This Deal Or No Brexit At All

[-Talbot-]

https://twitter.com/JunckerEU/status/1105238043106181120


When was 'No Deal' taken off the table?



https://twitter.com/SimonPearson961/status/1105241140943568897

[Kromovaracun]

//I could listen to Geoffrey Cox all day. Regardless of what he says, which frankly I don’t mostly understand, but if an expensive bottle of port could talk that is surely what it would sound like :-)//

Pretty terrible comb-over though.

[Khandro]

Cox's answer to Jon Snow;
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/03/geoffrey-cox-clashes-with-channel-4s-jon-snow/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Lunchtime_Espresso_20190312&utm_campaign=Lunchtime_Espresso

[ichkeria]

Yes I’ve heard an election will be called.
Hard at the moment to see how that would not lead to another hung parliament but who knows.
The DUP have done what they do best: said “No”, so I guess that’s that

[jim360]

Anyone yet have an idea what the numbers for tonight's vote will end up being (roughly)? Seems that the DUP are voting against, but ERG may just abstain. I think that implies a reduced margin of defeat down to 140 or so before all the various switching, or about 100-ish margin after various people switch from against to for.

[New Judge]

“NJ. We have a trade agreement with Chile…”

No we don’t, danny. We have a “Trade Continuity Agreement”. I quote the government’s own publication about it:

“This trade continuity agreement will see British businesses and consumers benefitting from preferential trading arrangements with Chile after we leave the European Union.”

It goes on:

“The new UK-Chile agreement replicates the existing trading arrangements as far as possible. It will come into effect as soon as the implementation period ends in January 2021, or on 29 March 2019 if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.”

Note it does not come into effect until after we have left (whenever that might be). Until then we are tied to whatever arrangements the EU makes for its members with Chile (and everywhere else).

I imagine the others you quote are similar in nature and are designed to avoid the “cliff edge” which Remainers keep ridiculously suggesting we may suffer should we “crash out” of the EU. It is this very type of sensible agreement that the government should have been developing over the past two years instead of devising ways to keep us enmeshed with the EU for as long as possible. But I repeat, the UK cannot conclude any formal trade deals on its own until we leave (properly, not under Mrs May’s deal).

[ichkeria]

50 or so change gets it down to 150. If the 60 or so ERGs abstain then down to 90.
Isn’t abstaining rather pathetic?

[ichkeria]

70 not 90

[New Judge]

"Isn’t abstaining rather pathetic?"

Yes, agreed. Parliamentarians are charged with making decisions. If they can't or won't they should get out. To "abstain" on such an important matter shows complete lack of moral fibre.

[Old_Geezer]

Since little of importance seems to have changed, i can't see why anyone would want to abstain if they rejected it last time. We'll have to see later.

[jim360]

"It is this very type of sensible agreement that the government should have been developing over the past two years ..."

Except that the Department for Trade *has* been trying to develop such agreements over the last two years or so. Indeed, Liam Fox said it would be "easy" to have something in the region of 40 such deals in place by 29th March. That he has failed is certainly not the EU's fault -- nor even necessarily Liam Fox's, although he should certainly have been more realistic about the chances -- but owes a great deal to the truth that the world is not really that interested in bending over backwards to give the UK what it wants on a platter.

From a trade point of view, at least, it always has been in the UK's interests -- and for that matter any other country's -- to be part of a bloc that is as large as possible. In practice that means being part of the EU, which, united, has a trading power essentially equal to that of the US and China.

[dannyk13]

At the moment the PM is giving her speech to the Commons and, from the reaction she is getting, it is obvious that there is no chance of it getting through the vote this evening.

[jim360]

Quite. The question now is one of margin. Is there some threshold of defeat that is somehow "acceptable" enough to press ahead to round three?

[dannyk13]

NJ, Then how do you explain this:-
Trade between the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region was worth £1.5bn in 2017 - about 0.1% of total UK trade.

[ichkeria]

If there’s a round three then we’ll have to tell the EU. They’ve packed up the tents and moved on.
That’s why I am not sure there’s a huge point in Thursdays vote assuming today’s goes the way expected and then tomorrow’s

[Kromovaracun]

If that's the case ich then we'll be stuck between revoking and no-dealing with about two weeks to decide.

I guess we'll all be finding out soon enough if all those car-crash predictions will turn out to be true or not...

[jim360]

//
Trade between the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region was worth £1.5bn in 2017 - about 0.1% of total UK trade. //

Danny, I'm not NJ but I'm fairly sure that we had such trading arrangements as a result of being part of the EU. *Not* a separate deal that existed independently of it. Except possibly under WTO rules, in which case the purpose of a trade deal is to improve on those.

[dannyk13]

Jim, OK but when we leave the Eu this will apply:-

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/esa-uk-economic-partnership-agreement-epa--2

[jim360]

Indeed, but by your own admission it represents approximately 1/1000 of the UK's total trade, so whilst it's a welcome step it is also hardly a resolution to the potentially huge hit to UK trading arrangements that awaits us on March 29th.

[jim360]

As I type Sky news is reporting that Theresa May can count on 14 Tory MPs to switch sides in favour of the Withdrawal agreement, meaning that she only needs another 102 MPs to do the same.

[New Judge]

//NJ, Then how do you explain this:-
Trade between the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region was worth £1.5bn in 2017 - about 0.1% of total UK trade.”//
Jim, OK but when we leave the Eu this will apply:-
Because we trade with countries regardless of whether we have trade agreements or not. For those countries that we do trade with under an agreement the agreement is one between the EU and that country, not between the UK and that country. Our biggest single trading partner outside the EU is the USA, with whom we run a surplus of around £10bn per annum but the EU (and by extension the UK) has no trade agreement with the USA, nor is it likely to have one in the near future. Our largest single trading partner, incidentally, is Germany, with whom we run a deficit of around £20bn pa (of the £80bn EU total deficit).

//Jim, OK but when we leave the Eu this will apply:- //

Yes, Danny. And that’s all but identical to the Chile example we discussed earlier. It is the arrangements for post-Brexit, not the arrangements that exist now.

“From a trade point of view, at least, it always has been in the UK's interests -- and for that matter any other country's -- to be part of a bloc that is as large as possible.”

Indeed it is, Jim. But it depends on the price you pay for membership (and I don’t simply mean the financial price).

“Is there some threshold of defeat that is somehow "acceptable" enough to press ahead to round three?”

What will round three involve, Jim? And who will be the participants? I think it was Albert Einstein who defined madness as repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.