Brexit discussion thread VII (Please read OP before posting)

fash wrote: »

Whatever you feel about Tusk's intervention, to describe Varadkar as "sniggering and gloating" I suggest says far more about you than about him: at the highest, an unexpected statement was made by a colleague at a conference and he merely acted with the necessary decorum.
What could he gloat about - yet another British ill thought it and uncaring intervention in Ireland which massively damages the social, political and economic environment simply to serve British arrogance and narcissism? Why would that give cause to gloat?

Infini wrote: »

They wont be rallying much of anything to be honest unless they want to continue deluding themselves. There's a point in time when the niceties simply have to be dropped and people told EXACTLY what their level of bullshít is causing. The British Government have been at this for 2 years and now it's time for them to choose and own the problem they themselves created. Instead we get the likes of Sammy Shítstirrer treating his own voters with contempt when asked real and valid questions about food supplies and concerns by retailers saying "Send them to the Chippy". May going on endlessly with statements that have long since been proven as unworkable and ignore facts.

It should also serve as a warning to them that if they intentonally crash and cause damage to everyone that bar humanitarian issues and concerns (were not that cold) that Britain will not get anything more favourable and possibly even less favourable after a crash than before it. There's consequences for malicious and intentional damage to others.

FrancieBrady wrote: »

Tusk and Varadkar are doing the job the Remainers should be doing - ridiculing the irresponsible, directionless attitude of Brexiteers.
The 'Brexiteers' have been latching on to mistruths since this began. They are now hearing the truth because the EU have nothing to lose anymore. The negotiations are over - that was the profundity of yesterday. Remainers should be underscoring and underlining that instead of getting pointlessly upset.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Well, put Tusk’s intervention in context:

1. May (on behalf of HMG) negotiates a deal with Barnier (on behalf of the Council). Each side understands that the other side has to go back to their respective parliaments to get the deal ratified. This is normal in international treaty-making.

2. There’s always a risk that one or other parliament won’t ratify the deal. This is understood. But it is expected that the negotiators on each side (a) by signing the deal, are indicating that they expect their parliament to ratify it, and (b) will recommend it to their parliament for ratification.

3. In the event, the Commons didn’t ratify the deal. But, much worse, May didn’t recommend it for ratification; she voted against ratifying it herself, and she whipped her party to vote against ratifying it. That’s (a) completely unexpected; (b) very shocking and (c) hugely destabilising to the process. Everything that has happened since has to be seen in the light of that.

4. The Commons (at May’s urging) passed a motion rejecting a key aspect of the negotiated deal and calling for it be replaced by something else, but (a) didn’t say what the “something else” should be, and (b) didn’t even set out any indicators or parameters or boundaries as to what kind of something else might be acceptable to them. This is a deeply, and almost deliberately , unhelpful stance to take so late in the negotiations. It is not calculated to maintain either trust or goodwill.

5. The most charitable explanation for this is that Parliament didn’t indicate what kind of something else it might accept because it couldn’t; there is (still) no agreement among Brexiters on the kind of Brexit that is acceptable.

6. This is clearly not a situation in which the EU is going to start offering further concessions; nor would any reasonable person expect them to. Clearly, the Brexiters are not yet ready to deal with the EU. Any further concessions offered at this point would simply be trousered by the UK, and then regarded as the baseline from which to formulate their request for some further concession as an “alternative arrangement”.

7. So the EU officials did the only thing they could to in this situation - indicate firmly that they have negotiated a deal, they stand over the deal, they see no need to depart from the deal, and if the UK wants to propose an alternative to the deal it needs to, well, actually propose an alternative to the deal.

8. For this purpose May assembled the “Alternative Arrnagements Working Group”, made up of Brexiter Tory MPs tasked with formulating an alternative arrangement that can be put to the EU, and offered civil service support/resources to do so.

9. Right. Yesterday, with depressing predictability, the Alternative Arrangements Working Group started to fall apart. A trip to Northern Ireland was arranged for the members of the AAWG to meet local businesses and politicians, and to be briefed by intelligence and security officials on the border issue. Ultra-Brexiteer members of the group decided that this was a sinister trap; the secret agenda was to expose them to the views of people who would be harmed by a no-deal Brexit and who would be opposed to it, which was obviously a deplorable attempt to skew their deliberations by requiring them to contemplate reality at least once. This was a stitch-up. Half the group refused to go, and the trip was called off. That half is now lining up with other ERG members who are briefing that that no changes to the backstop will be sufficient to secure ratification of the deal. The other half will not adopt this stance, which they see as politically suicidal, and they are breifing that if the ultras don’t come back to Earth the AAWG will split.

Right. That’s the context within which Tusk makes his remarks. His remarks are pretty pungent, right enough, but its notable that, among all those who profess to be outraged, insulted, horrified, etc at what he has said, virtually nobody has said that his basic premise is wrong. Nobody is saying “we had a clear, deliverable plan for Brexit; we know what we want”. Tusk’s remarks hurt not because they are false but because they are true.

OK, but, still, when you have the choice between speaking the truth and not speaking, sometimes the wise course is not to speak. So what was Tusk’s objective in speaking this particular truth at this particular moment?

The first object, I think, is to highlight it. The UK’s approach to Brexit is being crippled by the fact that Brexiters still don’t know what they want. The Brexiters themselves know this to be true. Tusk’s intervention makes it very clear that the EU understands this, and will take advantage of this state of affairs for so long as it prevails. It maximises the incentive for the Brexiters to stop fighting among themselves and start agreeing. Any agreed Brexit position, no matter how stupid and unrealistic, would be more conducive to progress than the current shambles in London.

And the second object is to provide support to the Commission and its officials. Barnier, Selmayr, Weyand, etc are Commission officials, and a common Brexiter line has been to dismiss what they say as the thoughts of unelected bureaucrats. But Tusk is the President of the Council, elected to that position by the EU governments (including the UK government, which voted for him). He is trying to strangle at birth, in a public and unmistakeable fashion, any half-formed notion that the Council of Minister will yet save the Brexiter, override the Commission and cave to the UK to avoid a no-deal. Tusk wouldn’t be taking this line if he wasn’t completely confident that the Council would support it (if not perhaps in quite such direct terms).

What Tusk is pointing to here is the fact that Brexiters still don’t have a realistic, practical, deliverable plan for Brexit that they themselves support. Put the other way, he is signalling that the way forward for them - the only way forward - is to come up with such a plan and agree among themselves to support it.

(You’re right to say that it’s not helpful to the Remainers’ cause. It’s not intended to be. The EU is not expecting or pushing for a “remain” solution.)