Thread: Brexit - It's Still On!

Kemi battered again.

'Oh dear!'

From the day Britain left the EU, this reset was inevitable. What a pointless waste of time, money and effort | Simon Jenkins | The Guardian

Simon Jenkins

Keir Starmer is not blameless when it comes to Brexit, but he is moving in the right direction. Even the Tories attacking him know that.

For the Tories to attack Keir Starmer’s first step towards a Brexit reset is monumental hypocrisy. Their Brexit led to £4.7bn being spent on implementing post-EU border arrangements, according to the National Audit Office, including a vastly expensive “take back control” border post at Sevington in Kent. No other country in the world can have erected such ludicrous barriers against its biggest trading partners. All are now wasted. At least the nonsense can stop. Memorial plaques to Boris Johnson should be pinned to their gates and passersby invited to sign a 50-page customs form in his memory.


Meanwhile, Starmer should hang his own head in shame. He was Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit henchman back in 2019, when Labour voted down Theresa May’s bid to negotiate a soft Brexit deal that would certainly have gone beyond what was signed this week. It was Starmer who helped to scotch at least a possible Commons coalition against hard Brexit and in favour of sanity. It was Corbyn and Starmer who could have stifled five years of the greatest act of self-harm by a British government since the Great Depression.

After the British public voted to leave the EU in 2016, the main reason they gave pollsters was immigration. There was little evidence of opposition to EU trade or membership of Europe’s wider economic community. So-called hard Brexit was adopted entirely by Johnson and those round him as a tool to oust May from Downing Street. Mendacious garbage was issued by his campaigners to claim it would benefit Britain. Public interest was hijacked by power.

The outcome was and is glaring. All serious estimates, official and unofficial, accept that Brexit has made Britain poorer to the tune of tens of billions of pounds. The result can be seen in slowed growth and worse public services. There is not a remote chance of recouping the losses in the foreseeable future. Deals reached with Australia, India and the US cannot begin to redress the harm of hard Brexit.


This week’s political reaction to Starmer’s deal was absurd. The UK’s negotiating strength with the EU was crippled by Brexit. Of course Britain must sign up to EU food standards if it really wants to trade. The EU is the bigger market, as is the US. Of course extended fishing rights for European fleets is a concession, though it reflects a concession already made by Johnson. So too is freer movement for Europe’s young people. Does Nigel Farage really regard this as “abject surrender”? Does he really want to keep open the Sevington border checkpoint and ban e-gate use at airports? Unwilling to put his case to Starmer in the Commons this week, he scurried through an e-gate for a holiday, apparently in France. To him, Brexit has always been a game.

I once opposed EU membership as I thought on balance that a looser free trade area, like the European Free Trade Association, was more in line with Britain’s place in the world. In retrospect, I was wrong. The stability of western Europe over the past half a century has vindicated British membership. Margaret Thatcher was right to negotiate the 1986 single market agreement, but John Major was right at Maastricht to avoid greater union, as was Tony Blair to avoid the euro. Throughout history, Britain’s relations with Europe have always been best when semi-detached.


Since Brexit, two changes should now influence the debate. First, the issue of immigration is consuming all of Europe, desperately requiring international cooperation. The EU’s internal borders have begun to harden and the open door of Schengen has begun to close. Within Britain, the overwhelming majority of annual immigrants are legal, authorised with government visas for work or study. Recruiting immigrants to the labour force was Tory policy. How Brexit was ever expected to reduce this is a mystery.

Meanwhile, and despite public feeling on immigration, polls show a strong majority now regrets Brexit, with 55% of Britons saying it was wrong compared with the 52% of those who voted supporting it nine years ago. Just three in 10 people now approve of Britain having left the EU. People realise they were lied to. British companies can only “take control” of trading by not trading.

That realisation has now been curbing not just farming and food, but manufacturing, services, academic and cultural exchange, and tourism. Even orchestras have had to stop touring. Other European states outside the EU have not so isolated themselves. Hard Brexit was xenophobic, economically illiterate and narrow-minded. I am sure most public figures who supported it, for whatever reason, know this is true but lack the guts to admit it.


From the day Brexit arrived, the laborious reset process that began this week was inevitable. When public opinion is allied to economics and common sense, something has to give. But it will be slow. The EU owes Britain nothing for its behaviour over the past decade.

An apology from the Brexit lobby is too much to hope for. Silence might be a relief. Meanwhile, Starmer should mean what he says: that this is only a first step. We don’t have to “undo Brexit” – at least in this generation – but we must re-establish civil and commercial relations with the continent of which we are a part. An appalling mistake was made. It awaits correction.

What a pointless waste.

President Donald Trump plans to hit the European Union with a massive 50pc tariff on all goods it sends to the US, starting on June 1.

Mr Trump berated the EU as “very difficult to deal with”, and said US negotiations with Brussels to avoid a transatlantic trade war were “going nowhere”.

The president’s unexpected escalation would appear to cover the entire $600bn (£447bn) flow of goods exports from the EU to America. It would likely provoke more than €95bn (£80bn) of EU retaliatory measures.

Mr Trump seems to have lost patience with Brussels, after reports in recent days suggesting Washington was unhappy with the offer that European negotiators had tabled. The two sides have been negotiating a climbdown from Mr Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff salvo of April 2. This added a 20pc EU-specific tariff to his “baseline” 10pc tariff, but was later paused for 90 days.

Mr Trump made his announcement in a post on his online platform Truth Social, in which he resurfaced his full list of grievances with Brussels: the EU’s large trade surplus with the US, its trade barriers, value-added tax, legal and regulatory action against US companies, “ridiculous corporate penalties” and “monetary manipulations”.

“The European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of taking advantage of the United States on TRADE, has been very difficult to deal with,” he wrote.

“Our discussions with them are going nowhere! Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50pc tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025. There is no Tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States.”

A European Commission spokesman said Brussels would not be commenting until after senior trade officials from both sides had spoken to each other.

another one to add to starmer’s list of ‘triumphs’ this week.



1/ betrayed the brexit referendum

2/ betrayed fishermen

3/ betrayed chagossians

4/ betrayed britains strategic military position

5/ betrayed jews

6/ emboldened antisemites

7/ given WHO jurisdiction over our future lockdowns

8/ betrayed justice (Lucy Connely)

9/ reopened EU free movement

10/ shackling us to the EU freeloaders five days before trump announces 50% tariffs on them.

^ Starmer is undoing some of the damage caused by Brexit. Damage that both the Tories and Labour shamefully failed to prevent in the first place.
Johnson, Gove and Farage should have been locked up for fraud. They cheated UK citizens with their lies and deceit.

I fail to understand why people like you, tax, fail to see the obvious.

Dumbest thing the UK ever did..

in these times of dwindling resources, overpopulation, cheap goods from the east and financial problems, every nation is trying to achieve what is best for itself.

in an ideal world, co-operation between countries, eg. the eu, would and should be the answer. but that does not take into account human nature, where patriotism, nationalism, survival, self interest, and seeking an advantage are the rules. its politics.

every country wants a bigger slice of an ever decreasing cake.

i believe that the uk is better off out of europe, making it own way in the world without being subjected to the ever increasing bureaucracy and political in fighting imposed on its members by brussels in its attempts to level the playing fields and impose "fairness" on 27 countries with different cultures, economies, needs and personalities.

the different flavours of diversity, be it racial, religious or sexual and even the diversity of the cultures, economic needs and aspirations of european countries mean that one size can never fit all, the result being disharmony, dissatisfaction and politicisation especially in times of conflict, need and uncertainty.

the brexit vote was won by a narrow margin, which left the country terribly divided, and the advantages offered by independence were not seized upon, thanks to poor governance, objection, confusion ,the appearance of covid, and the intractability of both sides when trying to negotiate the rules of leaving.

starmer, is a weak leader, who spends more time doing his hair than running the country, has always believed in the eu, and now seeks to take us back in. the deal he has arranged will just make us even more subservient to brussels than we were before. it will turn out to be a very expensive mistake with few benefits. i believe we should be in control of our own destiny, and not a bit player in a failing union, increasingly arguing amongst itself, in a continent with a war on its doorstep instigated by a psychopathic madman that could very easily spread westwards.

for so many reasons, this is no time for the uk to get cosy with the eu. trade with it by all means. sell to it and buy from it, exchange knowledge
and make travel easier, of course, but we dont need to sign up to agreements and laws that could hamstring us for years to come.