NightlyPoe said:
Scoobes said:
I didn't say the backstop, I said May's red lines were not compatible with the GFA. At present the only way to honour the GFA is to stay in the customs union and the single market. May's red lines mean we can't do either and no one has come up with a realistic alternative so far. She invented the backstop as the only legal method to ensure we don't end up in a situation where we renege on our commitments to the GFA. Once you take out the bits that you consider "protecting our sovereignty", we leave ourselves with 2 options: stay in the customs union and single market or renege on our legal commitments. Any potential alternatives won't exist in a short-medium time frame and would probably require R&D before a genuine technological solution can be found. This is why I place the blame at May and her government.
Remember that May is the one that created the backstop so trying to remove it is already an international humiliation.
So, what is your alternative? Because so far it just sounds like you're happy to renege on the GFA in 0-2 years time.
This is partly what I meant by 'how much sovereignty are you willing to give up?' Are you willing to lower food safety standards or to increase the level of privatization in our health service for a trade deal with the US. Or to give the US the opportunity to veto future trade deals?
Larger trading blocks and larger Countries are going to be demanding a lot of concessions before they are willing to deal and they're going to be bigger whilst still having all their current trade deals intact. They're going to be negotiating from a position of strength as we'll look isolated. India for instance have already said that any future trade deal would require the UK opening more space for Indians to migrate to the UK.
In any negotiation there will be give and take. We will have to give up something which is why your sovereignty claims when dealing with the Irish border situation are going to come up in other areas when we try to strike trade deals outside the EU.
And what evidence do you have that these claims are sensationalised? Also, how long do you think trade deals take to strike on average?
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Ah, I see. So we are talking about two different things. To me May's red lines are simply a negotiating stance, so they could be moved. Indeed, they already have.
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Now I understand what you really meant.
Thing is, they didn't move anything substantially. And she can't move them without facing massive backlash within her own party. But I let CGP Grey explain, I think that's going to be clearer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1Yv24cM2os
The UK can only pick 2 out of the 3 options, but wants all 3. But another Video explains some of the details why no deal is coming forth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agZ0xISi40E
Here you can see all the red lines, which makes only no deal possible - but that breaks the GFA. The EU figured that out early on, as the slide is from December 2017, but still the UK doesn't budge on any of the issues.
