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[Teneb]

Big Brexit Still Hungers

[Loud Whispers]

*clears throat*

Deal or no Deal.

Can't really top that tbh

Besides maybe the Brex Factor

*EDIT
Are you smarter than a 10 year old

[hector13]

Flicking through Facebook, saw a post from something to do with Scottish banter that equates the choice between Johnson and Hunt as PM with choosing between Kate McCann and Jimmy Saville as a babysitter.

I chuckled, and I’m not sorry.

[TD1]

"Plucking fingers" made me chuckle, wasn't sorry.

[Enemy post]

Is it normal for a Prime Minister to remain in office for this long after resigning?

[smjjames]

No idea if this long is unusual or not, but she is still on in caretaker mode and the proccess has various legal and logistical constraints that keeps it from going any faster than it is.

[hector13]

Is it normal for a Prime Minister to remain in office for this long after resigning?

She’s waiting for her successor to be chosen, the timetable for which has been set for months.

But it is rather typical of the Tories of the last few years to fritter away the time they have to engage with Europe on playing politics. She’s abandoning ship when Strong and Stable^tm leadership is needed most.

Boris has shown his biggest talent in the campaign so far is hiding, and he can’t do that as PM with 3 months to get something done before the shit hits the fan, and he’s probably going to win, so we at least get to watch that shitshow.

[TD1]

Oh please. The most Strong and Stable thing the Mayfly could do at this point was resign. The tumult of leadership contests is still much preferable to an inept Europhile in a competent Europhobe's position.

[hector13]

It's a bit late for that though, innit? Even just in the Tory party there is huge division on what is the best course of action, and they were the ones that got to decide who could be the new Brexit Idol.

Consequently, this isn't your common-or-garden variety leadership contest. The EU have said they won't negotiate further on the deal that was agreed by the outgoing PM. This means Boris and Hunt have to convince parliament to vote for a deal that the former resigned over, and the latter supported but didn't really help.

Hunt also claimed Merkel said she'd be willing to renegotiate, but even if she was able to convince the other 25 or so members that was a good idea, he'd have three months to get a deal done - though he has said that he'd decide by the end of September whether or not there was a realistic chance of a deal, so two months - that took 18 months for May to receive the biggest government defeat in parliament in history.

The choice is May's deal or no deal. Maybe parliament will succeed in taking the reigns and stopping a no deal from going through, but that would probably force a GE and maybe the EU gives the UK another extension while trying not to laugh at the ineptitude of the political class.

[TD1]

Of course the EU won't negotiate on a deal so markedly in their favour. The choice seems to be between Bad Deal or No Deal. Personally, I know which I prefer, but everyone's different.

Anyway, I disagree with your saying it's a bit late for the Maysignation. May was pathologically devoted to her 'Deal', so much so that she was willing to throw Parliament under the wheels (repeatedly) to get it. I sincerely doubt her ability to pursue No Deal as an alternative, despite early promises. If you ask me, she left just in time to prevent a political collapse of apocalyptic proportions. The choice is the same as it was during May's tenure - Deal or No Deal, choose your box. Except now we have a chance that both options will be considered, rather than throwing everything on what many -myself included - see as a nation-crippling arrangement.

[MorleyDev]

The issue with reopening negotiations over the Irish Border part is it also means all 27 countries can again start jockeying for their own amendments, because that's what reopening it means. They can't just reopen the Irish border issue and nothing else, and at the very least Spain and France have extra things they want to push for, hence the trying to patch it via extra political declarations.

Really the debate around the bill was mostly which worst-case scenario you want:
Do we allow for a hypothetical situation in which the Irish Border could be closed to trade goods seeking to pass without inspection + tariffs (as mandated by WTO rules).
Do we allow for a hypothetical situation where the border remains fully open for trade goods, but separates Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK
Do we allow for a hypothetical situation where the border remains fully open for trade goods, and the UK remains in the Customs Union during the negotiations for a wider trade agreement (which we know would take years by virtue of every other trade agreement taking years to negotiate).

The former is unacceptable to the Northern Irish Republicans, the middle is unacceptable to the Northern Irish Unionists, and the latter is unacceptable to the pro-Leave parts of the English Parliament.

Until those 3 factions, all of whom have enough clout to shut down any exit from the EU, can pick an option it'll remain fucked. And getting those 3 to agree on anything is an impossible challenge. No Deal remains a less popular option than Remain to the UK population as a whole as well, unless you declare the opinions of everyone who votes Remain don't matter which ain't how democracy works I'm afraid. If you use the referendum to remove the remain option, all that does is shift those remain voters over to combine with the smaller-but-still-significant pro-Customs Union leave voters to become the largest group at still-less-than-50%-of-the-population).

[smjjames]

Except those extrapolitical declarations aren't working. There was some talk about technical/technological solutions, but they were all 'No way, the technology doesn't exist yet or it'd take too long'. Come on, have they ever heard of IRFID tags and stuff? They should be able to figure out some sort of technical solution with current tech if they actually try.

@Th4DwArfY1: There still could be a political collapse of apocalypic proportions, especially if they fail to decide on deal or no deal and go into a general election. As for nation-crippling arrangement, both sides see the others option as nation-crippling.

Still, the UK has been preparing for a no-deal for so long that I read something about warehouses getting full. So, when it does come, it'll likely end up being more of a controlled glide 'crash through' rather than the free-fall chaos scenario people fear.

[MorleyDev]

Warehouse stocks are still only estimated to last a few weeks, though. And it doesn't address the issue of services provided to European companies from Britain, of which the news has mostly ignored (probably because physical manufacturing goods are a more obvious thing for the average person to grok), and still has it's own suite of difficulties and questions around how things like cross-border data security is going to work.

Considering when dealing with services, proximity to customer is arguably even more important than with physical goods, service-providing businesses are in trouble if they can't do enough business with the people in the timezones somewhat near them. Such businesses are more likely to scale down UK operations to be UK-only instead of shifting the business over to work with the US and Canada (where they probably already have offices setup anyway in much closer timezones).

Between Brexit and Trump/China mucking up the places these global service-oriented businesses with a UK branch are focusing in investing in lately, we're already seeing slowdown.

Except those extrapolitical declarations aren't working. There was some talk about technical/technological solutions, but they were all 'No way, the technology doesn't exist yet or it'd take too long'. Come on, have they ever heard of IRFID tags and stuff? They should be able to figure out some sort of technical solution with current tech if they actually try.

Pretty good explanation of border trade from London School of Economics and Political Science, but a long read: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/02/06/long-read-there-is-no-such-thing-as-completely-frictionless-trade-across-a-border/

The conclusion is basically "You can move some of the checks away from the ports, but some kind of physical infrastructure will always be a requirement for any border because of the formalities involved in cross-border trade".

[smjjames]

Having a few weeks time is better than having days or barely being prepared at all and the contingency plans will buy time as well. That's the 'controlled glide' part, though it's still up to the government to figure things out before time runs out.

For the border checks, okay, fair enough. I've read plenty about North Irish not wanting to have the physical border checks back (for various reasons, nearly all connected in some way to The Troubles) and that the border areas became prime targets for IRA attacks, but the primary no-no seems to be a border (even if it's just a trade border and not a de jure one) between NI and the rest of the UK. It's something that's going to have to be dealt with on the fly because a no-deal looks inevitable and nobody's happy with the currently proposed systems.

[TD1]

It's "the Northern Irish," not the "North Irish." But I doubt anyone really cares, so meh.

Anyway, around 30000 people cross the border for their work daily. Trepidation concerning a 'hard' border is understandable from the likes of them.