Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

If she actually means the "no deal is better than a bad deal", we can all save a lot of time and effort and don't negotiate at all. It will be a bad deal as the good deal is what Britain has just decided to exit from.

Don't be dense.

He's right.
Britain had an excellent deal with the EU. Massive special  treatment.

I won't tell you not to be dense as that would be futile.

Well that's a convincing argument.

Why do you think this is dense?

[Liep]

Saw someone on Twitter compare May's brexit plan to this:

[Tamas]

Boris Johnson compared Hollande to Nazis enacting collective punishment, for the idea of introducing tariffs against post-Brexit UK. The cherry on top is that Hollande hasn't made a singel comment on May's speech yet.

[Josquius]

The papers are apparently getting well up on the WW2 rhetoric.

[Duque de Bragança]

Boris Johnson compared Hollande to Nazis enacting collective punishment, for the idea of introducing tariffs against post-Brexit UK. The cherry on top is that Hollande hasn't made a singel comment on May's speech yet.

Hollande might be many things or more accurately mostly nothing but this...

[Syt]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/18/boris-johnson-world-war-two-punishment-beatings-brexit-francois-hollande

Boris Johnson to France: no WW2-style punishment beatings over Brexit

British foreign secretary evokes dark period of French history as he warns François Hollande against trying to hurt UK

Boris Johnson has warned the French president, François Hollande, against trying to "administer punishment beatings" in the manner of "some world war two movie" to any country that tries to leave the EU.

The foreign secretary evoked the darkest period of France's recent history as he rejected comments by an adviser to Hollande who said Britain should not expect a better trading relationship outside Europe than it currently enjoys inside.

In an extraordinary outburst at a foreign policy conference in Delhi, Johnson said: "If [François] Hollande wants to administer punishment beatings to anybody who seeks to escape [the EU], in the manner of some world war two movie, I don't think that is the way forward. It's not in the interests of our friends and partners."

There was no immediate response from French officials to the remarks.

At the conference, Jacques Audibert is understood to have said that Britain could not expect to get a better deal outside the EU – a position articulated by several European figures including the prime minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat.

On Wednesday Muscat told the European parliament: "We want a fair deal for the United Kingdom. But that deal necessarily needs to be inferior to membership."

Hollande, who has not yet responded officially to Theresa May's Brexit speech, said in October that Britain would have to pay a heavy price for leaving, declaring: "There must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price."

Johnson's remarks are likely to add to growing diplomatic friction between France and the UK in the wake of a public feud over the wisdom of France calling a Middle East peace conference just before Donald Trump takes power in the US. The UK refused to send a delegation to the conference and did not sign the final communique.

Speaking on Wednesday, Johnson said new tariff barriers between Britain and Europe would "cut both ways", citing imports of German luxury cars into Britain. It was "absolutely incredible", he said, "that in the 21st century member states of the EU should be seriously contemplating the reintroduction of tariffs or whatever to administer punishment to the UK".

Johnson said: "[Britain] can put a 10% tariff on 820,000 cars, Mercs. That's a lot of money for the exchequer. We think we can do a great free-trade deal for the benefit of both sides. The more trade, the more jobs on both sides."

He added that it would be "foolish for the EU to seek to cut off its nose to spite its face by punishing the City of London [because] those jobs won't migrate to Paris or Frankfurt but to Singapore or Hong Kong or New York".

In her speech on Tuesday May called for her ministers to show restraint in their language during the Brexit negotiations. She said: "Every stray word and every hyped-up media report is going to make it harder for us to get the right deal for Britain. Our opposite numbers in the European commission know it, which is why they are keeping their discipline. And the ministers in this government know it too, which is why we will also maintain ours."

It is not the first time the former London mayor has evoked the second world war in the context of Brexit. He told the Sunday Telegraph during the referendum campaign that the EU was an attempt "by different methods" to unite the continent under a single government. He said: "Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically."

Interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Wednesday, the Brexit secretary, David Davis, also cited the "difficult histories" of other EU nation states as evidence for why they would not want to leave the EU.

"There is no other country which is in our position," he said. "We are an offshore island. We have got a great global history and so on. For us, going into the EU in the first case it was the common market, we saw it as economic issue. But for most of the countries of Europe it is not just about economics. It is about democracy. It's about the rule of law – countries that have come from difficult histories into what for them is the exemplar of modern politics – freedom, rule of law, democracy."

As a result, he said, they were not going to be tempted to leave the EU.

Davis also quoted former cabinet secretary Robin Butler who, he said, had told him: "The civil service coped with world war two; they can cope with this."

Johnson told the audience in the Indian capital it was "time to stick up for free trade", arguing that Britain and India had enormous potential to boost their economic ties, and suggesting the Indian government start by relaxing its 150% tariff on imported whisky.

Scotch whisky accounts for around 4% of the Indian market, the largest market for the liquor in the world. "Now imagine we could just double that or treble that by removing those pesky tariffs, giving the Indian consumer more money to spend on other things," he said.

"And, symmetrically, we could have zero tariffs on wonderful Indian products like those electric cars or buses or perhaps even bicycles that we're now seeing on the streets of London."

Such a deal could not be negotiated until Britain formally left the EU, he said, but could at least be "sketch[ed] out in pencil on the back of an envelope".

"We may be leaving the EU, we may be taking back control of our borders, but that does not mean we want to haul up the drawbridge. We do not want to deter Indian talent from our country," he said.

[Zanza]

It's somewhat telling that Boris Johnson's recent examples for trade are Prosecco, Whiskey and Champagne. 

[Valmy]

The French are Nazis and Indians are great. Boris knows how to play to his audience.

[Solmyr]

Catchphrase of the month will be "Global Britain"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-38635035


Apparently the Leave voters did not want the UK to turn inward, but to make it properly global.

Maybe they plan to recreate the British Empire.

[Valmy]

Maybe they plan to recreate the British Empire.

Yeah the last time Britain went global it got kind of ugly

[grumbler]

Boris Johnson compared Hollande to Nazis enacting collective punishment, for the idea of introducing tariffs against post-Brexit UK. The cherry on top is that Hollande hasn't made a singel comment on May's speech yet.

Hollende was late, and Boris had a stupid quota to meet, so he just went ahead and pre-emptively responded to Hollande.

[Richard Hakluyt]

He's a big scary fellow is Hollande, no wonder BJ was fearful 

[Syt]

[Liep]

What does the leave voters say to the tax-haven plans?

[celedhring]

Yeah, I love how the pro-Brexit camp touts so much Trump's sympathy and eagerness to sign a trade deal with the UK. The same Trump that sees international trade as a zero sum business and whose EU ambassador pretty much openly described a "divide and conquer" strategy regarding Europe. Trump will only sign a deal that favors the US, not the UK. And the UK has chosen to put itself in a position of near-zero bargaining power.

That's what's so funny about all those nationalist parties patting each other's backs. At the end of the day, if they had their way and they all ruled their countries, they would only look to fuck each other.