Double Standards

[Workingman]

The situation we are in now was never expected because nobody would have considered that those who voted for Brexit would vote again, before Brexit and vote to cripple it.

The situation we have now was never expected because nobody saw May playing fast and loose with fixed term parliament law.... it is everything to do with her and she screwed us all up big time. Love the bit about *those who voted for Brexit would vote again, before Brexit and vote to cripple it*. How strange.... ardent Brexiters changed their minds and voted to cripple the process! And here was me thinking it was only Remoaners and the Gina Millers of the world who wanted to do that.

Maybe there is something newsworthy to print after all.

[AliasAggers]

A vote was taken, and whether by lies or not the voters decided we should leave. Now we should all pull together to get the best deal for us all and move on and write a new future without the constrictions of the EU non elected politicians.Manxie xx

That's exactly as I see it, and I wish our politicians would just get on with the job.

[Workingman]

Since the vote that is also what I have said, so why are we not doing it?

It is certainly not down to the EU. It has been steadfast since day one. It is down to us and all this *blaming* of the EU is nothing more than an attempt to deflect from our inadequacies and all the stupidity we have displayed over the past months.

[Suff]

Great.

No Brexit Bill, veto all negotiations, no grandfather rights, 4m people hung out to dry. Signed, sealed and done in 6 months.

Then we can, if we wish, talk about trade.

It still works for me. It doesn't work for the EU because of the massive shock to the system and the precedent it would set for other states in the EU who might want to leave in the future.

Hence any dirty tactic which can be employed will be employed. We should rise above it but we can't because, as ever, we're split on the whole thing.

Some time, in the future, when we are out of the EU; this will all be clear to everyone. Hopefully it will stop EU expansion forever and, perhaps, lead to a bit of contraction. But I'm not holding my breath.

I just want a bit of balance and that we are not going to get.

[Workingman]

The EU does not have to employ any dirty tactics to keep the 27 in line. Those nations are quite capable of watching one of the world's largest economies implode without any help from the EU. That massive shock to the system and the precedent it sets should be ample for them to decide which side their bread is buttered.

If only the the referendum debate had been a bit more balanced we might not be in this Tory manufactured mess.

[Suff]

Actually, as I understood it, this was a UKIP manufactured mess as it was the UKIP 12% of the vote (and growing), which forced Cameron to play this card at his last election.

The debate was dishonest on many levels and certainly no less on the Remain side than on the Leave side. Almost all of the Remain lies and FUD have already been outed. Whilst Leave lies and misstatements have partially been outed, it remains to be seen whether the rest of their "rose tinted spectacles" were lies or not.

My view has not changed. Even if the worst possible consequences of the Remain FUD were to be seen it would still have been cheap at twice the price.

The UK has been holding the EU back for decades. Something which will be seen in the decade following the UK's eventual exit. I wonder how many of the Remain lies and soft sell points will be destroyed as the EU goes hell for leather into integration without the UK.

Oddly enough a 2 speed EU is more likely without the UK because the UK would have been a clear leader for the "have not's". Without the UK, the possibility to split the EU, ride roughshod over detractors and "get the job done", is much higher.

But, first, the EU has to cripple the UK in leaving, to make that more likely.

Only when we realise the danger of that will we truly be free of the EU and able to take up our rightful place in the world.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. The world economy is $77tn. The EU 27 is just shy of $14tn of that. We have two years, the last thing we want to be doing is expanding our trade with the EU and trying to negotiate to keep it. We need to shrink it rapidly and replace it with trade elsewhere in the world. So that the impact of leaving the EU is more on the EU side and less on the UK side.

Boris is totally right. They can go whistle for their €100bn and if they want a trade deal they'd better buck their ideas up. In the meantime the UK needs to be making trade deals around the world ready to go into effect the second we leave the EU.

Only when I hear those words from our Government will I know that they recognise the situation as it really is.

This is why Barnier and the EU is trying to undermine the government and gain control of the negotiations on both sides.

That is news. It is not being communicated.

[Suff]

Or should I say that far from being commented as to what it is, it is being commented as _Positive_ for Brexit.

Mr Jones and Ms Sturgeon condemned the bill in a joint statement issued in Brussels, where they were both meeting the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier.

Let me see, what is the alternative to this bill?

Yep, let's just dump the entire European communities act and not replace it with anything and then leave. That will be so much better.

Or so we are led to believe. As our devolved ministers and opposition party leader meet with the EU chief negotiator.

[Workingman]

But, first, the EU has to cripple the UK in leaving, to make that more likely.

Twonk!

The crippling of the UK is already being carried out from within according to the CBI, the banks, the City, financial institutions, the governments own committees, heads of the Border Agency, National Audit Office, OBR, some of its own MPs and former Ministers (Remain as well as Leave) as well as its chief negotiator, David Davis.

The UK has its own experts on the case, it does not need help from the amateurs of the EU.

And when it comes to trade we really are in a pickle. It we go to WTO rules we end up with reciprocal tariffs until we agree bilateral trade deals. Some of those will be reasonably quick, but others could take years, even decades. If we stay in the EU's SM/CU then we cannot do bilateral WTO deals with countries already signed up to EU deals, so that cuts our most of the worlds biggest economies.

Remain's Project Fear is turning into Project Truth. Leave's "rose tinted spectacles" have fallen off and all its lies are becoming exposed to the true light of day.

[Suff]

Hmm, the doomsayers of the referendum are, yep, doomsaying. I'd like to say "I won't fall for that one again", but, surprise, I didn't fall for it in the first place.

So let's see. Who is the UK's largest trading partner for export??

That would be the United States with £45bn in goods in 2015. (But even then these figures are extremely difficult to present, the ONS doesn't even include travel, transport or _Banking_ in its services stats. If you include all services, the export trade to the US, in 2014, was £88bn.)

But, NO, they say, it's Germany. Actually I said "for export", you know selling our goods. We only import £35bn in goods from the US making the UK a net importer to the US.

Will that be threatened if we fall back on WTO rules? Erm, no, because the EU doesn't have a trade deal with the US and we already trade with them on WTO rules.

Next fun stat. We export more goods to Switzerland than we do to:

Spain, Poland, Sweden, Czech Republic, Denmark, Austria, Hungary, Portugal, Finland, Romania, Slovakia and Greece; combined!

One deal with Switzerland and we get that export trade protected.

What does it say about the trade deals with Switzerland and the EU?

Switzerland's economic and trade relations with the EU are mainly governed through a series of bilateral agreements where Switzerland has agreed to take on certain aspects of EU legislation in exchange for accessing the EU's single market.

I.e. no overarching formal treaty. In fact Schengen is in danger of a 100,000 signature challenge in the parliament as it is breaking down quality of life by dropping the real rate of wages, often illegally.

The EEA have free trade agreements with

Albania,Bosnia and Herzegovina,Canada,Central American States (Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama),Chile,Colombia,Egypt,Georgia,Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),Hong Kong, China ,Israel,Jordan,Korea, Republic of,Lebanon,Macedonia,Mexico,Montenegro,Morocco,Palestinian Authority,Peru,Philippines,Serbia,Singapore,Southern African Customs Union (SACU),Tunisia,Turkey,Ukraine

Of those 27 we would need about 10 in order to protect the vast majority of our non EU exports. Of those 10 two are already in the Commonwealth of nations and could be easily negotiated. Of those 27, I challenge you to find One and I do mean One which allows the ECJ to rule on any disputes, including free movement of people. Free movement is, in every case I looked at, controlled by WTO rules.

To get a better picture of how our exports and imports go, this picture gives a clearer one as it includes services even though it comes from 2014. However, bear in mind this has moved further from the EU in those 3 years.



I'm not saying that this is going to be easy. What I am saying is that it is not a foregone conclusion that the UK economy is going to fall off a cliff. Only if the government does nothing, agrees no trade deals and bows down to the EU, will that come to pass. Nothing I have heard so far tells me that will be the case.

More fearmongering.

The upside? We're leaving the EU, regardless and once we are out we can decide to rescind any deal we made in the exit, simply by unilaterally cancelling it. Hence the €100bn bill. They know we're going to dump them so they want us to pay for it up front before we do.

[Workingman]

All academic and very interesting, or probably not. Everything will change post Brexit.

What we are now seeing is Leavers becoming more paranoid as their undefined Brexit starts to unfold, or collapse, as the case may be. Not only are they looking for any scraps to talk things up they are increasingly scrabbling around looking for bogeymen to blame for anything and everything that goes wrong, and they use the old tactic of "attack is better than defence" in the hope of deflecting away any analysis of their own position. We all know that Brexit is not going as planned, well there never was a plan, but is it their fault, oh no, it is all down to those evil bast*rds in the EU.

Unfortunately for them their attacks are getting ever more feeble as time goes on. They are so gossamer thin they are see through.

The thing is that Brexit was (is) a nebulous and romantic idea for the UK to escape the evil EU empire, to control its borders and regain sovereignty, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that - as a dream. The big problem is that there was no real plan for its execution, its implementation and what its final outcome will be. We are now in the process of making things up on the hoof and that puts us in the weakest of weak positions.