"Noone has explained to me why we can't leave without a deal"

[Amoregentlemanlikemanner]

So, there we were yesterday in pilates and I said to my neighbour - a very gentle calm person who doesn't profer opinions very often - "they should do pilates in Parliamen to calm down". And she said (whilst working on her core)
"Noone has explained to me why we can't leave without a deal"
and after some more pilates we finished and I realised that I didn't have a succinct friendly answer. One suitable for that environment

Anyway I said as much and explained my own personal reasons for wanting to stay in the EU.

But can anyone help with something nice and short as the answer to her question?

But we can leave without a deal

Well we can.... they are just voting not to

We can leave without a deal. Just it would be economically and (IMO) culturally disastrous.

Because you still have to trade with the rest of the world and there will be extremely difficult consequences if you don't make an agreement.

Because there are thousands and thousand of laws and regulations affecting daily life that relate to the relationship between us and the EU - import and export of goods, movement of people, financial products, food standards, employment rights just to name a few. If we have no deal, these laws and regulations no longer automatically apply and there is nothing to replace them. There aren’t a set of back-up laws lying around in case this happens, and while we might be happy to carry on using the same laws as before (but then why leave?) the EU are under no obligation to honour them as far as we’re concerned.

Technically we can but it would leave questions about borders, importing of goods and so much more unanswered. Negotiating amicably how you leave anything is far better than slamming the door and having to go back knocking and hoping they answer. Unfortunately we aren’t even storming out we are dithering.

What Michaelbaubles said. A no deal means we are hanging out with our asses in the wind with absolutely no idea what comes next. And that means that moving goods in and out, services, people etc becomes difficult. Sure, for example we can continue producing food products to current standards and hope that is all okay, but what happens when we actually get to the border and no one knows what tariffs to employ? Even if everyone involved knows that the food safety standards have been employed in exactly the same way, is the documentation LEGAL with a no deal. Just because we SAY it's all exactly the same, it doesn't change the fact that from a purely LEGAL perspective, it's not.

The point is that Brexit isn't about small time issues and politics. Just because you say that everything is the same on the quality of your goods/people/services and you produce your own evidence, it means nothing if that evidence has not been legally recognised.

I think this is the bit people struggle with. There's this kind of unspoken view that "common sense" would prevail. But it doesn't matter how sensible and obvious things are, nations are based on a complex and detailed legal system and no one is going to let that slide because the moment you do, you open the floodgates.....

To continue my example above, legally, all this documentation I've been talking about, you could argue, is exactly the same so why does it matter? But once we leave the EU, that farmer has all this documentation, but there's no built in legal process that allows, for example, the EU to CHECK that the paperwork is being processed and handled correctly. So then what happens? What if it slacks or someone tries to work around it? The EU has no recourse and no way to know that the paperwork, which looks and feels and says the same things as it always did really IS the same. Because, again, this is how legal systems work. There are processes and fail safes etc built it.

And actually, if nothing else, Brexit should tell us that schools should be teaching basic economics and international law. we DO live in a global world, so we need a basic understanding of how it works. We teach our children religious education and PE because we understand that a basic understanding of these things are important as we move through society. Economics and international practices seem pretty important to me these days.

The last two posts have provided a long answer but it is important to remember that until the PM DOES something, the default legal position is that the UK will leave on 29th with no deal.
The HoC vote cannot overturn an international treaty.

"I think this is the bit people struggle with. There's this kind of unspoken view that "common sense" would prevail. But it doesn't matter how sensible and obvious things are, nations are based on a complex and detailed legal system and no one is going to let that slide because the moment you do, you open the floodgates..... "

And Bling - yes I think you are on to something there.

Well, of course we can (and will, if the HoC doesn't get it's arse in gear), but the point is that we don't want to, because it would be economically catastrophic and lead to widespread shortages, disruption and confusion.

Tbh anyone who says "no one has told me" usually means "many people have told me repeatedly and at length but I preferred not to listen and to dismiss what they were saying as Project Fear".

Well you could decide your marriage is over and just walk out of the house leaving everything behind including your phone, wallet and car keys. That would be the equivalent of no deal.

In addition to the above the laws and regulations and agreements we have with non EU countries about trade, movement etc etc are part of our membership of the EU so if we leave the EU without a deal we also fall out of our agreements with everyone else too. .. that is my understanding of it anyway.

So we'll have agreements with no-one and we'll be desperate. Everyone else will know this, not the basis for us to get anything resembling a good deal from anyone after Brexit.

I guess some folk haven't noticed that we live in the paperwork & regulations age. I guess my strategy for reply would be something like...

We can Leave with No Deal but we shouldn't because in modern times there are regulations about everything (I hate this too) and all of the rules fall apart without rules about which regulations still apply and what the procedure is for making sure everyone follows the rules.

If we don't keep the rules then British people who worked in Europe don't get all their pensions, tanker ships can't transfer their cargo, exporters don't know which export forms to fill in, manufacturers don't know when their parts will arrive, smugglers can bring bad stuff or people in without checks, special medicines can't be imported, nobody is regulating what goes into your face cream or how the chickens you eat were cared for (etc.)

Because we want to keep all the good bits.

Leaving without a deal, if we truly meant it, is technically possibly.

It would screw the GFA which in turn would ruin us as a nation but the damage is already done there

The problem has always been that when Leavers said leave, they just meant from the bits that suited them.

@HoneyDragon - But we can leave without a deal

Absolutely. Provided you don't give a crap that doing so means ripping up an international peace treaty.

Michaelbaubles gives a good explanation - if you want to say it more succinctly the entire country’s paperwork would become invalidated at the stroke of midnight on March 29.
Leaving the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement is a bit like insisting you are going to move out of your house on a fixed date without having sorted anywhere to go to, because you can always live on the street. And thinking you’ll save money by defaulting on your mortgage.

"There's this kind of unspoken view that "common sense" would prevail. But it doesn't matter how sensible and obvious things are, nations are based on a complex and detailed legal system and no one is going to let that slide because the moment you do, you open the floodgates....."

I think you're right. I keep coming across the view that "businesses will want to go on trading as they are, so they'll just keep on doing that" or even "if would made the EU look bad if we couldn't get enough medicines, so they'll just give them to us" .

Makes me wonder why we're leaving the EU to get rid of all the red tape and regulations, if people think the rules can just be ignored after all

I think an open border was written into the Good Friday agreement so not sure how that would pan out if there had to be a customs point at all crossings.
So I think that has something to do with the problem, also the DUP are needed to vote with the Gov to get things passed and they will demand an open border.
Though I think No Deal could still happen regardless of the above.

While this is all helpful if your neighbour were that interested picking up the occasional newspaper would help them.

Perhaps say - because World Trade terms are also a deal - and on really bad terms. We can then start making our own - but each deal would take 5-10 years.

@Bagpuss5 - also the DUP are needed to vote with the Gov to get things passed and they will demand an open border.

The DUP would like nothing better than to destroy the GFA. They were against it from day 1. However, they have constituents, particularly in the farming sector, who benefit hugely from it.

What the DUP are insisting on is that NI is not treated any differently to the rest of the UK. Which makes it a little ironic that they haven't been up in arms over the proposals announced last week for dealing with no deal whereby there would be no tariffs on goods between NI and Ireland. This would also contravene WTO as all countries must be treated equally under WTO.

Basically, the DUP want to have their cake and eat it while also continuing their traditional response to everything: NO

I spoke to someone last night who wouldn’t believe that our trade agreements would cease to function if we left without a deal. He was quite adamant that they would all carry on as if nothing had changed.

Yes, we can leave without a deal, at a massive financial cost to the country and the tax payer. Our food will be more expensive and less varied, lots of transnational companies will move away leaving behind plenty of unemployed people, out products won’t be able to be competitively priced abroad due to the usual higher taxes, so our own companies may be become more local or die, etc, but at the end of the day, it is a waste of time trying to explain how economy work to people who may think this is all about blue passports and more expensive holidays.

At the moment no deal is the default outcome if a deal or an extension is not agreed before 29 March 2019. Only 11 days away.