E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

The swiss will reject the current arrangements as unconstitutional later this year, as the `deal` is not the one the referendum was about. I am very aware of how the EU works , the current `stalemate` should demonstrate that the EU position is clear and allways has been and the UK has simply said no. No deal is on the cards.

 

Well, then Switzerland will drop out of EFTA, won't they?

I'm sure they'll manage, as Switzerland has a budget surplus and actually manufactures stuff. The UK... not so much. Then again, if saying no was really that simple, why hasn't the UK government simply walked away yet? Where is their post-Brexit vision? Where are the preparations for new customs controls and trading under WTO? There are none, because going WTO is a fantasy. The Tories may talk big, but most of them know that a no- deal Brexit will make austerity look like a picnic and they will not get elected again for a generation. They just don't know how to get themselves out of the corner they painted themselves into.

The difference between stupidity and intelligence is that the latter has limits.

 

The problem is that the referendum should have never been allowed to happen the way it did in the first place.
Switzerland has safeguards that are supposed to prevent referendums that promise the impossible, in other words the referendum should have made it blatantly obvious that it was impossible to cancel freedom of movement without cancelling the other agreements as well due to the guillotine clause, but the safeguards failed and as a consequence they have been in a huge mess regarding how to implement it.

 

The swiss send a lot to referendum, and this is certainly within the remit to do so, so to say `promise the impossible` is not true. They spent years in the EFTA negotiating on a case by case basis, its the EU that have said if they want to continue trading them the swiss must play by the EU rules.... and amazingly the swiss population did not want that.

 

It did promise the impossible since it promised to place restrictions on immigration without making any mention of all the other stuff that is connected to freedom of movement via the guillotine clause.
What would have made the referendum fine would have been the promise to cancel the entirety of the agreements and then negotiate new ones in their place with a focus on restricting immigration.

Bad analogy time:
You can't have a referendum to create a law that requires ducks to wear hats since the law couldn't possibly work.
You can have a referendum to create a law that requires humans to put a hat on any duck they come across.

 

Good analogy, actually.

Time will tell what the Swiss will choose; as long as they realise that it's a package deal.

The UK government meanwhile still seems to think that it can cherry pick, walk away, not pay its dues. It certainly has not disabused the electorate from that notion. Fifteen months in, and people still harbour fantasies of "walking away", cake-and-eat-it, and not paying any settlement at all. Whatever Brexit the UK gets, it is almost certainly not going to be the one that the people expected.

 

Thats from Boris in the media , he is helping the negotiations so well

 

And Rees-Mogg, and Redwood and other hard core Brexiteers who keep unrealistic expectations alive. And while they do that, Theresa May is unable to please anybody and make any compromises and the EU is wondering whether there is actually any point in negotiating with a PM who has no executive power, and may not be around long enough to keep her side of whatever agreement is wrought, and may not have the public backing to in any case.

 

Redwood has always been anti eu , he ran on that very platform to replace maggie.

 

The point is:

--that the UK is seen as still very much arguing with itself, which weakens its credibility as a negotiating partner (Compare this with the --for the EU fairly exceptional-- unity shown by the EU); it is felt that there is no guarantee that Theresa May will be in office long enough to honour a deal, and that a successor won't start agitating immediately for more concessions from the EU (because Britain has a track record of doing that). This belief is also reinforced by:

--political infighting in the UK is keeping unrealistic expectations alive in the public, which makes negotiation compromise impossible and will nonetheless lead to inevitable huge disappointment in the electorate. EU officials often cite the negotiations between Cameron and the EU before the EU referendum: he won considerable concessions, but the electorate felt it wasn't enough and chose to leave anyway. So what's the point in trying?

The EU is quite prepared for the UK to crash out in the WTO; in fact it pretty much expects it, because how can you compete with promises of unicorns by the hard core Brexiteers? You don't even try. You just let people learn the hard way.

"Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth" --Mike Tyson

And the UK doesn't even have a plan.

 

"Only a madman would actually leave the Market" --Owen Paterson MP, 2016

“What we should not be terrified of is the WTO” --Owen Paterson MP, 2017

 

Post-Brexit free trade deal with the EU should be the “easiest in human history” - Liam Fox, July 2017

"Leaving without a deal will not be the Armageddon some people predict." - Liam Fox, October 2017

 

The EU isn't yet prepared for a WTO <> Hard Brexit:

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-b...group-preparing-for-hard-brexit-idUKKCN1BH1LF

 

Arguably, they have less to prepare for (and this is Germany: when it decides to do something, it gets moving. The UK spends a decade debating whether just to add another runway to Heathrow).

 

Probably because most of the EU couldn't give two monkeys...

Most of them consider the small hit to things like car manufacturing will be more than made up for with the exodus of financial companies.

 

Have a look at all the drama around the airport(s) in Berlin
But in general you are right that they are far more efficient when it comes to getting something done.

 

Corky :

https://fullfact.org/europe/uk-eu-trade/

£25 Billion of trade is not a `small hit` if no deal and things go south.

 

Divide that up between 27 nations and that's less than a £1bn hit to each nation, it's less than 0.3% of Germans GDP (if my maths is right). I'm pretty sure, while they wouldn't choose to lose 0.3%, it will be more than made up for in new business, fact is the stuff the EU sells to us makes up around 7% of the EU's exports whereas the stuff we sell to the EU make up around 45% of the UK's exports.

It something politicians always seem to misunderstand IMO, sure we export more to the EU than we import but we're a single nation whereas the EU is made up of 27 nations and as such any hit to export/imports caused by Brexit will be felt much more by the singular nation than the group.

EDIT: Did you mean to say £250 billion?

 

Isn't the UK government's stance that no deal is better than a bad deal? And aren't there MPs who think that no deal is preferable to any deal?

What makes you think that the EU will think any differently?

 

The Taoiseach said today that most people in Northern Ireland regardless of political views would avail of Irish citizenship if for no other reason than for the convenience of having EU citizenship. That would then leave a situation where there will be a non-EU region where the majority of its indigenous people are EU citizens.

I would find that pretty amusing were it to come to pass.