Macron would like to start poaching the EU branch of all the companies with holdings currently in the UK before the next electoral cycle.
We get to be back here and have the same debates from October 20-28…nothing changes.
Our traditional national dish, the Chicken Tikka Masala, has more flavour than your frogs legs and snails!
So, an extension to a time no-one actually wanted, with no actual plan with what to do in that time. Too long to provide urgency, not long enough for stability, and barely long enough, if at all, for a General Election or referendum. Looks like 6 more months of pointless squabble.
Better than leaving I suppose, but only just.
I’ve always been fond of the quip “The British Empire conquered the entire world in an endless quest for new spices - only to discover it didn’t like any”. Chicken Tikka Masala is no exception - the result of someone with a no doubt glorious moustache going “This curry thing’s really something else, I tell you, what what. Now remove almost all traces of it, that’s a good lad. Perfection !” 
Thus more than enough time for a general election.
I also read somewhere of a minimum of about three months for a referendum (after details were agreed).
Just because I’m a pedant, I have to point out that the dish was actually created by Bangladeshi immigrants in the 1960s, rather than colonial gentlemen in the 1860. Certainly for the taste of the average Englishman, though.
And spices are wonderful things - all of them, for their flavour, rather than just the chilli for its heat
It’s legally more than long enough, the problem is whether it’s politically long enough. I think what is most likely from this point is May resigning at some point, a Tory leadership election and new PM, which takes us to probably July. Then some more faffing as the new leader attempts to assert himself with the EU, fails, Parliament also faffs, and we’re back where we started.
I don’t see a no confidence vote passing at the moment, as May still has something approaching a majority, amd neither the Tories nor the DUP will want to face an election when they could influence a new Tory PM instead.
If No Deal has finally been recognised by all sides as utterly unacceptable, and there’s no political will for remaining, or a referendum with that as an option, at some point there will have to be new negotiations on what a withdrawl will look like.
Wait, what?
Macron wanted to the the UK only a short extention, which is what they asked for. Most other member states wanted to refuse that, and offer a long extension, which the UK didn’t ask for. So who, exactly, is being a dick to the UK?
But the scope for the negotiations is extremely limited. The EU is not going to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement, which it regards as settled. There is scope for renegotiating aspects of the Political Declaration, but this requires the UK to soften some of the “red lines” declared by May, and the likely winner of any Tory leadership contest is someone who favours, or claims to favour, a harder Brexit than May, not a softer Brexit.
So, it seems to me, what the Tories need is a leader with the Brexiteer crediblity to be able to lead Tory Brexiters into an acceptance of reality. And I’m nst sure who that might be.
I think I’ve asked this before, but can’t find it.
What exactly were May’s “red lines” and why are they so problematic?
I read the article, and I have to say, the fact that he just now after three years has realised that the idea of abandoning the EU for better trade deals elsewhere shows that he had blinkers on right from the start.
The EU is a market of approximately half a billion people. And Britain has free access now to that market.
What trade deals, with what countries, will give Britain free access to half a billion consumers? Consumers with the high consumer power that EU citizens have, compared to citizens of other countries?
This was the driving force for Canada in the late 80s to negotiate the first Free Trade Agreement with the US. Of all the G7 countries, Canada was the only one without guaranteed access to at least 100,000,000 consumers. Access to the US market was crucial, and still is.
WTO is not a guarantee of access. Negotiating separate trade deals, with a number of different countries, to gain free access to a different half a billion consumers? When you already have that access now?
It just never made sense to me.
For a considerable time after becoming Tory leader and Prime Minister, May refused or was unable to say how she would implement Brexit, taking refuge instead in boldly meaningless soundbites like “Brexit means Brexit”, and “we want a red, white and blue Brexit”. This worried both (a) Brexit supporters, who doubted her commitment to the project since she had been, or at least had claimed to be, a Remain supporter during the referendum, and (b) people who took it as a sign that she had no clue what Brexit involved or how to implement it.
Eventually, at the Tory party conference in October 2016 and in her subsequent Lancaster House speech she set out what were termed (if I recall correctly, by her) some “red lines” which set the parameters for what she regarded as an acceptable form of Brexit. These included:
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“Take back control of borders” so as to have an autonomous migration policy
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No longer accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice
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Not be in the European Single Market (since this requires a commitment to free movement of labour, which she saw as incompatible with the aim of an autonomous migration policy
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Not be in a customs union with the EU
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Not pay “huge contributions” to the EU budget, though she didn’t rule out payments to participate in specific programmes
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have a “new, comprehensive, bold, ambitious” free trade agreement with the EU, delivering frictionless trade
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“no return to the borders of the past” in Ireland
The red lines met with two objections. First, taken as a whole they indicated that she was targetting a hard Brexit. Given that a promise of a formless Brexit that would deliver all good things and no bad things had only managed to acheive 52% support in the referendum, a hard Brexit almost certainly would not enjoy majority public support.
Secondly, May was in denial about the hard choices involved in her red lines. They appeared to contradict one another. She wanted “frictionless trade” while simultaneously repudiating the arrangements that deliver frictionless trade, and not suggesting alternatives. She wanted to keep the Irish border open while withdrawing from the mutual arrangements that keeep the Irish border open, and not proposing alternatives. Etc.
There was a view here that what May was doing was staking out some high ground, which would give her room to climb down a little in the negotiations, which she would inevitably have to do, given the disparity in strategic position and bargaining power between the UK and the EU. Perhaps that was her thinking. But her mistake was not to acknowledge at this point that Brexit would require tough choices. By setting out these red lines she encouraged the detached-from-reality thinking that already fuelled the Brexit movement - that the UK could withdraw from the Customs Union and the Single Market but still keep all the benefits of both; that it could have different trade and migration policies from the EU but still have an open border in Ireland; and so forth. In short, she fed unrealistic expectations which she was never going to be able to meet.
Unfortunately, I’m afraid that a lot of (Continental) Europeans are starting to feel rather fed up with the UK’s arrogant cluelessness. The nation that used to be extremely respected, and in many aspects even admired has lost almost all its partners’ s goodwill. It’s become a pathetic shadow of itself.
It’s especially painfully for people like me, who’ve been in love with British culture for as long as I can remember. Seeing this slow-motion trainwreck, reading and hearing the rabid nonsense spouted by Brexiters, I can only come to the conclusion that the country that I’ve loved so much for almost 40 years doesn’t exist anymore.
You have it completely backwards.
See it this way. Imagine you’ve been married for decades to someone who has always made it clear that they only married you for the material advantages that your union offered, but that they never loved you in the first place. Now, that person, who’s spent your entire marriage throwing hissy fits over anything that may have resembled a union based on affection and mutual respect, has decided that they will find better partners… somewhere. Once they get rid of you, suitors are going to line up and come knocking on their door with amazing marriage proposals. It’s going to happen… somehow.
They filed the divorce papers and sent them to you over two years ago. But for some reason, they’re still in your freaking dooway, unable to make up their minds on what they want and making preposterous demands, like they’re leaving, yet are still going to use your garden and your car. And they’ll still sleep in your bed because it’s so comfy (but no sex because we broke up, remember). Come on, be a good sport about it.
Frankly, after over two years of this BS, wouldn’t you get a tad impatient ? Even if you never wanted to get a divorce in the first place, wouldn’t you feel like kicking them out once and for all, even if there’s a real risk of seeing them crash and burn ?
Meaningless? I think Quartz will want words with you about that. Maybe he’ll tell you what the heck it means.
These people were, for the record, totally fucking correct.
If you’ve got a guitar and the skills, there’s a country song in there for you.
You give this analogy as some kind of preposterous story to show how unreasonable the UK is being. But I wonder if that kind of behavior isn’t considered either just-how-people-act or how-you-gotta-get-by-in-life by a fair percentage of the population.
Imagine you’ve had the kind of life and been sculpted by the kind of subculture, situation or state where people commonly act like that. For example, my uncle has been married to a woman for at least 30 years with whom he has two children. She still changes in a closet to avoid being naked in front of him. She had two children but refused to eat meat when pregnant with one of them without making up for it in her diet; That child is heavily mentally handicapped for his entire life. I’m giving this example to show that the preposterous story you just gave is unfortunately not that preposterous to a good chunk of the population.
I have to admit to being a little scared that people like that seem to have gotten their shit together barely just enough to joy ride in two of the most powerful countries in the world.
How dare you! How very dare you! Have you forgotten that my grandparents helped out your grandparents in the 1940s? Surely I’m entitled to whatever I want!
At least UltraVires and The Donald understand.
(Shambles off muttering about the injustice of it all…)
I’m way late to the game here, and can barely follow what’s happening. Do I have it right that the new deadline is Oct. 31? If so, how likely is a new referendum, resulting in a Remain outcome?
There’s a long way to go until then. One of the big questions to answer first is: how much longer can Theresa May’s government survive? And if she leaves office by hook or by crook, which particular crook will be sitting in her seat next?
There’s certainly enough time for a referendum but don’t underestimate the ability of Parliament to descend even further into chaos and fighting first.
The existence, the wide spreaded-ness of fools, the overwhelming majority of humans being fools even is no argument for a need to suffer fools gladly.