Iv'e just come across this. Sums up the situation. I feel were at that point now where anything remainers say will be disregarded by brexiteers and vice versa, But anyway...
Not at all. I like to think I am objective no different to the rest of us
There are now seven weeks to go until the UK is due to leave the EU, and things are getting messier and angrier by the day. Well, there’s a surprise.
Why is it a surprise? Because UK's case was sound and reasonable and adult like response was expected from the EU? Not a surprise to me considering the way with contemp UK has been treating EU.
Faced with Mrs May’s request from the British parliament to compromise on the Irish backstop, as a result of which it might then agree to a deal, the EU told the UK to go to hell.
Nobody told UK to go to hell. This is silly emotive words with no basis. It's simply negotiations on some kind of new deal and considering UK doesn't know where she stands or wants, it is most unreasonable to expect the EU to accept what exactly? I don't think anybody knows what UK wants or what her position is.
Donald Tusk, the EU Council president, observed on Twitter: “I’ve been wondering what that special place in hell looks like, for those who promoted Brexit, without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely.”
This is obviously a matter fact and the truth. It should be clear from lack of clear plans this is indeed the case. It is unfortunate, the point was not made diplomatically.
To which the EU’s Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt added: “I doubt Lucifer would welcome them, as after what they did to Britain they would even manage to divide Hell.”
Devide and Conquer. Not much changes.
The European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has said the backstop cannot be replaced; Martin Selmayr, chief of the EU civil service, said Mrs May’s request wasn’t even being considered.
I agree.
Such arrogant and contemptuous bullying has enraged even some Remainers. Just who do they think they are, people are fuming. Well, this is what they are, and this is why the UK wants to leave the EU.
More emotive words. Arrogance and contempt is what the UK holds against EU. TM was more the bullying tart imo. Make me an offer or I'm leaving. Merkel asks tell us what you want adn TM replies make me an offer or I'm leaving. You've seen this with your own eyes on TV. Someone who takes such a cavalier daft approach to negotiations can simply get lost. No wonder Sir Ivan Rogers resigned with such negotiation skills from the cabinet. Is this the cabinet that's going to make deals all over the World winning trades agreements. Hillarious stuff.
In accordance with their customary Mafia-style tactics, the Eurocrats believe they have made the UK an offer it cannot refuse. All that’s needed now is for Mrs May to wake up in Downing Street to find a dismembered leg in her bed shod in a leopard-print shoe.
Mafia style? Really is this how the UK sees the EU. Does the tail wag the dog? It's simply negotiations. When I'm dealing with suppliers, procurement or negotiating I don't ever recall referring to discussions or approach to negotiations as Mafia-style tactics. This is the victim scenario coming out again. Beatings and punishments. Heard it all before. What else have Brexiteers have got to go on but them and us battles.
This EU reaction was always entirely predictable. As Fraser Nelson says in today’s
Telegraph, its leaders think they must demonstrate that leaving the EU entails unbearable agony. This is because they are all too aware that in several member states, more and more people are expressing a fervent desire to leave. To nip this in the bud, the EU cannot let the UK be seen to prosper from Brexit.
Total rubbish. Brexiteers or more commonly known as Eurosceptics have been scratching this itch for the last 45 years. Stop moaning and get lost is EU's reply. Fair cop imo. What we have now clearly working as we are 5th in GDP league table.
The inescapable implication of that, however, is that they know the UK will indeed prosper.
BUT do they really know that? Of course they don't. Just because some body writes it doesn't mean it is so. On the contrary most expert opinion along with market sentiment based on sterling's depreciation and falling investment, currency flows leaving UK.
Predictions by the Bank of England and other solidly Remainer institutions that a vote for Brexit would cause the economy to collapse have proved to date spectacularly wrong.
No, not at all. This is categorically wrong. BoE reduced rates coupled with up to 20% in currency helped exports. Not to forget the global economy was recovering from 2008 market crash. Remember, we haven't left yet.
Now the Bank’s same forecasting geniuses have downgraded its growth forecast for 2019 from 1.7 per cent to 1.2 per cent. But although the Bank’s Governor, Mark Carney, repeatedly warns against a no-deal Brexit, he has acknowledged that the downgrade is due to a slowing global economy as well as Brexit uncertainty.
Fair true statement imo.
As he
said: “The fog of Brexit is causing short-term volatility in the economic data and, more fundamentally, it’s creating a series of tensions.” And the Bank added: “The economic outlook will continue to depend significantly on the nature of EU withdrawal, in particular the new trading arrangements between the EU and the UK, whether the transition to them is abrupt or smooth, and how households, businesses and financial markets respond.”
Fair true statement imo.
Quite. The fact is that no-one knows what’s going to happen; and financial markets hate uncertainty above all else.
But it stands to reason that, notwithstanding some unavoidable problems and shocks along the way, the world’s fifth largest economy will, when freed of its EU shackles, ultimately do well.
What reason is that then? More useless words with no substance or meaning or data to back it up. Claims as fact no-one knows what's going to happen and then makes some profound daft statement contradicting the no-one knows tosh. LOL. Gotta laf. Bunch of clowns.
Only last month, Carney
told the Commons Treasury Select Committee: “Financial stability risks around [the EU exit] process are greater on the continent than they are in the UK. There is a tremendous financial services capacity in Britain and even though there will be shortfalls at the point of leaving [depending on the exit arrangement], these are more likely to affect Europe”.
You bet. The EU is currently staring at its own increasing political and economic wreckage. The Eurozone has been given an economic downgrade. The German economy is poised at the edge of recession. In France, the self-styled heir to Napoleon and Jupiter, President Emmanuel Macron, has failed to quash the “yellow vests” uprising and is quarrelling with
Italy and
Germany. The upcoming EU elections may return a slew of eurosceptic commissioners and bring the agenda of “ever-closer union” to a juddering halt.
And Brexit could deliver in addition a possibly fatal wounding blow.
The Eurocrats’ strategy rests on their belief that the UK will be so frightened by leaving with no deal that at the last minute parliament will cave in and vote to support the deal the EU brokered with Mrs May.
Some believe that prospect has improved with the olive branch offered to Mrs May by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, in the form of a set of “compromise” conditions on the basis of which Labour would support her deal.
As has been widely
observed, it’s hard to see how this could happen since he is sticking to Labour’s insistence that after Brexit there must be a customs union arrangement with the EU – which means not leaving EU control at all.
Some, though, think that enough “soft” Labour Brexiteers will want to accept this compromise, enabling Mrs May to isolate the true Brexiteers in parliament and thus get her deal through.
But that would mean Mrs May suddenly forgetting what she has understood all along in having made a customs union/single market her red lines. This is that Brexiteers know these options would clearly negate the referendum result; and then they would never vote Conservative again and the party might even break apart altogether.
As March 29 approaches, the British should have one thing in mind above all: that the EU are digging in like this because they are terrified of Brexit. And the reason for that is that if Britain leaves the EU, not through Mrs May’s Brexit-in-name-only-Remain-by-stealth deal but through a clear, undeniable, unequivocal departure, the EU knows this will accelerate its own disintegration while it watches the UK start to prosper.