The future of the EU and the UK, post-Brexit

malakas stated the UK would have no food, medicine, air travel and be destroyed by meteorites on page two and you are going after mojo man? fo real?

 

I dont actually think the unionist parties have the votes to do much. They can stop legislation with the petition of concern but they don't actually have the votes to pass anything to break the arrangement. The combination of Sinn Fein, the SDLP, the Alliance and the Greens creates a majority on its own (without relying on unionist votes) to pass anything. All the DUP and UUP can do is file petitions of concern to block legislation. The DUP lost all leverage the moment the Tories won their majority in parliament. Now they're getting rolled over by the government.

The DUP should've supported May's original deal that had the whole UK maintain regulatory alignment with the EU. At least in that model, there would be no Irish Sea border. Now the DUP is going to get further isolated. Pretty ironic that Ireland will now have more say and input on regulations and trade in Northern Ireland than the UK parliament.

 

That's good to hear and my friends are definitely not voting DUP.

 

From what I've heard I agree with this and the it does sound like DUP power is greatly diminished. Also it sounds like the fear of a return to sectarian violence from either revived IRA factions or Unionist militias isn't very likely.

All of that said the amount of confusion and chaos over BREXIT (sounds very familiar) still stuff to worry about. As Malakas noted many of the Catholic residents can claim citizenship in the Irish Republic and I know at least one who lives in Derry who has gotten an passport of the Irish Republic. I haven't talked to him recently but he got it a year ago just to be ready incase things went bad.

 

There is a grace period on enforcing the Irish Sea Border but that expires in April. But assuming the deal gets done, they worst case scenarios are avoided.

There will still be huge changes as a result of this. Businesses in the UK are already complaining about new regulatory headaches that they have to deal with to ship goods to Northern Ireland. That problem is largely temporary as companies will eventually adapt to the customs process but this becomes a serious problem once future UK governments decide to diverge from EU regulations. At that point, Northern Ireland will start to have separate laws on key regulatory areas which will increase the regulatory challenges. Additionally, shipping goods to the EU via Northern Ireland also results in customs protocols so that won't be "frictionless" either.

On the other hand, trade directly between Ireland/EU and Northern Ireland doesn't really change. As long as the goods aren't going to be shipped to the rest of the UK, things don't change. This creates the scenario that the unionists didn't want. It will now be easier to trade with the EU than the rest of the UK. Trade between Northern Ireland and the UK will require customs protocols that could potentially grow over time but trade with the EU via Ireland really won't change much.

The unionists are already fighting amongst each other as this new deal is many times worse than any deal previously discussed. Boris Johnson reneged on all of his promises around avoiding a sea border. But by striking a deal that gives the UK the ability to selectively diverge from the EU, the Tories guaranteed that the sea border will become larger and larger over time. And now Northern Ireland is a vassal state of the EU and the hard truth is that Ireland is now responsible for advocating for the interests of Northern Ireland in the EU.

I don't think the troubles are coming back but the unionists are really going to have a hard time going forward. The DUP only finds success when it can polarize politics to attract soft unionists (who might disagree with the DUP but find it to be the only option for them). With the Alliance poaching these types of voters (and the end of the confidence and supply agreement in the UK parliament), the DUP no longer have the ability to stop this.

 

Thanks for all the fish.

 

LOL
There will be a deal today 23 or tomorrow 24 December.

The difference is 63.5 million euros in fish. Small change.

It may take a while to be RATIFIED by all 29 parliaments (Westminster, EU, other 27 country parliaments), and perhaps the first 5-6 days of January may be on WTO terms until ratification, but there will be one.

 

YES I WANT MORE CARTOONS, PRONTO

 

I guess you've pretty much given up on the US...

 

It's an interesting situation.

Based on everything I've read, the British are still subject to EU regulations on goods and nothing's really been decided on the services side (especially financial).

I think this delivers what Brexit promised, a sovereign UK. That does mean all the frictionless processes that they got from being a part of EU will go away but that is what the British wanted (or at least the majority voted for).

I also think it'll suck for the British companies trading with EU but let's wait for more details.

 

Johnson did deliver in getting a deal passed but it sounds like it may not win over the hardliners in his party who wanted a purer BREXIT. This may be another one of those deals that doesn't satisfy anyone
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/world/europe/brexit-uk-tories.html?searchResultPosition=2

Boris Johnson Delivered on Brexit. It May Not Soothe His Unruly Party.
Conservatives are united for now over the British prime minister’s trade deal, but as details emerge, he could face challenges from hard-liners and business groups.

LONDON — An “exceptional victory,” the result of “fantastic work” and a deal that “delivered” for the British people.

Even before the text of the post-Brexit trade agreement was published, lawmakers loyal to Prime Minister Boris Johnson lavished praise on him for resolving an issue that has convulsed British politics for almost half a decade.

When Parliament convenes next week to ratify the document, the question will only be the size of Mr. Johnson’s majority for a deal that severs close economic ties to continental Europe on Jan. 1 after almost 50 years. Even the opposition Labour Party will officially support it, arguing that it is better than nothing.

Yet this is unlikely to be the final word in the Conservative bloodletting over Europe that has, at least in part, led to the downfall of the party’s last four prime ministers.

Hard-line Brexit supporters have yet to examine the agreement, and they probably will not like every word of an estimated 2,000 pages of dense treaty text and annexes. A small group did not want any trade deal at all, never really trusted Mr. Johnson and might still be inclined to make trouble for him.

Already, an organization representing British trawler fleets has expressed disappointment at compromises over fishing rights, and the Scottish government has attacked the deal, arguing it strengthens the case for Scotland’s independence.

“In the short term, the Tory Party is pretty united around the very hard Brexit that Boris Johnson pushed Britain toward but which many Britons never thought they were voting for,” said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, a research institute.

But the agreement provides only limited economic benefits for Britain, and friction with the European Union is likely to remain, added Mr. Grant, who said the country’s post-Brexit relationship with the European Union may not be much more stable than what preceded it.

“In the longer term, the rift may reopen,” he said, adding that pressure might grow once the deal’s limitations become clear.

The pandemic has plunged Britain into the worst recession in three centuries, so post-Brexit politics remain highly volatile, said Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King’s College, London.

And the Brexit debate has poisoned the workings of the Conservative Party, which had long been known for a pragmatic and successful pursuit of power rather than an adherence to political doctrine.

Now, despite achieving his aim of getting “Brexit done,” Mr. Johnson cannot assume that the divisions are over.

“Europe has turned the Conservatives into an ideological party, and it has basically got in the way of Conservative governments governing,” Mr. Menon said.

Others have tried and failed to end this internecine feud, including David Cameron, one of Mr. Johnson’s predecessors.

Mr. Cameron once famously pleaded with his party to stop “banging on” about Europe. Yet after being harried by internal euroskeptic critics, he took the fateful gamble of calling the 2016 referendum on European Union membership in an ill-fated effort to put the matter to rest.

Mr. Johnson was a beneficiary of that miscalculation, and the lesson he appears to have drawn from recent history is that it is dangerous for any Conservative Party leader to be outflanked on the euroskeptic right.

He campaigned for Brexit, became prime minister thanks to it, and last year kicked out of his party lawmakers who opposed the idea of a clear rupture with the European Union, uniting his Tories behind his hard-line stance.

But in striking a trade deal, Johnson is taking a calculated risk in disappointing a cohort of purist Brexit supporters who helped him win power and who wanted no agreement at all.

An influential caucus of pro-Brexit Conservative lawmakers known as the European Research Group has yet to weigh in on the agreement, and Mr. Johnson has been working hard to bring them on his side. How many of those lawmakers oppose him and who they are will be very significant, Mr. Menon said.

“If you have 20 to 40 of them screaming ‘betrayal,’ that changes the dynamic,” he said.

Waiting in the wings is Nigel Farage, the populist anti-European Union politician who has now rebranded his Brexit Party as Reform UK and has shown his skill in the past at peeling off Conservative supporters.

On Thursday, Mr. Farage cautiously welcomed Mr. Johnson’s deal but with the important caveat that he had yet to read the fine print.

Some Brexit supporters have always scented that betrayal would lie somewhere within any treaty negotiated with the European Union and, even before the agreement was struck, it was being denounced as another in a long series of British surrenders to Brussels. One commentary article in the pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph argued that the government had been “outsmarted at every turn.”

Others agree with that analysis, but from a more pro-European perspective, noting that even official forecasts suggest Britain will lose out on significant economic growth under Mr. Johnson’s deal.

Many businesses will notice the limitations of Mr. Johnson’s agreement as soon as Britain leaves the European Union’s giant single market and customs union on Jan. 1. The accord failed to secure much of anything for the services sector, for example, which accounts for around four-fifths of the British economy.

And the deal increases barriers rather than eliminating them for the manufacturing sector and agriculture. So while there will be no taxes on the import and export of goods, there will be additional checks on them — so-called nontariff barriers.

Delays at ports — of which Britain just got an ugly foretaste, when France briefly blocked all travelers and freight from Britain — will add significant costs to companies, which will have to make an estimated 20 million new customs declarations each year and face other compliance costs.

“In the long run, it is such a bad deal that the more moderate wing of the Tory Party may try to get a better deal,” said Mr. Grant of the Center for European Reform, noting the Conservatives’ traditional link to business.

Yet perhaps the biggest danger for Britain is that it is now stranded awkwardly, half-in, half-out of the European economic system, leaving its relationship with the bloc as fraught and politically combustible as ever.

As a big economy that shares a land border with Ireland, a European Union country, Britain will be unable to escape the huge trading bloc’s gravitational pull, any more than other neighbors that stayed aloof from it, experts say.

Switzerland, for example, is in constant, fractious negotiation with the European Union over their relationship.

Pro-Brexit lawmakers will be likely to press the British government to break away from Europe’s standards and laws and to test the limits of regained national sovereignty. That is possible under the agreement, but if the European Union believed any such measures were designed to undercut it, the issue could go to independent arbitration and tariffs could be imposed as a penalty.

Mr. Johnson might judge it in his interests to press ahead with contentious rules, either to promote his industrial strategy or to reignite the politically divisive debate over Europe that brought him to power.

Either way, the mechanism established by his deal for resolving trade disputes over diverging economic rules is likely to provide a future flash point. These or other cross-Channel conflicts are certain to be inflamed by the more jingoistic parts of the British tabloid media.

“It means a process of almost permanent negotiation between Britain and the E.U.,” Mr. Grant said, “and every time that happens, it will pump up the emotion and the rhetoric.”