To ask why would anyone want no deal?

[guinea36]

Watching Sunday morning political shows. A few politicians suggesting they would prefer no deal if necessary. These people are presumably intelligent and educated
Yet they believe - although I struggle to see it - that ultimately it will be better for the country economically in the long run. Just wondering what the theory is behind this belief?

The French interconnectors are mainly used in the peak hours. The hour time difference means France has a few mw to spare when we need it most.

With the massive increase in renewables, peak is now especially vulnerable on cloudy winter days with no wind or sun and it's only the French nuclear that keeps our lights on.

England also imports a lot of electricity from Scotland. In 2017 there was only 13 times that Scotland had to import from England

state those who say they voted on a No Deal basis are lying

Provide some evidence that no deal was even discussed before 2017 and I'll believe that you are telling the truth. But you won't, and you aren't.

Even Farage and Banks - the more "extreme" end of the leave spectrum in 2016 - were not promoting no deal prior to the referendum.

I can appreciate that when your story changes every few weeks it's hard to keep track of what you said when ;)

But AFAIK nobody's said they're going to stop selling us their spare power (and why would they?), and there's no need to have a trade deal in place for it to continue.

Of course there needs to be a trade deal! France aren’t sending you their spare power free and out of the goodness of their hearts

Which part of 'No Deal' are you struggling with?
It is the same as you turning up at the supermarket 2 minutes after they locked the doors. No deal means EVERY deal that the UK has now is torn up and by 1 minute past 11:00 UK time the UK effectively does not exist.
Your car or house insurance ends at 12:00 midnight on whichever date it expires. You have an accident at 12:01, you are not insured.
It is not a 'OK you are mates, have some extra time'.

Do you think we need a trade deal in place to buy something from someone in another country?

Roll on 30th March. It can't come quick enough!

{Do you think we need a trade deal in place to buy something from someone in another country?}
Of course.

Do you think we need a trade deal in place to buy something from someone in another country?
Not if we are willing to pay cash on order
and totally rely on them to sell us what they said they would

hence why people like ebay and amazon act as intermediaries
as the alternative is to send cash to China and hope

Do you think we need a trade deal in place to buy something from someone in another country?

In principle no, but when it comes to electricity it's a heavily regulated industry. You can't just buy as-you-go from a metaphorical bloke in the pub and plug it into the national grid, you enter into a legal relationship with your supplier that governs an ongoing service.

So as this stand we have existing arrangements we have for electricity supply with French entities. These will be legal contracts defined on top of a certain set of regulations. If those regulations do not apply to UK entities after March 29th there will be no legal basis for the agreement and supply will cease.

I don't know the ins and outs of the agreements we have with French entities (I do know that National Grid is owned by a French company so I suspect it's a relationship between two entities of the same group), but I work in an equally regulated industry and I think it's far more likely our that the relationships do depend on the EU framework than they don't.

Do you think we need a trade deal in place to buy something from someone in another country?

You don't need a trade deal, but it makes it a lot easier. Most of the UK's trade is done under some sort of agreement in addition to WTO terms, if not with a full trade deal then with a more limited agreement on for example harmonised customs procedures.

I think it would be a fair statement to say that without a deal, it will be difficult or impossible for British companies to participate in European just-in-time supply chains as they do now.

Yet they believe - although I struggle to see it - that ultimately it will be better for the country economically in the long run. Just wondering what the theory is behind this belief?

No they do not believe that it is going to better for the country economically in the long run, they couldn't actually care less. The long and the short of it is, they and their friends stand to make more money than the average UK citizen makes in a lifetime x 1000+ if we leave with no deal. Remember money before party, party before country.

If it goes to hell in a handcart , is anyone actually going to be able to do anything to them ? Nope, they will slink off into the sunset (probably not a British one ) with a gigantic bank balance. They have a mandate remember coz of 'The will of the people'

Is anyone else reminded of those awful scams on elderly people where they keep on sending their life savings, even though deep down they know they are being scammed, but this is the final payment and then they will definitely get their money back

I rather suspect that EDF France wouldn't stop supplying EDF UK unless the EU actually took action to prevent them. And I think they'd have the UK/ROI gas interconnect in their minds before they risked taking any action. There's no reason why they wouldn't cooperate anyway, it would be entirely up to them - no external international trade issues to consider in this case.

Fishes
There's no reason why they wouldn't cooperate anyway, it would be entirely up to them - no external international trade issues to consider in this case.
Sorry?
The ROI will be inside the EU
and the UK will be outside it
thats pretty darned international in my book

The tory politicians who want a no deal are independently wealthy and will be protected from the negative effects of no deal.

They might have to pay more for things but they can afford to.

They stand to benefit from remaking the UK without the protections of the kind of employment rights we have come to take for granted.

They dont care if we turn into (in fact they want us to be) a low tax small state economy.

Did you want investment in education? Healthcare? Social care? Well you can forget it. The tax base of this country is going into reverse, our economy into decline. The damage has been done already.

If i were in power and i'd grown up with a massive sense of entitlement and ignorance of / uncaring about the reality of ordinary working people's lives perhaps I'd think no deal was a price worth paying.

{I rather suspect that EDF France wouldn't stop supplying EDF UK unless the EU actually took action to prevent them. And I think they'd have the UK/ROI gas interconnect in their minds before they risked taking any action. There's no reason why they wouldn't cooperate anyway, it would be entirely up to them - no external international trade issues to consider in this case.}
You have a weird naivety about this. It isn't 'mates down the pub' it is international trade with legal constraints all over it.
Mrs May could shake hands with the bosses at EDF or whoever to 'buy' the electricity, but there are offices full of lawyers who will insist that certifications and regulations are all met. Everything of this nature is ripped up with a 'no deal'. The word will be 'come back in a few weeks, we will get some lawyers to look at it'.

Thats pretty darned international in my book

I said no external international trade issues meaning that it's entirely between the EU and the UK and there's no third party or outside body which has to be involved or considered.

The electricity thing is a very interesting one...
As I understand it (and am no expert but very interested in energy supply, particularly how the transition to renewables is managed) its not so much that electricity has tarrifs, but that the sharing of it through the interconnectors is made possible by us being signed up to a mutual agreement with other EU countries. It should be possible (I think) to still do this after Brexit, but not in a no deal scenario: We are about to leave the current agreement (along with a whole host of other ones) and need something to replace it for things to carry on as normal.
"No Deal" means we don't have a replacement deal.

Balancing the national grid is very complicated. It always has been, but is even more so now as not only does demand vary throughout the day/night, but the supply available does too (renewables have priority access, but when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing extra capacity has to found from somewhere else).

So the mix of energy types feeding into our grid varies.
It is not as simple as "turning up" a power plant at peak demand, and "turning it down" at low demand. Energy sharing allows us to export electricity when we have a surplus, and import it when someone else has a surplus and we don't. Its a really clever way to smooth out the peaks of demand and supply, and makes it possible to balance the grid.

This is an interesting website which shows where your electricity is coming from:
gridwatch.co.uk/

At the moment we are importing 4.6% of our electricity from France, 2.4% from Holland, and we are also exporting some to Ireland. This will change throughout the day. The way the interconnectors are controlled relies on some very complex rules to make it fair for all sides.

If we leave with No Deal on electricity sharing, then I can't see how it would be possible to keep doing this (at least in the short term).
So balancing the grid will be harder. On cold, dark evenings of peak supply there will have to be another way of balancing the grid. There are (expensive) agreements in place with some companies, who agree to shut down work when supply is low. There is also some extra capacity available from (very environmentally unfriendly) generators. But if this is't enough, we will be looking at Brownouts or blackouts at least in the short term.

In the long term, if we want to move towards more renewables in the mix then an increased cooperation with neighbouring countries would make this aim much more achievable. Very interesting to look at how this could work with offshore wind farms etc. Unfortuately despite the clear benefits, I worry that there may not be much political appetite for "European Super Grids" (or European Super" anything) in the current climate.

Please always take into account how much some politicians have to gain from brexity deregulation of our economy - and how much unprincipled actors (uk and non-uk) are willing to pay them to do it.

FishesaPlenty How do you think the electricity produced by EDF France gets into the UK National Grid?
For that matter, how do you think that the electricity from ay electricity supplier gets to your sockets?

Its not like when I turn my kettle on, my electricity supplier directly pumps more onto the grid in response.

Power stations in France are connected to the French National Grid, the French National grid is connected to the UK National Grid. EDF France don't directly control where the electricity they produce goes.
No electricity supplier directly controls where the electricity they generate goes (unless perhaps its part of some kind of local small scale micro-grid and not connected to the National Grid).

redandyellowandpinkandgreen99 sounded remarkably like Katie Hopkins’ interview with Femi Oluwole during that little outburst of glee there.

I rather suspect that EDF France wouldn't stop supplying EDF UK unless the EU actually took action to prevent them

This isn't a question about what they might desire to do, nor is it a question about the physical infrastructure. It is simply, will EDF UK and EDF France still have a contract under which they can continue to operate their existing arrangements without breaching regulations?

Do you know what legal requirements the UK and French electricity regulators place on contracts between electricity generation and distribution companies? Will UK entities continue to meet those legal criteria after March 29th if there is no deal? (For example, if the French regulations specify French companies can only enter into supplier relationships with parties overseen by a EU regulator or one that has been recognised as equivalent, on March 30th the UK regulator will no longer comply, being neither an EU regulator nor one that has been recognised as equivalent.)

You may know the answers to my questions. I don't. If you do, please do share.

(I'm sure there will be a Brexit project at EDF that does know the answer and by now has spun up a contingency plan. So I doubt supply will be interrupted. But it is such a shame that money that could have been invested in improving the service has instead had to spent just making sure tomorrow continues to be the same as today. And this is being replicated all over the UK economy. This is the reality of the Leave vote - far from Brexit making things better, we are spending milllions (at least) just to make sure they don't get worse)