Brexit delayed

[Which Tyler]

Taking them into Europe also makes it harder to rebuild the war shattered countries they have fled from.
Solution is to minimise the conflict and let refugees return home.

No Western powers are trying to 'rebuild these shattered countries'. Destabilising them makes it easier for us to nick their stuff. DRC, Libya, India, China. It's a lot more difficult to make money from a stable opponent.

What if that opponent is both stable, and strong, like our beloved May?

[Sandydragon]

Definite invasion!

Seriously, if one side is going to win a confrontation then the best effort is to get refugees to a secure place, let the fighting end and then help to move refugees back home. If there are good reasons thybrefugees can’t return then they need to look elsewhere for a permanent life.

A protracted civil war is another level of misery and will produce more refugees. Stabilisation might require assistance from the outside.

[kk67]

They went from being refugees to being economic migrants in a fraction of a second.

[Puja]

Definite invasion!

Seriously, if one side is going to win a confrontation then the best effort is to get refugees to a secure place, let the fighting end and then help to move refugees back home. If there are good reasons thybrefugees can’t return then they need to look elsewhere for a permanent life.

A protracted civil war is another level of misery and will produce more refugees. Stabilisation might require assistance from the outside.

What's a secure place look like? It would require millions of people to be housed, fed, educated, doctored, powered, even entertained, and then keeping them there for years. Who's paying?

Puja

[Sandydragon]

Definite invasion!

Seriously, if one side is going to win a confrontation then the best effort is to get refugees to a secure place, let the fighting end and then help to move refugees back home. If there are good reasons thybrefugees can’t return then they need to look elsewhere for a permanent life.

A protracted civil war is another level of misery and will produce more refugees. Stabilisation might require assistance from the outside.

What's a secure place look like? It would require millions of people to be housed, fed, educated, doctored, powered, even entertained, and then keeping them there for years. Who's paying?

Puja

Who’s paying for the refugee crisis at the moment?

[kk67]

Who's profiting is a better question.

It's the apposite question. It's the only question.

[kk67]

Jacob, Boris, and all their ilk will make money......that was always the goal.
It's what they do.

[Puja]

Definite invasion!

Seriously, if one side is going to win a confrontation then the best effort is to get refugees to a secure place, let the fighting end and then help to move refugees back home. If there are good reasons thybrefugees can’t return then they need to look elsewhere for a permanent life.

A protracted civil war is another level of misery and will produce more refugees. Stabilisation might require assistance from the outside.

What's a secure place look like? It would require millions of people to be housed, fed, educated, doctored, powered, even entertained, and then keeping them there for years. Who's paying?

Puja

Who’s paying for the refugee crisis at the moment?

Greece, Italy, Turkey, Jordan, Iran, Iraq - the countries that physically have to deal with them because they're on their doorstep.

Not very high on that list - UK, USA, Canada, France, Germany, China, Japan, Russia. If we wanted to do your plan, it would involve all of those opening their wallets a lot more than they do now and I'm not sure I see that happening.

Puja

[Sandydragon]

I know, it’s not our problem until it’s our problem. We could save a lot of aggro and misery by resolving the source problem and watch those countries move forward rather than descend into ungoverned spaces where more refugees are keen to leave.

[canta_brian]

Just for keeping up to date

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45098550

Still the soon to die choosing to vote against the wishes if those who will live with the decision.

[Sandydragon]

Very good article by Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph. Interesting as Warner isn't a remainer.

For the umpteenth time, no-deal is not an option, or at least not one that you would voluntarily choose. Before accusing me of "remoaner" pessimism, let me explain why, for there has been much ill-informed nonsense of late to the effect that we have nothing to fear from such an outcome but fear itself. This is denial verging on the delusional.

Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, says the chances of a no-deal Brexit grow by the day, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, says those chances have become uncomfortably high, and Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary reckons it’s now more likely than not. Each ill-judged utterance brings the pound that bit closer to outright parity with the once languishing euro.

With this slide towards the cliff edge has come a gathering volume of commentary to suggest that such a divorce would be both manageable and even positively desirable. The safety net of World Trade Organisation terms are all the protection we need, it is claimed, making it impossible for the EU to discriminate against our goods and services.

The reality is that the WTO framework is not as robust as it might seem, and crucially we would still have to rely on the goodwill and agreement of the EU to make it work in our favour. In other words, we would need some sort of a deal.

Intransigence by the European Commission and its puppet masters in France and Germany might yet bring matters to the acrimonious, no deal divorce that markets fear, though at this stage it is quite hard to see MPs agreeing it. Instead, parliament would seek an extension, and the Government would be sent back to try again.

But to argue that come what may it will all be fine, and like the millennium bug we’ll soon be wondering what all the fuss was about, smacks of arrogance and complacency, and risks a massive political letdown when it turns out not to be true.

Whoever takes us down that path must be honest about the consequences, and like Churchill, admit that they have nothing to offer but blood, toil, sweat and tears.

In the long term, advocates of this approach could be right; with the correct policies on tax and regulatory competitiveness, Britain might indeed thrive outside the EU. But supply side reform takes time to work. Payback will be some distance off. “In the long run we are all dead," observed the economist John Maynard Keynes. “Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again”.

One analogy that comes to mind is that of a car gliding along the motorway in sixth gear where the driver suddenly decides to wrench it into second or first. With luck it won’t destroy the gearbox, but it will cause the vehicle violently to slow, throwing the passengers forward in their seats. It will take some time to once more achieve cruise speed.

The millennium bug comparison comes from Bernard Jenkin, as thoughtful a parliamentarian as you could hope to find. But on this occasion, it is a misleading one. Today, we do indeed wonder what all the fuss was about. Yet we would likely have had a very different perspective had not so much money and effort been spent on neutralising it. By definition, we only see the disasters that happen, not the ones that are averted.

At the centre of the belief that it will all be fine on the night lies the admittedly not unreasonable assumption that since our regulations and standards will look no different the day after we leave than the day before, there could be no valid reason for interfering with trade as it is.

In an ideal world, this would indeed be the case. Unfortunately, the WTO provides no guarantee or legal underpinning for such hope. In virtually all its position papers in preparation for Brexit, the EU makes plain that Britain becomes a third country from the moment it exits. Without some form of dispensation, all those myriad tariff and non tariff barriers to trade immediately kick in. This may be legalistic and irrational, but it is the law. There is almost no business that takes place outside a legal framework of this sort.

Here’s one example. To sell medical equipment in the EU requires a certificate – or “Conformité Européene” marking – to show required standards are met. These certificates are pretty much automatic for EU members, and as it happens are substantially written here in the UK for the EU as a whole, but would cease to be valid for UK suppliers when Britain becomes a third country. UK certification authorities will no longer be recognised.

Even if the UK said it planned to remain fully compliant with the EU, including ECJ rulings on such matters, the EU could if it wished to play hardball either refuse such certificates or subject British medical equipment to vigorous border controls to ensure compliance. Some countries – Switzerland, Australia and Turkey – enjoy mutual recognition with the EU on medical equipment standards, but by definition, this requires a deal to be struck.

Talk of empty supermarket shelves, long tailbacks at ports, stockpiling of drugs at hospitals – this all does admittedly seem somewhat hysterical. But to step outside the EU’s borders after decades of being within them, and begin trading instead on WTO terms, will none the less be a significant shock to the system. It is naive to think otherwise.

WTO rules to prevent discrimination provide little more protection than a thin cotton overcoat in a Force 9 gale. So long as the EU can show it no more discriminates against the UK than any other third country, it would be within the rules. This will be easy enough in all the high value-added trade the UK does with the EU.

And even where there is a valid legal case, it will take a long time for the WTO to decide it. By the time the ruling is made, the damage will be done.

For the EU to apply such an approach would be vindictive, economically irrational and self harming, but it shows no sign of giving way. Its stance is like that of Hugh Owens, the 78-year-old mushroom farmer who refuses to allow his wife to divorce him. It intends to make leaving this loveless marriage as difficult and costly as possible. The last thing the EU wants is for the UK to succeed once outside, for that would surely undermine its raison d’etre.

It will therefore be as parsimonious as possible with its favours.

To raise these points is not to succumb to Project Fear, but only to recognise the almost impossible task faced by those heroically trying to reconcile the smooth and easy Brexit promised with the unreasonable demands of the the world as we find it.

[Digby]

If he gets bored of trying to be reasonable he can still seek a government role and become a professional troll of British businesses

[Sandydragon]

If he gets bored of trying to be reasonable he can still seek a government role and become a professional troll of British businesses

I think Boris and Gove have that role sewn up.

What’s slightly concerning is th impending martyrdom of Boris over his Telegraph article. My understanding is that members of the Conservative party have complained and that has triggered an investigation. The way some brexiteer are talking you would think it’s an excuse to topple May before st Boris is burnt at the stake. I doubt the final verdict would be that severe and Boris certainly ain’t a victim.

[Digby]

If he gets bored of trying to be reasonable he can still seek a government role and become a professional troll of British businesses

I think Boris and Gove have that role sewn up.

What’s slightly concerning is th impending martyrdom of Boris over his Telegraph article. My understanding is that members of the Conservative party have complained and that has triggered an investigation. The way some brexiteer are talking you would think it’s an excuse to topple May before st Boris is burnt at the stake. I doubt the final verdict would be that severe and Boris certainly ain’t a victim.

I can't say I much like people's faces being hidden, for a number of reasons, but it was stupid to use the language Boris did

[Sandydragon]

I agree. I’m no fan of the burka. If Johnson were just another journalist making a point then ridicule is all very well. For someone aspiring to high office is a very poor thing to write.

[Digby]

The letter box comment I can live with but saying they look like criminals was going too far

[Mellsblue]

Take out the ‘jokes’ and what he said was pretty much spot on. Sadly, all we are hearing about are the ‘jokes’, such is the climate of politics at the moment and Boris’s ability to match fairly incisive comment with grand farce.
Whether he meant it or not he’s currently topping the bill, or at least vying with Corbyn’s anti-semetic chickens coming home to roost, and he’ll be loving every second of it.
The Conservatives need to be careful. The party’s base, at least the old, ‘the country is going to the dogs’ demographic - which is, sadly, a large majority of the active members - are looking for a fight (and have been since Cameron dared to move into the 21st century by making gay marriage legal). The Cheques plan plus too harsh a finding on Boris’s investigation may tip in to all out war.
It’s all farking depressing.
Still at least our leader, deeply flawed as she is, isn’t a supporter of almost every person or movement who wishes to see the country fail.
Did I mention that it’s farking depressing?

[Digby]

Less than 250 days now, I wouldn't want to run a major IT upgrade on such a short notice period, and that would have established steps to the process

With Brexit we're somehow agreeing to a server upgrade, or downgrade tbh, with no swing kit, moving onto an unknown server in an unknown building, not knowing if the building can physically take the server, where the new server will come with all new hardware and software, and all the coding will be done in a language that hasn't yet been written. What could go wrong?

[canta_brian]

Less than 250 days now, I wouldn't want to run a major IT upgrade on such a short notice period, and that would have established steps to the process

With Brexit we're somehow agreeing to a server upgrade, or downgrade tbh, with no swing kit, moving onto an unknown server in an unknown building, not knowing if the building can physically take the server, where the new server will come with all new hardware and software, and all the coding will be done in a language that hasn't yet been written. What could go wrong?

Just in case anyone found that cheerful, Barnier is saying that we are entering the final stages and that a deal should be finalised in October. So that would be before the Server had in fact been built.

[Mellsblue]

no swing kit

There’s swinging involved?!?!
This will explain why leave is more popular with men but makes the French negativity a little surprising.

[Digby]

Would the last one out of Northern Ireland please turn off the lights

[Digby]

In fairness I doff my cap to whichever civil servant wrote the advice to businesses in Northern Ireland that for updates on what to do about future cross border trade they should consult the Irish government

[fivepointer]

The notices are proof that a) no sane person should even suggest a no deal brexit and b) that this Govt continues to display a level of competence that would shame a local parish council.
The notices paint a picture so grim that any Govt - even one as bad as this shower - would be utterly mad to go down a no deal route. We will probably, therefore, end up with some sort of bodge that satisfies no one, yet is at at least a deal of sorts.
Anyone care to remind me why we are going through with this madness.

[Which Tyler]

[Sandydragon]

The notices are proof that a) no sane person should even suggest a no deal brexit and b) that this Govt continues to display a level of competence that would shame a local parish council.
The notices paint a picture so grim that any Govt - even one as bad as this shower - would be utterly mad to go down a no deal route. We will probably, therefore, end up with some sort of bodge that satisfies no one, yet is at at least a deal of sorts.
Anyone care to remind me why we are going through with this madness.

This has little to do with sanity and everything to do with ideology.