Brexit On The Brink...

[Gob]

The EU and UK have reached a post-Brexit trade deal, ending months of disagreements over fishing rights and future business rules.

At a Downing Street press conference, Boris Johnson said: "We have taken back control of our laws and our destiny."

The text of the agreement has yet to be released, but the PM claimed it was a "good deal for the whole of Europe".

The UK is set to exit EU trading rules next Thursday - a year after officially leaving the 27 nation bloc.

It will mean big changes for business, with the UK and EU forming two separate markets, and the end of free movement.

But the trade deal will come as a major relief to many British businesses, already reeling from the impact of coronavirus, who feared disruption at the borders and the imposition of tariffs, or taxes on imports.

As the deal was announced, Mr Johnson - who had repeatedly said the UK would "prosper mightily" without a deal - tweeted a picture of himself smiling with both thumbs lifted in the air.

In a press conference in Brussels, European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen said: "This was a long and winding road but we have got a good deal to show for it."

She said the deal was "fair" and "balanced" and it was now "time to turn the page and look to the future". The UK "remains a trusted partner," she added.

At his press conference, Boris Johnson said the £668bn a year agreement would "protect jobs across this country" and "enable UK goods to be sold without tariffs, without quotas in the EU market".

He acknowledged he had been forced to give ground on his demands on fishing.

"The EU began with I think wanting a transition period of 14 years, we wanted three years, we've ended up at five years," he said.

And he said the UK had not got all it wanted on financial services, a vital part of the UK economy, but he insisted the deal was "nonetheless going to enable our dynamic City of London to get on and prosper as never before".

Most of the UK - except from Northern Ireland - will no longer participate in the Erasmus student exchange scheme, which Mr Johnson said was because it is "extremely expensive" - but a British option called the Turing Scheme will provide an alternative, he added.

Students in NI will still be able to take part thanks to an arrangement with the Irish government.

The UK's chief trade negotiator Lord Frost said the full text of the free trade agreement would be published soon.

The UK Parliament will be recalled on 30 December to vote on the deal - it will also need to be ratified by the European Parliament.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer - who campaigned against Brexit - said his party would vote for the deal in the Commons, ensuring it will pass.

He said it was "a thin agreement" that "does not provide adequate protections" for jobs, manufacturing, financial services or workplace rights and "is not the deal the government promised".

But with no time left to renegotiate, the only choice was between "this deal or no deal," he added.

No deal would have "terrible consequences for this country and the Labour Party cannot allow that to happen", said the Labour leader, and that was why he had decided to back it.

Analysis box by Laura Kuenssberg, political editor

It is a massive achievement for both sides that they have done such a huge trade deal on the timetable that was said to be impossible at the start.

Whatever your personal view, there's a sense of vindication in the camp of those who campaigned to leave the EU - they got a free trade deal with zero quotas and zero tariffs (although there may be some before you scream) but the UK will not be under European law.

It's no coincidence that David Frost's number two, Oliver Lewis, wrote the Vote Leave manifesto. No 10 believes the PM, who was propelled to his position by the Vote Leave tribe, has been able to keep his central Brexit promises.

Look out for the "rebalancing clause" when the deal finally emerges - the mechanism where either side can request a change to the deal, or seek to punish the other side if they believe they are breaking the agreement.

In short, the UK side believes it means they have been able to achieve two clear objectives: the deal applies to both sides, it's reciprocal, but there is the possibility of exit if things go wrong, without collapsing the whole shebang.

But it's Christmas Eve, so I suspect you agree that's enough for now. The vote in Parliament is set for the 30th. The result is not in doubt, but the theory that's been agreed tonight, will only be tested in years to come.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55435930

[MajGenl.Meade]

Good. Now we can bring the Premier League back to the standards of the first 75 years of the 20th century and ban all these foreign managers and players. See how quickly then the English team will win the World Cup*. Again. For the second time since 1950. Since ever. Look out Brazil with a 'z' - we're after your record!

*Clarification: no other cup is THE World Cup. Only the football one. The real football one.

[ex-khobar Andy]

CNN is reporting that the UK's massively lucrative international legal services business could suffer major ££££££ damage.

There's a thing called the Lugano Convention which controls how cross border litigation applies within the EU and to some extent in other countries. For years the UK was seen as the gold standard of international legal services which depended on the Lugano Convention. But UK's membership was part of its EU status and lapsed when Brexit happened. UK has applied to rejoin but so far has only the support of Iceland, Switzerland and Norway - all non-EU members - and the EU appears to be dragging its heels.

Per CNN:

The UK dropped out of the treaty as a consequence of Brexit, and applied to rejoin in April 2020. Yet, while the non-EU signatory states (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) agreed to its re-admission, to date the European Commission has recommended that the EU deny this request, and said that the bloc was "not in a position" to give its consent to UK accession.

And:

"The alternatives are slowly becoming clear for international companies that want to operate in the EU and don't want any blockages," says Josep Galvez, a former Spanish judge admitted to the English bar at Del Canto Chambers in London and Galvez Pascual in Spain.

"This Lugano limbo the UK finds itself in is the worst situation possible as lawyers on both sides have no clarity on what will happen in the long term. I think the EU wants to make the UK suffer and give EU jurisdictions the opportunity to take business from England."

It's, sadly, the human condition. You keep calling your parents assholes, don't be surprised if they cut you off when you leave home.

[Big RR]

Of course, after your parents cut you off, they are usually better off (at least economically); I'm not sure this is the case for the EU. Cutting one's nose off to spite one's face is never a good idea. I understand passions falre, but I thought the adults on both sides would be moreattuned to what is best.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Well, BRR - usually I'd agree and I certainly hope that the grownups prevail. But if I were Brussels I'd be looking to protect my own turf and investments. Yes they want Britain to succeed - or possibly more accurately, not to fail - but not to the extent that it fuels the anti EU mobs in France, Germany, Italy . . .

They are treading a fine line.

[Big RR]

Indeed they are; but grinding the UK into the ground will make the EU much less economically viable, which will fuel the others to want to leave. The best way to keep them is to show it makes economic sense for them to remain.

[rubato]

The UK is getting what they demanded and getting it good and hard.
They might learn their lesson and recant but I suspect not, or at least not until a lot of damage has been done.
fishing has been hammered because the UK fishermen now have to follow the import rules all non-EU countries have.
Uk fisheries have been hammered they are trying to sell a perishable product with much greater trade restrictions. They have handed a huge advantage to EU fishers who can now catch fish in UK waters and sell them faster and more efficiently; an advantage created by Brexit. UK fish exporters are having to hire an expensive export compliance expert at great cost.

UK farmers are letting crops rot unharvested because they made it harder to attract foreign workers.

There is a critical shortage of lorry drivers because foreign drivers were driven away which created a barrier to their entry. If you tell people that they are unwanted and disliked thy will generally agree with you and go elsewhere.

New construction has slowed because skilled workers from Poland and eastern Europe have moved to places which were 'not hostile to them.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brit ... SKBN29B1XE

The adults in the room said several years ago that Brexit was harmful to both sides but the UK, with the willful self destruction of teenagers, refused to listen.

yrs,
rubato

[ex-khobar Andy]

Results of a new poll on the UK economy post-Brexit are in:



Depressing. I used to think that UK voters were smarter than US voters. Sorry about that.

[Scooter]

As much I don't think Brexit has turned out to be the magic pill that its proponents advertised it to be, taking the popular pulse about the economy right now isn't particularly meaningful. For example, the two items with the biggest disparity, ability to import goods and prices, are impacted by supply chain issues and attendant inflation that are issues in most countries at the moment.

[Joe Guy]

As much I don't think Brexit has turned out to be the magic pill that its proponents advertised it to be, taking the popular pulse about the economy right now isn't particularly meaningful........

I agree. If the question was 'Is COVID 19 having a generally good or bad impact?', you probably get the same results.

[Gob]

" Opinium poll for the Observer" I don't think that was ever going to find anything else...

[ex-khobar Andy]

I don't disagree with Scooter and Joe - there are probably multiple factors at play here and it's possible that Brexit is being partially blamed for things which are not its fault -but Opinium has a good track record and does not appear to have a reputation for telling its clients what they want to hear, which is what Gob implies.

From their Wikipedia entry:

Opinium's most recent success in political polling came at the 2019 UK General Election where they were the most accurate agency,[8] calling the actual results. In the 2016 EU Referendum, Opinium were the only agency to predict the eventual outcome with the smallest error.[9]

I don't doubt that Opinium staff had a hand in the Wikipedia entry so it's possible that those data have been cherry picked. But they are not the only poll to find general disappointment with Brexit: Statistica do it every two or three weeks and they are finding a widening gap (currently 11%) of Britons who believe that leaving the EU was wrong. There was a narrowing of that gap and even a slight preponderance of people favoring Brexit a few months ago, probably because (my speculation, not theirs) the UK seemed to be doing a better job of rolling out vaccines that did the EU.

[Gob]

Fair comments Andy.

[Burning Petard]

'At a Downing Street press conference, Boris Johnson said: "We have taken back control of our laws and our destiny."'

IMNSHO, that is not necessarily a good thing. Hope it works out for you better than Trump is doing for us. The fascists here seem primed to prove Trotsky's observation: with control over 5% of the population, I can rule the nation.

snailgate

[Big RR]

What's the alternative, to cede them to some "superior" power?

[ex-khobar Andy]

From this thread a couple of years ago, just prior to the UK General Election.

BloJo appears to be winning the PR war. The Guardian is reporting that the "Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) officials agreed not to announce whether they were going to investigate “possible criminality” over allegations about a conflict of interest in Johnson’s dealings while mayor of London with US businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri until after the election." Arcuri is the businesswoman who appeared to get favorable treatment (£126,000 worth) from Johnson when he was mayor of London. I have no idea what, if anything, BloJo got up to while visiting Ms Arcuri at her dancing pole equipped flat in East London but I would prefer it not to have been done with pubic money.

The possibility exists that Johnson's Tories might win the erection and then an investigation would begin. If guilty of misusing the taxpayers £s he could be doing porridge for the rest of his life.

Jennifer is the young American 'entrepreneur' who used her charms to seduce our famously continent pillar of rectitude - then the Mayor of London - into an affair which involved pole dancing. I am not making this up. She provided her diary of these exhausting and exhilarating times to John Ware - a journalist who writes for, among other things, the political magazine Standpoint (I refuse to lower myself into some crude innuendo on that mag's name and its positions on the issues at hand) - and, according to the Observer* "At Ware’s request, Arcuri has now agreed to allow publication of some of the extracts following Johnson’s statements last week about public probity, including how MPs who break conduct rules “should be punished”."

Well now. The cat is now firmly among the pigeons. Ms Arcuri's contemporaneous diary accounts make it clear that Johnson (BTW 'Johnson' is common slang for a piece of the male anatomy in the UK - I'm not sure how much that slang has penetrated this corner of the world - let's just be thankful that Johnson's UK times do not coincide with those of a Bush and we are therefore spared schoolboy jokes by newspaper subeditors) did his thinking with his lower brain. I shall just repeat the headers to the piece:

Jennifer Arcuri: ‘How Johnson pledged help for my business to win my love’

I’ll be your throttle, he told Arcuri as mayor

Diaries could reopen misconduct inquiry

Blimey. I used to think, back in the day, that I had a useful line of chat, but I never thought of the 'throttle' gambit. Too late to try it now.

*The Observer is essentially the Sunday issue of the Guardian.

[Crackpot]

We have a guy at work (he works offsite) named John Thomas that always gives the British guy I work with a chuckle.

[Gob]

I could take offense, but I won't....

[MajGenl.Meade]

So, did BoJo get a BloJo or what? What's this throttle business - sexphyxiation?