Brexit 2020+

UK is a fading ex-colonial power but still had considerable soft power influence

Yep, and the key to it was to insulate ourselves from full-world market influences by being in ‘clubs’ like the EU – seeking to keep standards up and avoid a race to the bottom against countries that have populations who will work for far less because they have to.

Does anyone envisage the EU hardening its position after a no-deal?

Yes, after much provocation, they’ll have to.

Remember that after 31st Dec this bunch of clowns have less and less room for manoeuvre, so they will start to take the piss. I reckon they’ll use the Irish Republic like Khrushchev bragged about using West Berlin as the ‘testicles’ of the west. “When I want something I just squeeze” type of thing.

There’ll be issues all over, smuggling, chaos at ports and they’re going to try to make out that EU intransigence is to blame.

Eventually the rabble will make us so impossible to deal with that the EU will just say “oh just piss off then”.

Barnier is constantly ratcheting up his willingness to publicly show disdain for the UK. He has to, he has to look after the interests of the EU. We’re the ones who kicked our friends in the balls.

The EU will now begin to treat the UK like a piece of shit on the sole of their shoe; something to get rid of quickly and without ceremony but the smell will linger for a while.

Does anyone envisage the EU hardening its position after a no-deal?

It’s already happening. They’ve had enough of our shit. And who can blame them.

They know that this lot want to establish the UK as a tax haven off the shores of the EU and drive down costs by jettisoning all EU. legislation to create a filthy, polluting, unregulated sweatshop to undercut its neighbours

Why the hell should they help us do that?

There will be zero concessions from the EU

The only hope we’ve got is that Boris, spineless bastard that he is, will bottle it (again) and fold (again) at the eleventh hour and accept regulatory alignment (while letting him call it something else) as a price for access to the single market

Otherwise we are well and truly ****ed!

The only hope we’ve got is that Boris, spineless bastard that he is, will bottle it (again) and fold (again) at the eleventh hour and accept regulatory alignment (while letting him call it something else) as a price for access to the single market

That’s not what the sharks are paying them to deliver, though.

Any hint of regulatory alignment and bang go their post-politics lives of luxury.

I know it’s probably wishful thinking on my behalf but what might save us is Johnson’s ridiculous vanity and narcissism.

He’s never believed in Brexit. It was just a means to an end. He knows what damage a no deal Brexit will do.

Does he want to go down as the PM who totally ****ed the UK economy? Seeing as he imagines himself as Winston Churchill?

So his vanity and egotism is, somewhat ironically (as it’s what got us into this mess in the first place), our only hope.

The only hope we’ve got is that Boris, spineless bastard that he is, will bottle it (again) and fold (again) at the eleventh hour and accept regulatory alignment (while letting him call it something else) as a price for access to the single market

Brexit is now set in law, only a parliamentary reprieve will call it off and Boris, because he’s so spineless, will never do that.

I remained hopeful that he’d call for an extension due to Covid but actually Covid and the associated wrecking of the economy in advance of Brexit (as well as the complete distraction that it’s provided) has actually given added impetus to it all.

Anyway, Boris isn’t in charge, it’s Dominic Cummings and the Russian paymasters.

Does he want to go down as the PM who totally ****ed the UK economy? Seeing as he imagines himself as Winston Churchill?

Any and all damage to the economy can be blamed on Covid. Also the “bounceback” and the “rebuild” can be used as an excuse to rip up all the environmental protections, workers rights and checks/balances in the name of getting the economy going again.

Bonfire of red tape.

However, once the 6 months are up (so July next year), comprehensive import procedures will apply, and the process for importing goods via Dover will look something like this: pic.twitter.com/PPLuUtmL4L

— Sam Lowe (@SamuelMarcLowe) July 13, 2020

When Boris said “**** business!” He really did mean it, didn’t he?

The whole of Kent is just going to be one enormous lorry park on January 1st

Absolutely. This is my favourite though, ‘customs declarations are complicated’.

How we have fallen from ‘easiest deal in history’.

Key line in the government's Brexit border plan (which runs to 206 pages): pic.twitter.com/O9IgNZYEuS

— Matthew Garrahan (@MattGarrahan) July 13, 2020

I know it’s probably wishful thinking on my behalf but what might save us is Johnson’s ridiculous vanity and narcissism.

He’s never believed in Brexit. It was just a means to an end. He knows what damage a no deal Brexit will do.

Does he want to go down as the PM who totally ****ed the UK economy? Seeing as he imagines himself as Winston Churchill?

So his vanity and egotism is, somewhat ironically (as it’s what got us into this mess in the first place), our only hope.

He signed the contract. He knows what is up for grabs. It is too late.

Johnson, fat, oafish, feckless, lazy pillock that he is, didn’t expect to bloody win. The muppet.

He wanted a narrow loss, so he could get the leadership as a ‘People’s Champion’ who could bang the nationalist drum with a safety net of not actually having to do anything.

But he will have known who he was getting into bed with. Winning the referendum wasn’t what he wanted, but there are no actual consequences for him anyway, so well…….who gives a shit?

dannyh
Subscriber

He signed the contract.

To be fair though, this is Boris Johnson, unless it was signed in his own blood on the skin of Dominic Cummings it doesn’t count for a thing

To be fair though, this is Boris Johnson, unless it was signed in his own blood on the skin of Dominic Cummings it doesn’t count for a thing

Serious people a layer or two down, though.

It is the same throughout history when it comes to organised wrongdoing. Don’t focus on the functionaries, don’t focus on the ones who go around doing the enforcing. Concentrate on the ones raking in the cash.

When even a Brexiteer dimwit like Liz Truss is saying ‘hang on a minute chaps, this ‘no deal’ thing might actually not be that great an idea’ you know that we really are ****ed

Dom will now sack her for pointing out the emperors new clothes, obviously

Liz Truss letter now fully leaked

And it reveals post #Brexit horror for #Britain

There never was an “oven-ready” Brexit! https://t.co/dpU5pPkm10

— Richard Corbett (@RichardGCorbett) July 11, 2020

[strong]binners[/strong] wrote:

The whole of Kent is just going to be one enormous lorry park on January 1st

currently trending on Twitter as #FarageGarage 🙂

Make them own it.

I remained hopeful that he’d call for an extension due to Covid but actually Covid and the associated wrecking of the economy in advance of Brexit

Don’t think that was going to ever happen, I think Boris’s strategy is to run The clock down and piece together a last minute deal, his own side won’t have enough time to see what he’s agreed to and will have To sell it as a great victory.(Repackaged transition anyone with extra frills).

You’d think this would be coming straight from the pages of a satirical website but no, it’s The Guardian and it’s all depressingly true.

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/13/gove-delivers-lorry-load-of-oven-ready-brexit-with-no-ingredients

together a last minute deal

There’s no last minute deal. Withdrawal Agreement is signed, deadline for extension has passed. We are now negotiating an FTA as a third country.

Life comes at you fast, as the saying goes.

As a country, we are definitely oven ready now. Utterly plucked with a lemon shoved where the sun don’t shine.

Will the gammons ever admit that all the talk of frictionless trade was always a blatant fallacy and that they were conned? Guess not, it will still be ‘remoaners’ fault somehow.

Johnson, fat, oafish, feckless, lazy pillock that he is, didn’t expect to bloody win. The muppet.

He wanted a narrow loss, so he could get the leadership as a ‘People’s Champion’ who could bang the nationalist drum with a safety net of not actually having to do anything.

Absolutely bang on! We’re in this mess because that clown couldn’t even get that right.

That look on his face and his opportunist partner-in-crime in the press conference the next morning said it all. While the Faragists were all going mental, waving their little flags and popping champagne corks, those looks said…

Oh shit!

^^^^^

Yep, they realised at this point that they couldn’t even trust the ‘great’ british public to narrowly lose something.

What an epic fail this whole thing has been from start to finish.

In another lovely bit of irony (it would be funny if it was happening to someone else) the Faragists are beginning to realise they were sold a pup whilst De Pfeffel gets his shot as playing Churchill for a bit and not having to suffer any consequences.

The faragists are beginning to realise they’re not getting what they wanted. This is because Brexit was always sold as what it is not, not what it could be. Not in Europe. Not under the yoke of the EU. Not.
Unfortunately the only way to deliver that is make pretty much everything else also ‘not’. Not successful, not what anyone wants, unless you happen to already be very well off, thank you, and can put all your money outside this mess until the dust settles, then come back in and buy everything for peanuts.

Have the Leicester garment sweatshops given us a glimpse of the future – as envisaged by johnson and gove, his polyp.

Obviously Leicester is an extreme case but that is the direction we have to head to set ourselves apart from Europe/European laws/working practices

Its the only way it can work.

The only business model that makes any sense post-Brexit will be to become a satallite/subservient bitch of the US. So we jettison environmental standards, workers’ rights, food standards, the welfare state, and universal healthcare to allow huge tax cuts for the rich which will turn us into an offshore tax haven, just with shit weather.

It’s worth listening to what Gove says and assume the actual intention is the polar opposite of what that slimy little sock-puppet states.

He’s said all along that Brexit will allow us to build a high skill/high wage economy, and that freedom from EU regulations will allow us to increase our food standards and environmental controls

So you can take it as read that none of that will be happening. The reverse of it most definitely will

The only business model that makes any sense post-Brexit will be to become a satallite/subservient bitch of the US. So we jettison environmental standards, workers’ rights, food standards, the welfare state, and universal healthcare to allow huge tax cuts for the rich which will turn us into an offshore tax haven, just with shit weather.

There was a documentary on this exact outcome on TV recently.
It was called The Hunger Games…

Have the Leicester garment sweatshops given us a glimpse of the future – as envisaged by johnson and gove, his polyp.

The Leicester garment sweatshops are already an illustration of extremely dodgy working practices and borderline bonded labour being legitimised.

15-20 years ago the ‘underground’ garment manufacturing in Leicester was renowned for producing knock-offs of designer label clothes – pretty much 100% illegal counterfeiting. Now they have been exposed by covid, it transpires they are making intentionally labelled garments for ‘kosher’ brands. Brands that the bigger stockists have felt the need to distance themselves from. No covid, no exposure. They would have continued producing over the counter rather than under the counter garments and hardly anyone would say a thing.

But as a working model of post-Brexit britain I think we will see some of those practices become widespread.

The working practices in Leicester will come as no surprise to anyone who’s read No Logo

And hand-in-hand with those working practices always go what used to referred to as ‘Export Processing Zones’, now rebranded as ‘Freeports’

The ‘Freeports’ championed by Gove and co as the saviors of our economy were once the exclusive reserve of such delightful regimes as Burma’s military dictatorship

Rishi Sunak reportedly planning to open bidding for towns, cities and regions to become designated zones where UK taxes and tariffs will not apply

They’re basically setting up a tax-dodging infrastructure for international corporations to take advantage of.

In other places it’s been used as the thin end of the wedge too. Firstly tax and tariffs don’t apply within these zones, the next thing you know all manner of other things become exempt too… workers rights, union recognition, environmental controls. That sort of thing.

I can’t imagine why this shower is so keen on promoting them, can you?

If you’ve not read No Logo then it’s worth a read. Just so you know where we’re headed

I may have posted this back in 2016 but it’s worth repeating if only for the prophetic insight:

‘Heartland’ by Matt Johnson/The The (Some Bizarre/Epic Records 1986
Beneath the old iron bridges, across the Victorian parks
And all the frightened people running home before dark
Past the Saturday morning cinema that lies crumbling to the ground
And the piss stinking shopping center in the new side of town
I’ve come to smell the seasons change and watch the city
As the sun goes down again
Here comes another winter of long shadows and high hopes
Here comes another winter waitin’ for utopia
Waitin’ for hell to freeze over
This is the land where nothing changes
The land of red buses and blue blooded babies
This is the place, where pensioners are raped
And the hearts are being cut from the welfare state
Let the poor drink the milk while the rich eat the honey
Let the bums count their blessings while they count the money
So many people can’t express what’s on their minds
Nobody knows them and nobody ever will
Until their backs are broken and their dreams are stolen
And they can’t get what they want then they’re gonna get angry
Well it ain’t written in the papers, but it’s written on the walls
The way this country is divided to fall
So the cranes are moving on the skyline
Trying to knock down this town
But the stains on the heartland, can never be removed
From this country that’s sick, sad, and confused
Here comes another winter of long shadows and high hopes
Here comes another winter waitin’ for utopia
Waitin’ for hell to freeze over
The ammunition’s being passed and the lords been praised
But the wars on the televisions will never be explained
All the bankers gettin’ sweaty beneath their white collars
As the pound in our pocket turns into a dollar
This is the 51st state of the U.S.A.
This is the 51st state of the U.S.A.
This is the 51st state of the U.S.A.

2 years ago I did ask my most Brexity chum (he almost worships Farage, even copies his emphasis and speaking style, and is obsessed with immigrants and ‘remoaners’ whom he literally sees as ‘traitors‘ to the country) what he thought about what I saw as the UK becoming more aligned with US policy/politics and the attendant selloffs. He said (paraphrase) ‘Better that than all these unelected EU officials and **** immigrants, so it sounds alright to me’

He’s not lived in the USA. Or ever had to face selling his home because he or his loved ones got sick. Of course. Neither does he appreciate that two of his closest-friends had to do just that (but that’s the total narcissism/short-sightedness/lack of empathy involved in such a cult-mentality?)

So where to for SS England/Britain? Only the apathy, confusion, horrified resignation and sheer dumbfoundedness of the electorate/crew remains. With such depleted skills a last-minute revolution/tack around the approaching iceberg is not on the cards because ( to further torture the nautical analogy)… that ship has sailed and anyway the crew are now either drunk or asleep or else watching it unfold slow-motion in Twittervision as infotainment.

Even if there wasn’t a nasty bug/smokescreen going around I’m pretty sure the excuses would still be ‘blame it on the EU, foreigners and remoaners‘ even as the ship goes down.

And then you won’t see those **** for dust, as the prime-movers all had their personal lifeboats and havens all sorted. Even as they told us remoaners ‘if you don’t like it, then leave’.

Believe me, I would, in a heartbeat but someone seems to have burned all the bridges. ‘Keep calm and carrion’

Ah… Minford on Newsnight sounding like he has not a clue how business and international trade works… it’s like 2016 again.

Minford was proper bonkers

Apparently the £7bn annual cost of all the new customs red tape won’t happen because WTO rules say you don’t have to pay extra costs !?!?!

I thought Patrick Minford died years ago – wrong.

Minford was proper bonkers

Apparently the £7bn annual cost of all the new customs red tape won’t happen because WTO rules say you don’t have to pay extra costs !?!?!

We’re BRITAIN, and we’ll pay what we bloody well want to, which is NOTHING – traitor remoaner.

We’re BRITAIN, and we’ll pay what we bloody well want to, which is NOTHING – traitor remoaner.

We don’t have to pay for anything we don’t want to. But then nor can we expect to have the benefits.

That some oaf is now going on Newsnight and talking this kind of shit about the WTO (which was the ‘oh no, my god, we will not end up there’ option about 12 months ago but now seems to be the ‘go-to option’ for a thrusting modern britain) has a neat symmetry to it.

Could we use the correct title please? We’re heading for an ‘Australian Style’ Deal. Not ‘No Deal’. Not a ‘Crash Out’. Its an ‘Australian Style’ Deal.

I’m sure that before long we’ll have a three word slogan to trumpet its virtues.

A spokesman for the Chinese government has just been on Radio 4 this morning, stating the bleeding obvious regarding the repercussions of our rejection of Warwai.

He described the UK (correctly) as now being a second-tier European nation, outside the EU, and that we have now completely subjegated our foreign policy to the Trump White House

Are we levelling up on an oven-ready Australian style deal?

Are we levelling up on an oven-ready Australian style deal?

“You Little Ripper”?

Chris Grey nails it again

The cost of customs

These costs – just as regards customs declarations, before any other costs are considered – will amount to £7 billion a year (£) to UK businesses trading with the EU, rising to £13 billion (£) when EU businesses trading with the UK are included. It’s worth reflecting on these figures. They compare to the approximately £9 billion net contribution the UK made to the EU in 2018. It’s not a one-off, but a recurring annual cost. And, to repeat, it exists whether or not there is a trade deal – it is nothing to do with any tariffs that may be levied or any other trade barriers that may arise.

i particularly like:

The slogan for the information campaign is ‘Let’s Get Going’, which some businesses might reasonably take as a suggestion to relocate abroad while there’s still time.

but we can’t have an Australia deal as that involves replicating agreements that exist between Australia and the EU. What we are heading for is “Australia -“