A comment in the Guardian is worth sharing the morning:
One EU diplomat said: “I am deeply pessimistic that there will be a positive outcome from this negotiation,” putting the chances of the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal as higher than 50%.
The EU is frustrated that May's team has not, as they see it, “engaged with reality” on David Cameron's promises to pay into the EU budget until 2020 — a promise Brussels insists the British must stick to. “They [the British] are not just on a different planet, they are in a different galaxy,” said the source.
There are two reasons for noting this. The first is that the sentiment on a failed negotiation appears to be commonplace in Brussels, where I have been for the last couple of days. It may all just be politics, but it does not seem like that. The fear that negotiations will collapse over the size of our exit bill, which I gather is very large indeed, appears to be very real.
The other reason is that the second sentiment might quite easily be applied to the whole state of UK politics at present. It appears we are having an election for another place, facing a different reality from the one we are in. Observing popular sentiment makes me feel as remote from the discussion as the average incomprehensible episode of Doctor Who does.
There is a point about Doctor Who though. That I recall it always ends up back on earth. And so will we, without a sonic screwdriver to fix the mess we'll be in. Sometime appreciation of that will dawn. What is more, we'll realise our new Tardis is smaller inside. It's going to be a mighty hard landing.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
They’re still swaggering round making veiled threats and inviting Europe to look at the size of their majority. Laughable arrogance and hubris.
I won’t be disappointed if May gets utterly humiliated over this, although the press will never describe it in those terms.
Interesting to hear your take on the Brussels atmosphere.
I was in the EU (but outwith the UK) for the triggering of Article 50 and followed the local newspaper and TV reports/analyses with interest. There seems to be quite a strong narrative developing that blames David Cameron and the Conservative Party for putting UK citizens in the position of having to make a complex decision without providing them with the information required to make that decision, and all for party political purposes. This narrative was echoed back to me in various conversations I had.
I was therefore surprised to hear May and most of the UK media repeating ad nauseam this idea that she needed to seek a general election to resolve issues in parliament and give her a strong mandate to negotiate.
This merely seems to strengthen the idea that the British people are being used as pawns by a political party/government that resolves its perceived internal failings via elections/referenda.
If anything I would have thought that places the govt in a weaker not stronger position.
Um, two years from March 2017 takes us to March 2019. So does this massive bill only relate to the year 2019-20? Or are there post-2020 items that we are being asked to pay towards too? Our gross annual contribution is of the order of £18 billion, ignoring the rebate, so are we being asked to keep paying for another year or two? Might we not end up doing during a transitional period anyway?
What is the size of the exit bill? Has someone provided a breakdown? What does it include? And surely there are some EU projects that we might want to continue to pay to participate in: shared security infrastructure, for example, or academic research programs. What do Switzerland and Norway do? Or Turkey and Israel?
The bill is on top of required contributions, and those we might still have to pay to access the market
It represents unfunded contingent liabilities arising from the time we have been in membership and crystalising now
Is there a breakdown of what the ‘exit fee’-so called – actually consists of?
I imagine it’s the yearly contribution to the EU budget, pension contributions and contracts.
There are payments the other way and is the figure of sixty billion euros, gross or net?
Pensions is a large part
I am told it is by no means all
I have not seen a breakdown
It very much reminds me of the Falklands War. the Tory’s are pitching this as a patriotic struggle against Johnny Foreigner. This plays well with a domestic audience and those who see May as a second Thatcher.
If I can suggest Simon Wren-Lewis’s blog today “One vote to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them” – a Lord of the Rings theme https://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/one-vote-to-bring-them-all-and-in.html
It’s good
Absolutely Sean, May’s pathetic speech yesterday accusing the rest of the EU of ganging up on Britain is playing to this fraudulent theme. As usual, “patriotism” (just as with Trump) is the last refuge of a scoundrel. The dishonest appealing to the stupid (including, it appears, many of the patriotic working class Labour voters who say they’ll vote for the Tories).
I wonder whether you’ve ever come across a book called ‘Midshipman Rex Carew VC’, written by John Margerison, shortly after WW1. My Dad won it decades when he was at school, and I read it when I was a kid. Essentially, it’s a Boy’s Own load of enjoyable but jingoistic tosh set against the background of the naval struggle in the North Sea in WW1, where plucky Carew and his loyal Irish sidekick Mulvaney take on the evil Hun. It is ludicrously one-sided propaganda in the way much of the press was at the time, depicting the ‘Hun’ as cruel, ruthless, treacherous and underhand – the use of submarines, for example, is typical of the unsportsmanlike Hun!
Astonishingly, I see it was republished last year as a paperback. Talk about a sign of the times. As a description of the Brexit mindset and an example of propagandist claptrap it really can’t be bettered. I particularly love the fact that Carew’s sidekick is an Irishman, considering the novel is set at the time of the Easter Rising.
Anyhow, I suspect that the triumphal end of the novel in which Carew defeats the machinations of the ‘Hun’ aren’t going to be replicated a century later. Instead of HMS Stilleto joining the rest of the Grand Fleet in defeating the Germans at Jutland, I foresee a rather different end for HMS Brexiteer and the rest of the ‘plucky’ British fleet this time round.
No I haven’t read it sounds like a light read. Could do with a laugh as I am getting depressed by the state of politics at present. My current book is https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/27/road-somewhere-populist-revolt-future-politics-review-britain-divided-brexit-david-goodhart
Which is interesting. I can’t say I agree with everything; in medical parlance the diagnosis is pretty good. The cure is a bit of quackery in places.
I agree with Wren-lewis when he says this: ‘I have never known a government that has such a poor record on health, education (this, and grammar schools for pity’s sake) and even prisons. The ‘we now have a strong economy’ line is a lie just waiting to be busted. All that means the Conservatives will focus relentlessly on Brexit and leadership.’
This is what May is doing with vile images of Union Jack’s and references to Thatcher all plied by a gutter press ( the reality that Thatcher reduced manufacturing by 15% and sped up globalisation and job outsourcing; house bubbling; and whose trickle down was a chimera, is not talked about)
We might have to accept that with a dumbed-down populace waiving Union Jacks and misplaced ‘sentimentality’ about an abstracted Europe that doesn’t exist from some on the Left ( winks at Richard) the situation doesn’t look good and the outcome will be messy. But Wren-Lewis is wrong: Labour is doing the right thing by focusing on the domestic economic factors of housing/jobs/NHS/Social care because whether we are in or out of the austerity obsessed EU we have our own currency and are not constrained on spending on those things.
Sean is right – the Tories can’t lose really – their friends in the press will have a field day saying the EU have stabbed us in the back and too many people will lap it up.
Only time will reveal what has really happened unfortunately.
No
The Tories can’t win.
Seriously, you wouldn’t wish our economy 2018-2020 on your worst enemy
Eriugenus
I agree with you that the economy might very well be a train wreck in the period you describe.
However, let us just reflect on this so-called government a moment.
We’d just had a huge USA induced crash in 2008 resulting in a severe global recession and what did the Tories do? Like the political piranhas they are, they smelled blood in the water and blamed it all on the workings of the post war state created by Beveridge and Co. And then they set about completing the Thatcher’s project by dismantling it brick by brick.
Do not under estimate the ideological factors of Tory neo-liberalism here. When May gets in, and yes – the economy tanks even more – you will begin to hear more excuses from them about how this very rich country of ours cannot afford the NHS, affordable housing, the disabled, pensions – well the list will go on and on.
A lot of Tories believe in chaos because it is how you can make money. It is as simple as that. And economic upheaval is chaos.
Remember that when there is stampede (chaos) on the Serengeti Plain, it is the predators who look for the opportunity to pick off the weak and young. That is what the Tories are really. The Predatory Capitalist Party – that is what they should be called.
The economic troubles ahead will not faze the Tories Eriugenus. Not al all.
Good morning. As you know, I’m a big fan and our views are generally in accord but …. do you not think we all spend too much time (energy) commenting on situations over which we really have very little control? OK – specifically re. Brexit – there’s a not totally unexpected GE looming when we can actually cast a vote. But, it’s not another single-issue plebiscite so there are a myriad of other infinitely more important and pressing topics to be judged, in spite of Lynton Crosby’s tactic to frame the debate to exclude them (which might backfire).
This comment is prompted by my viewing Noam Chomsky’s March presentation to MIT – ‘Racing to the Precipice: Global Climate, Political Climate’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5A8BVrjRfU.
As it’s over an hour long I don’t expect many to watch it all. But, having outlined the uniquely perilous situation faced by global society his parting advice to the question ‘what can we do about it?’ is basically ‘stop talking and do something – anything’. He believes change is best achieved through grass-roots incremental action. While reversing climate change may already be too late, he says there are more opportunities than ever to generate change but they depend entirely on individuals co-operating to form a critical mass.
What’s so depressing, and of deep concern for future generations, is tha utter paucity of British politcs at this time. There seems to be little or no appetite among either the political class or the electorate for opening a dialogue about the real threats that face us as nation and as a species. ‘Brexit’ is a dangerous distraction. And spending time trying to guess how it will pan out is a waste of intellectual energy. Just saying!
I agree with you
I try to do soemthing more than talk
In my own area I work hard to generate real change
Sometimes I succeed
I know you do, Richard, and I applaud you for it. I was just making a general observation. Having read today’s news(?)papers and a wide range of Internet comment, the level of voter manipulation and corresponding naïveté I find to be genuinely frightening. Even with maximum tactical voting there still doesn’t seem to be a realistic chance of removing this duplicitous, reactionary, thieving, nasty government. I guess we just have to gird our loins, accept the inevityable outcome and get on with whatever we can do to, according to individual resources, to ensure its demise in 2022. If a week is a long time in politics then the next 5 years will seem like an eternity.
So true
John
I’m more deeply worried about the UK than at any time during my 36 year tenure so to speak. We are trying to get a movement going on ProgressivePulse.org and your input would be welcome
I agree with that Sean
Yesterday I posted Stanley Baldwin’s election campaign speech from 1923. That had a lot to say about Europe which is very familiar.
http://www.thecynicaltendency.blogspot.co.uk/
““They [the British] are not just on a different planet, they are in a different galaxy,”
That’s good coming from the EU that seems to be on another planet itself, gutting the economies of its own members; oblivious to the fascism that it is unwittingly helping to create within its own borders and still pushing for more austerity in Greece and oblivious to decades of suffering the greek population will face.
Sorry -when it comes to la-la-land and utter stupidity the EU is equal to UK politics on that one!
The more we talk about brexit the more we take our eye off the real ball: the economic ideology that is at the root of our problems, an economic ideaology that also took root in the EU in the 80’s while the real, keynsian, EU disappeared down the khasi. This is a technique that May is using -focus on Brexit and the Union Jack waiving image of a ‘strong’ leader.
let’s stick to the underlying reality on top of which the EU is a vile carbuncle.
I voted remain, but the EU’s demands seem very unreasonable to me. If I was a member of a club that employed staff and had premises to maintain, I would not be under any obligation to fund staff pensions or building maintenance once I had resigned and stopped paying my subscriptions. Perhaps this is just an EU bargaining strategy, but, if so, it looks bad and feeds leavers’ prejudices.
The EU is not a ‘club’
If it’s not a club of nations, what is it?
No Peter, that’s wrong. The EU’s demands are simply those that arose from our membership of the EU, and are to do with obligations and programs we signed up to before the EU referendum. By their nature, many of these are long term commitments that you can’t just stop paying the day after the EU result, or even on the day we leave the EU (if that happens).
This British obsession with a ‘deal’, and the belief that the EU is just playing tough as part of a bargaining strategy is part of the self-delusory stupidity that Angela Merkel was referring to. We’ve signed up to certain obligations as part of our membership, and now we’ve decided to leave, these have to be settled before anything else is discussed.
That’s only unreasonable to EU haters. And besides, if the fanatics here get their way and the UK refuses to pay these previously agreed obligations, the UK’s reputation as a trustworthy business partner and politically stable place to do business will go down the tubes. Who would want to sign all those ‘fabulous’ free trade deals that the Brexiteers assured us we’ll get on leaving the EU once they’ve seen how the UK now operates?
Well, I’m no EU hater, and I voted remain on pragmatic grounds. But I can’t see why the UK has any obligation to pay the sort of money the EU is demanding. In a club, or in a partnership, members can withdraw and cease paying contributions without being called upon to continue to fund the programmes they voted for and agreed to while members. If I cease to be a member of the local cricket club, I can’t reasonably be required to continue to contribute to the 5-year clubhouse improvement programme. If a lot of people leave the cricket club, then the executive committee will need to trim its budget.
Richard says the EU is not a club. Then what is it? What is the model? A marriage, after which we must pay maintenance to a former spouse? An imperial project, in which we are compelled to pay tribute money? Such models are exactly what the leavers use, and the EU seems to be feeding their paranoia. Punishing the UK will not encourage the UK to re-join the EU in the decades ahead.
A marriage is a much closer analogy
And the point is costs were incurred but not paid for whilst we were in membership, especially for pensions, that we must now settle
Not playing by the same agreed rules as everyone else is a behaviour redolent of another much more dangerous country: America.
It is America who gave birth to the 2008 crash – not the EU – by deregulating its financial sector and putting profits before fiduciary duty. And the US Government has got away with it.
If we do treat the EU like this then the Americanisation of Britain will be complete in my view and no doubt we will cosy up to the global bully even closer. And the result? American corporations will expand their ideas of markets and capitalism deeper into our economy and society no doubt. Everything will become an income stream.
I too have issues with the EU but I voted to remain for lots of valid reasons but anyone who thinks that it is the EU who has wrought financial ruin on its members is badly informed and are indeed living in a another galaxy.
Well, a Spanish Minister once said…’when you belong to a club you have to play by the rules…’ of course with the EU, when it comes to the ‘rules’ they are often bent to accommodate political objectives like Spain expanding its deficit and floating stability and growth pact rules to keep the conservatives in -these rules are ‘honoured’ in the breach….the whole thing stinks.
‘anyone who thinks that it is the EU who has wrought financial ruin on its members is badly informed ‘
I have to disagree PSR. The idea that the EU has nothing to do with the crises in Greece,Portugal, Latvia, Spain can’t be right can it. The IMF works in ‘concert’ with the ECB and it is the ECB that bailed out dodgy loans to Greece while maintainig a debt that is about 2% of the EZ debt creating a catastrophe on the ground with millions out of health care (German charities going in to help!) cutting socila care, HIV and drugs programs -it’s an absolute disaster by any measure and the ECB could stop it with a few keystrokes -Steve Keen has talked about this:
“So simply on the data, the prima facie case is that all of Spain’s problems–and by inference, most of Greece’s–are due to austerity, rather than Spain’s (or Greece’s) own failings. On the data alone, the EU should “Cry Uncle”, concede Greece’s point, stop imposing austerity, and talk debt-writeoffs–especially since the Greeks can argue that at least part of its excessive public debt ratio is due to the failure of the EU’s austerity policies to reduce it.”
So Steve Keen is ‘badly informed’. If the EU isn’t responsible then who is ‘America’, even America doesn’t impose the absurd 60% debt to GDP limit on itself. The ECB is responsible for that suffering which is colossal. The notion that there is an EU separate from the one that exists and operates like a ‘platonic’ version of the real thing makes no sense to me.
Simon
Dear or dear…………..
Whilst I concede that the ECB has not covered itself in glory since 2008, to lay the suffering you seem so concerned about solely at the door of the EU/ECB is grossly wrong.
From a strictly causal perspective, the deregulation of its mortgage and financial sector by successive US Governments is wholly to blame for not what just happened in the EU but also globally in 2008 (you seem somewhat oblivious to the wider impact the crash had – Singapore is not in the Eurozone – nor is China and they all suffered as a result and still are). I recall that the EU was chugging along nicely before 2008 and all that.
Sure – the crisis has cruelly opened up the existing weaknesses in the EU/ECB/Eurozone set up. The ECB was set up to control inflation – not to deal in QE after a financial crisis that just about everyone said would not happen – in the hope of avoiding the economic travails that has led to war in the continent the past. And it has largely succeeded. The Euro has also been badly implemented.
And why is it that everyone seems to blame Germany for the hard stance of the ECB?
I am no blind fanboy of the EU or the ECB. I have concerns with the institutions – lots of them. It is infected with neoliberalism for example but then so are the states that make up its membership. I mean – look at our own mismanaged country and the Tories who love austerity. And that for me is the root of the problem.
Have you and others (even Keen) ever considered that the EU is actually made up of states with neo-lib tendencies and all we are actually seeing is the culmination of individual state’s neoliberalism reflected in the behaviour of the institutions (including the ECB)?
You and Keen talk as if the EU/ECB is some sort of separate institution that acts independently of the member states – it can certainly look like it at times. So perhaps- does Wolfgang Streeck who calls the EU under the auspices of the ECB ‘the EU consolidation state’ – dedicated to balanced budgets and increased privatisation and other neo-liberal crap.
If this is the case, then why do the member states not kick back and change the ECB? The reason why is as I said above – that many of these member states agree with austerity too. The ECB is just a reflection of this. And this is where you and people like Keen make a major intellectual error. The EU/ECB for all its faults is us! Or at least our politicians and the countries that they ‘manage’. To treat the EU/ECB as some sort of detached bogeyman like the BREXIT brigade do is just lame sophistry.
Courageous states would take on the EU/ECB and make it change and make it stop austerity. But there aren’t many if any courageous states out there. Because tacitly they mostly agree to the ECB hurting their own people as part of the neo-lib doctrine.
Sorry but I stand by my view on America. None of this austerity business would be needed if the Americans had not done what they did. Clinton, Greenspan, Rubin, Summers, Paulson and others – these are the people responsible for exporting mayhem the world over.
PSR -The ECB is just a reflection?
Worth reading a bit about the evolution of the EU and how it dropped the Keynsian model in the 80’s and adopted the monetarist approach then your notion the the ECB is a mere reflector of the austerity desire of it’s member states might not seem so secure. I also wanted to believe in the vision of Monet and Schuman but history shows that it was hijacked by monetarism in the 80’s.
If what you said was right then why did America abandon austerity (briefly after the crash) and the ECB not? You would expect the opposite. It never ceases to amaze me, how many well-intentioned people on the left hang on to an abstracted conception of the EU as some force for social justice when the reality on the ground is the opposite.
‘The Single European Act dovetailed with the politics of the thatcher administration in the 1980’s….the EMU endorses and puts on a legal basis, the neo-liberal politics of tight money, labour market deregulation and the liberalisation of the capital and financila markets….’ (Werner Bonefeld)
This was well before the GFC.
probably best left there, we won’t agree on this and I don’t want to hijack the blog with a rehash of this debate I think we had last year! We’re on the same side , though, and my disgust with the EU does not lessen my visceral disgust with the Tories and the wreckage of this country -but I won’t hold onto baseless fantasies about the EU.
To paraphrase Hyman Minsky the Neo-Liberals/Neo-Conservatives blame the poor for the state of the economy not the way the economy is run. Here in the UK the poor don’t blame the way the Neo-Liberals/Neo-Conservatives run the country’s economy they blame the EU! Go figure as the Americans would say!