What do we think of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party?

On here, I must seem a poor deluded fool, easily conned

Well, I'll stand in that corner with you Urmston I am a poor deluded fool too according to Remainers. I am a lot more besides apparently.

A Guardian keyboard warrior (bless 'im, a disciple of Owen Jones, no doubt) told me in a rant that as I am a "coffin dodger" ( I am in my early 60s.) I am a fool who should not be listened to or heeded. He owned up to being 21.

It would seem our contemporaries on Gransnet share the same delight in dismissing us as having no sense.

I for one think they are deluded about the expensive membership we pay (£billions) to become one of the 'member states' (Not 'a country', note.)

Not one of us has to justify our vote either. I voted Leave. I am delighted a Brexit Party has been created.

It is disgraceful that it looks very likely that we will have to vote in the EU elections, three long years after we decided to leave the EU.

I wish the Brexit Party every success.

Urmstongran I am sure you realise that almost everyone in the country is sick of the whole thing.

May's Government lost its majority in the 2017 General Election. So, not only was it not obliged to implement a non-legally binding promise, gained under a very iffy referendum, but it also lost its power to do so.

You are fed up with how you feel treated and so is the rest of the electorate however they voted.

Urmstongran, Day6, those that support the Farage dictatorship of the Brexit party could perhaps convince more of us of its political value if they answered one or two of the most common questions put to them.

In that, many times it has been asked that should Britain leave the EU under WTO rules which is the Farage solution, how would he then resolve the Irish border issue.

Or, Perhaps immediately following Brexit he would resign his government and let some other Prime Minister and party sort out the war that may inevitably follow.

As stated, if not the above, perhaps the disciples of Farage could furnish us doubters with an answer?

He's good at getting people angry and stirred up.

With good reason, you'll find.

The Brexit Party is merely a channel for that anger. Leave voters have been left high and dry.

A lot of people are more than angry and stirred up about "Leave meaning Remain"because of our politicians blocking the exit process at every turn.

It seems to Remainers that Leave voters have no reason to be angry.

Imagine the vitriol if the shoe was on the other foot and the Remain vote had won the referendum, but a Leave parliament had worked to free us from the Brussels stranglehold? Remain means Leave. How would that work for you if Parliament had made it impossible, somehow, to Remain?

I despair Day6. We did not join as a "country" as I am sure the Scots, Welsh and Irish would by happy to point out to you. We joined as the United Kingdom. Deluded is not the word I would use in these circumstances. How you must love these countries. So much so that you cannot even see that the make-up of the UK may well have been one of the reasons the word "states" was used.

And still no answers Day6 to the very basic questions put to Brexit party follower, even on Brexit itself.

NF says ”I want Brexit. If you think there should be a border, a hard border (in Ireland), let’s work it out, shall we?

“There’s a different currency between the north and the south, different income tax rates, different excise rates, different corporation tax rates – if you need to have a hard border because of differences, there should be one there already today.

“If we have a simple free trade deal with the European Union that would be a non-issue because there would be no excise duties to collect.

- every day there are tens of thousands of containers that come in from China, we do not open them and check them, they are logged and registered and the excise duty is paid.

“The truth of the Northern Ireland border, the real truth is, it is being used very cleverly by Monsieur Barnier to trap Theresa May in a position.

“You see, the one thing Europe don’t want is us to leave the single market rules and become competitive.”

Urmstongran Quote [if we have a simple free trade deal with the European Union that would be a non-issue because there would be no excise duties to collect.] End Quote.

Urmstongran, any "simple free trade deal" signed between Britain and the Europen Union following Brexit would have to contain terms that protected the agreed internal EU standards in many industries and sectors.

Therefore any trade agreements Britain signs with countries outside the EU would also have to be inline on the above EU standards or border checks will have to be brought in to protect the European Union from sub-standard products entering the EU through Britain.

Border checks are not all about tariffs, but obviously the Brexit party dictator Farage would not understand such matters, or does he, but does not wish the impossibility of his so-called policy to become apparent to his unquestioning disciples.

Claim
If we leave the EU on WTO terms, Article 24 of the World Trade Organisation would allow the UK and EU to maintain zero tariffs for up to 10 years while negotiating a new deal with the EU.

Conclusion
This is very unlikely in practice. This refers to Article 24 of the WTO’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. It allows countries who are negotiating a free-trade area or customs union to have an interim agreement on trade tariffs for a period of (in most cases) up to ten years provided they have a “plan and schedule” agreed for concluding a final deal. It’s unlikely we could have such a “plan and schedule” in place with the EU before we leave.

So could we leave on WTO terms and keep tariff-free trade under Article 24?
Almost certainly not.
The Article 24 plan is possible in theory, but very unlikely in practice. Article 24 does not remove the need to strike a deal with the EU.
Both the UK and the EU would have to reach an agreement about going into such an interim period—the UK couldn’t make the decision by itself—and they’d also need to agree on what the “plan and schedule” for the final deal would look like.
Article 24 also says that the future agreement must cover the “duties and other restrictive regulations of commerce” of “substantially all the trade” between the countries involved. Other members of the WTO could also ask for changes to the agreement if they have concerns about it.
This would all need to be agreed before we leave the EU. Experts have said such an agreement is unlikely.
Without such an agreement, or some kind of withdrawal agreement as proposed by the government being in place, the UK will leave the EU and being trading with it on WTO terms—meaning tariffs on trade.

Why can’t we just have no deal and zero tariffs with the EU?
It would be possible for the UK to unilaterally remove or reduce tariffs on any or all EU goods without an agreement post-Brexit. But because of WTO rules known as ‘Most Favoured Nation’ the UK would then have to do the same for all other countries. Even if we did do this there would be no guarantee that the EU would do the same in return.
On 13 March the government published its plans for temporary tariffs in the event of a no deal Brexit. They would remove tariffs from “87% of total imports to the UK by value”, according to the government’s figures, but would apply tariffs to some categories of imports, including some food products, vehicles and fuel. This would last for up to 12 months, and we don’t know what tariffs the EU might place on goods imported from the UK to the EU.

fullfact.org/europe/article-24/

Please do not think it is okay to take the other half of the population out of the EU without actually knowing what you are doing to us. It really isn't.

We did not join as a "country" as I am sure the Scots, Welsh and Irish would by happy to point out to you

And I am sure someone who has better reading comprehension skills than you possess GracesGran, will point out to you that no mention of ANY country was made.

Sigh.

The gist of my post was that ALL countries lose their identity to the EU when they become 'member states'.

Many worry we are being swallowed up into a federation.

From Wiki.

Federalisation of the European Union is the institutional process by which the European Union (EU) is transformed from a confederation -a union of sovereign states - towards a federation - a single federal state with a central government, consisting of a number of partially self-governing federated states

There is ongoing discussion about the extent to which the EU has already become a federation over the course of decades, and more importantly, to what degree it should continue to evolve into a federalist direction

The EU is not officially a federation, although various academic observers regard it as having the characteristics of a federal system.

The Brexit Party is the party that recognises we could be swallowed up, and that prospect is anathema - abhorrent - to millions of people living in the UK.

Go Nigel!

I will be delighted if the Brexit Party bursts the Westminster bubble.

There is nothing wrong with my comprehension but like most dyslexics I may read more slowly and with more difficulty but we still get there or there is always reading software.

As for "And I am sure someone who has better reading comprehension skills than you possess GracesGran, will point out to you that no mention of ANY country was made." This is what I read:

"I for one think they are deluded about the expensive membership we pay (£billions) to become one of the 'member states' (Not 'a country', note.)"

Now I could be misreading it but I think you were commenting on the use of the word "state" instead of the word "country" which is why I suggested that the make-up of the UK may well have been one of the reasons the word "states" was used. To clarify, I suggested this as we joined as the United Kingdom, which is a sovereign state that consists of four individual countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Now I have an excuse for missing the odd thing or producing clunky sentences (which I know I do) but do you have any for writing spitefully critical comments?

could perhaps convince more of us of its political value if...

Ooooh. Come, come Grandad

You do realise that in posing that question you'll have to convince us of the merits of Corbyn and the Labour Party, now he has blocked Brexit, a break with the EU as voted for by millions and millions of Labour voters in Midlands and Northern towns and cities?

If Farage is a 'dictator' of a party (your word) then all leaders dictate to their parties? We all know hard-left Momentum controls Labour. If that is not a dictatorship, what is? Corbyn is merely a puppet.

You know as well as I do that Nigel Farage leads the Brexit Party on ONE ISSUE only - that we leave the EU. That was the wish of the majority of voters in the UK.

Stop asking us to write essays as to "How?"....It just won't wash. I am sure if we met over a drink in the pub we might while away the hours talking politics in a friendly fashion. We'd probably get on.

We appoint MPs to sort out the messes created by democratic decisions...like Irish border controls. Yes, that is a deliberate cop-out, one the EU/Ireland/Westminster will be able to overcome once we leave the EU.

It is an EU problem in truth. (Yes, I appreciate that is simplistic but even Barnier has said it is not an insurmountable problem.) Like many, I feel we should have waved bye-bye to Brussels soon after the MAJORITY OF (duplicitous) MPs VOTED IN FAVOUR TRIGGERING ARTICLE 50. We voted to leave the EU, not do a deal with Brussels to tie us to the institution.

The European Commission’s messaging about the Irish border is both illogical and contradictory

Derek Epstein writes:

The Irish say the backstop is essential because they think that, without it, there will need to be a hard border. But there doesn’t need to be – as Michel Barnier has now admitted.

What are the EU afraid of?

Soft border controls are in use now at the Irish border – a combination of administrative cooperation, whistle-blowing, auditing and site raids by customs, tax and regulatory enforcement officials, all supplemented by occasional random spot-checks on roads leading up to and cameras at the border. The thoroughness of such controls is a matter of degree. No border is fool-proof as only a very small proportion of cross-border consignments is ever physically checked, even at hard borders.

By the end of the transition period, the Irish border could be controlled by the system of checks by then developed and, if either party considers that more robust controls are required, the nature and timing of such further improvements could be settled by agreement or arbitration.

A no-deal scenario would remove that head start, but the same evolution process would apply. It is only the nature of the goods and produce crossing that border that can be of relevance

Other aspects of the Free Trade Agreement, such as access to fisheries, have no relevance whatsoever to agreeing appropriate controls on movements across for the Irish border.

Currently the UK is in full alignment with EU standards

Now I have an excuse for missing the odd thing or producing clunky sentences

Oh dear. I cannot say I have noticed that GracesGran Have any of us?

Not very convincing. You got it wrong love. Fess up. Stop the excuses.

Or we could all now sympathise that a horrible naughty Day6 is not very sympathetic towards GracesGran who writes reams and reams on political threads to sharply put down those who disagree with her?

Play fair, eh?

In your post of 0.48 a.m the reason you give for your bitchy comment is that you did not mention "country". In my answer I pointed out exactly where you did. How this means I "got it wrong" is beyond me. I check and double check my posts. Perhaps you need to do the same before you start throwing the insults around.

Looking at your post of Tue 23-Apr-19 01:35:59 it looks to me as if you are not only prepared to attempt to undermine others with nasty comments that simply do not bear any relationship to what was written in order to try and put yourself in a better light, but that you are full of the prejudice we occasionally see on here when it comes to what some people believe re dyslexia.

If you search back through the older threads you will see many places where this has been talked about, where I have contributed my own experiences and those of other family members. What is certain is that, if you are taught coping strategies and the use of technology there is no reason that you should not generally write to the level of your intelligence and knowledge. There will certainly be people who sadly, particularly if they are older, missed out on the opportunities now available but that doesn't mean you will be able to spot people because they write like six year olds which you seemed to infer would be the case.

This has been talked about so often on here that I am appalled that comments like yours are still made. It certainly felt like a kick in the stomach to me. And yes, I immediately went back to a time when I would assume I had done something wrong but a little bit of time and re-reading shows that not to be the case, doesn't it.

Well it seems from your post ‘GracesGranMK3 Tue 23-Apr-19 00:14:50m’ that what NF suggests isn’t actually impossible just ‘unlikely’.

Once the EU realise that we are finally, with NF, prepared to play hardball let’s see what can be achieved! A whole lot more I expect than they’ve offered the craven Mrs. May with her Remain wingman, Olly Robbins.

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Urmstongran, the EU have already offered an extension to artical 50 to which Britain through its incompetent has been forced to accept. The EU cannot grant the leaving terms that Britain is demanding as that would mean tearing up the Treaties that underpin the whole European Union.

It would matter little if Brexit party dictator Farage was on the other side of the negotiating table, the above situation would still apply.

Anyway, of to work now but look forward to joining this debate and another one later. However, thinking about it, that could be much following a Bank Holiday.

Apologies, should be "incompetence" not "incompetent" in my post above.

The NI border issue is a fact of life the EU are NEVER going to agree to an open border for 2 reasons
1) there would be widespread smuggling
2) there would be no point I having an EU trade policy

Some would argue that the EU is collapsing anyway but that is irrelevant. The EU 27 are unanimous in wanting to retain their unity they would prefer the UK to remain but it’s up to us to decide, we can remain or leave or accept the deal it’s our choice.

Farage will no doubt get a lot of votes in the European elections, but it’s only protest vote and will influence very little in Europe. Just like the Ukrainian election where a comedian was voted in it shows the electorates frustration with mainstream politics, Macron in France has the same problem.

It remains to be seen just how the Climate change protest will affect UK politics - David Attenborough for next PM!

I watched a programme about what used to happen on the N.Ireland border before. How anyone can imagine that bringing back such a devisive and unpolicable regulation will be easy I really don't understand. As violence escalates again in N.Ireland I think Farage should realise what Brexit might beome responsible for and at least admit that he hasn't any solution to the problem. Acting first and then let's work it out might just be a bit too late.

The reality is almost nobody wants a border, north and south are quite happy as they are, its only political dogma that is preventing agreement.

If we are to leave without a customs union there will have to be a border down the Irish Sea. Let nobody try to con us that it will be Intelegence led or a soft border, it will be a full inspection border because there will likely be large tariff and duty differences, particularly if the UK goes down the free trade route.

Just think if we did a free trade deal with the US, there would be a massive imbalance in tariffs on food alone let alone cars and other goods

David0205 isn't that something the DUP have said they will never accept? Wouldn't it provoke more Loyalist violence?