Brexit - whats the difference.....

Haha you couldn't make it up:

But Mr Barnier, who is now considering a run at the French presidency next year, yesterday said the role of the ECJ in France should be limited. In an extraordinary intervention, he said: ‘We must regain our legal sovereignty so that we are no longer subject to the rulings of the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights.

Mr Barnier yesterday also criticised the Franco-German relationship at the heart of EU policy making.He said that the relationship was unbalanced, with Berlin becoming too powerful – and called for France to reassert itself
 
As stated before, the UK did with Brexit what alot of other EU countries would like to do themselves.

France won’t be the only ones to start making a noise.
 
So the UK has extended the NI 'grace periods' for the third time, and this time it's indefinitely, i.e. They see no prospect of getting this sorted out in any sort of predictable timeframe.

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So once again we're left with a deal so fantastic, so oven ready, and so 'great for Britain' that they still can't implement it two years down the line.

However, it's not necessarily a bad thing. By all accounts the EU aren't going to raise any strong objections, (the previous extension was arranged with the mutual agreement of Brussels), and the talk is that cooler heads are starting to prevail on both sides of the debate.

Also, the situation in Afghanistan has focused minds too, with both the UK and the EU realising that the Americans will just do whatever the hell they want and bollocks to everyone else, so maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea for UK/EU to be a bit friendlier, a bit more pragmatic, and stop with the sabre rattling. (On top of that, the UK has quietly acknowledged there will be no amazing trade deal with the USA, and any trade deal at all will simply be the massive USA stamping on the relatively tiny UK.)

As such, where we are now is both sides get some of what they want, for the EU the NIP remains in place, albeit not fully implemented, and for the UK, the easements and exemptions remain in place - this gives NI businesses some measure of stability and a chance to find solutions within the protocol framework going forward.

So fundamentally the can is being kicked down the road (again), but in the context of a bad situation - (a bungled Brexit that took the UK out of the Single Market and the Customs Union, with a terrible UK negotiating team agreeing to the NIP, and a lying charlatan of a Prime Minister utterly falsifying to the British people what it was he'd signed up to) - this does at least, arguably, not make it any worse, and gives some breathing room for both sides.

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I was going to post this last night Chops but I watched your latest vid in here so I declined. However before I forget about it and while I am on the source I thought it would be something you may want to reply too.
As I mentioned recently I said it seemed that Barnier was going to run in France against Macron. Despite Barndoor being the chief negotiator for the EU v GB he is running on an anti EU ticket. He did not want the UK to cherry pick what they wanted from the EU but he is now fighting on a ticket of what the French want from the EU.
He now wants a referendum on immigration as well as regaining legal sovereignty on over ruling the EU's ECJ and the EU's human rights. He also is fighting against the German influence in the EU.
Is it just an attempt to save his own party by splitting the votes?
 
I was going to post this last night Chops but I watched your latest vid in here so I declined. However before I forget about it and while I am on the source I thought it would be something you may want to reply too.
As I mentioned recently I said it seemed that Barnier was going to run in France against Macron. Despite Barndoor being the chief negotiator for the EU v GB he is running on an anti EU ticket. He did not want the UK to cherry pick what they wanted from the EU but he is now fighting on a ticket of what the French want from the EU.
He now wants a referendum on immigration as well as regaining legal sovereignty on over ruling the EU's ECJ and the EU's human rights. He also is fighting against the German influence in the EU.
Is it just an attempt to save his own party by splitting the votes?
He's basically mitigating the problems EU rules are causing in France while not wanting to er.. relinquish the power the EU gives them over other nations, the same power he now preceives Berlin to have over France. Kinda ironic. :laugh::laugh:
 
He's basically mitigating the problems EU rules are causing in France while not wanting to er.. relinquish the power the EU gives them over other nations, the same power he now preceives Berlin to have over France. Kinda ironic. :laugh::laugh:
Are you talking about the same powers he and his cronies wanted to use in order to make French the main language used online instead of English?
 
I was going to post this last night Chops but I watched your latest vid in here so I declined. However before I forget about it and while I am on the source I thought it would be something you may want to reply too.
As I mentioned recently I said it seemed that Barnier was going to run in France against Macron. Despite Barndoor being the chief negotiator for the EU v GB he is running on an anti EU ticket. He did not want the UK to cherry pick what they wanted from the EU but he is now fighting on a ticket of what the French want from the EU.
He now wants a referendum on immigration as well as regaining legal sovereignty on over ruling the EU's ECJ and the EU's human rights. He also is fighting against the German influence in the EU.
Is it just an attempt to save his own party by splitting the votes?

Thanks for your thoughtfulness on that geordie I appreciate it :)

My take on the Barnier situation is that when he was EU Chief Negotiator he was doing his job, and now he's standing for the presidency of France he's doing that as a French person. (i.e. in the former he was looking out for the EU's interests, and in the latter he's looking out for France's interests, and those things aren't always going to be the same.)

Yes there are some ironies in the platform he's standing on but I don't see that being a Europhile and pro-EU in general automatically precludes being wary of some elements of the EU's setup and the powers it has. (I myself very early in this thread described the EU as being 'unwieldy and technocratic'.)

This I think comes to what is arguably one of the biggest follies of Brexit in general, in that previously the UK was a powerful top-table member of the EU with a hell of a lot of clout, when the UK said it wanted something, Germany and France (the other two big powers) had to listen - as evidenced by all the exemptions, special deals, reformed rules and so on the UK secured over the years. (Going right back to the Thatcher era of course when she secured the rebate.)

That's gone now, we're just another third country and as the last nine months have shown, the EU hasn't gone away, all we've done is imposed a load of new red tape and bureaucracy on ourselves when it comes to interacting/trading with it, and thrown the substantial amount of influence we had within the EU in the bin.

So if Barnier wins in France he will use France's power within the EU to progress French interests as a top-tier member state, and the UK will still be sitting off on the sidelines moaning about how unfair everything is.
 
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Thanks for your thoughtfulness on that geordie I appreciate it :)

My take on the Barnier situation is that when he was EU Chief Negotiator he was doing his job, and now he's standing for the presidency of France he's doing that as a French person. (i.e. in the former he was looking out for the EU's interests, and in the latter he's looking out for France's interests, and those things aren't always going to be the same.)

Yes there are some ironies in the platform he's standing on but I don't see that being a Europhile and pro-EU in general automatically precludes being wary of some elements of the EU's setup and the powers it has. (I myself very early in this thread described the EU as being 'unwieldy and technocratic'.)

This I think comes to what is arguably one of the biggest follies of Brexit in general, in that previously the UK was a powerful top-table member of the EU with a hell of a lot of clout, when the UK said it wanted something, Germany and France (the other two big powers) had to listen - as evidenced by all the exemptions, special deals, reformed rules and so on the UK secured over the years. (Going right back to the Thatcher era of course when she secured the rebate.)

That's gone now, we're just another third country and as the last nine months have shown, the EU hasn't gone away, all we've done is imposed a load of new red tape and bureaucracy on ourselves when it comes to interacting/trading with it, and thrown away the substantial amount of influence we had within the EU in the bin.

So if Barnier wins in France he will use France's power within the EU to progress French interests as a top-tier member state, and the UK will still be sitting off on the sidelines moaning about how unfair everything is.
Yes, but it's NOT us who are moaning, is it?
 
Yes, but it's NOT us who are moaning, is it?

You seen any of the right wing press recently? :)

Literally just went to the Daily Mail site and found this story in about 10 seconds.

'Stringent European border restrictions' - or rather, the new border restrictions we imposed on ourselves by leaving the EU and in shoot-your-own-feet-off stupidity opted to leave the Customs Union and Single Market as well.

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Thanks for your thoughtfulness on that geordie I appreciate it :)

My take on the Barnier situation is that when he was EU Chief Negotiator he was doing his job, and now he's standing for the presidency of France he's doing that as a French person. (i.e. in the former he was looking out for the EU's interests, and in the latter he's looking out for France's interests, and those things aren't always going to be the same.)

Yes there are some ironies in the platform he's standing on but I don't see that being a Europhile and pro-EU in general automatically precludes being wary of some elements of the EU's setup and the powers it has. (I myself very early in this thread described the EU as being 'unwieldy and technocratic'.)

This I think comes to what is arguably one of the biggest follies of Brexit in general, in that previously the UK was a powerful top-table member of the EU with a hell of a lot of clout, when the UK said it wanted something, Germany and France (the other two big powers) had to listen - as evidenced by all the exemptions, special deals, reformed rules and so on the UK secured over the years. (Going right back to the Thatcher era of course when she secured the rebate.)

That's gone now, we're just another third country and as the last nine months have shown, the EU hasn't gone away, all we've done is imposed a load of new red tape and bureaucracy on ourselves when it comes to interacting/trading with it, and thrown the substantial amount of influence we had within the EU in the bin.

So if Barnier wins in France he will use France's power within the EU to progress French interests as a top-tier member state, and the UK will still be sitting off on the sidelines moaning about how unfair everything is.
So you do not think it is just a cynical ploy to steel votes away from Le Pen given that his policies are akin to some of hers? Do you think he believes a word of what he is standing for in the upcoming French erection?
 
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You seen any of the right wing press recently? :)

Literally just went to the Daily Mail site and found this story in about 10 seconds.

'Stringent European border restrictions' - or rather, the new border restrictions we imposed on ourselves by leaving the EU and in shoot-your-own-feet-off stupidity opted to leave the Customs Union and Single Market as well.

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You are being obtuse - I was referring to the article geordiecolin posted, regarding France.
 
You seen any of the right wing press recently? :)

Literally just went to the Daily Mail site and found this story in about 10 seconds.

'Stringent European border restrictions' - or rather, the new border restrictions we imposed on ourselves by leaving the EU and in shoot-your-own-feet-off stupidity opted to leave the Customs Union and Single Market as well.

View attachment 158461
I think that there is no doubt that Brexit has impacted the UK driver issues but look around the world and you will see it is a global issue that is not related to Brexit.
Edit. I mean on the sauce in the post early this morning. Drunken bum I am :p
 
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So you do not think it is just a cynical ploy to steel votes away from Le Pen given that his policies are akin to some of hers? Do you think he believes a word of what he is standing for in the upcoming French erection?

My honest answer to that geordie is I don't know, I don't really follow French domestic politics and my knowledge of Barnier is largely limited to his time as Chief Negotiator for the EU, which he was very good at, as David Davis found out in embarrassingly short order. (Which was the negotiating equivalent of the pub team from The Royal Oak in Skegness going up against Manchester United.)

He's seems to me to be a competent operator, whether the people of France will see him as presidential material is a different matter and one for them to decide at the ballot box :)
 
My honest answer to that geordie is I don't know, I don't really follow French domestic politics and my knowledge of Barnier is largely limited to his time as Chief Negotiator for the EU, which he was very good at, as David Davis found out in embarrassingly short order. (Which was the negotiating equivalent of the pub team from The Royal Oak in Skegness going up against Manchester United.)

He's seems to me to be a competent operator, whether the people of France will see him as presidential material is a different matter and one for them to decide at the ballot box :)
If you think stone walling is being very good at negotiating then you are spot on :thumbsup:
 
I thought he was quite impressive in terms of looking serious and professional, until seeing the footage discussing ireland, then realised he had no principles.

Though kind of conservative supporting, the DM editor is a commited remainer, basically every newspaper despite most slating the EU over the years, preferred us to stay in on balance.

Some rumblings in norway, from centre and left politicians, that their country's relationship to the EU now needs reform, in effect, power is drifting away from the norwegian voters to brussels. The conservatives in power, with a coalition iirc, want things to stay as they are.

My mindset has been anti eu but like europe, [the cultures and regionality] it could be argued the way the eu want to homogenise everything, and constantly make new rules and laws, they have an end image where europe acts and is different to how we've known it. Pro modern-liberal policies decided centrally must be embraced by all, hence poland and hungary now coming under the microscope and pressure.
 
Let's not try to rewrite history mack :)

Also the previous editor of The Daily Mail was Paul Dacre, an avid Leave supporter, he didn't exit the role until November 2018 so the Leave/Remain credentials of the current editor aren't really relevant to the paper's position on Brexit (where it campaigned very hard for Leave).

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Let's not try to rewrite history mack :)

Also the previous editor of The Daily Mail was Paul Dacre, an avid Leave supporter, he didn't exit the role until November 2018 so the Leave/Remain credentials of the current editor aren't really relevant to the paper's position on Brexit (where it campaigned very hard for Leave).

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The biggest arguments for remain were based around forecasts of economic doom, the newspapers put it out there largely unchallenged, on the basis of the 'govt/experts/economists say...' and those stories were covered daily for months.

If that chart is correct, well in my experience it certainly wasn't easy to find pro leave articles, especially on the paper's comment leader pages.

Funny enough the express cover eu stories the most today. On a different point, thinking back over the years, television news and programmes rarely did anything on the EU, it was always an 'over there' feeling, maybe something on newsnight occasionally. Whereas making laws and rules we had to follow, obtaining £10 billion annually to do what they want, there should have been more coverage imo.
 
So you do not think it is just a cynical ploy to steel votes away from Le Pen given that his policies are akin to some of hers? Do you think he believes a word of what he is standing for in the upcoming French erection?
I think that there is no doubt that Brexit has impacted the UK driver issues but look around the world and you will see it is a global issue that is not related to Brexit.
Edit. I mean on the sauce in the post early this morning. Drunken bum I am :p
Just checked to see where the L key is in relation to the R key on the keyboard.

Nowhere fucking near each other :laugh:
 
The biggest arguments for remain were based around forecasts of economic doom, the newspapers put it out there largely unchallenged, on the basis of the 'govt/experts/economists say...' and those stories were covered daily for months.

If that chart is correct, well in my experience it certainly wasn't easy to find pro leave articles, especially on the paper's comment leader pages.

Funny enough the express cover eu stories the most today. On a different point, thinking back over the years, television news and programmes rarely did anything on the EU, it was always an 'over there' feeling, maybe something on newsnight occasionally. Whereas making laws and rules we had to follow, obtaining £10 billion annually to do what they want, there should have been more coverage imo.

Well the research is just research mack, they explain their methodology in the article I linked above, and the results are that there was more pro-Leave stuff in the press than there was pro-Remain, which TBH makes perfect sense as most of the press is indeed right wing and Brexity.

I don't agree that there hasn't been much coverage of the EU over the years, although it is true to say that an awful lot of people weren't much interested because it wasn't really that controversial. But on a wider note the Tories have been fighting like cats in a sack over it for decades, and lest we forget Cameron only called the referendum in the first place to try to see off Farage from harassing his flanks and pinching votes in Tory seats.

I mean, this story is from 1993, so this stuff is hardly new :)

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Well the research is just research mack, they explain their methodology in the article I linked above, and the results are that there was more pro-Leave stuff in the press than there was pro-Remain, which TBH makes perfect sense as most of the press is indeed right wing and Brexity.

I don't agree that there hasn't been much coverage of the EU over the years, although it is true to say that an awful lot of people weren't much interested because it wasn't really that controversial. But on a wider note the Tories have been fighting like cats in a sack over it for decades, and lest we forget Cameron only called the referendum in the first place to try to see off Farage from harassing his flanks and pinching votes in Tory seats.

I mean, this story is from 1993, so this stuff is hardly new :)

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Yes there was the major stuff, 'the sound of white flapping coats', but there were no regular tv progs, news updates, documentaries on the EU, I can't recall any from 2000 to 2015.

The newspapers covered curvy cucumbers and the metric martyrs etc...but most of the public couldn't even name their mep, in short there was little in the way of scrutiny. Where did that £10 billion go each year, there ought to have been a bbc programme showing us. There has been a 'you don't need to know' attitude towards it.
 
Yes there was the major stuff, 'the sound of white flapping coats', but there were no regular tv progs, news updates, documentaries on the EU, I can't recall any from 2000 to 2015.

The newspapers covered curvy cucumbers and the metric martyrs etc...but most of the public couldn't even name their mep, in short there was little in the way of scrutiny. Where did that £10 billion go each year, there ought to have been a bbc programme showing us. There has been a 'you don't need to know' attitude towards it.
Don't start cucumber shaming, it's not their fault they carrying a few extra litres of water.
 
Yes there was the major stuff, 'the sound of white flapping coats', but there were no regular tv progs, news updates, documentaries on the EU, I can't recall any from 2000 to 2015.

The newspapers covered curvy cucumbers and the metric martyrs etc...but most of the public couldn't even name their mep, in short there was little in the way of scrutiny. Where did that £10 billion go each year, there ought to have been a bbc programme showing us. There has been a 'you don't need to know' attitude towards it.

Well in a way this is kind of the problem with historic coverage of the EU in the UK, most of it was indeed utter trivial nonsense about the EU telling us how bendy bananas could be (a lie) and that they were threatening to ban prawn cocktail crisps (also a lie), or the one about us having to rename Bombay Mix (another lie).

And of course one of main peddlers of those lies was Johnson in his Telegraph column.

So you had this toxic combination of stories bashing the EU, that were false, that were also trivial and designed to make the EU look like this meddling and interfering relative, perpetuating an anti-EU narrative that lasted decades.

There was sober and thoughtful coverage of the EU throughout (both positive and negative), but that didn't sell newspapers so unless you were prepared to go looking for the information, or read a publication such as Private Eye (which admittedly is very UK focused but does cover EU stuff as well), or a quality newspaper, or programmes on the telly that tended to be tucked away in the schedules, you might not come across it - but you could argue with very good cause in that an awful lot of people just didn't give a flying fig about the EU, it was a fairly non-controversial subject that most people didn't care about.

An example for context. There are plenty more here:

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THE SUN - 'Nutty EU officials want to rename Bombay Mix'

In 2006, the Sun reported that “nutty” EU officials wanted to rename Bombay mix Mumbai mix, “to make the snack politically correct”.

This story is completely fictional. The Telegraph’s then Brussels correspondent, David Rennie, managed to find the source of the story, which was a small regional news agency in England. The editor there told him the story “came from a mate at the Home Office, who had heard it being talked about” and when challenged said: “Look, this is just meant to be funny for the tabloids.”

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Sunday used to feature a number of politics shows for some odd reason, but again I can't recall anything eu related. I remember meps and the elections did start to get mentioned in the 2000s, but have they been a thing since the 80's and 90s, without looking it up I genuinely wouldn't know. Yet I always followed politics to some degree, would watch the brian walden interview, the rawnsley c4 duo show etc...

Without tv coverage the public were not being informed as a whole, I think people were interested or curious, by nature you would be, but generally not to the point of heading to your library to get a book on it. The newspapers in the 80 and 90s carried a lot of politics, until the advent of z list celebrities, big brother, beckham, and jordan's latest escapades.
 
The sound of pennies dropping over at The Telegraph....

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Now, one of things I've been called out on in this thread, and with the benefit of hindsight it's true, I hold my hands up to that, is that I post a 'bad news Brexit story' but don't include any suggestions on what might actually make it better, so I'll try to rectify that from now on.

So how about this, as a genuine suggestion that might be sellable to both sides, is that the UK seeks to rejoin the Customs Union and Single Market. For the Remainers it is made clear that the UK is not rejoining the EU, it's simply not going to happen, this is as good as it's going to get. For the Leavers the assurance is given that the UK will not rejoin the EU, and these actions will be taken to mitigate the consequences of Brexit that have proven to be more difficult than expected to deal with, but that the UK will retain its sovereign status outside the EU.

I appreciate that straight out of the gate the objection will be that we're giving up too much sovereignty in doing so, but really, of all the arguments around that which were made for Brexit, which have proven to be true? The trade deals we're getting are the same as we already had with the EU (if that), we didn't get our fish back (and now it's a lot harder to sell what we do catch to the EU), the dinghies are still coming across the channel every day and UK businesses are crying out for foreign workers to do jobs that Brits simply don't want (and if those workers don't come from the EU, they're going to come from somewhere). Also the great hope of a fantastic trade deal with the USA has come to nothing, and on top of that we've seen the Americans drop us like a hot potato in Afghanistan and as even dunover observed a couple of pages back, our obvious and logical military partners going forward are countries within the EU.

When it comes to trade and business I think it's a lot clearer, Brexit has been a failure, I honestly believe we're at the point now where it's simply impossible to pretend that whatever the intentions might have been, the end result of Brexit has been to impose massive new walls of red tape and bureaucracy on both UK businesses wishing to deal with the EU, and vice versa, to the extent that many of them have simply stopped bothering, and those that are still trading are drowning in costs and paperwork that simply didn't exist before.

Contrary to popular belief I don't just post every 'bad news story' I come across in this thread, quite the opposite (there are loads, and loads, and loads, I don't post here), but there was one the other day about UK businesses paying over £600M in tariffs on EU exports due to Rules of Origin (i.e. not quite such a tariff free deal), a report about many more medium sized UK businesses saying they've probably got 12 months left before they go bust unless something changes, M&S are closing their stores in France etc.

There's no doubt that supply chains are under massive strain and this is leading to some shortages on shelves and elsewhere in the supply chains that aren't necessarily visible to the average person on the average day, yes this is not just a UK problem (everywhere has Covid and some degree of HGV driver shortages), but we're clearly suffering more than most.

And then of course we have the situation in Northern Ireland and the NI Protocol, that's been done to death in this thread already so I won't rehash it all again, but seriously folks, can anyone even remotely try to claim that's worked out well, not least with a border in the Irish Sea?

Rejoining the Single Market and Customs Union fixes all of this, basically overnight. UK businesses would breathe a massive sigh of relief, as would many of their partners in the EU, it fixes the situation in NI and makes the sea border go away, and honestly, truthfully, would that many people really be that bothered?

I was struck by mack's posts above which kind of leans into what I've said several times in this thread, that for the longest time the EU was really a non-issue for many people, yes we had the nonsense stories about prawn cocktail crisps being banned (which once again for the record, was a lie), but hand on heart folks, prior to the kerfuffle over the referendum back in 2015/2016, how many of you were really getting all worked up about the EU on a regular basis?

Now I know straight away this will be framed as as 'betrayal of Brexit' but go back five years and folks such as Daniel Hannan were saying stuff like 'No one is suggesting we give up our place in the Single Market' and Farage was touting the 'Norway option' for quite some time before deciding to go down the Hard Brexit espousal route, and no one found these comments way off beam at the time.

For the longest time in Leave circles, it seemed to be accepted that leaving the EU but retaining the benefits of the Single Market was a sensible and pragmatic way to do things, and the Customs Union is a natural extension of that.

From the Remainer side I think we have to accept the things we got wrong, trying to frustrate the Leave vote in the Commons was a terrible mistake, as was going for a second referendum, as were all the apocalyptic warnings about the sky falling in should Leave win the referendum, going forward I think our position needs to be that the UK is out of the EU, it's staying out of the EU and we won't try to change that, but can we work together on finding some sensible middle ground that works best for Britain as a major trading partner of the EU.

Anyway, just some lunchtime musings :)
 
The sound of pennies dropping over at The Telegraph....

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Now, one of things I've been called out on in this thread, and with the benefit of hindsight it's true, I hold my hands up to that, is that I post a 'bad news Brexit story' but don't include any suggestions on what might actually make it better, so I'll try to rectify that from now on.

So how about this, as a genuine suggestion that might be sellable to both sides, is that the UK seeks to rejoin the Customs Union and Single Market. For the Remainers it is made clear that the UK is not rejoining the EU, it's simply not going to happen, this is as good as it's going to get. For the Leavers the assurance is given that the UK will not rejoin the EU, and these actions will be taken to mitigate the consequences of Brexit that have proven to be more difficult than expected to deal with, but that the UK will retain its sovereign status outside the EU.

I appreciate that straight out of the gate the objection will be that we're giving up too much sovereignty in doing so, but really, of all the arguments around that which were made for Brexit, which have proven to be true? The trade deals we're getting are the same as we already had with the EU (if that), we didn't get our fish back (and now it's a lot harder to sell what we do catch to the EU), the dinghies are still coming across the channel every day and UK businesses are crying out for foreign workers to do jobs that Brits simply don't want (and if those workers don't come from the EU, they're going to come from somewhere). Also the great hope of a fantastic trade deal with the USA has come to nothing, and on top of that we've seen the Americans drop us like a hot potato in Afghanistan and as even dunover observed a couple of pages back, our obvious and logical military partners going forward are countries within the EU.

When it comes to trade and business I think it's a lot clearer, Brexit has been a failure, I honestly believe we're at the point now where it's simply impossible to pretend that whatever the intentions might have been, the end result of Brexit has been to impose massive new walls of red tape and bureaucracy on both UK businesses wishing to deal with the EU, and vice versa, to the extent that many of them have simply stopped bothering, and those that are still trading are drowning in costs and paperwork that simply didn't exist before.

Contrary to popular belief I don't just post every 'bad news story' I come across in this thread, quite the opposite (there are loads, and loads, and loads, I don't post here), but there was one the other day about UK businesses paying over £600M in tariffs on EU exports due to Rules of Origin (i.e. not quite such a tariff free deal), a report about many more medium sized UK businesses saying they've probably got 12 months left before they go bust unless something changes, M&S are closing their stores in France etc.

There's no doubt that supply chains are under massive strain and this is leading to some shortages on shelves and elsewhere in the supply chains that aren't necessarily visible to the average person on the average day, yes this is not just a UK problem (everywhere has Covid and some degree of HGV driver shortages), but we're clearly suffering more than most.

And then of course we have the situation in Northern Ireland and the NI Protocol, that's been done to death in this thread already so I won't rehash it all again, but seriously folks, can anyone even remotely try to claim that's worked out well, not least with a border in the Irish Sea?

Rejoining the Single Market and Customs Union fixes all of this, basically overnight. UK businesses would breathe a massive sigh of relief, as would many of their partners in the EU, it fixes the situation in NI and makes the sea border go away, and honestly, truthfully, would that many people really be that bothered?

I was struck by mack's posts above which kind of leans into what I've said several times in this thread, that for the longest time the EU was really a non-issue for many people, yes we had the nonsense stories about prawn cocktail crisps being banned (which once again for the record, was a lie), but hand on heart folks, prior to the kerfuffle over the referendum back in 2015/2016, how many of you were really getting all worked up about the EU on a regular basis?

Now I know straight away this will be framed as as 'betrayal of Brexit' but go back five years and folks such as Daniel Hannan were saying stuff like 'No one is suggesting we give up our place in the Single Market' and Farage was touting the 'Norway option' for quite some time before deciding to go down the Hard Brexit espousal route, and no one found these comments way off beam at the time.

For the longest time in Leave circles, it seemed to be accepted that leaving the EU but retaining the benefits of the Single Market was a sensible and pragmatic way to do things, and the Customs Union is a natural extension of that.

From the Remainer side I think we have to accept the things we got wrong, trying to frustrate the Leave vote in the Commons was a terrible mistake, as was going for a second referendum, as were all the apocalyptic warnings about the sky falling in should Leave win the referendum, going forward I think our position needs to be that the UK is out of the EU, it's staying out of the EU and we won't try to change that, but can we work together on finding some sensible middle ground that works best for Britain as a major trading partner of the EU.

Anyway, just some lunchtime musings :)
Trouble is, mass unsustainable migration did and has caused social issues. Hitherto we were happy to have marginally lower prices while our worker's wages were kept low by this migration. Now, with demand outstripping supply, we will see the workers benefit as indeed seems to be the case in trucking and building at present, even in unskilled warehouse work as with Amazon's £1000 sop to new employees. I am not saying we cannot recruit from outside the UK for essential labour needs but this can be on our own terms i.e. temporary resident status, work permits and NOT permanent settlement unless meeting our own special criteria.
The trouble is, while I can see the logic of a Customs Union which would undoubtedly provide a quick fix for 90% of issues since Brexit, there's two issues with that:
1. That's exactly what the EU wants us to do.
2. We will have given up before even grinding out the issues which have befallen trade, before things get ironed out and we have established alternative trade routes for goods we presently rely on EU imports for. Until we do that we've no clout anyway (as we saw by NOT imposing tariffs or obstacles on those imports whereas the EU did this from the outset.) We need to get to a point where we can make it equally hard for the EU to sell here before things will improve.

Another thing to consider is that you'd be effectively asking for a 'Norway'. Unfortunately, that Customs Union comes with open borders, something much of the UK public did find and would still find unpalatable and it would be a disaster for whichever government allowed it to to happen again, in fact was probably the biggest contribution to BREXIT sentiment in the first place.

So unless it could be ONLY a Customs Union and nothing tacked on, this seemingly attractive idea is a non-starter.
 
If le pen was to win the presidency who knows how that would affect the EU.

Apparently we have not yet introduced our new checks system on imports from the eu, because we don't want more delays etc..but maybe when we do, the eu businesses wiill have increased costs as well.

Without examples of red tape and what 'firm A' need to do now, we're in the dark again. Labour don't have much business nous and strongly dislike brexit, therefore the normal political method of solving issues, opposition MP's tabling relevant debates and studying the problems constructively is unlikely to happen.

It comes down to the tory mps to fix it, that's not so easy if they have to criticise the 'deal' and thus the deal makers.
 

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