Westministenders: Deadline Day #1

[RedToothBrush]

We have hit another Deadline Day.

As it stands, the EU are looking for more progress. May is digging in her heels by suggesting there is new a requirement for backstop to a backstop. The backstop to all intents and purposes is the GFA. So May is saying in effect, that the EU are forcing her to put in provisions to protect an international agreement we are signed up to, and if we breech it we risk peace in NI.

After lots of noise it seems that the Cabinet have decided to stick by May. For now.

The EU look like they are talking as if their meeting next month will exclude the UK and just go straight to No Deal planning.

There is also other talk of alternatives to allow the UK to stay in the customs union. But theres not much to that and it still doesn't solve the ERG and the DUP problem.

May is vastly unestimating how much the ERG and the DUP want to break the GFA. Which is a huge misjudgment.

There is also talk of the final final Deadline Day actually being Dec 13. For various reasons its not. Thats 29th March.

So Wednesday is Deadline Day #1. Expect more.

Forgot the important bit

🐟🎣👑 Place Mat King.

@Peston has a thread on Twitter about it. It's a non starter on the UK side because of the ERG nuts etc. 😒

Barnier wants the NI backstop in the WA to apply right from Brexit Day[[https://www.ft.com/content/6582b8ce-d175-11e8-a9f2-7574db66bcd5?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6
]]
It is the same SM+CU he has proposed for NI ever since talks began
Additionally, NI would belong to the UK Customs Union

• remember, he was on the periphery of the GFA talks, so is very expert on the NI /RoI situation, far more so than anyone seems to be on the UK side, especially the NI Secretary of State.

May has been trying all along to leverage the NI border into giving all the UK the benefits of the SM+CU, without the 4 pillars.
This would give the UK a competitive advantage with lower regulation on workers' rights, maximum working time, maternity leave, health & safety, the environment etc

Barnier is putting off discussions on a probable EU-UK CU - which May wants but the ERG & DUP hate -
until after the WA, because negotiations will take some years - like all trade deals !

(FT paywall)
https://www.ft.com/content/6582b8ce-d175-11e8-a9f2-7574db66bcd5?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6

Speaking to ministers in Luxembourg, 

Mr Barnier privately outlined his vision for a “two tier” backstop that could be included in the withdrawal agreement
to ensure an open border was always maintained between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

This would include both a backstop for Northern Ireland alone,
keeping it within the EU customs union and single market for goods,
and alternative references to a UK-wide customs union.

Any separate UK-EU customs arrangements would, however, have to take the form of a new treaty to be negotiated and agreed in full after Brexit.

“The extension and two-tier backstop arrangement would only be offered if all other parts of the Withdrawal Agreement are reached,”
...
Any extension would be subject to agreeement by both sides.

France and Germany are supporting Mr Barnier’s objections to UK demands that the so-called backstop include no Northern Ireland specific elements,
insisting that any UK-wide elements are agreed after Brexit.

Nightly reminder that we have an active, sensible preppers forum on MN offering sound advice on how to prepare your household for a no deal brexit. May I encourage as many of you to read through the threads and get some preps in place for your family. The more of us who are prepared, the better.

With that I bid you goodnight!

Thanks fox
Any Westministenders in the UK:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/preppers

Thank you for the thread and, as a prepper, thank you for posters pointing people to the Prepper topic. Hopefully people will find some sensible ideas to pick from to suit their situation.

///...

Thank you Red.

Commiserations about your house.

Place mat king

Place marking for Red

Thank you for keeping these threads going. I read it all but don’t say much. The whole situation sends my anxiety levels rocketing - this whole clusterfuck is just inconceivable. I really struggle to understand why our elected representatives are set on a course which weakens our economy and makes life worse for ordinary people. The UK will be massively vulnerable...

PMK

Thank you to Red. The level of insight and understanding on here is superior to that of our own government.

It feels like Groundhog Day .

Didn't Barnier/the EU tell the UK yonks ago that the UK as a whole couldn't be included in any special arrangement for NI as it would affect the 4 Pillars?

Even the FT article doesn't actually describe a "second" backstop: it describes the backstop that was supposedly agreed back in December (at the time the UK Government still believed in unicorns believed that "technological solutions" not invented yet would avoid the need to implement it ) and the "second backstop" is the trade deal that the UK will eventually make with the EU

I really struggle to understand why our elected representatives are set on a course which weakens our economy and makes life worse for ordinary people

Same here. I wonder if we'll ever know what's truly going on.

@Andrew_Adonis
Exeter City Council last night passed a motion for a people’s vote to stop Brexit. This follows Liverpool, Belfast, Leicester, Swansea & many London boroughs

Milton Keynes soon to follow.

www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/world/europe/brexit-preppers-united-kingdom.html

But with time running out and negotiations at a delicate point, some Britons are preparing for a crisis that could upend their way of life.

“People are talking about World War II and rationing,” said Ms. Mann, a former midwife. “People have also been talking about the blackouts in the 1970s, and how power was rationed.”
This has the potential of being a combination of the two,” she said.

Interesting to see an article about preppers in an American newspaper but Nothing about that in the U.K.

(I might actually pinch that list on the photo and cross referenced with mine too)

Too early for ? I thought not.

Sometimes I think it would have been better if Boris Johnson had become PM in 2016. Surely the whole Brexit debacle would have imploded by now - no excuses with a Brexiteer in charge.

Absolutely I agree, leave them nobody else to blame. BJ was too smart for that though, he knows, Brexit is undeliverable without huge damage.

Leasdom wasn't too smart, but blundered anyway. I suspect the men in grey suits got to her. She herself, would have made an almighty mess, but with Gove pulling her strings - well, it would still have been a mess.

As for May, ambition certainly was her No. 1 priority, her chance to be PM, even if she hadn't made it as the first woman PM. Then I genuinely think that she really didn't understand the complexity of what 'she intended to make a success of'. She was also not wise enough to realise that she would not be able to appease her right wing, and that eventually they would turn on her. Which they will do, but seem to be keeping their powder dry at the moment.

It's very very noticeable that the darling of the right wing, Grease-Smug doesn't hold office, and appears not to want to. Why don't the right wing either put up or shut up? Preferably the latter.

@MyBrexitGoesOnHoliday - my family in the US who dip in and out of UK politics were astonished when I told them that it was mainstream problematic. They watch the BBC a bit online and on the app and said it didn't really seem to suggest any likely problems. I suggested that this was perhaps not the whole picture and told them about the new Food Supply Minister. They were shocked . I think a light bulb went on.

.