Brexit and the Border

Northern Ireland's economy is heavily dependent on it public sector income and its this that needs to be protected by them should a united Ireland raise as a possibility. The average UK citizen is not aware just how much the North costs Britain to keep and so if a future UKIP decides to raise this issue as a reason to drop the north it could get traction with the voters. The North is in a very dangerous position at the moment because I believe Brexiteers would happily dump the north but only hold back because it would precipitate Scotland and even Wales looking to leave.
 
It looks like there is an agreement although it probably won't make it through the Commons.
If passed the Brits keep the North and we don't have to take on that social and economic basket case.

We may have dodged a bullet there and avoided the whole thing blowing up in our faces.
 
This saga is going to run for a long while yet methinks. Confucius had his tongue in his cheek when he said,"may you live in interesting times". As a history buff I'd say "may you live in boring times and read about interesting times".
 
I am very puzzled by Domnic Raab's resignation.

Boris Johnson fits the stereotype of the upperclass buffoon well. The most expensive education, Eton and Oxford, utterly self absorbed, everything he says is for effect. He has never shown any talent or effort at anything except self -promotion and entertainment. A man to be ignored, and not really a reflection on modern England, every society produces its own type of buffoon.

Raab should be a very different person. Again the best education, though grammar school rather than Eton, a degree from Oxford and a post graduate degree from Cambridge. His father is Jewish, Raab worked for the Palestinian negotiators in the Oslo accords. Impressive. A good career in a large law firm before entering politics. That doesn't come without effort and talent.

Then he comes out to admit he didn't know the importance of Dover as a port. The ignorance is mind boggling and the fact that he admitted it perhaps more so. Cabinet ministers really should at least pretend they know what they are talking about.

Now he has resigned from the cabinet over the Brexit deal. Duh, who was the cabinet secretary responsible for negotiating with the EU.

Angela Leadsome is obviously too stupid for school, but Raab was supposed to be capable. England's problem is that no one with any ability is in Cabinet.
 

I'd disagree entirely about Rabb.

I'd much rather someone show honesty than the type of bluffer we have all too many of over here who give long speeches, using 'in' phrases and say nothing in the end, and do nothing. Just make more speeches and commission more reports and fudge more figures and corrupt language & statistics until they are devoid of all meaning.

He was responsible for the negotiations but he was working within the bounds set by his PM and Cabinet. He was not solely responsible.
He was given a job to do, he didn't resign in a huff in the middle of it, he carried out his duties and then having completed the job to the best of his capabilities and brought it to the Cabinet said that he could not support it. The easy thing to do would have been to not walk away.
 
in my view then on balance Theresa May has done the only thing she could do and sign up for the deal at hand. Only other choice was not to leave the EU. The irresponsible Tory right are prepared to wreck the economy so they can turn back the clock 40 years and have total power again.
 
I find it very hard to accept at face value any concerns the Tories express about a difference in NI's status. Maybe they're brainwashed by the DUP, but the minute the DUP are out of the equation I dont honestly believe they give a fiddlers.

Objectively no-one wants a hard border and the risks that poses. The deal potentially gives NI the best of both worlds. The majority who wanted to remain should be happy. Even those of the unionist persuasion must be wondering where is the real problem with the backstop - they still part of the UK until a vote otherwise, & now that the notions of Britania rules the waves have died they must wonder what's the upside of Brexit. Indy polls in Scotland are now in Yes territory - ok if Brexit settles down that may recede a little - but suffice to say that's a tide that is inevitably coming in. When it does then NI will look like a total outlier, cut off from their historical base, a base that will re-join the EU (if dragged out by then). So the long term is starting to look like a United Ireland .....I don't say that with any great relish, but 'leaving well enough alone' seems to sliding off the table at this stage - though I am still quietly confident of a peoples vote to remain.

What of Brexit? A monument to British arrogance, they honestly thought the EU would crumble when the Brits banged the table. They thought Ireland would follow them out (FFS!). Totally misunderstood their relative importance and power in the world. Now they have the deal they could only have gotten - i.e. if you want all the benefits you have to play by the rules. If you don't want the benefits then by all means be "soverign", "take back control", but just have a think about where that leaves you in trading terms. The biggest "suck in" to Britain since the empire crumbled. They're back where they were, but now they're desparately unhappy about it, I find it hard to generate any sympathy. So is it to be a no deal crash out?? - I seriously doubt it. Dover chaos, food and medicine issues. More likely a peoples vote to Remain. If not then maybe a general election - if Corbyn could be sidelined then labour should romp home and I doubt they'll run on a no deal Brexit ticket. Probably on a remain.

Theresa May should never have taken the job, if you were genuinely a remainer I dont see how you could carry out "the will of the people" stocially if convinced they'd made a terrible mistake - let those who were 'mad for it' get their hands dirty & take the flak. Now they just blame her - worst of all worlds.
 
Lots of pan Nationalist gloating this morning. But this is in great danger of being a Pyrrhic victory. Ireland is an even bigger loser than the UK if there is a No Deal. Also how many diplomatic credits have we left in the EU bank. How long will we be allowed to maintain our idiosyncratic approach to Corporation Tax?
 
Duke of Marmalade said:
But this is in great danger of being a Pyrrhic victory. Ireland is an even bigger loser than the UK if there is a No Deal.
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That is true, however Ireland can start to recover from that point, by building new markets and attracting investment that might otherwise have gone to the UK. Indeed that process has begun already.

England on the other hand will only be starting its downward journey on Brexit day.
 
Duke of Marmalade said:
How long will we be allowed to maintain our idiosyncratic approach to Corporation Tax?
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Until the EU develops a coherent approach that addresses the changed nature of the multi-national corporation. When the EU develops a plan, we will have to fall into line. And while that will end Ireland's niche in tax planning it is overall to be welcomed, governments have been too slow to develop new models of taxation for multi (or non) -national corporations.

And that has nothing much to do with Brexit.
 
cremeegg said:
And that has nothing much to do with Brexit.
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My point is that we probably have nothing left in our EU deposit bank of diplomatic credits. Let's face it we have been getting away with outright piracy on our multi national tax policy. When the EU get their act together in this area there is no way IMHO of us negotiating any special opt out.

There was never going to be a hard border. I remain deeply suspicious that the EU have used the border issue as a lever to get the Brits exactly where they want them.
 
I don't see any pan-Nationalist gloating, not here anyway. Nationalism is a poison. I despise it. It is the reason for Brexit and it was the reason for so much death and suffering in Europe over the last 100 years.
The Tories are a disgrace and Brexit is a knife in the heart of the moderation which has been at the heart of Britain as a nation for hundreds of years and allowed them to avoid fascism and revolutions which tore Europe apart during that time.
 
English and UK business people are away better at holding on to Existing business than Irish business people are,I can see most if not all existing day to day business exporting from the uk to Ireland will still be done with no deal, Cant see the same happening with existing business going from Ireland to the Uk if no deal, British business people offer exceptional customer service best in the World by far the always think long term which will stand to them if no deal,
 

What facts are you basing any of that on? If goods from the UK are going to cost significantly more, why are you so confident no Irish business will seek out cheaper alternative sources within the EU?

RETIRED2017 said:
British business people offer exceptional customer service best in the World by far the always think long term which will stand to them if no deal,
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If that were the case why are programs such as Watchdog and Rogue Traders so full of examples of appalling customer service and online forums so full of complaints? Zendesk who study international standard of customer satisfaction rank the UK 4th on 96.2%, behind Belgium, Norway, & New Zealand. Ireland ranks 11th on 94.7%. There are a number of other industry bodies that publish such reports, I don't see a single one that puts the UK first, they do pretty consistenly rank the UK ahead of Ireland, but only by a very small margin. So best in the world by far???

It's quite naive to think businesses by and large can overcome price increases based on goodwill built up through good customer service. Carrillion with their 20,000 UK staff were winning awards for customer service and hitting targets for net promoter scores right up to their collapse.
 
Purple said:
The Tories are a disgrace and Brexit is a knife in the heart of the moderation which has been at the heart of Britain as a nation for hundreds of years and allowed them to avoid fascism and revolutions which tore Europe apart during that time.
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One could argue that maintaining a sense of distance from Europe also played a part in helping Britain avoid those events, no?
Is this government really less moderate than that of say Lord Salisbury??? Churchill's second term?

The disgrace was probably getting Britain into an arrangement that it would be impossible to cleanly escape, given the half-hearted nature of UK support for it. I think the mistake was Maastricht. That brought the UK deeper into the EU and it did not have popular support - any referendum on the issue would have been rejected.
 
The true ugly side of the Tory is also being exposed here. They have always paid lip service to the notion that they were really a UK national party but in reality they were really an English party first. I find it musing to hear Rees Mogg talk of vessel state and dominion when they have treated Wales,Scotland and N. Ireland pretty much like this. It was a Tory government that imposed poll tax on Scotland first to see if it would work or not. The upshot of this dropping the pretence could in fact do the one thing they feared most, the dissolution of the United kingdom
 
Mrs. May and the British negotiating team see to have agreed to a deal which honours the commitments that they made at the time of the Brexit referendum. I’m pleasantly surprised but I think it is doomed as Corbyn is a Brexiteer, the DUP will NEVER... NEVER... NEVER support this and the little-englanders high-Tories who pull the strings in the Conservative Party are aghast at the idea that the British actually keep their promises.

They are 'little England' incarnate. History, law and international politics aren't complex phenomena requiring deep and subtle understanding, they are a series of cartoonish anecdotes or sound bites where the lesson is always 'England is right, everyone else is wrong or stupid'. It is no wonder such people take shelter in the comforting myths of 'Churchill saves civilization' and live on a diet of angry, middle aged men reading the gutter press and posting support online for racist criminals with multiple pseudonyms. Those are the intellectual borders of their universe. All wisdom comes from mirrors. To expect more would almost be cruel.
 
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