Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Admiral Yi]

I wonder if cutting back on vowels makes a city more competitive.

Damn, beat me to it.

[Threviel]

Consider cities like Szczecin or Trnava have all the skills you need, lower costs, and will actively cover your costs of the move.... and its just logic.

I wonder if cutting back on vowels makes a city more competitive.

Wales disagrees.

[Tamas]

According to Jim Pickard and Gillian Tett in today's Financial Times (paywall), Nigel Farage, the Brexit party leader, and some Donald Trump supporters in the US are backing a new group, World4Brexit, which is being set up to lobby for Brexit. Farage told the FT he was not convinced Boris Johnson will deliver Brexit.

Mr Farage, speaking just before the fundraiser at the New York Athletic Club in Manhattan, said the donations would all be "above the board and legal".

The cash would not go to political candidates and would be used to "dig deep, find out who is really running the show", according to the fundraising documents ...

Mr Farage said that W4B was still in a "start-up" phase, and had been organised "at the American end" by Gerry Gunster, the American political strategist who in 2016 helped Leave.EU, the unofficial referendum campaign for the UK to leave the EU.

Its fundraising literature said "we have donors from all across the United States and across the globe", and stressed that "all our money [raised] will follow the letter of the law in the eyes of the IRS". As a not-for-profit organisation, it can take donations ranging from $5 to $5,000.

As Pickard says, World4Brexit is also making false claims about how much the billionaire philanthropist George Soros has donated to remain campaigns.

Pesky Jews going all Jewish on precious Brexit! 

[Josquius]

Every time they moan about the metropolitan liberal elite be sure to mentally translate it to jew. It loses nothing.

[Valmy]

So they are setting up a world cosmopolitan conspiracy using elite money from "all across the United States and across the globe" to achieve Brexit?

[Tamas]

So yeah, I am actually starting to get concerned that Boris IS working for/with the circles gunning for a no deal exit.

His spokesperson, earlier today, refused to start negotiating with the EU until the EU drops the backstop altogether. Which obviously won't happen and they know it.

So either they are even worse than May in drawing red lines they'll be forced to cross and humiliate themselves, or indeed for the new government it is a foregone conclusion that we are crashing out, and all the care for is putting all blame on the EU for it.

[The Brain]

How big a reason is English independence (with England as the successor state to the UK) for the actions of the Brexit leaders?

[Tamas]

How big a reason is English independence (with England as the successor state to the UK) for the actions of the Brexit leaders?

I don't think it's a goal, but it seems like they don't really care if they lose Scotland and NI, and I guess even Wales.

Singapore-on-the-Thames will fit nicely into England so they can't be that bothered.

[Valmy]

Wales voted Brexit back in 2016 so they might be with Boris on this one.

[Josquius]

I don't think it's a goal, but it seems like they don't really care if they lose Scotland and NI, and I guess even Wales.

Singapore-on-the-Thames will fit nicely into England so they can't be that both

Its weird really, the Conservative and Unionist party has maintaining the UK as one of its core foundational values.... yet increasingly today their ideology heavily points away from that and they stand to profit enourmously if they can break up the UK.

Wales voted Brexit back in 2016 so they might be with Boris on this one.

With England things are more debatable but in Wales its pretty much certain things have flipped now.

[Valmy]

Well I guess they missed the memo that they only get to weigh in on this once for all eternity. In direct democracy changing your mind is not allowed.

[Josquius]

I've just realised something shocking:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Irish_Unification_of_2024



How the hell did they predict that?!?!?!

[Threviel]

Things will have to move real fast if Irish unification is to be accomplished in five years by terrorism.

By vote, yeah, not by terrorism.

[Zanza]

Boris Johnson has set up a "war cabinet" to deliver Brexit "by any means necessary" by October 31 as a senior cabinet minister warned that there was "now a very real prospect" of no deal.

In a dramatic shift Michael Gove, the minister responsible for no-deal preparations, said the government was "working on the assumption" that Brussels would not strike a fresh agreement.

In a Whitehall revolution, Johnson will make every decision on Brexit policy with a team of just six senior ministers — all of them Brexiteers who support no deal.

Starting tomorrow, the war cabinet — Gove; the chancellor, Sajid Javid; the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab; the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay; and Geoffrey Cox, the attorney-general — will plot the nation's course.

Putting the country on a war footing, Johnson has ordered Gove to chair meetings of civil servants and political advisers every day — including Sundays — until the 2016 referendum result is delivered.

[...]

Gove also said he had been told to "launch one of the biggest peacetime public information campaigns this country has ever seen" so that businesses and citizens "can prepare for what will happen in the event of no deal".

The new war cabinet replaces a chaotic Brexit decision-making process under May whereby the Brexit department was sidelined from negotiations, three departments led no-deal preparations and the Treasury was allowed to thwart them all.

Gove's "operational committee" will meet on a daily basis to commission work from departments, summon officials and issue orders. They will be given just 24 hours to deliver on the orders.

Javid pledges today that "all necessary funding" will be made available for a no-deal, with plans for 500 extra Border Force officers and possibly new port infrastructure. In an article for The Sunday Telegraph, the chancellor says the Treasury will now have new priorities.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/boris-johnson-vows-no-deal-brexit-by-any-means-necessary-55tjljkfw

So it looks like they mean it this time. 94 days to prepare, which isn't exactly much...

They will spin it to blame the EU. The EU will point to Johnson, who has a terrible reputation on the continent, and will assign him the blame.

Both sides will be bitter about the disruption this causes. This will make the nect stage of the negotiations even more acrimonious. 

I feel sorry for the Irish. Caught between a rock and a hard place. They will be forced to setup a border across Ireland against their wishes. But I guess there is very little chance that Ireland would pick this English nationalist government over the EU.

[Duque de Bragança]

I expect a fancy BoJo bon mot soon.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/29/brexit-could-spell-end-of-ellesmere-port-plant-says-vauxhall-owner

Brexit could spell end of Ellesmere Port plant, says Vauxhall owner
More than 1,000 jobs at risk if factory becomes unprofitable, announces PSA chief




The French carmaker that owns Vauxhall, PSA, could pull all production from Ellesmere Port in Cheshire if the British factory becomes unprofitable after Brexit.

The company's chief executive, Carlos Tavares, told the Financial Times the business would switch to a plant in southern Europe to build Vauxhall Astra and Opel Astra cars if the UK did not achieve a satisfactory outcome when leaving the EU.

The Ellesmere Port plant employs more than 1,000 workers. If it closed, it would leave Vauxhall's Luton-based van plant as the company's last presence in the UK.

While Boris Johnson shuffles the deckchairs, the car industry is crashing

Tavares told the FT: "I would prefer to put it [the Astra car] in Ellesmere Port but if the conditions are bad and I cannot make it profitable, then I have to protect the rest of the company and I will not do it."

He added: "We need visibility on customs for parts coming from continental Europe or from the rest of the world, and we need visibility on the customs for cars coming out of the UK to continental Europe. Those are the only things we need – everything else we'll take care of."

His comments came after the UK's car trade body warned Boris Johnson on Friday that a no-deal Brexit posed an "existential threat" to the car manufacturing industry in the UK.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said: "No-deal Brexit is simply not an option."

The PSA Group warned in June that it would build its new Vauxhall Astra at its Ellesmere Port plant only if the UK avoided a no-deal Brexit. The Astra is the bestselling model produced under the Vauxhall and Opel brands.

Several senior cabinet ministers have said that Boris Johnson is "turbo-charging" preparations to leave the EU without a deal on 31 October.

Leaving the EU without a deal would trigger customs checks and tariffs for importers and exporters.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Michael Gove said the government was "working on the assumption" of a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.

Other car manufacturers in the UK have expressed concern over Brexit uncertainty. Earlier this year, the Japanese car producer Nissan decided to build the next X-Trail model in Japan instead of Sunderland.