Okay, I’m saying this yet again. The EU is not making a choice when it says that we can not have the benefits that arise from shared rules unless we follow those shared rules… it is simply a fact… a truth… a truism. Losing the benefits that arise from harmonisation across borders has to happen if we opt out of the harmonisation. After all these years you’d have thought people in the UK would have got this. I’d at least have thought that anyone bothering to contribute to this and the previous thread would have worked this out by now. The EU is not making it hard on us… “we” are choosing to no longer partake in rules based systems from next year that currently benefit us. This is nothing to do with EU choices, it is the choice of the donkeys that lead us, cheered on by infantilised voters.

Anyway, came to post this… it’s short but essential reading…

Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine Michael Gove had admitted there’d be border disruption and new trade barriers before the Brexit vote.

Of course you can’t. And the worst part? Our leaders’ total lies are answered with total reward.

My latest https://t.co/9rWbKe94eE

— Jonathan Lis (@jonlis1) February 14, 2020

Cougar – let me rephrase.

Yup, no arguments with any of that.

@mehr, it gets better!

Brilliant weekend celebrating Brexit. Not been on here much. Sank a few yesterday down the local after an enthralling match down the King Power. Where are all the remoaning cyclists who were laughing at me months ago. He who laughs last laughs the longest.

— Colin Browning (@ColinBrowning14) February 2, 2020

Absolutely disgusting service at Schiphol airport. 55 minutes we have been stood in the immigration queue. This isn’t the Brexit I voted for. pic.twitter.com/QcSne9d4qW

— Colin Browning (@ColinBrowning14) February 13, 2020

Cmon, fess up, who is it?

Incorrect use of the present perfect continuous (‘have been standing’, not ‘have been stood’) and the ending of a sentence with a preposition. And to think leave- voting boomer types are always complaining about younger people having a poor grasp of grammar.

JP

Very good reasoned analysis of where we are heading here…and very worrying:

I thought Byline was a mad conspiracy site, but that one is fantastic, good find, well done.

Ooh, wait a minute …

Taking a photo at immigration is expressly forbidden.

Read some of the comments here https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/schiphol-airport-amsterdam-tweet-1-6514898

That’s not funny. The reference to ‘down the King Power’ means there is a high likelihood this chump lives near me somewhere.

Still, I saw a loaf of bread in Sainsbury’s earlier that reminded me of this guy, then I looked a bit closer and realised it actually said ‘Thick Cut’.

kelvin – I suggest you read my follow-up post clarifying ‘…giving us a hard time’.
I think most contributors have a decent understanding of what is happening – specifically the benefits of harmonisation.
The EU could say, amongst other things:
– OK, you’ve left but we will work co-operatively with you to ensure the UK achieves the best possible deal without compromising any of our stated objectives and core principles
or
– you’ve left; we will not offer any significant concessions to the UK, will not be obstructive or uncooperative but will not be bounced into helping you achieve your date for concluding a trade agreement
or
– you’ve left; live with the consequences; we’re not bothered if this leads to a hard brexit and WTO rules across the board; we have all the negotiating cards and the experts to manage our interests. No concessions of any kind; all trade-offs will be in our favour.

Johnson and his bunch of second raters want the first but are doing nothing to encourage the EU; in fact their attitude is likely to result in the latter.
In addition, Johnson wants ‘good’ trade deals with the EU and the US but those two trading blocs don’t have an easy relationship with each other and johnson will be squeezed – talk about being between a rock and a hard place.
If trump wins a second term the pressure will really be ramped up.
Other than that, everything’s good.

It is in the EU’s interests to have a prosperous country as it’s neighbour of course. So they aren’t trying to knobble us. But there are rules that they cannot break for very obvious reasons. It’s that simple.

Caymans on the black list, funny what happens when you don’t have a veto anymore.

The Colin Browning Twitter account must be a parody. It *must* be.

Apparently the airport delays were because it was a staff training day. Nothing to to with brexit in this case.

Still a longer queue in the non EU passports bit tho

I don’t care if it takes a bit longer to get through the airport, at least we are now making our own rules and controlling our borders. We are, aren’t we?

Worth checking out this thread… if you need a reminder of why the “easiest trade deal in history” is still a bogus proposition…

This, then, is the problem of disintegration. You want to keep some of the positives, but what are the conditions under which they can be kept? It was all part of a network of steps to establish trust /13

— Holger Hestermeyer (@hhesterm) February 16, 2020

In case we didn’t know….https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51526784.

Okay, I’m saying this yet again. The EU is not making a choice when it says that we can not have the benefits that arise from shared rules unless we follow those shared rules… it is simply a fact… a truth… a truism

It makes no difference how many times anyone states it. Truth is not what motivated/motivates Brexit, neither the political puppet-show we have in place. The game is perfectly rigged.

I’m sure it is just posturing by the French. After all I’m sure I recall this being ‘the easiest deal in history’.
Maybe one of the Brexit flag wavers could clarify my memory.

It can still be the easiest deal in history

” we want cake and unicorns”
” you cannot have them”
” we will walk away then”
“bye”

It can still be the easiest deal in history

” we want cake and unicorns”
” you cannot have them”
” we will walk away then”
“ see what the filthy globalist lefty communist foreigners are doing to us? Dunkirk, blabla, Trump, bla bla, we’ll break the EU, we hope it fails with it’s bendy bananas and corrupt filthy unelected beurocrats, no wonder we’re popular. Bla bla ner ner ner, ner”

FTFY

Easiest planned no deal in history. And it will be lapped up by the electorate.

Overton Window has seemingly been bricked-up and instead painted as an abstract meme on a cloud somewhere between Trumping Towers and the Internetz. It may get a refurb/reassessment in a few decades. Maybe not. One thing is certain and that is that populism (like Nationalism) is still catching up with social media (a new hyper-tabloidism) and they fit together like hand-in-glove. I predict much much worse before things begin to turn another corner. This feels more like a dead-end/fait-accompli. I’d dearly love to be wrong.

The French are probably just giving us back about 0.00001% of what we deserve in this outburst. It is not constructive of the guy in question, but if you act like a dick sooner or later someone is going to have a pop back. It might feed the gutter press some more in this country, which is about the extent of any damage it could do.

Nothing, nothing is going to get away from the fact that there is a near perfect inverse relationship between degree of alignment with the EU and the UK’s economic prosperity.

Opt for BRINO and limit the damage or go full **** and invoke an economic catastrophe. Those are the two poles, options exist between but more chest puffing stupidity equals less cash in the kitty. Always was the case, is the case now and always will be.

The best bet would have been staying in the EU, of course, but well…..****.

and invoke an economic catastrophe

This is not going to happen. Although the steps necessary to avoid it might prove unpalatable for many people still being told by the liars running the government that voting for Brexit was about “keeping our money”, “spending on our priorities”, “controlling our borders and fisheries”, “saving the NHS”… all while “protecting workers rights” and “ever higher standards of environmental protection”. At some point choices will have to be made.

Still a longer queue in the non EU passports bit tho

We were all directed to the EU biometric lines at Alicante airport Saturday. We’ll see what happens at the end of the transition period.🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Kelvin – no deal is coming I am certain. all this is just preparing the blame game to blame anyone but the tories for the damage it will cause

It’ll either be no deal, or “minimum deal”, and all the chaos and cost that entails, yes. And blame everyone else, of course… goes without saying. The mitigations that follow are still going to be a surprise to people who voted for a better life though.

The mitigations that follow are still going to be a surprise to people who voted for a better life though.

As not one of these has yet explained to me how life will be *better* out of the EU then how can they be ‘surprised’? Surely no matter how bad it gets, this shall simply ensure a near-endless supply of the same old scapegoats with which to fuel the New Dunkirk Spirit of cap-doffing, Spam-worshipping, blaming Johnny-foreigner/‘Marxists’/brown people/The French/uppity feminists/‘academics’ and of course the never-fail emergency ripcord – ‘blame the poor and/or disabled’.

I went through the ‘all passports’ line at Milan Linate last week, because in amongst the scrum of people I noticed that the EU line was roped off into zig zags but the all passports line went down the side of the zig zags in a straight line and hence was much shorter. The flight had just landed from the EU though so it contained mostly EU and Brits.

Soz,ignore.

As not one of these has yet explained to me how life will be *better* out of the EU then how can they be ‘surprised’? Surely no matter how bad it gets, this shall simply ensure a near-endless supply of the same old scapegoats with which to fuel the New Dunkirk Spirit of cap-doffing, Spam-worshipping, blaming Johnny-foreigner/‘Marxists’/brown people/The French/uppity feminists/‘academics’ and of course the never-fail emergency ripcord – ‘blame the poor and/or disabled’.

It is handy for them that the festering reservoir of prejudice was there all the time for them to tap into.

Thomas Cole(former EU negotiator) – The EU is a large global rule setter… so if the UK government sees itself as a complete sovereign equal to the European Union… then they're going to be in for a very hard wake up call when reality dawns & that's not the case… pic.twitter.com/2Xyi6YAYxB

— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) February 18, 2020

“We don’t need no stinking rules”, or the slightly more nuanced (if still just as deluded), “we will set all our own rules without compromising with any of the big trading blocks or states”, need to meet reality at some point. I fear they will be doing so in our workplaces long before our representatives in government and their Vote Leave handlers and financiers will let themselves be seen to bend to global reality.

Meanwhile, in today’s “brexit coming home to roost” news, I fear the wurst.

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/food-and-drink/sausage-manufacturers-brexit-fresh-meat-sell-european-union-trade-1848467

.

EU in ‘No, you can’t have what you want’ shocker.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51549662

Well, who’d have thunk it? No cake and eating it? Whatever next?

The comments on that BBC article display a truly staggering level of ignorance. Its no wonder we are where we are when people seem to continue to wilfully reject reality in favour of some nationalist pipe-dream of empire

This stood out for me

Boris Johnson has used sausages to further his position in the past (Photo: Getty)

Easiest planned no deal in history. And it will be lapped up by the electorate.

Does look like this, The instant the EU are reneging from Johnson right after we left was a bit like Farage immediately disowning the bus.

When you add in the awkward things like er Gibraltar and the Elgin marbles and the fishing stuff and the instant point blank refusal for some alignment plus the fact they have locked out from further extensions and just the actual limited time in place.

Does make you wonder if the US trade talks are still being conducted in secrecy to be quickly whipped out as the answer to all our problems.

Joris Bohnson has made exactly the same mistake as May. Started with bluster and hardline rhetoric, painted himslef into a corner (to satisfy the right wing nutjobs) and left himself nowhere to go. Any concessions will now send the Brexiteers into meltdown, screaming betrayal. And we all know they must be appeased at all costs. Even if the cost of that is an enormously damaging shock to the countries economy

The months leading up to December will be increasingly farcical as it becomes needlessly confrontational, with Bohnson and co’s nationalist posturing leading to the inevitable no deal crash out. They’ll try and spin it as the EU’s fault, but the blame for this upcoming economic suicide will lie firmly in Westminster.

We presently are being ruled by complete maniacs. But then its easy to act like a madman when you can stroll away from the damage, Cameron style, and leave the little people are left to pick up the pieces

If people think that Boris will hang around any longer than Dave did once the shit hits the fan, they’re delusional. Bullied on style, he’ll waltz off, having smashed the place up, leaving the minions to pay for the damage

I don’t think it’s going to be December, I’m sure there’s a mid year point when the eu decide the state of the negotiations around June then they want it ready near end of November.