Please can someone explain? Will we pay if we leave EU without a deal?

"It’s amazing. I have not had a single rational and fact-based conversation with a Brexit supporter to date."

It may be "amazing" to you but I'm not surprised. For a start, serious and rational Brexit supporters (me included) just don't have the time to waste in conversing with someone who believes that facts could change - talking about "fact-based". The same as I am not attempting to teach my dog algebra anytime soon, if ever. We've got far better things to do!

Get yourself a job!

Get a life!

It's exactly that, a cult, an evangelical religion. And we all know the role religion had in controlling the masses, the promotion of ignorance to thwart questioning of doctrine or whatever the demagogue of the time was doing. This promotion of the dislike and mistrust of experts ties in with that.

I get the feeling you'll be waiting a long time for those rational explanations. Are you sitting comfortably with some ?

@Melassa

Cultism or tribalism is the way Americans are explaining how the Trump base still supports him. It feels similar here: anything that endangers the sense of belonging to the Brexit tribe or cult generates a strongly adverse and emotive reaction.

So the reactions cannot be rational for those tribe members.

I’m told Boris hymns the national anthem and cups his ears when brought bad news on Brexit until the bearer of bad news leaves. Case in point?

But I’m still hopeful to have it explained to me, to have missed the aha and understand the advantages.

Agree Olivia, it's amazing how the soundbite kings and queens melt away when asked to explain their posts. The random links, the incoherent word soup, the contempt for any actual knowledge or facts, the offence at anyone explaining the bloody obvious as being "rude" or "smug".

I wonder what a Russian Brexit bot earns? There's at least one who is on here all day and every day, pasting links and starting threads full of fallacies.

It’s amazing. I have not had a single rational and fact-based conversation with a Brexit supporter to date.

The discussion moves all too quickly to am emotive state and is devoid of fact or analysis.

I’m still hopeful.

I know, but you still get the Russian Brexit bots simply repeating lies ad infinitum, and the head-in-the-sand brigade not questioning the simple lack of logic.

@CardinalSin

Interesting thread I found on twitter ... Doesn't look good. Or rather, looks more like a reversal of this Brexit mess will happen. I don't see another way to get out of this. The public is going to catch on and get v nervous. Even the DM and Telegraph are now getting worried, esp with the latest Govt scandals with Boris, Patel, Fallon, 58 sector reports.

Someone remind me: farmers voted to Leave the EU right? In order to get tariffs imposed on their exports and lose EU subsidies ... Good move I guess.

Note: the reference to trade talks is wrong. There can be no trade talks until the UK leaves the EU. This is because the EU cannot negotiate with an existing member state. So the UK govt has misunderstood the timeline: it is physically impossible to sign an FTA before we leave the EU. We also cannot negotiate one. But we can discuss the outlines of one - ie what do we want - and discuss other non-trade related matters (nuclear, aviation, fin services) as well as regulatory alignment ...

All: if this proceeds, this is going to take ten years.

Back from meetings in Brussels. There's good news and bad news. First, the bad news. Because it's... extremely bad. 1/

2/ While consensus in London seems to assume trade talks kick off in December, senior EU officials now consider this, on balance, unlikely

3/ Brussels monitors UK media & ministers' statements - they can see PM has been backtracking since Florence - ie backtracking to cliff-edge

4/ Behind the scenes, also evidence that UK has reneged on guarantees for citizens that it initially signalled it would make. Really bad.

5/ As for money, if May insists she can't make any further commitments, EU will not trigger trade talks in December. It's that simple.

6/ EU went as far as it could in Oct. Nobody's asking for precise figure, just specific commitments. €60bn the ballpark figure.

7/ UK Government knows all this, incidentally. They're in denial about it. But what happens if they test EU anyway?

8/ If no agreement in Dec, next opportunity to kick-start talks is in March. That leaves 7 months to agree deal. They can't, and won't.

9/ All of this means, we're heading for crisis (and economic shock) very soon - December or January - unless UK comes to its senses.

10/ EU fears May, when rebuffed in Dec through her instransigence, will retreat to comforting insanity of Redwood/Mogg Brexit utopia. BAD.

11/ So senior EU officials now putting chances of no-deal at over 50%, and making detailed impact assessments about what it means for EU

12/ EU officials don't think UK Gov working in national interest; worse, believe May & Davis don't understand process, or what no-deal means

13/ EU unsure whether civil servants not telling ministers truth, or if ministers just aren't listening- but UK incompetence is mystifying

14/ One official agreed that Davis's recent remark on negotiations going down to wire, after EU Parl't vote, was lunacy. EP vote is final.

15/ Which brings us to the centrality of the misunderstanding. Brexit is a political, but far more importantly, a legal process.

16/ Article 50 rules must be obeyed. Which means, everything must be agreed by European Parliament. And that means, everything.

17/ So when Davis says that we'll have a basic deal, on eg aviation, but without things we want, that must also be approved by EU Parl't.

18/ And here's the thing: it won't happen. EU conditions for deal are € above all else: if UK refuses to pay everything, no deal on anything

19/ If UK planning to leave hole in EU budget, forget about 'deal no deal', 'basic deal', or 'orderly no deal'. No deal means no deal.

20/ That means no aviation, drastically curbed radiotherapy. No transfer of nuclear material unless UK's undergone exhaustive IAEA process

21/ EU thinks UK won't easily be able to resurrect old aviation treaties, and a new one will take 2 years. This also requires goodwill.

22/ EU also fears Gov won't walk away, but just let clock tick - a no-deal by accident or incapacity. Followed by 'bloody unreasonable EU'.

23/ EU also not concerned about its own unity - in a crisis, officials think member states will rally round, not peel off. Unlike in UK.

24/ This, regrettably, is not the only bad news.

Let's assume UK does come to its senses before December summit, and talks progress.

25/ As Barnier's made clear, there's no bespoke transition. That means we have to stay in EEA, and to make that seamless, apply to join EFTA

26/ EFTA officials confident UK could apply to join EFTA quite quickly & provisionally apply agreement for Mar 19, seamlessly staying in EEA

27/ This, provided Norway & Iceland happy to let UK in for transitional period. But they would be under great pressure to allow it.

28/ Might even be possible for UK to negotiate 'associate' EFTA status so doesn't have to apply to join EFTA's trade deals (big concession)

29/ Only... Northern Ireland is ruined, because off-shelf EEA agreement excludes agriculture. Which means full WTO tariffs. No ifs, no buts.

30/ EEA Agreement Article 19 provides framework for agri liberalisation- but needs to be negotiated from scratch. Norway's deal took 2yrs.

31/ So Davis was right to say, last Tuesday, that new tariffs would be 'a real problem' for NI. It's a problem he's determined to make real.

32/ So, I hear you ask, where's the good news?

Easy. If UK wants to extend A50, or revoke it, just say magic word. Even at last minute.

33/ Can negotiate new aviation treaty, new agri provisions to top up EEA, or a new trade deal, while comfortably still in EU.

34/ Senior officials describe difficulty of UK participating in EU elections as 'lowest priority'. Avoiding cliff-edge much more important.

35/ EU doubts PM has authority to pull this off. Easier for her to drag us off cliff than show humility/common sense. But there's still time

36/ It's not too late to see this cliff-edge & prevent what's otherwise an unavoidable catastrophe. All they need to do is open their eyes.

@CardinalSin

It does feel as though the wheels are falling off the Brexit red bus. Even the Telegraph and Express are beginning to worry.

Still public sentiment is going to have to follow. We need 60/40 or thereabouts to overturn.

To be honest, even those of us who where vehemently opposed to Brexit didn't realise until recently that the whole project was being backed and financed so powerfully by disaster capitalists. We just thought it was entitled fools like Farage, Gove, and Johnson, rather than the wet dreams of the Legatum Institute etc..

It's not that much of a surprise, as the Brexiteers have been desperately trying to keep everything that isn't unicorns on sunlit uplands as a secret. Hence they won't reveal those reports. They are too scared that "the people" might actually start to realise what a spectacular cock up this referendum was, and not just sit there passively reading their Daily Mails or sticking their heads in the sand.

Sorry two more points.

It was surprising that the panel did not know how many agreements they needed to negotiate

Also a big attack - don’t know if justified - on the DIT’s thin trade white paper.

Just watched Liam Fox in his testimony to Parliament - starts around 20 minutes into the video.

He’s actually not as bad as I thought. Significantly more thoughtful than David David and slightly more honest.

This update to Parliament posted here highlights the aspects of the various FTAs and MRAs and regulatory cooperation agreements that need to be dealt with.

There is an interesting section which addresses Lord Mark Price’s tweets from 1:06:20 to about 1:20:00. These were posted by @Carolinesbeanies as a means to demonstrate our state of readiness to enter into trade deals.

In particular the panel refuted the assertions of Lord Price that agreements can just be rolled over.

Overall not a bad video which will show that it is going to take years to replicate the Non-EU parts of our trading system.

Davis allegedly still thought Czechoslovakia was a country. He’s ex-army. He’s an MP. And he allegedly got basic shit like that wrong.
So hope this was apocryphal because I dread to think of our negotiations in the hands of someone as stoopid as that.

I've heard a few efforts at spin, but they don't add up to what we're losing. And you get the muppets on these threads saying that they want to trade freely with African countries for food at the same time as bewailing the carbon footprint of parts crossing Europe for JIT processes.

Leavers do seem to have trouble with joined up thinking.

And Brexit costs to date £500 million. I was wrong about the £250m. Old news I guess.

Drip drip of bad news keeps coming.

Have you heard anything positive come out recently?

David Davis has admitted that Brexit withdrawal agreement with EU will 'probably favour the union' financially.

No shit Sherlock...

David Davis says whatever happens "we will have a basic deal - I think of it as a deal without the bits we want"

Davis: Even if we didn't get a full deal some areas eg security both our interests are so great we would get some kind of fundamental deal

Well now I’m reassured. Thankfully DD is on it.

@CardinalSin

So a massively expensive rebranding exercise too?

£250m being spent by Govt this year to prepare for Brexit. 3,000 people hired thus far.

HMT saying £1bn required to prep Treasury for Brexit.

Boris: where are the £350m a week gonna come from mate?

Well, the rumours are that the EU are doing their best to help May by the EMA deal and giving it a different name so she can sell it as an "imaginative and creative" solution that's honestly nothing like EMA...

@CardinalSin

And there's no thread of a plan. I don't see that in the responses, do you? All fairly vague pronouncements without tying back to a framework for action. So we should probably blame Barnier at this point for being unreasonable.

Interestingly, many of the things DEXEU describe are tantamount to SM/CU membership. So we would be leaving SM/CU to rejoin SM/CU in a different name (deep and special partnership?).

It does look like a cut-and-paste of various excuses, interspersed with changing the goalposts and not even considering membership of the SM and the CU.

Unfortunately, it's no less than we expect from David Davis and his Department for Exiting Reality.

@CardinalSin

I think this Caroline individual likes Trump ... Careful.

I came across this letter from DEXEU to Baroness Verma. It is in response to the Baroness' request for access to the famous sector reports that the Govt has said it hasn't read. How democratic of the Government ...

A few things to note:

• The deflection of the original request to have sight of such reports under NDA is striking. Lots of text to say no

• Note the statement we are leaving the SM/CU. See attached the expectations of most voters in July 2016 that we would stay in the SM/CU ... See table 16. Is that not a retrade?

• The bold questions / statements are educative - ie one learns a lot about how things work just from the questions and comments. Also, the Lords seem to have focused on the right things, though the section on tariffs to my mind is not so critical as NTBs

• The responses feel thin. We are committed etc. We anticipate this or that. No real planning. Am I being unfair?

• Lots of dimensions to work through in about a year. How realistic is this?

Caroline reminds me of Farage on some ITV programme last night;

Presenter - So Nigel, what do you think about Trump and his "Grab them by the pussy" now?

Farage - Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton...

Presenter - No Nigel, what about Trump?

Farage - Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton...

Have pmed you caroline

@Carolinesbeanies

No that was I, empty headed animal food trough wiper.

Not @Rufustherenegadereindeer1.

Now go away before I taunt you a second time.

To all others: sorry but this Caroline person reminds me of Monty Python every time she posts.