Brexit: A change of heart??

 

The "Norway Model" could win support, but the problem is that we would have to adopt "Norway +", which means staying in the customs union.

 

That means it's almost the same as staying fully in the EU, but without any say in the rules.  For that reason, Brexiteers would never accept it, and even a lot of remainers are not keen because it's a worse option than we've got now.

 

The problem with joining EFTA is that the EFTA countries would have to agree to us joining, and, at the moment, they're not too keen:

 

 

They're concerned that having the UK in EFTA would upset the whole balance of EFTA, as the UK would dwarf all the other EFTA countries combined.  Any future trade deals would thus be based on the needs of the UK rather than of the other EFTA countries.

 

They're also worried that the UK would use EFTA as a "stop off" on the way to a full exit of the EU.  They don't want us turning up, buggering up EFTA, and then buggering off out of it.

 

On the question of the Irish Backstop, I would also recommend reading this interesting article on BBC news yesterday:

 

 

I think it reveals what we knew all along:  that the backstop is needed by the EU, but it's not needed to preserve the Good Friday Agreement, as many claim.

 

There is a solution to the Ireland border issue:  we leave under WTO rules but continue to trade with Ireland on the same basis as we do now and claim a National Security Waiver with the WTO

 

The EU won't like it as it means a backdoor to cheap foreign imports into the EU, which undermines their protectionist policies, but what can they do about it?

 

If the EU argues against the National Security Waiver then it will look like they're undermining the Good Friday Agreement and peace in Ireland

 

 

 

 

 

There is a third scenario everyone is forgetting about

 

Deal or no-deal is what everyone is concentrating about...

 

But I suspect that some are thinking to simply cease that Art 50 bullsh*t stuff (I'm sure it can be done, as an emergency procedure... my money's on it), so that means Remain, until a better deal is done.... which could be years to come

I haven't commented on this here yet but I just add a few words.

1) The referendum voted for Brexit but not for hard Brexit, that was never on the table and may well have lost, so it doesn't make sense to state that this would have been the will of the people. The 52% who voted for Brexit had quite differing ideas of what that actually means.

2) The EU had negotiations with the elected UK government and they have agreed a deal. I don't think the EU can be blamed for not taking into account that UK parliament would not support its own elected government. The government has represented the UK in the negotiations; if their position is not in line with their own parliament, that's a UK issue, not an EU issue, and therefore it is wrong to blame the EU for anything that went wrong here.  If the UK is not happy with the line its own government goes, they better elect another. Boris Johnson had the chance to become PM after Brexit but didn't want to do it, I think he rather wanted to see somebody else fail; I can only hope that the Tories and the UK people don't forget what a snake in the grass he is. He has some major responsibility for the state in which the country is now.

3) My subjective probability for the government to lose the confidence vote today is 65%. I'm really not sure but their majority is wafer thin and it only takes a few votes of people who are rightly embarrassed to let a government go on that was shredded to tears by its own party over months (let alone a coalition partner who never left any doubt that it'd vote the government down on the key issue of their term) and suffered the biggest defeat in history on one of the biggest issues the parliament ever voted on.

4) Not sure whether this was said in this thread but I've heard in many places that the government and the politicians in general let the British people down. Oh well, the British people themselves are of course totally innocent not thinking of Northern Ireland, Scotland, the dealings of Mr Putin and the fact that the EU needs to care for itself rather than being nice to Britain in case Britain leaves, and instead being mesmerised by Mrs Farage and Johnson. Oh and then such a nice riddle of a general election result that would of course have been totally easy to deal with by the politicians, but no, they screwed it up all on their own. Not.

5) I don't expect civil war or anything really disastrous and actually Brexit was not a main reason for my moving to Italy (I give it to the Brexiteers that the rest of the EU is not in the best and most welcoming shape either politically and Italy is surely no exception); however I am rather relieved indeed about not being in the country end March or whenever the moment finally comes.

 

I can't think of anything better to do with most of our newspapers