Westministenders: Transition

[RedToothBrush]

Last thread opener, it was all about the government buzz word being shown to listen at every opportunity.

Now transition is creeping in as people realise that no we can't just do a settlement, arrange a new trade deal with the EU and have a whole host of other deals in place in two years.

Who'd have thought.

We will be getting Brexit because we give in to threats of terrorism. Not quite getting how that takes back control.

But Brexit will be good. It will be glorious. And in the long term we will be better off for it.

Er ok.

I presume the clock is still ticking

The rules surrounding A50 should make it clear. Bearing in mind A50 (like our aircraft carrier) has never been used in anger before ....

I suspect the rules say nothing - suggesting once triggered, it's 2 years and not a second more ?

Is it just me, or did they also get the smallest, windowless meeting room ?

There was a suggestion when Jolyon Maugham was trying to get his challenge going that if a Brexit matter were to be sent to the ECJ, then the clock would be paused while the matter was considered and ruled upon. Whether our government's inability to grasp detail would elicit such a concession...

Anyway, the headline is misleading - it is suggested that the talks could be stalled rather than halted until the UK gets its arse in gear act together.

Yes, the A50 clock is still going tick-tock

It would be interesting if the govt try to appeal any issue to the ECJ, whose jurisdiction they demand to leave ....

It is anyway unlikely that the ECJ would rule that DD being unable to distinguish his arse from his elbow is a valid reason to stop the clock.

A small windowless room with DD - and Barneir halts talks
Am I the only one who wonders if DD let rip a whopping fart ?

OK, more likely:

"The agenda for the four-day talks includes the rights of EU citizens in the UK – and British ex-pats in the EU – the exit bill and the Northern Ireland border

Last week, Mr Barnier urged the British side to present detailed proposals on all three priorities before the talks resumed, but there is no evidence that this happened."

Has anyone heard of the Legatum Institute? Miriam Gonzalez Durantez suggests that it is behind DD's rubbish negotiating stances:

[At Chevening], according to the Financial Times, British business leaders were asked to share the table with the Legatum Institute, a thinktank with unparalleled access to Davis and Theresa May and that seems to have been at the origin of some of the preposterous positions on Brexit taken by the government so far. Its inexplicable presence at that table was the clearest signal that the government has not changed its views on Brexit after the general election even one tiny little bit...

Unlike thinktanks like the Center for European Reform which knows more about the EU than the whole cabinet put together, the common characteristic of most of the Legatum trade commission seems to be not having worked at any time within the EU or even directly with it...

The main idea of the institute, though, seems to be the creation of a “prosperity zone” between the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, eventually extended to the US, Canada and Mexico, if the North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiations succeed. This is actually an old idea, originally floated by Mitt Romney in 2008. It obviously did not work then, and it will not work now. One does not need to have a Nobel Prize in trade economics to realise that, even with the US and Canada included (which is very unlikely indeed) this can hardly compensate for all the trade that the UK will lose by stepping out of the EU.

@jamesrbuk
Starting to feel like it might have been sensible for the UK to have worked out what it wanted from Brexit before starting negotiations.

My only issue with the is 'starting to feel like'

But lala those others are forrin and this lot speak English init?

That's very interesting, lala

Also may explain why the govt seem to be waiting for something:

they're waiting for Trump to build that wall

• clearly Mexico is the odd man out, not belonging to the prosperous anglosphere
• I gather the hard right want Singapore as an honorary member because of their classic neoliberal free trade economic policy & (minimal) welfare policy.

They must be sad that South Africa is no longer apartheid, so no longer qualifies

Oh, is this back to the Anglosphere Melanie Phillips was wittering on about the other week on This Week?

Given that this has been posted by RobinHoodUKIP, excuse the random lower case.

(FT paywall) David Allen Green - Brexit: the day the whistling ended

https://www.ft.com/content/489e43e4-139a-11e7-b0c1-37e417ee6c76
....
The humiliation came in three stages, spread over three days.....
The third stage was the admission by the UK government on Thursday that it was, in fact, accepting that it was to pay an amount to the EU on departure.

In effect, Thursday was the day the whistling ended

This was spotted by the FT’s bureau chief in Brussels Alex Barker as a written answer to a parliamentary question:
....
“On the financial settlement, as set out in the Prime Minister’s letter to President Tusk,
the Government has been clear that we will work with the EU to determine a fair settlement of the UK’s rights and obligations as a departing member state,
in accordance with the law and in the spirit of our continuing partnership.

The Government recognises that the UK has obligations to the EU, and the EU obligations to the UK,
that will survive the UK’s withdrawal — and that these need to be resolved.”

This, of course, is no surprise.
Unless something unexpected happens,

the story of the Brexit negotiations will be one of the UK giving way on each contested point.
.....
There are two main reason for these setbacks.
.....
The first ..... is that the EU has prepared properly and practically for these negotiations.

The EU knows what it wants, can justify what it wants and has worked out how to achieve it.

Britain is instead saddled with a prime minister whose idea of “getting on with the job” includes calling and then losing unnecessary general elections.

The second reason is that UK ministers are, in fact, negotiating with the wrong people ...

Ministers are engaged in attempting to win over, as much as possible, their own backbenchers and the tabloid newspapers.

A Martian looking down on these ministers would assume that the EU exit negotiations were of secondary importance to winning political and press support.

The Brexit agreement has an auxiliary role to the need to say the right things to the right people domestically.

Such is the closeness of Westminster political and media worlds that the foreign secretary and others do not realise there is anything about international agreements beyond joking with backbenchers and political correspondents.

For Mr Johnson and those laughing along with him, Mr Barnier and his team are no closer than Alfred T. Mahan’s far distant, storm-beaten ships.

As pro-Brexit ministers attempt to bluster or chuckle their way through any form of scrutiny,
the EU negotiating team is there waiting patiently, knowing the clock is ticking away.

There will be attempts by ministers and their supporters at avoidance, evasion and diversion.

There will be name-calling and strident demands for patriotism.

There will be blame-mongering and jockeying for succession.

But what there will not be is any relevant minister taking this as seriously as the EU is doing.

This week may have seen the day when the whistling stopped.

But far more important is
what Britain will have to show for itself when the ticking of the clock stops in just over 20 months’ time, and is replaced by the sound of silence.

Even Mr Johnson may fail to raise a smile then.

Interesting from Robert Peston via Facebook:

So here is an interesting thing, which I'm not sure I have encountered before: the Tory party in Westminster is split horizontally as well as vertically.

What do I mean by that?

Well the vertical split, obvs, is between those who want a cleaner more abrupt rupture from the EU, and those who want transitional semi-membership for a shade shorter than eternity.

The horizontal split is more novel: it is between the government at junior ranks and backbench MPs as one group and much of the cabinet as another semi-detached group.

The point is that most of the parliamentary Conservative party are clear they want Theresa May to remain as prime minister for at least a year and maybe longer.

They want all their side to rally round her.

So they are absolutely furious at what they see as "yesterday's men" in the cabinet, semi-publicly bickering about what kind of pay rise to give to public sector workers and the ideal form of Brexit - and also sending out their loyalists to argue their claims to succeed May.

Here is his how one younger MP put it to me - and he is typical of many conversations I've had:

"It is the last gasp of the old men to seize the leadership. They know if they can't get her out in September they'll have had it. Their time will be up.

"Because if she survives a year or two - and she will - her successor will be from the younger generation, possibly even someone none of us have quite thought of yet".

What these younger MPs want is dutiful service from May till at least next summer and maybe till spring 2019, during which they can remember - if at all possible - what the Tory party is supposed to be for (apart from bickering over Brexit).

And what they want from the Johnsons, Davises, Goves and Hammonds is to do their important jobs without public or private rancour, and with an acknowledgment - however painful that may be - that none will get the keys to Number 10 any time soon, if ever.

Michael Creed, the RoI Agriculture Minister, yesterday sounding pissed with UK Brexit chaos:

“There is no political coherence there. There is no leadership on Brexit.

Various ministers talk about hard Brexit, soft Brexit, no deal being better than a bad deal.

The worst possible deal is no deal, both for them and for us.

The lack of any coherence is a huge problem for us and until they get their act together, what we are trying to do…

It appears to me that the instability is spilling over, impacting on the kind of Brexit.
There is no coherence.”

Simon Coveney (RoI Minister of Foreign Affairs & Trade with responsibility for Brexit):

“What we do not want to do is pretend we can solve the problems of the border on the island of Ireland
through technical solutions like cameras and pre-registration and so on.

That is not going to work.”

https://sluggerotoole.com/2017/07/18/ireland-top-of-the-agenda-in-todays-brexit-negotiations/

On BBC Good Morning Ulster earlier, Fine Gael Senator Neale Richmond, a colleague of Coveney, seemed to suggest that the Irish Government’s favoured approach would involve moving customs controls to seaports and airports,
an arrangement that would be politically toxic to unionists.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-40645026

Until now,
politicians in London in particular have delivered empty platitudes in relation to Ireland
such as ‘no return to the borders of the past’,

without ever offering anything resembling a solution, other than that which Coveney has now dismissed as unworkable.

Today I have met an air steward from Brussels who is pro-Brexit, loves May (thinks she's Thatcher2), sympathetic to why Trump happened.... and hates Merkel.

I'd say the situation but it'd out me. Suffice to say it was somewhere where you would expect no one but Leftie liberal loons in large numbers.

You know you are onto a winner when the conversation goes "I'm not a racist but" and you know you are going to have to be polite for hours to them.

Anyway the long and short of it, is he thinks the UK will be just fine and the EU will give us a cracking unicorn deal. Interesting to hear it from non UK pov (minus all the other anti Islamic stuff) rather than English Brexiteers.

Anyway the long and short of it, is he thinks the UK will be just fine and the EU will give us a cracking unicorn deal. Interesting to hear it from non UK pov (minus all the other anti Islamic stuff) rather than English Brexiteers.

The only time I've ever heard this from outside the Anglosphere was, bizarrely, from a trainee manager at my local Lidl. Doubt it was an anti-Islamic pov though because I suspect he was Muslim himself.

Legatum
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legatum

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20121111033530/www.li.com/about/about-li" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20121111033530/www.li.com/about/about-li

Now this is interesting:
www.li.com/
Articles on
'Developing a True Transatlantic Partnership',
'Brexit can foster a more open and fast growing economy',
'In ConservativeHome, Shankar Singham sets out the reasons why we must leave the European Economic Area and Customs Union',
'In the Financial Times Danny Kruger writes that Britain’s public services need reform and fiscal discipline',
(scroll down a bit)...
'A Blueprint for UK Trade Policy',
'A new UK/EU relationship in financial services – A bilateral regulatory partnership'..

Who you may ask is Shanker Singham?
www.asiascot.com/shanker-singham/

All of this circles within circles stuff reminds me forcefully of the work of John Buchan ('The 39 Steps')

Math...This whole Legatum thing is a bit weird. I don't get it....

If the gov. Is going to get advice from experts, which goodness knows is clearly needed, then perhaps establish an impartial economic think tank with the very best experts you can get.

I've been googling and there are loads of think tanks (most of them with a specific agenda) ranging from the Adam Smith institute, Centre for European reform, Chatham house etc etc

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/30/list-thinktanks-ukk_

I don't know where the national institute for economic and social research fit in too.

Legatum clearly heavily involved because of Matthew Elliot is there.So the Chief Executive of Vote Leave (who must have sanctioned the great deceits) is now influencing government policy too! The other legatum advisers seem a bit mediocre to me,experience of being an advisor to IDS is hardly top of the tree is it? Also whilst I love NZ that Crawford bloke being an academic at Lincoln University, New Zealand and being an NZ minister gives experience of a very different economy to our own.

Overall the people at Legatum have a clear Australia/NZ/America bias. There's no knowledgable EU expertise in there. Jeez I'm no economist but surely doing the bulk of our trade with our immediate neighbours makes more geographical and environmental sense for goodness sake.

Weird.

I also don't get that the Shankar Singham adviser is clearly passionate about the unfeasibility of protectionism in the 21st century....

economics21.org/html/high-cost-protectionism-1716.html

Yet we are gambling on at least short term reliance on the most protectionist US president in living memory. It's doing my head in.

I do hope the farming unions are aware of the influence of Legatum. I know the US subsidises farmers generously, but NZ famously stopped all subsidies in the 1980s. Which model do we think the current UK government would favour?

www.politico.eu/article/uk-reject-eu-demand-for-brexit-bill-estimate/amp/

UK to reject EU demand for Brexit bill estimate

LONDON — U.K. negotiators are not planning to present their own estimate of financial obligations owed to the EU on Brexit during this week’s round of negotiations, according to a U.K. official familiar with the progress of talks.

Despite warnings from EU diplomats that chief negotiator Michel Barnier is prepared to “stall” talks unless proposals are put forward by the U.K., the British side views this week’s round of talks as an opportunity to interrogate the EU’s position, the official said.

Their stance is consistent with U.K. Brexit Secretary David Davis’ statement to a House of Lords committee that the “proper approach to get the right outcome in the negotiation” would be to “challenge” the EU’s calculations. Davis told the committee last week the U.K. “may well publish an alternative proposal,” but the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, was clear this would not happen this week. It is not clear when an alternative will be published by the U.K. government.

Davis told the House of Lords EU committee last week that British officials had been engaged in interrogating the EU’s position on the so-called Brexit bill “on a line-by-line, almost word-by-word basis.”

“The objective in the case of the financial settlement is not to pay more than we need to, it’s fairly obvious,” he said. “There will be a process of challenge going on here and that will happen and has started already.”

“I would be tempted to say Article 50 negotiations are now in the hands of the divorce lawyers — we have very good divorce lawyers” — Margaritis Schinas
The EU side is insisting on a written acknowledgement from its negotiating partners of the need to settle the U.K.’s accounts with the bloc when it leaves. “We’re waiting for a position paper on financial settlement,” an EU official told POLITICO, adding that ideally it would arrive before the end of this round of talks on Thursday.

The Commission’s spokesman Margaritis Schinas said Tuesday that he would not provide “a running commentary” on the talks and declined to say if the British negotiating team had forwarded new position papers on topics such as the financial settlement.

“Talks are ongoing as we speak,” Schinas said, adding that the Commission will “assess this round of negotiations but it will not be done today or tomorrow, it will be done on Thursday.”

Richard North proposes: drastic measures to protect food supplies:

http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=86542

As near as can be certain, on exit day – 29 March 2019 –
UK exports of food to EU member states are going to stop.

This is not a matter for negotiation and nor can it be avoided.
It is an inevitable consequence of the UK leaving the Single Market and becoming a "third country".
....
Bearing in mind that close-on 40 percent of our food currently comes from the Continent,
if that supply chain is disrupted,
we could have serious shortages, particularly in fresh foods.

We would be confronting the very real possibility of empty supermarket shelves and people going hungry.

What the government must do, therefore, is prioritise.
That means protecting the supply chain to make sure that food imports get through.

In the longer term, we will need to sort out the export situation,
but first things first – people must be fed.

Early on, some months before exit day, food exporters – whether selling processed goods or primary produce – will need advance warning.
They should be told that, from exit day until further notice, no exports to EU member states will be possible.

They must be instructed to keep their vehicles away from the ports.

To enforce this, on the day,
there will need to be road blocks in place well outside the ports.

All commercial vehicles carrying food, live animals, or products of animal origin, must be kept away from the ports and the routes into them.
....
what we are going to see in Brexit is the supply system being smashed.