Re: Fisheries Bill ...
Originally Posted by
7779311
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I agree with your assumption that there will not be any giving in from any of the both sides at the last possible moment. They both will keep their faces.
However I do not think that BREXIT is foolish. Many people have been trying to predict the precise outcome of BREXIT during the last years and it is yet not clear how it will be. Even if it turns out to be negative from a financial point of view, is is not foolish.
I see the strong will of >50% of UKs population to be 100% free of any ties to any other entity. That strong will cannot be foolish in my opinion. Even if BREXIT turns out to be worse than before the UK gained something that they so desperately wanted.
Concerning Frost and Barnier I have great respect for both of them because they "play" this game so professionally. I assume that they know very well that their negotiations will not be successful. Still they don't walk away but continue to treat each other respectful and seem to be serious about their mandates and tasks. I find that respectful and I cannot laugh at any of the two.
The UK position is to leave the EU with or without a deal, that was the manifesto that Boris Johnson was voted on as Prime Minister in the 2019 General Election. He won with a landslide victory of 80 seats and consequently we left the EU on the 31st January this year as promised, with a deal (the Withdrawal Agreement).
The UK has nothing to fear from an (average) 6% tarrif from exports to the EU. We have been exporting to the rest of the world (and importing with the applied CET tariffs) in greater capacity with the rest of the world than we have the EU. The EU is a shrinking market for the UK, it has been for over 20 years.
What is going to be even worse for the EU, is the reduction in volume of trade from countries such as Canada. The UK accounted for around 45% of exports as an EU member state and come January next year, Canadas exports to the EU become around 45% less.
I discussed this last week with Catherine McBride (an economist) funnily enough, and both she and I think that there will be some fingers tapping on the negotiating table of those unratified, incomplete trade deals where countries now want the EU to make up for the UK loss of business and offer more to make the tariff free trade worth while.
Next week, Barnier has to admit failure and his blaming the UK will simply won't hold water. Over the past 2 years, the UK has completed around 22+ trade deals and the EU has only managed around 40 in the last 40 years (this includes the 27 and the EEA members), plus a bunch of countries they don't really trade with anyway (like Vietnam).
Now, when you consider the top trading partner for the EU (the USA) doesn't have any trade deal with the EU anyway, (and as the UK also has had tariffs have been applied while we were a member state), do you honestly think we will hand back our sovereignty and territorial waters because of 6% tariffs ??
I don't think so