I think the Tories approach to this is that they are accepting no deal but they will try to ask the EU for whatever wish list they want, if they EU are stupid enough to give it to them then great, if not they are happy to go with no deal and then blaming the EU for any problems that come along afterwards. The Tories will keep the Brexit public support, Theresa May will keep her job. They will gamble on Brexit not being as bad as predicted and hope that they can fix any problems before the next general election in 2022. If a hard boarder pops up in Northern Ireland and any troubles occur then that will be good for the Tories too (as it was good for Thatcher) and the DUP will be happy that Irish unification has taken a step back. The tricky part will be getting all this through parliament, a handful of Tories could bring the whole thing crashing down, will they put their party before the country? What will happen with Scotland? will they try for independence again? I guess the Tories think they could just keep denying them an other referendum vote.
Maria D. White and others, for those of us not up-to-date or truly understanding the Brexit ramifications on the rest of us, your news items, intuitions and intuitive predictions are incredibly helpful!
Thank you so much, all of you!
A hard border in Ireland isn't good for the Tories, or anyone in the UK, for that matter. That's because it will bring lots of problems to both sides of Ireland. And Ireland is still a major trade partner with the UK for all sorts of foodstuffs. Nobody wants an argument with their own fridge. When it comes to Ireland, any deal is better than no deal for them, so I gather the plan is to scare them with "no deal" and then they'll be ready to accept anything.
Scotland have already said that they'll do a second referendum some time after Brexit, if they're unhappy with the deal, and they almost certainly will be. Strictly speaking, they don't need permission from London to do it, they can do like Catalonia and organize a referendum without permission. The main thing that stops them at this point is that the nationalists don't think they can win a referendum yet. But five years down the line, that's a definite possibility.
A hard border in Ireland is good for the Tories because it's good for the DUP, any trouble that arises will be blamed on the EU. It also creates a siege mentality which tends to make people more conservative and rally around the flag. Thatcher used the IRA attacks for her own political gain. Labour brought in the good friday agreement in 1998, the Tories are now trying to destroy it. A border will be bad for the UK. The Tories do not care about the people of Northern Ireland and Ireland, only staying in power.
Scotland can hold their own illegal independence referendum but it will never be internationally recognised, almost every country in the world has their own breakaway movements and they won't want to encourage these breakaway movements to hold their own illegal referendums. Catalonia's illegal referendum was not recognised by anyone other than Catalonia. The EU immediately said it did not recognise Catalonia as being independent. No nation wants to encourage an illegal referendum. Everything has to be done within the rules. Also I can't see everyone turning out to vote if the referendum is illegal so there will always be a debate over the result.
Hello all, I've just been reading the latest predictions and we now have two that suggest Brexit may be stopped. One that explicitly says it will be stopped and one that says a unilateral agreement will be reached.
This seems more positive that what was seen before...does this mean it's looking more hopeful and it may be stopped or at the very least a hard Brexit will be averted?
Watching with great hope and positive thoughts.
I feel the situation is pretty hopeless right now. Country is split right in the middle. Tories are forcing through with this insanity to win right wing votes. I'm hoping and praying for miracle.
I said earlier in this thread that a global recession would be coming sooner than Brexit day, with the full crisis coming at the beginning of next year but problems starting before that. We just have seen global stock markets going down, which fits the economic timetable I was seeing.
To clarify terminology, Brexit with some sort of trade agreement with the EU can be "soft Brexit" (if the agreement is close to remaining in the EU) or "hard Brexit" (if it's far from it). If there is no agreement, it's called "no deal Brexit". "No Brexit" would mean staying in the EU.
Brexit would be almost impossible to stop at this late stage. Because the decision was the result of a referendum, there really isn't a way of rolling it back unless something happened that was such a huge game-changer that it justified stopping the process. And I don't see any such game-changer between now and Brexit day.
Most people are still expecting that "no deal Brexit" won't happen, and some sort of agreement will be reached. This is what I see myself, though I see the agreement will be rather incomplete, and a "hard Brexit".
Stu, the news today show that the Tories and DUP aren't agreed on Ireland. Hardly surprising, because the DUP is rather extreme. I agree that the Tories don't care much for the people of Ireland, North or South, but they do care, like the establishment in Great Britain always has, about the food coming from Ireland. The difference today is, nowadays it would be impossible to extract food from Ireland without the express consent of Irish people. Which requires compromising with them.
On the side point of a Scottish referendum, they could do it as a "consultative" one and they'd almost certainly get away with that. But today, it's a moot point because they know they wouldn't win it, so they won't try. In five years time, it's a possibility. The difference with Catalonia is that the British establishment, unlike the Spanish one, know quite well that it's pointless to try to stop a bunch of people from doing something they're totally determined to do, so if they saw the Scots were determined, they'd find some sort of compromise.
The draft Brexit deal has come out today.
As I said at the beginning of this thread, it's very incomplete. The way it's escaped causing massive disruptions in trade is by effectively agreeing to a transition period, and during that time the UK will stay in the customs union. What most people would call the real deal negotiations will happen during the transition period. And the EU has only accepted this solution recently - probably once they realized it was the only option they could realistically get in the available time frame.
Also, what I was saying all along about the Irish border has been proved correct. Tories never had any interest in a hard Irish border, and the draft deal pretty much proves this point.
It seems to me like the EU was trying to use the "Irish backstop" as their general gambit for a deal. The argument would go something like: If you Brits are willing to accept this deal with Ireland, that is a EU country, why not with everybody else? Except that Britain wants to be a lot closer to Ireland than to the rest of the EU. This looks pretty much impossible, because Ireland is in a customs union with the rest of the EU. But the UK has been unmoved.
The way I see this, the British government will treat Ireland differently from the rest of the EU, and they're willing to wait for as long as it takes, and stay with things as they are for as long as needed, till there is agreement on something acceptable to them, or the EU ends, whichever comes first. I have a strong feeling they're expecting the EU to end first, actually.
A big part of the draft deal is about the finer points of the divorce bill. The most significant part of this isn't who is going to pay how much, but that it states clearly that financially, UK and the EU are going their separate ways. So on the next euro crisis, the UK will have nothing to do with it.
Another big part of the draft deal is about the status of EU citizens in Britain and British citizens in the EU. As I see it, the idea is give generous terms to current EU citizens in Britain so they can easily get permanent residency, in exchange for making it expensive and complicated to get citizenship (so once those EU citizens go home for long enough, they lose their residency rights), and getting pretty much free rein in restricting immigration from now on. Which was always clearly one of the main aims of Brexit.
If anybody has questions that aren't covered in the news, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.
Theresa May is getting many non-confidence letters right now. The Government (and this Brexit Deal) may crumble if there is a non-confidence vote in the Parliamentary System of the UK.
To be honest i think they will vote this disarray of a deal through. Yes I voted leave, and will never ever vote for anything ever again, after the way they have handled this.
The powers that be, bankers, elites etc will not allow brexit to happen. It was pretty obvious from the start.
The worse thing is this deal is even worse then what we had before, even if there never was a referendum.
How can being in a club be a good thing, when you are a rule taker and have no say. Just pure insanity.
What worries me is this poor deal could well break up the UK.