Westminstenders: Break it or make it.

[RedToothBrush]

We have a deal on the table. In reality it does not answer the question the result of the referendum posed: what type of deal do we want? The progress we have actually made in 2 years is to say, 'we want to leave' but nothing more. Or as its been termed: 'Blind Brexit' in which we exit but without knowing what comes next.

Even this is controversial. There are apparently some 88 Conservative back bench MPs (or half the Conservative back bench MPs) who are intending to vote against approving the deal. Some are remainers and some are hard leavers. Each side believing there is still everything to play for; whether that be no deal or no brexit. We are still as divided as ever.

The stumbling block, as ever, is largely the NI backstop. With many still arguing that it should be time limited. This fails to understand that the backstop is the GFA to all intents and purposes. And this is why Ireland and the EU will never agree to have a time limited backstop.

And once again we have this fundamental misunderstanding that the withdrawal agreement is anything more than merely the mechanism to leave, not the final deal, which is hampering all discussion of the subject.

There is talk that May will try to push the deal through and if she fails she will try for a second time. This might work, if this wasn't being anticipated. The trouble is the element of surprise is gone. This has now been denied by a No10 spokesperson. And has the possibility of a second referendum. Though the door on that, seems to be more open than less, with May's official declaration of a Blind Brexit. The whole effectiveness of a TARP style situation and a second vote on the deal in the HoC is the guilotine effect, where MPs look over the cliff and go 'shiiiiiitttt'. If the hope is alive for another way out for either the ERG or Remainers, then the plan is dead anyway. The a50 ECJ case is also still on; the latest government appeal to kill it was blocked.

Not only this, but there is the first tangable rumblings of discontent within the EU towards the deal. Spain has talked about voting the deal down. Whether this is anymore than talk, remains to be seen. Spain can not veto the deal at this stage anyway - but it might be able to cause trouble further down the line and thats the danger.

Meanwhile Labour are still promising unicorns and a total renegotition of the deal. This still focuses on the backstop.

Sunday's EU summit does still seem to be on though, despite Merkel suggesting that she wouldn't turn up.

And remember, as it stands, on 29th March we will leave the EU without a deal. The power to stop this lies with the Government and EU as far as we know at present, pending the outcome of the ECJ case.

May still has everything to do to make a deal happen and there are so many forces and people working to break it. We have still not made any real progress to Brexit, apart from get closer to it, through the mere ticking of the clock.

[RedToothBrush]

ukandeu.ac.uk/the-house-of-commons-and-the-brexit-endgame-what-can-the-commons-achieve-before-exit-day/
The House of Commons and the Brexit Endgame: what can the Commons achieve before exit day?

[RedToothBrush]

Ravi Naik @RaviNa1k
Important case for press freedom. We acted for @MikeSegalov to successfully challenge the (previously secret) police press accreditation system. The excellent @judebunting of @DoughtyStPublic instructed. See @robevansgdn reporting:
www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/23/journalist-michael-segalov-unlawfully-barred-from-labour-conference-court-rules
Journalist unlawfully barred from Labour conference, court rules

Michael Segalov sued Sussex police for secretly labelling him a leftwing extremist

‘My court case against the police is a victory for press freedom’

Wow.

[RedToothBrush]

Faisal Islam @faisalislam
Real push now from Downing St, trying to turn around public and then MPs opinion on the Brexit Deal. So how many Cabinet ministers are going to use the official hashtag?

twitter.com/theresa_may/status/1066013570792603649
She's got a hashtag AND a video.

Must be getting serious.

[1tisILeClerc]

{Might have been a lot worse if you had to pay to leave Wales ....}
It's part of a plan, next you won't be able go get out of Wales, they are after all a 'bit' foreign. They have that funny language too.

[DGRossetti]

Real push now from Downing St, trying to turn around public and then MPs opinion on the Brexit

The problem is the only changing minds have been doing over the past 2 years is away from Brexit.

And anyway, the adage about advertising is only needed for things you don't need rings true. If Brexit was that good, it would surely sell itself.

And I am suspecting that entire end point of this exercise is not to promote Brexit, but to promote Theresa May and the Tories. Which, as a taxpayer, I object to strongly.

[BigChocFrenzy]

Number plate recognition has long been tried and trusted (unless the plate is covered in mud)

Unfortunately, there is no tech solution for most phytosanitary checks,
e.g. to tell if any of the cattle / beef within a truck were raised with masses of hormones, banned in the EU

[BigChocFrenzy]

The ERG tried to topple May, but only succeeded in showing what a laughable bunch of incompetents they are.

The Irish border summed up the last ERG shenanigans perfectly:

The Irish Border@BorderIrish

The people who had the idea of Brexit but were too incompetent to actually organize it
have now had the idea of staging a coup against their own idea
but are too incompetent to actually organize it 😂😂

< see a common theme there >

[RedToothBrush]

George Eaton @ georgeeaton
Theresa May resembles a parent serving their children dry chicken and boiled potatoes before telling them: "It's that or no dinner at all!"

[FestiveForestieraNoel]

And you'll get it again tomorrow morning for breakfast...

[DGRossetti]

Number plate recognition has long been tried and trusted (unless the plate is covered in mud)

"trusted" ? With cloned plates an accepted fact - even here on Mumsnet ?

Even doing a simple report on cars reported as entering and leaving a supermarket (so pretty "clean" conditions) shows a margin of error of 2-3. (You query the database, see how many cars there should be in the car park. You then put boots on the ground and count ...)

Also, have we sorted out access to all those lovely EU databases ? You'd need those for ANPR to actually work.

[DGRossetti]

So that's one billion pounds we'll never see again.

www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/23/galileo/

There were heated exchanges at the UK's Defence and European Scrutiny Committee this week as members attempted to get the Minister for Defence Procurement, Stuart Andrew, to put a figure on the cost of the Galileo project.

Andrew did not have the number to hand, which prompted Mark Francois MP to splutter: "Oh come on, Stuart, this is your job!"

Admittedly, the minister has only been in the role since July 2018. But still.

The figure, when it came, was €1.15bn, or around £1bn at current rates, and reflected how much the UK has spent on the programme to date.

(contd)

[BigChocFrenzy]

red May does remind me of my childhood and primary school dinners - where we had no choice,
veg - boiled to death the British way, fatty meat, potato swimming in water
followed by incredibly dense suet pud & lumpy flour-flavoured custard.

I used to have to sit their all lunch hour until I finished, or be slippered.
I once vomited up part of a meal, but was made to eat it

Ah, "the good old days" 🤔
I really don't see them as some lost British Dream to which I want to return.

[DGRossetti]

Meanwhile, in grown-up land ...

www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/23/brexit_ireland_backstop_hmrc/


theregister.co.uk
HMRC: 30 months to prep Northern Ireland backstop systems, 24 for customs
23 Nov 2018 at 17:45
6-7 minutes

With just two years to go until the end of the Brexit transition period, HMRC has said its preparations for a Northern Ireland backstop could take up to 30 months – once Whitehall has said how the mechanism will work.

Effectively, this means there is no definitive date on when it could be operational.

It is the latest in a long line of stark warnings from the UK's tax department that have consistently stated that, until it has something more concrete to go on, it is impossible to build the relevant systems.

The two permanent secretaries at the department, Jim Harra and Jon Thompson, were speaking to the Treasury Committee (PDF) this week, in what Thompson said was his 13th select committee appearance about Brexit.

Thompson revealed that building the systems required for the Northern Ireland backstop could take more than two years – but pointed out this was based on a series of assumptions.

"It is really difficult to answer that question," he said when asked if a backstop would be ready by December 2020, which is when the transition period is currently scheduled to end.

For a start, he said, the department needs further clarity "on what exactly is required in order for us to be able to work out what IT systems we would need to build".

After that, HMRC would need to know what EU IT systems and databases it still had access to. The Withdrawal Agreement provides for different systems to be shut off at different times, but a draft political declaration published yesterday aims to re-negotiate access once the transition period is over.

I will be pleasantly surprised if the political declaration, when it is completed, gives us that level of certainty.

Once the department has those two elements, it can specify the operations required and build IT systems to do it – at which point, "we would need businesses that are transacting towards Northern Ireland to adapt or amend their own systems".

"In broad terms, if we were to make a number of assumptions, we think it could be up to 30 months to do that work," he said – but the clock won't start ticking until the governments reach an agreement.

For other customs systems at the border – working under the assumption it would be asked to implement a Facilitated Customs Arrangement – Thompson said it would take 24 months. But again this comes with the same caveats.

Harra added that, while an operational version of the Facilitated Customs Arrangement, for example, could be ready in 24 months, a repayment mechanism for businesses that overpaid would take longer.

On the time frame, Harra said it was unlikely that the completion of the political declaration on the future relationship, which was updated yesterday after a series of leaks, would be enough. That document (PDF), which runs to 26 pages, makes references to customs cooperation, but provided no specific details.

"I will be pleasantly surprised if the political declaration, when it is completed, gives us that level of certainty," he said. "In a Facilitated Customs Arrangement there is quite a lot to be agreed with the EU, which I would expect us to have to do in the next phase of the negotiation."

He effectively concluded there would be no choice but to proceed on the basis of some risk – which means there is "a chance that we will make the wrong assumptions and, therefore, we will have to redo some work".
Businesses taking the strain

Thompson repeatedly emphasised that readiness wasn't just down to the civil service.

"Even if we say we are clear about what needs to be operationalised, this is a highly automated system in which a whole range of other people then need to change their own systems," he said. "Traders, haulage companies, ports, airports and so on that need to adapt their own systems to what it is that we are saying they need to do".

If the government decide that they want to introduce an inventory linked system that requires ports and the ferry operators to introduce some new technology so that we know what lorries are crossing Dover Strait, so that when they enter the United Kingdom we can decide which ones to stop – that is a plausible scenario – that requires other people to build IT systems, to purchase IT systems or amend IT systems. That will take some time. It will not necessarily be about HMRC.

Finally, on the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, Harra reiterated previous comments that HMRC has plans in place and could have a functioning customs border on 30 March 2019 – but this would come at a cost, quite literally.

"We know the priority is to keep trade flowing and that fiscal risks may have to increase over the short term to enable that," he said.

"Therefore, the arrangements we will have in place will be suboptimal. They will not give us the level of assurance of taxes we would want to have and we would have to build on them over time. However, we recognise – because the priority is to keep trade flowing – that is what we will have to do."

He added that the compromises made on border control systems would be on financial, rather than security and safety risks. ®

[BigChocFrenzy]

DG I said tried & trusted - not foolproof or crookproof

For small amounts of goods, the EU wouldn't be happy,
but already has to tolerate some smuggling across all its current external borders - it would be ruinously expensive to make them 100% safe

For larger goods vehicles, number plate recognition would run alongside Trusted Trader schemes, plus vigorous policing in the RoI and heavy penalties for transgressors.

BUT
If mainland GB leaves with No Deal and no longer follows all EU standards, then the NI border is a potential source of sub-standard goods
A whole new ball-game where everyone loses except the crooks.
That would mean phyto-sanitary, Rules of origin etc checks, for which there is no clever tech to avoid a hard border

Hence the need for an external border in that case - the alternatives of either the SM being damaged / challenged in the WTO, or the RoI leaving the SM are not acceptable

For all the UK,
a big problem with No Deal is that we would not be on ANY EU databases, including those for imports of any kind

R North wrote that it takes 6 months to fully process a 3rd country application to be put on those databases
... and that's with countries that haven't pissed off the EU

They might not let us on those databases at all, until we reinstate the backstop, pay any bills oweed, re-instate expat rights .... and undo any new stupid actions from our govt

[BestIsWest]

I can only recommend @Darius (John Bull) ongoing Twitter thread about the WA once again if you haven’t seen it. It’s made me snort out loud a few times. Very good on the Irish border technical solution.

[BestIsWest]

@Garius not darius

[BigChocFrenzy]

To keep trade flowing - well, to reduce the logjams -
the Uk would have to abandon checks on RoI and indeed all EU imports, at least of food, meds and other essentials

it would also have to abandon collecting VAT and duties.

[1tisILeClerc]

Jam roly poly, Manchester tart, real custard that would probably glow in the dark and it's pink and brown variants. The scheme to go in last and get larger portions and a possibility of second, occasionally thirds!
A couple of miles walk a day helped against weight gain.

[BigChocFrenzy]

That is one of the major problems with a No Deal

[DGRossetti]

DG I said tried & trusted - not foolproof or crookproof

The semantics of trusting something which is neither foolproof, nor crookproof would be an interesting exercise for airline pilots (for example).

How many people need to trust it for it to be "trusted" ? 1 ? 100% ? 52 % ?

I don't trust it, so it can't be 100%. I suspect the answer will be "1" again. That "1" being Theresa May ....

[BestIsWest]

Link twitter.com/garius/status/1062983853260918784?s=21

[BigChocFrenzy]

leClerc You were obviously one of those boys - with switched off taste buds - who would gobble down all their dinner and then rush out to play,

while I sat all hour forcing down the luridly-coloured custard, which tasted like the leavings of a chem lab experiment
and the suet pud which was like trying to eat a car bumper

[RedToothBrush]

"Femsplained"

[BigChocFrenzy]

DG In practice, such systems can never be 100%
So "trusted" really means "good enough for govt work"
because to stop the remaining 10% (?) takes 10 x the effort and resources that controlled the 90%

[DGRossetti]

because to stop the remaining 10% (?) takes 10 x the effort and resources that controlled the 90%

i thought 80/20 was the usual split ?