The Brexit Thread (topical thread)

[Aractus]

Seems as if BoJo's natural wit and charm has fucked things up royally.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-55249561

Brexit: 'Large gaps' remain after trade talks with Ursula von der Leyen

The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said the evening had "plainly gone badly" and the chances of the UK leaving the post-Brexit transition period at the end of the year without a firm arrangement was a "big step closer".

Ah well,  elect a clown - get a circus!

You've clearly never followed a big EU “negotiation” in real-time before. Boris hasn't fucked anything up at all. What you're seeing is what always happens in EU politics on this scale - the EU is very slow to move, it makes firm decisions and then expects the other-side whether that's a member state or some other nation state to see things their way and back-down. They didn't lift a finger to help David Cameron win the Remain argument in 2016, had they negotiated in good faith in 2016 and given Cameron what he promised to deliver to the UK then Brexit probably would not have happened, at least not yet. If anyone's behaving badly it's the EU by allowing a small handful of member states, and in particular France, to dictate the terms of the FTA negotiation. Not to mention creating such a haphazard exit mechanism in the first place (Article 50).

Look back at what I said two years or so ago - the EU likes to wait until beyond the deadline before they make a decision. We haven't even seen them enter their endgame strategy yet - their endgame strategy as I said is to hold an European Council summit to decide what to do about the FTA with the UK, and when we see that happen the member states will decide upon what they want to do - either compromise on terms that the UK wants with the outstanding issues, or accept WTO trade for the time being. I can't tell you what they're going to decide - for two reasons. Firstly in the UK's favour is the fact that it does appear the sticking points are demands by only a minority of EU nations. However they will show solidarity, and if they think it makes them look weak they won't hesitate to cut off their nose to spite their face. Secondly they don't see things at all the way that the British do, they are really out of touch with them.

Thirdly, the EU has shown themselves time and time again to be unwilling to face the hard reality of their situations. How many people on this forum have a favourable view of Brexit? I do - and Brexit has always been in Australia's national interests. But this forum is dominated by people from Europe, the UK, and the US - it's not in the national interests of the EU27, and it wasn't in the USA's national interests either. But even if you see Brexit as a crisis - when has the EU ever been great at crisis management? The Eurozone crisis? They behaved appallingly in responding to a crisis they created and yet put all of the blame and responsibility onto Greece. They've shown shockingly poor leadership over the Covid-19 pandemic as well. As I mentioned earlier, their drug regulator the EMA, isn't even assessing emergency use authorisation for Covid-19 vaccines, expecting member-states with skeletal regulators that simply take the EMA regulations and apply them domestically to make those decisions!!

What you said did imply the EU caving, but yeah...

Thank you for quoting me accurately. Nowhere did I say they would cave - there I said (and perhaps it may have been a bit of an exaggeration) that they don't even begin negotiations until the 11th hour. And note I said they will try to re-negotiate what they already agreed to - this has already happened now: 2 weeks ago von der leyen made progress the UK side were happy with, Barnier came back and he didn't just tear it up but came in with a new set of demands directly from Macron.

What you said did imply the EU caving, but yeah...

Yeah that's how the EU negotiates, they will wait until the last day if they have to before they negotiate, they're a very very tough organisation to negotiate with. A nightmare. They'll wait until the very last minute of the 11th hour to negotiate, and then they'll try to re-negotiate the deal they already signed.

WTO rules means they breach the Good Friday Agreement and no one wants that. The EU has been adamant about this issue right from the start of whatever negotiations happened with Theresa May.

That's not factual at all. Both sides are bound by the terms (the bi-national treaty) of the Belfast Agreement - if WTO trade means that UK breaches it then it also means that Ireland breaches it. But regardless the NI protocol protects it.

Interesting that you say that Johnson has to back down...

I didn't say that. I said exactly the opposite: he has a clear mandate to pursue a good deal or it's no deal. He doesn't have to back-down at all, and nor should he. WTO trade is not a catastrophe. It certainly is not optimal, but it's a temporary state until the FTA is negotiated. I think the Johnson government is facing that reality. A reality that neither the May government nor the EU wanted to face. It may well be inevitable.

Where you could quote me where I'm not so confident is I did say that a trade deal would be signed this year. I said that on the basis that the UK has no experience for 47 years in negotiating their own FTAs. The UK however has stuck to their mandate, as they should.

Rather than thinking about one side, or the other, caving think about this as a process. We are only part-way through. The rhetoric coming out of the negotiating teams might be that we're at the end with an impasse, but like I said here on the day or eve of the so-called “deadline” that there were probably still weeks of negotiations left and I woke up to hear that indeed the “deadline” had moved to Sunday midnight.

What I think is that Europe may well need to face the hard reality head-on in a WTO-trade world before they come back with sensible compromises. But there is a chance that at their summit, not this one the one they'll hold in another 2-3 weeks to address the impasse if it's still going on, that they'll decide to change their mandate.