The Poverty of Brexit

thegreatcritique.wordpress.com/2018/03/10/rather-than-calling-me-a-remoaner-why-not-try-setting-a-good-brexample/

A brilliant article, well worth reading.

Even more poverty.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-make-food-drink-prices-12154570

infacts.org/no-theresa-us-canada-border-not-good-model-ireland/
I think May is definitely losing her marbles.
Does she really think this is a frictionless border?

Wow!

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-talks-irish-border-tusk-varadkar-northern-ireland-uk-solution-dup-a8246216.html

Did you know the very first Lego toy was a wooden duck?
Maybe that's what they want to trade in.

Already interested in trade deals.

Not forgetting that the border in Ireland was part of Part one, which was supposed to be agreed before part two could start.
The same as the problem of EU citizens living here and UK citizens living in the rest of the EU, and the amount of money we pay to the EU.
Not a single thing agreed fully yet.

The EU have stated that agreement about Ireland must be reached first, before any trade talks. If the govt are serious about not wanting to see the return of a "hard border" or militarised frontier around the UK, it will be interesting what they come up with.
It has been estimated that there are 275 road crossings bisecting the 500km long partition line, that figure is almost certainly a conservative one if smaller tracks, greenways and private routes are included. In contrast to Ireland, there are only 137 crossing points situated on the whole of the EU's eastern frontier, a multinational border which stretches for over 6,000kms.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/03/08/the-uk-government-was-blatantly-and-unforgivably-negligent-to-keep-big-business-on-side/

We owe money to the EU that has nothing to do with Brexit.

Brexiteers losing out again.

infacts.org/brexiters-yet-clock-mays-surrender-competition-rules/

Whitewave, those stamps reminded me of this Steve Bell cartoon.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2018/mar/06/steve-bell-on-boris-johnsons-comments-about-russia-cartoon

One of the comments was that he has obviously forgotten that he is supposed to take his ball back home.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/liam-foxs-chief-civil-servant-12146021

This is his present chief civil servant, not the one that left.
If Fox were trump, he would have sacked her by now.

Easy peasy, isn't it???

Say hello to roaming charges again, folks

The European Digital Single Market - the digital equivalent, if the name weren't clue enough, of the EU Single Market for physical commerce - has brought a range of benefits including the abolition of mobile roaming charges and rules designed to prevent 'geo-blocking' due to go into force this December. Unfortunately, it appears that the UK will not be benefiting from these or any other Digital Single Market regulations going forward.

On digital, the UK will not be part of the EU’s Digital Single Market, which will continue to develop after our withdrawal from the EU,' confirmed Prime Minister Theresa May in a speech made late last week.'

www.bit-tech.net/news/tech/theresa-may-confirms-eu-digital-single-market-exit/1/

New Brexit stamp due out

mobile.twitter.com/Anna_Soubry/status/970945873684389888/photo/1

Good twitter thread here on the EU's draft guidelines for future EU/UK relations

twitter.com/StevePeers/status/971372373646639104

Steve Peers is a Professor of EU, Human Rights & World Trade Law. I guess he knows what he's talking about...

Thanks everyone for this lengthy, interesting and well informed debate without personal slagging off.

This is how it should be done!

*Phil Space*[Huffpost]

Philip Hammond gets up at 2pm to deliver his own ‘road to Brexit’ speech, with a warning to the EU that it should include financial services in its free trade deal with the UK. The most pointed paragraph in the Chancellor’s speech will be this dig: “The EU itself pursued ambitious financial services co-operation in its proposals for TTIP [the defunct US-EU trade deal]”. That’s a reference to the fact that Michel Barnier was the EU’s man who did the pursuing in 2014.

However, with the EU27 set to publish its draft guidelines on a post-Brexit trade deal with Britain, there’s no sign yet that Brussels is backing down on its insistence that financial services can’t be part of the FTA. Sources close to Barnier say it’s precisely the intractable problems thrown up by TTIP that proved it was a non-starter. There is a much bigger point here though. May’s offer of a ‘comprehensive system of mutual recognition’ of EU and UK regulations is seen by many in Brussels as impossible, precisely because it misses the whole point of the EU’s internal market and institutions. A withering, detailed takedown of the PM’s plans is HERE in this blogpost by Oxford academic Stephen Weatherill.

The Waugh Zone

www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2018-03-07/u-k-facing-cliff-edge-loss-of-eu-s-trade-deals-lawmakers-say

We will have to replicate EU deals with 70 other countries; otherwise we will have no deals when we leave.
It will not include finance, whatever Hammond wants.

I'm not sure if this has been highlighted. It is in the EU insider briefing.

It’s shaping up to be a dreadful deal for Britain [Observer]

The Observer Editorial looks at Theresa May’s Brexit speech last week and concludes that it was a sobering defeat for the UK. Britain will not have its cake and eat it: it will simply have less cake. The editorial asks, given the emerging shape of this unfavourable, damaging and overly complex ‘EU lite’ deal: is Brexit, as now envisaged, really worth the trouble? Better, perhaps, to admit we made a mistake in 2016 and humbly ask for time to reconsider.

Whatever happens, dj. go or stay, I think it leaves us all thoroughly f8cked up (sorry, I can't think of any other way of describing it) because the UK will take decades to recover from the division and bitterness.

I don't want Brexiteers to get what they voted for.
If they do, where does that leave the rest of us?

The sad thing is that at the moment it doesn't look as if anyone is going to get what they voted for.

You posted just what I feel speci. Well posted.

100% agree.