Wednesday 3 May 2017

Brexit: delusion on both sides.

As more comes out regarding the meeting between Theresa May and Jean Claude Junker last week, the more it seems that both sides are poles apart regarding Brexit.

May being dismissive of detail and wanting a more pragmatic approach to the negotiations, with Juncker taking the typical bureaucrat line and emphasising the detail and procedure. Exactly what you'd expect him to.

After all his type love to bind up negotiations in the minutiae of transactions. It's what they do, what keeps them in a lifetime of employment. Why would you complete negotiations in two years when you can continue to haggle and work on the finest of fine details for a decade instead? After all, it reduces the chances of you losing your employment if you drag things out like that. You only need to complete less than half a dozen negotiations at most to cover your working life.

It's not like they do a good job either. The migrant crisis showed that. They get bound up in the minutiae that much that they miss some really important things. Like what the procedure is when a million refugees turn up on your border. Do you (a) reinforce the border and supply funds to enable the countries on the border to hold and process the refugees (and immediately deport the non-genuine cases) or do you (b) refuse to plan for such an emergency, go wibble and ignore the fact that the border countries, unable to cope don't hold the refugees at the border and allow them unfettered access through Europe's open borders to travel across Europe without any checks. Yep, it's b.

It's also interesting that the talk from the EU side even before negotiations begin is of money. We are a huge contributor to the EU's coffers and without us the gap in EU finances would be huge. Not only that, Germany are staring at supplying the lion's share of money to fill the gap. No wonder Mrs Merkel took on board Junker's briefing and decided to chip in.

It looks like the EU are setting out their stall. They are happy for the UK to leave, but they are not happy for the UK's money to leave as well. It's all about the money. They are also ready to bind the negotiations up for years discussing minute details.

Of course they threw in the rights of EU citizens resident in the UK in an effort to look PC and protecting human rights, just like Merkel's statement on refugees. Then chucked in the spanner of the status of Northern Ireland to the debate.

So the EU want us to carry on paying for projects we have no control over, they want us to give full rights to EU citizens including benefits, with no way of claiming the money back off their respective home countries and they also want to muddy the water on the Irish situation. Do they want yet another land grab and subsume Northern Ireland into the EU, almost like Russia's annexation of Crimea? Do they want to grab Gibraltar as a payment for keeping the Irish border open?

The UK might find it's not as simple as they think to make agreements with the EU. It's looking more likely we'll leave the EU without a deal, which is what I already knew and voted for in the referendum.

What's sure is that we ain't seen nothing yet and for sure we don't need weak government on our side of the table.

The thing that gets me is if the EU is such a wonderful club to be in, why punish someone for leaving? Wouldn't leaving itself be punishment enough if it's so bad outside?


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