Labour’s u-turn on supporting the Brexit Referendum result.

So we've spent 43 years being part of the EU, which means that a significant part of the legislation and institutions we either proposed or at least agreed with. Now we want to leave and pretend, it seems, that we never had 43 years of input.

born that's really perceptive. The formatting kinda detracts from the substantive point.

Maths, if you wrong, no one at a negotiation where both sides want something lays out all the card for the other side to see while the other keeps things on hold.
We want to know what we are bring asked to pay, not just what for, it really is being asked for a blank cheque right now as the EU also have no idea how much it as, as they know the amounts can differ.
How can we talk about a Bill when the trade deals will alter the amounts. and the different funds they want money for, `have elements that are nothing to do with us, their going to have a blacklash from all the 27 countries over bits that a particular country can't live with, so what will they give us a refund or demand MORE cash to sort something they forgot about...
Get real, there will be no deal, and then it will be a case of talking trade and bills at the same time, something we should be doing right now.

On threads like this, where the discussion attracts posters who also post on similar threads, one recognises names. After a while one gets to know the named posters, in the sense that one picks up snippets of information about their backgrounds, occupations and family - and one gets a "sense" of them as a person, even an idea (probably wrong!) of what they look like. They include both Remainers and Leavers.
However, there are those who I certainly can't get a "handle" on at all. They are those like the OP, who post reams and reams, are heavy on the formatting and who seem to have a distinct style of argument which has been described well on here, better than I can do. My mental image of them is a cartoon or caricature, not a real person. So though they might be real people, I am sceptical of their authenticity as simply Mumsnetters with an interest in politics and a point of view.

I would just like to know what the government's negotiating positions will be. I think tm, dd let alone any other member of tories don't have any clue what is happening even at this moment. I'm starting to think they're just flipflopping around until everybody's given up on brexit completely.

Math, you know its bad form to chase posters round threads.

Nobody forces anyone to read long posts. Swipe on by. Id still defend Theas right to post, whichever style or manner she chooses. Were not quite at entry level testing of language being a requirement here at MN.....despite protests.

I dont have a problem reading them and seeking out the pertinent points. Some do. Thats fine.

This principle, that DD repeated this week, is still being lost on some.

‘We are a country that meets its international obligations and will continue to do so but those obligations have to be well specified and they have to be real. The Commission has set out its position and we have a duty to our taxpayers to interrogate it rigorously.’

DD is not refering to leave voting tax payers. He refers to all tax payers. That is first and foremost what our government are tasked to do. We agree to pay a tax and to live under laws to ensure a civil society. We created a government to 'manage' our governance, and they then govern at the request of the people, not despite them.

DD is absolutely right taking the position he has, and indeed has been far more diplomatic than we are, by not pointing out the EUs position hasnt actually specified anything in value terms. Im sure theyll get round to it. What is clear, is as many have pointed out for decades, these are not business men running the EU, theyre politicians. They see a 'win' as gaining agreement for a pension donation for example, even if that donation is then £50.

Back to labour, so Tom Watsons ploughed in this week........ JC is surprisingly quiet. Are his followers desperately waiting for leadership? If so, as the unions have tabled further changes to labour party leadership rules for the upcoming conference, are the unions indeed getting behind a firm, no freedom of movement position, but behind Tom Watsons eternal access to the SM ? Does anyone want to quietly point out the EUs position on this?

Indeed, will Labour have finally decided what their position is going to be by March 2019 (though it may have been prudent to have thought about all this prior to the referendum LOL) or is it heading the way it looks, and theyll still be bickering years after we've left?

Thea When I first started posting I was basically told by several no-doubt ‘elite’ Mumsnet posters that I could not string a sentence together, am I English, my poor granma? was shit, all trying to discredit both my input and views – I assume the next step up of my Mumsnet ‘right of centre passage’ – is to be told I am now ruining the board with pesky facts.

Nope - it was more like begging you to post with proper syntax and grammar the better to understand your views.

As I remarked before to you, life is too short to waste so much time picking through your passages for whatever point may buried in there.

Nice jab with the word 'elite'.

It was interesting to see you take such umbrage at the suggestion that English is not your first language. The suggestion that English is not your first language is not an insult. Why would the implication of foreignness be such a dreadful slight?

their determination to interfere in the Irish border problem, which is none of their business

Priceless piece of idiocy there.

You told me that the phrase was lifted by me from something you had read (or seen) recently, implying very strongly that you did not know it was a common phrase and/or that you had never come across it before.

I don't watch BBC News so I will have to take your word for it that someone or other may have stated views similar to mine.

It wouldn't occur to you that more than one person could hold the same common sense opinion, I suppose.

I did address your silly comment on Labour with my remark that engaging in petty party political gamesmanship at this point in time is akin to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Negotiation is a collaborative process, Mummy.
It's not a case of blindsiding your 'opposition' with some brilliant move that will make them fall on the floor and run to their mothers sobbing, 'We give up!'

if Davis published everything they thought then they have nothing to use to gain a better deal.
You see some cleverness and cunning on the part of the UK in overt antagonism here, and its failure to be forthright about what it wants, or how it proposes to solve the issues that are being discussed. The rest of the world sees a government that is clueless, and the sight is appalling.

Because I want to read it as I am nosy, but in reality I realsied that if Davis published everything they thought then they have nothing to use to gain a better deal.

I do think the EU are using the holidays as time waster, as once the EU Parliament are back do you really not thing the MEP's won't have some say on what is happening. We can't agree a deal on how much we pay then have countries wanting things written into the deal that might cost us only for the EU to say the Bill is fixed but we want 50% of your fishing rights for nothing.
There has to be give as well as take, but EU are all take right now.

If there is any secrecy about this, then it's on the UK side. Why not write to your MP, or consider a request for information under the FOI act?

We the public have not seen them, so don't know if they are included.
Seems there was a 3 hour reply by UK about the EU bill.
Wish it had been made public.

where are the assets, the wine, the fixtures and fittings, the buildings, the other things the EU parliament own, should we not have a share of the good as well as the bad?

If the UK wants these things to be included in the financial settlement, then they need to be included in a document that clearly sets out its negotiating position. Are they?

I never said I had not heard the phrase before.
It was on the BBC News and you seem to have taken rather a lot of what was said from the whole interview, DUP comments as well.
Which you still won't agree about, as usual you take one phrase from my comments and fixate on that, funny you didn't choose the DUP and Labour bit... wonder why!

From another thread - I am most interested in the interview you watched, Mummy. The one from which I lifted the well known phrase 'rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic' that you have apparently never come across before...

Who was it being interviewed?

I read this last time you posted it.
It lists all the Liabilities of The EU.
But not how much of each we should be taking.
Also no Assets listed.

Since we will be out of the EU why do we have to pay all the Agency Bills?
Investment and Developement funds. These should be EU liabilities not UK once we leave.

As said where are the assets, the wine, the fixtures and fittings, the buildings, the other things the EU parliament own, should we not have a share of the good as well as the bad?

If there was a defined legal basis for calculating the financial settlement, there would be no need for negotiation.

You can read it all you like Misti, theres no legal basis for it whatsoever.

The EU's view on the financial settlement is here:

ec.europa.eu/commission/publications/position-paper-essential-principles-financial-settlement_en

Published in June. You've had nearly three months to read it.

This is funny.

"the aim of this stage of the negotiations is to establish what liabilities can reasonably/ legally be attributed to the UK"

AKA, Dear UK, We havent a clue so could you tell us? Love EU. (PS We pay Neil Kinnock 90,000 a year in his EU pension as well as Mandelson, Blair etc etc can they be on your team please?
As well as securing their pensions, they did swear an oath of loyalty to us by the way, that if youve forgotten, does specifically superseded any oath of loyalty to the British people. Just saying. Love EU)

You are confused.

The EU wrote a position paper. This is the starting point for negotiation, not the end point.

Misti, they gave us that list of what Liabilities were.
What they have not said is how it is to be interpreted.
Do we pay via how much we pay into the budget.
As 1/28 of the total.
By landmass?
Or on how many people live in the country as a percentage of total EU citizens.
They need to tell us how much of the debt belongs to us in detail.
As the EU produce the accounts not us.

In my experience (of working for a large European company) businesses and business people who do business within the EU want to remain in the single market. A FTA would very much be second best, and WTO potentially disastrous.

I think there is still (rightly or wrongly) a sense among business people that if forced to choose between WTO terms and remaining, the UK will step back from the brink. I suspect that this explains why many businesses have (so far) been rather reluctant to take concrete steps to address the problems that will be created by brexit, although companies are now starting to make decisions.

mummy2017 the aim of this stage of the negotiations is to establish what liabilities can reasonably/ legally be attributed to the UK upon leaving. Once the framework has been negotiated, then a sum can be calculated.

What was the comment today, how can you name a price when you don't know what your paying for.
This now seems to be the theme the negotiations are going, show us legally what we are paying for.
I bet the EU are hoping mad that instead of making us just pour more money into the EU we are asking for clarification of what we need to pay, how much and when.

They thought they could bully us, but it's not going to happen, and they are forecast to see their share of World Trade full over the next 10 years, so do you really think losing your 4th biggest trade partner is clever or stupid.
Who would want to lose that much trade, and do you really think business in the EU are not trying to twist arms.