UKC

Brexit: Cabinet agrees 'collective' stance on future EU deal http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44747444

Sanity prevails? 

This proposal sounds remarkably like membership of the European Union, why don’t we just do that instead?

Hahahahaha.

F*ck off.

Like it

but.... will you really say that? Merkel has got all sorts of problems domestically, the migrant crisis is front and centre in Italy, and you’ve only got so much political bandwidth. And you lose too if we end up with a hard brexit. Has she made an offer that is close enough to being acceptable, and that’s the best she can realistically make, that it will be seized on as the way out of an otherwise insoluble problem?

Boris notably and uncharacteristically quiet. For all his bluster, he must have realised that wrecking the economy was only an option if he could blame someone else for it. May appears to have called his bluff; she’s not going to, so if he wants to ‘f*ck business’, he has to do it himself. Courage of his convictions? What a surprise, apparently not...

It makes sense in terms of Tory politics but in practical terms it is crazy.

There are to be no customs checks between the UK and EU.  What is to stop someone getting a lorry full of widgets which aren't supposed to leave the UK because no EU tariff was paid when they were imported into the UK and driving it into the EU?   

Oh god can you imagine the next f*cking 40 years of whining though? Having saved the tw*ts from themselves everything will be blamed on not having an ideologically pure Brexit. Part of me wanted a hard Brexit: 6 months of a reality bath would have seen Boris et al consigned to the dustbin of history. 

(Bonus points if anyone spots the climbing reference above)

I'm rather hoping that all the whining can now stop and UKC can return to some semblance of normality.
Don't think that is going to happen though...

That's a reasonable description of the while ridiculous farce. 

If I can be persuaded that this is what Theresa was planning all along I may have to replace my utter contempt with deep respect. 

Indeed - the “submarine” finally surfacing? The Times today has some pretty strong stuff on cabinet collective responsibility being enforced from now on. Will be interesting to see some more detail from the White Paper - and how the Blonde Blowhard reacts.

Cue the BBC giving a shit-tonne of airtime to the Brexit hard-on brigade.

From the article:

The main details of the Chequers statement are as follows:

• The UK would accept continuing "harmonisation" with EU rules on the trade in goods, covering only those necessary to ensure frictionless tradeParliament would have the final say over how these rules are incorporated into UK law, retaining the right to refuse to do so

Harmonisation is precisely what happens now. Hard to see how refusing to do so would be acceptable.

• There will be different arrangements for trade in services, including financial products, with greater "regulatory flexibility" and "strong reciprocal arrangements"

For some incomprehensible reason the EU won't develop a new banking capital now that itsi lost its current one? Or is London to be more 'competitive', maybe due to reduced regulation and slacker financial controls?

• Freedom of movement as it stands will come to an end but a "mobility framework" will ensure UK and EU citizens can continue to travel to each other's territories and apply for study and work

Loss of opportunities for all.

• A new customs arrangement will be phased in, with the goal of "a combined customs territory"

Having cake and eating it.

• The UK will be able to control its own tariffs and develop an independent trade policy

Better deals than can be arranged while wirhinthe EU? Good luck with that.

• The jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice will end but the UK will pay regard to its decisions in areas where common rules were in force.

Meaningless drivel that fails to address the vital pan-European agency memberships.

I'm struggling to see how any of this could seriously be attractive to anyone except those heads of financial institutions who could keep a foot in both camps.

When goods enter the eu now from say China or the usa, customs checks are already done in China, prior to shipping. So nothing really changes significantly. That is what makes this whole border debate a bit of red herring. When a massive ship arrives in Southampton or Rotterdam with hundreds of containers from Shanghai they don't then do individual checks one by one, it's already done before the port of departure even accepted them. 

The various customs and border agencies process the admin, do random checks and sweep through with sniffer dogs etc.. 

and the end users of all of the counterfeit goods do the checking, including dangerously fake electronic components.  These have been identified as a major threat to reliability of electronic systems including medical and military systems to the extent that the US has government programmes dealing with the Chinese problem.  Great!

It’s the spot checks that create the issue, though. If you’re checking 10 per cent of lorries, that’s still 600 a day on the Irish border, a similar number at Dover, perhaps 400 a day at the tunnel, etc etc. It’s not the same as checking every single truck, granted, but it’s not nothing either. 

It means every single widget in the UK has to be classified according to whether EU or UK duty has been paid and that classification has to be tracked every time it is sold or incorporated into something larger.   So every company in the UK which has stores of parts is going to need software to track this.   If you make computers and have 5,000 memory modules in your store then it could actually be 1,000 modules you can use in goods to be sent to the EU and 4,000 that can only be used in goods for the UK or rest of world.     If you sell one of your 'UK only' PCs to a small company or consumer or a French/Irish person that walks up in a shop then in theory they'd be smuggling if they took it to Europe.   And to police all this presumably you need an army of new HMRC employees plus random checks at ports.  Random checks on the UK/ Ireland border or just let them smuggle as much as they like because its better than having customs agents getting shot at?

It is the sort of idea that people with near zero real world experience who are more worried about political compromise within their party than practical implications come up with.   Or, if you were to be cynical an idea designed to be rejected by the EU which can then be spun as the EU being intransigent about a reasonable compromise and used to justify what they really want to do.

This. In spades.

In broad terms and at first reading it seems about the best we could hope for having made a decision to leave. At least there is an acknowledgement that something has to done to prevent UK manufaturing industry getting completely phuqed over and we need a sensibly open about immigration and emigration with the EU. The details are unlikely to survive first contact with the EU negotiating team anyway.

..and if William Rees Mogg is pissed off then that's certainly a good sign as far as I'm concerned.

What would you suggest then?

My preferred option is Independence for Scotland. Scotland stays in the EU and never has to give a sh*t about Theresa May, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson or David Davis again.

The UK should go into the EEA for five or ten years and then decide whether it wants to break off further or go back into the EU.  Cameron should have said that what was happening the day after the referendum based on the narrow majority for Leave and that a significant fraction of Leave voters were intending Leave to mean the EEA.

Of course. If you buy cheap unbranded  electrics from China then what do people expect. 

With chargers for cheap head torches etc. Being a classic example of a potential fire hazard 

But companies track their widgets now, as export to eu or non eu, Switzerland and Norway are also special as they are in the trade area for different classes of goods. The UK would be in the trade area for all goods, which is simpler than the Swiss or Norwegian model currently is. 

Yes, a minor issue really and I'm not sure I see why the government's position on customs makes it any more likely.

I work in the electronics industry and source lots of components from the Far East btw.

To be honest if all folk can find fault in is the details of a customs mechanism then it sounds like a reasonable negotiating position to take. It'll be interesting to see what Keir Starmer thinks of it.

Are those percentages fact or just grabbed out of the air? 

Goods are checked now, trucks opened up etc..  trucks between the UK and mainland Europe don't drive straight through. All are stopped for basic admin anyway as the UK isn't in the schengen area. 

If you look at the Swiss, food isn't free trade, unless it's organic... and it goes on. It's infinitely more complex than what the UK has proposed. Norway, all food and drink is excluded in their agreement. I don't see how the eu can complain, but they will.

I think a large proportion of remainers who rant about the border check don't know that most custom checks are done long before a container even reach it's port of departure. 

And Switzerland and Norway have customs checks and border posts.

Firstly, this just isn't true. Secondly. Wherever the checks are made doesn't matter, they still needs to be made, and anyway these things go both ways. 

The decision to buy or not to buy goods from a foreign country, or your own, is largely determined by two things, quality and cost.

Assuming quality of EU and UK goods don't change then what remains is cost and a change in cost will largely be determined by import or export duties and of course exchange rate. Try putting a price on the extra cost of a customs check on a container full of goods compared to the cost of the contents of that container.

Yes because many of their goods are not part of their trade agreement. The UK now proposes all goods will be tariff free. 

You are missing the point. When you import from China to the UK or say Cyprus, now, today, checks happen in China prior to departure. After Brexit, nothing will change. There is no extra cost. 

If you bought 1,000 memory chips today for assembling into computers you wouldn't care whether the computers containing them would eventually by sold into the EU or the UK or somewhere else.  Quite likely you would be buying based on sales predictions rather than actual orders and wouldn't even know where the computers were going to be sent at the point you bought the memory chips. 

Once someone bought one of your computers you would have different paperwork depending on where you were going to sell it.

Why? The white paper proposes the UK conform to eu standards and goods will be tariff free. No change. 

Just admit it. The proposed trade agreement has taken the wind out of many remainers sails?

It might have blown in a few hard brexiteers though. But that is the nature of negotiations. Compromise. 

Have they even issued the white paper?  All I saw was a statement from the meeting.

What it said was the UK would apply EU tariffs to goods which would eventually end up in the EU and whatever tariffs the UK agreed with the other country for other goods.   So if the UK then did an agreement which had substantially lower tariffs on a class of goods those goods would need to be tracked according to the duty paid when they came into the UK.   It would create a book-keeping extravanaganza on a similar level to VAT and a huge number of borderline cases to fight through the courts.

I'd be amazed if the EU didn't reject the idea because it is also a 'cake and eat it proposal' which gives some businesses a competitive advantage relative to being completely inside the EU and an invitation to smuggling.   If you were a French business that needed to buy all their components with EU tariffs applied and whose suppliers within France had a higher cost base because they are paying EU tariffs you would consider it unfair competition.

The proposal seems to be simply the least possible alignment the UK gov can get away with while keeping up the December agreements about the Irish border and the absence of a border in the Irish sea.

Economically this makes no sense: a goods only deal with the EU when the UK is predominantly a service exporter. The banks cannot be happy about this....

From the EU point of view, the advantage of a goods only deal is that it provides a possibility to lure more UK service companies to the EU27 and have more control over stuff like euro-related banking. But the cost is high. Lots of new regulations that nobody wants and a break of the central principle of the four freedoms of the market. So the EU27 will say no.

But not yet. This proposal will be used to get a withdrawal agreement with the Irish backstop and some fudgy language about a future relationship past UK parliament. The Brexit happens and EU27 will remark that some of the detail is not yet good enough. Then pressure from UK business and EU27 will lead the UK gov to accept full single market + customs unions, probably with some small regulations about dealing with FoM and advisory rights on EU legislation. After Brexit day the UK's leverage is even less than now.

I hope the UK's view of the union will change and leads to rejoin in 5 years time

Why should the eu reject It, it meets all it's desires and solves NI border issue.

Of course the eu will, as it shows other eu nations they could have a good trading relationship with their European neighbours and bin all the bullocks that the federalist commissioners force everyone to sign up to. 

The EU has consistently said there's no picking and choosing you are either in the single market or you aren't.  This is picking and choosing: they want access to the single market without applying EU tariffs to goods which will be used in the UK or eventually exported to countries outside the EU.  That's like a country sized 'special free trade area' within the EU customs area and single market.   Businesses inside the EU don't get offered that deal and other countries outside the EU don't get that deal.   They are also picking and choosing about the freedom of movement aspect of the single market.

I think there is an even simpler reason it won't fly: the UK is chucking in a complex new idea at a very late stage in the negotiations and expecting a group of 27 countries with a complex array of existing treaty commitments (which may well have 'most favoured nation' clauses which force them to offer whatever concessions they give to the UK to other countries) to be able to consider it and agree in a couple of months.   Barnier has a clear mandate that he can do a variant of the Norway deal or the Canada deal and a-la-carte is off the table: this is going beyond his mandate.

However, maybe the EU will think its best move is not to say no preemptively but to play a long game take time and pick apart the details and gradually squeeze towards a Norway model while the UK gets more locked in to the 'soft' versus 'hard' Brexit path.

Yes, as long as the UK relinquishes it’s red lines as this will require ECJ jurisdiction an freedom of movement. 

Theresa May has done a very fine job of creating a potentially workable Brexit compromise that could keep both sides reasonably happy.

But we didn't vote for a compromise.

Life is a compromise.

When for voting for a party in a GE no one really expects to see 100% of a manifesto happen. There was always going to be a trade deal with eu and this is the very least possible, other than falling back on WTO rules. 

You better brace yourself, there will be a free movement fudge to come, it will sit somewhere between visa entry only and open border.. perhaps based around the older schemes that existed for migrant farm workers, but with a more extensive list of UK Labour deficiencies. 

They might fix a deal where ecj only applies to Irish border related issues, not the whole of the UK. Although the argument stands, it's an eu problem not a UK one, as it's their border etc.. with trade across it ppotentially agreed, it is not a big leap to imagine the same for workers and locals. Although many are just worried about not being able to pop across for cheap shopping, which can't be the greatest political concern. 

You may not have voted for a compromise, but since we were only given one binary question, how can you tell about anybody else?

Well no, they don't.

No, they don't, in most cases. And there is an extra cost.

And more importantly, time. The integrated supply chain relies on lorries crossing the channel back and forth. 

The UK is way behind other countries in putting containers or trailers onto electric trains. The idea of a dirty diesel truck, going into an bunker oil burning ferry should be consigned to history. 

Road and rail terminals, miles from the coast at major motorway junctions, all customs and admin carried out there, then off under the channel, then half way across Europe all on the same train to other regional hubs is the future. 

They will reject it because the UK wants to cherry pick one bit of the single market.

At the end of the day if the UK accepts ECJ and freedom of movement,  and budget contributions, even if they call  it something else, then this might work .

But then, one might ask, it would be quite stupid to end up with only part of the benefits of membership with all of the costs and no influence. But this is what might happen. Although I doubt it, too unsustainable.

That's because at the heart of the eu the agenda isn't free trade with neighbours, it's working towards federal Europe led by Brussels. Common currency, financial, military and legal institutions.  

You don't get it. You are paying any extra costs already. That is how it works today, now, in the eu. Nothing will change afterwards.

Not really. Lead times can be managed.

Ffs, yes, that's how it works from what comes directly from and to outside of the EU. Without a customs union the same thing needs to happen from what comes from and to the EU

Yes, at an extra cost.

No that's because your idea of "free trade" is an outdated and simplistic one that belongs to the Victorian era.

The economic benefits of trade nowadays are dominated by the global value chain, regulatory alignment, and the exchange of brain power. 

Which is precisely what they have proposed for goods. 

Exactly, and for a reason, now the problem is that in order to get that there'll need of course ECJ, free movement , budget contributions, etc etc...

It was you that was talking about delays in trucks crossing borders being a problem.

They proposed matching regs. 

Yes and in this non Victorian era, you don't need to be in the same country face to face to do that. We are in two different countries, using a UK website that may or may not be hosted by a UK based server. Being in the eu or not, is irrelevant. 

Only because it matches the eu's federal agenda. There are dozens of trade agreements around the world between other countries that don't require any of this. 

Simply because they don't even remotely seek to achieve  the same level of integration and frictionless trade.

There would be nothing preventing the U.K. from getting a FTA with the EU similar to what they have with Canada. But that would mean custom checks and a hard border in NI.

Pleaae tell why having budget contributions has to impact trade agreements, other than to bank roll Brussels? 

Well yes, it would be if they did not make the necessary concessions to stay in a customs union.

Yes, EU rules, without influence. 

It is very relevant if you are going to offer any commercial services from it, you have have to comply with the regulations of the countries you sell in.

Because the UK wants more than a trade agreement, they want to be part of the integrated market for goods. A part of the rules of that integrated market is that you contribute financially towards common policy.

Your answer to everything is "evil Brussels". why so much hate ?

They are not forcing the U.K. to do anything, the U.K. is free to not have any agreement if they don't want to.

No hate. Just do not like their agenda and don't think it will work long term. 

The UK has proposed matching regs and free trade for goods, there is nothing for you to dislike. 

Common policy? You either trade or you don't. Why should a country pay for everything else the eu wants to do, just to trade. It doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. 

No, not in a significant way.

But please just go ahead and believe whatever you want to believe. I won't bother trying to correct you again.

An agenda which is no more than a paranoid story you made up to justify your identity politics. 

I don't think this will work as in order to get this they would have to accept near all EU rules and regulations, including freedom of movement and labour standards, in which case you might as well stay in the single market or the EU.

Yes, in a very significant way, just LISTEN to what people in those industries actually have to say. 

A return to WTO rule would add 10% to the cost of a car made in the U.K., according to industry experts.

What do you think that does to an industry that works on volume and wafer thin margins ?

We both know that isn't what the eu wants. If the UK walks, the eu budget would be wrecked in 2019/20, when it doesn't get those billions. 

That's a minor issue which has already been settled and had not much to do with future partnership. The U.K. cannot walk anyway as going without transition would cost many times more.

You would first need to build all that infrastructure, probably including more rail lines and a second tunnel under the channel to provide the extra rail capacity to replace all those lorries and ferries.  And you'd need to persuade the French to provide matching increases in rail capacity on their side of the link.  So you have a solution for 10 years (or more) in the future if you started working on it today.

In the place we are now the only thing that is going to work and keep the economy running smoothly is leaving things alone i.e. staying in the customs union and single market.

Anyway a frankly ridiculous suggestion, it would be unrealistic to have border controls and customs checks everywhere there is a train station, the reality of wanting to have hard borders is that it forces people and good through choke points where there is infrastructure to process them.

The irony of summo solution is that it is achievable and useful only if the U.K. not only kept all the freedoms, but also became part of Schengen.

I read the suggestion as  specific rail stations have customs facilities. Fully loaded trains are then treated as sealed units until the destination of the freight. Totally agree that infrastructure needs a lot of work to get there though.

although adapting places like this https://slp-emg.com/c/rft.php

might not take too long.

Yes. But the UK has a growing population, you can ignore this and the push towards green energy, just keep on trucking with your articulated trucks, with no plan for a better future. 

There is no logical reason why you need to physically drive a single truck all the way from southern or eastern Europe to say Scotland. Only the first and last 50-100miles should be on roads. Many countries roads are choked already. Build another motorway, or an electrified rail line on the same gauge as the rest of Europe? 

http://www.greencargo.com/en/our-services/transportation/direct-routes/

http://www.greencargo.com/en/our-services/transportation/

It is happening now. The UK is being left behind. Sweden to Italy, SE to Belgium, SE to Austria, SE to Germany.... that is just one company.

Folk will of course blame Brexit when the uk's exports decline and import transportation costs increase.  

I wonder what these countries have that we don't... maybe something called schengen area ?

The point is that borders makes rail less attractive. try taking the Eurostar all the way from Lyon to London: absolute nightmare, basically the train stops in Lille where the full train has to disembark, pass the U.K. border and the security checks in Lille in a specially equipped terminal, and then go back in. About 70 minutes of queuing. Well guess what I never took that train again.

Makes no difference. Schengen is people related, not really freight. The difference is people are looking forwards with working solutions. 

Perhaps the people who designed that system didn't want it to work?

Sweden had border checks for 2 years between Denmark, until the eu forced it to stop. Train line was 10-30mins max extra. No one had to even leave their seat. Road less than 10mins. 

Edit. Besides I was talking about freight. So your Lyon example is irrelevant. 

Does that happen ? I've only used the Eurostar between Paris & London but in both directions passport control is in the railway station of departure, just after ticket control (with British passport agency staff in Paris & their French counterparts in London)

edit to add

In the past (pre Schengen) passport controls often took place on trains, I well remember being woken up by German officials on a night train to Brig from Ostende on my first visit to the Alps

sorry i was trying to remmber where i'd seen the eestimate of 10%. It was here: 

https://www.ft.com/content/1794919c-10e0-11e8-8cb6-b9ccc4c4dbbb

"Between 400 and 500 trucks arrive daily in Dublin from the UK at the peak time, between 5am and 6am. According to Mr O’Reilly, between 40 and 50 trucks are likely to have some form of interaction with border officials."

Re-reading it, its not clear whether he is talking about current checks on trucks arriving in Dublin from UK or future. Either way 10% is a realistic figure. 

The problem with checks for customs / regulatory spot-checks vs passport checks is that they take much longer. I saw an estimate of 2 hours per container (i.e. checking goods + paperwork).   

And with May's trade proposal there would be no requirement for any border processes to change. Hence Davis's resignation as the proposal is too aligned with existing arrangements. 

Precisely! This is why there will be no deal for goods only, especially with a permission to undercut the EU in external trade.

CB

Yes, no doubt that's why May's proposal is constructed as it is. 

Did they kick you feet and demand, "Papers!"

Of course. Why shows the eu's true colours, they want so much more than being a strong trading group globally. Wouldn't want any other country thinking they could keep trading and avoid funding the Brussels gravy train. 

That's what they did here until the eu stopped them. Passport or ID, police and border staff would ask whose bags were whose, as they swept the length of the train with search dogs on a fenced off platform, at the first station over the border. Worked ok for what was set up as a temporary measure. 

Yes we want more, the "gravy train" is a little toy train compared to the benefits.

CB

Well yes, the point is you need to pass border checks and that can happen only in a terminal with the adequate facilities X-ray scanners etc etc and UK border force.

Yes, they don't really do that anymore to go to the UK, they make you get off the train with your luggage to a border area with X-ray scanners.

Under Mays proposal, why would current border arrangements need to change?

The rail vs road argument is irrelevant in the context of stopping a meltdown after Brexit.   A road to rail transition is would take 10 to 20 years and probably tens of billions in investment since all those extra trains to replace the trucks are going to need many more long distance tracks to run on, extra station capacity and probably a second channel tunnel.   The UK car industry isn't going to say "Hey its all going to be fine in 20 years so we'll just tough it out."

Mays proposal are unworkable so that's a moot point

Glad we agree her proposal equals no change and you can't actually explain why it wouldn't work.  

My point was that even if a trade agreement ended up meaning trucks were checked. The future should not be individual trucks guzzling their way over on ferries, one by one. The deal and indeed the UK transport hub needs to look beyond the next 10 years. 

Of course it takes time and money to develop. But if you never start, you'll certainly never finish it. 

I'd agree that the kind of infrastructure you are talking about is what we should have gone for in the past and be running on today - but the fact is we didn't.   I'm less sure vast expansion of rail is what we should be starting to plan to install with a view to having available 15 or 20 years from now.   I think that newer technologies such as self-driving electric powered trucks which form up into 'platoons' on motorways to reduce air resistance could potentially be extremely competitive with trains within that timescale.   The self driving truck future has the huge advantage that it will happen incrementally as companies buy new vehicle fleets and avoids the need for a government mega-project to switch from road to rail.

I'd also agree that we should be thinking about replacing ferries with increased tunnel capacity across the channel.  I think it is crazy that there is not already a bridge or tunnel between Scotland and Ireland which is a far shorter distance than England to France.

Also true.  But if you want to have money for desirable infrastructure projects and an extra £20 billion for the NHS and to increase spending on the armed forces and all the other wish list items then an excellent starting point is not f*cking up your entire economy for no good reason.   This is the opportunity cost of Brexit:  it is a massive distraction of public and private brainpower and resources from other useful projects to something which is fundamentally pointless.

They could have special lanes to avoid congestion, to avoid battery charging needs they could hang electrified wires over the roads, tyre wear and friction could be reduced by running metal rims on metal tracks.  

How does the freight volume differ though?

The answer is taxation, you get what you pay for. The eu isn't free, being in it doesn't enable the printing of the magic money and the UK is not a net beneficiary anyway. Brexit is of course something to blame for everything and anything. 

You mean, like you do with the EU ?

The UK does not directly receive back more than we pay in via our budget contributions, however, our deliberately neglected post industrial and rural regions are about to find out how much they matter to London vs Brussels. Our budget contributions are significantly smaller than they should be for a nation of our size and wealth due to the 'rebate' this misadventure has likely squandered. We benefit enormously from the huge frictionless market created by the EU, on our doorstep. We benefit further by not being sent to die on European battlefields as our forebears were. Apart from all of that, no, we don't benefit much.

Brexit is likely to have wide reaching, long lasting and nett negative implications for ordinary Britons. On that we can agree. Lucky you living in Sweden eh.

jk

The 'net beneficiary' argument is simplistic.    If the EU spends a lot of the money we send to it in the UK that is great but it isn't the win/lose criterion for doing business with the EU.

If the UK bought a bunch of planes from Boeing and Boeing spent some of that money in the UK for Rolls Royce engines that would be a good thing.   But the primary reason for spending the money is because we want the planes.  Nobody would claim it was a bad deal because Boeing didn't spend every penny we gave them in the UK.    People would realise it was cheaper to buy from Boeing than create a complete aircraft manufacturing company in the UK just to service the UK market.

It's the same with the EU.  The reason for spending money with the EU is that its services like the single market, the customs, union, the trade agreements, the regulatory agencies are valuable to us and it would cost far more to provide them ourselves than to buy them in because we wouldn't be splitting the bill with 27 other countries.  A case in point being the European GPS satellites - a reasonable project for a 27 nation block like the EU, a totally stupid idea for the UK to try and build a similar system on its own if we get kicked out.

Yes. Everyone can't physically have more benefits, especially as net eu exports are slowly declining despite the eu growing in size. So you can keep pushing the same money around Europe, with the eu taking a chunk at each stage, convincing yourself it's working. 

A good example of the eu being bitter and childish. A space programme of benefit to all, but because of spite the eu would happily lose a partner in the programme. More eu true colours, it's school playground tactics.

It does of course highlight that senior eu politicians want to be all controlling over every single thing in Europe and if you don't play ball with one thing, then you can't have anything. 

And the current proposal doesn't change that.

The coal and steel trade agreement post ww2 that turned into a full trading body, plus NATO should take credit for that. But you might want to speak to the former Yugoslavians about how the eu helped them, or rather failed to.

You really think CAP(40% of the eu budget) is preventing war. Are the pink corduroyed elite about to kick off if they lose their grouse moorland subsidies? 

If anything the eu's inability to handle the migrants or refugees in causing borders to be rebuilt in much of Europe and allowing some very nasty parties to gain mps in many countries. There will be problems down the road because of it, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Romania etc..Italy isn't much better either. Of course these problems are out of sight out of mind to most in the UK. 

There is more to the world than Europe. If the eu is so great because of its size etc... wouldn't it be better still for trade if everyone was a fully cooperating member of the WTO, go global. Forget the little Europeaner thinking.

The UK helped found the WTO but lost it's seat at it when it joined the eu. One of the biggest or wealthiest nations in the world losing its say and having to let a commission speak on it's behalf, which is led by an ex president of a country no bigger than Bristol. 

It would also mean that the squeeze could be put on Trump for going off on one trade wise. (Amongst other things). The global push could kill trumps aspirations of a trade war in weeks.

Err, Yugoslavia that was never in the  EU!! 

And I have spoken to many from the successor States who are all keen members, or wish to be 

Of course, but the eu did attempt to intervene early on, but failed and other organisations had to take over. So the claim of the eu preventing war isn't proven at all. The eu and western allies also convinced the Ukraine to disarm, that didn't exactly help when Russia marched in and took Crimea, by the time the eu had it's very first committee meeting about it, it was all over. But then Merkel and others were very reluctant to risk their exports to Russia, they didn't really care about the Ukraine population, trade first, people second.  

No one claims the EU has prevented all war (anymore than NATO has). Within its borders however it has been 100%successful, with many members having been adversaries until the point of joining, even Italy and Austria for example. 

Sounds more like a government closer to home, in fact the self same government we're in the process of handing further powers to do exactly that.

Perhaps. The one party that at least appeared to consider people has nearly been voted out of existence. The people's will? 

Edit. I will add I'm not rejoicing I was one of the few that voted for them. 

Yep. Turns out Croatians do a great line in mildly withering sarcasm, which I found out whilst visiting shortly after the Brexit vote.

Except for services, our biggest industry oh and the cherrypicking which will be kicked back across the table once May has dealt with he current wobble.

The EU has been a powerful stabilising force. It does not have to be and nobody would claim it has been perfect for that to remain clearly true. We destabilise it at our peril.

I think CAP imperfectly protects our food security. I think for a continent that has in living memory known deadly famine that's not to be sniffed at. Could it be better? Yes. Can we make it so by getting out? Can we hell, the government loses influence on the continent and is weak at home, it'll be bending to the will of the donors and lobbyists to replicate or expand the very subsidies you bemoan.

Yes. This needs to be tackled head on but it isn't easy.

That's not how it works, we have to be able to survive the change for starters with an economy, skills base and infrastructure in place. We're deeply embedded in Europe, we're physically proximate, it's lunacy to tear out those connections in the home of making new and distant ones with small but fast growing economies. We should of course be building those connections but we should be doing it within the framework we've built that has for decades allowed us to prosper. They'll be beating us to many of the deals we desire anyway and likely securing far better terms than we will in our fire-sale desperation.

Frankly I couldn't give a toss about all this lost prestige nonsense, it's pathetic, we don't have the Empire any more, those days are gone.

What? You think Britain holds more sway with Trump in our current distressed position than shoulder to shoulder with half a billion other Europeans. Think.

jk

Where did i say that? You read one thing and say I said something else. I was talking about the WTO acting as one, no just little Europe. I can't debate with you if you keep replying as though I said something completely different. 

Ps. Isn't Europe just a new empire? they never last do they. 

You said it above.  Perhaps you didn't mean to, but that was the meaning of what you wrote.

Yugoslavia wasn't EU. Perhaps had the EU had an army (something you oppose IIRC) with which it could do serious peace keeping alongside diplomacy things would have been different (as they ultimately were after NATO intervention) but they didn't and they weren't and it was a nasty mess. That isn't a failure of the EU to maintain peaceful relations within its borders.

Russian troops didn't 'march in', they left their barracks.

Well that and being careful not to ignite a nuclear war over an assault on an allied but non-EU nation. Obviously in your mind this is all simple, the EU should somehow with the limited levers available short of military confrontation (with the army it doesn't have, which you oppose) have prevented the Russian military seizing territory it had de facto occupied and fortified for decades. Yes, sometimes things do have to be prioritised, ugly compromises do have to be made.

jk

It's implied in the ridiculous idea the WTO can't act effectively without British leadership.

Why can't the WTO act 'as one' without Britain as a separate member? You're not making sense.

Yes and no. Empire implies conquest to me so I'd err more toward no personally. Nothing lasts but there is no reason why the EU need crumble and its doing so will not solve any of the problems you see in the world, it will just bring conflict.

jk

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/International_t...

It looks to me like exports are growing and the net balance is pretty much flat (and positive, unlike the UK).

The EU isn't growing that much any more.  Croatia joined in 2013 but that's 4 million people into a 500 million block.   The last really big expansion was 2004.  The EU expansion eastward was a one time event caused by the iron curtain falling: it's over.

If a country joins the EU trade which was previously booked as exports will become internal to the EU.  So assuming the EU sold more to Croatia than Croatia sold to the EU there would be a small hit to exports and net exports when Croatia joined.  But in terms of actual money the same people are still selling the same stuff as before: it is just booked internal to the EU rather than as exports and imports.  In fact it is better for the companies involved because there is less overhead in the trade when tariffs and currency changing are eliminated.   In terms of GDP and tax raised the EU will do better from having Croatia in its internal economy and it is misleading to look at the change in export numbers without looking at the matching change in GDP.