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Oh Britain, what have you done (part ∞+14)?

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The backstop is actually popular in Ireland and Northern Ireland. It’s the Eurosceptics who don’t like it. A better description of it would be safety net. It means there won’t be a hard border in Ireland if the UK and EU can’t agree a trade deal.

I'm sure it is - it's the DUP that is out of step.
 
Call me thick but I still don't fully understand the backstop or why it's such a contentious issue for the Irish?

I'm aware it means we stay in the customs union until a deal is sorted out, but what is the big hullabaloo all about and why are the Irish so dead against it? I can't see where it mentions a hard border or how it leads to one.

The Good Friday Agreement is an international peace treaty. It mandates no hard border between NI/Eire. All this petty squabbling by trumped-up (I choose that phrase accurately) delusional idiots in the Tory party can’t be allowed to impact something so hard-won and with a history of such bloodshed. The EU are 100% right to treat May with the contempt she deserves on this one.
 
The EU won’t allow goods and people to cross its border into a non EU country which is why there will be a hard border if there’s no deal.

This ain’t rocket science.
 
The real point about the backstop of course is that Brexiteers hate it because they know there is no way to solve the problems of the Irish border so it effectively means we would stay in the EU customs union forever.
 
The real point about the backstop of course is that Brexiteers hate it because they know there is no way to solve the problems of the Irish border so it effectively means we would stay in the EU customs union forever.

With May’s deal Ireland effectively becomes a united Ireland
 
Excellent. No £39BN cheque to write Juncker then.

I enjoyed the BBC2 program on the EU last night. Simply highlights that it doesn’t work.
Another dingbat fantasist.
Just suppose we didn't pay the 39BN - which we owe, and have agreed we owe - just suppose we didn't pay it, what sort of trade deals might we subsequently attract, with a recent 39BN default, and what sort of rates might we be able to borrow at?

I'm glad you enjoyed the program. I've yet to see it.
 
Why would the eu research group who are totally opposed to the eu do that? Beats me :)
 
They are voting on the Corbyn Unicorn Amendment now. There is no chance this passes.
 
Yet more total cognitive dissonance.

The EU's central project, and you can argue this one till the cows come home, is the political, economic, fiscal and monetary unification of its member states. Free movement (of goods, services, capital and workers) is part of this project, as is EMU. The latter, in its manifestation as the Eurozone, lays down clear rules (which are applicable to all member states, in or out of the EZ), amongst the most important of which decree that member states may not have a budget deficit which exceeds 3% of GDP, and the debt/GDP ratio should not be higher than 60%. In the case of EZ states exceeding these levels, the EC calls for austerity measures in order to limit the budgets on the pain of substantial fines. Following the financial crash of 2007/8 and the sovereign debt crisis in the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) countries and Cyprus, the EU 'troika' (the IMF, ECB and EC) imposed harsh austerity measures in return for bailout lifelines. The austerity drive spread to countries beyond the PIIGS which were also caught up in the financial crisis - France, Germany and the UK. Austerity was virtually de-rigeur across Europe, and it was very much an EU policy. ECB QE, which allowed interest rates to fall to 0%, helped the bailout countries in terms of contributing towards meeting the austerity demands (though usually also at the price of much higher debt/GDP ratios), and all have now voted in anti-austerity governments which have introduced more generous budgets. It is widely argued that EU austerity ceased some years ago, though it remains a central tenet of German and EC policy. Many EU/EZ countries exceed the EU's budget deficit rules, often by substantial degrees (Italy debt/GDP is 131%, Greece 170%, France 97%, even Germany at 64%), and with budgets being pushed towards or beyond the 3% limit and the ECB closing down QE, it is pretty difficult not to argue that with the kinds of contractions that are looming or actually happening in global trade the EU is going to be hit with a new wave of sovereign debt emergencies that, with no further ammunition in the ECB's fiscal warchest, may make the last lot look fairly quaint and old fashioned.
Thanks for the one liner, ET.
So, our austerity measures were an EU order.
Show me it. Show me when we were threatened.
Show me the EU directive saying that although they had ended advocating austerity some years ago, we were to carry on with it regardless, under pain of some sort of EU sanction.
Why would they, when we weren't even in the euro?
 
Another dingbat fantasist.
Just suppose we didn't pay the 39BN - which we owe, and have agreed we owe - just suppose we didn't pay it, what sort of trade deals might we subsequently attract, with a recent 39BN default, and what sort of rates might we be able to borrow at?

I'm glad you enjoyed the program. I've yet to see it.

Probably the first time I agree with you.
 
The backstop just says if there isn't an agreement then we stay in the current customs union to ensure there is no hard border. If there were no backstop then without an agreement when the UK leaves the customs union there will be a hard border in Ireland. ET's Magic Borders (TM) notwithstanding.

“We will have to find an operational way of carrying out checks and controls without putting back in place a border.” Michel Barnier, January 2019.

It's called Realpolitik. We'll undoubtedly be seeing more of it, and by no means just from the UK.

And more than that it's the EU26 sticking up for a small member country. The Brexiteers thought (in as much as they think about anything) that the EU would just throw them under the bus because German cars or something.

The EU isn't sticking up for a small member country. If it were, it would be looking for solutions, not obstructions. Varadkar is the EC's current useful idiot.

The Irish treasury is estimating that a hard brexit will knock 4 percentage points off of the country's GDP. That will take the smirk of Varadkar's face.

There was apparently a not unantagonistic conversation about Ireland's corporation tax regime at the Davos shindig last week. When the EC decides that the time's up, Ireland will be going under the bus. The EU is a fair weather friend.
 
Thanks for the one liner, ET.
So, our austerity measures were an EU order.
Show me it. Show me when we were threatened.
Show me the EU directive saying that although they had ended advocating austerity some years ago, we were to carry on with it regardless, under pain of some sort of EU sanction.
Why would they, when we weren't even in the euro?

I didn't say anything about austerity in the UK being an EU order (though I wouldn't discount it). I said that austerity was an EU, and EU-wide, policy.
 
BTW, if Scotland or Wales goes independent and both manages to obtain EU membership sometime afterwards then England will have to face this backstop issue again on both the Welsh and Scottish borders.

I would vote for Scottish independence tomorrow frankly.
 
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