Brexit Bill

[Royal]

After just the 3rd round of the so called “negotiations” things have stalled because the EU wants a big cheque to be signed and the UK is refusing to get its pen out until we are assured that the amount being discussed is legal, fair and morally defensible to the UK people.

Barnier has said he wishes to “teach the British people and others what leaving the EU means. If ever there was a Freudian slip - there it was. Teach us and others. In other words, here's the bottom line for EU27 watching - an exit from the club will hurt you more than it hurts us, so don't do it - watch how much it will cost the UK.

It is clear that the UK has no LEGAL obligation to pay anything once Brexit is enacted. Article 50 has no such clause and as I have pointed out before, it is magical thinking on behalf of the EU to claim the sums being bandied about.

However, I accept that there is a MORAL obligation for us to pay on leaving, and our government accepts this. The question is - how much?

The EU sets budgets every 7 years and the current round ends in mid 2020. I believe that our position should be to seek to extend our membership of the EU until that time, which is 18 months after our current Brexit date of 19 Mar 2019 and pay our dues until that time. As our net contribution appears to be £10Bn annually, the alternative for a 19 Mar 2019 exit should be a payment of £15Bn. If both of those offers are refused, I believe that we walk away from the “negotiating” table now and owe nothing, because the negotiators don't actually want a deal. They just want to pull our pants down and give us 6 of the best in front of the other members of the "club".

UK to be 'educated' about consequences, says Barnier

The EU's Brexit negotiator has said he sees the process as an opportunity to "teach the British people and others what leaving the EU means".

Michel Barnier said he would never resort to blackmail but saw it as his job to "educate" the UK about the price it would pay for leaving the EU "club".

The EU's Brexit negotiator has said he sees the process as an opportunity to "teach the British people and others what leaving the EU means". Michel Barnier said he would never resort to blackmail but saw it as his job to "educate" the UK about the price it would pay for leaving the EU "club". The UK has hit back, saying the EU does "not want to talk about the future".
Brexit Secretary David Davis said it was "frightened" and the UK would not be bounced into a divorce bill deal. The latest salvos come after a week of talks in Brussels about the UK's withdrawal from the EU - scheduled to take place in March 2019 - which increased tensions between the two sides.

The EU suggested little substantive progress had been made on three key "separation" issues, the size of the UK's financial liabilities to the EU, the future of the Irish border and citizens' rights after Brexit. Mr Barnier accused the UK of "nostalgia" and cast doubt on whether enough progress had been made to broaden the discussions, in the autumn, to consider the UK's post-Brexit trading relationship with the EU. This led to a frosty response from British ministers, one of whom, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, said the UK would not be blackmailed into doing a deal on money in order to open discussions on trade.

Speaking at a conference in Italy on Saturday, Mr Barnier said he did not want to punish the UK for leaving but said Brexit would be "an educational process" for the British. "I have a state of mind - not aggressive... but I'm not naïve," he told the Ambrosetti forum. "There are extremely serious consequences of leaving the single market and it hasn't been explained to the British people. We intend to teach people… what leaving the single market means." On the issue of finance, he said the UK must accept some key principles, such as honouring the commitment it made in 2014 to pay 14% of the EU budget until 2020
He said that a future free trade deal would be different to all others in the past and there had to be assurances there would be no unfair competition in the form of social, environmental or fiscal dumping, or state aid. But speaking to BBC One's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Davis insisted the UK would not be pressured into agreeing an EU divorce bill until it is sure the sums being demanded are fair. He dismissed newspaper reports the UK had secretly agreed to pay a figure of up to £50bn as "nonsense". The UK was assessing the EU's financial demands on an item-by-item basis in a "very British and pragmatic fashion" - which he said the EU found difficult.

While Mr Davis said he personally liked his counterpart, he said the European Commission risked making itself appear "silly" when it claimed no progress had been made in areas such as access to welfare and healthcare rights across Europe for British expats. "What he's concerned about of course is he's not getting the answer on money… they've set this up to try and create pressure on us on money… they're trying to play time against money". He added: "We're going through [the bill] line by line, and they're finding it difficult because we've got good lawyers… He wants to put pressure on us, which is why the stance this week in the press conference. Bluntly, I think it looked a bit silly, because plainly there were things that we've "We put people before process, what they're in danger of doing is putting process before people". Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said some of the figures touted for the size of the divorce bill were "extravagant" and the UK would only respect a number that was "serious and validated in law". "We will certainly honour our legal obligations as we understand them," he said, while stressing the UK would "certainly not pay for access to the European markets".

[kingfisher]

I too have been unable to find any reference in Article 50 concerning a financial settlement to the EU by the departing state.

The surprisingly thorough fine print on the insurance schedule for my battered old Honda Jazz doesn’t mention morals. It simply states terms. Now, wouldn’t you think that when potentially many billions are at stake, the lawyers drafting Article 50 would have taken care to ensure that there were no grey areas left which required one or other party to act “morally”? (rather than solely legally). So I don’t think morals come into this particular treaty resolution. [Britain has generally acted morally in regard to foreign aid and similar undertakings- e.g. Oxfam was started in the UK to relieve starvation in Greece in WW2].

The EU has made the financial settlement an “a priori” issue. The same lawyers who omitted to stipulate in Article 50 that moral considerations must be given due regard, also overlooked to mention that before anything could be discussed, a large arbitrary sum must be put on the table.
But then, as regards these dilatory lawyers, I’ve yet to hear of any eurocrat being held accountable to anyone for anything.

[Jimgward]

The UK press have been banding around a figure of £40bn semi-agreed by Davis and May but being held back until after Tory conference in 4 weeks....

Part of the figure includes money towards pensions.....

I agree that the UK needs to look to minimise our payment, as much as possible. The stance from the EU does seem to be one to threaten and also make other countries aware of the consequences. I do agree, though, in the assertion that voters in the UK were not aware of the consequences of leaving a single market, the financial penalties and the issues over free movement,.

[Devil]

I do agree, though, in the assertion that voters in the UK were not aware of the consequences of leaving a single market, the financial penalties and the issues over free movement,.

Anyone with anything between his ears knew or would have realised, before the referendum, that leaving the single market was a sine qua non. Free movement was certainly known and discussed. As for the financial side, who said there were 'penalties'? If you believed Johnson and Farage that the NHS would swim in a new-found source of wealth, then more fool you. Just after the referendum it was announced that the Chancellor had set aside a sizable war chest to cover the possible costs of exiting and covering the estimated dues during the two-years of Art. 50. No financial 'penalties' have been mentioned, only dues.

[Royal]

Britain has generally acted morally in regard to foreign aid and similar undertakings- e.g. Oxfam was started in the UK to relieve starvation in Greece in WW2.

The UK is legally committed to spend 0.7% of our Gross National Income on Foreign Aid (actually more correctly termed Overseas Development Assistance).

In 2016 this amounted to £13.3Bn (€14.5Bn at even today's poor exchange rates).

Maybe we should count any financial settlement reached with the EU as Foreign Aid and stop giving to Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, Syria etc.

[Jimgward]

Maybe if we hadn’t gotten militarily involved in those countries, they wouldn’t have needed aid....

[Firefly]

We give large amounts to China, why ?

Back to topic, I fail to see why we should pay anything. If the EU is on a mission to show us and the rest of the EU what leaving means, I suggest that all we give to the EU is two fingers, and prove what it means.

Jackie

[Devil]

I fail to see why we should pay anything.

Because we are committed to our legal obligations; is that too difficult to grasp?

[holitec]

Legally, I think you will find all obligations cease on the 29th March 2019, article 50 has been triggered. However, the UK did agree to the EU's 7 year budget for 2013-2020. Any obligations in this budget should be met, but that works two ways, ie. CAP payments, rural development grants etc from the EU should also be made until mid 2020 when the budget period ends.

Anything after 2020 is the EU/UK's problem, and given the amount mooted, it may actually be better value to reduce VAT (to compensate for any import duties) or other taxes to help industry, I am sure there are options available.

As for pensions etc, could the UK not take their staff onto the Civil Service pension scheme and re-employ them in the UK?, I would not expect the UK to pay for other countries staff pensions, or pensions of eu ministers, who probably actually caused the problem in the first place.

[Pete G]

I fail to see why we should pay anything.

Because we are committed to our legal obligations; is that too difficult to grasp?

All of our legal obligations, including the treaty of Rome itself and its other iterations are based on payments to gain current or future advantage.

If we can no longer gain these concomitant advantages, then we are not legally obliged to make the payments.

I know that the EC fail to grasp this [fairly obvious one might have thought] point, as in demanding that the UK continue to make supporting payments for the EIB whilst refusing to allow further loans to UK enterprises, but one might have thought it well within the compass of sensible politicians [if such a creature still exists].

Besides which, as when we leave the EU we inevitably leave the jurisdiction of the CJEU, under what jurisdiction would you claim that these obligations remain legal ones?

[Firefly]

Not difficult to grasp Devil, IF it were true ! So rude......as usual.

Jackie

[Royal]

Anyone with anything between his ears knew or would have realised, before the referendum, that leaving the single market was a sine qua non. Free movement was certainly known and discussed. As for the financial side, who said there were 'penalties'? If you believed Johnson and Farage that the NHS would swim in a new-found source of wealth, then more fool you. Just after the referendum it was announced that the Chancellor had set aside a sizable war chest to cover the possible costs of exiting and covering the estimated dues during the two-years of Art. 50. No financial 'penalties' have been mentioned, only dues.

Got it in one! Or three

Sadly, with a few notable exceptions, Brexiteers have never shown themselves to be the sharpest knives in the drawer. Only now, with equal amounts of surprise and disgust, are they waking up to the realities of Brexit.

I can already hear the sound of pennies dropping.

Dear old Lloyd. He has even used colour coding to illustrate his 3 points for us thickies, so I'll use the same colour coding - just to keep him happy that it hasn't gone unnoticed, but will also use numerals in case he is colour blind as well as ‘positive Brexit blind’.

1. The old laughable standby. “Brexiteers voted Brexit because they are stupid” “Nothing between their ears” “Not the sharpest knives in the drawer.” Devil has previously (and pretentiously) told us that he is in the “top 5 percentile” as far as the MENSA intelligence test is concerned, whilst Lloyd constantly insists that he has correctly predicted events all along and if you don't agree you're in the stupid category. Somehow, this is meant to put us all in our place and that we should listen to their pontifications that we are heading to Hell in a handcart. They clearly feel a superiority to anyone who doesn't see their point of view. However, one of the most respected and intelligent politicians in Parliament at present is a Brexiteer - Jacob Rees Mogg. Listen to him sometime, you will learn a great deal. Maybe listen also to Professor Patrick Minford about the economic position for the UK in a global economy. You will learn that 85% of all world trade is conducted OUTSIDE the EU which is where we want to be. Why do Remoaners fail to see anything bad about an organisation which is demanding money (with menaces) which cannot be quantified and their own auditors have not been able to ‘sign off’ the accounts for 20 years? Does one have to be in a particular percentile of the MENSA intelligence test to grasp such simple concepts?

2. Again - the old standby that Brexiteers were all duped by the claim that the NHS would receive an extra £350,000,000 per week. We have covered this before, but because you clearly have a short memory, I will repeat that no Brexiteer I have ever met interpreted the message on the London bus (which actually said “We send the EU £350 million per week. Let's Fund our NHS instead.”) as a commitment to actually spend £350,000,000 per week on the NHS. The fact remains, however, that once we stop paying the net £10,000,000,000 per year into the EU gravy train, that sum will be AVAILABLE to spend wherever the national priorities are at the time.

3. Agreed that no financial ‘penalties have been discussed, but the so called divorce bill is nothing to do with “dues” either. The UK has ALWAYS paid its dues. Let's not forget that our country was left nearly bankrupt twice in the last century by fighting tyranny in Europe. In fact, he last instalment on our WWII loans from the US was only paid in 2006. Let's also not forget the debt forgiveness which we extended to Germany after WWII in order to rebuilt that nation. We have always paid our way. However, the EU are seemingly obsessed with British money and have put it at the top of their agenda. Why? Because they know that in legal terms we can walk away and owe nothing, so they are desperate to secure our money to be able to kick can which the financial impact of Brexit will bring, further down the road. The EU is about to lose 10% of its annual income and are desperate to put off the financial impact for as long as possible. We also have some £10Bn of capital held in the European Investment Bank. The EU are desperate not to lose this along with our annual payments. The very fact that they want our money and we don't legally have to pay it is another ace that we have, but you, Lloyd (and others) fail to see it. We will end up agreeing to pay something - I have no doubt of that, but it will not be because we have to. It will be because we are being blackmailed and we will probably concede something akin to an EU face saving exercise.

[Poppy]

Good post Royal as usual however I thought I read somewhere that the UK contribution was 14% - if this is correct then pretty shocking that we pay 1/7th of the total amount and have no more say than a country who pays nothing and only receives?
Hungary and Poland now at loggerheads with the EU too!

[Royal]

Good post Royal as usual however I thought I read somewhere that the UK contribution was 14% - if this is correct then pretty shocking that we pay 1/7th of the total amount and have no more say than a country who pays nothing and only receives?
Hungary and Poland now at loggerheads with the EU too!

Poppy, you are right - depending upon which source you use, bearing in mind that properly audited EU accounts are not available! In 2014 The UK contribution of the EU budget amounted to 9.73%. In 2015, our contribution rose to 15.35% - more than 1/7th of the total. No figures available yet for 2016.

Whatever the real figure is, the EU net contributors are going to have to pay more, the net ‘takers’ are going to have to receive less (or become net contributors) and the EU budget will have to be slashed.

But of course, don't forget that the EU holds all the aces…

[Firefly]

Royal

Great post, maybe, just maybe, Lloyd and Devil might read and inwardly digest......or maybe not.

Jackie

[outasite]

Firefly, you do know how to make me laugh. If those two inwardly digested Royal's post, the USA and North Korea would become the best of friends.

[Devil]

Anyone with anything between his ears knew or would have realised, before the referendum, that leaving the single market was a sine qua non. Free movement was certainly known and discussed. As for the financial side, who said there were 'penalties'? If you believed Johnson and Farage that the NHS would swim in a new-found source of wealth, then more fool you. Just after the referendum it was announced that the Chancellor had set aside a sizable war chest to cover the possible costs of exiting and covering the estimated dues during the two-years of Art. 50. No financial 'penalties' have been mentioned, only dues.

With the exception of my comment in italics, this post was apolitical. The comment was more historical and humourous than political, because every thinker knew that the J&F declarations were impossible and stupid. From there on the thread has disintegrated into political diatribes (in bold, blue text) born from the very mistaken belief that I'm a so-called 'remainer' and a left-wing extremist. In itself, this is a paradox because many of the votes to leave were cast in traditional left-wing constituencies. Be that as it may, I should like to make it clear that (1) I'm indifferent as to Brexit (previously stated a no. of times) and (2) I support no UK political party. It is true that I may approve or disapprove, on occasion, any one of them but on the merits or stupidities of what is pronounced (most often stupidities!). Unfortunately, the stupidities outweigh the merits, these days. These stupidities are often repeated on these forums and in readers' comments elsewhere (e.g. Cyprus Mail).

[Jimgward]

Devil. I wouldn’t worry at people misinterpreting for their own means. The assertions that many Brexiteers were led by battle-bus messages, racist posters, lies, racist leanings and on any other issues, will never be accepted by some on here. As a frequent used of political forums, message boards, Facebook and Twitter both during and after the vote, I can assure people that many, many people were not only led that way, but still believe it.

When a “toff” like Boris says something, there is still a surprisingly large number of cap-doffing people prepared to not only believe what they say, but will actually do what they say.

[Jimgym]

Devil. I wouldn’t worry at people misinterpreting for their own means. The assertions that many Brexiteers were led by battle-bus messages, racist posters, lies, racist leanings and on any other issues, will never be accepted by some on here. As a frequent used of political forums, message boards, Facebook and Twitter both during and after the vote, I can assure people that many, many people were not only led that way, but still believe it.

When a “toff” like Boris says something, there is still a surprisingly large number of cap-doffing people prepared to not only believe what they say, but will actually do what they say.

Can you offer proof of your assertions? Also, can you tell me how many Remain voters were swayed by the lies told by George Osborne and many others in the Remain camp? Your assurance doesn't carry any weight with me, I prefer proof.

[kingfisher]

Although this article appeared in the Spectator eight months ago, it hasn’t really got a sell-by date. It clarifies where the arrogance, conceit and smugness of some in the remain camp derives from:-[Quote]
“What explains the idiocy of the liberal elite? It’s their education…
Enough! Enough! For months, the so-called liberal elite has been writing articles, having radio and TV discussions, giving sermons (literally) and making speeches in which it has struggled to understand those strange creatures: ordinary people. The elite is bemused by what drives these people to make perverse decisions about Brexit and Trump. Are they racist, narrow-minded or just stupid? Whatever the reason, ordinary people have frankly been a disappointment.
Time, ladies and gentlemen, please! Instead, let’s do the opposite. Let’s try to explain to ordinary people what drives the liberal elite. The elite persists with some very strange and disturbing views. Are its members brainwashed, snobbish or just so remote from real life that they do not understand how things work? What is the pathology of liberal eliteness? Why would anyone support Hillary Clinton — a ruthless, charmless Washington insider with socialist tendencies? Why do lawyers, churchmen, the BBC and, indeed, most educated people support the EU — an organisation as saturated with smug self-righteousness as it is with corruption; one which created the euro, which in turn has caused millions of people to be unemployed; an organisation which combines a yawning democratic deficit with incompetence over immigration and economic growth? The elite are supposed to be educated. So why are they so silly?
Ah! There is a clue. That word ‘educated’. What does ‘educated’ mean today? It doesn’t mean they know a lot about the world. It means they have been injected with the views and assumptions of their teachers. They have been taught by people who themselves have little experience of the real world. They have been indoctrinated with certain ideas. Here are some key ones. They have been taught that capitalism is inherently bad. It is something to be controlled at every turn by an altruistic government or else reduced to a minimum. Meanwhile the pursuit of equality is good. These are truly astonishing things for educated people to believe when the past 100 years have been a brutal lesson instructing us that the opposite is the case. The pursuit of equality brought the world terror and tens of millions of deaths along with terrible economic failure. In the past 30 years, by contrast, since China and India adopted more pro-capitalist policies, capitalism has caused the biggest reduction in poverty the world has ever known. You may know that, but it is not taught in schools. Schools actually teach that Stalin’s five-year plans were a qualified success! The academic world is overwhelmingly left-wing and the textbooks spin to the left. They distort the facts or omit them.
What the elite have been led to believe is that governments make things better. ‘Market failure’ is taught; ‘public-sector failure’ is not. In my own area, they are taught that everything was awful in 19th-century Britain until governments came along to save the day with an ever-bigger welfare state. The importance of friendly societies, voluntary hospitals and so on is omitted. It is rubbish — left-wing propaganda. But misleading education of this and other kinds rubs off even on those who are not studying history or politics. It comes through in the Times, the Guardian or, in America, the Washington Post or New York Times. In Britain, BBC Radio 4 is the continuation of university propaganda by other means.
Meanwhile, from early on, environment-alism and recycling are taught as doctrine, rather than as subjects for discussion. My children had to report to their school whether they had arrived by public transport (good), bicycle (excellent) or car (evil). Children don’t escape the propaganda even when they study languages. My daughter studies French and has had to write essays on how marvellous recycling is. There is no analysis of counter-arguments. In fact, no data is offered on which a counter–argument could be based. This is not education. It is not teaching children to challenge ideas and think for themselves. This is anti-education: teaching them what they must think. It is as prescriptive as education in the Soviet Union. At least in the Soviet Union, many understood that they should not trust what they were being told. Here, because the propaganda is less obvious, students do not have their guard up. One of the most important things schools and universities teach is that the students must never, under any circumstances, be suspected of racism. It is not enough to treat people of all races with respect. You must be even more above suspicion than Caesar’s wife. That is part of why the elite was against Brexit. They could not bear that someone might think they supported it for racist reasons. That, in the minds of the liberal elite, would be too awful. By extension, they also would hate to be thought of as insular or inward-looking. Yes, I know that many on the Brexit side were particularly global and outward-looking, but Remainers assumed that Brexit must equal insularity. It offended their view of themselves as internationalists.
Another central tenet of the dogma is that women have been oppressed, are oppressed and, for the future, there is no limit to what we must do to ensure they get to be in the same situation as men — having as many directorships and military medals and anything else one can think of. Feminist doctrine has so permeated the elite that its members assumed that all women in the USA would vote against Trump after his vulgar, arrogant remarks about touching women were leaked. The elite thought that was ‘game over’ for Trump. Ordinary women took a different view. A majority of white women voted for Trump. Ordinary people have been subjected to the same kind of indoctrination as the elite. They have just had less of it. They were in the hands of the propagandists for a shorter time and have been in the real world for longer. They do not read the ‘quality’ papers or listen to Radio 4. They watch Sky Sports and Strictly Come Dancing. For their understanding of the world, they rely more on what they see for themselves and experience. The elite’s fuller education in the key beliefs explains why it was for Remain and Clinton. They voted for Remain because, in doing so, they demonstrated they were not racist but tolerant internationalists. They were not put off by the incompetence of the EU, because they have been taught an irrational respect for government — even EU government. They also perceived the EU as more likely to pursue environmentalism than an elected British government. You could say they were trained to vote for Remain. Clinton, too, ticked every box. Members of the elite could effortlessly show how feminist they were by wanting her to win. She was also the embodiment of the other key tenets: more equality, more government and anti-racism.
You may think, ‘Can’t they think for themselves?’ Unfortunately, formal education, while requiring thought, does tend to discourage too much independent thinking, especially on the key parts of the faith. If a member of the elite, for example, finds him or herself reflecting that it is usually quite difficult to interest little girls in train sets and guns, they must squash that thought. Some rebels do hold on to an ability to think, but it’s noticeable that quite a lot of the most original minds, such as George Orwell and Pascal, never went to university.
Let’s try to understand why members of the elite get so cross when others don’t take the same view of Brexit and Clinton as they do. It’s partly a sense of entitlement. People talk of a culture of entitlement among those who live on benefits. But the elite has its own entitlement culture. They think that because they studied English literature at Durham they understand the world better than a plumber in Croydon. They think they are superior and therefore their view should prevail. They also think they are morally superior because they hold to the views which they were told were virtuous. Anyone who appears not to subscribe to these views must, of necessity, be a sinner or else appallingly misled by the Daily Mail or some other evil force. It is outrageous to the elite that the work of the Devil should prevail.
They are virtuous. They know best. They are the chosen ones. They have only a token belief in democracy. They expect and intend to prevail.