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Oh Britain, what have you done (part XXII)?

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Unusually, May is to travel to Brussels with DD for this week's negotiations. She's going to want to see what he's got in his bag- it'll be same as last time, a puzzle book and some extra strong mints for the train.
 
Panic on the streets of London, certainly on that Downing Street.

Relax and repeat after Chris Grayling... Britain will succeed whatever happens... Britain will succeed whatever happens... Britain will succeed whatever happens...
 
Oh dear, we've found another voice of doom. https://www.facebook.com/pestonitv/posts/1932135997111136

"Robert Peston
27 mins ·
Facebook Mentions
Tomorrow night’s dinner between May, Davis, Juncker and Barnier has supposedly been in the diary for some time.
For what it’s worth, Downing Street and Brussels agree on that - in perhaps a unique example of Brexit entente.
But the fact that the dinner was a secret till tonight cannot but create the expectation that it is of life-and-death moment to our cumbersome process of leaving the EU.
Again both sides say there is no way that deal-or-no-deal is on the menu, for the simple reason that we already know that Friday’s summit will be characterised by collective whistling in the gloom for comfort - in that the draft council conclusions leaked last week make crystal clear that inadequate progress has been made on settling the size of the divorce bill and the rights of migrants.
It is inconceivable that on either front sufficient progress will have been made by the end of this week to allow talks to start on a UK/EU trade deal or on a temporary transition period when we’ll become non-voting EU members.
In fact the truculence of Germany and France suggests that it may be naive to hope - as May and Davis do - that the breakthrough on bill and migrants will even be made in time for December’s meeting of the European council.
Worse than that, May will almost certainly learn tomorrow night that two of the pillars of her recent Florence speech - that a comprehensive trade deal can be concluded by March 2019 and that the two-year transition thereafter would be purely to implement an agreement but NOT to negotiate and conclude that agreement - are made of straw not marble.
She will be told in no uncertain terms by Juncker and Barnier that even if talks on our future relationship with the EU were to start in January - which as I say is by no means certain - that relationship is seen by EU governments and officials as fraught with complexities and difficult-to-resolve issues of principle.
So for what it’s worth, the proposals in our recent position papers on everything from data flows to customs checks are seen as naive and unworkable - largely because we are perceived as not having accepted that we are to become a third party, a stranger to them, no longer a member of the family.
My powerful impression is that the rest of the EU sees the UK government as less hostile than it was, but considerably more muddled.
And the risk for the prime minister, which presumably she knows, is that the moment she brings clarity where today there is ambiguity - on what transition actually means, on how much we pay on divorce, on the role of the European Court of Justice in settling the rights of migrants - she will alienate either the rest of the EU or half her own party.
There will be no Brexit without an almighty political crisis, whose form is yet to be determined."
 
Perhaps the most brainless comment this week- Caroline Frost, entertainment correspondent reviewing the papers on BBC News Channel: "there used to be a partition between Brexitiers and remainers but that's gone, we are all Brexitiers now".
 
TheDecameron said:
Perhaps the most brainless comment this week- Caroline Frost, entertainment correspondent reviewing the papers on BBC News Channel: "there used to be a partition between Brexitiers and remainers but that's gone, we are all Brexitiers now".
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More blind optimism.
 
In 2018 will she have the guts to say "there will be no brexit. It just can't be done without massive damage to the UK on political and economic levels." ?
But what happens then ? Resign ? Election ? Pretend it never happened ? There can't be another Referendum.
 
400 job losses at Vauxhall ? Traitors. They need a good talking to and a bribe: plenty of Brexit £ to go around I'm sure.
 
The non-believers have stopped buying cars, surprisingly businesses keep buying cars, so Tories might be supported by those.
 
More doom and gloom. Am I late to this? Have I missed this in the mainstream UK press? Is this "fake news"?

Independent said:
Britain is £490bn (€550bn) poorer than thought and no longer has any reserve of net foreign assets to help protect against any damage to the economy from Brexit.

The revision to the national accounts in the Office of National Statistic's (ONS) so-called Blue Book means that the UK's net international investment position has collapsed from a surplus of £469bn to a net deficit of £22bn - equivalent to a quarter of GDP.

The revised figures show the country owns far fewer international assets and owes far more to foreign investors than previously thought.

"Half a trillion pounds has gone missing," said Mark Capleton, the UK rates strategist at Bank of America.

The ONS overestimated how many financial assets Britons own overseas and foreign investment in the UK.
Company profits were lower than forecast, and a large amount of supposed assets held by firms were in fact disguised forms of lending to UK households.

The revision is disturbing given that foreign direct investment into Britain has collapsed, plummeting from a net £120bn in the first half of last year to a net outflow of £25bn this year.
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UK ambassador in NL gave interview to biggest newspaper, diplomacy :)
He says we are third largest tradepartner UK after Germany and USA, just like for Netherlands UK is third largest tradepartner after Germany and Belgium. Also Netherlands are second largest investor in UK after USA. Ambassador says it must be troublesome to the Dutch that 26 other EU nations have a say in our trade :)
 
markvdv said:
UK ambassador in NL gave interview to biggest newspaper, diplomacy :)
He says we are third largest tradepartner UK after Germany and USA, just like for Netherlands UK is third largest tradepartner after Germany and Belgium. Also Netherlands are second largest investor in UK after USA. Ambassador says it must be troublesome to the Dutch that 26 other EU nations have a say in our trade :)
Click to expand...

His Excellency and his other colleagues will have been given the classic British 'divide and rule' message to spread. 'It's not us hurting your business- if only big bad Brussels would get out of the way'. Naturally the EU27 will want to stamp down hard on this freejacking. As someone's already said, if this was another country leaving and trying to put one over like this, Westminster would be frothing and demanding sanctions.
 
Johnson is exhorting the EU "not to allow the grass to grow under their feet after receiving a good offer from his (current) Prime Minister".
He's a crap salesman insnt he? First he threatened them, then he told them they could go whistle for their money, now he's telling them they'll miss out if they don't take up Brexit Island's tasty, one time only offer. In reality he and his government are going to capitulate further before the 27 will come to a settlement. No doubt he'll threaten economic suicide again- this is the type of politician he is.
 
TheDecameron said:
Johnson is exhorting the EU "not to allow the grass to grow under their feet after receiving a good offer from his (current) Prime Minister".
He's a crap salesman insnt he? First he threatened them, then he told them they could go whistle for their money, now he's telling them they'll miss out if they don't take up Brexit Island's tasty, one time only offer. In reality he and his government are going to capitulate further before the 27 will come to a settlement. No doubt he'll threaten economic suicide again- this is the type of politician he is.
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Too one-sided. You have 2 clowns, him and Juncker. Why not show some balance in the piss-taking? He has already described his meeting with May as something that is already dead by telling people to wait for the autotopsy.

Extremely childish. He's a knob. Just like Johnson.
 
The EU is a far bigger combined economy than the UK- it has the capacity to tolerate the damage from Brexit better than the authors of Brexit, or should I say, us. We are going to pay the bill for a Johnson, Gove and Fox's vanity project. On the secondary issue of Johnson's calibre as a politician- he's widely regarded as fool both in Washington and European capitals.
I'm coming to the conclusion that if he replaces May, he might actually role over for the EU and reprint himself as the economic saviour of Britain. He could just stick to his current trajectory though and destroy the economy before bailing to save his own skin. We don't know what he'll do- like Trump is impulsive and entirely self- interested.
 
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