This morning coming to work, I heard an MP (Bernard Jenkin) talking sense about why the negotiations to leave the EU are proving so difficult, despite the Radio 4 interviewer’s best attempts to de-rail him and keep the BBCs obvious stay in the EU agenda and de-bunk those wanting to leave
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His recurring theme was that EU negotiators were blocking and stalling things and in direct contravention of Article 50. The EU doing things in contravention of their own rules to suit their agenda is nothing new.
The basic message was they need to make the process as difficult as possible to make leaving unattractive as possible to other countries.
It is interesting that Article 50 does not mention any money to be paid in order to leave and this seems to have been introduced so that governments (German and French especially0 don’t have to explain why they are having to pay more into the club and might not get as much back.
I’m finding it increasingly annoying that we’ve voted to leave an undemocratic and very bureaucratic system and everyone is surprised that the process is being largely undemocratic (in just having a single negotiator) and is being very bureaucratic about the whole thing.
I find it ironic that Brexit campaigners want border controls with Europe but want an open border on the island of Ireland which last time I looked was a European country.
Ireland is being used as yet another block by the EU. Personally I don’t see a problem with an open border for free movement for UK and Irish citizens, note citizens not passport holders on the pretext that somewhere in their family history there is a vague connection.
Frankly the petulant and childish behaviour shown by the EU ever since we voted to leave, has displayed why we need to be out of it.
What about the petulant and childish behaviour of the British Government?
David Davis lied to parliament about the existence of the impact studies. How can the EU take anything he says seriously when he’s lied to his own parliament? He should be removed from post.
Knowing the difficulties Britain faced in joining the EEC I’m not surprised this isn’t a simple clear cut process.
So how do you check if somebody has a passport if there are no frontier controls.
Anybody can get on the Roscoff to Cork ferry drive to Belfast and get on the ferry to Liverpool. Job done no frontier to cross, no passport checks.
Any sort of impact study would be a waste of time and effort, given the changes and anyone thinking they would be done and have validity is an idiot. If they had been done as suggested, if their validity wasn’t questioned, it would have been very surprising.
The difficulties that Britain faced when it was trying to join was two-fold; we were still major economic force during the 50s and 60s which scared the original EEC and more so De Gaulle who constantly vetoed attempts to join. If we’d joined in the 50s we’d have been one of the architects and not the jobbing labourer.
I think we should have left when the ERM was mooted, as since the EU it has moved away from being a trading block and more so to a political and financial union superstate, which has attracted small economically weak takers, all looking for a slice of the handouts and free job movement pie.
WRT the talks we have gone there with a clear agenda and the EU has sought to baulk that at every turn. BS like status of EU citizens, wanting loads of money to waste are not important. I’m getting to the point where we should say enough is enough and cut the strings. The prevarication is doing more and more damage to all concerned. The remaining countries will want to trade with us and won’t want huge tariffs making this difficult, so any trade talks will be as convoluted and made as difficult by the EU, as they have made things so far, as they won’t want it easy or smooth to ensure they (France and Germany) will want to keep the satellites in place and not think Britain left and nothing much changed, so we’ll do the same.
I agree that any impact study should have been viewed with a critical eye but to flat out not do them is sheer incompetence and nothing else. How can you possibly justify any requests that the UK makes without knowing the government has studied what impact they will have? It’s utter madness.
Britain was asked to join France, Germany, and the BENELUX nations in forming the EEC following the Suez debacle but only sent a junior FO clerk to the Treaty of Rome negotiations, pretty clearly stating its intentions. De Gaulle wasn’t even President in 1957 when the Treaty of Rome was signed so your ‘fear of the UK’ argument seems somewhat invalid. France accepted its limitations following Suez but the UK didn’t and maintained some idiotic notion of being a ‘great power’ which persists today.
The original “EU” was to support coal and steel production in a protectionist manner in minor European countries, when we had a thriving coal and steel industry and I imagine didn’t want to shore up foreign industries at the detriment to ours.
In 1957 we probably quite rightly felt we didn’t need it, but it soon became apparent it was bigger than expected it would be and applied to join.
De Gualle was the primary vetoer in 61 and 63, because he wanted to give France a bigger place on the world stage and feared with Britain involved we would overshadow France, didn’t think Britain was keen on European integration and only wanted easier trading rules and was suspicious of our friendship with the US, as he felt he was kept in the shadows during WW2.
It was only in 69 when we had been screwed over by Labour governments and their accessions to unions had weakened us sufficiently for the EEC to dictate terms and conditions, which didn’t go down well in 1973 and needed a referendum scattered with lies about the EEC and future in 1975. My dad was working for a Anglo European company at the time and said they made it quite clear that if we voted to leave, it wouldn’t bode well. I know people who work for companies with a European base and they said they had a string of ‘unofficial’ prompts not to vote Leave, some of these have seen proposed sell offs and general awkwardness that wasn’t there before the result in June last year.
Ever since 1975 there were more and more indicators of what continental Europe wanted from this and I feel we missed several points where we could have left, before it got too complicated. I’ve never seen a benefit to being part of this.
I went to see The Darkest Hour and I saw parallels to the appeasers in the 1940 govt to those trying to derail leaving the EU.
I think all MPs should be getting right behind leaving and not seeking ways to appease the Brussels/Strasbourg gravy train riders, as all the time these EU slackers see these people disrupting things, they aren’t going to take it seriously.
Corbyn’s latest bright idea would essentially mean staying tied to the restrictions so loved of Brussels in preventing countries doing their own trade deals outside the eu bubble. He really is an idiot and hasn’t grasped that the UK wants out.
I watched a bit of QT last week and one of the audience made the 'elephant in the room" comment that the eu wants to make it as awkward as possible, so that no other countries think that’s alright, we’ll look to leave. Not well received by some on the panel, although I suspect it’s what they all think.
the problem is that Ireland now has a common travel area with the rest of Europe - and now we’re leaving, they may well decide to enter the Schengen arrangement - so if we want a solid border border between the EU and the UK, we’ll have to put it both at Dover and along the border with the Republic.
the Irish government is spectacularly unlikely to agree to any kind of forward border - it wants to maintain the CTA with the UK, but it is determined to not be seen by the EU structures, with whom it has a close and politically profitable relationship, as being ‘the friend of the British’.
i doubt that the CTA can survive any kind of real Brexit, the physics of one just preclude the other.
One of the problems with the eu is it’s increasingly become their way or no way.
One of de Gaulle’s problems was the strong trading links we had across the world which meant if we’d joined in the 50s/60s we’d have wanted to keep our trade links, which would have messed up the Common Market as was.
So now they have stitched everything up in articles, directives and so on that are supposedly agreed by all member states, which don’t actually benefit anyone except eurocrats in offices, protecting unaccountable jobs / roles.
The long and the short of it, not one European country will not want to trade with us, whereas we could easily trade with countries across the world and if we wanted European things, I’m certain we could get them legitimately via third parties.
If Eire decides to enter the Schengen agreement, securing the Schengen border becomes their problem.
They haven’t done it yet; I don’t see them doing it in the future.
