Brexit Thread V - The Final Countdown?!?

[Sofista]

A deal to be signed should be beneficial to both parties. I still fail to understand how it would be beneficial for the 27 sovereign nations which are members of the EU, including Finland, to grant a preferential status to the UK that they wouldn't even have for themselves. Why would Finland, among others, harm itself in such a way?

For decades the UK has been allowed a privileged membership in the EU. Over time they probably came to see it as a given, a fait accompli.

 

[really]

Ireland and the UK did away with controls at the border in 1971, through the Common Travel Area. This predates both state's entry in the EU, in 1973. From the UK government's position paper on the EU negotiations in early 2017 (published only some months later):



The UK and Ireland already have a deal in place that solves the issue of travel across the border for its citizens. The only reason this deal may cease is if the EU imposes that it be terminated.

The UK and Ireland never really imposed passport controls on each other - it would have been impractical to police such a porous border and it would have created a headache trying to identify and document who was British living in Ireland and who was Irish living in Britain.
Unionists should note that controls were imposed by the UK during WW2 and for several years after between the island of Ireland and GB. (Within the UK controls).
The military border checkpoints during the troubles could and did ask for ID, not necessarily a passport.
The Good Friday Agreement did away with these security checkpoints.

Customs controls were introduced shortly after independence and remained there until the creation of the single market.

The first British officials to be killed during the troubles were customs officers in remote and at the time unprotected border posts.

There is no question of people controls being introduced. The backstop is for goods only.

 

[Silurian]

Lets see what innonimatu said. My highlight

Accusing the UK of causing a "hard border" in Ireland when when what the UK was demanding in the negotiations was free trade for goods and movement for citizens is pure hypocrisy. It was the EU that rejected that in the negotiations, and put many other demand on the table in order to allow this free transit.

Uppi called him out for falsehood.

That's quite a reversal of what actually happened, even for you. It was the UK government that wanted to limit freedom of movement - it explicitly stated so.

innonimatudid not defend his position that the UK was demanding free movement for citzens. Free movement for citzens is one of the EUs four freedoms which the Conservertive government wants to withdraw from in its bid to get nett immigration down to the tens of thousands. A sizeable number of people voted leave because of freedom of movement of EU citzens so stopping it is is one of the Governments key Brexit aims.

Where can I find their proposal at the tipe to do so on the irish border, regarding irish and UK citizens? Find it and quote or link to it, please. Until you do I'll keep my claim.

I posted a link to make it clear that the UK does not want to allow the free movement for citizens.

Controlling immigration does not equal a hard border. Numerous countries do away with visas and allow movement of people across borders without checks, where those borders are isolated. They are by default treated as visitors/tourists and will only face difficulties if trey try to work in the other country.

Northern Ireland is not some wind swept wilderness (my highlight above). The bridges over the river Foyle that runs through Derry are only four miles from the border.

Ireland and the UK did away with controls at the border in 1971, through the Common Travel Area. This predates both state's entry in the EU, in 1973. From the UK government's position paper on the EU negotiations in early 2017 (published only some months later):

The UK and Ireland already have a deal in place that solves the issue of travel across the border for its citizens. The only reason this deal may cease is if the EU imposes that it be terminated.

What May said before the referendum was conditioned by the fact that she was campaigning against brexit had wanted to strike fear about the consequences of leaving. She was a remained. After brexit was voted for, the UK's position in the negotiations was falling back on the CTA in case of no deal.

The Common Travel Area does not give EU citizens the right to free movement, so it does not solve the issue of travel across the border.

The Common Travel Area did not remove controls at the border in 1971, you are misinformed.

Video of the British Army was blowing up bridges on the border in 1975

 

[innonimatu]

@Silurian: you have no argument to make, so you make up strawman. You should be better that that.

We were talking about the issue of the Irish border as it affected the status of Northern Ireland and could create tensions there. We were talking about citizens of the UK and of Ireland. Not the rest of the EU. There is no risk of Northern Ireland starting a civil war because the french or the german or the poles can no longer immigrate (as in settle) freely there!

I find it quite hard to believe that you misunderstood what I was writing, what citizens I meant. You too are arguing here in bad faith, just for the sake of "scoring a point". Take it and be happy, if it makes you so. You're still deceiving yourself but that is your problem. What I will not allow you is to misrepresent to other people what I said.

As for the CTA, it indeed formalized in 1971 what had already been long-standing policy since Ireland got its independence. It was necessary to give a legal underpinning to continuing to have a border that allowed unfettered crossings by people, because at the time the UK was starting to review the mess that was its nationality law and the unusually (as compared to your typical border) "porous" status of the irish border was finally starting to draw some attention. This review, ironically given the current "worries", was a consequence of the UK giving up on its preferential relations with former colonies and turning towards a future with Europe. Up until then it was extremely easy for irish people to acquire acquire citizenship in the UK. If they did not had it already, grandfathered from before the laws of the late 1940s. As for the border @really is right, before the CTA people were not really controlled, neither country bothered to do so even though they formally could and kind of did during the war. And after the CTA agreement formal impediments to free travel were eliminated. Occasional operations during the armed conflict in Norther Ireland do not change that fact, any state can reasonably request people to identify themselves in such a situation, this does not prevent their free travel if they are indeed authorized (citizens of either country). And the UK was also in the unusual situation (compared to other countries at the time) of not having mandatory standard identity papers for its own citizens. Meaning that in practice the UK could not distinguish the citizens of Ireland from those of the UK at the border and turn the irish away even if it wanted to! Occasional controls on people were an exception due to the violence in the 1970s and never really functioned.

Are you british? Possibly young and only reading your favourite media echo chamber? I'm not, but it's not hard top find testimonies about the irish border in those decades and check what is said now...

I haven't found clear information and @really may add something useful, but it seems that historically it was Ireland that has sought to enforce border customs controls, and the UK that wanted "free trade". It was also Ireland that forced the issue of having separate citizenship for its citizens, and the UK that automatically kept granting rights to the new irish citizens born before independence, and easy immigration and naturalization to those after, until the legislation changes after the 1970s. Ireland's efforts to separate from the UK are entirely understandable in the context of its process of independence. But the UK cannot be accused now of having desired a "hard border". They didn't historically, and there is sign that they do now. It is the EU that has been imposing the binary choice "either a deal on our terms or a hard border", against the desires of both the UK's government and the irish government.

 

[Silurian]

@Silurian: you have no argument to make, so you make up strawman. You should be better that that.

We were talking about the issue of the Irish border as it affected the status of Northern Ireland and could create tensions there. We were talking about citizens of the UK and of Ireland. Not the rest of the EU. There is no risk of Northern Ireland starting a civil war because the french or the german or the poles can no longer immigrate (as in settle) freely there!

I find it quite hard to believe that you misunderstood what I was writing, what citizens I meant. You too are arguing here in bad faith, just for the sake of "scoring a point". Take it and be happy, if it makes you so. You're still deceiving yourself but that is your problem. What I will not allow you is to misrepresent to other people what I said.

You claimed that the UK was demanding "free ... movement for citizens" (see link in post 463). No mention of the CTA in post 453. Since you did not mention the CTA we can only presume that you considered that this fundamental part of the relationship between the UK and Ireland was not relevant.

Since the EU has never expressed a desire to end the Common Travel Area, as far as I am aware, then introducing it as a problem is a red herring.

 

[Oerdin]

For decades the UK has been allowed a privileged membership in the EU. Over time they probably came to see it as a given, a fait accompli.

It was hardly privileged; simply the result of decades of other countries needing the UK to not veto certain things they wanted so the UK would agree to do so in exchange for something else.

 

[Senethro]

It was hardly privileged; simply the result of decades of other countries needing the UK to not veto certain things they wanted so the UK would agree to do so in exchange for something else.

This is how hard you need to revise history in order to hate the EU so much.

 

[Silurian]

It was hardly privileged; simply the result of decades of other countries needing the UK to not veto certain things they wanted so the UK would agree to do so in exchange for something else.

Correct. Give and take between sovereign states. Four EU states have opt outs.

 

[innonimatu]

You claimed that the UK was demanding "free ... movement for citizens" (see link in post 463). No mention of the CTA in post 453. Since you did not mention the CTA we can only presume that you considered that this fundamental part of the relationship between the UK and Ireland was not relevant.

Since the EU has never expressed a desire to end the Common Travel Area, as far as I am aware, then introducing it as a problem is a red herring.

That post was in reply to Hrothbern's concern about igniting tensions in NI. Of course it was about movement of irish and british citizens, those were the only relevant ones for the issue. I already make my posts very lengthy, should I spell out everything and have a lawyer go over it before publishing? Fortunately I'm not a career bureaucrat...

The EU has been the one side raising concerns about possible tensions and a violation of the GFA. If they want to keep the CTA agreement in place, ll they had to do was to say "the backstop we wish is the CTA". The UK would have agreed without any dispute. In fact the US has proposed just that. The EU ignored the UK's proposal, which in practice means rejecting it, made up a problem and piled on outrageous demands.

 

[really]

The CTA never has and never will eliminate physical border checks on goods - the EU single market did that.

People movement and the CTA isn't a backstop. It isn't even an issue.

 

[Takhisis]

People understood the question in 2016 but most did not know how many balls would have to be juggled. This was not helped by different Brexiters saying different things.

The 2016 referendum could have been worded to confuse some Leave voters to vote remain by mistake. It is a legal requirement for the referendum question to be tested with the electorate so that they vote the way they intend too. Understanding the outcome is a separate problem.

See section 104 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/41/section/104

All right, I'll explain. Suppose that you have two people about to get married. So they are asked ‘do you understand what this means?’ ‘Yes, it means we'll be married’ they say. But if you quiz them and say that unless they have a pre-nup everything they own will belong to both of them, that the man will automatically be held to be the father of any children the woman bears after the marriage, that there is a duty of financial support, that they cannot marry other people, that if they cheat the other gets to keep everything, etc. a huge lot of people will be dumbfounded and say… ‘oh’.
And, in that sense, people really didn't understand the question. A lot of people are backtracking because they really didn't know what the EU is, what its relationship with its members (including, as of today, exactly three months before withdrawal, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) is, what its relationships with non-EU countries, alliances and organisations is, nor what the effects of that are.

But hey, £350 million a week and Nigel Farridge having a pint!

 

[innonimatu]

The CTA never has and never will eliminate physical border checks on goods - the EU single market did that.

People movement and the CTA isn't a backstop. It isn't even an issue.

And why exactly has a backstop been declared an absolute necessity, over and above what is already formalized both through the CTA and the GFA? And why won't the GFA be enough of a guarantee from the UK side (as they had been presumed to be so far), and the EU sees fit to make further demands with the excuse of avoiding tensions in Ireland? What tensions are those supposed to be?

I have not followed closely the news as they were presented on the Irish side. But I do know that the EU has claimed that it was mostly about the movement of people and the rights of citizens. What the EU is demanding from the UK in the withdrawal agreement goes much further. It basically appoints itself as the sole, paramount arbiter and indeed legislator or what rights are to be allowed and disallowed: the UK is compelled to accept future EU legislation, and the EU is under no similar obligations whatsoever towards the UK.

In making this demand the EU is not being merely abusive, it is being idiotic. This is not an agreement to avert tensions in the future, this is a sure seed for future tensions!

But the people who drew this agreement are not idiots. They never cared about the irish border issue, or Ireland's concerns. They cared to use a tool, any tool, to extract concessions from the UK, and the border issue, an inevitable problem, could instead be used as such a tool. A bold move. My take is that they were indeed too smart by far and this will instead lead to ruin: either now or in the future.
The UK government went along with it instead of outright ruling it out. Why, I do not know. Incompetence? Incomprehension and disbelief that the EU would stick to those demands to the end? A devious plan to torpedo agreement as time ran out? Probably incompetence...

 

[Kyriakos]

I do agree that it just does not tie to facts and known eu practices that they care about ireland. Not sure why some here seem to seriously believe they do. Doesnt the eu keep doing business with turkey? Seems threatsof war aren't worth reacting to, but an arrogant stance by the uk is. Very believable - not.

 

[Hrothbern]

I do agree that it just does not tie to facts and known eu practices that they care about ireland. Not sure why some here seem to seriously believe they do. Doesnt the eu keep doing business with turkey? Seems threatsof war aren't worth reacting to, but an arrogant stance by the uk is. Very believable - not.

Ireland is part of our EU team and by that the concern of Ireland on NI-Irish border is as much the concern of the EU.
Do mind that the Good Friday Agreement was very much a result of that.
Do also mind that the "battle for NI" did not end with Thatcher's attitude.
Thatcher: "She added: “I go berserk sometimes” when asked about the role of the police in Northern Ireland. Ultimately, she said, she had one objective: “That is to beat the IRA.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-files-show-thatchers-gloom-over-irish-border
Only two years after the Good Friday Agreement, in 2000, a certain Michael Gove wrote a pamphlet "The Price of Peace", published by the Tories’ leading “think tank” the Centre for Policy Studies.
Two links to the original paper in articles on that paper give as message: HTTP 404 - Not Found, The page you are looking for could not be found, Are you sure you have the correct address?

In the paper, entitled 'Northern Ireland the Price of Peace', Mr Gove wrote that he believed the IRA could have been defeated and the Good Friday Agreement was a capitulation to them by Tony Blair.
Mr Gove also wrote at the time that he believed the SAS and other undercover killers should have been allowed to continue in Ireland and could have defeated the IRA.
http://www.irishnews.com/news/north...ersial-remarks-about-northern-ireland-589123/

Here another and summarising article in the Guardian on it:
At the big BBC Debate the question was asked to the Brexiteers how about the GFA ? And Johnson did not answer that question. Though he did mention “I do worry about our security on the streets of this city.” This city was, of course, London. The UK cities that Union leader O’Grady had mentioned – Belfast and Derry – were neither here nor there.

Despite Thatcher not wanting to capitulate to the Irish... despite Gove saying the UK capitulated to the Irish... Rees-Mogg made the final spin that the UK had won the battle after all BEFORE the Good Friday Agreement and that agreement was therefore not important.

The culmination of the referendum campaign was the BBC’s live Great Debate from Wembley on the evening of 21 June 2016. It lasted for two hours. After an hour and a half, someone finally raised the question of Britain’s obligations under the Belfast Agreement of 1998 (often called the Good Friday Agreement) that brought an end to the longest and most vicious internal conflict in the history of the United Kingdom. Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, spoke passionately in a tone of pleading desperation: “Many trade unionists in Britain and Ireland worked together for many years to support the peace process in Northern Ireland and it took a lot of hard work. And we’ve supported the Good Friday Agreement ever since … The Irish prime minister has said that if we come out of the EU, there will have to be border controls and, let me tell you, the way that is seen in Belfast and Derry, I worry for our future.”
The leading Tory intellectual, Daniel Hannan, in his Daily Telegraph column, dismisses the agreement as nothing more than “a bribe to two sets of hardliners” in Northern Ireland. He claims, rather astonishingly, that it did not bring peace because Northern Ireland was already at peace: “The Belfast Agreement was a consequence, not a cause, of the end of terrorism.” And to crown the campaign, Jacob Rees-Mogg, also writing in the Telegraph, announces that this whole Irish business does not really exist – it is an “imaginary problem” caused by the Irish government.
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...and-perfidy-over-ireland-good-friday-agreemnt

And do mind as well, that whereas we are now complaing about the undemocratic gerrymandering of Orban in Hungary...
NI was in 1968 far less democratic than Hungary now.
In 1968, with street marches and protests everywhere in Europe, there were in November peacefull marches on Civil Rights for Catholics.
The damning trick of Westminster was that people in NI that did not own a house had no voting right in the NI elections and business owners had extra votes !!!
Because Catholics owned less houses and businesses and on top a gerrymandering was applied, there was no democracy:

This meant that in 1968 in predominantly Catholic Derry, where the total nationalist vote was 14,000 and the unionist vote 9,000, the local council comprised 12 unionist and eight nationalist members. Since its inception in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned, Northern Ireland, though remaining part of the UK, was a place apart. One of its founders, Lord Craigavon, had promised “a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people”.
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...rn-ireland-civil-rights-1968-troubles-what-if

1968 is a long way back, so is Thatcher, but Gove and Rees-Mog are very much there... and nothing has changed the Tory sentiments that Ireland is a nuisance to be ignored regardless the consequences as long as they do not reach London.



What the EU did was based on concerns about Irish people, listening to them and its Irish member.
That special status for NI only, the pragmatical solution to the benefit of Irish people, enabling a FTA for the 98% UK, for striking its own global deals, at the expense of the EU by some economical leaks to the rest of the EU.

What on earth is wrong with that ?

 

[Kyriakos]

But didnt you, like boris, just answer about one of the place mentioned?
I am all for the irish. I am not seing how the eu acted out of the ethical concern you presented.

 

[Silurian]

All right, I'll explain. Suppose that you have two people about to get married. So they are asked ‘do you understand what this means?’ ‘Yes, it means we'll be married’ they say. But if you quiz them and say that unless they have a pre-nup everything they own will belong to both of them, that the man will automatically be held to be the father of any children the woman bears after the marriage, that there is a duty of financial support, that they cannot marry other people, that if they cheat the other gets to keep everything, etc. a huge lot of people will be dumbfounded and say… ‘oh’.
And, in that sense, people really didn't understand the question. A lot of people are backtracking because they really didn't know what the EU is, what its relationship with its members (including, as of today, exactly three months before withdrawal, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) is, what its relationships with non-EU countries, alliances and organisations is, nor what the effects of that are.

But hey, £350 million a week and Nigel Farridge having a pint!

Understanding the outcome of the question and understand the question itself are two different things.

As I noted above

"People understood the question in 2016 but most did not know how many balls would have to be juggled. This was not helped by different Brexiters saying different things."

Even some Conservative Ministers have made public statements about "how many balls would have to be juggled"


I posted this a few pages back.

Which is why some sort of no deal now looks most likely.

It is too late to hold a referendum before 29 March because of the difficulties in getting the question(s) agreed. It would be no good to hold a referendum if people do not understand the question.

and you replied

That's already been done once.

A new referendum would have to have different questions. There are now three options (there is no time to work up other options).

Using the 2016 question again in 2019 would not be of any use.

But as I note above there is not enough time to get new question/s agreed as is legally required to ensure it/they are not ambiguous before 29th March. I think people are more informed about the marriage, or divorce, now; so more understand what outcome of Brexit will likely be.

The EU could extend the Brexit date if they wished but they would have to have a good reason. But I am sure that Mogg etc would be stating that the question approved by the UK commission was an EU imposition.

 

[brennan]

We had rising living standards, regulations on working standards, human rights, free press and the rule of law long before we joined the EEC/EC/EU.

And the Brexiteers are as uniform as they are vocal in their desire to roll every single one of these restrictions upon commerce back, no?

 

[Hrothbern]

But didnt you, like boris, just answer about one of the place mentioned?
I am all for the irish. I am not seing how the eu acted out of the ethical concern you presented.

On that comparison with Boris:
Say it again in other words so that I really understand you

On that ethics of the EU.
The special status construction causes a leak for abusive trade into the EU. The James Bond import/export company I made earlier a post about. That will cost the EU money.
That same leak is in principle there with the Canada FTA (backdoor US), but there the intercontinental distance transport cost is a mitigating factor for the size of the damage.
Nevertheless the EU was willing to that special status of NI, to that economical leak abuse, listening to the Irish people, its Irish member state, to their concerns for peace along the Good Friday Agreement.
In effect the EU, Barnier, was negotiating on that border issue on behalve of Ireland with the power of the EU.

 

[Oerdin]

"Abusive trade"

Meaning people in Ireland might actually benefit from and want free trade than allowed by the protectionist and anti-free market EU.

In any event Iteland amounts to exactly squat all for total EU trade so why get upset at the thought of Irish people living better and being able to afford more for their money? It is, and always has been, all a nonissue stirred up by criminals like Juncker to try to make up excuses for not having fair trading agreements with the UK because he wants to put ish the UK. He knows others will be tempted to follow as the EU really is that dictatorial and unpopular so he wants to try to sabotage the UK. It won't work.

 

[Takhisis]

Meaning people in Ireland might actually benefit from and want free trade than allowed by the protectionist and anti-free market EU.

You're missing a word there. I suppose you mean ‘more’ free trade?