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Deal or No Deal? Amazingly I appear not to have yet used that headline.
The BBC reports,
Brexit: Trade talks with the EU are over, says No 10
Talks between the UK and EU over a post-Brexit trade agreement are “over”, Downing Street has said.
No 10 argued there was “no point” in discussions continuing next week unless the EU was prepared to discuss the detailed legal text of a partnership.
UK chief negotiator Lord Frost said he had told EU counterpart Michel Barnier there was now no “basis” for planned talks on Monday.
Number 10 said the two sides had agreed to talk again next week – by phone.
So talks are not quite over after all.
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It’s obvious that Johnson will fudge and cave to the EU, and use Covid-19 as a distraction.
That would seem to be great news! No Deal is the only deal I trust these fuckers to make
Even if Johnson wants a deal, he would be better to wait until after the deadline. Then the pressure moves off him and onto the EU. If they want a part of the fisheries etc, then once the status quo is that they don’t have them, then they become the supplicants.
Until the EU actually realise no deal is a reality they will think they have the upper hand. Remember, they believe the EU is a good thing.
No talks – but there will be a phone call.
No calls – but there will be a text message.
No text messages but there will be an emoji.
Maybe an anniversary card.
No cards – have a nice life
There’s no chance of an acceptable deal.
The goal of the EU is to punish us for leaving pour encourager les autres.
Speculation in the FT suggests up to a 10% hit to GDP. Well, if we can shrug off a 20% hit to GDP in Q2, then another 10% shouldn’t bother anyone, much.
On the other hand the Guardian reports ‘no deal’ will cost 3 times more than COVID-19 measures.
But once the Guardian mentions ‘LSE modelling’, the thought ‘not another fucking University model’ jumps into my mind and I sneak a peek at the TES to find the LSE ranked 27th in Economics behind the notorious ICL of Niall Ferguson infamy at eleven.
So, if we all put another £15 grand down the back of the Sofa before Christmas as a Brexit provision, we’ll probably be OK.
APL, you have the wrong Ferguson. Neil is the crazed epidemiologist. Niall is the respected historian.
Thank you CH. I’d say, I have the right Ferguson, just labeled him incorrectly.
Anyway, who in their right mind would call themselves Niall when the perfectly adequate Neil is available? 🙂 It beats me!
According to wiki “Neil is a masculine given name of Gaelic origin. The name is an Anglicisation of the Irish Niall which is of disputed derivation”. So, same same.
But yes, since forever. I’ve had a problem attaching labels to people, just the other day, a lady who routinely goes by the name of Caroline, objected when I called her Catherine. Three times in the space of forty five minutes. It’s a small burden.
Perry, I absolutely agree with what you wrote. And I agree with what you wrote too, Flubber.
The EU has never been negotiating in good faith. Absolutely the last thing it wants is for Britain to leave the EU and then prosper.
And yet they will give it the means to prosper by going No Deal. At that point the UK government is forced to try and negotiate deals with other countries and to revisit the whole protectionist thing. Countries who have gone free trade have prospered, so I doubt the UK will break the trend.
The best way to hamper the UK would have been to accept that fisheries etc were gone, and negotiate on the main trade items. Thereby shackling the UK to the EU in most respects.
If the UK Government had any sense (OK, stop laughing and bear with me on this one) they would have been building fishery protection vessels over the last four years for the inevitable piracy in British waters by the French and Dutch fishermen after 1st January 2021. Even a hydrocephalitic chimpanzee out of its head on drugs could have predicted that outcome. The Common Fisheries was the first thing that the EEC wanted and was surrendered by Ted Heath and will be the last thing that they will relinquish.
IF (and it is a VERY BIG if) the UK government has any sense, they will tell them to sod off and, as commentators above have said, the EU will then have lost the upper hand. But I suspect that the EU fishing fleet will take as much notice of the territorial waters of the UK as they do of the voters in the EU.
I don’t believe that Johnson can afford to open a second front against himself by selling us out to the EU. The EU are giving NOTHING as ever so it could not be a sell out that could be hidden. Blojerk is in a lot of trouble already and dropping himself in any more would be foolish indeed.
That said he is a supremely arrogant moron.
“Business” (i.e. the despicable “Woke” Corporations who endlessly lie) has had four and half years to prepare for independence – four and half years.
And anyone who whines about the “economic costs of no deal” who supports the Covid LOCKDOWNS is a hypocrite of the worst order.
The British people voted to leave the European Union (the question was not “ambiguous” – as evil individuals falsely claim), we must have our independence.
The laws, regulations, of the European Union must not apply inside the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – no more than they do in Canada, Australia or other independent countries.
If (IF) on January 1st 2021, some four and half years after our vote for independence, we do not have our independence – then Mr Johnson will have utterly failed in what he was elected to do, and should resign, or be voted out as Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister.
Or have a short conversation with Mr Ecks……
FWIW, even I am surprised. 🙂
I have remainer friends who are senior in pharma, which is a heavily regulated sector. The EU regulator used to be in the UK but relocated to the low countries some time ago, once the irreversibility of Brexit became plain. My take was always that, once the regulator had moved, the hit to British pharma was inevitable, a sunk cost, so no longer any argument against completing Brexit. However I also thought there would be a hit to that sector.
For once, the ‘Despite’ in ‘Despite Brexit’ is appropriate.