Westministenders: Brexmeggadon Redux.

[RedToothBrush]

The last thread started about how the Withdrawal Bill was in tatters with The Rebel Forces feeling confident of staying in the Customs Union and there seemed to be a growing backlash towards the hostile environment and the need to reduce immigration.

This thread starts with the revelation this week that Farage has claimed that he never said the UK would be better off financially under Brexit, just that we would be self-governing and the Brexmeggadon Planning Revelation.

The Sunday Times has published a story about No Deal Brexit as senior civil servants have drawn up scenarios for David Davis. If you remember the minister responsible for No Deal is actually Steve Baker. That’s ERG founder Steve Baker. And if you remember he is facing queries from Brexiteers about whether he is truly committed to Brexit on the basis of his recent actions and comments.

There were reported that his plans for No Deal were stalling and proving impossible.

And today we have the Brexmeggadon ‘Project Fear’ article with three levels of jeopardy: Mild, Severe and ‘Oh my fucking God’.

Suddenly all our talk of stockpiling on Westministenders are starting to look rather prudent and enlightened. Ian Dunt’s book is looking like a Brexit Manual. David Allen Green is just standing there going ‘Well’. And George Osbourne is maniacally laughing his head off somewhere.

In the Level 2 Disaster Planning we are looking at Dover collapsing on Day One, food would run out within days and hospitals would run out of medicine within weeks. Petrol would run out within week two too.

As I’ve point out before in the worst case, the government has insufficient police and army to manage a worse case scenario.
Of course this is so explosive, its only been shared with a handful of ministers and are ‘locked in a safe’ and The Sunday Times don’t tell you what is in the ‘Bremeggadon’ scenario.

Or you could just read social media for the ‘scaremongering’.

We now have political attempts to FOI or force the publication of these reports to look forward too. The irony being that in this case the government will have a legitimate case that it would be against national security to release them. Of course they can’t actually admit that either!

Naturally Cabinet ministers and DeXeu has dismissed the article as not true. What else could they do?

Only for a ‘government source’ to claim that the denial was ‘untrue’ to Sam Coates of The Times.

Matthew Holehouse pointed out that the government can’t say for certain what impact no deal will have on medicine supply chains, because review on this isn’t due to finish its “initial” work until “late spring 2018”. Of course we are now in Summer 2018 and its still not been completed. Which obviously bodes well.

And there is talk of Chilcot style inquiries into Brexit sometime in the future. Westministenders is once again way ahead on that score…

----------------------

Meanwhile over in the Labour corner, growing pressure has been mounting on Corbyn. This week has seen the launch of a Corbyn supporting left wing pressure group, comprised of grassroots and trade unions to stop him supporting the harakiri of Tory Brexiteers.

We wait with tepid enthusiasm and sceptical levels of optimism for Corbyn’s climb down. St Jeremy knows what he wants...

----------------------

What does all this talk all mean? I think its difficult to read as much different to the media catching up with what the sane – who have a modicum of understanding of what trade deals, the custom union and the single market actually are - have been saying for sometime. Reality can’t be spun forever. At some point, you have to start preparing the public for the coming shit storm or the inevitable u-turn. This seems likely to be the move to kill off No Deal once and for all.

In terms of a ‘possible civil war’ under Brexmeggadon, its noticeable key Brexiteers are backing away from the cake. That doesn’t smack of civil unrest, that smacks of cowardice and a lack of Brexiteer leadership as no one is truly prepared to nail themselves to the mast as the ship starts to sink.

I also don’t think people will blame other people in the event of no food and no medicine and no medicine. I think people will be fairly unified in blaming those in charge who caused ‘No Deal’.
Oh and The American Trade Wars have began.

Ronald Regan ‘We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends—weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world—all while cynically waving the American flag.’

Hmmm. Sounds a lot like Brexit doesn't it?

Turnips anyone?
Planting season is late June to early July.

Am I right in thinking this is where we're at with Brexit?

29th of March at midnight, we leave the EU. If we have not made any other deals or arrangements with the EU we fall onto WTO trading rules. This involves recording/checking all imports/exports to/from the country and collecting tariffs on goods . We don't have anything like enough customs facilities or personnel to deal with this traffic. Every port in the country would become completely clogged within an hour. About 50% of our food is imported, and stocks would run dry after about five days assuming people continued to shop normally and not panic buy. We have about two weeks supply of medication in stock as much of this is also imported.

David Davis's solution to this when asked on the radio the other day was to just not do the checking and wave through imports from the EU. But to do this would be in breach of WTO rules. A way around this would be to open the doors to every other member of the WTO as all members (without a specific trade deal between them) have to be treated the same. Fine, goods are waved through (no standards would apply or tariffs collected) , but supermarket shelves remain stocked. Problem, if EU countries did this then they would also be in breach of WTO rules and they would have to apply the same conditions to every other nation. The EU would never do this as it would be far, far, too damaging to there economies. So, we are back stuck with clogged up ports and empty shelves in supermarkets. Hungry people riot and loot.

I can't find anybody who can dispute this summery, with facts, not just flag waving nonsense, and point to reasons why it can't happen. I have tried to post on Leave EU boards on Facebook but my questions just get moderated off so nobody sees them and is able to answer.

Last chilling thought, David Davis is in charge of negotiating this.

Emily My concern is that if there is no Withdrawal Agreement requiring it to do so, the Uk will stop making payments for the S1 health system

As I posted, it would actually cost the UK more, but this is a very stupid govt, who doesn't believe experts
They might do so out of pure malice, or to play to public prejudices against people "escaping" Brexit.

I'm confident the EU countries wouldn't be malicious towards their expats or ours, but of course they won't want to subsidise UK - third country - citizens who haven't paid in to the country's health or pension system

Exchange rates have been a serious issue for pensioner expats for many years now - particularly for Brit expats, because the pound has been sinking against other currencies since leaving the Gold Standard in 1931, but particularly noticeably post-WW2

Also an issue for pensions from UK employment which are not indexed - many pensions are fixed permanently at the retirement level, especially from private employers.
So these lose their purchasing power even more quickly

kenn One solution for food & other essential imports from the EU is for the UK govt to pass emergency legislation to come into effect just before Brexit Day,
making it illegal for vehicles to carry goods to the EU (maybe with a few specific exceptions agreed with the EU)

The Uk would also need staff to check all goods vehicles on entry to all UK ports & the Chunnel were genuinely empty - not much training required for that

i.e. send over empty lorries only, which the EU would wave through

• trusting checks on the UK side - to be filled and then returned to the UK.

The govt might also need to ban all private cars from travelling over by ferry or Chunnel, because the drivers' licence / insurance would probably no longer be valid within the EU, causing jams at the EU ports with checks / refusals.

Of course, all that would massively increase the UK trade deficit, but keeping people fed and maintaining civil order is much more important - or should be.

Unfortunately, that would require the govt to be courageous and to plan ahead, before Brexit, because once the ports are log-jammed, it could take weeks to clear.

The problem with waving through all imports from all countries is that these countries might then have no incentive to do any trade deals with the UK !

• they would already have free access to the UK market, so why would they negotiate to allow the UK access to theirs ?

No trade deal would be better than the free access to the UK that they would already have

How did you decide on Malaysia for your fantasy escape plan?

I've been toying with the idea of teaching abroad (sadly now left it too late to be out of the country by b-day) and Malaysia was one of the places I was looking at.
It's commonwealth and (as commonwealth countries go) quite British friendly - so it seemed less likely to turn around and decide that, as I had travelled in on an EU passport, post brexit my right to be there was no longer valid.
It has English as an official language - so it is relatively easy to get by. Plus it has a huge expat community. Whilst it's not as cheap as places like Thailand and Vietnam, it is still massively more cheap than Europe - which will be useful when the pound plummets. Plus it is more modernised than it's surrounding countries (the place I was looking at has a giant Tesco nearby).
It is far enough way from Britain that the sheer embarrassment of brexitmaggedon won't make me too mortified to leave the house.
They drive on the left and - and I can't stress this last one enough - it is warm all year round.

It was a no brainer.

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-06-08/u-k-said-to-mull-keeping-n-ireland-in-single-market-rules?twitterr_impression=true

Theresa May’s officials are considering keeping Northern Ireland aligned with European Union rules after Brexit as a last resort to avoid a hard border
…
The U.K. has been told to come up with a so-called “backstop” solution for the Irish border as part of its divorce deal with the EU, so that no policed frontier emerges on the island after Brexit.

It made a partial proposal on Thursday - after much domestic wrangling - and the EU said on Friday that while it’s prepared to keep talking about it, some key elements of the plan won’t work.

Part of the problem is the U.K. hasn’t addressed how to keep regulations aligned on either side of the frontier.
The EU says ensuring the same rules apply across the island of Ireland in areas such as goods, agriculture, energy, electricity, and environment policy will be crucial to avoid border checks.

Marina Hyde on DD's* SAS "career*" 😂😂

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/08/top-guns-brexit-eu-machismo-tories

Don’t take my word for it – take Nadine Dorries’, even if she hasn’t been playing with a full set of patio furniture since the MPs’ expenses scandal.
“David Davis is ex SAS,” thundered the member for Mid Bedfordshire this week.
“He’s trained to survive. He’s also trained to take people out.”

I solicited reminiscences of Davis’s time in the SAS (territorial).

A couple of his former brothers-in-arms got in touch with memories of TA 21-SAS (V).
I had two favourite anecdotes.

The first was when Davis was required to coordinate an ambush, and opted to position his men on either side of the road so that – had the exercise been real – the soldiers would have opened fire on each other.
< epic 😂 >
The Sun Tzu of DExEU, there.

The second story saw Davis charged with managing an “escape and evasion” mission.
“It was supposed to last five days,” recalled one of his men.
“But he accidentally led us through a choke point – a kind of bottleneck where trackers always wait – and got us captured inside 36 hours.
So we were put in a truck, blindfolded, driven around, and dropped at night on an undisclosed remote hill to start all over again.”
I mean … the jokes are too easy, aren’t they? 😂

Brexit is on the 'love island'

"It will be harder to go on holidays......I love my holidays"
Could be useful.
twitter.com/gullyburrows/status/1005187613270167552

I didn't listen to it - but I read what everyone said.
These women are being ruthlessly mocked for being ... a few sandwiches short of a picnic, let's say... But, gormless as they appear to be, they have worked out that it will be harder to go on holiday following brexit. And that is a bad thing. I wish a few more people in this country had their kind of foresight. It could have saved us a whole load of trouble.

pretzels I’m from Malaysia and you are right about all of those things (yes, there is even Tesco and IKEA) except for one thing I have to correct you on - it’s not warm all year round, it's freaking hot

The Love Island woman wasn't wrong about Cheese either. I gather that French cheeses are much more expensive in Norway. Not to worry - they have their own brunost instead.

What I don't get in all this: the talk about taking measures to ensure that food gets into the country in the weeks after Brexit, eg lorries going out empty and coming in full, waiving tariffs for entry. Perhaps this would work as an emergency measure. But we are looking at a PERMANENT situation of no deal with the EU. So how would things be survivable going forward?

It is beyond outrageous that Leaver forums are moderating out anything that is not unicorns. There is more information available to people than there has ever been, and yet they are still seeing only 1 side of the argument on something that is so important to their future. Madness.

it’s not warm all year round, it's freaking hot

even better

Icantreachthepretzels Apart from a delay at passport control, why will it be harder to go on holiday?

I don't understand what the Brexiters' medium plan term is. Do they intend just to negotiate very very quickly, on desperation terms, in the vague hope that the country will just about survive on that? And then just allow EU goods to come in tariff free indefinitely?

Danniz Don’t you mean the government, there seems to be plenty of remainers in there.

KennDodd

Your summary is one of the more positive ones as it assumes we go over to WTO but can't process stuff fast enough. Some experts are saying we won't even be able to go to WTO terms as we're not a member in our own right. The UK government are assuming that they can roll over membership. That's not a given. They are assuming they can roll over tariffs. Again that's not a given. They are assuming they can keep their part of the EU quotas. Again that's not a given and is highly unlikely.

EU ports are already well down the line of recruiting and training hundreds of new staff. So far the UK has done nothing. That's a policy choice. Civil servants say they are not allowed to start preparing for this because that's being negative and contrary to the governments position of 'despite all evidence to the contrary, everything will be just fine'.

Danniz I don’t think they know what they are doing, unless they have some clever master plan, I think they need to walk away and start planning for a no deal while we still have time, rather than leaving it to the last minute that’s what EU are famous for in negotiations doing a deal at or beyond the last minute, As a labour MEP said, once you start negotiating with the EU it’s like entertaining a mine field, were you have to watch ever step, obviously the government would have been aware of this.

Icantreachthepretzels Apart from a delay at passport control, why will it be harder to go on holiday?

• We won't be part of the open skies agreement so flight will be harder to come by and more expensive

• Customs controls. Having your bags and car unpacked and checked for stuff you can no longer freely take with you eg your roast beef sandwiches in your packed lunch

• Restrictions on how much money you can take with you.

• No health insurance card. Great if you're fit and healthy but if you have an existing condition?

That's of the top of my head. I'm sure there's more.

MimpiDreams if that’s the case then the government are very clever and for some reason confidant or this will turn out to be the end of the Conservative party as we now it

MimpiDreams That’s all to be decided, and that would work both ways, granted the U.K. is not a great place for your beach holiday, But surely the holiday destination would be up in arms about the vast loss in earnings, would cripple some places

MimpiDreams U.K. citizens spent 46 billion in Europe 2017, that’s a lot of money to turn away

The UK, along with Germany France and several others deliberately made it difficult to get out of the EU to stop countries from 'shilly shallying' around right at the formation of the EU. Long term planning has been sorely lacking for so many years and 'soundbite' politics is now being shown not to work.
If it had been said at the outset (just before the vote) that to leave the EU would cost every person in the UK £3,000 per year (say), and that the process would take 3 years, and shown with some detail how and why this would be so, it would make sense and we would know what we were getting into. Instead all parties went for 'hot potato' soundbites with, as has been demonstrated, no fundamental basis.

Not really. A lot of holiday destinations are sick of brits who have no respect for the local culture and behave disgracefully, ruining towns' reputations. There's an increasing number of tourists coming from Eastern European countries whose wealth is increasing. They are more than happy to fill the gap and holiday destinations are very happy to accept them.