For the Brits: When will BREXIT referendum happen ?

[Stavros]

SCOREBOARD:
Theresa May's Combined Top Team 3 - 8 Supreme Court XI
Devolved Administrations also lost their match after being kicked into touch. There may not be dancing in the streets of Glasgow/Cardiff tonight..

A spokesperson for the SNP on Radio 4's The World at One said they have 50 amendments to table to the Bill when the government presents it to the Commons later this week. They won't get 50 debated, but it may constitute the only substantial opposition to the Bill given Corbyn has signalled Labour will not oppose it.

[flabbybody]

May is meeting Trump at White House Friday. I'm wondering if she's being politically savvy by laying down with the devil. Will a robust May-Trump relationship add to her prestige at home?
And does anyone know if Farage will be a accompaning her? I'm sure Nigel's been given a free private suite at the Trump hotel so he and POTUS can hang together. I'm sure Trump will insist he's appointed ambassador in exchange for a plum trade deal.

[Stavros]

May is meeting Trump at White House Friday. I'm wondering if she's being politically savvy by laying down with the devil. Will a robust May-Trump relationship add to her prestige at home?
And does anyone know if Farage will be a accompaning her? I'm sure Nigel's been given a free private suite at the Trump hotel so he and POTUS can hang together. I'm sure Trump will insist he's appointed ambassador in exchange for a plum trade deal.

Farage is desperate to be an important man, having finally ceded the leadership of UKIP to others in a party he says is full of 'low-grade people'. Mindful of the fact he is going to lose his 93,000 Euros a year salary (but not his EU pension), the man needs money and the power he has never been able to obtain in the UK. From the start this pompous loser has bragged about his links to Trump, claimed he can be a 'bridge' between the US President and the government of the UK, because like Trump's people Farage sees career diplomats as 'part of the problem' of bureaucratic inefficiency and hostility to change. Energised by the 'can-do' businessman in DC, Farage claims the US is already on the verge of offering the UK a trade deal, even though he knows it would be a violation of EU rules, and knows that May is not going to go solo given the difficulties she will have once Article 50 negotiations start. In any case, Cabinet Ministers have been told not to speak to Farage, who is now some sort of loud mouth on Fox News.

What Theresa May will be most concerned about is the existing trade between the US and the UK compared to trade with the EU. Using figures from 2014 with data from 2015 the UK sells goods and services to the EU worth around £220 billion, it imports from the EU goods and services worth around £290 billion using UK data or £360 billion using EU data
In contrast, the UK exports goods and services to the USA are worth £88 billion, and imports roughly £52 billion. This makes the USA the UK's largest trading partner outside the EU. May will be most concerned to protect UK-US trade but also to register the view that tariff walls would damage both sides, and rather obviously place the UK in a vulnerable position as the UK economy will shrink as Brexit takes hold (sources for figures in the links below).

From this point of view, Trump could make all the usual vacuous noises about the 'special relationship', polish the bust of the Anglo-American bigot and windbag Churchill in his Oval Office, waffle on about his love of the UK (or is it Scotland, a country that doesn't love him), but the bottom line could be a businessman salivating over the prospect of a weakened UK economy desperate for US investments, with the irony that if the UK allows it to happen, the relationship could be even more unequal than the UK-EU relationship is alleged to have been. How this squares with Trump's decree 'Buy American, hire American' is anyone's guess. The Independent put it quite well a few days ago-

A hasty US-UK deal could mean a raft of compromises for Britain, involving a diverse array of industries and rules, from food and farming through to drug production and environmental legislation.
For example, in the UK, standards and regulations in the food industry are tightly controlled. But a free trade deal allowing US food into the UK market would seriously undermine those standards and would throw UK farmers into direct competition with American producers.
Likewise, an amalgamation of UK and US drug markets could mean the current low prices for pharmaceuticals in Britain could come to an end.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7536816.html

Data on trade can be found here-
https://fullfact.org/europe/uk-eu-trade/
http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/gbr/
http://visual.ons.gov.uk/uk-perspect...eu-and-beyond/

[Stavros]

The 'Brexit Bill' has been published -

[flabbybody]

I listened to May's Philadelphia address in my car driving home. It was masterful. She praised "the new emboldened America". Lots of kiss-ass references to Trump and the special historical US-UK relationship.
Can she come home with any concrete trade deal from Trump? No way, but it's all about optics and she checked the required boxes with this speech. She'll be hailed as the next Thatcher when she gets back. Hope she delivers

[flabbybody]

Question for the board.
The PM referred to her county as The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Notthern Ireland. Why does N Ireland get separate mention as opposed to say, Scotland. Is there a Southern Ireland? Are they British?
POTUS might not like the confusion. Most Americans basically call you guys England.

[Stavros]

Question for the board.
The PM referred to her county as The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Notthern Ireland. Why does N Ireland get separate mention as opposed to say, Scotland. Is there a Southern Ireland? Are they British?
POTUS might not like the confusion. Most Americans basically call you guys England.

Great Britain, in geographical terms, is the large island which contains England, Scotland and Wales, but not, for example, the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands. Northern Ireland is therefore not geographically attached to Britain, but as part of the island of Ireland comes within the geographical term, the British Isles, which includes the islands off the coast of mainland Europe that are under the jurisdiction of the UK and the Republic of Ireland. The official name of the state, 'the United Kingdom' dates from 1707 and the Act of Union between England and Scotland (Theresa May is leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party), but in 1801 became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, indeed some Irish historians argue the 'long war' of independence from Britain began as a result of the hostile reaction in Ireland to the merger between the two, the designation ending with Irish independence in 1922.

Consider the difference between America and the United States of America. Literally speaking, a Brazilian, a Canadian and a Colombian could all claim to be American, yet most of the time we think of Americans as being citizens of the USA.

Merging 'English' with the UK is bad form, ask any Scot! And just what is it that Trump loves, Scotland or England? Or rather, if he had to choose...

[Stavros]

I listened to May's Philadelphia address in my car driving home. It was masterful. She praised "the new emboldened America". Lots of kiss-ass references to Trump and the special historical US-UK relationship.
Can she come home with any concrete trade deal from Trump? No way, but it's all about optics and she checked the required boxes with this speech. She'll be hailed as the next Thatcher when she gets back. Hope she delivers

In fact Theresa May only mentioned Trump twice, to acknowledge his victory and to look forward to discussing policy with him. On policies she actually highlighted the differences not just between the UK and the Trump administration but also between the Republican Party and Trump, which is one reason the speech was well received.

For example
--she made a point of endorsing NATO where Trump has questioned it
--she appealed to a shared commitment to an international role in meeting our responsibilities to our friends and allies, champion the international cooperation and partnerships that project our values around the world, and continue to act as one of the strongest and most forceful advocates for business, free markets and free trade anywhere around the globe -where Trump has put 'America First'.
--Where Trump has criticized Globalization and China, May says The rise of the Asian economies – China yes, but democratic allies like India too – is hugely welcome. Billions are being lifted out of poverty and new markets for our industries are opening up.
--Where Trump has a soft position on Russia (the noise is that Trump will lift US sanctions on Russia this weekend) -May is unequivocal: But we should engage with Russia from a position of strength. And we should build the relationships, systems and processes that make cooperation more likely than conflict – and that, particularly after the illegal annexation of Crimea, give assurance to Russia’s neighbouring states that their security is not in question. We should not jeopardise the freedoms that President Reagan and Mrs Thatcher brought to Eastern Europe by accepting President Putin’s claim that it is now in his sphere of influence.
--Where Trump has called the nuclear deal with Iran 'the worst deal in history' May rebukes him with: The nuclear deal with Iran was controversial. But it has neutralised the possibility of the Iranians acquiring nuclear weapons for more than a decade....[it] was vitally important for regional security.
--Where Trump has raised doubts about the USA's commitment to the UN, May says I have encouraged Antonio Guterres, the new UN Secretary General, to pursue an ambitious reform programme, focusing the United Nations on its core functions of peacekeeping, conflict prevention and resolution
--May deals with the contradiction between 'Buy American, Hire American' and a trade deal with the US by arguing the deal must: demonstrate to those who feel locked out and left behind that free markets, free economies and free trade can deliver the brighter future they need. And it can maintain – indeed it can build – support for the rules-based international system on which the stability of our world continues to rely.

Some of the things May said were crowd pleasing, but wrong, but intended to emphasize the British view that there is a 'Special Relationship' which many Americans do not recognize in the same way.

It was evident in the remark on the US-UK partnership being vital in the Cold War, but which by excluding the crucial role of West Germany may have been a subtle dig at Obama who had a warmer relationship with Angela Merkel than David Cameron, but is historically wrong. She was also wrong to claim that only the US and the UK meet the requirement to fund NATO with 2% of GDP as this is also met by Poland, Estonia and Greece. It should also be noted that NATO members like Iceland don't have a standing army and with such a small population 2% of GDP is for them an unrealistic figure -it spends around 0.1% on defence.

May took sides with the US and Israel against the rights the Palestinians have to live independently in the land they have owned and farmed for thousands of years, misleading her audience with references to Israel as a democracy, which it might be in Israel, whereas it is a brutal, and illegal military dictatorship in Occupied Palestine. May did not refer to the 'two-state solution' which has been the basis of US and UK policy since the Oslo Accords of 1993 -the peace signed by Yitzhak Shamir but trashed by Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu- but as the editorial in the Financial Times yesterday (26th January 2017) pointed out Trump is playing a dangerous game by changing policy and allying himself with the violent extremists in Netanyahu's government.

One also notes that May has said Iran's ambitions in the Middle East need to be curtailed, but made not one mention of Saudi Arabia as the GHQ of international terrorism or its savage, unwinnable war in the Yemen.

The point is that May made many positive references to Trump's idol, Ronald Reagan, but did so mostly to draw out the differences between the two men, in terms of both style and content. Whether Trump can match Reagan's diplomacy remains to be seen, but I can't see May and Trump agreeing on a range of issues other than the need for a trade deal, where the anxiety in the UK is that we should not deal with the US at any price, given that our regulations on food and product quality, on health and other aspects of business are superior to the USA.

But again, the hollow bombast of 'Buy American, Hire American' was exposed by Joachim Fels, also in yesterday's FT where he argues it is Europe that is in a better and stronger position on trade than the USA -but does this also mean the UK?- because the Euro is weaker than the dollar making European imports attractive to US consumers, thus:
"Switching demand from foreign goods could work eventually, but in the near term there is not quality and capacity in US manufacturing to fill the gap".

Whether or not the UK can fill that gap, the UK is in a stronger position with a weaker pound, but for how long can the UK take advantage of demand in the US, and will the 'Buy American, Hire American' ever mean anything in real terms? In other words, if there is a deal to be made, who stands to benefit most from it? In the long term, the UK will be weaker outside the EU, and at the moment is desperate for deeper trade ties with the US.

The full text of May's speech can be found here-
http://uk.businessinsider.com/full-t...17-1?r=US&IR=T

[Laphroaig]

Merging 'English' with the UK is bad form, ask any Scot! And just what is it that Trump loves, Scotland or England? Or rather, if he had to choose...

Note I'm going on memory and haven't checked my facts, but I believe that Trump claims Scottish ancestry somewhere in his linage. Of course, we all know that what Trump claims and the actual facts are often two very different things.

However, after his spat with Alex Salmond, a few years ago, over plans to build an offshore windfarm, "spoiling" the views from his golf course in Aberdeenshire, I'm half expecting a US Navy warship to be permanently stationed in the North Sea as a deterent to developments...

[Stavros]

Last night -1st February 2017- the House of Commons voted to begin the process of leaving the EU, giving the Government the authority to invoke Article 50. As pugnacious Laura Kuenssberg -the BBC journalist who rattled Donald Trump in the May-Trump press conference in Washington DC- has put it:

After decades of debate, years of acrimony over the issue in the Conservative Party, months of brutal brinksmanship in Westminster, and hours of debate this week, MPs have just approved the very first step in the process of Britain leaving the European Union.

There are many hurdles ahead, probably thousands of hours of debate here, years of negotiations for Theresa May with our friends and rivals around the EU, as she seeks a deal - and possibly as long as a decade of administrative adjustments, as the country extricates itself from the EU.
On a wet Wednesday, the debate didn't feel epoch-making, but think for a moment about what has just happened.
MPs, most of whom wanted to stay in the EU, have just agreed that we are off.

The full article is here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38830552