Westministenders: Brexit Britain = Gridlock Britain ?

[BigChocFrenzy]

We keep getting told the Uk can get a deal like Canada, Turkey or other non-EU countries have, without FOM.
Those deals do not provide the same privileges as EU members:
They have quotas, restrictions and must obey EU regulations

e.g. After CETA, Ron Davidson, head of international trade for the Canadian Meat Council stated:
"We do not have what we would call commercially viable access to the European market".

The deal with Turkey abolished tariffs, but did not give free acess. This is what that means:

www.ft.com/content/b4458652-f42d-11e6-8758-6876151821a6

"On a recent Saturday at the Kapikule border crossing, about 30 minutes drive from the Turkish city of Edirne, a line of trucks 4km long stretched along the highway, inching along glacially towards the Bulgarian checkpoints.
"Today is a good day", said Ibrahim Kurtukcu, a 42-year trucker who had been waiting 14 hours.
"Last week the line was 7km long".
The record is 17km. It can take up to 30 hours to get through to the other side."

Of course, UK ports (and French ports) do not have the capacity, facilities, storage space or trained staff to handle customs processing of the vast amount of British exports & imports.

Building this additional capacity - where ? - would take several years and there are no signs that even the planning stage has started.

I really don't know what will happen in Scotland, but in the same way that Farage and the extreme Tory right were anti EU and went on and on about it, I don't think the genie of Independence for Scotland can be put back in the bottle - or only with an extreme change of direction from Westminster.

Great news from West Oxfordshire but, less encouragingly,

Broxbourne BC, Waltham Cross - Labour died - Conservative gain
Derby UA, Derwent - UKIP died - 4 candidates: Con, Lab, LD, UKIP Conservative gain
East Hertfordshire DC, Hertford Castle - Conservative resigned Conservative hold
Rutland UA, Exton - Conservative resigned - 3 candidates: Con, LD, UKIP Conservative hold

I would be tempted to say with by election results that it shows UKIP is finished - but all it shows is that the Tories are now UKIP.

So you think May's speech had the opposite effect to the one she wanted i.e. turned people pro - Independence?

I hope this is the case
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-guy-verhofstadt-british-eu-citizenship-rights-europe-chief-negotiator-latest-a7621896.html

Badders, that solution neatly covers the guarantee of rights of UK citizens currently living/working in the EU - so no reason for UK not to guarantee rights of EU citizens currently living/working in UK - an EU wide reciprocal arrangement in other words.

I hope that's enough for the daftness regarding the uncertainty of EU citizens here to stop.

(I'm ignoring future UK to rEU movement obvs, but that's nothing to do with the point I'm trying to make!)

Peregrina - I'd like to say Yes as that's what I thought (that the speech was the epitome of hypocrisy).

But I don't think that the general population actually cared that much about the content of her speech.

The Conservatives are a minority party in Scotland. Remember that for all of Ruth Davidson's "advances", the Tories still only polled 22% - less than Thatcher was at the height of her unpopularity.

The interesting thing about that poll (which could be an outlier) is that the SNP and other Independence supporting parties have not, contrary to what the MSM and the Unionist parties imply, started campaigning for a Yes vote in an Indyref

All the noise has come from the Unionist Parties (see "speech by Theresa May" as an example )

The canvassing on the doorstep for the upcoming council elections has been on local issues.

I suspect May's speech helped a lot more in turning people onto independence than turning away from it. Since the eu ref Westminster has let time and time again how little it thinks of Scotland and Northern Ireland and its their part in the union. May's speech was really an insult. It's almost like she thinks the Scottish nation is entirely stupid and does not hear what she's saying elsewhere.

Scotland isn't my domain but I am a sixteenth Scottish so I can say stuff so I'd rather the people of Scotland, both in and out of Scotland currently, chose whether they wanted another Indyref. From a moral point though, I feel they were fundamentally lied to in the first wrt eu membership and therefore should be given the chance if they want it.

not just Opinion polls, which haven't been too reliable of late.

Opinion polls were reasonably accurate in both the referendum and the U.S. election (it was the interpretation and press reporting that were wrong). Eg the final national polls in November showed Clinton at about +3% and she won the popular vote by more than 2%.

It was only really in the 2015 GE that they had a big miss.

Speaking of polls, Macron seems to have overtaken Le Pen in first round polling. (I get a daily update from my Macron fanboy DH ).

On the previous thread, or maybe the one before, so hundreds (!) of posts ago, we were talking about how votes transfer between the first and second rounds of the French presidential election. I found the graphic that I was talking about - link here in case anyone is interested. It's quite counterintuitive: a small part of the Le Pen vote goes to Macron in the second round! (This is the French version of the Bernie Bros effect: they want to shake things up but in this case they get a second bite at the cherry to allow them to put it right).

twitter.com/evanoconnell/status/840128253998252032/photo/1

Badders, that solution neatly covers the guarantee of rights of UK citizens currently living/working in the EU - so no reason for UK not to guarantee rights of EU citizens currently living/working in UK - an EU wide reciprocal arrangement in other words.

Unfortunately the analysis of people with some migration expertise eg Jonathan Portes seems to be that this is a non-starter: too complex to implement.

Still I guess us migrants are allowed our unicorns ;)

At least unlike the EU Referendum the French have a chance to register their protest vote in the 1st round and to "correct" it in the 2nd.

In fairness prettybird there's no evidence that a rerun of the referendum would have produced a different result.

I suppose the French way about it would have been to offer several choices in the first round - eg remain; stay in SM but leave EU; stay in CU; hard brexit - and then do a rerun between the top two choices. It is very unlikely that such an approach would have given a mandate for a hard brexit.

Richard Dawkins has weighed in

I share Dawkins's frustration but it's too late now to say that the referendum wasn't well thought out. We know that, we know it was a disastrous gamble on Cameron's part, we know that there was a ton of misinformation on both sides, we know its long-term consequences will be disastrous. As (I think) BigChoc said on the last thread, we've got to look at ways of mitigating the disaster rather than rending our garments that it ever happened in the first place.

My Scientist daughter took me to be educated to see Richard Dawkins interviewed just after the referendum. He said all this and that he was angry that he had been asked to make that decision because did not feel equipped with the necessary knowledge and expertise to make such an important decision. As my daughter keeps saying, if he wasn't equipped then the vast majority of voters certainly were not.

Mind you the subsequent quality of Brexit Planning and that pathetic White Paper makes you wonder if Parliament was either.....

....makes you wonder if Parliament was either....

No - I don't wonder.

I disagree Lala, it needs to be kept out there in the public consciousness that this was a vote undermined by the inanity of the question and the duplicity of the political campaigning on both sides. That will help those with the courage to try to steer politics in the interests of the country, not populism.

Still I guess us migrants are allowed our unicorns ;)

#unicornsforeveryone #keepikeameatballstarifffree

did not feel equipped with the necessary knowledge and expertise to make such an important decision

That was exactly the conversation that went on in my workplace in the run-up to the referendum. A team of senior academics, research scientists and professors all with at least one postgraduate degree in a medical or biological field...

(Before The Inevitable, let me just explain - sigh - that this doesn't mean I think the less educated should be disenfranchised! Just that, if a bunch of educationally privileged, politically and socially engaged people who are used to dealing with complex issues were feeling ill-equipped to understand what we were voting for/against, what hope was there for people in general to make a truly informed decision?)

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/stand-up-for-eu-nationals-in-britain-tickets-32688631577

Ian Dunt is speaking at this event in support of EU migrants. I am in London that week and might go along.

Before The Inevitable, let me just explain - sigh - that this doesn't mean I think the less educated should be disenfranchised

MN should really have some sticky caveats for these threads Elements!

did not feel equipped with the necessary knowledge and expertise to make such an important decision

I can't tell you how tempted I was to scrawl we pay you arseholes to get informed about these things and make decision for us

Then I though no, no, it's just advisory. This is one way of getting informed about the lay of the land.

I expected better even of a Tory government. Like has been said earlier, they've blown apart the view that they're the competent party

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-manufacturing-09-per-cent-january-a7622121.html