Sufficient progress on Irish Border

[user1471441738]

Donald Tusk said today although he welcomed the end if cake and eat it we'd still not made enough progress to move to a trade deal.

I'm wondering if we can ever get there. Guaranting citizens rights SHOULD be simple enough. The "divorce payment" is just about money.

However, what position would work on the border question?

For me, workable ideas are:

1: Cancel Brexit
2: United Ireland
3: EEA/single market membership
4: Single market for Northern Ireland but not Britain, hard border with Britain (border is the coast) and Northern Irish businesses wishing to trade must generally meet both EU and British standards.
5: Hard border with customs and passport checks between Northern Ireland and Eire.

Are there any others?

All 5 would surely massively anger lots of people

Bear - I think the answer to my choice of two different conclusions from earlier this afternoon is b) as he/she is has insisted that he/she is not a troll*

The level of ignorance in the true sense of the word displayed is both shocking and disappointing - but symptomatic of many Leave voters*

It’s she, not he, but whatevs.
Not ignorant either - in any sense of the word.

You really didn't dear

Today at 16:02 pet.

You really need to start RTFT.

At 16.02 you repeated your assertion that people should have ignored their allegiances and ideologies when voting.

Then said they should have put aside their pride when voting.

how are these 2 things different?

Can you give an example of the 'pride' you actually mean if I'm wrong?

In the nicest possible way: could we leave off the arguing and keep the discussion to the intended subject of the thread? I had been finding it interesting and informative.

Liv, I am from NI so I understand only too well about loyalist paramilitaries. However, what is the alternative? Unless Britain all decides to remain in the customs union, there has to be either a hard border between NI and RoI or at the ports.

Splitting the island is crazy, unmanageable and will break the GFA. Giving NI a special status is not a breach of the GFA - in fact it reflects the unique circumstance which is embodied in the GFA. Loyalists may dislike that solution, just as they also disliked the GFA. However, the whole country cannot be held to ransom by the intransigence of those whose only motto is 'not an inch'. NI will still be part of the UK and the practical difficulties are low.

By my back-of-an-envelope calculations, even if all of the electorate in NI had turned out and everyone had voted Remain, it would not have changed the overall result.

There was an amendment proposed to the EU Referendum Bill when it was going through Parliament that for the UK to leave the EU not only would there need to be an overall Leave majority in the UK as a whole, there would also need to be a majority for Leave in each of the four constituent countries (ie a double majority). It didn’t make it through.

Sorry rhiannon

I do think the argument is pertintnet to the thread though.

If Leavers think things like 'putting aside your pride' when voting, even if it goes against everything you believe in, it does go a long way to explaining the predicament we are now in.

Happy to do that Rhiannon.

I agree springbreeze that that’s the practical choice.
It’s up to the politicians now to grow up & get on with it (all of them).

Sure, Bear, I don't totally disagree.

It's just when posts get into 'kindly show me where I said that' territory, it feels like we're losing the thread of the thread. As it were.

And thanks, Bear and Faith. I don't want to be the thread police but I hope you can see where I'm coming from.

The trouble is rhiannon, discussion threads become a bit pointless when people refuse to either answer questions or back up their points.

If they feel they have been misrepresented then a simple explanation of what they actually meant, maybe using an example, is all that's necessary to clear the point up and move on.

Complete refusal to do so only serves to prove they weren't misrepresented at all.

The fact is, and this isn't just aimed at faith, there are no sensible answers coming from Leavers either on here or IRL.

It's all still on a wing and a prayer.

The fact is, and this isn't just aimed at faith, there are no sensible answers coming from Leavers either on here or IRL. It's all still on a wing and a prayer.

Oh, I totally agree. And no one is using the wing and a prayer approach more than our 'leaders'. Believe me, I'm as pissed off as you are.

I accept your point about the unfairness to Scotland of a special arrangement for NI, motheroffourdragons. I have Scottish friends who feel the same, and it is totally understandable. There are a few points we always come back to when we discuss it.
1/ Geographical differences - there is a border to consider in NI that is completely porous.
2/ A referendum on Scottish independance took place recently. Scots got their say, and decided to stick with the Union. The people of NI haven't had that opportunity yet. (And of course them ever getting their say is complicated...)
3/ Most significantly - what is being sought for NI is a solution that doesn't undermine the GFA and is legal and enforceable for both U.K. and Ireland/EU and doesn't drag down the economy or employment rates for the island of Ireland and both sides of the community - including their armed radicals - can accept. (All of these points are necessary for the peace process to remain intact.) I don't know what that solution is, but if it's found I don't think those of us outside of Irish/EU and British leadership, and NI itself, will get any say. Not even the Scottish parliament.

That solution doesn't actually exist though, and we knew it before Brexit. That's the problem. There is no solution that works on all sides.

Your quite right existential.

I was pondering this last night and I can't think of any other situation where people would so wilfully ignore the reality of a situation.

In normal circumstances, if for example, a poster started a thread saying I want X and people replied saying that couldn't happen because of Y then the OP would generally either:-

• say, oh shit, I hadn't thought of that, I'll have to revise my expectations or
• say, yes, I've thought of that and worked out I can do A, B, C to overcome Y.

In this case, X is having a completely free trade agreement without paying for it once outside the Single Market and Y is the fact that that cannot happen because of the impact on other countries agreements, yet there is absolutely no sign of anyone thinking beyond 'well I want X and I'm just going to ignore anyone who tells me I can't have it'

It's brainwashing, cult-like and, quite frankly, unbelievable.

^^ You're not your!

That solution doesn't actually exist though, and we knew it before Brexit. That's the problem. There is no solution that works on all sides

Genuinely the only solution is not to Brexit at all. I'm thankful that the EU are placing such emphasis on NI as our own government doesn't seem too fussed about chucking them under the Brexit bus.

Whilst I agree that right now it looks like there is no solution, I remember feeling that before about the north of Ireland. Most notably about the chances of a lasting peace treaty. And yet, with negotiation and patience and international support the GFA happened.

If Brexit goes ahead then we need something of that kind of magnitude. We'll have to somehow find it. Or brexit can't go ahead.

But that took years of work from some incredible people who were highly motivated to succeed. None of that applies here. What we have now is a shower or incompetent shits with no reason to bother their arse about a border.

Some of them were incredible people. (Mo, for instance). Others were, or are, complete shits. (Examples could be drawn from both communities!)
I take your point though.

They were shits that did great things, and they were all incredible in their own way.
We've got no-one now that could organise a piss up in a brewery, and they aren't even trying.

I agree with you to a large extent. I'm just trying to hang on to some vestiges of hope.

I just read Brokenshire's speech (from yesterday). It was such a tangled web of contradictions - including proclaiming his impartiality and then basically going "just wanna shout out to me mate Arlene who's in the crowd over there" - that the hope is fading again.

Wonder if Brokenshire was at the "large DUP fund-raising dinner in Ballymena on Thursday night" where Gove spoke? Never mind, I'm sure Mikey will update him on what the DUP want to happen in NI. bury those revised boundary changes for one thing

I'm sure they understand each other quite well. Mr Gove was a vocal opponent of the 1998 Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, which he viewed as a capitulation to the IRA.

www.newsletter.co.uk/news/michael-gove-addresses-large-dup-dinner-1-8174605

A (very big) part of me hopes this becomes the sticking point that ultimately scuppers Brexit. And I think there's a reasonable chance of it happening.

However, if a solution is found, I think the only fruitful way forward is special status for Northern Ireland who remain in the single market and a hard border with the British mainland.

Yes, the DUP aren't going to like that, but time for them to face up to the impossibility of achieving brexit with no change to the border situation. Of all the fucking clowns who seem to think they can have their cake and eat it too, the DUP strike me as the very worst offenders. This solution will distance NI from the UK and bring them closer to ROI. And I won't have an ounce of sympathy for DUP idiots when that happens.

And what people seem to be forgetting is the Republic of Ireland government, who will need to agree to any changes to border arrangements. They have absolutely no interest in changing the status quo, because that represents a huge risk to them.

They also have no desire to solve this issue for the UK as they are committed europhiles and this problem is entirely of the UK's making, so why the fuck should they? I am confident they will be a huge thorn in the UK's side on the border issue.