This tweet from Conservative Central Office is minutes old:
So this is Brexit:
Knock, knock
Who's there?
A Brit, and can I come in, please?
Top which, right now, the answer is:
We don't know
But May still says no deal is better than any deal.
I despair, because let's be clear: at this point of time we're not even talking trade. We're reduced to asking if we can even cross the Channel.
If that's 'taking back control' it's the weirdest definition of control I have ever come across.
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In order to make any kind of sense as to how and why we’re in this clxstrfxck situation, it’s probably helpful to understand the divisive ‘cultural’ differences between the negotiating parties. I found this latest blog from Jack of Kent (lawyer and journalist David Allen Green) insightful: http://jackofkent.com/2018/03/brexit-and-the-contrast-between-process-and-publicity.
John
I admire DAG in general though he was (still is?) “Leaver.” Indeed in my recent progressive Pulse Article http://www.progressivepulse.org/brexit/securing-the-border-an-impossible-task I have used his analysis. His one major weakness is his poor understanding of Northern Ireland and only realised it would be an issue comparatively recently. I would not take his analysis on NI seriously, but otherwise he tends to be very sound.
You will see I in turn have been using your analysis this morning
Good piece from jackofkent though Im not sure its a matter of culture but of basic competence and professionalism. As he says, there are people in the UK civil service who are quite capable of doing the analyses. Their political masters have chosen not to use that competence. A combination of arrogance, incompetence in that they really have no comprehension of how the EU and UK work, and fear that if the true story gets out, they will be exposed. We saw that with the so-called Brexit impact assessments which existed in detail and then disappeared.
She wants an EU “by analogy” scheme and she wants the trading freedoms that EU members do not have.
If this was in any way deliverable then all EU members would want similar arrangements and this would signal the end of the EU and the administration cost of a “by analogy” scheme would be staggering.
She want’s her cake and she wants to eat it, who does not?
Where did Theresa may get the idea that Leave voters want to protect the rights of road hauliers to access the EU market, and vice versa?
Surely any Leave voting lorry driver is hoping for no deal and that lowly paid East European lorry drivers will not be allowed to work across the channel. The truckloads will have to be taken over by British drivers, perhaps restoring the bargaining power for the sort of pay they used to get. A deal to allow foreign workers to continue to drive here would be a betrayal.
While Tory Leave enthusiasts may love free markets most Leave voters , and certainly the amount needed to get over the 50% win line in the referendum were wanting labour shortages and more regulation, of which immigration controls were only one much shouted about part.
lionsafterslumber says:
“….While Tory Leave enthusiasts may love free markets …..”
No they don’t.
They love markets which are skewed to their advantage. That is the only reason they support/tolerate government at all. Without government they would have to compete.
The flip side of course is that I think there are currently in the region of 50,000 UK truckers who work on the continent and licenses will be limited to about 1500 as a third country.
That will solve the UK shortage
I would be interested to see some figures. My gut feeling is that there are a hell of a lot less UK drivers earning UK acceptable wages driving in Europe than there are Polish drivers earning wages that are adequate for living in Poland driving in the UK.
I do know that none of the firms trucking stuff out of Felixstowe recognise trade unions now. Getting paid less than minimum wage is a real issue for lorry drivers now. It is almost impossible to pursue the matter of a an east European lorry driver getting paid less than UK minimum wage while he drive in the UK. The company can just make up paperwork to allocate a bigger proportion of the money to the hours spent in the UK, taking it from the hours paid for driving the load through a low minimum wage country.
Driving used to be an aristocracy of labour occupation where a working man could make a decent living and now the employers are squeezing it down to subsistence level. And some people can’t understand why these guys might have considered the David Cameron/EU neoliberal status quo to be intolerable and voted to throw a spanner in the works?
In little more than a decade there will be about as many truckers in the UK as there are farriers.
One feels that, any minute, plates will cease spinning and begin crashing to the ground. From out this tumult, new political alignments will necessarily arise, and one will have to swallow at least some pride and ask we be allowed to stay in the EU. The Tories seem to have buried themselves. They won’t be missed.
That’s all a bit rich when the silly buggers have wound down local government services to the extent that we can’t keep the roads open when it snows.
The lights are on and because the curtains are open it’s easy to see there is no one at home 🙂
The level was always going to be as high or low as the intellectual competence of the so-called leaders-planners-thinkers.
That was therefore never going to take us very far.
As an ex teacher/headteacher, I’ve been assessing May and her cronies for a while, and apart from one or two who might make a decent intelligence grade, there’s not much there but a good ability to deliver words in the right order with good confidence and posh accents.
We were doomed from the start.
Marie Thomas says:
“As an ex teacher/headteacher, I’ve been assessing May and her cronies for a while, …. there’s not much there but a good ability to deliver words in the right order with good confidence and posh accents.”
Erm… to be defined as being ‘in the right order’ should they not then ‘mean’ something……
…….or are you judging by the standards which I (cynically) apply to poetry ?
Why is the brexitter agenda still obsessed with the EU? Watched Gove being interviewed after the May speech and even he was dragged into a long discussion on the exit terms.
Shouldn’t people in his position simply be saying “why are we even talking about the EU? We voted to leave, end of! I want to talk about the UK’s future trade with the rest of the world! The USA, China, India, Canada, South America, whole developing continents like Africa will be our oyster! Enough of this obsession with Broken Old Europe!”
But they’re not. Even the most fanatical brexitters can talk of nothing other than how we “deal” with future EU. It wasn’t meant to be like this, was it?
Reality is a crushing thing to have to deal with, isn’t it?
You wished for something that could not be delivered. My message to the Conservative Party and the Brexiteers is taken from the immortal words of Oliver Hardy:
“This is another fine mess you got me into”.
And that level is lower than infected yeast in terms of intelligence and ethics.
“We’re reduced to asking if we can even cross the Channel.”
That would be the ‘English Channel you’re referring to I suppose (?)
I suspect under international maritime rules crossing the Channel will not be problem.
Disembarking on the other hand….. 🙂
But we’ll be able to put up a “No Foreigners” sign on our side of the Channel. And if the perfidious French try something similar on their side, we’ll just point out that *we* are not foreigners and breeze past them