To be furious at Brexit checks 'price you pay to be sovereign again'

[NoCloudsAllowed]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/31/uk-minister-andrea-leadsom-brexit-checks-price-you-pay-sovereign-state-again

Andrea Leadsom saying barrier checks are the price of sovereignty.

This is not what they promised, is it? The bare faced lies of it all. They've delayed introducing checks because they knew they couldn't square it with Leave campaign promises. In the end, the issue of NI was only solvable by these checks.

This is supposed to cost £330m a year. It will make food more expensive and supply less reliable. There is zero, absolutely zero, benefit to the country. It's just a direct detriment imposed because they can't accept the whole thing is a fuck up.

They never actually express what this sovereignty is supposed to do for us, or what was problematic about the EU rules. It's all on 'the principle of the thing'. Sovereignty won't feed hungry children, will it?

I think I'm just as piping mad about this as I was in 2016 - they're taking the whole country for fools.

Be careful what you wish for.

FPTP means you do not get the extreme right and extreme left that you have another countries.

Do really want the national front or BNP to have seats parliament?

And the farmers in Germany and Netherlands.

Why are all these farmers revolting if the EU is so great?

It's not all benefits

The audacity of this string of words that insinuates there are any benefits.

If you think it is bad now just wait until they start the requirement for individual checks at channel ports and other points of crossing into the UK. This will cause chaos at the ferry ports, particularly in August holidays.

And that’s a classic diversionary tactic as described below. Criticise those who highlight the issues rather than accept responsibility for the problems and address the matter in question.

What are you expecting them to do? We left the EU, the SM and CU. This is the consequence - we have to implement it. There isn't any option of just not doing it.

But . . .

We have Blue Passports, they're printed in the EU because it's cheaper, but they are BLUE.

We have absolute control of our borders and can deport any people who sneak into our country 🤔😬

We no longer have to abide by the verdicts of the EU courts 🙄😬

We can forge trade deals with the USA, leveraging that "special relationship"😬

We can still travel easily to the EU 🙄

We can still live in our French Chateaus and retire to our Spanish villas 😂

We can still import cheap food from the EU 😬

We can . . . let me think . . . we can . . .

OK we can't do any of that, but we do get lovely BLUE covers on our EU printed, now mostly useless, passports.

Honestly explain to people the motivation behind people like Johnson's Brexit stance? Have them admit their duplicity and that it was a fucking massive mistake?

Obviously it won't happen, but imagine it did.

Johnson taking some Veritaserum and appearing on TV and saying the whole lot was absolute lies.

If they're able to run as a party (are not a proscribed organisation) and get enough votes to get into parliament, then that's democracy. FPTP favours a two-party model, which is bad for democracy. Even highly objectionable people/those you disagree with have the right to an equal voice in political representation.

Unfortunately, this means that we have to accept that sometimes people like Grzegorz Braun (an MP in Poland) get elected, because they get people voting for them.

I think the one thing the Tories could do to regain any credibility (with me anyway) is to show they’re capable of being humble. Hell, the whole country would probably benefit from that kind of example.

being generous maybe they did really believe what they were saying but the evidence of reality doesn’t stack up… and they’ve literally had their way, unopposed for years and it’s shit. Utterly, unavoidably shit. It didn’t work and it’s going to impact for generations. Acknowledge reality and then we might be able to move on with our heads held marginally higher without the weight of having to pretend this exploded arse has even a notion of credibility.

"I think, in an ideal world, Brexit might allow and encourage the UK become a bit more self sufficient, which would be a good thing. It’ll be a long haul though."

The UK has not been self-sufficient in food for over 200 years, and there is no feasible way in which the UK could ever become so.

During WW2 the government had to introduce food rationing in order to ensure that everyone had at least the bare minimum needed to survive as imports had almost totally stopped arriving. Rationing did not end until 1954 - nine years after the end of the war.

"Border checks are a natural occurrence in international trade."

Except when you are a member of the largest, most standardised and wealthiest trading bloc on the planet, in which case a country (which ultimately means the taxpayers and consumers) don't have to pay £400m a year for border checks - because there is no border for these imports, and just as importantly for your own exports to this bloc.

"But in the long term it will be much better for us to be more independent and have multiple sources for products rather than be overly reliant on just one partner. That's what opening up competition does."

Even when in the EU, the UK could source food from elsewhere in the world. Most of Africa was covered by the EU "Everything but Arms" agreement, allowing food to be exported by these countries to the EU tariff-free. Similar agreements were in place with developing countries elsewhere. What the EU has is a number of minimum standards for food production, which include banning certain pesticides, banning certain animal medicines and requiring minimum welfare standards - all of which the UK has decided to cast aside in order to import cheap, lower-standard food from Australia and New Zealand, although Comical Kemi has at least baulked from signing a deal to allow hormones in meat from Canada.

Brexshit, the big steaming pile of turd that won't flush.

The electorate have been lied to for decades by the right wing press about the EU. Populist politicians jumped on the bandwagon and pushed for it.

Leaving always has been and always will be an economic and political disaster.

No leaver had ever been able to give an actual, real life benefit.

I assume that you are white?

I don't think many non-white people would be happy to have a BNP MP.

People are complaing about people being easily dubed by Boris and the other Leaver MPs to vote Brexit. Don't you think that those same people would vote for extremists parties if it meant that could get in to parliament? Just like in France, Germany, NL etc?

These parties are just causing chaos and social unrest. Is that what you want for the UK? Don't you care about non-white people and how they will feel having a party which wants to re-patriate them? Isn't it bad enough that the Tories want to remove illegal migrants without having a party which wants to remove legal ones too?

Sometimes voters have to be protected from themselves which is what FPTP does.

This is not what they promised, is it?

The promises were based on nothing or wild claims, we all know that. "That's not what we voted for" is nonsense. People who voted for Brexit voted for a complete unknown. Those who voted remain pretty much went with a "better the devil you know" approach because it quite literally was the only certainty. The EU may not be perfect, but it was a shit tonne better than the logistical clusterfuck we have ended up in.

My favourite moment was the eel farmer in Gloucestershire or Wales (can't quite remember which side of the border) who moaned on the news that he lost his EU customers (>90% of his trade) and claimed that it wasn't what he voted for.

Turkeys voting for Christmas springs to mind.

@IMustDoMoreExercise "These parties are just causing chaos and social unrest. Is that what you want for the UK? Don't you care about non-white people and how they will feel having a party which wants to re-patriate them? Isn't it bad enough that the Tories want to remove illegal migrants without having a party which wants to remove legal ones too?"

The Conservative Party has caused chaos and has destroyed much of the public sector - and passed draconian laws to ban protests and strikes in an attempt to avoid social unrest.

Sometimes voters have to be protected from themselves which is what FPTP does.

In no way does FPTP do this. Instead it supports a two-party State which disenfranchises the majority of voters and gives a party that can obtain around 40% of the votes (and the support of less than one-third of the electorate) a 5-year elected dictatorship. The Conservatives are so scared of Farage and his paymasters that they are bowing to the demands of a group of right-wing parties such as UKIP, Brexit and Reform - none of which has ever had more than a single-figure representation in Parliament. Meanwhile a whole range of parties - Greens, Social Democrats, Christian Democrats, Communists and Fascists - have no real chance of being elected. If you truly believe in democracy then you also have to accept that there will be parties whose policies are far from one's own.

Why do you think so much of our trade with the EU goes via Dover and not by ship across the Irish Sea, North Sea or indeed the wider parts of the Channel? Because crossing the strait between Dover and Calais is the quickest and cheapest way of getting goods in and out of the country.

If the congestion at Dover is so bad, goods can be taken on any of the many other ferry routes operating between the UK and EU. Or shipped by container on the same routes.

Suggesting that the alternative to Dover-Calais is shipping things to countries that are orders of magnitude more distant than our most important trading partners on our doorstep is plainly rubbish, and the idea that doing this would be beneficial to anyone is economically illiterate in the extreme.

Yes, finding new customers in other parts of the world could benefit UK businesses. But not at the expense of erecting barriers to trade with their existing partners.

Anyone who thoight Brexit, leaving the EU/EEA bloc, will not lead to border controls on goods and different deals with EU (as an independent entity) shouldn't have a right to vote.

I don't understand why people think that Brexit is or was a Tory policy (whether a Tory voter or not). It was a policy of a minority of Tory MPs at the time plus Farage and UKIP and a few Labour MPs. The vast majority of all MPs were for Remain including most of the cabinet. And as a previous poster said, Theresa May who was a remainer had negotiated a reasonable Brexit deal which was clearly not radical enough for BJ and his minions hence him bringing her down.

No system is perfect, but FPTP is better than most.

The Conservatives have not caused anything like the chaos in other countries.

Do you actually know anyone in France or Germany? I do.

Do you know what is going on in Germany with the AfD with Jewish people leaving because they are scared of what the party will do to them? Do you want this here?

Hilarious.

You need trade agreements with countries in the rest of the world in order to trade with them.

Trade agreements involve a means of adjudicating disputes, setting quotas, ensuring quality standards - remind you of anything?

To be honest, most of our food is British except tropical fruit, rice, pasta and some tinned stuff.

I can't see it makes that much difference.

And our food is less expensive than on the continent, so I can't get too heated about it. Maybe that will change with time.

People voted leave because they don't like immigrants. Nobody will ever admit it - ask anyone why they voted leave and it will be some crap about MEPs.

And now we're all having to pay for these people's bigotry and xenophobia.

@Meadowfinch

80% of British food is imported.

"Most of our food is British except tropical fruit, rice, pasta and some tinned stuff.".

Yeah. There should be a basic intelligence test before people are allowed to vote.