Thursday 19 January 2017

EU show their teeth




Been very busy here at Capitalists Towers, what with the need to earn salaries and income etc.


So apologies for the lighter posting this week.


The EU seem to be really goading themselves for a fight though. Anything said by Mar or Johnson at the moment is being taken as a horrific insult worthy of instant response and denigration.


There are a couple of obvious themes:


- Left-Wing Euroers are much worse and are very akin to remainers.
- The Brussels crowd are this doubleplus
- There is the strange outlier here of Donald Tusk who seems to be acting like a grown-up.
- Key player Merkel is remaining very quiet, lots of the national political whining is by politicians trying to shore up their positions ahead of elections this year they are likely to lose.


These 'negotiations' are unlikely to last very long in this environment.

23 comments:

Steven_L said...

Key player Merkel is remaining very quiet

Perhaps the chaps at VAG, Daimler and BMW have told her to keep her trap shut lest she peeves off some of their best customers?

Nick Drew said...

from time to time I take a peek at goings-on over at eureferendum

poor old North is still pissed off with everyone and everything

James Higham said...

Wonder if May would have the guts to just stop paying them. End of.

Lord Blagger said...

Perhaps remainers and the EU need to learn a bit of history.

WW2 in a large part was caused by France insisting on punishing Germany for WW1.

Now we have the EU demanding the same because the UK had a bout of democracy.

When will they ever learn.

Bill Quango MP said...

That 60 billion euro we are supposed to pay after we go is taking the piss.
Hopefully May will tell them to get stuffed.

What are they going to do?
Kick us out?

dearieme said...

"Anything said by Mar or Johnson ..."

Owing to a 19th-century dispute there are currently two Earls of Mar (WKPD) so I think you should tell us which one you mean.

Electro-Kevin said...

The Dutch Prime Minister says our economy will tank.

He'd better hope not. If they're worried about Italy then what do they think will happen if the UK economy implodes ?

Electro-Kevin said...

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2017/01/magical-realist-or-iron-lady-mrs-mays-speech-on-the-eu-examined.html

Once again, this is worth reading. I do not trust Mrs May. She has previous of giving the EU record levels of what it wants whilst telling our people what they wanted to hear.

She has mastery of the oblique.

Blue Eyes said...

EURef is hilarious. After many years of campaigning to leave, Dr North appears to want to stay. He is a child: wanting whatever he cannot have.

Mark Rutte is playing to his domestic audience - the Dutch economy has been in depression for a long time. Wassisname the trade commissioner who is being quoted by the BBC today has not updated his script in light of St Theresa's speech. His insult about the British having invented clubs would be funnier if it wasn't so bitter.

Anonymous said...

Although I expect some barracking from you lot over "levels of maturity" and "well developed argument"....

So far as our European neighbours are concerned, Forkem All.

As we can now see it will not be so bad. Yes, we will be worse off in some respects and better off in others. At our own choice - we will make the best of it.

Closing my HSBC account as I type. Fork them too.

GMorris said...

I cannot wrap my head around TMays globalisation is bad but free trade is good speech in Davos, i'm hoping its just a load of old bollocks that's meant to sound good but not really mean anything kind of like saying sorry or i love you. What am i missing here?

Electro-Kevin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Electro-Kevin said...

Clearly Brexit didn't mean Brexit then.

We can remain in the SM if the conditions are right. This is where things will be muddied beyond recognition. We're staying in. "No deal is better than a bad deal."

Sorry, Mrs May but the people had honestly thought that No Deal is precisely what they voted for on the 23rd June.

The dealing was attempted at the point where Mr Cameron was sent back with pretty thin gruel. We voted Leave on the 23rd. Very many people expected us to be out of the EU on the 24th.

Blue Eyes said...

EK WTF are you on about?

Anonymous said...

As far as I can see from the reports and I tend to agree,the last few months of informals/formals/behind the scenes etc have convinced HMG that it'll be a waste of time starting off 'nicey-nicey' as the EU will simply string us along until the deadline and then play hardball. So UK might as well cut out all that crap and go for it now.

Merkel and Co. didn't exactly start set a concessionary scene when they told Mrs May to get lost on an early deal on resident nationals and insulted/blanked her at the last Heads of Govt beano.

As for the theory that this is all a charade and we will end up staying in the EU how could Mrs May and the Tory party sell that? She is playing for big stakes, her party and the Country.
Hopefully there will be a sensible divorce deal, possibly even an EEA membership whilst things are sorted out/wound down -and here I have a lot of sympathy with Richard North -but beyond that surely we are out.

Nick Drew said...

when they told Mrs May to get lost

Yes, a ba-ad move: May's highly developed, ultra-sensitive amour propre is strongly averse to being given the brush-off or the look-down-the-nose, gosh she's thick

a good job she doesn't have time to read C@W, eh ..?

Anonymous said...

ND,
On the contrary I should have thought that Mrs May is remarkably thick skinned .
What message do you think she should have given in her speech?

Nick Drew said...

I think she delivered an excellent message! - 9/10 stuff

But I also reckon that she was hastened towards the correct conclusion - that only Hard Brexit is possible - by the discourteous way they treated her from almost the word go

if she had been treated as nicely (and I only mean in terms of civility/pleasantries because obviously the underlying facts & positions are what they are) as Boris treats the French (oh yes, he goes down very well in France - speaks good French to them, and they absolutely lap it up on the Quai D'Orsai) they could have encouraged her to be a lot more optimistic on how the negtiations will go, more inclined to give concessions, less determined to show them she's not to be belittled

this is just human psychology (and all of our personal assessments thereof) - but it counts

Hollande, in particular, has been deeply and personally *undiplomatic*: he may not be around to reap what he has sown, but it may be a needlessly blighted harvest

Blue Eyes said...

100% agree ND. As always.

stevenjocb said...

good one.

Electro-Kevin said...

I agree with Nick.

Nick Drew said...

have we gone all consensus or sumfink?

where's that Budgie, who used to come along and be offended all the time?

nice weekend to all !

Weekend Yachtsman said...

Presumably the EU panjandrums' first plan is to prevent a rush for the exits, which is exactly what would happen if things were made easy and nice for us.

Secondly, they're all wetting themselves because after Germany, UK's nett contribution is more than all the other member states added together.

So there's going to be a mighty big hole in their budgets; ferchrissake they might even have to start paying income tax (not really, we all know that won't happen).

So we can expect general nastiness, on the political level, throughout. Mrs. May knows this. otoh, at the more sensible, commercial level, things will probably turn out OK, somehow.