Brexit - Post Match Reaction

What about all these brexiters who told us they don't mind a little economic pain to get "sovereignty" back?

How much pain is acceptable to them as they shuffle off this mortal coil leaving the rest of us to pick up the pieces?

Surely you must be for Brexit as without it your man won’t be able to put his policies in place?

Didn't he actually say "fail at Brexit"? That's quite a different prospect from wanting the nation fail altogether.

Didn't he actually say "fail at Brexit"? That's quite a different prospect from wanting the nation fail altogether.

Nope. He said he wanted Brexit to fail before adding " and I'd rather see the nation fail"

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Nope. He said he wanted Brexit to fail before adding " and I'd rather see the nation fail"

 

 

 

 

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Although when called out, it turns out it was a wind up

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Nope. He said he wanted Brexit to fail before adding " and I'd rather see the nation fail"

 

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Fair point. I should probably have read the entire 2 sentence post...!

Meanwhile, I see the Germans are finally coming to their senses.

Voting for a political party like AfD doesn't come across as 'coming to their senses' to me. 'Despair' is a better description.

Surely you must be for Brexit as without it your man won’t be able to put his policies in place?

Im for a middle ground, if all European countries had PMs similar to JC I believe a new type of EU could be formed on socialist principles rather than corporate global capiltalism.

Im for a middle ground, if all European countries had PMs similar to JC I believe a new type of EU could be formed on socialist principles rather than corporate global capiltalism.

Im for a middle ground, if all European countries had PMs similar to JC I believe a new type of EU could be formed on socialist principles rather than corporate global capiltalism.

Why not go the whole hog and clone him. All of europe run by Jeremy Corbyn, what could possibly go wrong?

Im for a middle ground, if all European countries had PMs similar to JC I believe a new type of EU could be formed on socialist principles rather than corporate global capiltalism.

**** me, if that's the middle ground what's the far left.

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Interesting piece in the FT on Corbynism and Brexit

 

Labour should not be seduced by Lexit

The left’s case on why the UK should leave the EU unravels under scrutiny by Martin Sandbu

 

Britain’s opposition Labour party stole a march on the government by committing to a standstill interim period after Brexit before the government realised there was no good alternative in the short run. But as the annual party conference now under way in Brighton shows, Labour is having a much harder time deciding how it wants the UK’s permanent new relationship with the EU to look.

 

This inability has deep roots, which go by the name of “Lexit”. That was the moniker for the case some on the left made for leaving the EU, and what defines it is a conviction that the EU is hostile to socialist political programmes and that EU membership is therefore a hindrance to a committedly socialist national government, which Labour now aspires to become. Lexit, in short, is a necessary prerequisite for socialism in a country.

Where it becomes interesting is in the specific form that conviction takes; the mechanism by which the EU is thought to frustrate the coming of socialism.

 

The most prominent strand of Lexit is the romantic one. The romantic Lexiter observes how countries such as Greece have been under the thumb of its creditors, and how eurozone machinations installed technocratic governments both there and in Italy. And so either simply to express disgust or, more ambitiously, to provoke a collapse of the European project, they wanted Britain to leave the EU. What their disproportionate horror (which we addressed in Free Lunch before the referendum) never quite made clear was why the UK, permanently exempt from the euro and with a strong influence in the EU, should not rather stay to make things better.

 

Another strand is more pragmatic. This second type of Lexiter argues that the laws of the EU make it impossible to pursue appropriate leftwing policies. This worry seems to be shared by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, at least to judge by his comments on The Andrew Marr Show: “we need to look very carefully at the terms of any trade relationship because at the moment we’re part of the single market, obviously. That has within it restrictions in state aid and state spending. That has pressures on it through the European Union to privatise rail for example and other services.” Corbyn, then, is suggesting that it may not be good to stay within the single market because the rules on government subsidies (“state aid” to companies) could preclude some policies he wishes to pursue. But it is all very non-committal, which may be politically useful, or simply reflect a lack of knowledge: “Well, there are issues of state aid rules which are endlessly disputed.”

 

If single market rules put constraints on Labour’s agenda, shadow chancellor John McDonnell did not mention them in his muscular call for nationalisation of a host of services in his conference speech on Monday. And as it happens, two lawyers have looked carefully at the general structure of state aid laws and how they would apply to the policies set out in the Labour manifesto. Their analysis concludes: “Neither EU state aid rules, nor other EU rules which are distinct from state aid rules but sometimes considered in the same bracket, provide any obvious barrier to the implementation in the UK of the measures contained in Labour’s 2017 election manifesto.”

 

Not only that. “The design of state aid rules is not intended to promote neoliberalism, but the kind of ‘social market’ economy associated in particular with Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries.” And critics often neglect “progressive effects of European state aid law in preventing multinational corporations from extracting tax and other subsidies from national governments”.

 

Finally, there is a philosophical Lexit view, which is altogether more coherent. It is best expressed by Harvard political theorist Richard Tuck, who advocated leaving the EU in an essay for Dissent magazine before the referendum, and defended a hard Brexit as the best opportunity for leftist politics in the UK in a Policy Exchange lecture in July. The philosophical Lexit claim is that the EU’s reliance on written constitutional texts, rather than any particular rules, is inherently biased against socialism.

 

In Tuck’s view: “Popular politics is precisely what the EU was designed to obstruct. Like independent central banks and constitutional courts, its institutions are essentially technocratic.” And the technocracy tends towards market liberalism. In contrast the Labour party in 1945 had used parliamentary power for deep socialist reform, unconstrained by constitutional wing-clipping.

 

This is an intriguing claim. To be persuasive, however, it must account for two things. The first is that the move towards market liberalism in the UK under Conservative and Labour governments since the 1980s was hardly forced by EU membership but exercised through precisely the unfettered parliamentary power whose supposed waning Tuck laments. Now one could argue that this move was chosen, not forced, but that constitutional constraints mean there is no way back.

 

The argument’s second problem is its British exceptionalism. Every western country had a strong turn to a mixed economy and a comprehensive welfare state in 1945, not just Britain, and regardless of what strictures any particular country’s constitution imposed. If the unique lack of a single constitutional law shaped the specifics of the UK model, it cannot have been the enabler of the overall social democratic transformation. Claiming otherwise is to confuse the institutions with the politics.

 

If constitutionalism as such is a red herring, the philosophical Lexit argument may fall back on economic interdependence: it is not so much constitution-like rules as the economic globalisation they are designed to manage that makes socialism in one country (let alone many countries) hard to achieve. That is a common view; but as I have been at pains to argue, it vastly underestimates the powers that remain in national leaders’ hands even today — in the UK and elsewhere.

 

Be that as it may, focus instead on the implication of that view if true. It would mean that leftwing politics require a radical retrenchment from economic openness — far more than “just” withdrawing from Nafta or from the EU. It would require undoing the web of free-trade agreements that has moved globalisation along, including the World Trade Organisation, with the intention of insulating national economies behind the high tariff walls that prevailed in the immediate aftermath of the war.

 

Romantic Lexit is self-defeating, pragmatic Lexit is impractical (because it is wrong). Philosophical Lexit is coherent but unpersuasive — and to the extent it is right, it is extraordinarily radical. If it did, improbably, pave the way to socialism in one country, it would do so because it would be each country for itself.

Why not go the whole hog and clone him. All of europe run by Jeremy Corbyn, what could possibly go wrong?

...

Interesting piece in the FT on Corbynism and Brexit

Very well argued. Whether it gets through the noise of a certain wing of Corbynism is debatable though.

There's a small hard core of fanatics, largely older and drawn from the 'extra-Parliamentary' left - Trotskyists and others who've snuck back into Labour and temporarily given up wondering whether ISIS for example might be a 'progressive force' - who persist with the ignorant and utterly false criticism of the EU as a 'neo-liberal project'. Actually the EU is ordo-liberal - in favour of mixed public/private markets.

Younger and more idealistic Corbynistas are strongly pro-Europe, but this older, deeply cretinous wing of Corbynism makes the most noise because, frankly, Corbyn himself is one of them, clinging to the pathetic fantasy that the EU is the brainchild of Friedrich Hayek.

Bin these gimps and Labour has a chance of formulating a winning strategy for the UK's relationship with the EU - one that, paradoxically, is more pro-business and more pro-state enterprise than anything dreamed up by the vastly incompetent intellectually bankrupt May regime.

Is the imposition of a 220% tariff on Bombardier aircraft being sold in the US a sign of things to come?

Is the imposition of a 220% tariff on Bombardier aircraft being sold in the US a sign of things to come?

In the absence of a US/EU trade deal, that is probably the sign of things to come for the EU. All the more important to get our own trade deal with the US ASAP...

In the absence of a US/EU trade deal, that is probably the sign of things to come for the EU. All the more important to get our own trade deal with the US ASAP...

Canada has a trade deal with the US - result: 219% punitive tariff.

May personally pleaded with Trump not to impose the tariff - result: 219% punitive tariff.

The US and EU have gone to-to-toe on Airbus about exactly the same issue of state subsidies - result: lots of hot air for over a decade but nothing yet.

Canada has a trade deal with the US - result: 219% punitive tariff.

 

May personally pleaded with Trump not to impose the tariff - result: 219% punitive tariff.

 

The US and EU have gone to-to-toe on Airbus about exactly the same issue of state subsidies - result: lots of hot air for over a decade but nothing yet.

It's not the US and EU going toe to toe. It's Boeing going toe to toe with Airbus at the WTO in Geneva. I believe that Boeing have a point wrt state subsidies for both Boeing and Bombardier. Not that Boeing are that clean, themselves...

The US administration are bottle jobs. It would have been easy to go after China and it's myriad trade practices - instead it picks on an ally and next door neighbour. Moral of the story for the jihadis: don't cross large trading blocs which have huge scope for retaliation, unlike smaller countries which are fair game. Poor little UK, all sad and alone.

The US administration are bottle jobs. It would have been easy to go after China and it's myriad trade practices - instead it picks on an ally and next door neighbour. Moral of the story for the jihadis: don't cross large trading blocs which have huge scope for retaliation, unlike smaller countries which are fair game. Poor little UK, all sad and alone.

Thats the reality of the UK trying to do trade deals with much more powerful economies like China and the US - unequal playing fields instead of the pathetic free trade and growth guff of not too bright Brexiteers.

It's not the US and EU going toe to toe. It's Boeing going toe to toe with Airbus at the WTO in Geneva. I believe that Boeing have a point wrt state subsidies for both Boeing and Bombardier. Not that Boeing are that clean, themselves...

Why do any of these huge companies get state subsidies?

Thats the reality of the UK trying to do trade deals with much more powerful economies like China and the US - unequal playing fields instead of the pathetic free trade and growth guff of not too bright Brexiteers.

But Yahya Misselbrook told us that the Trump administration was a great champion of free trade and that the special relationship was really special.

Never mind that the US has consistently p!ssed on UK trade interests when it's suited them. Ironic today that it's accusing Bombardier of dumping yet it had no qualms about dumping on the trailblazing British semiconductor industry in the 1960s and 1970s, permanently stunting its development. And that's just one example.

And poor old DUP that this has happened in their backgarden - must be a sign from God. Perhaps they can say a prayer for that magic money tree to appear again.

It's not the US and EU going toe to toe. It's Boeing going toe to toe with Airbus at the WTO in Geneva. I believe that Boeing have a point wrt state subsidies for both Boeing and Bombardier. Not that Boeing are that clean, themselves...

Companies (and governments by different routes) can bring cases to international trade panels. Only governments, not companies, can make or alter trade barriers. The Bombardier case, like the Airbus saga, has not reached a legal conclusion. Yet the US government decided to throw up a tariff barrier that, with taxes, triples the cost of Bombardier's plane overnight.

The decision was taken by Wilbur Ross, Trump's commerce secretary and a fully paid up member of Trump's highly protectionist America First agenda. It's as clear a warning as we're likely to get as to how the Trump administration will view an enfeebled UK outside of the EU. It can easily push Canada around even with its trade deal (NAFTA). It can't push Airbus and the EU around anywhere nearly so easily - and hasn't, even though the Airbus case has been in the works far longer.

It's also also a clear warning to May - she personally pleaded with Trump not to impose a punitive tariff little more than a week ago. So much for the special relationship.

As for Boeing - who last year alone spent $17 million just on lobbying Washington politicians - the case doesn't even eliminate a direct competitor because Boeing doesn't actually make a competing aircraft (a case made strongly by Bombardier's customer Delta Airlines). Boeing has a reputation as a slash-and-burn company against foreign and domestic competition - its corporate instinct is to monopolise. It would like nothing more than to wipe out Airbus, but takes out a non-competing minnow instead. Even if the tariff is eventually dropped, it will have been enough to drive away a major customer in Delta.

By the way, Airbus will tell you that the net cost of the subsidies it receives is nil - because they're what are called launch subsidies which are repaid incrementally to governments as royalties on sales.

Meanwhile Boris yesterday launched his think tank on FCO property, dedicated to pressing May towards a jihadist Brexit - a WTO free-for-all in which the UK unilaterally pulls down all its own tariff barriers. It even (says it) wants to abandon EU product standards, thereby cutting off the EU increasingly as a market into which UK companies would be allowed to sell. The latter is more likely yet another of Boris's jolly-jape EU wind-ups. It'll have the opposite effect, of course - as before, galvanising the EU into an unsplittable negotiating pact.

Boris thinks this is the way to Nirvana. This comment in the FT yesterday sets out a more likely trajectory:

You enter a basement dungeon of your own accord (referendum), slam the self-locking door shut (the leave vote), drop your trousers, bend over and strap yourself into conveniently placed restraints (trigger Article 50), throw some choice insults at the ominous hooded figure in the corner (Lancaster House speech), and now you expect that the next scene will involve a muscle-relaxing massage that leaves you refreshed and energised.

Companies (and governments by different routes) can bring cases to international trade panels. Only governments, not companies, can make or alter trade barriers. The Bombardier case, like the Airbus saga, has not reached a legal conclusion. Yet the US government decided to throw up a tariff barrier that, with taxes, triples the cost of Bombardier's plane overnight.

 

The decision was taken by Wilbur Ross, Trump's commerce secretary and a fully paid up member of Trump's highly protectionist America First agenda.

Sorry, but I don't buy that. It was a committee within the commerce department, the International Trade Commission, that decided and I can't see Trump or Wilbur Ross being involved in any meaningful way. Anyway, what is wrong with a country protecting its jobs against unfair foreign trade practices? The EU have been doing it for years via the CAP, providing inefficient French farmers a way of competing with more efficient growers and we've been paying far too much for our food ever since.

I think a balanced argument is needed but we are still in the EU, which has no trade deal with the US, primarily because the US would demand access to the market for their agricultural exports, an outcome that the French would never allow. That is why the EU/US trade deal is dead.

I can see the UK opening up it's market to cheap US food in return for a break on aircraft tariffs.

Anyway, it's all about a bankrupt Canadian company being propped up by Canada, who happen to employ workers in Northern Ireland, the ruling party of which forms a vital part of the working majority in the House of Commons. Boeing, a solvent company, employs more workers in the UK than Bombardier and I can't see the UK government doing anything more than giving lip service to placate the DUP. The factory is in the EU and we have a better chance of negotiating a reduced tariff than the EU would anyway, but why would we care too much about a Canadian company?

£40bn? Thought the EU was going to go whistle?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/may-set-to-anger-tory-faithful-by-offering-eu-a-better-divorce-deal-gp2zpg96n

Edit

Is there a timetable for when the government will complete the negotiations with itself?

Boris's latest intervention contradicts just about every point made in May's Florence speech.

So Tessie May is going to target young voters with her vision for the future - that would be the demographic who voted 75/25 to stay in the EU. How is she going to square tht circle ?

So Tessie May is going to target young voters with her vision for the future - that would be the demographic who voted 75/25 to stay in the EU. How is she going to square tht circle ?

By throwing a few more millions onto the help/rent-to-buy pyre, apparently.

And also by not firing Brexit Jihadist-in-chief BoJo, who's polished his street cred with Millennials by quoting a patronising colonial-infused poem by Kipling. That'll get the younger vote out for the Tories. Especially as they come to realise that the next leader of the Tory party wants a Brexit that drives the thickest wedge possible between Britain and the EU, in order to return to some kind of Kipling-esque Nirvana of Commonwealth countries lorded over by a new British Raj.

It is entertaining, though, watching such a monumental (especially the last two syllables) case of someone inside the tent pi ssing in.

£40bn? Thought the EU was going to go whistle?

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/may-set-to-anger-tory-faithful-by-offering-eu-a-better-divorce-deal-gp2zpg96n

considering it was reported that the EU started at 100m it's not so bad.

It is honourable and correct to pay for what we signed up to. It is also shrewd to tell other nations we need to keep onboard, that they will not pay/lose out by us leaving. At least until 2019 . We need their goodwill, for the final vote on the terms of us leaving

considering it was reported that the EU started at 100m it's not so bad.

It is honourable and correct to pay for what we signed up to. It is also shrewd to tell other nations we need to keep onboard, that they will not pay/lose out by us leaving. At least until 2019 . We need their goodwill, for the final vote on the terms of us leaving

€100bn not mn.

Net or gross?

€100bn not mn.

 

Net or gross?

one thing Is for certain,we will all be paying for the madness of Brexit. Not only financially but when we get a dose of Corbommunism after the next election

"Macron's vision doesn't fit Europe". No, it doesn't but I don't think that the Merkels, Macrons or Verhofstads do give a damn, they just march on and I guess it won't be before long that citizens of northern Europe will have to pay European taxes in order to save the "economy" of France, Spain, Italy and so on.

Brexit will harm the UK but to stay in the EU could be worse...

https://euobserver.com/opinion/139216

850 people injured in Barcelona and Catelonia. Women battered and stamped on....

The EU say nothing.

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850 people injured in Barcelona and Catelonia. Women battered and stamped on....

 

The EU say nothing.

 

 

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The spanish should have taken a leaf out of the anti democratic EU's book. Allow the referendum then ignore the result, like the EU did in France and the Netherlands.

 

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Much as I dislike the apparatchiks in the EU and where they are heading, it was the Dutch and French government who are to blame for ignoring the result of the referendum you're referring to. The coming Dutch government is even looking for a way to abolish any kind of referendum as they don't want citizens to block their policies. It's getting worse and worse...

850 people injured in Barcelona and Catelonia. Women battered and stamped on....

 

The EU say nothing.

Maybe the Jocks should reconsider if they really want to stay in an EU that is increasingly anti-democratic. Westminster has been fairly supportive about the devolution of power in the UK. The Jocks should have been more grateful. They could have been under the jackboot of Germany/EU, as Greece and Catalonia are.

Maybe the Jocks should reconsider if they really want to stay in an EU that is increasingly anti-democratic. Westminster has been fairly supportive about the devolution of power in the UK. The Jocks should have been more grateful. They could have been under the jackboot of Germany/EU, as Greece and Catalonia are.

They would have been, if salmond had got his way. He's on record as stating that one of the first moves for an independent scotland would have been exit from sterling and joining the eurozone.

They would have been, if salmond had got his way. He's on record as stating that one of the first moves for an independent scotland would have been exit from sterling and joining the eurozone.

Listen to this stupid, stupid woman:

http://news.sky.com/story/sturgeon-scotland-will-keep-the-pound-and-apply-for-full-eu-membership-10807681

Talk about a reverse ferret, I heard salmond myself on the today programme (before the jock referendum), he said clearly that adopting the euro was a natural and desirable starting point for an independent scotland. That, of course, was before the collapse of the pigs.

Maybe the Jocks should reconsider if they really want to stay in an EU that is increasingly anti-democratic. Westminster has been fairly supportive about the devolution of power in the UK. The Jocks should have been more grateful. They could have been under the jackboot of Germany/EU, as Greece and Catalonia are.

Well you only need to look at the attitudes of the Eurocrats, wanting to "punish" the British people for their Brexit vote (the EU's words, not mine). Then fast forward to the Spanish government punishing the Catalan people for wanting to have a say. Regimes like this can only exist when the freedom of expression removed and democracy is undermined.

Much as I dislike the apparatchiks in the EU and where they are heading, it was the Dutch and French government who are to blame for ignoring the result of the referendum you're referring to. The coming Dutch government is even looking for a way to abolish any kind of referendum as they don't want citizens to block their policies. It's getting worse and worse...

I disagree. The will of the French and Dutch people was clear. The EU constitution needed a referendum in those respective countries. The people of those countries made their opinion clear. The EU changed the wording to a "Treaty" and pressed on in collaboration with the French and Dutch governments, against the will of the people. No one in the EU said "hang on a minute, the French and Dutch disagree". They showed complete disregard for the peoples of sovereign nations. It is scandalous and I cannot for the life of me not see how anyone can find this acceptable.

With the Brexit vote, the eurocrats showed utter contempt for the will of the British people, talking of punishing us.

I disagree. The will of the French and Dutch people was clear. The EU constitution needed a referendum in those respective countries. The people of those countries made their opinion clear. The EU changed the wording to a "Treaty" and pressed on in collaboration with the French and Dutch governments, against the will of the people. No one in the EU said "hang on a minute, the French and Dutch disagree". They showed complete disregard for the peoples of sovereign nations. It is scandalous and I cannot for the life of me not see how anyone can find this acceptable.

 

With the Brexit vote, the eurocrats showed utter contempt for the will of the British people, talking of punishing us.

It was also very undemocratic the way they ignored the British people's concerns about immigration when Cameron went begging to them prior to the referendum. They ignored us when we were EU citizens so how can they be surprised that we wanted out.

I disagree. The will of the French and Dutch people was clear. The EU constitution needed a referendum in those respective countries. The people of those countries made their opinion clear. The EU changed the wording to a "Treaty" and pressed on in collaboration with the French and Dutch governments, against the will of the people. No one in the EU said "hang on a minute, the French and Dutch disagree". They showed complete disregard for the peoples of sovereign nations. It is scandalous and I cannot for the life of me not see how anyone can find this acceptable.

 

With the Brexit vote, the eurocrats showed utter contempt for the will of the British people, talking of punishing us.

Not forgetting the way they treated The Greeks.

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I disagree. The will of the French and Dutch people was clear. The EU constitution needed a referendum in those respective countries. The people of those countries made their opinion clear. The EU changed the wording to a "Treaty" and pressed on in collaboration with the French and Dutch governments, against the will of the people. No one in the EU said "hang on a minute, the French and Dutch disagree". They showed complete disregard for the peoples of sovereign nations. It is scandalous and I cannot for the life of me not see how anyone can find this acceptable.

 

With the Brexit vote, the eurocrats showed utter contempt for the will of the British people, talking of punishing us.

Baldrick, only your fellow jihadis have suppressed WWII feelings about punishment. But it's absolutely clear that the UK isn't going to enjoy the benefits of EU membership without accepting its obligations. Absolutely nowt to do with punishment.

It was also very undemocratic the way they ignored the British people's concerns about immigration when Cameron went begging to them prior to the referendum. They ignored us when we were EU citizens so how can they be surprised that we wanted out.

Nothing to do with democracy, little fella, just your jihadi sense of entitlement and exceptionalism. For what it's worth, the UK has negotiated numerous opt-outs over the years, won the argument on lots of issues from free trade, liberalisation of air travel and telecoms and EU enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe and failed to exercise the rights that all member states have enjoyed.

Baldrick, only your fellow jihadis have suppressed WWII feelings about punishment. But it's absolutely clear that the UK isn't going to enjoy the benefits of EU membership without accepting its obligations. Absolutely nowt to do with punishment.

Think you're being a bit naive, there is bound to be an element of punishment because they will want to deter other countries from doing the same.

We've gone from being an important part of their club to soon be a direct competitor, I'm sure, in the spirit of capitalism they will be doing all they can to make us fail.

Think you're being a bit naive, there is bound to be an element of punishment because they will want to deter other countries from doing the same.

 

We've gone from being an important part of their club to soon be a direct competitor, I'm sure, in the spirit of capitalism they will be doing all they can to make us fail.

They want to disincentivise others from leaving which means not letting the UK have its cake and eat it and get something for nothing.

That's fair enough, anyone in the EU's position would rationally insist on the same as a guiding principle: how much flexibility the EU then exhibits is a matter of negotiation. That's a million miles from gratuitous punishments. If you've read any of the EU position papers (doubtful), you'll realise their stance is utterly consistent - principles such as the inseparability of the four freedoms existed before Brexit and apply to all member states - only kippers who have a warped sense of entitlement and exceptionalism see dark ad hominem plots against the UK. Grow the f**k up and stop whinging.

In the 'spirit of capitalism' You've not got a Scooby what the spirit of capitalism is.

They want to disincentivise others from leaving which means not letting the UK have its cake and eat it and get something for nothing.

 

That's fair enough, anyone in the EU's position would rationally insist on the same as a guiding principle: how much flexibility the EU then exhibits is a matter of negotiation. That's a million miles from gratuitous punishments. If you've read any of the EU position papers (doubtful), you'll realise this stance is utterly consistent - principles such as the inseparability of the four freedoms existed before Brexit and apply to all member states - only kippers who have a warped sense of entitlement and exceptionalism see dark ad hominem plots against the UK. Grow the f**k up and stop whinging.

 

In the 'spirit of capitalism' You've not got a Scooby what the spirit of capitalism is.

Na, I disagree. They are going to do all they can to make sure Brexit fails so will punish us all they can IMO.

Na, I disagree. They are going to do all they can to make sure Brexit fails so will punish us all they can IMO.

Well since any one country can veto the deal so that makes no sense. Either no other country wants to leave - which makes the punishment unnecessary or others do in which case they would veto the punishment deal no?

As Shurlock says its about making sure that non members do not get a better deal than members, which is absolutely fair enough.