Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Zanza]

They could have pushed for European tech champions and would probably have found a strong ally in Paris and have a much bigger potential market, so that these tech champions can actually compete globally. Has happened before with Airbus.

[Josquius]

It's funny as brexit crashing the pound was a big part in the last big British tech company of note, ARM, being bought by a Japanese firm.

[Tonitrus]

Isn't the Pound pretty strong again now?  At least, the US-UK exchange rate tells me so.  MAH DOLLA. 

[Zanza]

The USD is currently a bit weaker against several currencies.  GBP/EUR is close to the historical minimum.

[Tamas]

"Creating domestically owned smbig businesses" have been the prime justification for rampant nepotism and corruption in Hungary for the past decade.

[Tamas]

In a shocking turn of events, Johnson is trying to weasel out of the inconvenient parts of the Withdrawal Agreement:

Boris Johnson is drawing up legislation that will override the Brexit withdrawal agreement on Northern Ireland, a move that threatens the collapse of crunch talks which the prime minister has said must be completed within five weeks.

Johnson will put an ultimatum to negotiators this week, saying the UK and Europe must agree a post-Brexit trade deal by 15 October or Britain will walk away for good.

But progress on the already fragile talks will be threatened by plans revealed on Sunday for the UK government to publish a controversial section of the internal market bill on Wednesday that will intentionally try to unpick parts of the withdrawal agreement signed in January. It will include elements of the special arrangements for Northern Ireland that are legally binding.

A UK government source told the Guardian the plan was part of the preparation for a no-deal exit that would present a number of new barriers to trade from Northern Ireland – and accepted that the move was likely to blow up at the negotiations this week.

Labour said the prime minister was "threatening to renege on the UK's legal obligations" and called it "an act of immense bad faith: one that would be viewed dimly by future trading partners and allies around the world".

The news was condemned by Ireland's foreign affairs minister, Simon Coveney, who helped broker the original Brexit settlement. He said any change would be "very unwise".


The move, first reported by the Financial Times, would row back parts of the UK's agreement with the EU on state aid and customs arrangements for Northern Ireland. It is understood that the UK government believes the original protocol is drafted ambiguously enough to allow for a change of interpretation – a view likely to be fiercely contested by Brussels.

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A government spokesperson said it was hopeful that a deal could still be reached. "As a responsible government, we are considering fall-back options in the event this is not achieved, to ensure the communities of Northern Ireland are protected."

Key figures close to the negotiations have already warned that EU leaders and heads of state must intervene before the end of the month to save the talks from collapse.

On Monday, the prime minister will set a firm deadline of 15 October – the date of the European council – for a deal to be signed, with the mood bleak as formal talks resume this week between the UK's lead negotiator, David Frost, and the EU's Michel Barnier.


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If no agreement is reached before the deadline, the UK will "move on" and accept that a deal cannot be struck, Johnson will say, adding that no deal would be a "good outcome".

The prime minister will strike a belligerent tone, suggesting there will be no movement from the deadline and claiming the UK is ready to trade on World Trade Organization terms from January.

"There is no sense in thinking about timelines that go beyond that point," he will say. "If we can't agree by then, then I do not see that there will be a free trade agreement between us, and we should both accept that and move on."

Johnson and his allies have repeatedly said they did not believe earlier negotiations made the threat of no deal tangible enough.

EU officials had previously said the deadline would be the end of October. Sources close to the talks have suggested fresh faces and interventions by member states are now needed to break the impasse after days of recriminations.

Raoul Ruparel, one of the leading advisers in Theresa May's Brexit negotiating team, suggested the dynamics needed to change. "It is just Frost and Barnier and the same teams in talks; you've got two immovable objects sitting down again and you are not going to see great movement coming from that," he said.

"There needs to be some change, some sort of fresh input, political input ... If we come to the end of the year and we don't have a deal between two close allies, that would look ridiculous, but with the two sides entrenched, where the mechanism is for unlocking the talks is not obvious."

Johnson will characterise the result of no deal as a "a trading arrangement with the EU like Australia's", saying the UK would have full control of its laws and fishing waters and would "prosper mightily as a result".

He will say the UK would find "sensible accommodations on practical issues such as flights, lorry transport, or scientific cooperation, if the EU wants to do that."

Industry leaders have previously said no deal would spell disaster for the country, with tariffs imposed on goods sending costs for industry and consumers soaring.

Last week an LSE economics professor, Thomas Sampson, said no deal could cost more than the economic shock of Covid, causing a £3.3tn decline in the value of the UK's output.

Johnson will say negotiators will continue to work hard to try to close a deal. "Even at this late stage, if the EU are ready to rethink their current positions and agree this, I will be delighted. But we cannot and will not compromise on the fundamentals of what it means to be an independent country to get it."

There are worries that European leaders, preoccupied with the Covid-19 recovery plan and foreign policy crises in Belarus and the eastern Mediterranean, appear to have no appetite to intervene in Brexit talks for now.

There remain three stumbling blocks: state aid, fisheries and governance. The EU has protested that the UK is refusing to put forward proposals, while the UK is accusing Barnier of trying to force it to cut a deal on the "difficult" areas first and failing to engage on easier challenges such as fishing rights.

While some national capitals favour a tougher negotiating stance than the one being pursued by Barnier, they appear content to leave the talks in his hands, fuelling fears that there will be no deal if back channels are not created to test new ideas in confidence.

One UK government source said member state engagement had been minimal, but more direct approaches with EU leaders could be imminent.

"Our broad view has been that will come in the next few weeks," the source said. "The nature of these negotiations is that bigger players will start to get involved when we reach the final stages."

The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said on Sunday that the Brexit negotiations were approaching a "moment of reckoning" and that a deal was "there for the taking".

UK officials are keen to start technical work on the bulk of the trade agreement on goods and services, for example on service schedules. "If we can't start talking about legal texts this week, it is going to be difficult to get all the work done in the time available," a UK official said.

A last-minute political intervention would be high-risk, say EU sources. "Ursula von der Leyen isn't as interested in Brexit as [Jean-Claude] Juncker was," the source said, referring to the European commission president and her predecessor. "You get the impression she just wants to move on and the same for any member states."

Fears that talks were on the verge of collapse were heightened in the last 24 hours after Frost said the government was not "scared" of walking away.

His remarks in the Mail on Sunday led to recriminations, with May's former chief of staff Gavin Barwell saying Frost had a "brass neck".

[The Brain]

Key figures close to the negotiations have already warned that EU leaders and heads of state must intervene before the end of the month to save the talks from collapse.

Heads of state? Don't many European heads of state fill a mostly (and in some cases completely) ceremonial role? I don't think they would want to get involved in Brexit stuff.

[celedhring]

We have a spare king that's willing to get you a deal if you grease his palm enough. We could work something out.

[The Brain]

We have a spare king that's willing to get you a deal if you grease his palm enough. We could work something out.

Good.

The Swedish king got into (mild) trouble many years ago when he came out against Norwegian seal hunting. And that was on behalf of baby seals. The Johnson government isn't nearly as cute.

[Sheilbh]

Bizarre especially as until now the reports coming out of London, Belfast and Dublin have all been about how surprisingly well the committee implementing the protocol were working.

Edit: Also I've said it many times but it's hard to work out which was the biggest catastrophic miscalculation in 2016-19: Remainers deciding that instead of trying to shape the deal into soft Brexit they would bet the house on stopping Brexit and a second referendum or the opposition including lots of Remainer MPs supporting an election instead of keeping the minority Tory government at the mercy of Parliament (the Lib Dems proposed the motion that led to an election the government wanted! ).

I used to throw in the DUP but that was based on the protocol actually being implemented. If the UK government is willing to renege on that then the DUP might actually be quite happy.

Also striking is this is legislation which mean Parliament has to vote on it, so will be knowingly voting to go back on the WA.

[Tamas]

At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister's spokesman said that Boris Johnson had always made it clear that he did not want Northern Ireland exporter to have to fill in exit summary declarations, or tariffs to apply to goods moving from Britain to Northern Ireland, and that therefore the EU could not object to London interpreting the withdrawal agreement in this way. The spokesman said:

The PM has always been publicly clear about what our interpretation of both the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol was. For example, he publicly set out that there would be no export summary declarations on goods moving from Northern Ireland to Great Britain, and he also ruled out tariffs on goods moving from GB to NI on several occasions. He set out those positions in advance of the EU signing the withdrawal agreement. They did so with full knowledge of the prime minister's position.

Johnson made comments along these lines on various occasions, most famously when he spoke at a Northern Ireland drinks reception during the 2019 general election campaign. In this clip he said there would be no tariffs on goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland - although here he clarified that there would be an exemption for goods subsequently going to Ireland. On other occasions he implied there would be no tariffs period on any goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland.

"You should have known he had no intention to keep a promise he doesn't like, and now have only yourself to blame."

[The Brain]

I'm confused. Didn't the UK sign the withdrawal agreement?

[Tamas]

I'm confused. Didn't the UK sign the withdrawal agreement?

As if that means anything.

[The Minsky Moment]

I'm confused. Didn't the UK sign the withdrawal agreement?

Yes but the according to the PMs' office, the text of a legal agreement can be modified by boozy comments made by the PM at an Irish cocktail party.

The technical term is the "implied Bushmills codicil."

[Zanza]

Isn't one of the supposed strengths of London as a financial centre the strong tradition of rule of law in Britain?