Trump for President?

[Wandering Warrior]

Saw a programme on Iraq last week. If they manage to shift IS it will still be up in the air. Half the Iraq government have links to the Shia militia so there'll be opportunities to be ceased in a still existing power vacuum.
The West, particularly us and the yanks, have created this mess. Oh for a crystal ball that works!

[thegimble]

Saw a programme on Iraq last week. If they manage to shift IS it will still be up in the air. Half the Iraq government have links to the Shia militia so there'll be opportunities to be ceased in a still existing power vacuum.
The West, particularly us and the yanks, have created this mess. Oh for a crystal ball that works!

Crystal Ball would not have worked people had decided to attack Iraq regardless if it was the right thing or not. This scenario was warned about but no one listened and in the end the same scenario is playing out in every nation we pretend we are helping.

[Wandering Warrior]

Libya is a classic example of further mayhem.
It will be interesting to see how Don responds given the Russians and Iran's comments 're. military action.
Furthermore Johnson has been made to look the prat he is over this lot.

[Wiganer Ted]

Poor old Wormer with his Cumbria link.

What on earth has the replacement of Trident submarines got to do with whether we are in or out of the EU?
That article was well prior to 2016 anyway.
Wormer clearly thinks renewing Trident is due to the Leave vote in the referendum.
You keep reading the Daily (UKIP News) Express old lad!

[Wormburner]

Poor old Wormer with his Cumbria link.

What on earth has the replacement of Trident submarines got to do with whether we are in or out of the EU?
That article was well prior to 2016 anyway.
Wormer clearly thinks renewing Trident is due to the Leave vote in the referendum.
You keep reading the Daily (UKIP News) Express old lad!

Poor old Ted and his memory, scroll back a few pages and look for the post you made stating that there was not enough workforce in Barrow to take over the work of Scottish shipyards if Scotland where to go independent, it must be awful being an old geezer

[Wormburner]

Poor old Wormer with his Cumbria link.

What on earth has the replacement of Trident submarines got to do with whether we are in or out of the EU?
That article was well prior to 2016 anyway.
Wormer clearly thinks renewing Trident is due to the Leave vote in the referendum.
You keep reading the Daily (UKIP News) Express old lad!

Poor old Ted and his memory, scroll back a few pages and look for the post you made stating that there was not enough workforce in Barrow to take over the work of Scottish shipyards if Scotland where to go independent, it must be awful being an old geezer

ps since that article the buildings have been built and it is all going full steam ahead

[DaveO]

But still you fail to check the veracity of the stories once you've read the papers. What you said was the EU Parliament voted to veto; that was in fact completely incorrect. Not withstanding that, the notion of a EU Parliamentary veto at all is something of a misnomer. What you have done is likened the EU Parliament to the UK Parliament which is the supreme body in the UK. The EU Parliament on the other hand is a debating chamber more akin to the House of Lords - ie lots of people with no real power, containing and dominated by a preponderance of members from the large influential countries.

How can you suggest someone "check the veracity of the stories" and then go on to post such complete and utter bollocks about what the EU parliament does?

The word ‘bollocks’ doesn’t add to your argument, and only serves to make everything else that follows it less.

OK I will rephrase. How How can you suggest someone "check the veracity of the stories" when you demonstrate such ignorance as to the workings of the EU parliament? Happy now?

The EU works like this.

.....

To say the EU parliament is like the House of Lords with no real power shows a basic lack of understanding of what does and what its powers are.

UK normal legislative process = The Houses of Parliament consider proposals, called bills, most of which are introduced by the government. To become law, a bill must be approved by both MPs in the House of Commons and peers in the House of Lords. Bills go through a very similar process in both Houses.

Spot the difference?

I can spot a cabinet form of government when I see it but you can't. To paraphrase the above:

The EU parliament considers proposals, called bills, most of which are introduced by the EU Commission (at the behest of the Council of Ministers) . To become law, a bill must be approved by both MEP's in the EU parliament and by the Council of ministers.

Spot the similarity? Neither parliament nor the EU commission "govern". They both vote on legislation proposed by the executive.

And just to make sure you can see the similarity Ministers in the UK are appointed and not elected. Just like EU commissioners are appointed and not elected. In the UK ministers don't have to be MP's either.

The fact of the matter is whether you can see it or not the UK and the EU both practice a cabinet form of government.

Notwithstanding that, we are not actually talking about legislative processes; we are talking about the process of agreeing a trade deal. What you show is a basic lack of understanding of the issue in question

Whatever you were discussing, you were the one who brought the legislative process up with your incorrect assertion that the EU parliament didn't have an effective veto and likened it to the House of Lords as a debating chamber when clearly like the UK parliament it can approve or not the legislation put before it.

Are you going to admit you are wrong now?

I've asked many times and have yet to get an answer, but why would an organisation, predicated on free trade and the removal of trade barriers, want to create and put up barriers with its largest single export market?

Because it isn't predicated on free trade. It's predicated on free trade within the EU. Outside of it, it acts as a trading bloc and as is allowed under WTO rules to impose tariff and non-tariff barriers on trade with other countries on a country by country basis (something a single country can't do).

That could not be any wider of the mark. The original premise of the then Common Market was to create free trade and co-operation between the countries of western Europe to reduce the risk of those countries engaging in armed conflict. Its current number one policy is to create a global system for fair and open trade.

Absolute nonsense. The fact the EU imposes tariffs (and has non-tariff barriers) in place to protect itself and its industries shows it takes free trade as far as it is advantageous to itself and no further.

You think that, for example it puts an over 300% tariff on imported raw cane sugar from the likes of Brazil on such imports for fun? Or is it to protect the indigenous sugar beet industry from dumping? I'll let you guess.

When we leave they aren't going to allow us to trade with them tariff free without a free trade agreement and even with one they will not agree to remove some tariff non-tariff barriers to some trade because it simply isn't in their interest to do so. They are not a charity.

I agree in part, but the UK has the option to impose reciprocal tariffs. It doesn’t make economic sense to impose a tariff on someone who sells to you, when you sell them more than they sell to you.

If the UK imposes a reciprocal tariff on the EU then it would be bound by WTO rules to impose the exact same tariff on all countries. That may not be desirable and may not be acceptable to other countries the UK wants a separate free trade with. There is no reason for them to accept the same import tariffs being imposed by the UK as are currently imposed by the EU. Common sense suggests they would expect the UK to lower tariffs and restrictions to agree a trade deal and if we do, then we must offer the same terms to the EU.

Imposing reciprocal tariffs just because the EU has tariffs isn't an automatically sensible thing for the UK to do anyway. It just forces the cost of imports up so consumers and businesses see costs and inflation rise. We import goods from the EU because we need to so reciprocal tariffs i.e. a trade war helps no one but especially not the UK. Trade with the UK is not propping up the EU economy and its value and the clout it gives us is way overstated.

The reasons are obvious. The fact we tell 'em we have adopted the same laws and "there is absolutely no regulatory divergence between us" doesn't mean there isn't any or that over time there won't be deliverance. From the second we leave our word that there isn't divergence isn't good enough.

I agree that there may be some divergence over time, but this is not outside the scope of negotiations on future relations. It is something that could be easily resolved

For there not to be divergence and there has to be an agreement that lays down who is the arbiter of standards in the UK that the EU accepts as ensuring the relevant EU standards are maintained. There isn't one nor is there a body set up to ensure compliance.

The Government is planning to incorporate a large majority of EU regulations into UK law and to prune the legislation it doesn’t want or need. Eighty percent of the standards governing manufactured goods in the single market are voluntary, and these have been progressively harmonised across Europe. European product standards are normally voluntary and agreed outside any EU framework and led by industry in order to promote competition. It is trading standards officials in the various countries who check for EU conformity at the point of sale.

Divergence is just that. Diverge and you break the rules. Want to trade? Then stick to the standards and rules. You can only do that if you agree to some administrative body enforcing the rules - like the ECJ.

And this " It is trading standards officials in the various countries who check for EU conformity at the point of sale."

totally ignores the fact that disputes arise and they need sorting out. Every free trade agreement going has an arbitration body tasked with enforcing the rules and regulations.

So you need rules and a body to enforce them as part of your trade deal with the EU. So much for taking back control eh?

Simple example. If we want to carry on trading agricultural produce to the EU we will have to ensure it is not genetically modified or for animal products they have not been fed genetically modified feed. That EU rule will mean we have to ban importing GM produce from the USA. You might think that is a good thing (I do) but whatever, the point is that rule will be imposed upon us by the EU or kiss goodbye to that export market and they won't accept some local trading standards body outside of the EU framework as good enough to decide if that is what we are doing unless they submit to scrutiny.

There also has to be an agreement as to who settles trade disputes between us and the EU. The EU will want that to be the ECJ, something "taking back control" is supposed to remove us from.
The reliance on the EU legislation and the ECJ is also why we can't simply cut & paste trade agreements written between the EU and other countries to create our own (as suggested by the dimwitted Peter Lilley MP). These agreements are written from front to back referencing EU rules, regulations and EU law. Again all of which we want to distance ourselves from supposedly.

But we are not distancing ourselves from EU legislation and the decisions of the ECJ - we have cut and pasted it into UK law. The main point is that we can ignore the past judgments of the ECJ or EU law where it doesn’t relate to our dealings with the rest of the world, or internally.

I don't think you understand. The actual words of these trade agreements reference EU law, rules and regulations. It really isn't as simple as you are making out. It is not a simple matter of changing the words "ECJ" to "UK supreme court" etc. These agreements are deeply wedded to EU legislation and actual EU treaties.

The specifically mention the EU as the territorial limit of such agreements and look at this from the S Korea FTA:

"Article 11.2
Definitions
For the purposes of this Section, competition laws means:
(a) for the European Union, Articles 101, 102 and 106 of the
Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, Council
Regulation (EC) No 139/2004 on the control of concentrations
between undertakings, and their implementing
regulations and amendments;
(b) for Korea, the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act and
its implementing regulations and amendments; and
(c) any changes that instruments set out in this Article may
undergo after the entry into force of this Agreement."

The UK would have to implement competition laws equivalent to Articles 101, 102 and 106 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Council Regulation (EC) No 139/2004, and their implementing regulations and amendments, in a manner which satisfies South Korea that these UK laws were equivalent to EU competition laws. Just because we said we do because we did a global edit doesn't mean S Korea agrees!

To be clear these are not just referencing laws we will add into our laws but are reference to EU rules and regulations and as in bold above reference to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union!

If it cut & pasted the above the UK would have to continue to update its competition laws in line with the EU, including implementing the ECJ's rulings, to satisfy South Korea.

That's the situation for an existing agreement the UK wishes to simply replicate in all its current essentials, a so-called 'copy and paste' agreement between the UK and another country the EU has a trade deal with.

How much more complex is it going to get if the UK or any other party to these agreements want to make substantive changes to their terms?

The EU has 71 such agreements in place with different countries and the idea we can cut & paste to get similar agreements not only presupposes we are willing to adopt all the laws, rules and regulations the EU references in these agreements but that these countries actually see some value in going to the trouble of agreeing a trade deal with us at all. We do not represent anything like the market to them that the EU does.

The idea this is all relatively simple to adopt these agreements is just naive.

For example, and to show the point, and drawing on an issue that everyone will have heard of - although it seems frivolous today.
Some years ago, the EU issued a directive insisting that everything is displayed and sold in metric weights and measurements which effectively forced the UK to comply. This led to;
Traders being ordered to pay costs for selling Brussels sprouts by the pound, and another was given a 12-month conditional discharge for pricing pumpkins and other vegetables by the pound.

We will be in a position to remove ourselves from the supremacy of directives which have no effect on our internal market, but of course we would have to comply with the rules of the EU market to trade with the EU market.

I am shocked you didn't mention bent bananas. That is trivial. We just introduced a 12 sided pound coin. Relevance? The idea it is just the EU who introduce regulations and changes that have a cost to business is not really a valid argument to leave the EU. I think you will find the UK government is the prime source of costly regulatory red tape.

In any case what would be the point of having different rules for our internal market to the external market? Wholesale suppliers aren't going to want to deal in Lbs and ounces in the UK and Kg and grams outside of it just to keep the Colonel Blimps in the UK happy. It's this kind of stupid narrow minded little britain thinking that got us into this brexit mess in the first place.

[Wiganer Ted]

Trump's bombing of Syria has certainly been a game changer.

Boris did us proud when he got it wrong and cancelled his visit to Moscow.
Then even prouder when he got it wrong at the G7.
Said from the moment he was appointed Foreign Secretary that he wasn't up to the job and May had set him up to fail.
He was her biggest rival for leadership of the Tory Party and he's proving that he's not up to that job let alone Prime Minister.

What Trump and his men think about Boris after all this would be well worth knowing.

[Wandering Warrior]

Well they did him big style by gazumping him on the Moscow trip.
I think you're right about May setting him up, Davis and Fox also. May is not going to leave her back uncovered when it goes belly up as it surely will so why not let the three Brexit stooges take the hit?

[Wormburner]

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/econ ... ns-economy