It is quite astonishing how quickly Brexit has been forgotten. Coronavirus has swept it aside. But to ignore the fact that it is ongoing, and due to be completed by 31st December this year, would be a significant error, and most especially as the scale of the coronavirus in the UK, and right across Europe, becomes apparent.
As Politics Home has reported this morning:
The next round of Brexit trade talks has been cancelled as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.
Around 200 negotiators had been due to sit down for face-to-face discussions in London on Monday.
But as the numbers struck down by Covid-19 continues to rise across the world, the decision was taken to postpone the talks.
It is reasonable to presume that this delay will be for an unspecified period. Quite when the meetings of the required scale to manage Brexit might take place again is at present simply unknown. What is more, the capacity to deal with this issue might be seriously impaired right across Europe over the coming months. In that case it is glaringly obvious that the time has come for the government to announce that the date for us leaving the European Union has to be delayed.
I do not say this as a Remainer. I say it as someone who wants an organised departure from the EU if we are to have one at all. The chance of that was already slim: now it is non-existent. Surely some pragmatism has to prevail?
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“…I say it as someone who wants an organised departure from the EU if we are to have one at all….”
But that isn’t the government’s intention , is it? If it is they have a funny way of going about it.
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
I entirely agree with the authir of this article. In the midst of this coronavirus epidemic, Brexit does need to be delayed until the UK can have at least one proper round of talks with EU delegates, otherwise we could still crash out with No Deal.
Let us hope that the holders of credit default swaps (bets taken on BREXIT addled performance on certain vulnerable sectors of the economy) who have also bank rolled the Tory party are in a listening mood.
Look at it differently. The EU is on the back foot, it’s major economies are in recession (even before coronavirus) and they are more incentivised than ever to compromise and reach a trade deal which suits all parties. The intransigence shown in previous negations will be replaced by pragmatism.
Being pragmatic still takes time
Get real
Phil mills. I’m interested to know in what way is the EU being intransigent? FYI it is the UK that has left the EU. The UK no longer wants to play by the rules of the game that it helped make, support and applied on other 3rd countries for over 40 years. The UK has rejected all models of relationships that 3rd countries currently have with the EU – for instance, the Norway option. Models that the UK supported as a member and would only offer to outside countries when it was a member. The UK has been told right from the start that it cannot cherry pick, have its cake and eat it, or have a special status simply because of who it is if it is not prepared to play by the rules of the game which it helped create. The UK now doesn’t like those rules. It is the UK that is being intransigent.
If anyone thinks that using this virus panic is a means to getting a better deal because of the threat to EU economies and society then you are missing one important fact (alongside the morality one). It could well be that it is the UK that will be hit worse and become desperate as the situation unfolds. To unleash a no deal Brexit on the public on top of this virus panic would be totally irresponsible. To try to use it to get a better deal will not go down well across the EU. I think they will see right through that one.
Finally, it may well be that at some stage the EU will simply say we have more important things to deal with than Boris Johnson’s artificial deadline. Talks will be cancelled – as they have this week – and the EU simply offers an extension which I think will be generous of them. If the UK declines then the EU is perfectly within its rights to say take it or leave it and move on, the health of their citizens will be far more important. Hopefully, sanity will prevail and our Government will see what is in the public interest and above party and ideological politicking. More likely they will accept it and then blame the EU.
Meanwhile back in reality….
EU governments are being pragmatic already and announcing financial packages to cover businesses, cancelling taxes, shutting off affected areas and generally following the Chinese “model” for dealing with all this. It is all keep calm etc and elbow bumps out here. Sorry, brexiteers! The only thing that concerns me at the mo is should the title of this article have a comma in it! I think not.
Don’t tell Peter Dawe….
Yes, EU (National) Governments, NOT EU Institutions
… ECB looks totally out of its competence!
It’s doing more than the BoE
the UK isn’t growing either.
And the loss of the single market will be costly.
Brexiteers like to kid themselves that the EU is about to fall apart.
I see the old ‘this will hurt them more than us’ Brexiter argument is still alive and well.
🙂
And the UK isn’t or won’t very soon be judging by the Chancellors own budget statement?
There will be compromise, but not as much as UK might expect. CETA (Canadian trade agreement) doesn’t work that well for Canada – they find they cannot make as much use of the agreement as it appears to allow on e.g. meat exports. The Ireland question won’t go away, there will be barriers to trade and at a point we are going to have to choose between EU and US. Yes UK will lean to US but that will not be to our advantage – we already have more trade with US than they do with us. Same questions/issues that we faced the day after the vote. Like Coivd19 we are looking at the least worst option and will still get something even more inferior.
Happy Friday 13th
Proving, yet again, that Brexit is a faith-based enterprise rather than anything based on facts or reason, a Leaver trots out the same nonsense about how weak the EU is, and that it is the EU being unreasonable rather than the UK being the guilty party in Brexit. The same inverted reality that Brexiters have been spouting for years.
Don’t you ever learn Phil? Remember how the German car industry was going to be so desparate to sell cars to the UK (as if BMW, Audi, Mercedes etc don’t sell to the entire bloody planet!) that they’d “force” the German government to let the UK have its cake and eat it. That doesn’t seem to have happened does it?
Or how about the threat that the UK wasn’t going to pay any of the divorce bill to the EU? Nope, we’ve agreed to pay it.
Or what about the numerous declarations by Brexiters that the sovereignty of the UK was absolutely, totally inviolable and they’d never agree to there being a border between the UK mainland and NI just because the EU insisted on it? Errrrrrrrrr…………..
In just the same way, if anybody is in a weaker position now due to the Coronavirus outbreak, its the UK. Especially as we seem to be doing a lot less to prevent the likelihood of an epidemic than the rest of Europe. Still, I’m sure that with a political titan like Johnson leading us we’re in good hands eh?
I see the EU Institutions as totally failing to respond to the crisis. They carry on with month long processes to make essential changes that need to be done at a moments notice. E.g. suspension of empty flight on the use-it-or-lose-it.
I’ve also noticed that in a crisis, national governments are simply ignoring EU rules and Institutions. E.g. Migration, travel, export of strategic medical goods, deficit limits ….
The UK government is able to act without looking over their shoulder at possible EU repercussions, EU State Aid rules will seriously hinder EU countries in helping their businesses survive.
I think the crisis will call into question the existence of the EU in the remaining 27, rather than pulling the UK back
Poor old Brexiters – they’ve convinced themselves that we cant move a muscle without asking the EU for permission (eg state owned railways, migration, tampon tax etc, etc). And then they complain bitterly when the EU does not tell everyone exactly what to do, because thats not actually how it works
Just wish they’d put themselves in self-isolation for a while…
Brexit can’t be cancelled because the UK has never fully resolved the arguments in the sense that a workers revolt against market fundamentalist free flow of EU economic migrants has never been balanced against a breakdown of global trading rules with the Americans abandoning a WTO that was an ineffective enforcer and forcing the world into trade deals increasingly determined by market clout not fairness.
http://www.primeeconomics.org/articles/brexit-and-its-consequences