for product standards checks or intellectual property rights checks at the border’ would do the trick.

However, it failed to explain how checks might be avoided in practice (a trick revisited in the Malthouse proposal). Meanwhile, the Irish government had been on the case for a while.

A paper produced in May 2017 stated that there ‘will need to be a political and not just a technical solution.’

Indeed, what became Paragraph 49 of the December Joint Report—the backstop in embryonic form—was first drawn up by Commission and Irish negotiators in a working paper later in November 2017.

The Irish understanding of the border solution was front and centre. As Tony Connelly remarks, ‘the meaning was clear. In order to avoid a hard border … Northern Ireland, to all intents and purposes, would have to remain in the single market for goods and the customs union.’

For the British government, this was unacceptable. All the more so given that, between Lancaster House and the appearance of the Commission’s proposals, Theresa May had suffered humiliation at the hands of the electorate and been forced to rely on the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to form a government.

The latter vehemently objected to any suggestion of anything that implied the creation of an internal border in the UK. While the UK government’s position had always been to ensure there were no physical borders either on the island of Ireland or in the UK, the DUP’s influence led to much more explicit commitments.

As Arlene Foster commented at the time, “Nor separated constitutionally, politically, economically or regulatory [sic] from the rest of the United Kingdom.” The prime minister’s red lines were underlined in DUP blood red.

The first practical attempt to square these circles came when the government began its consideration of two different ideas: a facilitated customs arrangement (FCA) and ‘max fac’, or maximum facilitation. Both attempted to avoid the need for a border in Northern Ireland while allowing the UK to pursue an independent trade policy.

In the case of the FCA, this was to be achieved by the UK treating its external border as a UK border for goods destined for the UK and as an EU border for goods destined for the EU, applying the appropriate tariffs and standards in each case.

Max fac was inspired by a report produced by Lars Karlsson for the European Parliament in November 2017, involving maximising (hence ‘max’) technical means of monitoring the border, such as reaching an agreement with the EU to allow the exchange of risk data, pre-registering goods vehicles and people, and using mobile inspection units and CCTV.

The eventual FCA included in the Chequers white paper contained elements of max fac, such as use of automation, streamlined procedures and simplified customs declarations.

However, Michel Barnier’s response was pretty unequivocal: ‘The EU cannot—and will not—delegate the application of its customs policy and rules, VAT and excise duty collection to a non-member, who would not be subject to the EU’s governance structures.’

Max fac has undergone a revival in recent weeks, repackaged as the Malthouse Compromise, which contains many of the same features. The main difference is Malthouse contains a ‘Plan B’ if, and most likely when, the max fac-style solutions prove insufficient (more on that below).

But it’s worth remembering why the plan was seen as inadequate in the first place. Karlsson never suggested his proposals would lead to a friction-free border. Indeed, his conclusion is that smart borders can ‘create secure and low-friction borders.’

But low friction is not no friction, which is the mutual aim of both sides. And that’s not to mention the extra £20 billion a year HMRC forecast it would cost businesses.

This is why the backstop—a legal guarantee that whatever happens there will be no hard border in Northern Ireland—is seen as necessary, both by the EU and Theresa May. There are technical solutions and ideas out there, and they can certainly help.

No one could question the logic of making border procedures less intrusive and more efficient. But, as things stand, they simply cannot achieve what is required of them: checks of some kind remain an inevitability.

Which brings us to the Malthouse Compromise. This suggests redesigning the backstop in a way that would be compatible with a future, unfettered UK-EU free trade agreement.

The trouble is that this plan, too, doesn’t even aim to avoid all checks and controls, it just moves them inland from the borderline. So the basic dilemma remains: how do you maintain a completely open border between two legal jurisdictions?

The only solution found to date—after many months of careful negotiation in Brussels, if not in Westminster—is the backstop.

 

 

[Awol]

3 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

20 years of smashing terrorism?

yeah, absolute **** unqualified success that's been

 

and these are the same people that think they also understand economics and then threaten civil unrest when the glorious return to 1955 is delayed by snowflakes

absolute **** state of it

 

I totally get that you haven’t followed the actual detail of counter insurgency operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia etc.why would you? AQ in Iraq for example we’re systematically demolished by UK and US special forces. That’s not an isolated case. If the IRA fancied a comeback it would be horrific for them. Not what some people may want to hear, but still a realistic assessment of the current operating environment. 

[ml1dch]

5 minutes ago, Awol said:

So embarrassment aside: No-deal day +1, what does Dublin do on the border with Northern Ireland? 

With apologies for the copy-and-paste...

I expect that in a practical "what do the EU actually do about this in two weeks time" sense, you basically do two things:

First, you go full Trump and do Article XXI of GATT (a different article to one to the one that Farage bangs on about):

...nothing in this Agreement shall be construed . . . to prevent any contracting party from taking any action which it considers necessary for the protection of its essential security interests . . . taken in time of war or other emergency in international relations

It's not a long-term solution, but works until someone important kicks off about it. And you're unlikely to have the US kicking off about something that Ireland wants. Diaspora etc. So you suspend your checks on the immediate border until you're actually concerned about the UK deviating from the current regulatory standards.

Second, you state that any UK-sourced product used by Irish businesses needs to be able to demonstrate that full tariffs have been paid and full regulatory compliance has been met (with the burden of proof being on the Irish business), with spot checks and penalties for non-compliance.

Basically prevent it being in the interest of Irish companies to source goods of any sort from the north or the rest of the UK.

Pretty horrible solution for everyone involved. And that paragraph above basically shits all over the the spirit of the Belfast Agreement. But crucially not the legality of it.

But then they're having to clear up someone else's dopey mess, so there's bound to be mess to be cleared up. And as long as the world knows that the blame is situated in Westminster, not Brussels or Dublin then they make do.

[Enda]

1 minute ago, Awol said:

So embarrassment aside: No-deal day +1, what does Dublin do on the border with Northern Ireland? 

We talk with the EU about how we maintain the integrity of the CU and SM with as little damage to the locals as possible. The locals, for 20 years passive under a fragile peace deal, a majority of whom voted Remain, and having been offered special economic status by Brussels, feel rightly indignant at how London has thrown them under the bus.

The majority of these newly indignant people will simply grow stronger in their views that England's arrogance treats the North not as a constituent member of a union but as an awkward component of colonial nostalgia. Unfortunately, a shower of disgruntled young men from Derry and Dundalk will take things more seriously.  Even your post-9/11 Minority Report wet dream will not be able to stop these guys murdering people.

But hey you'll have your blue passports and shitty trade deal with the US. Good on ya.