Brexit all done and dusted?

And they could be not ploughing ahead with the most extreme hard Brexit possible.

They are not delegates and are supposed to act in the best interests of the COUNTRY and not just to follow an ill conceived poll and result based on lies told.

I think we should separate Civil Servants and MPs here. I agree that MPs should have voted in the interests of the country but poor old civil servants (i.e 'government officials) have to do what they are told, however much they might disagree. I wrote the last post on my tablet, never an easy job, otherwise I might have distinguished between the two in my 'admiration' comment

BTW I think that even if the government were to tell Brexiteers that the evidence shows that it's a big mistake they:

a) wouldn't believe them
and
b) would howl for it to go ahead anyway

But they seem to have taken no loss of Free Movement very calmly.
And potential loss of Parliamentary sovereignty. Out of the EU 'dictatorship' frying pan into the tory 'dictatorship' fire without batting an eyelid...

The online design magazine Dezeen has just announced the winner of its competition to design a post-brexit passport.

London based Scottish designer Ian Macfarlane has won with this design which looks to me as if, by some horrible accident, he had ruined his beautiful EU / UK passport by spilling something dark and nasty onto half of it.

An apt metaphor for the nasty accident which may ruin the UK???

The Govts. pre- referendum stance was to remain. TM made a number of new appointments, including the appointment to senior posts of Brexiteers, but my guess is that most of even the post referendum ministers had been remain voters. I think the main problem since the vote has been the pre-negotiation stance of the EU to the effect that the UK must accept all the EU pillars with no caveats plus a contribution, or there would be no deal at all. That may be changing, and as it does it's no surprise to me that the govt. also shows signs of distancing itself from a rock hard Brexit. If both sides are prepared to compromise, we will hopefully salvage something useful out of all this. But I don't see any likelihood of another vote.

Whatever might be 'salvaged' we will be most likely to end up with something that looks like the 'Norway' solution which means we have to largely accept the '4 freedoms', retain the jurisdiction of the ECJ and pay a large contribution without having any say on the framing of regulations and directives which we will have to conform with in order to trade freely in the EU.

It all makes the exercise seem a bit pointless really.

And what about the loss of Parliamentary Sovereignty?

We've got it back apparently! Personally I never thought it had gone away

Don't forget that we paid £350 million a week to "trade freely" with the eu.

No we didn't, Petra. It was less than £2million. As has been posted on this forum a number of times in the past.

But we will still go on contributing £x million per week if we want to stay in the Single Market. With absolutely no say; as I said above.

WW we did keep parliamentary sovereignty in the sense that Parliament could always, if it chose to do so, ignore the treaty we signed, scrap the European Communites Act, and start passing legislation in conflict with EU laws, but we did give away practical sovereignty. That was an absolute requirement of EU (even Common Market) membership.
Mazie the point would be exactly that which I made. To salvage something from where we are now.

fitz could you point out to me the date that all those treaties etc were imposed on us without Parliamentary sovereign approval?

I didn't say anything was ever imposed on us. We voluntarily gave up a degree of sovereignty when Parliament passed the European Communites Act, until such time as Parliament repeals it.

No!! That is so wrong. Nothing was ever done without our Government being involved in any decisions. Nothing has ever been imposed on the UK which our Government disagreed.

until then I will put up and shut up unless really provoked

If you are shutting up why start this thread? I thought putting up and shutting up meant just that but I could be wrong, of course.

Unless you are like other people I knew who used to like 'lighting blue touch paper and retiring'
If so, it appears to have worked. .

WW, ECA is a statute which states that the UK will be subject to all EU law, and that if any UK legislation conflicts with the EU legislation, the EU legislation takes presidency. EU legislation requires sign-off by each member govt. in the council, by the EU Parliament, and by the Commission. In the past that would result in a directive which then had to be put through Parliament, but that was effectively a rubber stamping exercise because, given the ECA, any diversion from the Directive would be illegal and ineffective under UK law. This process does give the UK govt. a say in the Council, but even that has been water d down by the principal of qualified majority. Moreover, even the rubber stamping exercise by Parliament isn't always necessary because the EU has recently adopted a procedure whereby it passes a "Regulation", which has direct effect on all member states without going through any individual Parliament.
I'm not saying the UK ever completely gave up sovereignty, but in my book the UK govt. and Parliament handed over a lot of overriding power to the EU in return for membership. I was generally comfortable with that. How can you possibly have an effective law making body that doesn't have such power?

Maizie I'm afraid your figure of less than 2 million a week doesn't tally with the figures stated in Factchecking. They state that our net contribution in 2016 was £6.8 billion.
I'm the first to admit that my maths aren't good but £2 million a week doesn't add up to £6.8 billion. I could be wrong though.

Petra are your figures gross, or net after the rebate and EU grants received by the UK?

fitz because at no stage was the UK ever in a position not to be able to veto a particular law. Indeed we know of a number of times when the UK objected to and indeed opted out of a particular treaty or law.

Fitzy54 Factchecking said this was the net figure. I used Factchecking because it's the go to bible for most posters on the politicle threads

I have to take my hat off to the eu with their budgeting if we are only paying in less than £2 million a week. Taking into account we are in the top group of contributors.
It's either that or the ones above us are paying humongous amounts.
If I was a German I'd be well peed off.

We pay more than £2million a day, but nowhere near £350million week. According to the ONS, it's about £24million a day, but that doesn't take account of EU money paid to private companies, such as science research grants, so it's actually less than £24million a day.

Some of the money goes to EU administration. One way or other, that administration will have to be repatriated and institutions such as the European Medicines Agency will have to be duplicated. The UK will also have to spend more on customs and border staff. We're already employing 1,000 more civil servants just to deal with the leaving process. There's no doubt the UK will have to employ thousands more civil servants permanently, which will reduce the £24 million considerably.

Moreover, the fee paid to the EU isn't the same as economic benefit. We won't know how much that is until the deal has been done and new trading arrangements start. The loss of economic benefit could be more or less than than £24million. It's highly unlikely that we will trade more with the EU after Brexit and it depends on tariffs and how many UK-based companies go abroad or lose trade to other countries.

The big concern is financial services and the vultures are already circling. If we lose that, we're really in trouble, especially if Trump succeeds in becoming more isolationist. America is the UK's single biggest export market, accounting for 25% of exports.

The devaluation of sterling means that the UK will become a cheaper place to invest for foreign countries. The result of that would be that the UK becomes a foreign-owned sweatshop economy. Coupled with any repeal of workers rights, the outlook for British manufacturing workers isn't looking good.

Germany benefits from the EU, without any shadow of a doubt. There's no need for them to be peed off. Germany has a balance of trade surplus (despite its high prices) and needs export markets, which the EU provides. The money Germany pays to the EU is returned in bucket loads. Germany also benefits from a huge pool of immigrant workers, who are flexible and are prepared to work for less and accept lower legal protection than German workers.

Oops. sorry . I missed a few noughts off my figure. It wasn't £2 million at all. It was £200 million (a week). the figure I've always seen was about £195 million. But I'll check it again. I do know that the £350 million has always been contested.

That is net, of course.

(how I wish we had an edit facility...)