The Irish backstop

So the EU is refusing to budge on the Irish backstop, because without it we face a cliff edge / hard border scenario.

But refusing to budge on the backstop could result in no deal, which means a cliff edge / hard border immediately.

So the EU strategy seems destined to bring about the very thing they are trying to avoid. Or am I missing something?

 

But but but, the EU will cave in rather than no deal, they need us more than we need them etc etc etc.

 

But yeah most probably.

 

90 catches and 14 stumpings in One Day Internationals.

 

The EU didn’t instigate Brexit .27 countries are wrong and only Leavers in GB are right ?
Ye ok, only one party at fault and it isn’t EU

 

You're right, you're missing something.

 

I'd prefer an English backstop like Bairstow or Butler. Adam Gilchrist wasn't bad for Australia in his prime.

 

Please explain, because this looks like an incomprehensible negotiation strategy from the EU.

 

After 2 and a half years, the UK govt have failed to find a solution to the border issue in Ireland and to honour the GFA. Europe negotiated in line with this and its EU member EIRE, while also taking account of the red lines May put down. The only way the circle could be squared in any fashion was this backstop fudge which nobody wants and nobody thinks is ideal on either side.

After May failed to get her deal through the commons in the biggest defeat in history, she has fudged and fawned to the extreme right of her party and the dreadful DUP to try and waste more time to get closer to a cliff edge to scare everyone into voting for her withdrawal agreement through fear.

The EU is quite correctly refusing to play ball and do anything to breach the GFA while supporting EIRE's stance as a member of the EU.

But if you want to believe everything is the big bad EU's fault and everything this dreadful govt has done has been to strike a deal, feel free to believe that.

 

WE SHOULD JUST BUILD A WALL.

*******!

It's much more fun posting like this you know. Everyone should try it.

 

Hmm so you think 27 other countries need the UK more than we need them?
I'm not so sure about that. But not long now till we do find out. Imo this is one absolute mess which should never have come about. Our troubles have not even started.

 

You could not be any less accurate with your interpretation of my views on Brexit.

My question was about the EU’s negotiation strategy. We are threatening to push the EU off a cliff. Their counter is threaten to jump off the cliff before they are pushed.

 

The EU have been crystal clear about their red lines from the beginning. They don't want a no deal Brexit, but it seems perfectly obvious to me that they'd consider it a lesser evil than putting the union itself in peril. It seems a fair position to take, to be honest.

It's our government who are at fault for all of this, demanding and promising a variety of things which they well know won't be agreed. Whatever fantasy deal they're trying to patch together now is inherently contradictory (no border with Ireland, no border in the Irish Sea, no freedom of movement or common market), and has already been explicitly rejected by the rest of the EU. It would be a bit sad but for the fact that the main culprit, as far as I can see, is a significant minority of leavers who are pretending to act in good faith with the eventual aim of securing what they've always wanted, which is the UK crashing out with no deal. Disaster capitalism.

 

Completely agree (though I think the poster was being ironic seeing the triple buts! ;-))

Ironic the media line and govt line peddled is "get on with it"... won't have time to get on with anything apart from the fall out of Brexit and getting back on par afterwards, if we ever do.

 

The backstop is only ever a temporary solution until the UK and the EU negotiate something better and permanent during the transition period. It has to be put in to cover off the land border between ROI and UK. It was the fudge that was put in following two years of negotiations between the two parties. So it can't have an end date and can't be stopped unilaterally by either side. BUT it is designed to be temporary and will go when the final trade and customs agreement is put in place. But yeah, lets scrub that and try for something different in the two months that are left to keep the DUP and the ERG happy. Wait a minute, EU says no. What are we gonna do now, what are we gonna do now ad nauseum.

 

We're nowhere near powerful or influential enough to push the EU off any cliff. We're threatening to jump.

You don't honestly think that the EU would suffer more from a no-deal Brexit than the UK would?

 

I think he was being ironic. Il not point out the obvious juxtaposition of your own opinion however

 

I think the Government missed a trick last night. Should have put in Schrodingers amendment, where the UK could be both in, and out, of the EU simultaneously.

 

How is it? We're trying to bully them, they are saying the deal was negotiated and signed off with the govt and its done and supporting the GFA and their member country, and what are the other ideas that have fictionally emerged that the UK govt failed to mention in 2 years of "negotiations" to avoid the backstop? Its just another way of using time up to make no deal a reality for the ERG extremists.

If you want to blame anyone here, your starting and ending position is with the conservative government and those who prop it up.

(And i'm not assuming what your views are, just answering the points you posed)

 

The only way we can get past the EU superstate is to wait for sensible EU leaders to break ranks, eg Dutch, German, Scandi countries.The Eastern bloc need to wise up aswell. (61% of public infrastructure spending in Poland for eg is by the EU -that will be hit by no deal) Two things, regardless of how you voted:

The backstop gives the EU no incentive to negogiate sensibly as it keeps us under their control and paying in if we can't negogiate a deal that avoids the backstop. Hence we would be over a barrel

Secondly, why did Theresa May sign an international treaty that needed parliment's ratification before parliment had ratified it? I can only think she thought she would panic MPs into accepting any old deal, in which she made a very bad miscalculation- and not for the first time either - that seems to have played into the EU's hands