Did you miss BREXIT now that it is technically done ?

Satinavian

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Well, with the withdrawal agreement done,, transition period certain until end of december and the UK having technically already left it has been kinda silent for the last months.

But fear not, the drama and welcome distraction from US antics and corona is back :

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...-new-brexit-bill-will-break-international-law

The UK gouvernment wants to break the withdrawal agreement now that certain unpleasent parts of the treaty are bound to actually come into force. Reneging on an international treaty not even really a year old. Breaking international law by its own admission.


The bill also allows to overrule the Scots and Welsh on food safety so that the English can decide alone if they want to import chlorinated chicken in the future.
 

Thaluikhain

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Isn't overruling places that aren't England (or, really, London), what the UK is all about?
 

warmachine

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This tells you how Johnson got the Withdrawal Agreement past the European Research Group: he told them the UK could just break it afterwards. This explains why the likes of Steve Baker defended the new proposal. It also shows Johnson's attitude to planning: get through this week and worry about the consequences later. He must know too many old school Tory MPs will reject this and he won't be able to get shouty headlines on his side. But the ERG faction won't worry he's about to backstab them by capitulating to the EU Commission.
 

Agema

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Should I ever fall afoul of the law, I plan to defend myself on the basis that I merely broke the law in a "specific and limited" way, because if it's good enough for the government, it's good enough for me.

I wouldn't buy a used car off the chancers in the UK government, never mind sign a trade deal with them. God, what a humiliation.
 

Silvanus

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This is utterly ridiculous. It puts the UK in a highly disadvantageous position in terms of international diplomacy and trade (not to mention law)... but the UK electorate won't see it that way. Through endless simplification, posturing, and a subservient press, we've come to a place where damaging the country is electorally beneficial.

Johnson coasted to victory in the 2019 election on the promise that his deal was "oven-ready", a sound-bite that was endlessly repeated. Only... "oven-ready" doesn't actually legally mean anything at all, and so now we don't have an agreed deal and we're running out of time. Johnson signed the withdrawal agreement to get it passed in time... only now he plans to renege on it, with his own government admitting in Parliament that they intend to break international law. Which is already landing the UK in legal hot water with the UK and even endangering the trade deal with the US. Why should our partners trust us if we simply don't honour the agreements we make?

Utter shitshow. Every move is calculated solely for a domestic audience of increasingly-zealous Brexiteers, without a thought paid to how it'll fuck the country over, with the assumption that any damage can be blamed on Europe (or "Remoaners").
 

Agema

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This is utterly ridiculous. It puts the UK in a highly disadvantageous position in terms of international diplomacy and trade (not to mention law)... but the UK electorate won't see it that way. Through endless simplification, posturing, and a subservient press, we've come to a place where damaging the country is electorally beneficial.
I loved the bit where Boris Johnson said that the Withdrawal Agreement never made sense in the first place. So says the very man who oversaw its negotiation with the EU, sold it to the British public to win an election, passed it through parliament and signed it. It makes a lot clearer though to see that they always knew from the start they had no interest in honouring it.

I can't help but feel that 2021 with a no deal is going to really hurt the country. That's not going to go down well with the public. Boris isn't trusted, but still seems vaguely popular. A couple more problems and I think it's going to break their trust, and when it goes it's really going to go. However, a little part of me wonders if the plan for the Tories isn't to just accept they'll go down at the next election, but it's worth it to completely remake the country first.
 

Trunkage

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I loved the bit where Boris Johnson said that the Withdrawal Agreement never made sense in the first place. So says the very man who oversaw its negotiation with the EU, sold it to the British public to win an election, passed it through parliament and signed it. It makes a lot clearer though to see that they always knew from the start they had no interest in honouring it.

I can't help but feel that 2021 with a no deal is going to really hurt the country. That's not going to go down well with the public. Boris isn't trusted, but still seems vaguely popular. A couple more problems and I think it's going to break their trust, and when it goes it's really going to go. However, a little part of me wonders if the plan for the Tories isn't to just accept they'll go down at the next election, but it's worth it to completely remake the country first.
But don’t you understand WTO rules saves the UK! Such a remoaner....

So all that hand wringing May was doing for years was for a purpose? That there were thing that NEEDED to be ironed before withdrawing. Colour me shocked for saying that exact same thing during the last election
 

lil devils x

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I loved the bit where Boris Johnson said that the Withdrawal Agreement never made sense in the first place. So says the very man who oversaw its negotiation with the EU, sold it to the British public to win an election, passed it through parliament and signed it. It makes a lot clearer though to see that they always knew from the start they had no interest in honouring it.

I can't help but feel that 2021 with a no deal is going to really hurt the country. That's not going to go down well with the public. Boris isn't trusted, but still seems vaguely popular. A couple more problems and I think it's going to break their trust, and when it goes it's really going to go. However, a little part of me wonders if the plan for the Tories isn't to just accept they'll go down at the next election, but it's worth it to completely remake the country first.
I have refrained from discussing what I think will happen in the UK in coming years due to feeling bad for my friends sake. You guys have enough to worry about as it is without my doom and gloom predictions and it would be better for you to just keep as positive as you can and take things as they happen as best you can. You need to in order to endure what is expected to come from this.
 

Agema

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I have refrained from discussing what I think will happen in the UK in coming years due to feeling bad for my friends sake. You guys have enough to worry about as it is without my doom and gloom predictions and it would be better for you to just keep as positive as you can and take things as they happen as best you can. You need to in order to endure what is expected to come from this.
To be fair, it's not going to be a "disaster". I would expect probably a drop in living standards (more expensive goods), reduced trade and employment, reduced GDP growth (possibly sometimes to negative), for a few years. I am more concerned about the long-term, and the Tories' intention to decisively remake the nation. Unfortunately, I think they plan to remake it in the model of a middle-income country, albeit a much richer version. What I mean by that is essentially to turn it into a playground for the very rich, whilst living standards for the bulk of the population are left to stagnate or slide.

The UK runs many of the world's most effective tax havens (e.g. British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, etc.); they are conveniently out of the UK's direct jurisdiction to tar the country as a whole, but in reality very much subsidiaries of the City of London, busy carrying out the parallel dirty work alongside London's more respectable dealings. The UK itself, in certain ways, is a tax haven for foreign nationals, that's why so many extremely rich people to move to London. The current Tory leaders are, more than anything else, the representatives of international finance and billionaires. I'm not even sure some of their own MPs realise this, or perhaps they just delude themselves that they can somehow piggy-back their local Little Engander conservatism off letting the international jet set do as they please in London.

If you start to see the Conservatives' project in this light, it makes more sense. Nothing really matters except letting bankers and billionaires free to kick their money around as they please. It doesn't matter if the country has poor growth, if millions are in poverty and abandoned in the provices doing miserable jobs for low wages, if the health service is effectively shut down: it's not their country any more and by the time realise the continued funding of the super-rich will be so crucial to the country paying the bills that they'll be untouchable without crashing it anyway.
 

Breakdown

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I loved the bit where Boris Johnson said that the Withdrawal Agreement never made sense in the first place. So says the very man who oversaw its negotiation with the EU, sold it to the British public to win an election, passed it through parliament and signed it. It makes a lot clearer though to see that they always knew from the start they had no interest in honouring it.

I can't help but feel that 2021 with a no deal is going to really hurt the country. That's not going to go down well with the public. Boris isn't trusted, but still seems vaguely popular. A couple more problems and I think it's going to break their trust, and when it goes it's really going to go. However, a little part of me wonders if the plan for the Tories isn't to just accept they'll go down at the next election, but it's worth it to completely remake the country first.
The Conservative Party seemed to have picked up the knack of getting a new leadership team every few years and then shamelessly blaming all of the problems in the country on the previous leadership. And of course the new boys promise to get things sorted out, and the voters will believe them. We've seen it with Brexit, austerity, police numbers and so on. They'll keep getting away with it as well.

Boris will go but the tories will stay.
 

09philj

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The Conservative Party seemed to have picked up the knack of getting a new leadership team every few years and then shamelessly blaming all of the problems in the country on the previous leadership. And of course the new boys promise to get things sorted out, and the voters will believe them. We've seen it with Brexit, austerity, police numbers and so on. They'll keep getting away with it as well.

Boris will go but the tories will stay.
Johnson will be gone before the next election in 2024 but they'll just replace him with Sunack, who's pretty popular for some reason.
 

Agema

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Johnson will be gone before the next election in 2024 but they'll just replace him with Sunack, who's pretty popular for some reason.
I don't rate Boris's chances of making it through 2021. I think the minute the transition period ends, his days are numbered.

Question is, who replaces him? It needs to be someone with stature, but of course the Tories gutted their party of their most experienced moderates and Boris hired incompetents on the basis of their loyalty to libertarianism and Brexit so it'll be one of them. Sunak is the only one that doesn't look like a shitshow, and he's as neck deep in the UK's libertarian think tank powerhouse as anybody. Assuming it is Sunak, it absolutely galls me that the fucking "if you want a n****r for a neighbour vote Liberal or Labour"Tories, of all parties, will be the first to have a BAME PM as well as having the first woman PM.
 

lil devils x

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To be fair, it's not going to be a "disaster". I would expect probably a drop in living standards (more expensive goods), reduced trade and employment, reduced GDP growth (possibly sometimes to negative), for a few years. I am more concerned about the long-term, and the Tories' intention to decisively remake the nation. Unfortunately, I think they plan to remake it in the model of a middle-income country, albeit a much richer version. What I mean by that is essentially to turn it into a playground for the very rich, whilst living standards for the bulk of the population are left to stagnate or slide.

The UK runs many of the world's most effective tax havens (e.g. British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, etc.); they are conveniently out of the UK's direct jurisdiction to tar the country as a whole, but in reality very much subsidiaries of the City of London, busy carrying out the parallel dirty work alongside London's more respectable dealings. The UK itself, in certain ways, is a tax haven for foreign nationals, that's why so many extremely rich people to move to London. The current Tory leaders are, more than anything else, the representatives of international finance and billionaires. I'm not even sure some of their own MPs realise this, or perhaps they just delude themselves that they can somehow piggy-back their local Little Engander conservatism off letting the international jet set do as they please in London.

If you start to see the Conservatives' project in this light, it makes more sense. Nothing really matters except letting bankers and billionaires free to kick their money around as they please. It doesn't matter if the country has poor growth, if millions are in poverty and abandoned in the provices doing miserable jobs for low wages, if the health service is effectively shut down: it's not their country any more and by the time realise the continued funding of the super-rich will be so crucial to the country paying the bills that they'll be untouchable without crashing it anyway.
How much of a disaster it is depends on your standard of living now and savings. Those who were just struggling to survive before, it will be a disaster. The businesses that depend on EU contracts and EU tourism will have a very hard time of it.
 

Trunkage

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I don't rate Boris's chances of making it through 2021. I think the minute the transition period ends, his days are numbered.

Question is, who replaces him? It needs to be someone with stature, but of course the Tories gutted their party of their most experienced moderates and Boris hired incompetents on the basis of their loyalty to libertarianism and Brexit so it'll be one of them. Sunak is the only one that doesn't look like a shitshow, and he's as neck deep in the UK's libertarian think tank powerhouse as anybody. Assuming it is Sunak, it absolutely galls me that the fucking "if you want a n****r for a neighbour vote Liberal or Labour"Tories, of all parties, will be the first to have a BAME PM as well as having the first woman PM.
Does Libertarian means something different in the UK? Because the EU would be a good idea for most Libertarians with the obvious caveats the average person has with Brussels
 

Baffle

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I wouldn't buy a used car off the chancers in the UK government.
I wouldn't buy a brand new one from them, it would inevitably be made my one of their mates with zero experience making cars. World-beating deathtrap.
 

Agema

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Does Libertarian means something different in the UK? Because the EU would be a good idea for most Libertarians with the obvious caveats the average person has with Brussels
Well. The UK doesn't have anything like the libertarian tradition that the USA does, so it gets bandied around in a slightly different way. But libertarians generally dislike the EU. The EU is full of stuff like minimum labour standards, minimum goods and services standards, pollution controls and anti-climate change regulations, etc.

The reality of any trade deal is that it agrees rules of production, trade, harmonisation of standards, etc. The libertarian objection to the EU is essentially that it imposes too many standards and regulations in the process of making trade easy. So for instance the EU will not accept some US food produce because it is below EU standards (see "chlorinated chicken"), and libertarians simply object to the EU imposing those standards as a restraint on food production and trade.

This is part of the bind the UK is going to face. When it seeks a trade deal with the USA, the USA is going to demand massive cuts to UK standards so it can get its products in. British producers, in order to compete, are going to have to drop their standards - but if they do so, they then can't trade with the EU any more as UK produce will also become below EU standards. And herein lies a big issue, because the public are deeply unenthusiastic with the noises coming out of the USA for what the US wants out of a trade deal, and of course the UK government has been very reassuring that they won't let this happen. But what is the record of the current UK government in telling the truth - to anyone at all? Take a look at their ideology and their track record, their aim is to give the USA what it wants. It's just a matter of doing it, handing the public the fait accompli and managing their opinion (with the assistance of the absurdly pro-Tory media).

This is what I mean about the fact it doesn't matter if they get voted out in 2024, once those deals are signed they'll be surpassingly hard to undo: they'll decide the trajectory of the country for decades.
 
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lil devils x

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Well. The UK doesn't have anything like the libertarian tradition that the USA does, so it gets bandied around in a slightly different way. But libertarians generally dislike the EU. The EU is full of stuff like minimum labour standards, minimum goods and services standards, pollution controls and anti-climate change regulations, etc.

The reality of any trade deal is that it agrees rules of production, trade, harmonisation of standards, etc. The libertarian objection to the EU is essentially that it imposes too many standards and regulations in the process of making trade easy. So for instance the EU will not accept some US food produce because it is below EU standards (see "chlorinated chicken"), and libertarians simply object to the EU imposing those standards as a restraint on food production and trade.

This is part of the bind the UK is going to face. When it seeks a trade deal with the USA, the USA is going to demand massive cuts to UK standards so it can get its products in. British producers, in order to compete, are going to have to drop their standards - but if they do so, they then can't trade with the EU any more as UK produce will also become below EU standards. And herein lies a big issue, because the public are deeply unenthusiastic with the noises coming out of the USA for what the US wants out of a trade deal, and of course the UK government has been very reassuring that they won't let this happen. But what is the record of the current UK government in telling the truth - to anyone at all? Take a look at their ideology and their track record, their aim is to give the USA what it wants. It's just a matter of doing it, handing the public the fait accompli and managing their opinion (with the assistance of the absurdly pro-Tory media).

This is what I mean about the fact it doesn't matter if they get voted out in 2024, once those deals are signed they'll be surpassingly hard to undo: they'll decide the trajectory of the country for decades.
So do they actually even have Northern Ireland protocols sorted yet?
Yea, tbh the UK will be screwed if they take the US trade deal, they would be better keeping their standards and look elsewhere or they screw over most of UK business and people due to how messed some of US standards are. Trump has been reversing chemical pesticide standards to be even lower than the already substandard ones that existed before. I have to buy organic in the US or my glands swell up all over my body. It is seriously that bad. :(

To be clear we are talking about pesticides that have been proven toxic to humans and can have both acute and chronic effects.
 

Satinavian

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So do they actually even have Northern Ireland protocols sorted yet?
They had some kind of fudged bandaid solution in the withdrawal agreement where NI would have been treated as still part of the EU in many trade related matters and border controls could be avoided in favor of harbor controls.

But is is exactly the stuff the UK is now reversing and so far they don't have presented any alternative. That likely will mean a hard border and they will try to blame the EU for it.
 

lil devils x

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They had some kind of fudged bandaid solution in the withdrawal agreement where NI would have been treated as still part of the EU in many trade related matters and border controls could be avoided in favor of harbor controls.

But is is exactly the stuff the UK is now reversing and so far they don't have presented any alternative. That likely will mean a hard border and they will try to blame the EU for it.
Any Hard border with NI will sink any deal with the US from being approved in US congress.

US pretty much made that well known from the beginning, so they would be stupid to do so if they don't want to piss off the US. So they would essentially be losing their EU trade AND US trade doing that nonsense.