I have a prime seaside site on the Goodwins going cheap!!
Great column by Mary Beard about the significance of serving turbot to Boris Johnson at the dinner with Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday.
Johnson studied classics, and I’m sure the significance wasn’t lost on him.
One big point of the Satire was to ridicule the corruption and degradation of power. The summoned advisors would not admit that the whole problem was trivial; they went along with the whole scenario, treating the question as if it was a matter of national security, without ever telling truth to power. If you have been brought up with Juvenal, you can’t serve turbot without knowing that there is a message in turbots about the deceptions and humiliations of the imperial court, and the abuse of language and “sincerity”. Turbot always signals a question about power, control and mis-speaking.
Literally everything Remain warned about is coming true.
And we still have no idea what Brexit is because Brexiters have no idea.
Brexit is about feelings, not facts.
British-flavour Trumpism, but more pernicious, longer-lasting and harder to kill.
In some ways Johnson is worse than Trump.
Trump is unintelligent and has no self-awareness, but Johnson is intelligent enough and self-aware enough to know exactly what he’s doing.
There’s a constant smirk behind everything he says.
He’s intentionally lying to fool all the ‘stooges’ out there (to use a term he once applied to people who voted for him), and he enjoys doing it because it boosts his pathetic ego and, in his own mind, confirms his superiority.
Apparently the answer to the Op is- start a war.
Flag waving will go down well with Tory voters. With the EU, not so much. They won’t want to appear to be making concessions in the face of threats of violence.
It’s as though Johnson is deliberately trying to make an agreement on fishing less likely…
Presumably the impending payoff from this second point is a big piece of his enjoyment in the first point.
Me too !
Great cartoon! Except that Johnson’s hand should have been the other way round too.
The recent ‘Scallop War’ with the French and the memories of the ‘Cod Wars’ with Iceland provide some context to how disputes over fishing rights can escalate.
But raising this issue during delicate negotiations? This may play well amongst the party faithful, but it sends completely the wrong signal to the other side. It suggests the UK has already decided the talks will fail.
Boris has also tried to approach EU national leaders directly and has been rebuffed and referred back the the EU negotiation team. Theresa May did the same previously. But the EU is not falling for that trick and are putting up a united front.
Boris has no room to manoevre and is held to his position by his party, his election manifesto, the basis on which he was elected: to get Brexit done! Unfortunately he has only one way to do this and that is without a free trade deal. If he made any concessions he would be immediately accused of betray by the Brexit faction that currently directs Conservative Party policy. His assurance that he could deliver a free trade deal has come to nought.
The EU have far less to lose than the UK and they have come to realise that it will only be with period outside the EU with no Free Trade deal that the consequences will finally be understood by the UK side.
How the No-Deal will be handled will be interesting. There will be a series of crises and some hastily written temporary agreements for specific cases where there is a mutual interest. Agreements to allow planes to land on each others airports, that sort of fundamental legal neccessity that was built into EU membership.
The EU have rather more cards to play at this game than the UK. They will target the big UK Financial Services business. No need for gunboats. As soon as the UK leaves, a wide range of financial services have no legal basis for operating in the EU and the companues involved will be encouraged to relocate in the EU. There will be a flight of capital assets from London and this will alarm the UK Treasury. The French and Germans will be intent on making off with the golden goose of the UK economy.
Gunboats indeed! The pen is mightier than the sword
The French response to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ shows how seriously they take this sabre rattling.
For both sides to resort to fighting a economic battle at a time such as this, when all economies have been seriously damaged by the Covid lockdowns and need to recover?
That would be such a failure!
But it is not quite over yet. Will there be some heroic last minute compromise? I can’t see it.
I haven’t given up hope just yet, but time really is short now. Let me see if I have this right:
- Boris was elected to ‘get Brexit done’. On that basis, we can discount the possibility of remaining in the EU after all, because that would be a massive personal and political failure. It would also not do anything to resolve the underlying issue. Personally, I think even if the consequences of leaving are bad, we have been committed to going through with them for some time, politically.
- A further extension period also seems unlikely, because a) some Brexit supporters will see this as a failure close to 1 above, and b) what more can be achieved with a further delay? We will probably just end up in the same position at the end of any further extension. So we can discount this as a likely outcome also.
- There are basically 2 ways to ‘get Brexit done’ at this point: with a deal or without. Without, as has been pointed out, will obviously cause more disruption. There is a theory that Boris is somehow in cahoots with financial speculators who have placed big bets on no deal. Is there any actual evidence of this? If not, I think there is still a chance that Boris will do the right thing and agree terms with the EU at the last minute. I personally don’t see the problem with agreeing, in general, that if you want to continue to trade on EU terms you have to continue to abide by applicable EU regulations. But by not being part of the EU, the UK should be able to determine the case for doing so in each case on its own merits, as and when it comes up for review. In fact, that’s pretty much what Brexit means to me. Accept some of the ‘bad’ but be able to discard some of it, too. Or is the EU position that this isn’t an option, and they are still intent on tying everything together?
The EU is saying the UK can do whatever it likes, but if it doesn’t maintain a ‘level playing field’, then it will set tariffs for imports.
i.e. If the UK subsidises product x, which is not subsidised in the EU, then sells product x to the EU, it’s not fair to EU producers of product x. So EU importers of product x from UK must pay a tariff to ensure a ‘level playing field’.
On food safety standards, all foodstuffs imported to the EU must adhere to EU standards. If the UK wants to lower its standards, then it won’t be able to sell affected products to the EU without special licencing, inspections, etc.
There is nothing at all unreasonable in what the EU is saying. It’s basically the same as for all trade with non-EU countries.
Johnson is trying to bullshit that this in an infringement of UK sovereignty, but that’s nonsense. The EU is also sovereign, and they can set whatever standards and tariffs they like for imports. If you don’t like it, you’re free to sell your goods elsewhere.
The same applies to trade with any country. Even the WTO sets out rules for fair trade.
However, the latest news - from Barnier’s briefing to the EU - is that there has been some movement and the UK has accepted there would be a need for a mechanism allowingn either side to unilaterally impose tariffs. This might open up a path to a deal; the UK will probably be expecting the EU to move on fish as a quid pro quo. The problem being that tehre’s quite a lot of room to work with in deciding a tariff-adjusting mechanism, but who has fishing rights and who doesn’t is pretty black and white.
[quote] A post-Brexit trade and security deal could be sealed as early as this week after Boris Johnson made a key concession over the weekend, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has told the bloc’s ambassadors in Brussels.
Barnier said the prime minister’s acceptance of the need for a treaty-level mechanism to ensure fair competition as regulatory standards diverge over time had unlocked the talks. His comments came despite suggestions from Downing Street that a no-deal exit remains likely.
Barnier said, however, that the negotiations on EU access to British fishing waters had gone backwards. The UK tabled a paper on fisheries on Monday, only to take it off the negotiating table on Thursday, he claimed.[/quote]
The main problem with fishing rights is that large English fishing conglomerates sold off their quotas to other countries in the 1990s for short-term gain, and are now complaining that other countries own those quotas.
In Scotland, quotas were not sold off, because the Scottish fishing industry consists mainly of small family-owned businesses. So Scotland has no problem with fishing rights.
Thank you - this makes sense.
So, the $64bn* question: why can’t the UK just agree to this, on the basis that it is obvious common sense and has nothing to do with UK sovereignty? I’d be quite happy with such an agreement as an outcome, but obviously I’m not the typical Brexit voter.
*Made up number.
Because they want to have their cake and eat it.
They want to be able to change regulations and standards, but still sell freely to the EU without trade barriers. There is also an issue about how trade disputes will be handled.
Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement was common sense, but it specified that the UK would have to remain in lockstep with the EU on regulations until the problem of a hard border in Ireland was sorted out (if ever).
Johnson has ‘sorted out’ this problem by agreeing to a trade border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK instead. (So much for sovereignty!)
BJ might yet do so, but there will be [some number of] head-banging Tory Europhobes, in Parliament and in the Tory-favouring media who will claim that almost any binding agreement is ipso facto an infringement of sovereignty. And even if BJ is able to face them down in Parliament to get through an agreement they don’t like (and its associated legislation)*, they will be in a position to make continuing trouble for him in the longer term (and there will be plenty of reasons and occasions to do so outside this particular question - the handling of Covid, the absence of trade deals with other countries, and so on).
*This might be either with Labour positively voting for the agreement, or abstaining and thus highlighting the Tory split: either way, not a good look for BJ.
Thank you both. Well, maybe common sense will prevail.
Ah, now the Trump/Johnson comparisons make sense - Johnson is a Republican! Sorry, I’m probably not the first to make this joke.
Thus giving rise to the observation that the UK has somehow managed to negotiate a free-trade zone that is actually smaller than the UK.
There’s a line* about “The Tories of England long imagined they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent”.
Similarly, modern Tories would have said they cared about the Union, but the day of danger has revealed that they will put their grandad’s balls through the mangle if it’ll get them hard Brexit.
*Marx, but don’t hold it against me