There is really no end to Brexit and the stress it is causing our Government.
The EU are playing crazy hardball, the new Irish leader, Leo Varadkar is egging them on to do so. All in all, it appears the EU is very confident in its strategy that pushing the UK towards 'hard' Brexit will result in the Government falling and Brexit being averted somehow.
Now, honestly, this has come as a bit of surprise to many Brexiteers and soft remainers like the Prime Minister. They thought the EU would ultimately be rational and reasonable in its demands and they may have been correct to start with. But as time has gone on and the Remain capture of the Media has only increased, the EU has become more hardline, seeing this as a game it can win outright.
The Customs Union is a classic one, for all the talk of trade there are about 5 solutions such as Swizterland, Norway, Luxembourg, New Technology or new Free Trade agreement that could solve it if both sides chose to. None of these are acceptable to the EU for the UK, even though they have been implemented elsehwhere in the Union currently - this is pure political grandstanding by the EU and at all times the blame is laid on the UK. The anti-British hysteria in Brussls appears from afar not so different to that of Moscow.
Equally, for the UK Government, they are too terrified to say that the real reason they can't agree the EU terms are the four freedoms and so lack of control over immigration.
This is the Irish dilemma, solve the created 'Irish Crisis' (it is created, we had no border with eIreland bar for security before the EU, it is the EU, see link above, suddenly deciding it is the arbiter of the Good Friday Agreement when in reality of course it was the yanks pulling IRA funding) and with it allow free movement. Or stop free movement but only at the cost of an economy punishing hard brexit.
It is very tough and I note, that as much as there is far more good work being done behind closed doors than ever being said in public, that the EU constantly say the UK has no answers when in reality they just reject every offer made and have none of their own bar splitting the UK or taking the Remain option.
Weirdly in the current scenario, Corbyn is a good thing, as a useless pro-Brexit populist it means the EU has to be consider what it is wishing for - my personal worry is it is wishing for a very realpolitick outcome. A hard brexit then a hard left Government to lay waste the UK and bring opportunity to France and Germany instead.
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A hard brexit then a hard left Government to lay waste the UK and bring opportunity to France and Germany instead.
Sounds like you are getting your excuses in early.
Of course hard, soft or fudge Brexit will be costly economically but the real damage is being done by letting people like Fox in charge.
Have no issue with people wanting Brexit for philosophical rather than economic reasons - but we have really lost the plot when you have Fox, Gove and Johnson in charge of our futire.
Excuses maybe, blah, blah, Fox, Gove etc. Would you rather Abbott and Corbyn - because its a binary choice at the moment.
Would you rather Abbott and Corbyn
Glad you asked. No.
What I would like is capable people rather than self-serving idiots who are only in it for their own gain.
What's happened to our political system when these cretins are the equals to the First among Equals (May).
Oh.. I think I've just answered my own question.
I think what we're seeing here is classic displacement activity. You see this in animals when they are being prevented from doing something that they really want to do, so they end up doing something, anything, so that they are doing *something* even if it isn't what they wanted to do.
The EU is currently in deep shit, and getting deeper. It has a number of basic systemic problems, chief of which is the Euro with Germany acting as a strongly corrupting influence. Germany loves the Euro, since it is a weaker currency than an economic powerhouse like Germany ought to have. Thus the Germans view their contributions to the EU as a justifiably and very small price to pay for getting stupidly rich.
Everywhere else in the Eurozone has a currency that is way too strong for their needs; Greece is the best example of this. The Euro makes borrowing too easy for countries, and we now have a situation of debts going in circles inside the Eurozone, with a currency too strong to inflate away these debts.
At some point the whole edifice is going to come crashing down, and there is absolutely nothing the Eurocrats can do about it, because the rules that they set the whole thing up with were wrong. They are basically buggered and sooner or later that iceberg on the horizon is going to hit them.
They thus have an enormous urge to Do Something, only they cannot actually do the thing that needs to be done. Hence the displacement activity trying to Do ever so many things to Britain.
This is likely in the end to lead to an exasperated cry of "Well sod the lot of you stupid buggers, hard Brexit and no divorce payment, see how you like that!" which will cause crisis and pandemonium in the EU.
I think influential British remainers would sooner see Britain flounder than thrive outside the EU.
Their egos must be protected above all other things. They are the real danger here. They all know best, of course.
10/10 Dan. Too many truth bullets there. However 2008 crash taught me that fiat money is indeed magic, almost impossible to destroy as it would undermine humankind. The Fed printed trillions overnight, the ECB could do the same and nothing makes a difference. Your classical economics is spot on, but I am yet to figure out how it comes to pass in our strange, financialised world.
Printing fiat endlessly is fine right up until it isn't.
The money printing post crisis has already fomented many asset bubbles, one of which will see the Tories lose the next GE.
Why not declare that the whole of Northern Ireland becomes a Free Port as soon as we leave the EU. Zero corporation tax etc. If the EU want to play hard ball so be it.
If it's hard Brexit, they can whistle for the £39bn we agreed to pay.
Maybe it's time to stop messing about and just say we're leaving and that's that. What's so wrong with a border in NI...it need not make any real difference. We adopt WTO agreements and only pay for anything we're signed up for already...no divorce payment.
Dan has it 100% right. Economically the EU is FUBAR which is the main resason for leaving. Control of borders and return of sovereignity are added bonuses.
The EU negotiators are a grotesque bunch. There is "Drunker Juncker", with his brandy for breakfast and a thoroughly dubious past left behind in Luxembourg. There is the Pole (actually ethnic German) Donald Tusk, whose own government did not want him to be appointed to his current position. There is Guy Versho-whatever, who looks and sounds like Catweazle. And finally there is Barnier, who is almost a caricature of an arrogant and overbearing French enarque.
It is remarkable that David Davis, and our other Brexit negotiators Fox, Johnson and Gove, have maintained their calm in the face of such a persistent level of insolence and provocation.
Of course, behind them are an unlovely collection of Remainers and Euro-toadies, egged on by the BBC, who still think that they can somehow manipulate this country back into subservience to the EU.
A no-deal Brexit on WTO rules seems increasingly the best, indeed the only, option for a clean break with this appalling institution.
"Remainers and Euro-toadies ... the BBC": Quislings all.
The Irish effect is most worrying - with Gib held in reserve.
Why not institute a boycott of southern Irish agricultural products - suggest Kerry Gold for traitors.! This would bring them to heel in short order.
If they don't like borders then they can leave EU too!
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