Opinion
I haven’t read the details – yet – but my gut reaction, based on brief day one news, is we have been right royally stitched up and both the fishing industry and Northern Ireland have been sold down the river!
This is my personal view on the 2021 Brexit deal, and its dubious nature. A deliberately unscrutinised, rushed through & rubber-stamped deal cannot be trusted!
Cold fact of the matter
Here’s the facts, without looking at the agreement contents.
The EU and its leaders have repeatedly – for years – swore we would be made to pay for our betrayal to their grand schemes, that they would make such an example of us that no other nation would ever dare to “dissent”, would be too scared to risk the same wrath, essentially. You can Google this, these are straight out of the mouth of luminaries such as Juncker and President Hollande, to name but two.
The 27 countries of the EU leapt at accepting Theresa May’s betrayal deal. Instead of their normal glacially paced dithering, they agreed in barely 3 hours and were VERY keen to rubber stamp it. The deal, as we all know, was repeatedly rejected. It was a complete stitch-up, largely written by the EU, for the EU. May is rightly reviled.
The rhetorical around the current deal is all showmanship and misdirection and riddled with clichés such are “hard fought”, “down to the wire”, “last minute” and so forth. I, for one, do not believe all this buffoonery. Leaving it so late smacks of a calculated act, one Theresa May tried. Leave it to the last minute, do not let them read it, agree to it unread.
Regardless, we have the deal. Some 2,000 plus pages of torturous legal speak, full of clauses, conditions, hidden meanings and loop holes. And the House of Commons and Lords – also normally glacial – have just one week (and that between Xmas and News Year) to read, comprehend, dissect and agree (or not) on this legally binding document.
Trying to understand the T&C and EULA on a game or software package is hard enough. Fewer still understand they don’t own the software they just bought, they have merely paid for permission to use it. Frequently now, such agreements are temporary, hence the move to more lucrative software subscriptions and cloud solutions, extracting money in ever more innovative ways. That too is a stitch up, a convenience you pay over the top for. If it’s even a convenience now, rather than your only choice. Accept or have nothing is hardly a choice.
So, here we have a “deal” written in secret with and by people we know to be our ‘enemies’ (at least economically), who have avowed to ruin us. And we have a week to read and agree to their terms of surrender. Personally I’d have told the EU to ‘get bent’ the day after the vote. I would still reject the ‘offer’ and go with no deal and damn the consequences.
There are people in the EU, in big business, in London, and hard core Remainers (notably columnists for The Guardian) who have been openly vitriolic to a point well past raw hatred. These are people who would eagerly support the modern equivalent of gas chambers for anyone that voted Leave, who would cheer wildly to see our corpses tossed on a heap for disposal. Who have – actually have – cheered when old people died and gloated that it was “one less Brexshiter”. Some of these people work in the media, the press, the BBC. Many in our own government, think tanks and growing number of quangos.
Any deal that big business and the EU, in solidarity, fully and happily enforce and support, is not a deal we should accept!
This is not a deal we should agree to! The UK, England, North Ireland and Leave voters in particular are about to be violated in ways akin to a torturer with a fiendish plan involving orifices, spiny cacti, and using superglue for lubrication. It will not be pleasant! To be fair, you do have a choice, Hobson’s choice. Pick one!
The offending tomes
The links are below if you want to struggle through it all. I’ll take the overview from the tabloids.
UK.gov International treaty (Part of Brexit transition: new rules for 2021)
Agreements reached between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the European Union
EU link, The draft EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement Protecting the European Union’s interests…
(Yes, it really does say that in the sub title.)
What the papers say
Had my say, now let’s see what the papers say, even though (as at the 29th) they cannot have had enough time to deconstruct the weighty legal document.
Clifford Chance
“The Agreement runs to 1,246 pages and the EU plans to bring it into provisional application on 1 January 2021 before being fully ratified. The UK plans to fully ratify the Agreement by the end of 2020.”
Reuters
France supports the deal “but will be vigilant from day one over its proper implementation.”
OK, it is a stitch up. The minute our politicians (a shady lot at best) sign, we are screwed! If we are lucky it will just be pricky pears, but I think it will be those big spiky things from North America. Day one, we sign, day two, a porcupine is forced up our backside by a gleeful enforcer, reeking of garlic, and grunting, “Ah, monsieur, you agreed to this. Boris said you’d like it.” Echoes of Ted Heath, as Boris sails off on his new 63′ yacht, perhaps. Cheers, Ursula.
Elsewhere on Reuters, “Michel Barnier said on Tuesday the trade deal struck with Britain was a relief and provided stability for people and companies.”
To be sure, by people he means ‘the right type of people’, not the likes of you and me, or Polish farmers and German factory workers. The 0.1% in control type of people. Those Naom Chomsky accused of corporate assault on education and called the “Masters of Mankind”. If they gave a flying fart about regular people, sole traders, and small local business this would have been sorted amicably years ago. It’s all about big business, backhanders and jollies. It’s about money.
“The summary boasts that the EU has gone one step further, and the UK has in fact agreed a quota free deal”
Excellent, if wholly true, but just good neighbourly manners. That could have been agreed back in 2016. I am not impressed.
“Only ‘originating’ goods – those produced within the agreement area – are able to benefit from the liberalised market access arrangements. They’ll be specific rules on specialised products, including wine, motor vehicles and medicine.”
And so the caveats, clauses and conditions begin to creep in. Not unexpected.
Fishing: “According to the summary, the Agreement ‘provides for a significant uplift’ in quota for UK fishers, equal to 25 per cent of the value the EU catch in UK waters.”
So – phased in over 5 years – we are graciously allowed up to 25% of our own fish?
The fishing industry just got sacrificed. As I suspected, a betrayal appears on the horizon.
Another post by the Daily Mail (Boris Johnson’s ‘rotten’ Brexit trade deal) says not all of Labour support this, and that “Given the Government’s majority, it is a foregone conclusion that the deal will pass in parliament, but this deal will not “get Brexit done”: negotiations over trade and regulatory frameworks will go on and on for years to come.”
The DUP also oppose the deal “because the Brexit divorce settlement imposes customs checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.” Something there were promised would not happen.
“Mr Johnson will crash his trade deal through Parliament in a single day tomorrow.” Crash being the operative word, hmmm.
Daily Express: Deal condemned over fishing blunders
To put this into perspective – despite international laws to the contrary (and back to Ted Heath’s sell out) – we are only allowed to catch 8% of the cod in our own coastline. France can sail almost into the harbours, hauling back a 66% share of OUR fish. Holland and Spain take most of the rest. We basically have scraps at our own table and the ‘hard fought deal’ still leaves us with scraps. Again, a betrayal.
“But in the final stretch the decisions lay at the very top of government – with the Prime Minister – and he bottled it.”
BBC: Brexit: What are the key points of the deal?
The Guardian, The Brexit deal is done – but many crucial issues are unresolved.
MacIntye Hudson on the import, export and VAT aspects of the deal.
You get the general idea. The fishing industry, a ‘red line’ was tossed under the bus. Northern Ireland, a red line, also tossed under the bus. Politicians are being given barely hours to skip through a mammoth legal contract that would take experts weeks or months to fully grasp – and being told, “Trust me, it will be fine, rubber stamp this.”
No.
