Vocal Voices

As the UK says it will not drop tariffs on food imports when leaving the EU with No Deal. For a nation who sells 37% of their food exports to the UK, facing up to 53% WTO tariffs on food products is no joke. Pretty much, overnight, Irish food produce would be priced right out of the UK market.

Sadly this article was in the FT and it's paywalled. But the paragraph...

Ireland has responded with alarm to UK plans for tariffs and quotas on agri-food imports in a no-deal Brexit, as worries grow about the potentially grave impact on the country’s annual €4.5bn food and drink sales to Britain.

Means La La land, where Ireland gets to stand behind the shoulders of the EU saying Nah Nah na nah nah, doesn't quite come off so well.

Given that this situation would also cripple the Spanish industry, for whom the UK is the second largest export market next to Germany, it is now coming home to roost that hard nosing the UK into No Deal is not going to be a picnic for anyone and the first businesses to collapse are unlikely to be British.

Glad to get just a little bit of perspective out of the constant stream of hype drivel.

The FT is Pro Remain, so this is hardly a Brexit leading scare story.

Hopefully any damage can be minimised for all parties concerned.
I have no wish to put anyone out of business or out of work. Any sensible bunch of politicians wouldn't either.

Ireland has responded with alarm to UK plans for tariffs and quotas on agri-food imports in a no-deal Brexit

My Irish friends are worried?

So am I if ultra-boneheaded leavers slap 53% tariffs on Irish beef and dairy because I will have to pay, and so will you and you and you.

But look who is imposing these tariffs! It is us, the UK, as we enter WTO World the numbskull leavers have been banging on about forever and a day. And if we slap them on Ireland we have to slap them on everyone else due to MFN status.

Let's all give it up for WTO rules. Hip-hip hoo-bloody-ray!

Any leavers about to take ownership.... ? What the hell am I asking, of course they won't.

Workingman wrote:Let's all give it up for WTO rules. Hip-hip hoo-bloody-ray!

Any leavers about to take ownership.... ? What the hell am I asking, of course they won't.

Of course ownership will be taken. But here is the point. Those WTO rules are already in place for any nation, not having a trade agreement in place, who wants to trade with the EU.

If the EU does not want a trade agreement, then they have to accept reciprocal tariffs.

On the other hand the UK is in active discussions with many countries about trade deals post Brexit. We can buy in from Israel, Egypt, Australia, the US, Argentina, Brazil and many other countries. All of whom we could have a comprehensive trade deal with.

Of course the EU doesn't want to have a Trade Deal with us. They want to tell us that we can't have a trade deal because we're not in the EU. Just one more lie in the sorry and sad trail of lies the EU calls "negotiating".

So if the Irish and the Spanish and the Italians suffer, badly, from the intransigence of the negotiating position; why the hell should I care. Why should I take responsibility.

I wasn't joking when I said that the Irish should be tearing down the walls of the PM's residence to get him to talk sense. Apparently people are just waking up. About bloody time!

I did also miss a point.

Irish beef is expensive. It might be cheaper to us, but it is expensive on the world market. The UK could apply 25% tariffs and still import cheaper foodstuffs than from Ireland, Spain or Italy at EU internal prices. As WTO rates are so high, it would be possible for the UK to continue to support specific UK farming industries with tariffs, but reduce the price of food to the table in the UK.

I was going to expand on standards, duplicity, trade barriers with such idiocy as claiming that we can't accept chlorine washed chicken on grounds of dead animal welfare, but I'd just be off the page again.

All I hear is "project fear" drip, drip, drip. I never hear about the fact that it was the rest of the world that provided our fresh winter salads when the Italian and Spanish harvests were blighted with frost. Nor that fact that they were so expensive because of EU tariffs.

No, all I hear is that we'll have no food on the table and tariffs will hurt us. Well that's already happened in the EU and they already do in the EU. But that's OK then because we're the frog and we don't notice the water reaching boiling point. No need to jump because it's all good in the EU. Until we're fully cooked and they eat us.

Suff wrote:All I hear is "project fear" drip, drip, drip.

The probem for the people pushing that line is that they have overdone it. I have no doubt that some of it will be true; you can't start to untangle 40 year old trading relationships without pain.

But after you've heard about a no deal Brexit meaning that Irish racehorses won't be able to come to England, that the health of children in Leeds' proposed clear air zone is threatened by a No Deal Brexit, that a No Deal Brexit threatens the "global success story" of Britain's.... Orchestras???

People eventually stop listening.

Cromwell wrote:The problem for the people pushing that line is that they have overdone it.

Of course they have. It has been done as a counterpoint to the stuff coming out of Leave Central, Leave HQ, The Institute for Leave Hope or whatever it is called this week. And let us be brutally honest, even pre-school children are able to filter out the facts from the fiction and jokes.

At least Remain has some facts to publish.

On another quick note: the defectors. It is quite a good chuckle time when I see their former colleagues up on their hind legs foaming about honour, treachery, manifestos and by-elections.

We did not have constituency votes in the referendum but some guesstrapolated results by a bloke with a spreadsheet appear to show that about 72% of them are Leave constituencies. If those results are remotely true then any Leave deal should have sailed through parliament unopposed because the manifestos of both Labour and Tories said they would uphold the result of the referendum. Now excuse me but a quick calc on the back of a fag packet shows that at least a few hundred MPs are not going with the manifesto pledges they were elected on. I look forward to swathes of the country turning up to polling booths in the coming weeks.... surely that is the honourable thing to do?

The thing that strikes me most about this whole business is that the British Government made a great mistake in putting on
this Referendum without giving us voters all the necessary information regarding the pros and cons of any possible outcome.
If they had done, maybe some of us might have voted differently, maybe not. Who knows? I really don't envy the P.M. now.

You are absolutely right there Aggers! xx

The thing that strikes me most about this whole business is that the British Government made a great mistake in putting on this Referendum without giving us voters all the necessary information regarding the pros and cons of any possible outcome.

Am I really reading this? The government sent out a pamphlet to every household in the land outlining the pros and cons of their vote. It could not have been clearer, but it was trashed by Leave supporters as 'Project Fear'. Some even claim that it was a 'Remain' pamphlet.

Under common law the government has a duty to inform and protect its citizens, and that is what it was doing. To leave the EU without any comprehensive trade agreements in place would damage the UK, yet that is what we are about to do. This government, under May, is actively acting against the information it gave to the electorate prior to the 2016 referendum. Some might claim that it is breaking its own laws or promises.