Brexit

Tell Karl his brother is dead wrote:My view is that the entire UK should absolutely remain in the single market. We should remain in the EU too while we're at it. But the timeline where we let NI remain and the rest of the UK gets a decent trade deal is far far better for everyone than the timeline where we all get kicked out with nothing and have to deal with the IRA kicking off at the same time as our economy hits the floor.

Tell Karl his brother is dead wrote:For what it's worth I'm not trying to have a go or wind you up, I just think if you take your (100% justified and understandable) anger out of the equation you might be convinced that there is some pragmatic benefit to what was proposed today. It's obviously all academic because the DUP vetoed it (whoever thought we would ever be typing that about a UK-wide decision? ) but still.

Tell Karl his brother is dead wrote:Fair enough mate.

I am actually a member of a radical anti-Irish BNP sect. Our secret master plan is to go around reminding people that the IRA existed on internet gaming forums until internet gaming forum anti-Irish sentiment reaches such intensity that Westminster is forced to take action.

This, from the Financial Times’s Jim Pickard, provides some useful perspective on today’s events. It is worth pointing out too it won’t do Theresa May any harm either with her supporters to be seen to be holding up an agreement.

twitter.com/pickardje/status/937721673939333120

But feigned intransigence only works if it is plausible. Jean-Claude Juncker may have been laying it on just a little too thickly when he lauded Theresa May as a tough negotiator. (See 4.16pm.) For an alternative view as to how the government has handled the negotiation, this is what the former head of the Treasury, Nick Macpherson, tweeted last week, on the day it emerged that the UK would be paying around €50bn for the “Brexit bill”.

twitter.com/nickmacpherson2/status/935942783378092034

Tell Karl his brother is dead wrote:

Partridge Iciclebubbles wrote:But it’s absolutely not right that one part of the UK gets a special EU deal while the rest of us suffer.

I don’t want to leave at all. If we have to then every part of the UK should be treated the same. Northern Ireland should either suffer with us, or unify with the Republic.

Do you disagree with any of the following?

NI remains in the single market:
Pros
+ 2 million people in NI benefit directly from single market membership
+ Rest of the UK benefits economically from a back door into the single market
+ Slippery slope leading to possible membership for Scotland, then Wales, then London, then maybe even the rest of England deciding it doesn't want to be left out after all
EDIT: and I can't believe I forgot a really big + in the form of this being a probable prerequisite of a softer Brexit for the rest of the UK, in that we will be out with no deal at all if we can't figure this problem out
Cons
- It's in some sense unfair

NI isn't allowed to remain in the single market:
Cons
- Huge losses for businesses that operate on the island of Ireland
- Huge inconvenience for border communities
- Unravelling of the Good Friday Agreement leading to a possible resurgence in violence
Pros
+ At least they are suffering with us

twitter.com/faisalislam/status/937754605181636608

Photek wrote:Nice to know Moggy was gotten to about the crazy gooseberry fool he said a few weeks back.

twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/937728693010649088

twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/937750598702764033

twitter.com/eucopresident/status/937730892063297537

When Jeremy Hunt said on Peston On Sunday that his party faced a choice of backing Theresa May or risking seeing the UK stay in the EU, he was addressing his cabinet colleagues Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, as much as estranged Brexiteering ultras on his backbenches.

Here is why (this is a dense and nuanced argument - but please bear with me).

The prime minister has clearly (and probably rightly) made the judgement that Parliament would not vote for a no-trade-deal or hard Brexit. So she has decided to concede to almost every demand made by the EU’s negotiators, so that talks on a transition agreement and trade deal can start before Christmas.

But - and this matters - the concessions she is making are anathema to Johnson and Gove, and a powerful constituency within her party.

As I have been saying for a fortnight, they include a Brexit divorce payment of up to £50bn.

They include a role for the European Court of Justice to adjudicate on the rights of EU migrants living here, on the occasions when the Supreme Court decides UK law is not decisive (these are likely to be rare - though for the Brexiteers it is the principle not the frequency that is hateful).

And they include a promise that there will be close regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic so that a hard border between the two need never be re-introduced (customs checks on goods would not be needed if product standards north and south of the border continue to be the same).

Now it is with that very last concession that the PM is taking the political risk of her life, because in that concession she is in effect saying that a trade deal for the whole UK will also be based on a promise of close regulatory alignment between our country and the EU, in perpetuity.

That permanent regulatory convergence between the UK and EU is her preferred route, because without it her government would collapse: Northern Ireland’s DUP MPs, which are sustaining the Tories in office, have made it crystal clear that they will not accept a separate regulatory set-up for Northern Ireland from that prevailing in the UK as a whole.

But here is what I assume will be scaring the PM witless (it scares me, just as a bystander). She is signing up for close regulatory alignment between the UK and EU without ever having secured agreement for that from the Cabinet.

And for Johnson, Gove and most of the other more ardent Brexiteers, in and out of the Cabinet, almost the whole point of leaving the EU was for the UK to “take back control” of setting rules and regulations for British businesses.

To repeat, the PM will today move very close to making a promise that would mean the UK failing to reclaim rule-making sovereignty outside the UK.

And if her own Cabinet and backbench colleagues end up vetoing that offer, even if it is accepted by Juncker at today’s lunch, that would see the UK having no trade deal with the EU and being forced to reintroduce a peace-disrupting hard border with the Republic.

As I said earlier, May thinks MPs and Lords would reject such a no-trade-deal Brexit as too damaging both to the UK’s prosperity and too undermining of the fragile peace in Northern Ireland.

So she is in effect playing the highest stakes game of chicken with Johnson and Gove - and if she loses, her government could fall.

Or to put it another way, Jeremy Hunt might have gone further and warned his colleagues that failure to back May would see no Brexit and the probable advent of a Corbyn administration.

twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/937769285828644867

twitter.com/PickardJE/status/937767504935620612

twitter.com/ciaranmcmenamin/status/937742489921998849