The Empire's frontman, Herr Barnier, is reported to be stomping his little boots in frustration at Britain's continued refusal to submit to EU commands. This alone is reasonably positive news. Better still is the initial reception of the UK's paper on a transitional period and the Irish border. This was published after a careful official leaking of the £36bn settlement figure whilst Mrs May was on holiday, making the point that whatever the EU say, the figure is linked to at least a transitional trade deal. So when Herr Verhofstadt went to print declaring the paper 'rubbish' before even reading it, it's fair to think that he was responding to the leaked figure (on which he can't comment) as much as to the UK's eminent reasonableness.
Meanwhile pundits are forecasting a change in the exchange rate wind by the end of the year, with the € unable to maintain its overvalue. A few more fipronil egg scandals (in the UK we put it on cats to stop fleas), a bit of Greece, the termination of a sick Italian bank and a return to €1.30 would shrink that €40bn offer down to £30.7bn, or allow our team to increase their offer to the Herren to €47bn without busting the leaked £36bn figure. Of course if the goes the other way towards parity no loss - it was only a leak.
All in all, I remain cheerful.
17 comments:
The thought of paying £36 billion to them makes me feel pig-sick.
Why should we pay anything? We have a trade deficit with these people.
What is the justification for being reasonable to an outfit that continually threatens you, and what happened to the clean break if necessary and WTO.
Niftily offset by the £40Bn that we are owed back from our input to the ECB.
They owe us!
It depends what we are paying them for
Cap is the best example
We might want to stay in for a year or two to sort our farming subsidy, or lack of.
Us paying them £36bn and them disbursing £36bn to our farmers is fine
Us paying them £40bn and them disbursing £36bn is reasonable
Us paying them £72bn and them disbursing £36bn isn't going to happen.
We might pay a 1 28th of the costs of the EMA going forward to remain a member
We might pay more to keep it in London, more being a gdp weighting, not a double gdp weighting we pay now though.
The UK's coffers used to be the spare wheel on the EU's vehicle towards totalitarianism.
Now that they're about to become become a tricycle, the immigration factor will convert them to a bicycle and the banking crisis to a unicycle.
And someone is already loosening the bolts on the unicycles saddle.
As a vehicle towards self-destruction the EU are doing just fine on their own.
I'm rather inclined to agree with @Poisonedchalice, and I think that doesn't include the amount of money we coughed up for the various bail outs either.
@wiggiatlarge has a point, but being reasonable can only work in our favour, By doing this we are inter alia making the EU look unreasonable, threatening and downright nasty (which they are). Things like that get noticed.
Some might think the government is wasting time in its negotiations with the EU, but it is something I feel we have to go through. We may come away with absolutely no agreements on anything whatsoever, that sort of outcome will make the EU look bad.
There is one thing to bear in mind. Remember that Herr Juncker declared whilst in Downing Street that "Brexit could not be a success" That comment alone tells you the entire EU negotiating position. They are making the same mistake they made when Cameron tried his "re-negotiation" back in early 2016, and look how that turned out!
I would have thought that Monsieur Barnier might have learned something from reading Talleyrand who said of the Bourbons that "They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing"
Some things just never change.
Rapscallion - Monsieur Barnier? They're all Herr or Frau in my book ...
Radders - I take your point, and given the overbearing attitude of the French as well as the Germans, either is valid. Nevertheless his origins are French, so I felt it correct to give him the proper title, but hey, your blog, your rules :-)
If we are talking about boot-stamping & heel-clicking, shouldn't we be talking about the Dump?
Much as we might not like it, Barnier is mostly correct, as today's fiasco over the Irish border shows.
Brexit IS NOT GOING TO WORK
Except by Brit unemployment going to 15%
I was a very unhappy only-just-about-remain voter, but I never imagined it would get this bad, and there's another, what 18 months to go, or even change our minds, as the general election showed ( In entirely the wrong direction, incidentally )
Re: Irish Border
Have the EU any idea what they are signing up for? The UK says that if there is a hard border it will be the EU that imposes it and the EU that polices it. Can you imagine these fatheads trying to police Armagh?
@G.Tingey
You must have lived a very sheltered life.
Piss off again Tingey.
Remain sell-out AND atheistic dickhead.
Keep your cowardly crap to depress yourself with.
If money upsets you remember what TIS said in magnificent jest on Tim Worstall's blog "If we'd surrendered after Dunkirk we'd have saved ourselves an absolute fortune."
Sorry to 0/t.
I am on holiday so have only just seen your excellent post on the USA.
The BBC is out of control in this one.
The story has flared up again today with left wing msm getting itself all upset because Trump thinks tooled up lefties are almost as bad as tooled up righties.
The BBC's coverage today, three days on, is no less simplistic than it was.
Their " North America correspondent" is even less interested in balance than the main office. He is incredulous that Trump could say anything favourable about General Lee.
" a general who led forces attacking the elected government and military of the United States in the 1860s."
Perhaps Mr Zucher of the BBC is unaware that the elected leader in the 1860s, and commander in chief of all American armies, president Abraham Lincoln, offered the post of commander of all union armies to a certain, Robert E Lee of Virginia.
A request the non slave holding General Lee considered. But rejected when Virginia voted to leave the union.
It's a complex business, us civil war and slavery history.
And something the BBC has no interest in examining.
(Mr Zucher would probably have an attack of the vapours if it was pointed out to him that Lincoln was a Republican. The slavers were all Democrats.)
The EU's negotiating position is so rigid you could tie HMS Queen Elizabeth to it and know that it would still be there tomorrow.
The blast I'm getting out of this is New Old Labour's inability to understand that international trade and international socialism are not the same. The locked-in mentality that is socialism precludes any free trade thinking.
The EU is socialist project and that's why it will fail. They haven't a clue about how complex humanity can be and therefore their answers are always childish, because they think like children. Hilarious.
Steve
Mr Ecks
So, I'm an atheist - TOTALLY IRRELEVANT to the subject under discussion, so it's you who are the "dickhead"
Anon
Actually - correct.
All the EU has to do is sit on it's hands, because our guvmint is so mean & spiteful it won't guarfantee the security of tenure of other EU people already here.
How bad is that?
Why can't they simply say "Reciprocity of Security of residence" & fucking get on with it.
As for Labour, you have to realise that fuckwit Corbyn is a "Leaver", whereas the right wing of that party are Remainers.
Corbyn wants us out BECAUSE our trade will crash & unemployment soar - I'm sure you can work out why that might be?
You are a fantasist Tingey--as ever. And a supporter of international corporate socialist tyranny as your love for the thieving , dictatorial and arrogant trash of the EU shows very clearly.
You also have never hesitated to bring your atheistic tripe up as a point in all sorts of debates where it was absolutely irrelevant
Very much the case
It wont be UK border staff stopping irish horses entering, Itll be EU border staff stopping them going back, and then getting murdered.
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