British Indy: What Happens Now?

Don't let cambelltoon loch detour you into arriving at Aberdoom instead, finm. You know how they like to deflect and misdirect, up beyond The Wall.

 

What a wanker he is.

 

Tony Blair has to be the most toxic brand in politics, an odious con merchant with a history of titanic dishonesty. If he comes out and opposes anything you support, it's good news for you imo.

 

JC Drunker is also widely despised across Europe by the people who should matter but never will in the parallel universe that is "The Project": voters.
That two corrupt and narcissistic egomaniacs, one a vandal, warmonger, liar and thief and the other a shambling drunk can be presented as the respectable face of Europhilia by its enthusiasts is reason enough for any rational human being to reject it utterly and precisely why the British electorate did exactly that and why tens if not hundreds of millions of voters across Europe would do likewise if given the chance. Two more repellent individuals it is hard to imagine.

 

From the usually pro-remain Times:
(Copied because you have to subscribe to view a link):


IAIN MARTIN

august 31 2017, 12:01am, the times
Obstinate Juncker shows we’re right to leave
iain martin

An amicable Brexit deal is possible but the European Commission’s inflexibility is thwarting all attempts at compromise




The EU has made quite a few mistakes on a grand scale in the last quarter of a century, but one of the worst involved giving its top job to an obscure politician from Luxembourg three years ago.

The appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission in 2014 has turned out to be even more of a failure than his pro-EU critics feared and British eurosceptics hoped. On his watch the UK, the second-largest contributor to EU funds, failed to get decent enough terms to persuade it to stay, following which its electorate opted to leave.

Yet Juncker is the preposterous figure who, rather than resigning over his historic mismanagement, this week imperiously marked Britain’s position papers on Brexit as deserving of an “F” grade. There is a potential response that the British government could offer, also beginning with “F”, but as the Brexit talks resume in Brussels it might be thought unhelpful to the potentially productive outcome that Juncker’s intransigence imperils.

“Juncker is very emotional, it depends what time of day you get him,” says a key figure on the British side. “[Martin] Selmayr [Juncker’s eurofanatical head of cabinet] gives him the Brexit papers at night and nothing substantial comes back. We think he wants to pretend Brexit isn’t really happening.”

Juncker’s original appointment demonstrated what is wrong with the EU. Remember that it came at a pivotal moment, with the impoverishment of southern Europe to the advantage of the north thanks to the single currency. On top of which the abject failure to protect the southern external border has fuelled continuing suffering and upheaval.

What was needed at the European Commission, the central Brussels institution that drives legislation, regulation and enforcement of the rules, was skilful leadership and fresh thinking. What it did not need at the helm was Juncker, an intransigent and fanatical federalist with all the diplomatic skills of a bumptious barman calling time at a beer festival.

Indeed, a baffled David Cameron’s doomed attempt three years ago to block the appointment of this unsuitable character illustrates the Alice in Wonderland nature of a project that infantilises grown national leaders. They thought him unsuitable but went ahead anyway.

So here we all are with the grumpy europhile theocrat in a key position while the EU and the UK attempt to deal with Brexit and establish a new trading relationship once the British leave the European Union.

How long will France and Germany let this Brussels farce go on?
Echoing Juncker’s remarks about the supposedly “unsatisfactory” British position papers, but wearing the expression of a man who realises increasingly that he may have boxed himself in, is the EU’s suave chief negotiator, Michel Barnier.

For all that the Remain side has a weird reluctance to apply the “well they would say that” test to Juncker and Barnier, what is apparent is that Barnier is in a bind. The position advanced by the commission, which started out as inflexible, has become downright ludicrous.

The problem is this. Barnier promised the EU 27 (the EU minus the UK) that he would get a clear idea of the scale of exit payments from the Brits before the talks could move on, possibly in October, to any future trading relationship. British officials have pointed out all summer that in order to agree on a figure they first have to know the terms of a transition deal, and the broad terms of what the EU will agree to after that.

The commission approach is typical of the EU in putting procedure before common sense. Trying to show the British who is boss in this process, Juncker, Barnier and their officials stick to a rigid set of daft constraints elevated to the status of holy writ.

After the last few decades of EU behaviour this should not come as a surprise, but too many Brexiteers promised that it would be easy to overcome the Brussels mentality after a vote to leave. It is not.

The British, more used to a common law approach and improvised constitutional evolution, too often forget that the EU is a highly legalistic, obsessively rules-based and codified organisation built that way for a reason. It was designed to hold disparate states together in a web of ever-growing process, all the while amassing a corpus of law and harmonising rulings piled on top of each other remorselessly, until it became impossible, or too difficult, to get out. Today, this leaves the commission demanding money with menaces in the most impractical way, having trapped both parties inside Article 50 and the bizarre sequencing of talks.

The open question for British officials and for Paris and Berlin, to which there is no clear answer ahead of the German elections in September, is how long Germany and France will let this Brussels farce go on. Might they choose this autumn and winter to take back control, to borrow a phrase, and order the commission to show a little more imagination on smoothing transition and a new relationship? Some hints of that, since denied, emerged from France over the weekend. “It should all become clearer after the German elections,” says a British cabinet minister, not looking entirely convinced.

There remains a lot at stake for both sides. The EU budget will be an enormous £30-£60 billion short if the UK crashes out without a deal and pays nothing. That would shock the UK economy but also France, Germany and other states. Does the EU want Britain’s money, or not? If the answer is “yes” then both parties will have to throw away the rulebook and experiment to co-operate.

There is an irony in the poor handling of this tricky business by Juncker and Barnier, wedded as they are to absurd EU procedure. It shows, of course, why the British opted to leave in the first place.

 

Where does xenophobia come into anything? You can squeal RACIST!!! every time someone expresses political views you don't share if you wish but it makes you look like a baby and someone who isn't to be taken seriously so its not a very productive strategy.

Who ever said we want to "keep the best bits" (as if there are any) of the EU and have none of the worst? That might be the fantasy proposed by "soft" non-Brexiteers in order to paint a false picture of the reality of life outside the EU, but all the leavers I know want no part of any of it. We will trade with the 27 nations of the EU in the same way that the 93% of the planet which is not part of the EU bubble does now. We do not need to be a member of the single regulatory regime (there is no "single market"), nor any protectionist customs union. We do not need nor want foreign courts having any jurisdiction or say in any way over our legislature or governance. Our sovereignty is not negotiable, we do not want to be part of a theocratic superstate, even if it was well run, which is so far from the case the proposition is laughable.

What don't you understand about that? Don't answer, we already know. You don't understand any of it. It is beyond your limited comprehension.

 

A very lucid and thoughtful response. It will be lost on that fool though, I fear @Gimlet