The Withdrawal Agreement should anyone wish to wade through it in its entirety, is here, if you open links on this page.
europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-6424_en.htm
Boris however is sure (i sincerely hope!) to take note of the simple line contained within the press release from Brussels, 14 November 2018
Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed
Sounds very sinister to me.
Better, persons than me have worked their way through the whole WA, checking innocent looking sentences against treaties, paragraphs, sub paragraphs, clauses, sub clauses, etc, etc, etc. (If you have a spare few weeks/months you might want to try going through that confusing cross referencing too. 
)
The NI backstop is one concern. There are MANY others. If Boris is able to engineer minor tweaks and see that as a result, and so agree to May's disastrous WA, he will lose much support - mine for a start!
The Withdrawal Agreement is NOT acceptable to the UK unless we want Brussels to control or have a say in our future movements.
I do hope Boris' advisors are urging him to make a clean break.
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NO DEAL is the only way. The EU 'wrote' the WA Agreement.
(306 Posts)and it ties us to the EU indefinitely.
The Irish backstop could be the least of our worries.
May's WA must be rejected completely. It is an incredibly complicated document leaving hardly a subject not covered, and everything in it has been designed to be beneficial to the EU.
I doubt if any MP has read it from cover to cover. Nearly every paragraph is cross-referenced to a Treaty, Regulation or Directive, and each one has to be looked up, read and understood before moving on. It takes hours.
So says John Ashworth in his article This EU-written Withdrawal Agreement is toxic from start to finish
www.conservativewoman.co.uk/this-eu-written-withdrawal-agreement-is-toxic-from-start-to-finish/
It is a very revealing article, written by someone who has made an effort to link the words to the many treaties, acts and sub-paragraphs which determine the UK's role after a decidedly dodgy exit (or non-exit as it transpires) from the EU.
It is very worrying.
He concludes
During any transition period, we would not be classified as a ‘third country’, so although technically one could claim that we had left the EU, in practical terms, we *wouldn’t have done so – rather the opposite*
We would effectively be controlled by the EU to such a degree that we might just as well shut our Parliament down
We would finally become a ‘third country’ on 1 January 2023, as it is doubtful that the EU would consider an extension other than on the previous transition terms, which would essentially mean that we would still not have left the EU in any meaningful way
We would still be paying our ongoing fees, at full rate, to the EU. The EU would still control our fisheries and our armed forces and we would still be subject to the European Court of Justice, with our Parliament still essentially sidelined. No one in their right minds could want us to be in such a situation
We do not want Brexit in name only (BRINO) which is what the WA will give us, if our only request is the dropping of the backstop.
Boris, must be careful. May's WA is a non-starter. Farage, in waiting, understands that the WA has to be rejected - in full.
The problem with TM's withdrawal agreement was surely that it was widely thought to be less advantageous than no Brexit at all yet thought by the ERM as not to go far enough, and they are the people who are 'winning' now. I seem to remember MPs having to book slots to go and read the d***n thing, and doing so. Or am I thinking of something else? I think it an easy and prob unjust jibe to accuse MPs of not having read it.
On less. Glorious????
Why? Was he your favourite comedian WWM2 ?
less Remember Les Dawson???????
dear me , there's some seriously nasty stuff on this slanging match.
Ah well.....
The FT given leaked document yesterday from Gove’s department
The FT says the latest Govt verdict on no-deal plans are so bleak that Michael Gove has abandoned plans to publish it. Leaked copy to
@JasonGroves1
says a no-deal Brexit next month could lead to public disorder, travel chaos and shortages of fresh food, medicines and petrol.
Yes GG13 the whole debacle that remainer and rebel MPs are heading for is ‘how long is a piece of string’ with the EU pulling that string.....indefinitely.
This is good for our country...how?!
What a useless lot of arrogant asses they are.
Are you a grown up MaizieD then?
It’s quite obvious to those of us who actually are that the sort of questions that Jabberwok is ‘asking’ are rhetorical ones.
Have just seen this exert from the WDA posted on twitter.
If we do not leave on 31/10/19 the extension and time limit of will be entirely in the hands of the EU, the U.K. will have no say on the length of the extension......it could be indefini!!
One consequence of no deal is that in out desperation to get any sort of trade deal, we allow the USA access to our NHS. But before we do it would be as well to think of the potential outcome for many in our society.
Number of people who go bankrupt every year because of medical bills:
UK - 0
France - 0
Spain - 0
Portugal- 0
Denmark - 0
Australia - 0
Iceland - 0
Italy - 0
Finland - 0
Ireland - 0
Germany - 0
Netherlands - 0
Sweden - 0
Japan - 0
Chile - 0
Canada - 0
United States - 643,000
Why do you keep asking the same questions over and over again, Jabberwok? Are you hoping there are some grownups somewhere who might know the answers?
They're liars and cheats, and only interested in saving their own miserable careers.
The most prominent liars are those currently in government at this very moment. Brexiters to a man and woman (because they don't dare be anything else..)
It's such a childish way to think about MPs en masse. Of course some of them are liars, and possibly cheats, but a large proportion of them are decent people trying to do what is best for the country.
The problem with the last three years is that MPs seem to have been quite ignorant about how the EU works and how negotiating and doing trade deals work. I don't think many of them realised what a complex task was being set them.
Certainly, most Leave voters have absolutely no understanding of the complexity of untangling 40+ years of legal integration with the EU. Nor do they seem to have any idea of the reality of trade negotiations. Which is why they can be whipped up to a fury about how slow it all seems to be...
I suggest that people read the Ivan Rogers Spectator article that I've posted a link to somewhere today.
You must be spending a lot of time on GN to notice. I suppose I should be flattered. Most of us have better things to do with our time than count how many times other GNetters post.
Varian
There's a clue in the date and time next to your user name.
You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes.
Petra...am standing by with my trusty pike and musket just in case.?
How do you know how much time I or anyone else spends on GN Petra ?
petra! ????
Varian
i have not seen an example of remain posters predicting the future
Considering the amount of time you spend on GN I'm surprised you missed jura2s post on the 29th of August where she stated that the uk was on the brink of civil war.
Urmstongran
I'd even be prepared to revoke it all now, I'm that fed up of it
Oh don't be like that, we're just getting to the interesting bit ?
The evidence in referendums ( for if the right side wins)
Could well be in Ireland, where I think they had the best of three!
Or Scotland, who had a referendum for ‘once in a generation’ and have been yammering for another one ever since.
Or here, having had a referendum three years ago and the vote being to leave, Parliament as an entity doing all it can to backpeddle and wanting another one.
If only politicians know what is in the publics best interest, then why in Gods name were the public asked in the first place?! 'We value your opinion, but (pat on the head) run away and play because we know best! ' As you clearly know best, then why did you ask?!
MP's signed up for article 50 to save their parliamentary seats, that much is perfectly obvious! They've spent three, yes three long years doing their level best to frustrate and bring brexit down. They don't want a deal of any sort and never did! They're liars and cheats, and only interested in saving their own miserable careers. No doubt success will be well rewarded by their EU masters!
A very sobering long read here from Ivan Rogers:
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/ivan-rogers-the-realities-of-a-no-deal-brexit/
Just a snippet for those who refuse to follow links
Any abrupt ‘no deal’ exit would constitute a genuinely major supply shock to the UK, and would oblige us to negotiate post exit from a position in which the negotiating baseline – which will be in operation in the real world of commerce – will be no preferential deal. The pressure of the ticking clock will therefore be on the UK: precisely the same trap into which Theresa May fell so spectacularly on Article 50. Any government minister who believes the EU would not exploit that leverage to force better terms has clearly not been paying attention for the last three years. Any minister who believes that ‘no deal’ improves the UK’s negotiating leverage for the next, crucial, phase, does not understand trade negotiations.
The EU knows all of this too. Which is why the briefings that the EU is rattled because it knows it finally faces someone with the cojones to walk away is fine for domestic press consumption but gets more of a shrug outside the UK. Sure: the EU believes the risk of a ‘disorderly Brexit’ has risen even further in recent weeks. Most see it as a majority chance. Some as a near certainty.
But the mistake I am afraid the Prime Minister is making is to believe that, because they believe that, he is likely to get some materially different and better deal than his predecessor. My instinct is that they conclude from recent events that his primary objective is to win an election by reunifying the right and squeezing the Brexit party.
In which case, delivering a ‘no deal’ Brexit, or committing unequivocally to it in an election manifesto and trying to keep the Remain side of British politics split for that election will be the Prime Minister’s aim, regardless of the revisions the EU offers him on the Political Declaration or examining the alternative arrangements to the backstop. Indeed anything offered to the Prime Minister would have to be loudly declared insufficient and an indication of EU intransigence, or the strategy does not work. If that is one’s analysis, then one of course politely expresses enormous interest in urgently seeing new concrete legal ideas in print from the UK, but one does not hold one’s breath.
That EU politeness is of course being oversold here pre-prorogation as indicating new openness to non-backstop solutions. ‘Do not damage my hand, just as my tough new approach is making progress’. It is appreciably more likely that it is a careful blame avoidance strategy from the EU.
Both sides now have just one final chance in the coming weeks to draw back from the brink, and not reconcile themselves to this now being simply a blame, or blame avoidance, game. Seen from my seat it looks most improbable that they will. It will require courage, creativity and compromise. And the political market for those may be exhausted by both sides.
But if we do lurch to ‘no deal’ it will not, I am afraid, be some easy rapid patching up of reasonably amicable relations after an election, and smooth progress towards a fairly ambitious free trading and security relationship.
It will much more likely be a fractious, potentially quite seriously conflicting relationship, in which, for years, not months, the UK lives on much worse trading terms with the EU than most of the developed world. Trading terms which will depend overwhelmingly on decisions taken in rooms where no Brit is present. In which trading tensions will inevitably spill over into other areas of cooperation, of which there ought, at this time, to be legions, because the appetite will wither on both sides. This is bad for all.
Former colleagues on both sides of the Channel talk with some foreboding of a potentially lengthy deep freeze in cross-Channel relations as these tensions mount and the incentives to cooperate diminish.
Real political leadership – on all sides – involves weighing up very soberly where alternative paths are likely to end, and then communicating to the public why both your destination and your route to it are in the public’s best interests.
I don't think I predicted that BJ would stop brexit Alexa but I hope somebody does.
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