Quite. With the benefit of hindsight, it should have been done in the immediate aftermath of the referendum, or better still before.
Even after the referendu, it would have been entirely reasonable IMO to say
(a) we are legally and morally bound by the EU budget we were party to agreeing for the period to the end of 2020 (the £40bn some people talk about as though it were a fine for leaving)
(b) therefore - and especially given the closeness of the result, and the indeterminate nature of what Brexit would look like - the sensible thing to do is stay full members till 2020 and use a citizens’ assembly process or something like it to articulate the alternatives and their up and downsides, with a view to enabling a better informed electorate to choose a government in a general election with a clear mandate for one or another form of Brexit and in time to trigger Article 50 (if that’s the decision) for departure at the end of 2020.
Instead of the cack-handed, arse-about-face pantomime we’ve been given.
Well, the government has now announced that planning for No Deal will go ahead “in full”. Guidance for individuals will be rolled out in the next few weeks. The government will start chartering shipping space. £4000,000,000 pounds will be allocated to various infrastructure and IT projects needed to mitigate the effects of severing all ties with the EU overnight. 3,500 troops will be on standby to deal with such emergencies as may occur.
Domestic policies which require a contingency of 3,500 soldiers tend not to be very good ones. But here we are: either the government is seriously planning to go ahead with chaos, or they are using the threat of that to scare Parliament and/or their negotiating counterparts into giving them what they want. This is reckless brinkmanship or utter madness.
Can someone explain this further? I get that it is an issue, but I’m not really seeing why food can’t continue to be imported into the UK. It’s not like Europe or the rest of the world would let the UK starve right? I mean, maybe the UK would need to pay more, but if food can move into the UK now, why can’t it move into the UK after Brexit? My take on imports is that it is the country doing the importing that puts up barriers, not the other way around. So if a bunch of Spaniards show up with a boatload of oranges, why would the UK turn them away? I’m obviously missing something.
It’s not about willingness to import or export. It’s about the capacity of the system to manage the flow of goods. Because Britain is an island, the system relies on lorries (trucks) getting on boats at a small number of ports on the mainland, and getting off them at a small number of ports in the UK. The two closest ports are Dover and Calais, so they have the largest share of trade by volume. Obviously, there is a limit to how many lorries can get through a port in a given timeframe.
Right now, goods flow very smoothly through the system. This is because the UK is in the EU, and the EU is both a Customs Union and a Single Market. That means no tariffs and no duties, and more importantly it means that all goods can be taken as conforming to whatever standards apply - with food, obviously, standards matter. But we don’t carry out an inspection process on food coming into the UK from the EU, because Single Market rules mean that it is treated the same as if it were produced here. That is, if the Belgians say that a particular farm produces safe Brussels Sprouts, that’s good enough for us so they get waved through. As do the hundreds or thousands of other lorries arriving at ports every day. There’s a small amount of checking for smuggling of illicit cargoes, but the vast, vast majority of lorries simply drive away from the port uninspected and without even papers being checked.
As of the 29th of March, the UK will leave the EU and become a ‘third country’. At a stroke, all the trade supported by these common standards hitherto will now require certification or inspection. Papers will have to be checked. Goods will have to be inspected. These are legal requirements that can’t be just ignored. So, rather than flowing smoothly through the ports, lorries will now start being checked. Not all of them! That would be impossible. But even slowing the flow down so you can pull a sample out of line and into an inspection bay will have an impact. The people who run Dover port have estimated that even a two-minute-per-lorry delay would lead to 17 mile tailbacks. That’s not just pulling a figure from the air. In 2015, industrial action at Calais slowed trade down between the ports and turned the motorway from London to Dover into a car park - some lorries were stuck on it for 3 weeks.
There are contingency plans about using other ports, but they run into the obvious difficulties that a) these ports aren’t big enough to manage much more volume of goods and b) it takes boats longer to get to those ports, obviously, otherwise they’d already be going there. So more delay, and more bottlenecks. Add in the fact that we actually don’t have the capacity, IT systems or personnel to carry out the volume of checks required at any kind of speed, and you can see how this is a recipe for chaos.
The logistics of getting goods into Britain run extremely lean, and stocks are kept low in accord with Just-In-Time processes. This is usually fine, but obviously vulnerable to shock. And shock is what is being planned.
Note that Britain can on a temporary basis eliminate checks on imports from the EU. But the problem is that the trucks coming into the UK turn around and go back to the EU. And if there is a customs bottleneck going into the EU then that likewise shuts down trade.
It’s a bit like trying to explain to people why you can’t drive over Tower Bridge when the bridge is up the same way you do when the bridge is down. Yes, the bridge is still there but there are some rather significant obstacles to traffic flow.
And there are restriction of non-EU drivers and hauliers even operating in the EU eg UK drivers will need to obtain Certificates of Professional Competence from an EU country, as UK ones will no longer be valid*. UK hauliers will lose the right to cabotage in the EU too. So there’s a drop in cross-channel capacity straight away.
I guess I don’t understand why “legal requirements” can’t be ignored. (Well, I get why legal requirements can’t be ignored, but why can’t “legal requirements” be amended to meet what the UK needs?) It is a UK thing right? If the UK is all about sovereignty, can’t they just unilaterally say Belgian Brussels sprouts are OK and wave that fucker through? Or do they need to inspect it to make sure it isn’t full of Mexicans? Or will the Belgians try and sell shit sprouts to the UK since they aren’t in the EU anymore?
I guess what I’m saying is that in terms of importing stuff, the decision is entirely on the UK side. (Right? Maybe that is where I am wrong) Exports of course are another matter, but that isn’t the issue w.r.t. medicine and food going into the UK.
:eek: Holler if y’all need any CARE packages sent across the pond once this fustercluck really gets going. Deferred payment in looseleaf tea, candied angelica, golden syrup, pear drops and winegums gratefully accepted.
From my perspective from across the pond, a second referendum would be an act of bad faith. The people elected a Tory government on the promise of a Brexit vote. A fair one and a conclusive one.
Now maybe that was a stupid idea to promise it, and maybe the vote should have required a supermajority. But it did not.
So you are going to tell the people that we will promise referendums in the future, but only abide by them if you vote the right way, and if you don’t we will keep putting the measure before you until you get it right. That’s bad faith.
I think, though, that the EU’s conduct has shown the exact reason why the UK needs to leave: pure arrogance and being hurt by such a betrayal that it won’t act in good faith. I would propose that we help our old cousins out and start slapping tariffs on the EU if they don’t act right in letting the UK leave.
Where is the arrogance? I don’t think it’s emotional hurt; it’s practical. They don’t want everyone leaving any more than Americans want states seceding. So they let Article 50 work exactly as described, which the UK knew from the beginning.
It’s not so much that they don’t want anyone leaving the Union as that they want to ensure that the adverse effects of the departure on the Union and its continuing members will be minimised. Hence their insistence that the Withdrawal Agreement must include provisions on a deal to keep the Irish border open, for instance.
In a no-deal situation, where the UK does not commit to maintain EU regulatory standards and withdraws from the mechanisms for enforcing them, then there is no reason why UK goods should continue to be admitted to the EU market without inspection or certification; that would present obvious dangers. So UK goods will be subject to the same inspection/certification requirements as goods from any third country which has no trade deal with the EU. That means inspection at point of entry.
There’s also the matter of WTO obligations to consider. Under WTO rules, the EU can’t “play favourites” among countries with whom they have no trade deal. Under the “most favoured nation” rule, every third country is entitled to the most favourable treatment that the EU accords to any country with whom it has no trade deal. So, if in a no-deal situation the EU admits goods from the UK without inspection, and/or without levying and collecting tariffs, then it must do exactly the same with respect to goods from, e.g., China.
Exactly the same, of course, would apply to the UK. But in the grave national crisis that a no-deal Brexit would constitute, the UK could well either ignore its WTO obligations, relying on the fact that WTO enforcement mechanisms are slow and cumbersome and the Trump administration is working to make them more so, or it could argue that its critical situation give it an exemption, and it might admit EU goods without controls or tariffs. But, obviously, the EU isn’t going to play fast and loose with its WTO obligations in order to dig the UK out of the hole into which it has deliberately driven itself.
I’m inclined to agree with you that, absent clear evidence of a major turnaround in public opinion (which I don’t see) a second referendum is hard to justify.
But at this stage the point may be moot; there isn’t time between now and 29 March to legislatate for and conduct another referendum.
The 29 March Brexit date could in theory be deferred to allow a referendum to be conducted, but deferral requires consent of the EU-27 and that, of course, would only be forthcoming for a referendum that the EU wanted to have conducted. Which effectively gives the EU a veto over the terms of any referendum which might be put to the people, which (regardless of whether or even how that veto was exercised) must surely further poison what wouyld already a pretty poisonous well, in terms of the legitimacy of a further referendum.
[quote=“UltraVires, post:616, topic:824424”]
So you are going to tell the people that we will promise referendums in the future, but only abide by them if you vote the right way, and if you don’t we will keep putting the measure before you until you get it right. That’s bad faith.
[/QUOTE
No, I think the lesson is a different one. First, a government shouldn’t propose a referendum seeking a mandate for a policy that it has no wish to implement. Secondly, a government shouldn’t propose a referendum seeking a mandate for a policy that it has no fucking clue how to implement. Thirdly, a government shouldn’t propose a referendum to mandate a vague policy outcome; only to mandate an actual detailed policy.
The Scottish independence referendum was a good example of how a referendum should be conducted. The Brexit referendum is for decades going to be a textbook example of How Not To Do It.
This is nonsense. The EU Treaties give the UK an absolute and unilateral right to leave and provide a clear mechanism for exercising that right, and the UK is exercising that right and implementing that mechanism. Nobody is not letting the UK leave.
As for "acting right’, the EU wants to agree matters so that the terms on which the UK leaves minimise damage to the Union and its member states. That is an entirely reasonable objective, and they have been consistent, clear and open about it from the outset. The UK, by contrast, has no clue about what it wants, has been fighting bitterly with itself about what it should want, and has not yet concluded that fight. That creates considerable problems for the UK and has put it at a great disadvantage - an even greater disadvantage than it would otherwise have been at - in negotiating the terms of its withdrawa. But the EU can hardly be blamed for that. And the Trump administration “slapping tariffs” on the EU could do nothing to solve the UK’s Brexit-related woes.
Ouch. In this particular case, I don’t see how Britain holds any of the cards at all, since I would imagine that the number of mainland truckers who want to cabotage within Britain is probably small, whereas I imagine but could be mistaken, the number of times a British independent hauler needs to take something to the mainland and then could find a money-making opportunity on the way back within the EU is higher.
