For the Brits: When will BREXIT referendum happen ?

[sukumvit boy]

Oh , that IS funny.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3783948...-in-charge-of-

[Stavros]

But not new, a Lord Buckethead first ran against Mrs Thatcher in her Finchley constituency in north London in 1987...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Buckethead

[peejaye]

I honestly think Nigel Farage should be involved, why shouldn't he, he started all of this off, may as well have a say in finalising things?

[flabbybody]

But not new, a Lord Buckethead first ran against Mrs Thatcher in her Finchley constituency in north London in 1987...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Buckethead

I love Lord Buckethead's position advocating the legalization of hunting fox hunters

[Stavros]

Brexit negotiations continue, with a fog descending over what has actually been agreed so far. The agenda so far as focused on the Financial Arrangements between the UK and the EU, and the status of EU Citizens in the UK and the EU. Negotiations for the UK are currently led by 'Brexit Bulldog' David Davis, but he may have to give up this role if, as gossip claims, he replaces Theresa May as Prime Minister in the next 6 months, given that Mrs May is a 'dead woman walking' to use an unfortunate phrase.

The sticking point with the financial arrangements is that the EU wants clarity now, whereas the British do not want to agree a final figure until the negotiations end in March 2019. In fact, while Boris Johnson agreed with a militant bank bencher that the EU can 'go whistle' if it thinks the UK will fork out 100 billion Euros, the UK's chief negotiator, 'Brexit Bulldog' David Davis appears to have conceded the principle that the UK will honour its commitments, even if the figure has not been agreed.
In any event, given the UK has a rebate agreement with the EU, 100 billion in net terms after the rebate could be 60 billion, so a smaller gross figure will thus produce a smaller net contribution; most of the hysteria over these figures is being pumped out by the Militant Tendency alarmed at the prospect their leaders are seeking a 'soft' Brexit which will continue to link the UK to the EU.
The arrangements cover the existing commitments that relate to general budgetary plans, but also include, for example, the UK's contributions to EU pensions, offering the cute example of the MEP Nigel Farage boasting about the UK leaving the EU while he gets his EU pension without complaint from the very people he claims to loathe and detest. But just as one can imagine people in the EU complaining about paying his pension, I don't see why UK tax payers should have to pay all of it if the EU agrees that the UK should become liable to the pensions of the UK's EU MEP's and bureaucrats when they leave Brussels and Strasbourg -these are the kind of details that lie in the thicket of EU law which are going to prove difficult to disentangle. There is an interesting article on the finances here-
http://openeurope.org.uk/today/blog/...king-progress/

On EU citizens there are also complex legal problems -the UK could offer dual citizenship to EU nationals living in the EU who lived here before the EU Referendum, but not all the other 27 member states allow dual citizeship so anyone taking UK citizenship will have to give up the one they arrived with -Spain allows dual nationality with some countries, but not the UK, is one example, with more in the link below. The crucial problem may be the UK's insistence that when it leaves the EU the European Court of Justice which rules on EU affairs including the rights of EU citizens, will have no jurisdiction in the UK -but that this connection will not immediately cease with regard to cases before the court that are still being dealt with on the leave date. It is not clear if UK law can protect the rights of EU citizens to their satisfaction if such laws 'repatriated' under the Repeal Bill do not replicate the rights they had before.
https://theconversation.com/european...r-rights-80518

While we do not know how leaving the EU will affect the UK's membership of Euratom, the nuclear body that regulates EU policy on nuclear energy but also the trade in Radio Isotopes used by Radiologists in the health service, we do know that two EU regulatory bodies based in London's Canary Wharf complex, will be re-located out of the UK -these are the European Banking Authority and the European Medicines Authority, both of which employ c1,000 staff in London.
https://www.ft.com/content/72ead180-...1-d5f7e0cd0a16
https://www.ft.com/content/4111197d-...8-04bfb6a9f5ea

I know it can sound tedious, even boring, but the devil always was lurking in the details, and after 40 years of intimacy, we cannot expect a simple exit without complications.

[peejaye]

I'm not sure what's happening but every time I see David Davies on television shaking someone's hand in Brussels ;he appears to be on laughing gas! This makes me nervous.
Let's be honest, it's simple. We are NOT going to get a good deal, right wing "spin" will make out the government have got what they wanted but the intelligent amongst us will know otherwise.

[Stavros]

I'm not sure what's happening but every time I see David Davies on television shaking someone's hand in Brussels ;he appears to be on laughing gas! This makes me nervous.
Let's be honest, it's simple. We are NOT going to get a good deal, right wing "spin" will make out the government have got what they wanted but the intelligent amongst us will know otherwise.

Look at it this way, Peejaye- there are four headline elements to the exit: Sovereignty, Borders & Immigration, Financial freedom, and free trade, the future is not clear on any of them, and it is good or bad depending on whether one wants the UK out of the EU at any cost, or wishes this had never happened.

The Legal argument is that 'Sovereignty' will be repatriated to the UK House of Parliament from Brussels, so the UK will once again 'make its own laws'. In fact Parliament always had the right to veto EU legislation, so it never lost sovereignty in a purely legal sense. Parliament incorporated EU laws and directives into UK law (bearing in mind the differences in the application of the law in England and Wales, and in Scotland and Norther Ireland) as part of its commitment to the EU project, but the EU never had the power to impose a single law on the UK.
But does 'Sovereignty' mean what the Militants think it does? The UK has incorporated UN law because the UN is the primary source of international law, such as the Laws of the Sea, the Laws of War, Public (ie Commercial) Law and so on. I don't hear any calls for the UK to withdraw from the UN, though the UK's presence on the Security Council may be reviewed. And even after the UK leaves the EU you can guarantee the UK will agree to abide by European laws by repatriating EU law into UK law through the Repeal Act, such as agreements on climate change, health and sport to name three.

The claim that leaving the EU will 'restore' control of the borders and reduce immigration is based on the view that once the UK leaves the Single Market, the free movement of EU citizens across the EU and into the UK will end. There is no doubt that the movement as we know it now will end, and that an unknown number, certainly in the thousands, may leave the UK as European agencies leave the UK -mostly London- for other EU cities.
How the fall in the volume of EU labour will affect agriculture and food processing is not known, Tim Lang at the City University believes the govt has not done any forward thinking on this and that the food sector in particular is headed for a crisis in both Labour, and in the regulation of food imports which will shift from being organised through the EU to the Food Standards Agency which has had its budget and staff cut substantially since 2010 so the UK food sector at the moment is not even prepared for an exit from the EU. You can read about this here-
https://www.city.ac.uk/news/2017/jul...paper-tim-lang

The 'Financial Freedom' is the belief that once the UK leaves the EU its financial obligations will end and the UK will be richer for it. To a degree that is true, but as I suggested in the post earlier today, there will be a transitional period during which the UK's payments will gradually get smaller, but in the long term we could be paying for 10 years and we do not yet know if the EU will agree to a trading relationship which brings financial obligations with it. You might say on this the Militants are 'whistling in the wind' in the hope they get what they want. And there is no guarantee any money saved from the EU will be spent on the NHS or any other department, it could be used to draw down the deficit.

The same is true of free trade, with Militants like Liam Fox believing a new era of global trade is upon us and that we will be signing trade deals with the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China and India, though it is not known what they will be, how long it will take to negotiate them, and whether or not they will compensate for the loss of trade with the EU. Indeed, it may be that Davis, May and Chancellor Philip Hammond are concerned that the deals will not match current trade, and are thus looking for ways to remain linked to the EU without being part of either the Single Market or the Customs Union, because trade is regulated by the European Court of Justice. I don't see any way round this conundrum, also a problem for Labour with its mantra of 'tariff-free access to the single market' which is nonsense.

[peejaye]

Yes; It is a complicated issue to deal with and obviously a first for those involved with the negotiations, can't help thinking we're using a sledgehammer to crack a nut though? Think back to the days before the EEC was formed, we seemed to of managed ok back then?

[Stavros]

Yes; It is a complicated issue to deal with and obviously a first for those involved with the negotiations, can't help thinking we're using a sledgehammer to crack a nut though? Think back to the days before the EEC was formed, we seemed to of managed ok back then?

Peejaye, the UK was falling behind the European Economic Community when Edward Heath's Tory government negotiated our entry. I could argue that the history of the British Empire is contiguous with the history of the Honourable East India Company, founded in 1600, and that as a result this country has not 'stood alone' since that year, and is not prepared for it now. For over 400 years Imperial Preference became a fix whereby the British economy benefited from its colonial possessions, of which the greatest irony is that the one they lost through Revolution -British America, subsequently the United States of America- throughout the 19th century became the most important because lucrative trading partner, more financially worthwhile than the 'Jewel in the Crown', ie India.

In 1960, as the Empire was dissolved, the UK was a founder member of the European Free Trade Area, formed to boost the fortunes of the economy as the Empire receded into history, and because France's titanic President, Charles de Gaulle, vetoed the UK's application to join. Nevertheless it is estimated that being a member of the EFTA benefited the UK economy, and there is simply no doubt the UK benefited economically from being in the EEC/EU since 1973 as this FT report shows:
https://www.ft.com/content/202a60c0-...d-09f7778e7377

My own memory is petty but telling, because I like cheese. I recall that even as late as 1977 if I went into the average supermarket, the only foreign cheese on sale was Danish Blue, a failed attempt to emulate Stilton, which has no equal. I had been working in France where I had been introduced to Camembert and Brie, Bleu de Bresse, Chèvre, and Roquefort. The only place you could buy these cheeses in the UK was in the legendary Paxton & Whitfield in Mayfair, London NW3, or Ambleside, owing to the Nuclear Scientists working at Sellafield who lived in the area. I even knew someone who worked in a Deli in NW3 who one day sold me an absurdly delicious Roquefort which I ate in one sitting with a bottle of Vermouth. Pretty wild, what? By 1980 you could buy Brie in Tesco. As for the selection of affordable wine, I could go on for hours about that. I just hope we don't lose a lot of what we gained.

[Stavros]

A bracing article in today's Independent that highlights how unprepared the UK is to leave the EU with all that implies with regard to nuclear energy matters, the 'Open Skies' that governs the right of airlines to be based in the UK and fly to EU members states, and things which have gone unremarked such as

The UK does not have its own capacity to do things like certify maintenance facilities if it leaves the European Aviation Safety Agency. Yes, you heard that right. The UK won’t be able to certify the people that fix the planes. As with so many of these issues, the UK will either have to negotiate to remain in the Agency (which is within the dreaded European Court of Justice’s jurisdiction), or establish its own capacity to replace what it does from a standing start in only 20 months.

Apparently we need experts after all...read more here- bearing in mind it is a biased article
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...-a7858586.html