Is Britain about to leave the EU?

[Kyriakos]

Are you sure about that? You are Greek, after all.

For the n-nth time, the following person happens to be Swiss :/

 

[Manfred Belheim]

If I can be called out on allegedly histrionic posts, why can't I do the same? I'm not the one suggesting that pro-EU pro-indy Scots are simply lying to themselves and others.

I didn't say you couldn't, I just made a pot/kettle allusion. I don't think the point of the saying is that the pot was incorrect in his statement about the kettle.

 

[Traitorfish]

Traitorfish, participation and submission to the European regime is not the same
as independence and writing things on the side of buses has nothing to do it.

From the Scottish perspective, neither is returning power to a clique of deranged aristocrats. Call it making the best of a bad situation.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I was told the only reason why the Scottish want to stay in the EU is because the English don't want to be in the EU. If the English wanted to stay, the Scots will want to leave.

 

[Arakhor]

Of course. That's right. No doubt about it.

 

[Takhisis]

Ehm, wait. How the hell can there be no sanctions against a country for selling EU citizenship? That is nothing short of ludicrous and unethical.

Because they're technically selling Hungarian/Maltan (Maltese ?) citizenship. And the EU, not being a federation, can't stop them

Ultimately it's the same as big companies registering stuff as intellectual property in little-known countries on the quiet and then demanding that states parties to international IP conventions abide by those conventions and respect their IP rights.

I was told the only reason why the Scottish want to stay in the EU is because the English don't want to be in the EU. If the English wanted to stay, the Scots will want to leave.

This… no, just no.

 

[Traitorfish]

I was told the only reason why the Scottish want to stay in the EU is because the English don't want t o be in the EU. If the English wanted to stay, the Scots will want to leave.

Nah, the uncertainty of Scotland's position in the EU in the event of independence was a major plank in the Better Campaign in 2014, which would hardly work if it was mere contrarianism. Membership of the EU is one of the few points on which all of the office-holding political parties in Scotland agree on, even if the Unionist parties have good oddly quiet about it these last few months.

There is, I'll grant, an extent to which the issue has been taken up so enthusiastically by some Scots as a cudgel to beat the English- but given that the English (and Welsh) voted almost 3:2 to bulldoze the economy and abolish civil rights, this is one chip on our broad, chip-laden shoulders we can be forgiven. (Of course, there is the problem that the regions of England these Scots are keenest to bash, London and the Home Counties, largely voted Remain, but they wouldn't be good nationalists if they couldn't handle a little doublethink.)

 

[Arakhor]

My constituency would fit right in across the border - we're almost exclusively lily-white, we have lots of very wet hills, we're a thriving centre of alternative crafts and medicine and we had a majority to Remain above the national average. What do you say, TF?

 

[JohannaK]

Seriously Chukchi, I know not who you talk to but they seem to spit little more than concerningly wrong oversimplifications.

 

[Arakhor]

They seem to have just the wrong thing to say at any given time too.

 

[Mega Tsunami]

This is interesting, if true:

From the Telegraph:

CNN has obtained a memo setting out the Trump plan for withdrawing from the North American Free Trade Agreement within 200 days of his becoming President. He may then revert to a US-Canada deal along the lines of the 1987 Canada-US trade agreement (CAFTA), or perhaps extend that with a new bilateral deal with Canada.

It is now widely reported, and understood by the Trump transition team, that Trump will then want to offer the UK a trade agreement, either as an extension of the Canadian agreement into a new North Atlantic Trade Agreement (NAtlaFTA) or a separate bilateral deal. It is a mistake to understand Trump’s position on NAFTA as being simple opposition to trade agreements. Rightly or wrongly, his objection is merely to trade agreements with Mexico or other low-wage economies, which he sees as sucking jobs away from the US – especially the sort of jobs that would be done by his voters.

Here is the rest:

Spoiler :

That is why he has no objection to continuing or renewing the US’ trade deal with Canada. And it’s also why he will see no inconsistency between removing Mexico from NAFTA and extending the Canadian deal to include the UK. The UK is not regarded as a low-wage economy. Quite the reverse: it’s seen as an incubator of innovative ideas that are then taken to the US market and developed there.

Furthermore, a US-Canada-UK or just US-UK trade deal would not require any separate court system akin to the Investor State Dispute Settlement system that was controversial in the now-dead TTIP negotiations with the EU. The US and UK will trust each other’s courts to settle disputes.
There was already, separately from Trump, a constituency within Congress for offering an early trade deal to the UK. US voters are also believed to be keen. With the Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, the usual sources of blockages and delays to a US trade agreement will simply not exist. The deal is there to be done.

However, Trump wants an early deal. Presidents often establish the key shape of their administrations’ policies within the first few months of taking office. If things aren’t put in motion then, they often don’t get done at all. It also cannot be guaranteed, in our era of unpredictable politics, that Republican control of both chambers will continue after the next senate elections of late 2018 (though at present they do seem likely to extend their control).

Trump will want a trade deal with the UK, and he’ll want to get the deal being negotiated straight away, in early 2017, and have it ratified, done and dusted by 2019. If the UK cannot agree with that timetable, there’s a high chance that the Trump caravan will move on and it could be the next Presidency before the UK gets another chance to make a deal.

Furthermore, Trump is a supporter of Brexit and will see it as to his strategic advantage to help Brexit succeed. If we are seeking trade with the US in 2021 or 2025, Brexit will be old news and a new President may be much less inclined to be generous with the terms of a UK deal (though we should admit that any plausible future President is also likely to support some kind of bilateral UK or NAtlaFTA deal).
A trade deal with the US would be very significant. The EU estimated that the TTIP would add around 0.5 per cent to EU GDP – or around one quarter of the impact of the entire Single Market. The US is the UK’s largest trading partner: 14.5 per cent of our exports go there, versus 10 per cent for Germany and 6 per cent for France.

We need to stand ready to do the deal in 2017. As matters stand, though, the UK government stance is that it is forbidden by the EU treaties to negotiate or sign post-Brexit trade deals with non-EU countries before we leave the EU. I don’t agree that this position interprets the EU treaties correctly, but if it does then we should regard it as imperative to change that law or to obtain permission from the EU to do our own negotiations. If China told Japan it was forbidden from doing a trade deal with the US that would be considered a hostile act. We should regard any attempt by the EU to forbid us from having post-Brexit trade deals in exactly the same way. Simply accepting that we cannot negotiate such deals should not be considered an option.

Trump wants a deal with us. He will want to do it in 2017. That would be a worth a lot to the UK economy. We should not turn him down. Our politicians should be saying to their lawyers and bureaucrats: “Don’t tell me I can’t negotiate a deal. Tell me how I can.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...o-do-a-huge-trade-deal-with-britain-next-yea/

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, i can't really feel good about pro-Trumpism in the Uk either, so i won't. EU caused Brexit anyway (despite the obvious fact that in no way was Britain hit remotely as hard as other countries have, and their reaction was crucially intuitive instead of real and practical).

 

[Manfred Belheim]

but given that the English (and Welsh) voted almost 3:2 to bulldoze the economy and abolish civil rights

I wonder if this might qualify as histrionics in Arakhor's book?

 

[Arakhor]

It's certainly bulldozed the pound, if not the economy: I'll have to reserve judgement on the civil rights until we know what Parliament will get up to without the evil EU.

As for the Telegraph's comments on Trump, I am not nearly as optimistic. Trump will only do what he sees fit and the UK will come a very distant second (at best!).

 

[Manfred Belheim]

It's certainly bulldozed the pound, if not the economy: I'll have to reserve judgement on the civil rights until we know what Parliament will get up to without the evil EU.

As for the Telegraph's comments on Trump, I am not nearly as optimistic. Trump will only do what he sees fit and the UK will come a very distant second (at best!).

Right, so no then? Just trying to calibrate your histrionics scale

 

[Arakhor]

Edward's claims that our currency was "too valuable" aside, the pound mostly certainly was butchered after Brexit and there were several well-publicised ill effects from it.

Worrying about civil rights in the aftermath of Brexit could well turn out to have been hysterical in a few years' time, I agree, but given the Tories' long history in this field (and Labour's often ineffectual efforts recently), I'm hardly confident of that.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Do you not see a difference between having concerns that civil rights might be negatively affected, and making that claim that people explicitly voted to abolish them? And then if you do see that difference, cast your mind back to what the referendum question actually was and how closely that matches the claim? I mean it's up to you what conclusion you come to, but I would have to say that such a statement is at least as histrionic/hyperbolic/word-of-your-choice as the claim that the SNP are "lying" about what they actually want, if not quite a bit more so. If you disagree I'd suggest your own stance on the issues is introducing a bias into your judgement. But, whatever, that's just my two penneth.

 

[Arakhor]

When you put it that way, yes, I would agree that TF's statement was indefensibly hyperbolic. However, after comments by Edward and others that I have seen, it would seem that at least some people didn't care whether the economy tanked or not, provided that Brexit went ahead.

I would also note that I don't call out every statement I come across, if only because it tends to diverge into conversations such as these.

 

[Traitorfish]

My constituency would fit right in across the border - we're almost exclusively lily-white, we have lots of very wet hills, we're a thriving centre of alternative crafts and medicine and we had a majority to Remain above the national average. What do you say, TF?

Reconquista!

I wonder if this might qualify as histrionics in Arakhor's book?

Hyperbole can be a rhetorical device as well as an over-reaction.

 

[Takhisis]

My constituency would fit right in across the border - we're almost exclusively lily-white, we have lots of very wet hills, we're a thriving centre of alternative crafts and medicine and we had a majority to Remain above the national average. What do you say, TF?

Reconquista!

Throw the Saxons back to Saxony.