BREXIT! BREXIT! BREXIT!

[Brian Peacock]

The Brexit minister admitted that the recent Internal Market Bill broke international law, but only in "a very specific and limited way". It struck me as a curious turn of phrase. No doubt it was intended to imply that it's no big deal to break this particular law, but when you get done for doing 75 mph on a B-road that runs past a primary school it's not like you've broken all the laws of the land - or even all traffic laws. You've just broken a particular law in "a very specific and limited way". Every time someone breaks the law they do so in "a very specific and limited way" - that's just how laws work!

[Svartalf]

well, it's like a robber saying "but it was petty theft and not grand larceny' to try and exculpate himself

[JimC]

I hope the RAF is practicing its fighter defence of the UK...

[Sean Hayden]

What's the law being broken, is it unfair to the UK? All I could find in a quick search was a desire to retain the possibility of not enforcing everything already agreed to.

That's a given innit? You're responsible to the UK. You can't know the full impact of anything agreed to today. Should you find you're disadvantaged by something you agreed to, then you have to be able to reverse it. What's the alternative, to oversee the deterioration of your state so as to maintain trust in legal agreements?

[Brian Peacock]

What's the law being broken, is it unfair to the UK? All I could find in a quick search was a desire to retain the possibility of not enforcing everything already agreed to.

That's a given innit? You're responsible to the UK. You can't know the full impact of anything agreed to today. Should you find you're disadvantaged by something you agreed to, then you have to be able to reverse it. What's the alternative, to oversee the deterioration of your state so as to maintain trust in legal agreements?

Essentially it's about geography, movement, and trade, but the ramifications go a bit deeper. In terms of a binding international treaty one doesn't just unilaterally renege when things change, one renegotiates the T&Cs or mutually agree to dissolve the arrangement. Isn't that the legal, honest and decent thing to do?

The part of the treaty that's in question concerns where the border between the UK and EU exits. The agreement is that the border should exist in the Irish sea, so that things like customs regulations on goods and people travelling between the UK mainland and Northern Ireland should be administrated on either side of the crossing as if travelling between the UK and the EU. This is because a standing agreement between the UK and Eire governments, the Good Friday Agreement, to which the EU is also a signatory, guarantees an open border between Northern Ireland and its contiguous neighbour to the South in terms of the movement of people, goods, services, and money.

So, as things stood - before the introduction of the recent UK Internal Market Bill - on the first day of BREXIT goods etc could travel freely across the Irish land border but anything travelling between the UK and the island of Ireland would be treated as something entering/leaving the EU. However, the new Bill undermines that by moving the customs demarcation barrier (the border) from the Irish sea to the Irish land border. That's the element which specifically breaks the treaty already agreed between the UK and the EU and legally ratified by both parties - that's the bit that breaks international law in a supposedly "specific and limited way".

Can you see the problem? It means that goods etc travelling between the UK mainland and Northern Ireland will not be subject to any of the customs regulations that would have previously been applied between EU and UK jurisdictions. Moreover, with the Good Friday Agreement still guaranteeing an open border between the Northern UK administered and the Southern EU administered parts of Ireland the provision of the Bill effectively allow for goods etc to be moved freely in/out of Northern Ireland across its land border with Eire (in and out of the EU) as well as moving freely in/out of the UK across the Irish sea. The EU is not very happy that goods etc could now be moved between the EU and the UK through Northern Ireland without customs regulations, duties, tariffs etc being applied and/or commodity standards/regulations being adhered to.

The only way to resolve this would be a) to create a so-called 'hard border' between Northern Ireland and Eire, which would undermine the Good Friday Agreement, which is responsible for finally resolving what we euphemistically call 'The Troubles' and which forms the absolute basis of the peace and power-sharing arrangements between the sectarian political elements of Northern Ireland, or b) for the UK to constitutionally cut Northern Ireland lose from Great Britain.

The majority Protestant population of Northern Ireland consider themselves British to the bone and will never vote to join their sister nation to the South - they still resent that the land and authority was reclaimed from the British during the extremely bloody 1919-21 revolution - and the EU, mindful of the open wound that 'The Troubles" still represent to all sides in Northern Ireland, are unlikely to build a MASSIVE WALL along Irish land border. Ardent Brexitarians inside and out of the UK government are putting it about that it's a trivial matter to implement a technological means of tracking goods etc travelling across the Irish land border. However, this is an appeal to a future technology for which there is no model and that has yet to be invented, developed or agreed with the EU, and BREXIT day will arrive at the turn of the year just as noxious farting inevitably follows bully beef.

A third way round this would be for the UK government to request yet another extension to the transition period while things get sorted out, but the current Conservative gov are never going to do that since pretty much everybody agrees that the "Get Brexit Done!" branding of the Tories at last December's general election is now so tightly shackled to the Conservative Party and Boris Johnson's administration, and the resulting majority in Parliament, that it would amount to a self-administered political headshot for the party to appear to rollback or renege on it now. At this point, after four years of shambolic bad-faith negotiation with the EU from the UK government side, the EU are also pretty unlikely to agree to an extension to the transition, and when that matter is raised they often quote back the slogan which propelled Johnson to the leadership of his party: "Brexit means Brexit!"

It's a shitshow.

[JimC]

I know the answer! A fleet of German, French, Danish, Italian, Greek and Dutch warships permanently in the Irish sea, stopping and checking all sea traffic between Northern Ireland and Britain!

[Sean Hayden]

Thank you for taking the time to explain that Peacock.

Why should the UK agree to a disruption of business as usual regarding the flow of their goods/services with Ireland? How is the EU stance not, in effect, just a punishment for leaving the EU?

I'm assuming UK goods/services are as good as other nations in the EU, excluding the Netherlands obviously...

[Brian Peacock]

Thank you for taking the time to explain that Peacock.

Why should the UK agree to a disruption of business as usual regarding the flow of their goods/services with Ireland? How is the EU stance not, in effect, just a punishment for leaving the EU?

I'm assuming UK goods/services are as good as other nations in the EU, excluding the Netherlands obviously...

I don't think it's quite right to call it a punishment. It's a technocratic consequence of certain and particular decisions that have been made about the way the UK government want to exit the EU. In leaving the EU the UK has foregone the offer of remaining within the block's single customs union, and therefore arrangements have to to be treated as being negotiated between independent sovereign entities. The apparent reason for the UK gov not to go for a kind of Norway-style arrangement, one where there's regulatory alignment on trade, goods, services, and money but independence in most other areas, which is exactly what the Leave campaign campaigned on in 2016 btw, is... because... well... ah, yes, because we now realise that as a member of the World's largest free-trade zone the UK wasn't able to make trade deals on its own. This isn't strictly true of course. We were quite able to make trade deals with any region in the world, but if after that we wanted to export some of those imported goods to the rest of the EU we'd have to do the paperwork, pay the duties, meet the regulations, satisfy the standards etc. It was only after the votes were counted that the idea of a so-called clean-break or hard-Brexit began to be talked about as if that was the idea all along.

[Scot Dutchy]

It was and is all about offshore accounts a tax havens. The Brexiteers and their side kicks were terrified of the introduction of EU tax laws regarding these offshore accounts. It would have cost people like Moggs billions. So at all cost the UK had to withdraw never mind the consequences to the rest of the UK population but like so many greedy people planning is seldom good attribute.
A no deal was the plan all along. With this Bill Johnson is just making sure it happens. International law? Who is bothered about that? Making vast fortunes is the primary aim. The speed at which international law courts operate means fortunes would have been secured before any action can be taken.

[Scot Dutchy]

Brexit strategy risks UK 'dictatorship', says ex-president of supreme court

Lord Neuberger condemns internal market bill for exempting some of its powers from legal challenge

The government’s Brexit strategy is in danger of driving the UK down a “very slippery slope” towards “dictatorship” or “tyranny”, according to a former president of the supreme court.

Addressing an online meeting of lawyers, Lord Neuberger on Wednesday evening condemned the internal market bill, which enables the government to breach international law and exempts some of its powers from legal challenge.

“Once you deprive people of the right to go to court to challenge the government, you are in a dictatorship, you are in a tyranny,” Neuberger told the webinar. “The right of litigants to go to court to protect their rights and ensure that the government complies with its legal obligation is fundamental to any system … You could be going down a very slippery slope.”

His comments came as the Scottish parliament at Holyrood voted by 90 votes to 28 against granting legislative consent to the Westminster bill. The Scottish National party, Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat MSPs united to oppose the legislation; only Conservative MSPs supported it.

The vote will not prevent Boris Johnson’s government at Westminster from pushing through the internal market bill, but the Scottish constitution secretary, Mike Russell, said the Scottish parliament had “explicitly” and comprehensively rejected it.

[rainbow]

Thank you for taking the time to explain that Peacock.

Why should the UK agree to a disruption of business as usual regarding the flow of their goods/services with Ireland? How is the EU stance not, in effect, just a punishment for leaving the EU?

I'm assuming UK goods/services are as good as other nations in the EU, excluding the Netherlands obviously...

I don't think it's quite right to call it a punishment. It's a technocratic consequence of certain and particular decisions that have been made about the way the UK government want to exit the EU. In leaving the EU the UK has foregone the offer of remaining within the block's single customs union, and therefore arrangements have to to be treated as being negotiated between independent sovereign entities. The apparent reason for the UK gov not to go for a kind of Norway-style arrangement, one where there's regulatory alignment on trade, goods, services, and money but independence in most other areas, which is exactly what the Leave campaign campaigned on in 2016 btw, is... because... well... ah, yes, because we now realise that as a member of the World's largest free-trade zone the UK wasn't able to make trade deals on its own. This isn't strictly true of course. We were quite able to make trade deals with any region in the world, but if after that we wanted to export some of those imported goods to the rest of the EU we'd have to do the paperwork, pay the duties, meet the regulations, satisfy the standards etc. It was only after the votes were counted that the idea of a so-called clean-break or hard-Brexit began to be talked about as if that was the idea all along.

A combination of unscrambling eggs, and re-canning worms.
Anyhow there is a company that can do all the trade tracking on an Excel spreadsheet, for a minor consideration.
It just requires a pair of Bulldog testicles, old bean.

[Scot Dutchy]

The farce continues:

Brexit: Barnier mocks Johnson's 'third deadline' on talks

Chief negotiator says little prospect yet of EU and UK entering ‘tunnel’ negotiations

Michel Barnier has mocked Boris Johnson for issuing a “third unilateral deadline” during a meeting with EU ministers, warning that the Brexit talks remain difficult with little prospect yet of the two sides entering a decisive “tunnel” negotiation.

With 48 hours remaining before an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels, by which time the British prime minister has demanded a breakthrough moment, the bloc’s chief negotiator suggested a deal was “very difficult but still possible”, according to diplomatic sources.

He noted that Johnson had twice previously suggested that the UK needed the certainty of a deal by a specific date, only to later backtrack. “It is the third unilateral deadline that Johnson has imposed without agreement,” Barnier was said to have remarked. “We still have time.”

Johnson had said he wanted a deal before the end of summer, and then by the middle of October, before saying in recent weeks that a confident sign of a deal was all that was required.

The UK urgently wants to open a short “tunnel” negotiation during which the two chief negotiators would be given the freedom by Downing Street and the EU member capitals to be creative in solving outstanding problems on the basis that any outcome would be subsequently backed.

But after hearing Barnier’s assessment, diplomatic sources said this final phase did not appear to be on the cards “by far”.

“The negotiations are in a difficult phase,” Barnier had told the EU ministers in Luxembourg, according to multiple sources. There was a more “constructive tone”, Barnier said, but “movement on three key issues was still necessary”.

[Brian Peacock]

When have the talks not been in a difficult phase?

[Scot Dutchy]

Once again Johnson is caught off balance. He is not the only one to make demands.

Brexit: No 10 startled by EU insistence that UK accept trade terms

Bloc’s stance apparently taken as challenge to Boris Johnson’s threat to walk out on talks

Downing Street reacted in dismay as Emmanuel Macron led EU leaders in warning Boris Johnson that he must swallow the bloc’s conditions, in what appeared to be taken as a direct challenge to the British prime minister’s threat to walk out on the talks.

At a summit in Brussels, the EU proposed a further “two to three weeks” of negotiations but Europe’s heads of state and government offered Johnson little succour, demanding that he alone needed to “make the necessary moves to make an agreement possible”.

The intervention was evidently regarded as incendiary in No 10 as Johnson had said he would make a decision on Friday on whether there were grounds to continue the talks. In September, he had said that without agreement by the time of this summit the government would “move on” to focus on no-deal preparations.

The summit communique issued on Thursday afternoon noted the lack of progress but asked the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, to “continue negotiations in the coming weeks”. To the frustration of Downing Street, a call for an “intensification” of talks, included in an earlier draft of the statement, was deleted by the time leaders signed it off.

The UK’s chief negotiator, David Frost, tweeted in response: “Disappointed by the [summit] conclusions on UK/EU negotiations. Surprised EU is no longer committed to working ‘intensively’ to reach a future partnership as agreed with [the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen] on 3 October.

“Also surprised by suggestion that to get an agreement all future moves must come from UK. It’s an unusual approach to conducting a negotiation.”

[rainbow]

When have the talks not been in a difficult phase?

The deal was "Oven Ready" just before the last elections.

Unfortunately it was undercooked and sits as a soggy mouldy mess in the back of the fridge.