For the Brits: When will BREXIT referendum happen ?

[Stavros]

Does anyone remember Brexit? I feel almost embarrassed to read my posts above, but whatever the process has been frozen because the negotiations which were supposed to begin in March have obviousy not happened. It remains to be seen if as a result the EU and the UK can negotiate even an interim trade deal by December 2020.

In the meantime, if anyone wants to read the full Report by the Labour Party into anti-semitism and how it did not handle it, complete with uncensored insults by party officials directed at the leadership, the full report of over 800 pages is here-

https://www.docdroid.net/vUujX67/200...t-finalpdf-pdf

[Jericho]

A bit more than insults.
And not just by party 'officials'.

[Stavros]

The negotiations on the trade deal due to be signed in December are at an impasse. No doubt Covid 19 has been a road block, but so too have the positions taken by both sides, in which it appears, the UK in the negotiations wants all the benefits of membership with none of the responsibilities, thus Michel Barnier has stated:

“Every time we meet they say they would be happy to have a Canada-style agreement, but at the same time ... they ask for far more from us than is available under the Canadian model,” Barnier said, citing the UK’s desire for “virtually full freedom of movement” for short visits, maintenance of “existing arrangements” on electricity interconnection, as well as “broad and widespread” recognition of professional qualifications to enable British lawyers, accountants and auditors to work in the EU.
“We are not going to bargain away our European values to the benefit of the British economy,” Barnier said. “Economic and trading fair play is not for sale. It is not ‘a nice to have’, it is ‘a must have’.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...d-in-stalemate

If these negotiations cannot move on, is the UK heading towards a No Deal exit? The militants, who still claim the UK can, indeed must leave the EU without any of the 'Canada' style arrangements, are now looking at Boris Johnson, worried perhaps that he may seek an extension to the negotiations, arguing that Covid 19 was an unexpected intrusion and that not even a 'bare bones' agreement can be reached over the summer in time for a December signature.

It looks to me like Boris Johnson has lost his sparkle. I don't know if it is the baby keeping him awake at early hours, or the physical toll of his encounter with Covid 19 -which was also an encouner with Death-but I wonder, is Boris about to rock his party with an amendment to the law, or is he going to take the UK out of the EU without a trade deal when Global Trade is in recession?

It was supposed to be our Brave New World. Lord of the Flies might be a better model.

[Stavros]

Andrew Rawnsley has written an interesting article on the troubled negotiations between the UK and the EU on the trade agreement that is supposed to be signed in December, to mark the formal end of the transition period, and the beginning of the UK's 'independence'- he notes the fact that because the UK has remained in the Single Market and the Customs Union, it has meant that supplies of food and other goods have continued to flow into the UK, as traders and hauliers are exempt from isolation guidelines, just as they are exempt from the 14-day quarantine regulations about to be imposed on arrivals from outsde the UK.

Johnson is also now considering bringing forward the relaxation on the ban on pubs and restaurants opening, terrified that if the hospitality industry is not 'released from lockdown' now, 3.5 million are set to lose their jobs- though I don't think the breaking of physical distancing guidelines by Black Lives Matter demonstrators has been a factor.

The question is, if the UK leaves without a deal, will this not plunge the UK into a worse recessions than the one we are moving into? Johnson seems so committed to 'gettiing Brexit done' it may not be possible for him to compromise any more, but we shall see.

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...amitous-brexit

see also
https://in.reuters.com/article/healt...-idINKBN23E029

[Stavros]

It is not looking good unless Boris is going to pull some rabbits out of the hat at the last minute -either he undermines his postion by accepting compromises, or he goes for broke.

"Every stage of the UK’s uncoupling from the EU has been mapped out by treaty, including the expiry of transitional arrangements at the end of this year. By then, a free trade deal is supposed to have been negotiated and ratified. That is getting harder with each passing week. The impediment is British reluctance to recognise what is realistically available, or understand the imbalances of power in negotiations between a lone country and a continental trading bloc. In June, the prime minister said he could see no reason why broad agreement might not be reached in July. But there was a reason, and he was it. Mr Johnson has not paid close attention, made choices or given his negotiators bandwidth for compromise.
The UK still demands pristine sovereignty, with no obligation to align its standards with EU markets, plus a right to subsidise domestic industries to a degree not permitted under Brussels rules. The EU will not grant privileged market access on those terms, because doing so would undermine its own industries. Eurosceptic hardliners say they would prefer no deal to any obligation to match continental standards.
Whether that is a bluff or not is a question that interests EU leaders less and less. They have other things to do. At the instigation of Germany, Brexit has been dropped from the agenda of a top-level European meeting next week on the grounds that there is nothing new to discuss. Mr Johnson knows what the options are – they range from close integration to something more distant, with tariffs and quotas – and he must choose.
But he doesn’t. Instead, the government still treats Brexit in the most superficial manner, as if the performance of readiness counts as the real thing. A report that Tony Abbott, a former Australian prime minister, might take on a senior trade advisory role is a case in point. Setting aside Mr Abbott’s notoriously rebarbative character, the appointment would be consistent with the myth, common among Brexit supporters, that trade deals are conjured into being by swaggering personalities.
The reality is that good outcomes in a trade deal are achieved by the application of time, attention to detail, experienced negotiators and a rational appraisal of the other side’s interests. The UK government is deficient on all those metrics."
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...hnsons-nemesis

[Jericho]

Nice to see we're taking charge of our own borders...And turning the 'Garden of England' into a truck-stop!

[Stavros]

Nice to see we're taking charge of our own borders...And turning the 'Garden of England' into a truck-stop!

Kent today, Wales tomorrrow. "Show me your papers..." (and they won't mean Rizla).

[Jericho]

Kent today, Wales tomorrow. "Show me your papers..." (and they won't mean Rizla).

Rizla?
We'll have none of that French froggery in patriotic brexit Britain, thank you kindly!

Right, I'm off to shag a flag and complain about a necklace!

[Stavros]

As deadlines for a conclusion to the trade deal with the EU come and go, but can't go on for much longer, the drama that has convulsed Dowing St for the past few days shoud really be seen in the context of Brexit, given that the chidish rages and accusations of the Prime Minister, his immiment wife, the special advisers and the new Press team are just what is expected from an incompetent manager and the aggressive take-no-prisoner Leave heroes who have been or had been Johnson's Myrmidons.

The fear among the Leave fanatics in the House of Commons is that the PM who has not been around much to talk to them, is now surrounded by women, and women who are lukewarm on his precious Brexit project. Given that some compromises will be required if the UK is to end the transition out of the EU on January 1st with a deal, the anxiety among the fanatics is that he will give away so much the UK will still retain too many links to the EU to valdate their understanding of what Brexit is.

On cue this week, and perhaps in a personal lament for his departing idol in DC, Nigel Farage has formed a new party, The Reform Party that he hopes will challenge Johnsn and his Government on Brexit, and maybe stand against Conservative councillors in the local elections next May. Sme of us had hoped this perennial loser would emigrate to the US to get closer to his Billionaire buddy, but that career doesn't seem to be going anywhere, unless the'King of Europe' can get a talkshow on TrumpTV, if it happens.

But it is a fascinating example of how politics can go wrong so quickly -just less than a year ago, Johnson was the Tory hero with an 80-seat majority. Since then, he has lost a lot of the goodwill he had in December 2019, in part because of his atrocious hadling of Covid-19, and in part because the very man who led the Brexit campaign in 2016 is now seen to be a liability in delivering it, unless he decides to go for broke and not sign a trade deal at all.

One of the ironies of the anxiety expressed by some Leave MPs, is that his wife-to-be, Carrie Symonds, who some claim texted him on WhatsApp 25 times an hour when he was in the Commons a few weeks ago and being humiliated by Ed Miliband, and is ridiculed in other places as 'Princess Nuts Nuts', was the head of communications for the Conservative Party -when Theresa May was Prime Mnister, the woman Johnson spent a year stabbing in the back to get her job. Last week when May stood up to reply to Johnson's address on the new lockdown measures, he not only left the chamber before she had finished her first sentence, he demonstrated his contempt for a former Prime Minister, by walking the length of the Commons floor, rather than making a quick one by the Speaker's chair. I wonder what Carrie made of that?

In other words, there is a problem, a whole host of problems, summed up in two words: Boris Johnson.

If you are interested, you can read about the Battle of Downing St here-
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...downing-street

[sukumvit boy]

OK ,I know I'm about to demonstrate my hopeless American ignorance of British politics but I was watching the news the other night on PBS and with a "hard exit" looming just weeks away and with the forecasts of the expected economic downturn resulting from a hard exit on top of the economic devastation already resulting from Covid-19 why don't you just call the whole thing off? They showed the results of a recent poll that indicated that 57% of Brits wanted to remain in the EU .
Can't someone just give me a short answer.
"You're a stupid arse", doesn't count.