Rishi Sunak puts final touches to the Brexit deal ahead of talks with Ursula von der Leyen: pic.twitter.com/dDGBtFKXJI

— Have I Got News For You (@haveigotnews) February 27, 2023

NO! and NEVER!

Thats unfair and inaccurate.
They can occasionally find YES and MORE for example when it comes to dodgy subsidies such as the cash for ash.

This is the actual announcement from number 10 😳

1/ Today’s agreement delivers smooth flow of trade within the United Kingdom.

We have removed any sense of a border in the Irish Sea.

Food available on supermarket shelves in Great Britain, will be available in Northern Ireland – including sausages. pic.twitter.com/eSKP1ndPon

— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) February 27, 2023

In other news, this morning I tied my shoelaces #achievements

The crux of it seems to be that anything intended for NI doesn’t get scrutinised, anything intended for ROI does.

Can someone explain how that works in practice? Is someone going to be labelling every box of sausages in the lorry and then checking where they end up? Are we going to have different labelling on the packets, so they will have to say ‘NOT FOR SALE IN NI’ on them or something?

Food available on supermarket shelves in Great Britain, will be available in Northern Ireland – including sausages.

In practice, nothing will happen until the EU/Republic start complaining again, then another ‘agreement’ will be reached which pleases some people all of the time, or all people some of the time (what Rishi has done here). Give it 5 years and NI will be part of Ireland.

Can someone explain how that works in practice?

For supermarkets supplying themselves. Easy.

For business to consumer direct sales. Also quite easy.

For wholesale and resale … 🤯

EU sausage police gotta be on standby.

A step in the right direction…

ICYMI in all the hubbub of today, there was some GREAT news about UK access to Horizon Europe https://t.co/noHRofVUWj

— Naomi Smith (@pimlicat) February 27, 2023

So a good day so far until we see the details then. Nice to see things slightly moving towards sensible.

A step in the right direction…

Except the treasury took the money back last week – money that was earmarked either for Horizon participation or to be spent on UK research if we couldn’t participate. But stuck in limbo, unable to do either…….

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64726522

Hopefully that will be reversed and we can join; what can’t be reversed is the drain of researchers that couldn’t wait and have gone abroad for the certainty that brings.

Oh, it’s all about cushioning the fall… but we can still welcome that and hope we progress further. It’s the turning the ship around analogy… we’re still going the wrong way but early signs of a course direction, or at least a slowing down of the rush to go the wrong way.

Break: Ian Paisley, the DUP MP, tells me: the Windsor Framework “does not cut the mustard”. It provides no basis for the DUP to go back into government + Rishi Sunak needs to enter fresh negotiations with the EU

— Nicholas Watt (@nicholaswatt) February 27, 2023

Shut the ____ up !

^^ Shocker eh?

I actually saw a bloke wearing union Jack trousers today like the guy in that twitter pic a page ago! That’s a first for me.

Let’s just day he tucked every single Brexiteer box you can imagine.

I almost shouted, “bingo!”😁

If you wear union Jack trousers you are a red flag for mental illness

Union Jack trousers with matching Bollocks To Brexit T-shirt and an EU tattoo?

yeh, I’d cross the road

bigrich
Full Member
If you wear union Jack trousers you are a red flag for mental illness

Mate posted a pic of me in my union Jack boxers the other day. Pic was from around 2016,probably pre-referendum.

No idea what it says about me, but I ditched the boxers long ago.

Spoke to a bloke from Suffolk the other day. He was on his way to Santander to catch the ferry home before his 90 days run out. Felt genuinely sorry for him.

From the Guardian article this evening

Although most Conservative MPs warmly welcomed the breakthrough after two years of negotiations, Johnson stayed away from the House of Commons chamber and is said not to have made up his mind about whether to endorse or oppose the “Windsor framework”.

Nice to see Boris ‘2 letters’ Johnson is as principled as ever and is simply weighing up what would be best for Boris Johnson. Same as 2016. He’s consistent. Consistent in not giving a flying **** about anything other than himself

Boris Johnson dangles threat of rebellion over Northern Ireland deal

The minister for children up chimneys Rees-Mogg, was fawning all over him tonight on Peston. He now has a show GBTV 3 nights a week, surprised there hasn’t been a PSA.

I have to admit im as confused over this NIP stuff, but then I’ve little interest in politics.

Is this deal thingy about allowing the UK to deal with or trade with the EU without the myriad of checks being outside the EU has brought. As in many large companies who did deal with the EU could no longer due to brexit, and this is some sort of thing that circumvents the whole process.

I just wish it wasn’t called the Windsor Framework.

The Darwin Framework would have been much more fun to wind up the DUP with.

Is this deal thingy about allowing the UK to deal with or trade with the EU without the myriad of checks being outside the EU has brought.

This deal thingy is about allowing England, Scotland and Wales to continue to deal with or trade with Northern Ireland with a smaller subset of the myriad of checks being outside the EU would otherwise bring.

Trumpeting how much better things are for NI just with a fraction of what the entire country had prior to Brexit.

While any attempt to talk to the EU like grown-ups for a change is to be applauded, it just shows exactly what the majority of us have lost.

As expect, the likes of Steve Baker who torpedoed something similar under May are now lauding this fudged deal and trying to claim that something has been achieved. Will there now be a show of faux unity in the Tories to try to persuade the electorate they are not a bunch of infighting scumbags?

Is this deal thingy about allowing the UK to deal with or trade with the EU without the myriad of checks being outside the EU has brought. As in many large companies who did deal with the EU could no longer due to brexit, and this is some sort of thing that circumvents the whole process.

Not really, but based on the who-ha you’d think it was actually a benefit to the whole of the UK.

As I pointed out to an acquaintance, it’s a sticking plaster for the limb you amputated.

Does the rest of the EU have to ratify this deal? It seems like it increases the risk of NI being used as a backdoor route for UK companies to access the single market, which would upset quite a few of them, you’d have thought.

As for the DUP, nothing can disguise the fact that this halfway house status further disengages NI from the rest of the UK, the direction of travel is towards reunification by stealth. Add to this the fact that they have no intention of power-sharing with Sinn Fein after losing the majority (the reason they took their ball home in the first place), and I’d be surprised if they didn’t attempt to scupper this, or just continue to ignore the NI assembly.

Does the rest of the EU have to ratify this deal?

No. Not in the normal way. But both Hungary and Poland now making official noises about being unhappy with EU:UK arrangements bypassing the normal ratifications (the “ex member” status created as part of the withdrawal agreement for the UK is what’s been allowing that to happen) and wanting to make sure it doesn’t creep (either time wise, or for other countries).

Have I got this right?

The very same people who told us that we absolutely have to leave the single market are now championing the huge benefits that Norn Ireland enjoys by staying in the single market?

Yes.

I don’t think we’re in anything like the end phase of this Brexit/culture war nightmare. Finally managing to discuss basic trade and border arrangements with our EU neighbours and iron out some kinks in what is essentially moving goods within our own bloody borders does not really deserve a pat on the back, if that is what he’s actually managed to do…

Lil’ Rishi is just current face of Tory Centrism, much like ‘Call me Dave’ was before all of this. He’s an inoffensive pleasant enough publicly schooled managerial type who will, for a while, hold the disparate racists, nutbars and free-marketeers of the Tory party together and project some vague image of being “competent”.
This deal is just an opening gambit in a strategy to try and demonstrate a bit of stability and calm, ultimately intended to give the Tories some sort of shot at the next GE.

The overwhelming impression I got from the news was, nobody (apart from the Sunak loyalist) really knows if this is a good deal or not, they’ve been a bit blindsided and need to actually read and understand it before stating any opinions.

All the while Boris is still splashing in the shallow end of the political swimming pool, trying to decide if it’s worth wading into the middle again and loudly demanding everyone listens to him again or else he’ll piss and poo himself just to ruin Rishi’s party…

The very same people who told us that we absolutely have to leave the single market are now championing the huge benefits that Norn Ireland enjoys by staying in the single market?

That exact thing has been touted by bojo and whoever they chose that month to do the Brexit negotiations previously. You can actually see the result in the North as well – its absolutely thriving.

I fully expect the DUP and their ilk to screw this one over. As a member of a largely Protestant / unionist family (well the ones who reside in the North are, nobody else gives a fig) I cannot wait for the Catholics to outbreed us. Thankfully the nutjob quotient in the family fully embrace the ‘Blackadder’s puritanical aunt’ stereotype and so the chances of them multiplying are slim.

Brexit will never be done as it’s a chronic illness so will always need “managing”.

It will never be done in the real sense.

We’re clearly not doing irony today….

Rishi Sunak – "Northern Ireland is in the unbelievably special position… in the entire world… in having privileged access to the UK home market… but also the European Union single market… nobody else has that… only you guys" in Northern Ireland. 🤦 pic.twitter.com/E95X09fwFK

— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) February 28, 2023

You really couldn’t make it up

I could cry. What an absolute bunch of tools. Cheap chinese leadloy screwdrivers the lot of them.

They have baked a mouldy and toxic cake, shat on it, sprinkled some more dirt on it, cut a tiny wafer of a slice, stuck in a part burned candle and are now proudly marching it through the restaurant with great aplomb to the recipient.

I cannot wait for the Catholics to outbreed us.

In the rest of Ireland that might be a little outdated term now, except for weddings and funerals I’ve not done any hardcore church stuff for 30 years now.

I see Rishi’s an avid literature fan.

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. ”

And also, the EU good is the EU bad.

You heard it here from George Orwell first.

You really couldn’t make it up

Next steps… Labour to suggest that GB could do with some of what NI will be getting… and then future Tory MPs to start suggesting that May was onto a better compromise than her successors have delivered for GB… and then both parties can start the long slow journey towards whole UK alignment and close cooperation with the rest of Europe. It won’t be long before a sizeable majority of voters are expecting and calling for that… even in England.

Boris Johnson (the man who broke Britain for his own advancement) needs to be completely politically dead and buried first though, and no longer be a risk for any Labour or Tory leader.