According to the Politico website:
U.K. Brexit negotiators are developing a plan to solve the Irish border issue by keeping the whole of the U.K. aligned with a subset of the EU's single market rules, according to British officials.
The proposal – which also involves a wholly new U.K.-EU customs arrangement – aims to break the deadlock over the border question as both sides embark on a four-week push to rewrite the EU's contentious “backstop” plan for avoiding a hard Irish border.
Ther direction of travel here is obvious.
The moment the UK now discusses an issue with the EU they cave in.
So, give it a few weeks and the talk of a customs agreement will be about staying in the customs agreement.
And discussion on alignment with the single market will be about retaining membership of it.
And the EU will have it no other way, as they have always made clear.
May is playing a game of conceding in stages. This is the start of the next round.
Or so we can hope, largely because there is no other way out of this mess, and I am quite sure the UK negotiators know that.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
This was obvious from even before the referendum to anybody who bothered to recognise that the power dynamic between the UK and the EU was always in favour of the EU.
Anybody who called out all that hot air and nonsense spouted by Brexit politicians about German cars and Italian wine and how they needed us more than we need them were dismissed as Project Fear.
Likewise, all that pompous piffle about ”sovereignty” was such juveniile dishonest given that even the Brexit White Paper said “whilst parliament has remained sovereign throughout our membership of the EU, it has not always felt like that”. But that wasn’t enough to stop the blatent fibs of brass neck Brexit Parliamentarians.
Well, now it is Project Reality. I just hope Brexit kills the Tory party and ends the careers of the spivs and chancers who convinced peopleto vote for Leave, and puts the deluded myth of English exceptionalism finally to sleep.
Let the failure of Brexit be the despondent, desperate, dying gasp of Alf Garnet-esque imperial nostalgia.
Have a great day, everybody!
John says:
“This was obvious from even before the referendum to anybody who bothered to recognise that the power dynamic between the UK and the EU was always in favour of the EU.”
Got it one. The ‘leavers’ want to leave because they weren’t allowed to be captain. So they wanted to take their ball home. (and play with themselves ?)
The argument about ‘sovereignty’ was always bogus. We had, and still have, the most important aspect of sovereignty; we control our own currency.
Pity we have a government which will only use that control for the benefit of a minority of the population.
Hear, hear. And then of course, there’s just the little matter of Sundays’ revelations in the Observer about the collusion between various supposedly separate anti EU campaigns that broke electoral law, using the data obtained from Facebook.
I hope that the above statement is total rubbish as if it were to happen there would be an enormous backlash on the streets of this country from people that feel totally betrayed by there leaders. Surely we are better than this?
We will have an enormous backlash from the same people as their incomes vapourise
Which would you prefer?
It’s funny you predict that income will vapourise, when you’re involved with Cambridge Econometrics who predicted that under every Brexit scenario we will be better off than now.
To elaborate – under all free trading scenarios analysed the future will be richer, with being an EU full member being the best. When the medai said we will be worse off they were talking about gains foregone, not actual losses.
So what I want to know is why are you hysterically disagreeing with yourself, and are now saying we will be gravely worse off than now?
That is not what Cambridge Econometrics said
In fact, they said the exact opposite as I and everyone else I know read the report
And so what if we may be better off
Are you not aware we live in a relative world
If not, I suggest you do some serious learning soon
Denis Lucey says:
“…. there would be an enormous backlash on the streets of this country from people that feel totally betrayed by there leaders…..”
Interesting idea. Well over half the population of the UK is being betrayed by it’s government now and I’m not seeing much backlash.
Government ministers should be hanging from the lamposts all over the country if your assessment was even close to reflecting the reality of political engagement in 21st century Britain.
Visit to Specsavers recommended.
The purpose of ‘psyops’ is convincingly to present fiction as fact. It may be to convince a target sector of ‘the public’, that what actually exists, doesn’t exist; or that what doesn’t really exist, does exist. The operators of such systems believe they are appealing to “emotion”, and the purpose is fair use of speculative opinion – that is the gloss; but it is also (ironically, consciously or unconsciously), an attempt to uncover the target group individual’s unconscious values; and may appeal to deeply buried, suppressed or denied prejudices. People do not necessarily understand themselves. This is needlessly divisive when applied in politics; and may be dangerous. It also takes no account of what happens when the presumption of ‘trust’ in such messages (on which ‘psyops’ depends, or it is nothing), itself erodes confidence in the honesty of the information transmission process.
In short, they know not what they are doing.
As Theresa May said. Brexit means Brexit (Which given much of what she says is diametrically opposed to what she means) We draw our own conclusions.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master–that’s all.”
So the Free Movement of Capital will remain in perpetuity then. How very depressing.
Why?
Do you really think the EU can’t change?
It has done many times already
I see no reason why it will not again
What I am sure of is that the UK cannot change this outside the EU
I fear you may be right. I previously thought it would probably be the only advantage of Brexit, but as the UK is a small but open world economy, we’d have to change completely and pretty much overnight to actually stop free capital movement successfully. Much better, therefore to convince an EU we are still in, where, as part of the largest trading block in the world, we can all control it together.
“…I hope that the above statement is total rubbish as if it were to happen there would be an enormous backlash on the streets of this country from people that feel totally betrayed by there leaders.”
Not in NI and Scotland we won’t, and those would be the probable key losses if Westminster went ahead with “hard Brexit” .
Ken W says:
“Not in NI and Scotland we won’t, …”
Not only have the English never been comfortable with the idea of being part of ‘Europe’, they have never been entirely comfortable about being British. 🙂
The smiley implies that’s a joke, or like a joke, but I’m not sure it is.
I’m not so sure about the English being uncomfortable about being British as in my experience the two names are interchangeable in use and the overwhelming attitude of the English is subconsciously English IS British. My experience is that the reality that England struggles to cope with and accomodate is that there are differing points of view elsewhere in the united kingdom, particularly in Scotland and that leads the establishment to demand conformity that leaves many, many people across the other nations extremely uncomfortable and unsatisfied.
You are right
My experience in rural England is that there is a widespread contempt of the Scots, Welsh and Irish for not being English, which is defined as British.
The actually extends to contempt for the idea that they have a right to vote for independence
So now “Brexit means Not-Brexit” and contrary to predictions a certain butterfly in the Amazon rain-forest failed to flap its wings much!
What our leaders are trying to do is negotiate a compromise which doesn’t amount to a total Brexit, i.e. being totally out of the single market, the customs union, and the political federation. When Gordon Brown kept us out of the Euro, he was effectively making a compromise against signing up to the rule book of complete membership of the EU. Likewise, the politicians who kept us out of Schengen were making a compromise against the principle of removing border controls. Of course our borders have become less open in recent years, as a response to terrorism and the refugee crisis. I doubt very much that anyone really wants to reduce the UKs trade with the rest of Europe to punish it for Brexit. It is too significant economically to do that. Would Germany really want to see a huge dent made into its trade surplus as a result of excluding the UK from the single market and the customs union? But you never with politicians…
The 27 will forego us to keep the rules they have intact
That is why there is very little room for negotiation
Alex makes the interesting point that the battle cry of ‘taking back control’ was totally disingenuous given that two of the pillars of control are border control and control of currency issuance were never ‘devolved’ to the EU.
So far the only control we have wrested back from the EU is to chose the colour of our passport which we could have specified whenever we chose to.
Even if doing so reduces their GDPs?
I apologise: when I moderate I cannot see what you are commenting on and so cannot answer your question on this occassion
The question of free movement of capital was mentioned above , an issue of Sovereignty which seems to have been little considered in the EU debate , even by Lexiters. If a radical left goverment were elected in the UK there is likely to be an immediate flight of capital out of the country which would cause a financial crisis. The only thing that would prevent this would be controls on the movement of capital. But this is not permitted under single market rules. Is this not a much neglected argument for Lexit? I hope someone will tell me no.
I mentioned this in 2015 and David Cameron picked up me saying so
The reality is that capital flight is rare and from te UK even Moore so bevause this is where money is made and where the financial markets are
In that case fundamentals rule
I support capital controls but the reality is money goes where the returns are – and after a few days of silly game laying disruption people will return funds to the UK
We would just have to ride this out – knowing that money always goes to where it can be managed
“there is likely to be an immediate flight of capital out of the country which would cause a financial crisis”
Two fallacies in one short sentence.
Capital doesn’t exist for the purpose of making rash political statements and will only “fly” when it has material reason to do so. Relevant indicators suggest a capital glut anyway so if you can explain how this capital flight “financial crisis” would eventuate I’m sure that someone somewhere would be fascinated.
Meanwhile demand has been low for quite some time and the world is awash with idle funds looking for somewhere to invest. Flighty capital despite its archaic delusons has never been less needed or more perfectly expendable.
🙂
I think there will be a backlash but not from the streets – it’ll be from Tory MPs. I think there will be a leadership challenge to Theresa May (who has looked very weak since botching the election last year in any case), probably later this year. It’s quite possible (although not certain) that Rees-Mogg could win the resulting contest, which would be the beginning of the end for the Conservative Party as it slides into extremism… a British variant of fascism.
I think that likely
Howard Reed says:
“… leadership challenge to Theresa May (who has looked very weak since botching the election last year in any case), ….”
Well the pundits said she wouldn’t last ’til Christmas and it’s nearly Easter now.
“….probably later this year. It’s quite possible (although not certain) that Rees-Mogg could win the resulting contest, which would be the beginning of the end for the Conservative Party …..”
Wishful thinking , I suspect. I’ll be very surprised if it goes down like that.
Brexit Backlash? In England? Erm – the leave vote was largely from geriatric curtain twitchers who remember Dunkirk and Spitfires and Mr Churchill and the Empire on which the Sun Never Set(s) and red blobs colouring the atlas map of the world. These people are not given to backlash. They are not going to mob out in their Zimmer frames and invalid buggies storming through the streets to sieze Whitehall and Westminster and demand the head of May on a pike and get Nige into number 10. They will just whine and moan about the younger generation and I don’t know what the world’s coming to and you can’t walk down the High Street and hear English spoken any more or see a white face. The fact is most young people in England voted remain. It is young people who are most likely to indulge in a bit of backlash when Brexit is fully revealed as a disaster – and they are remainers. And I at 76 years old shall be eager join their youthful backlash.
🙂
Bravo!
As all this starts to look more and more like an inevitable backdown is anyone else reminded of Greece?
I remember Yannis Varoufakis saying how he wanted to go back to the drachma but found it logistically impossible (not economically, logistically). Now that so much of the Brexit discussion is focused on customs and border problems it seems as if the logistical difficulties that rarely featured in the referendum debate have taken centre stage.
The Eurozone is hard to leave and the EU is even harder. It is designed to be hard – to preserve stability and prevent a revolving door. The EU negotiators make it harder still so as to set an example in case in any other countries want to get any big ideas about leaving. They can be real bastards and they will. Just like Schauble was with Greece.
Well, maybe not quite as bad as that but the EU has interest in making this a test case to discourage nationalists elsewhere from leaving. If the Brexiters were to ever have a chance at success they needed to do more than have a referendum and win it. They needed a well thought-out plan and they never had one. Which is probably just as well.
The problem with hard-arsed EU negotiators is that they will make the Brexiters feel resentful and morally vindicated.
This is why we may need at least Norway for a while….see it as time in the sin bin
Slartibartfast for minister of employment. 🙂