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Notice how differently you've framed the two sides' complete unwillingness to budge - the EU magnanimously "offered the best they can" whilst the UK had "negoti

by makomk 7y ago

Notice how differently you've framed the two sides' complete unwillingness to budge - the EU magnanimously "offered the best they can" whilst the UK had "negotiation red-lines" they're stubbonly refusing to budge on. In reality, they're both the same thing - both sides have lines they're unwilling to cross based on their own interests and what actually stands a chance of passing. It's just that the press has spent the last few years spinning the EU negotiating position as some kind of blameless, inevitable natural law and the UK negotiating postion as a fallable human delusion.

starfallg 7y ago
Complete tosh. The issue isn't the redlines per se, the issue is that the UK redlines are completely contradictory to logic. We cannot keep NI borderless with RoI and the UK borderless with NI, while at the same time pursuing our own regulatory and customs regime, without massive problems in both governance and enforcement. It's just not possible logically, and efforts to paint it as a 'both sides' problem is completely dishonest.
jashmatthews 7y ago
What realistic concessions could the EU offer? No possible offer could get through the current UK parliament while we're so dysfunctional.
- makomk 7y ago
  Realistically, I don't think the EU is going to offer any concessions that would solve the problems that parliament has with it, but that doesn't mean the problems aren't real. In particular, the current offer trashes the part of the Good Friday Agreement which the government's current coalition partner cares about by eroding Northern Ireland's status as part of the UK, and the backstop tramples on the constitutional requirement that no parliament may bind its successor by tying us to the EU until they permit us to leave. The EU seems to think that the Good Friday Agreement consists of only the parts which help them, and the only way out of the backstop problem was to make the GFA problem much worse. We can't just solve this by deciding the EU is impossible to leave and giving up either, because again there's that pesky bit in the constitution about parliaments not being able to bind their successors. Whilst we have other international commitments about stuff like war crimes which could technically be argued to violate this, irrevocably transferring the power to create laws across many areas to a foreign body goes right to the core of what it's meant to prevent. Clever arguments about how we could technically leave, it's just not possible in practice don't solve this - our constitution is based on principles, it's not computer code where if you find a way around the literal rules you can get through.
  - addicted 7y ago
    The backstop extending to the UK was a UK requirement. And the backstop bonds the hands of a future parliament as much as any international agreement does. That’s a completely ridiculous argument. The backstop isn’t magically more powerful than any other treaty a country may sign and have their parliaments approve.
    - makomk 7y ago
      The backstop extending to the UK was something Theresa May came up with as a compromise to reduce the problems with the Good Friday Agreement and hopefully make it more acceptable to the DUP than what the EU came up with originally. Which is why, as I said, we could've avoided it but only at the cost of making that other problem worse. It also ended Theresa May's career and lead to the most spectacular rejection of a key government bill by Parliament in its entire history. Also, most of the international agreements the UK has signed up to are unilaterally revokable - unlike the backstop - for pretty much that reason. There's a few exceptions, but the ones I've seen Brexit opponents cite are things like war crimes restrictions, not giving up control over most of out domestic laws. Americans should also bear in mind that the rule against parliaments binding their successors is the only protection against (say) a party voting to transfer law-making power to a body they think will be more pro-business than the opposition. There's no requirement for a supermajority or a referendum, as would be required to amend your country's constitution. (In fact we don't even have a codified constitution that can be amended!) Our joining the EU scraped through the House of Commons with a 50.7% majority basically on the whim of one party.
      - jashmatthews 7y ago
        Doesn’t the GFA itself have no exit clause?
addicted 7y ago
This is a complete moscharacterization of what happened. The elected representatives of the EU and the UK agreed to a deal. A deal in which the EU compromised a lot (the backstop applying to the entire UK was a UK demand, insisted upon by May to retain DUP support). That agreed upon deal was then ratified by the EU parliament, but rejected by the UK parliament. Considering the UK is the party that is rejecting the deal, one would imagine they would be the ones responsible for at the very least stating what they want. But they cannot do that because there is no version of Brexit that has majority support. If they move in one direction away from the deal, they lose left wing votes while gaining fewer right wing votes. If they move in the other direction, they gain a few right wing votes, while losing more left wing votes. That’s why the UK has constantly insisted the EU compromise, without ever explaining what that compromise should look like (other than, no backstop, which then raises the impossible desire to both maintain an open border between Ireland and NI, while the UK insists on controlling its borders and having a different customs regime on one side of that border). It’s stupid, and the UK’spoliticians are entirely at fault here. The EU has been compromising to a fault, honestly. They should have listened to Macron and not extended the deadline. At least you wouldn’t have an incompetent lying charlatan leading the UK during Brexit. You’d only have an incompetent leading the UK.
- makomk 7y ago
  You sure about that? As far as I know the European Parliament never actually ratified the deal. They'd cannily scheduled their vote after the UK parliament's vote and last I'd heard they hadn't bothered going ahead with the vote after the UK rejected it, though that may have changed. It's possible that the EU parliament would've rejected it. Perhaps unlikely, as we saw with the copyright directive it's pretty hard to convince them to ever block something, but it's certainly possible - especially when it involves something that's so different from what the EU normally does.

by makomk 7y ago

starfallg 7y ago

Complete tosh. The issue isn't the redlines per se, the issue is that the UK redlines are completely contradictory to logic. We cannot keep NI borderless with RoI and the UK borderless with NI, while at the same time pursuing our own regulatory and customs regime, without massive problems in both governance and enforcement. It's just not possible logically, and efforts to paint it as a 'both sides' problem is completely dishonest.

jashmatthews 7y ago

What realistic concessions could the EU offer? No possible offer could get through the current UK parliament while we're so dysfunctional.

makomk 7y ago
Realistically, I don't think the EU is going to offer any concessions that would solve the problems that parliament has with it, but that doesn't mean the problems aren't real. In particular, the current offer trashes the part of the Good Friday Agreement which the government's current coalition partner cares about by eroding Northern Ireland's status as part of the UK, and the backstop tramples on the constitutional requirement that no parliament may bind its successor by tying us to the EU until they permit us to leave. The EU seems to think that the Good Friday Agreement consists of only the parts which help them, and the only way out of the backstop problem was to make the GFA problem much worse. We can't just solve this by deciding the EU is impossible to leave and giving up either, because again there's that pesky bit in the constitution about parliaments not being able to bind their successors. Whilst we have other international commitments about stuff like war crimes which could technically be argued to violate this, irrevocably transferring the power to create laws across many areas to a foreign body goes right to the core of what it's meant to prevent. Clever arguments about how we could technically leave, it's just not possible in practice don't solve this - our constitution is based on principles, it's not computer code where if you find a way around the literal rules you can get through.
- addicted 7y ago
  The backstop extending to the UK was a UK requirement. And the backstop bonds the hands of a future parliament as much as any international agreement does. That’s a completely ridiculous argument. The backstop isn’t magically more powerful than any other treaty a country may sign and have their parliaments approve.
  - makomk 7y ago
    The backstop extending to the UK was something Theresa May came up with as a compromise to reduce the problems with the Good Friday Agreement and hopefully make it more acceptable to the DUP than what the EU came up with originally. Which is why, as I said, we could've avoided it but only at the cost of making that other problem worse. It also ended Theresa May's career and lead to the most spectacular rejection of a key government bill by Parliament in its entire history. Also, most of the international agreements the UK has signed up to are unilaterally revokable - unlike the backstop - for pretty much that reason. There's a few exceptions, but the ones I've seen Brexit opponents cite are things like war crimes restrictions, not giving up control over most of out domestic laws. Americans should also bear in mind that the rule against parliaments binding their successors is the only protection against (say) a party voting to transfer law-making power to a body they think will be more pro-business than the opposition. There's no requirement for a supermajority or a referendum, as would be required to amend your country's constitution. (In fact we don't even have a codified constitution that can be amended!) Our joining the EU scraped through the House of Commons with a 50.7% majority basically on the whim of one party.
    - jashmatthews 7y ago
      Doesn’t the GFA itself have no exit clause?

addicted 7y ago

This is a complete moscharacterization of what happened. The elected representatives of the EU and the UK agreed to a deal. A deal in which the EU compromised a lot (the backstop applying to the entire UK was a UK demand, insisted upon by May to retain DUP support). That agreed upon deal was then ratified by the EU parliament, but rejected by the UK parliament. Considering the UK is the party that is rejecting the deal, one would imagine they would be the ones responsible for at the very least stating what they want. But they cannot do that because there is no version of Brexit that has majority support. If they move in one direction away from the deal, they lose left wing votes while gaining fewer right wing votes. If they move in the other direction, they gain a few right wing votes, while losing more left wing votes. That’s why the UK has constantly insisted the EU compromise, without ever explaining what that compromise should look like (other than, no backstop, which then raises the impossible desire to both maintain an open border between Ireland and NI, while the UK insists on controlling its borders and having a different customs regime on one side of that border). It’s stupid, and the UK’spoliticians are entirely at fault here. The EU has been compromising to a fault, honestly. They should have listened to Macron and not extended the deadline. At least you wouldn’t have an incompetent lying charlatan leading the UK during Brexit. You’d only have an incompetent leading the UK.

makomk 7y ago
You sure about that? As far as I know the European Parliament never actually ratified the deal. They'd cannily scheduled their vote after the UK parliament's vote and last I'd heard they hadn't bothered going ahead with the vote after the UK rejected it, though that may have changed. It's possible that the EU parliament would've rejected it. Perhaps unlikely, as we saw with the copyright directive it's pretty hard to convince them to ever block something, but it's certainly possible - especially when it involves something that's so different from what the EU normally does.