Thread: Brexit - It's Still On!

Originally Posted by cyrille

Yeah, that's always my first source of info...your 'catapulted at the screen' c+ps.



Put a link up at the top, you dozy twat.

.... this from the member from KSA, who accuses me of using personal insults?

^ Another stunning post from the mighty Chas

Meanwhile, the week has seen the expected problems with the NI protocol unfold and the EU and UK are in discussions to resolve the issues within a few weeks of the transition period coming to an end.

Another good article from Chris Grey's blog:



Brexit is coming apart at the seams

The electronic ink had hardly dried on my previous post which finished with a reminder that unexpected events are always liable to arise than just such an event occurred. During a very confused few hours last Friday evening the EU first proposed and then withdrew the proposal to impose export controls on coronavirus vaccines moving from Ireland to Northern Ireland, though this did not mean ‘closing the border’ and would not have meant stopping vaccine shipments at the border. This proposal would have involved the invocation of the emergency provisions in Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol. In the event, it did not happen but it has brought to a head issues which have been lurking in the background for months and given the UK government an alibi for destabilizing the Protocol.

The EU’s blunder

It immediately became apparent that this was a major blunder by the EU – or more specifically the European Commission – which had been done without regard for the political consequences. Neither the British nor the Irish government nor the Northern Ireland Assembly had been consulted or warned, and nor had Michel Barnier’s UK engagement team. As the news emerged, the Irish government in particular, along with Barnier and the EU Ambassador to the UK, played a key role in getting the situation quickly resolved. It also seems to be the case that the British government was measured and calm in its response, for which it deserves credit, although since then there has been a marked shift in its tone.

In and of itself it was an indefensible error by the EU. But all political systems commit such errors and it was speedily corrected, so whilst there may well be some lessons for the European Commission in what happened the idea that it says anything one way or another about the merits of Brexit is nonsense. Inevitably some Brexiters leapt upon it to claim justification, and some erstwhile remainers professed that it had changed their minds about Brexit. But there was no reason for that except for anyone who imagined that the EU is a perfect institution that never makes any mistakes, which remainers shouldn’t have and Brexiters surely didn’t. And let’s be clear, this episode has not led to the breakdown of trust between the UK and the EU – that was caused by the UK’s behaviour over the last four years or so, years in which the EU has been remarkably consistent and rational. That doesn’t excuse this piece of stupidity but it should put it in perspective.


The underlying problem: Brexit itself

The key point is that this episode was only possible because of Brexit and in particular because of the rickety and highly precarious arrangements for Northern Ireland which have had to be created to accommodate it. For the EU this means, amongst other things, having to get used to the fact that closing its borders with adjacent third countries is no simple matter. The UK is a third country, but the unique situation of Northern Ireland gives the meaning of that a particular complexity.

The issue isn’t that the EU needs to have any concern for annoying Brexiters. Despite what some in the UK seem to think, the EU does not view the world through the lens of Brexit as they do, and is not particularly bothered about nasty headlines in the UK press. Rather, it is that the EU needs to be attentive to the specific situation in Northern Ireland, not least as this is a matter of significant concern to Ireland which is a member state. In that context, any invocation of Article 16 would have to be a very last resort for a massive emergency.

The EU’s carelessness about this has been jumped on to feed the pre-existing, and wholly unjustified, demands from some unionist politicians in Northern Ireland, as well as some Brexiters outside Northern Ireland, to make use of Article 16 to suspend the operation of the GB-NI border, as mentioned in my post a few weeks ago. This is unjustified primarily because that operation is not an unforeseen or temporary emergency but is the necessary consequence of what the UK and the EU have agreed. Even more unjustified is to opportunistically use what happened on Friday to bolster the again pre-existing demand to scrap the Northern Ireland Protocol in its entirety.

Unsurprisingly, some of those doing so are still pretending that it, and the whole Withdrawal Agreement, are open to wholesale revision in the light of the TCA. Indeed it shouldn’t be forgotten that there is a hard core of Brexit Ultras who have never accepted the Withdrawal Agreement and the Protocol and have long argued for the government to jettison them, and will use any pretext to support that argument. The current row about last Friday's events is therefore a symptom of a much deeper problem.

How have we got here?

Demands to ditch the Protocol beg the question of what should replace it, and here it’s necessary to go right back to the fundamental issues of how it arose. To be extremely brief, it has come about because the hard Brexit of leaving both the single market and customs union necessitates that there be a border somewhere. Since it cannot be a land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland because of the Good Friday Agreement, and there are no technological solutions that would create a virtual border, it has to be a sea border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

These facts were ignored or denied by Brexiters before the Referendum, including Boris Johnson, and many of them continue to deny it even now. Yet it was the reason for the ‘backstop’ agreed by Theresa May. Brexiters, including Johnson, said that was unacceptable and he instead agreed, and his MPs voted for, the ‘frontstop’ whereby there would, regardless of whatever got agreed in the TCA, be a sea border of some sort. How intrusive a border that has turned out to be is an artefact of the UK’s decision to prioritise divergence from EU regulations in the name of sovereignty in the TCA.

That is a very short account, but what it means is that the complex and messy situation we are now in – including the ongoing and expected to increase disruptions to goods flows between GB and NI – is the result of Brexit in general, and of the particular way that Johnson’s government chose to implement Brexit. What that is now leading to is not just economic disruption but an emergent and highly worrying political and, potentially, security problem whereby sea border control staff are being threatened with violence and as a result some checks on animal products and food were suspended this week. Note that these threats also pre-date the Friday night Article 16 fiasco so cannot be blamed on it. Just as a land border is unacceptable to, especially, the republican community so too is a sea border unacceptable to, especially, parts of the unionist community. (It is important for anyone with a public platform, even one as limited as this blog, to clarify that there is no evidence of paramilitary involvement in these threats.)

What is now becoming ever-clearer is that Brexit threw a huge rock into the high delicate and fragile machinery of the Northern Ireland peace process, a machinery of complex checks and balances which had as an implicit condition the fact that both Ireland and the UK were within the EU. The Protocol averts the worst of the damage, by preventing an Irish land border, but that doesn’t prevent there being any damage at all. It is an enduring badge of shame that Brexiters were so casual in ignoring what Brexit would mean for Northern Ireland, that hard Brexit was pursued despite what it meant, that Johnson agreed to something without, apparently, understanding what it meant, and that his MPs endorsed it. The shame is all the greater given that the majority in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU.

Johnson’s dishonesty and opportunism

The danger now is that the government looks set to use the EU’s stupid mistake as cover to try to completely unpick the Protocol. At the heart of that lies the refusal of the government, including Johnson and Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis, to accept that the Irish Sea border even exists as a result of the Protocol they agreed to. That it manifestly does, with all the adverse effects that is having on Northern Ireland, is therefore being blamed on the way the Protocol is being operated, allowing Johnson to indulge in the sickening pretence that he can “ensure there is no border down the Irish Sea”. Worse, he threatened to invoke Article 16 even before the Friday row and is doing so again now as if in response to, or somehow justified by, the EU’s error.


The problems that Brexit is currently causing businesses in Northern Ireland, even though they are of the government’s own making, make it reasonable to ask the EU to extend the various existing grace periods – for example on uncooked processed meats – as Michael Gove has done in his letter to Maros Sevcovic, his co-chair of the Joint Committee. And there may be other adjustments that can reasonably be made. But Gove is quite wrong to suggest, in his rather aggressive letter, that the EU’s error provides a reason why the operation of the Irish Sea border should be revised wholesale and entirely in line with UK demands, and still less justified in using the implicit threat of the UK itself now invoking Article 16 if these demands aren’t met (which would in any case be a misuse of Article 16).

The border operation reflects the fundamental, long-term, structural problems of Brexit in general and the Northern Ireland agreement in particular, problems for which Gove is one of those most responsible. The problems it is creating were not ‘unforeseen’, they were set out in the government’s own impact assessment in October 2019 of the Withdrawal Agreement it had reached with the EU. This, remember, was the deal that Johnson hailed as a great triumph of his negotiating skills, the deal he sold at the General Election, the deal all Conservative MPs voted for, and the deal he signed barely more than a year ago.

So it is totally unreasonable to expect the EU simply to ignore all the practical consequences of what Britain has chosen to do to itself. Rather, it is for the British government to row back on its hardline decisions (in the TCA) about, for example, freedom to diverge from EU food hygiene rules. This in turn would reduce the extent of the sea border checks. Pretending they are something to do with the Friday mess-up is dishonest and opportunistic, and suggests that despite the government having met the initial crisis calmly it is now deliberately exploiting it to further antagonize relations with the EU.

It is hard to resist the thought that the government, and most certainly some of the Brexit Ultras, have always been intent on picking away at both the Withdrawal Agreement and the TCA at the earliest opportunity. And the illegal clauses in the Internal Market Bill showed its lack of acceptance of the Northern Ireland Protocol. If it chooses to really ramp up a row over the Protocol, especially to the point of actually suspending it without legitimate grounds, then it may create a very serious situation for Northern Ireland, of course, but also for itself. Nothing could be better calculated to sour the UK’s relations with Biden’s new administration, for one thing. And it bears saying that the European Parliament has not yet ratified the TCA, so it is hardly a propitious moment to effectively renege on the agreements that were its prior condition.

For now, the Joint Committee has issued an anodyne ‘place holder’ announcement, and there will be a further meeting next week, but the omens are not good. We are only a month into Brexit, in the full sense of the end of the transition, and already key parts of it are coming apart at the seams.


The wider picture

The wider lesson of the current situation in Northern Ireland is of the need for this Brexit government to take responsibility for all of the unfolding problems of Brexit. For this week has again seen a slew of reports about the difficulties facing businesses across the UK, underscoring that, as Gove has admitted with respect to Northern Ireland, these are not ‘teething problems’ and are liable to get worse, not better. In a summary of the first month since the end of the transition, Lizzy Burden of Bloomberg News reports how “UK firms are being slowly ground down” by the new barriers to trade with the EU. The BBC Reality Check team provides a similar summary as does the Financial Times (£).


In all three reports there are links to some of the stories referred to in the last few posts on this blog – the evidence base for substantial and permanent damage to UK businesses is now growing, and increasing delivery times mean that UK manufacturing is “close to stalling” (£). Whilst the latter is due to both Covid and Brexit, the report shows that other countries, which are also suffering from Covid, are seeing a growth in manufacturing exports. So it seems fair to attribute the difference to Brexit. I don’t think it is hyperbole to say UK SME exporters to the EU are experiencing a bloodbath from which many of them are unlikely to recover.

It has now emerged that, apparently without having realized it, the government has permanently destroyed British shellfish exporters. There are also new reports of serious problems facing the fashion industry and, as with the situation facing musicians and other performance artists, they arise ultimately from the end of freedom of movement of people but proximately from the UK government’s unwillingness to agree a mobility chapter with the EU as part of the TCA. That could, potentially, still be agreed if, as with the issue of food standards, the government were to change its hardline stance. Doing so would be far more important that the much-trumpeted opening of talks to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). There’s nothing wrong with doing so, but its economic benefits will be nugatory and it is more designed to make a purely political point about ‘Global Britain’ and the supposed long-term opportunities of Brexit.

That is hardly a priority when businesses are on their knees right now and could at least partly be helped by improvements to the TCA. One thing which any ‘Global Britain’ worthy of the name should certainly be doing is extending the clearly inadequate June deadline for EU nationals to apply for ‘settled status’ (£), as well as simplifying the system and stopping the bone-headed refusal to provide paper documentation when settled status has been established. Doing so would not only be right but would head off what otherwise is going to be yet another monumental mess caused by Brexit.

Will the Brexit government take responsibility?

The full effects of Brexit, now that the transition period has ended and the TCA has kicked in, are still only beginning to be felt. Every single one of them discredits the claims made by Brexiters, including the idea that there was no need to extend the transition so as to allow a genuine implementation period. There’s no point in them continuing to deny these effects, or continuing to try to justify the false claims they made. Now, it is their responsibility to work to mitigate, so far as it is possible, the worst of the damage they have created.

It is difficult to be hopeful that this will happen, not least because of the apparently pathological inability of Johnson and the Brexit Ultras to tell the truth or to take responsibility for their actions. So it seems more likely that the same failings that created this mess will be repeated and repeated. The appointment last Friday of David Frost as the UK’s Brexit and international policy representative is an especially bad sign given that he was the architect of the TCA which is responsible for some of the damage. And with Johnson and Gove now apparently refusing to accept that the Northern Ireland problems flow from their own policies there is little reason to doubt that we are the beginning of years of acrimony and instability as the Brexit process continues to play out. As many of us feared and warned.

Brexit & Beyond: Brexit is coming apart at the seams

And with Johnson and Gove now apparently refusing to accept that the Northern Ireland problems flow from their own policies there is little reason to doubt that we are the beginning of years of acrimony and instability as the Brexit process continues to play out.

They'll be brimful of BS about it.

It'll be lies lies lies about how bad things would be in the EU, even worse than the pitiful mess they have made themselves.

And as for things which the EU are truthfully not doing a great job of, well they will of course take on titanic importance.

Everything will be seized on.

Gove + Bojo will make Cinderella's ugly sisters seem low key, with their sanctimonious drone about how the Good Friday agreement is not being shown enough respect...having basically shat all over the union themselves.

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Brexit & Beyond
"Best guy to follow on Brexit for intelligent analysis" Annette Dittert, ARD German TV. "By far one of the best analysts of Brexit" Sarah Carey, The Times. "Consistently outstanding analysis of Brexit" Jonathan Dimbleby. "The best writer on Brexit" Chris Lockwood, Europe Editor, The Economist. "A must-read for anyone following Brexit" David Allen Green, FT. "The doyen of Brexit commentators" Chris Johns, Irish Times.

I am Emeritus Professor of Organization Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, and was previously a Professor at Cambridge University and Warwick University. I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS). I originally studied Economics and Politics at Manchester University, where I also gained a PhD on the regulation of financial services. I blog in a personal capacity and all views expressed are mine, not those of any institution or organization. My Brexit Blog is accompanied by a twitter feed @chrisgreybrexit
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Labels: Borders, Citizens' rights, Coronavirus, Costs of Brexit, DUP, Irish border, Northern Ireland, Trust



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Originally Posted by Joe 90

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In EU that joke is as old as the shellfish coming from Britain. It stinks.

^^ Your point?

Don't tell me you are a Gove disciple and think "the general population have had enough of experts..."

...or perhaps you believe "The EU must give back our sovereignty or we will walk out [of the EU]"

...or perhaps this one from early December:
"Businesses in Northern Ireland have the opportunity to enjoy the best of both worlds: access to the European Single Market, because there's no infrastructure on the island of Ireland, and at the same time unfettered access to the rest of the UK market."

Gove is a great orator of "content free" bullshit.

^ erm just posting the other bits of the page you missed because Joe couldn't access them.

Originally Posted by lom

In EU that joke is as old as the shellfish coming from Britain. It stinks.

It wasn't a joke.

I genuinely couldn't access a website because of Brexit and EU sour grapes.

And did you notice no Remainer came to your aid. They are such a petty bunch, meek and ideally suited to being led by the nose by the krauts, same sense of humour too. Sigh#

Originally Posted by strigils

^ erm just posting the other bits of the page you missed because Joe couldn't access them.

Joe90 couldn't access that blog from within Britain but you could?
That should have told you something.

Originally Posted by strigils

And did you notice no Remainer came to your aid. They are such a petty bunch, meek and ideally suited to being led by the nose by the krauts, same sense of humour too. Sigh#

You think you helped him? You think Chris Grey's blog was the site throwing the error?
It wasn't so wipe off that egg from your face..

Originally Posted by Joe 90

I genuinely couldn't access a website because of Brexit and EU sour grapes.

I don't see any sour grapes, I only see that a website has erroneously identified you as being located in the EU.
What kind of website didn't want EU citizens to access it?

Originally Posted by Joe 90

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[COLOR=var(--primaryTextColor)]Our servers have detected that you are accessing this site from a country that is a member of the European Union. This content is not available in your region.

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Isn't it racist to penalise EU citizens that travel into wog territory?

Originally Posted by lom

I don't see any sour grapes, I only see that a website has erroneously identified you as being located in the EU.
What kind of website didn't want EU citizens to access it?

A EU health and fitness website wouldn't allow me access as I was from Great Britain

Meh - who gives a toss.

None whatsoever.

It would be deleted if it wasn’t a mod’s buddy who made it.

Hey guys, the money printer is warming up to create another $1.9tr ad for Bitcoin. As the Fed proudly put it, our money supply is infinite, and half the country never batted an eyelid.

March target in January was $40k, now pet vulture says >$50, with a new wall of money coming in from guess where - WS!

Strange, everyone I've introduced to Bitcoin so far is either thanking me or wishing they had more than politely listened; of course this doesn't include TD, where the blue pill reigns.

Wrong thread, gramps.

yep, well done

The mere act of Brexit was a threat to an Ireland separated from the EU by Britain but certainly it could be nothing but a direct and immediate attack on the GFA. But the Brexit loons and their lumpen mobs caterwauling their support for it couldn't give a flying fuck for the Irish, north or south, which is all the more obscene when the cvunt Gove had the temerity to criticise the EU for considering an embargo on vaccine exports to NI when only three months previously he and the rest of his Tory scum were trying to rip up the WA agreement by scrapping unilaterally the economic border in the Irish Sea protocol. The rancid stench of hypocritical Brexiteers is truly nauseating.

But, back to brighter news. It seems the Road Haulage Association has computed that exports to the EU have fallen by 68% because of the Brexit customs protocols and the import controls are yet to start, now scheduled for June.

So, when does this Brexit bonanza of mighty prosperity begin? Or are we waiting for the total collapse of the fishing industry?

Calling all Brexit Bozos, when are we going to see those prancing unicorns on those Brexit swards of sunny uplands?

Fucking idiots, aintcha.

Har, har.

Let's get this into perspecive:

CCC tries to access a US site, which has a problem with EU data protection laws, which the UK is still adhering to. He receives this message:

Originally Posted by Joe 90

Our servers have detected that you are accessing this site from a country that is a member of the European Union.

and wrongly interprets it as some "sour grapes" from the EU as part of the Brexit fiasco.

Then Toots feels it necessary to post up irrelevant details about the blog from which I posted an article, wrongly thinking that CCC can't access the site to which I provided a link.


Dumb and Dumber Brexit supporters doing nothing but proving SA's point.

An exhibition of rank stupidity, but then...they ore Bexiters.

Originally Posted by cyrille

An exhibition of rank stupidity, but then...they ore Bexiters.

Which mine did you dig that nugget up from Cyrille.

You remoaners are so easy to get a rise out of, you remind me of play time at school with the girls gathered round playing one of their singing games. Now then ladies how is it all going in the land of milk and honey across the channel?

Since you all love articles from the Guardian/Observer so much:

Fury at Gove as exports to EU slashed by 68% since Brexit
Hauliers say Cabinet Office minister ignored warnings, amid fears that worse is to come with introduction of import checks in July

The volume of exports going through British ports to the EU fell by a staggering 68% last month compared with January last year, mostly as a result of problems caused by Brexit, the Observer can reveal.

The dramatic drop in the volume of traffic carried on ferries and through the Channel tunnel has been reported to Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove by the Road Haulage Association after a survey of its international members. In a letter to Gove dated 1 February, the RHA’s chief executive, Richard Burnett, also told the minister he and his officials had repeatedly warned over several months of problems and called for measures to lessen difficulties – but had been largely ignored.

In particular he had made clear throughout last year there was an urgent need to increase the number of customs agents to help firms with mountains of extra paperwork. The number now, around 10,000, is still about a fifth of what the RHA says is required to handle the massive increase in paperwork facing exporters.

Burnett told the Observer that in addition to the 68% fall-off in exports, about 65%-75% of vehicles that had come over from the EU were going back empty because there were no goods for them to return with, due to hold-ups on the UK side, and because some UK companies had either temporarily or permanently halted exports to the EU. “I find it deeply frustrating and annoying that ministers have chosen not to listen to the industry and experts,” he said.

Contact with Gove had been limited and had achieved little over recent months. “Michael Gove is the master of extracting information from you and giving nothing back,” he said. “He responds on WhatsApp and says he got the letter but no written response comes. Pretty much every time we have written over the last six months he has not responded in writing. He tends to get officials to start working on things. But the responses are a complete waste of time because they don’t listen to what the issues were that we raised in the first place.”

According to the House of Commons library, UK exports to the EU were £294bn in 2019 (43% of all UK exports) while UK imports from the EU were £374bn (52% of the total). The overwhelming majority of exports to the EU from the UK go through ports rather than by air.

Richard Ballantyne, chief executive of the British Ports Association, said the 68% figure sounded “broadly in line” with his impressions of the drop-off in traffic. He said some but not all of the problems with extra paperwork that caused delays could be overcome in time, although he warned some businesses on both sides would look for new markets rather than try to deal with the added friction. Ballantyne also predicted a new set of difficulties in months to come as the infrastructure needed at the point when the UK introduces full import checks on goods from the EU on 1 July would not, in his view, be ready in time. This raised the prospect of a whole new set of issues affecting imports.

As part of the Brexit arrangements, the government decided to offer a six-month grace period, meaning the full range of physical checks would not be needed on imports until July.

Trade experts said part of the reason for the sharp fall in exports was the coincidence of Brexit and the pandemic. But several heads of trade bodies fear worse is to come. Shane Brennan, chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation, the body for companies that move and store frozen and chilled foods, said: “As we look to April through to July what really worries me is we face a perfect storm.

“We will have an economy looking to come out of lockdown at the same time as the UK is imposing a range of import controls on EU business that may be no more prepared than UK businesses have been – and possibly less so – and a supply chain that is incredibly reluctant to service the UK. The full Brexit crisis that we were predicting could well come into effect at that point.”

In recent weeks hundreds of UK companies have decided either to halt exports to the EU or to set up warehouses or subsidiaries within the EU so they can distribute goods more easily. Ministers say most of the Brexit-relating issues facing businesses are “teething problems”, although Michael Gove has accepted that those affecting Northern Ireland are more serious.

A government spokesperson said: “We have had intensive engagement with the road haulage industry for many months and are still facilitating a daily call with representative groups.

“We do not recognise the figure provided on exports. Thanks to the hard work of hauliers and traders to prepare for change, disruption at the border has so far been minimal and freight movements are now close to normal levels, despite the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We will continue to work constructively with the RHA as we adjust to our new relationship with the EU and seize the opportunities of Brexit.”

Fury at Gove as exports to EU slashed by 68% since Brexit | Brexit | The Guardian