Tuesday 20 March 2018

Do we care if it is Brexit surrender?

With a Remain Prime Minister, Chancellor and Home Secretary, the days of worrying/hoping for a hard Brexit have long since passed.


The EU are good at negotiating too (short-term, long-term their game is terrible, hence Brexit in the first place).


But Remoaners are going to complain what is the point if we end up with worse terms than we had, so they will never be happy.


Arch-leavers will be unhappy with all the concessions, but they always would be. Hard Brexit was the worst option in many ways and with such a close referendum would have caused as much split in the Country as a pure remain vote.


Personally, I voted mainly to gain some control over immigration, despite all the concessions, when the transition period is over this will be the case. We will be able to hold our own politicians to account for border control once more.


If we had to make plenty of concessions elsewhere, then that in the round is a good negotiation strategy. I am sure plenty of the Government's red lines were never intended to be such a thing, just as the EU's were not.


In the round then, things seem to still be going as well as can be expected. I can't see how they could be going better in the circumstances, once you filter for all the media noise.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

In any negotiation, you have to understand the other side's position.

The EU has two cycles - the budget over 7 years and the election cycle over 5. Given that Dec 2020 is the end of this current budget cycle, you can understand why this is now the end date for "transition".

Going back to the election cycle, there are new elections next year so having the UK out of the EU / in transition makes more sense, and there is feeling of undue haste from the EU side yesterday about the deal. Perhaps "Brexit" works better for the EU than we assume.

What is in it for the pro-Brexit EU countries? Well we will only know for sure after next year's elections when the shape and political mix of the EU is known. For example, it could be that Barnier will be replaced by another with a completely different agenda such as how much of UK business such as services, can be transferred within the EU remit via relocation / incentives.

The fat lady hasn't sung yet.

James Higham said...

“Personally, I voted mainly to gain some control over immigration”

Oh dear, sincerely believing that possible?

Sebastian Weetabix said...

Of course it is possible. All that is needed is the will to do it.

Thud said...

I'm as happy as I expected to be and reasonably optimistic about my kids future but then I'm one for making lemonade etc. I can see how many are going to be deeply unhappy but this is the world we live in and I'll try my best to make it work for me and mine....oh and I voted remain.

decnine said...

The essence of competent marketing is to under-promise and over-deliver. Theresa May has consistently over-promised and under-delivered. Her management of the electorate's expectations has been disastrously poor. It's a good job she didn't run the last election campaign on a slogan such as 'Strong and Stable Government' isn't it?

Electro-Kevin said...

I wish there hadn't been a referendum, which is not the same as saying I wish I had not voted Leave.

Once called the referendum was only going to achieve one thing either way: prove that our government is a puppet government.

CityUnslicker said...

Anon - that would be worrying were the EU not a socialist monolith which is cracking down on every tax haven it can find and sucking up money and taxes wherever possible. The idea they are going to be nimble enough to 'steal' the UK industries is, luckily because it could be done cleverly, off the table for these nutjobs.

But they may well succeed in areas where bureaucracy reigns instead of any market forces which does leaves some nasty exposure, like Fishing.

andrew said...

It more like lending the neighbour your lawnmower for a week or two than surrender.

All these payments are pretty tiny really.

As stated before, Ireland will become a problem again. Not because it is a problem but because some people are still looking for any good excuse to shed others blood. And this is an excuse.

Otherwise I suspect we will see the self interested genius of the city struggle to keep all the business it has at the moment. That depends on the yanks. I suspect it will shrink over time and that wiĺl lay bare the fact that England is sort of Luxembourg and Lithuania glued together. The average may look ok but the median, not so.

I voted remain and in the spirit of making lemonade will point out that the ruling classes have now run out of excuses for incompetence.

The uk's real problems
- productivity
- skills of the workforce
- few natural resources
- high house prices
- stagnant wages
- social mobility

They have no one else to blame anymore apart from themselves.

I predict Boris will soon declare victory, move to the country, and take up writing not very good comic novels.


Anonymous said...

I don't ever hear much mention of what happens once we're out/past the transition period.

Assuming any deal isn't so binding that it can't be undone, who if anyone is doing the 5-10 year planning of what happens after 2020.

Steven_L said...

Andrew, I don't think the powers that be see the last three items on your list as 'problems'. Four and five are official central bank policy aren't they? As for six, none of the professions are lobbying to de-regulate and expose themselves to competition from outsiders. Support for a two sizes fit all private / comp education system and nepotism are both rife across the political spectrum.

andrew said...

S_L
In that case a slow slide towards Russian living standards is on the cards.
Life is good for the 1% in any country. The other 99% should have worked harder.

Anonymous said...

@andrew - "As stated before, Ireland will become a problem again"

And as I've said before, Southern Ireland is as pozzed after 35 years as the UK is after 65 years - indeed more so, given the Brexit vote. The kids in Ballinspittle are learning about the Holocaust, slavery and Rosa Parks now, not Kevin Barry and Constance Markievicz.

Sinn Fein are fine with being a region of the EU, just not with being a province or Dominion of the UK.

I'd be very surprised if they were capable of supporting anywhere near 1974-type unpleasantness. There could still be some nasty and lethal little campaigns but inshallah nowt more than that. And the EU will have to make up their minds if they'd rather have our troops in the Baltic States or in Fermanagh.

(I see btw that the BBC news narrative has switched seamlessly from "Russia won the election for Trump" to "Cambridge Analytica won the election for Trump, using Facebook data WHICH IS NOT OK!")

Anonymous said...

@CU

The point about the 5/7 year cycle is that it was always a given that "Brexit" would be 12/2020. But that leaves the other issue (elections) somewhat vaguer. Why was there a rush to have March 2017 as the start of the process. TM would have known about a) the EU elections and b) the legal timescales to hold the 2019 ones.

If TM wants to drop out of Brexit, she only has to withdraw the letter by the last day - and we are still in. Then the issue of holding EU elections within the 2019 timetable neatly falls into place as shown in the 2014 arrangements.

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/word_doc/0019/163018/EPE-election-timetable-standalone.doc

What price betrayal in 2019?

Anonymous said...

" who if anyone is doing the 5-10 year planning of what happens after 2020."

The Marxists. Five and ten year plans are their forte.

Don Cox

CityUnslicker said...

SL - The professions need no help, technology is revolutionizing them and they are undergoing huge change. Interestingly, all for the good, with London as a fintech, legaltech and insuretech hub the jobs will change but still be here. Sclerotic Europe will be tsunami'd by the low cost services being created.

Anonymous said...

I see I'm not the only one regarding "We will be able to hold our own politicians to account for border control once more" with a cynical eye. Never mind EU migration, just consider the huge numbers of folk admitted by governments of all hues from outside the EU, before and after we joined. Mass immigration has always aroused a great deal of concern and hostility, as a phenomenon unknown to England until the late 20thC - yet people continued to vote for the guilty Parties. Blair & Brown opened the floodgates post-2000, but if successive Tory governments since WW2 had introduced robust, patriotic controls, Labour's wicked and feckless policies would not have been possible - and we would not have (e.g.) more than three million Muslims alone, plus numberless others from Afro-Asia.
So forgive me if I do not hold my breath waiting for the gutless Tories, and certainly the Marx Bros at the gates, to change things. They might, if the people as a whole held them to account - but they're too busy shopping, and watching TV, it seems.

Anonymous said...

The UK Government may have abandoned most, if not all, of its "red lines", but the EU have maintained theirs, and even extended them.

The EU may, indeed, have over-reached itself, in that some of their recent demands (Irish border, fishing rights, EU migrants) go beyond what even our subservient Parliament would be prepared to accommodate.

If this Government has any remaining sense of pride, or even self-preservation, it should be making serious parallel preparations for a no-deal exit on 29th March 2019.