I don't know how it will pan out for the UK, but 1) my money has been on a no deal Brexit from day one, on account of the blatant incompetence and bad faith of the UK side; 2) I think Brexit is a chance for the EU to reform and improve, so as a European, I take it as a blessing in disguise.

Interesting that the EU are so angry with Boris that they're threatening legal action - not 'no deal'.. That could be seen as a sign of weakness by Boris; but Barnier is too smart to leave the EU open to being labelled deal-wreckers this early in the negotiating game of bluff.

Also, from the House of Lordds responses so far to the new bill it seems very unlikely that the govt will ever get it into law, so it could all be academic. Are the EU aware of this?

Oh who could've possibly seen Bojo favouring no-deal coming at some point over the last few years. Not sarcasm at you, it's simply extremely frustrating to watch the almost inevitable unfold.

#indyref2?

For me? Think it's a good idea. Whether I think it would be good for Scotland depends on how it's handled.

I wish for a successful Brexit, followed by Itaxit, Swexit, Fixit, Grexit, Spexit and many more. Best of Course would be a Germanexit, because that would be the end of the EU imperalist project right there.... without the financier, Macaron is left sitting on a a bankrupt half-empire.

I wish for useful contributions but that's not bound to happen any time soon either.

So is this Internal Market bill going to be stopped or what?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-54145202

So is this Internal Market bill going to be stopped or what? — Professor Death

The House of Lords may block it. If not it looks to me like it will deliberately be delayed until after the Brexit trade talks are completed or collapse. Boris is going to hold it as an axe over Barnier's head in the talks. I'm not sure what happens if, as they're threatening, the EU take legal action against the UK govt in the meantime though..

Johnson (not Boris, will call him Johnson) seemed to back down a bit after Ed Miliband took him to task on the bill:

I'd call that bluff. Even without the good faith negotiating obligations of the withdrawal agreement, it's still a breach of the Good Friday agreement. I'm pretty sure treaty trumps local law so it will never survive a court case even if the bill was passed.

Boris is going to hold it as an axe over Barnier's head in the talks. — Tim3003

It's an axe over his own head. Apart from EU sanctions that will cause economic and logistical chaos in the UK, Biden and Pelosi will scupper any possibility of a trade deal with Britain if he goes through with this. This has Brexiteers paying for a Trump victory, which won't help them as Pelosi is pretty much guaranteed the House. Stupid, stupid, Boris...

it's still a breach of the Good Friday agreement. — Benkei

I'm not clear on the Good Friday agreement. The US Democrats certainly seem to be up in arms about it. In what way does the new bill threaten it? The Bill is intended to stop the EU imposing trade barriers between UK and NI, I'm not aware if it prejudices the relationship between NI and Eire.

Anyway, I think BJ is banking on the whole EU affair being tied up way before he needs to worry about finalising the US trade deal. Cross one bridge at a time..

I'm not clear on the Good Friday agreement. — Tim3003

Keeping it really simple, the Good Friday agreement between the UK and the Republic of Ireland is the treaty that ended the civil war in Northern Ireland. It is founded on power sharing both within the province of Northern Ireland, (between Catholic Republicans and Protestant Unionists) and between the Irish and UK governments. A central plank is that there shall be no hard border between North and South.

This means that all matters pertaining to movement of goods and people need to be harmonised between the two jurisdictions.

However, the whole project of Brexit relies on ending the harmonised jurisdictions on just these matters between the UK and Europe. This gives rise to an immediate contradiction between the separate internal markets of the EU (including the Republic of Ireland), and the UK (including Northern Ireland).

Both sides are committed to a free internal market, and The EU in particular, needs to control its external borders.

Applications of fudge in the form of backstops, imaginary borders, and imaginary brexits, have failed to resolve or cover over this contradiction, and we face the prospect of a hard border followed by a renewal of violence and/or the breakup of the UK and the reunification of the Island of Ireland. I think that's about right, but maybe @Baden can make any corrections and add subtleties and complications ...

I know the GF agreement's background. But in what way does the new bill threaten the agreement? It could be said that in the case of no deal it is the EU who will put up trade barriers between NI which is part of the UK still and Eire..

It could be said that in the case of no deal it is the EU who will put up trade barriers between NI which is part of the UK still and Eire.. — Tim3003

Yes, it could be said. I don't know what would be done and by whom, but I do know that the EU cannot leave that border open without a deal of some sort. They cannot allow, for example, US chlorinated chicken to flow across that border and compete with the higher standard chicken mandated in the EU. So the EU will probably eventually have to put up a hard border itself if the UK breaks its commitments to maintain harmony between North and South trade regulations. That's after punitive trade war on other fronts amounting to almost a blockade, I imagine. Blaming the EU is already the main policy of this government, so I doubt more blame will cause much anguish in the EU.

The new bill (illegally) breaks the deal the UK agreed too. That deal guaranteed an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. It also put a border in the Irish sea. Again, the UK agreed to that rather than the options of a customs union, the backstop, or no deal. Boris put the border in the Irish sea because he didn't want the backstop and he called that a fantastic deal and he's now on an Orwellian Mission to pretend it's a horrible deal and this is somehow the EU's fault. It won't end well for him.

Kind of like if you offer me a banana and I say, "no, no, I want a pineapple", so you give it to me and then I run around screaming, "look, look, he's trying to give us a pineapple! We can't accept that!"

I know the GF agreement's background. But in what way does the new bill threaten the agreement? It could be said that in the case of no deal it is the EU who will put up trade barriers between NI which is part of the UK still and Eire.. — Tim3003

That's rather like saying if I go outside my family erects a wall between me and them.

Looks like people with UK bank accounts living in the EU/EEA might get their UK accounts closed after the transition period ends. Too little progress on negotiations. Thanks, you shits.

Wtf? Time to rescue my cash!

↪Kenosha Kid

We had a similar thing in the UK with Brexit. The leavers won 51:49%. Because David Gammeron was too thickly cut to consider the possibility that the majority might be comparable to the sort of result variance that would be time-averaged out, we were stuck unable to contest what ought to have been a highly contestable result.

Yes, Cameron was naive, he didn't realise how much anti-EU sentiment had been developing beneath the surface over the previous 12 years. He was Boyed up with the arrogance that he had won the Scottish Independence referendum and would win the Brexit referendum in the same way. There was little thought of losing it and what the consequence would be. It was a fatal flaw to leave to a simple majority, it should have been a super majority of 60%, or more for a win. Once the referendum was called the right wing populist machine went into overdrive and forced the vote through on paranoia, misinformation and false promises.

Now we have an equivalent to Trump in the UK, with the same worrying trends emerging. Even today it has been leaked that Paul Dacre the disgraced former editor of the Daily Mail, is being groomed for chairman of Ofcom. And a former editor of The Telegraph for director general of the BBC. With Government Ministers on the media this morning saying that it's time for right wing biased media in the UK. This administration is gunning for the BBC in a big way.

My take on it is that the economy has been in trouble since the financial crisis of 2008. People are starting to think of alternatives to free market capitalism, which has spooked the Conservative base and the big money backers of the party. They have all feathered their nests for a generation and now the rot has set in to the economy and the country, they don't want to give away any of their wealth to help put it right and the younger generation is turning left on mass. The Conservative party is heading for oblivion, which will allow socialists into office. Once that happens the game is up and the wealth will be clawed back for the good of the whole country. The solution in the eyes of these Conservatives is a lurch to the right with maximum acceleration of rightwing ideology and policies to force the country to the right and hoodwink the population into believing it is the only way to govern. It is high stakes and combined with the disastrous Brexit situation there is going to be much gnashing of teeth and upheaval over the next few years.

P.s. pasted from the Trump thread.

My take on it is that the economy has been in trouble since the financial crisis of 2008. — Punshhh

Uh...the World economy has been in trouble since the financial crisis of 2008, even if China and India have put respectable growth numbers.

The Conservative party is heading for oblivion, which will allow socialists into office. — Punshhh

You did have elections just last year, didn't you? How did those go?

I wouldn't say any party is heading for oblivion, as it just assumes that other parties will take their place without any effort. The political landscape and politics is far more dynamic and more complex than that in any country. If you think that younger generations are more leftist than older ones, well, they were so also in the 1960's and 1970's.

Uh...the World economy has been in trouble since the financial crisis of 2008, even if China and India have put respectable growth numbers.

Yes, that doesn't diminish my point though. As always in my comments in the Brexit thread, my focus is on the UK politics from the perspective of an insider who has followed UK politics for a generation. My perspective might have a narrow focus sometimes and ignore wider global trends, but if you understand this you can interpret it this way, as a window into internal UK politics from an insider and draw the implications of wider more global politics from your own knowledge.

I have explained my reasoning for my conclusions in this thread about a year to 18 months ago. But to recap.

In the UK, the left right political divide has been, for the last half century or so, in line with a class divide. So the right wing is primarily the middle and upper middle classes, who are privelidged and dominate the establishment, hold all the wealth and to a lesser extent the professions, arts and media. The left wing has been bottom up from the working classes. There is some movement into privelidge and establishment from this social class, but it is limited. Also the majority of the working classes have improved their circumstances over the last generation and become more middle class. But they are still held at arms length by the traditional privelidged classes by an ingrained, largely unconscious, bias and code. Often based on where people live, what schools and colleges they went to etc. This may be the same in other countries, I don't know, perhaps you can help me there, but in the UK it is still very dominant and skews politics towards the right.

Anyway the financial crisis was blamed on the City of London in the UK, just as much as US banks had been blamed. The spell, the magic of British capitalism was burst, exstinguished, in the minds of many people in the UK and subsequently knowledge of what the privelidged classes in the City were up to is more widely known. Then we had 10years of austerity imposed by the same establishment that was blamed for allowing and benefitting from the conditions which caused the crisis.

The young grew up during this and are now impoverished by continuing inflation in the housing market, meaning only privelidged young can purchase property*, with the help of their parents. Also they are in debt when they leave university due to having to pay for all their fees and accommodation etc. critically this impoverishment has affected large numbers of the young of the privelidged as well now. This has resulted in an en-mass move to the left among the young, which is also enmeshed in the newly developed ideologies around combatting climate change and protecting the environment. Issues which are largely denied by the privelidged (largely over 50 years of age) establishment, in favour of more free market capitalism.

Also the Conservative party is not covering itself in glory at the moment and is becoming a laughing stock.

The problem with our recent election is that the alternative was possibly even more scary than the Conservative party. A Corbyn government would have been a radically left leaning government and there just aren't enough people in the population who could vote for that kind of radical change.


* this trend is exacerbated by the housing crisis in general in which young who don't own their own house are forced to pay ever increasing rent for small properties. Meaning they can't pay back their higher education debt, or save money for a deposit to buy a house.

Then we had 10years of austerity imposed by the same establishment that was blamed for allowing and benefitting from the conditions which caused the crisis. — Punshhh

And, knowing all this, the electorate handed the Tories in their most ridiculous incarnation a landslide victory, all because they hate brown-skinned people. I don't think the spell has broken, rather, in order to survive, it has had to divorce itself entirely from reality.

Yes, that doesn't diminish my point though. — Punshhh

At least they didn't bungle up with economic growth when other countries in the West prospered. That would have been the thing.

In the UK, the left right political divide has been, for the last half century or so, in line with a class divide. — Punshhh

This is actually similar to other countries, actually.

Also the majority of the working classes have improved their circumstances over the last generation and become more middle class. But they are still held at arms length by the traditional privelidged classes by an ingrained, largely unconscious, bias and code. Often based on where people live, what schools and colleges they went to etc. This may be the same in other countries, I don't know, perhaps you can help me there — Punshhh

What makes the UK different is a deeper class divide than other countries, starting from even such things as the language/accent people use or even what sports they follow. British I think are very class conscious and not just the upper class. I think this might be changing though. And yes, it goes through party lines too this class divide. You could see this from Boris Johnson that he acknowledged humbly in his election victory that the conservatives had gotten "labor" votes from labor areas. Usually no politicians would make this kind of remark.

The young grew up during this and are now impoverished by continuing inflation in the housing market, meaning only privelidged young can purchase property*, with the help of their parents. — Punshhh

This asset inflation is typical in many countries and a result of the economic and monetary policies implemented after the financial crisis all over the world.

. This has resulted in an en-mass move to the left among the young, which is also enmeshed in the newly developed ideologies around combatting climate change and protecting the environment. Issues which are largely denied by the privelidged (largely over 50 years of age) establishment, in favour of more free market capitalism. — Punshhh

I think environmentalism broke through in the 1980's in other countries with Green parties. With tory and labor governments this might not have been so apparent in the UK.

The problem with our recent election is that the alternative was possibly even more scary than the Conservative party. A Corbyn government would have been a radically left leaning government and there just aren't enough people in the population who could vote for that kind of radical change. — Punshhh

This might be the real bungle up in British politics. Indeed, it likely would have been a moment for the conservatives to lick their wounds after a long time as the ruling party go to the opposition after everything, but the labor party itself get carried away.

And yes, it goes through party lines too this class divide. You could see this from Boris Johnson that he acknowledged humbly in his election victory that the conservatives had gotten "labor" votes from labor areas. Usually no politicians would make this kind of remark.

Yes, but they leant him their support (the majority of them) on condition that he would get Brexit done. They will swing back behind a moderate Labour Party at the next election. So it was not for conservative policies (other than Brexit) that they voted that way, they held their noses when they voted.

This asset inflation is typical in many countries and a result of the economic and monetary policies implemented after the financial crisis all over the world.

In the UK it is particularly acute, the housing crisis has been developing for 40 years now with an end to any provision of social housing over this whole period. Not only prices being unaffordable, we have no kerbs on rental fees, which are strangling the young with debt. While many large properties have one or two old people living there. The young are really in a bad place financially and they are wary of trusting the Conservatives when they promise to solve the problem. Because they caused and presided over it for the 40 years.

I think environmentalism broke through in the 1980's in other countries with Green parties. With tory and labor governments this might not have been so apparent in the UK.

It was not mainstream in the UK until Greta came along and Sir David Attenborough started speaking out more directly. Now it is widespread and there is little confidence that the Conservatives will make any progress in this direction.

This might be the real bungle up in British politics. Indeed, it likely would have been a moment for the conservatives to lick their wounds after a long time as the ruling party go to the opposition after everything, but the labor party itself get carried away.

Yes, there is a deep split in the Labour Party between the moderates and the radicals, which keeps coming to the fore and prevents them getting into office. They need a strong leader to break this curse, Blair did it and many people hope that Kier Starmer can pull it off now. God knows it's needed now.

Michael Gove is meeting Barnier today, let's see if he manages to sweet talk him. I suspect he will be laughed at.

Yes, but they leant him their support (the majority of them) on condition that he would get Brexit done. They will swing back behind a moderate Labour Party at the next election. So it was not for conservative policies (other than Brexit) that they voted that way, they held their noses when they voted. — Punshhh

And this tells a lot about how class based even British politics is. Because usually people who vote for a certain party are defined to be the supporters of that party. Not some people that are "just now" voting for them.

In the UK it is particularly acute, the housing crisis has been developing for 40 years now with an end to any provision of social housing over this whole period. Not only prices being unaffordable, we have no kerbs on rental fees, which are strangling the young with debt. While many large properties have one or two old people living there. The young are really in a bad place financially and they are wary of trusting the Conservatives when they promise to solve the problem. Because they caused and presided over it for the 40 years. — Punshhh

Add there the quite rapid population growth and economic growth being concentrated on few larger cities.

Yes, there is a deep split in the Labour Party between the moderates and the radicals, which keeps coming to the fore and prevents them getting into office. They need a strong leader to break this curse, Blair did it and many people hope that Kier Starmer can pull it off now. God knows it's needed now. — Punshhh

It is always the "extremist fringe" or the "traditionalists" that create problems to mainstream political party, which alienate a lot of people not closely attached to the ideological side of the party, be the parties either on the right or on the left.

Yet the old class divide may not work so well today. Simply put, all parties need to evolve as the society evolves in order to exist in the long run.

Add there the quite rapid population growth and economic growth being concentrated on few larger cities.

Yes, this population growth is predominantly from the EU, while there is very little housing being built to house them, no provision of healthcare resources and schools in the areas where they move to. So the local population perceives them as depleting their resources (I wrote at length about this in this thread about 18 months ago). Also, some towns, a number near where I live, now resemble Polish towns. Again the local population is not happy about the way their towns have changed and they feel like they live in a foreign country. It is these demographic forces which have resulted in many of the voters who leant their vote to the Conservatives, voting that way. This is largely why we have Brexit. I notice that now Switzerland has had a vote, due to people wanting to end freedom of movement. The vote was lost, but would have been very disruptive if it had been won.