BREXIT thread

Sky sourceees: No deal on Ireland today

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Theresa May has destroyed Junker

England will be a 2nd world county by 2020

The Democratic Unionists believe that the early morning hype about an imminent deal between London and Dublin was ‘manufactured’ by the Irish government.

If the DUP aren’t going to move at all, and they won’t, it looks like there are only two possibilities - no deal and a hard border which will destroy the North, or if May tries to force the issue, an election and a new UK Government, which may or may not be led by Jeremy Corbyn, but which will not include the DUP, after the election of which, emergency talks will resume.

They probably aren’t too far wrong, although I’d say it was more the UK government.

It would seem Theresa forgot to ask Arlene if what she was saying was ok by her. :sweat_smile: What a tinpot country you live in @Tassotti. All the Micks are in stitches laughing at ye

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Well a hard border is out of the question ROI and EU will never agree to it

Yes mate. That is exactly the issue

Astute.

How a no-deal “open border” could destroy the UK economy:

The EU would need a physical border to check goods coming into the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Although in theory, the UK could decide not to impose checks on goods moving the other way (i.e. from the Republic into Northern Ireland). This could make a hard border slightly softer.

But there’s a catch: under WTO rules, unless you’re in a free trade bloc like the EU or NAFTA, you have to obey the “most favoured nation” rule.

That means if you lower trade tariffs for one trading partner, you have to lower tariffs to all your other partners. Professor O’Donoghue explains:

“If the UK chooses not impose any tariffs on goods coming across the [Irish] border… that would mean that the UK is giving the EU (because Ireland is the EU in this context) complete open access. So its most favoured nation tariff is zero. That means it would have to give a zero tariff access to every single country in the WTO.”

Now, the idea of the UK scrapping tariffs altogether isn’t entirely out of the question, according to some advocates for hard Brexit. Regular FactCheck readers might remember this proposal featured on the famous “Wetherspoon manifesto”, and was printed on half a million beermats across the pub chain’s 800-odd branches.

But doing so could have a devastating impact on UK businesses.

Back to our researchers at the Universities of Birmingham, Durham and Newcastle, who explain: “the impact upon the agri-food and farming sector is particularly revealing. Most agricultural products and livestock are subject to EU import tariffs of between 6% and 22%.”

“UK agri-food products would either have to compete with heavily subsided EU produce on the global market… or target sales within the UK to avoid import duties. It is likely that suppliers will use the cheapest available option which, due to CAP subsidies, may very well still be EU products”.

In other words, abolishing import tariffs could mean that UK producers are priced-out of UK and EU markets.

Can we write Roberts emmets epitaph now ? He said not to write on his grave till we had a United Ireland or regulatory alignment .
To be honest the whole socialist / Marxist bit of the republican ideal was always the bit @anon98850436 took as a necessary evil but now he has his ideal scenario - regulatory alignment north and south , the businessman’s United Ireland. Hats off EG

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I was replying to Sidney’s post see above. He said that if DUP don’t get their way then a hard border is going up as one of the two options - I said well, it actually won’t as EU and ROI won’t agree to that! Therefore it isn’t an option.

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Here lies the famed Republican Robert Emmet, poor organiser, great Orator.

Govt source; “They were on board but the language was too strong for them”. Got Dublin over the line but not the DUP. For today at least

This coup d’état by the DUP will be a Pyrrhic victory.

Theresa May has the micks reeling

She is a busted flush. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be the man at Leo the Lion’s side next week when reunification is announced.

What I think happened here is that May, Varadkar and the EU privately agreed to spread rumours of a deal in the media without involving the DUP, in order to really crank up the pressure on the DUP, so that they would be the only people objecting to a deal and might have felt they had no option but to cave in.

The DUP, of course, have not caved in, which does not surprise anybody remotely familiar with how they operate - perhaps May simply doesn’t understand how intransigent they are.

This now will spread distrust between May and the DUP. It could make a deal less likely. But is it likely in the first place? I’m not sure.

There’s very little wriggle room for May here.

The DUP’s objection is not to stating in the single market in customs union, it’s to being treated “differently” to the rest of the UK.

If the UK government could see sense and agree to remain within the single market and customs union, there would be no problem as regards the North.

But the hardline Brexiteers would go nuts.

So May is trapped with very little wriggle room between two intransigent forces, the DUP and the hardline Brexiteers, neither of whom show any sign of backing down.

A UK election in the very near future and a Corbyn-led government, and most importantly, no DUP, seems the most realistic way out of all this, unless May can face down the hardline Brexiteers and get the whole of the UK to remain in the single market and customs union, or achieve the same thing by another name.

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She certainly has the Northern Micks on the run.