Octopus Overlords

Japan has given Britain just six weeks to sign up to a post-Brexit trade deal or face disruption to its imports and exports.

In the latest sign that the “swashbuckling” drive to sign deals with countries around the world is proving less than straightforward, the UK could lose favourable access to Japanese markets it enjoyed as part of EU membership if no agreement is signed.

UK negotiators also face the prospect of being bounced into a deal on unfavourable terms, as countries like Japan seek to use the reopening of talks to gain further concessions against the UK.

Japanese negotiators this week piled extra pressure on Boris Johnson by accelerating the schedule for a deal, citing a lack of time in their parliamentary calendar.

LordMortis wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 4:02 pm Thank you. I didn't understand but wasn't curious enough to put in the effort to connect any dots.

And so on Tuesday it finally began. After four years of hearing how everything would stay the same, things started to change. First, parliament passed the Immigration Bill, which definitively terminated freedom of movement in law. Then, at midnight, the deadline passed for the UK and EU to extend the Brexit transition period. There is now, to all intents and purposes, no going back. We've had the rhetoric, and now comes the reality.
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The Immigration Bill was more predictable. It was, after all, the central plank of Brexit and the issue ministers most enjoyed promoting. Sure enough, it passed by a majority of 94 votes in the Commons. MPs even rejected an amendment from Yvette Cooper which sought to preserve the rights of unaccompanied child refugees. And yet, for all the inevitability and cruelty, the vote was still a moment of historic shock. Here was a democratic legislature voting to take away its citizens' rights and those of its closest neighbours and allies. One of the few constants, necessities and joys of human civilisation has been to seek a better life in another place. Since 1973, millions have taken the opportunity to work, study, find love or retire in a place where they were not born. MPs denounced and discarded that freedom, and then celebrated.
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On Tuesday alone, while parliament was ending free movement and Johnson was promising investment, major companies announced almost 10,000 job losses. A government which paid basic lip service to caring about its people would act to stem the flow. This one simply blows another stick of dynamite in the dam.

• Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Brandon Lewis on Tuesday said the government's plans for the province would break international law "in a very specific and limited way."

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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government has admitted that its plan to make changes to the Brexit protocol for Northern Ireland is a breach of international law.

In an extraordinary exchange in the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon, Brandon Lewis, the UK's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, said the plan "does break international law in a very specific and limited way."

A Financial Times report on Sunday that said the UK government was seeking to overwrite the protocol for Northern Ireland agreed upon with the European Union sent shockwaves throughout Westminster and Brussels.

Johnson's government will on Wednesday table legislation that, if implemented, would give UK minsters the power to unilaterally determine several issues relating to trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain which are being negotiated by UK and EU officials.


UK government officials said the changes were minor and would not supplant the withdrawal agreement struck last year. In practice, they would give UK ministers the power to decide which goods are "at risk" of entering the EU, waive export declarations on goods heading from Northern Ireland to Great Britain, and pick and choose when to inform Brussels of state aid decisions that affect the Northern Ireland goods market.

The government has faced accusations across the political spectrum of seeking to wriggle out of commitments it signed up for as part of the Brexit withdrawal treaty. On Tuesday, the Financial Times reported that Jonathan Jones, the head of the UK government's legal department, had quit his position in an apparent protest against the government's plans.

On Tuesday, Lewis confirmed claims that the UK government was planning to break international law.

The government has unveiled plans to give ministers sweeping powers to “disapply” part of the Brexit deal that Boris Johnson signed in January, in a move that has shocked Brussels, threatens to provoke a rebellion by Conservative MPs and caused Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, to warn there will be “absolutely no chance” of a US-UK trade deal if it presses ahead with the move.
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The move now threatens Brexit talks. The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, condemned the bill on Wednesday. One source said the logical conclusion was that negotiations could be suspended this week.

8. Joe Biden said there would be no UK/US Trade Deal if the IMB went ahead

9. Iain Duncan Smith said "we don’t need lectures" from Joe Biden

10. Trump’s special envoy to NI also said there would be no Trade Deal
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15. Dominic Raab, whose job it is to understand the Good Friday Agreement, admitted he hasn’t read the Good Friday Agreement

16. His excuse is: "it’s not a novel". True. Novels tend to be longer than 35 pages, aren't vital to solving conflicts that killed 3600 people

The United Kingdom and European Union have reached a post-Brexit trade agreement after months of fraught negotiations, the British government said in a statement Thursday. The breakthrough averts a much-feared "no-deal" scenario that would have sparked economic chaos and risked major disruption to the flow of goods and medicines.
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It is unlikely that the deal will be formally ratified before the Brexit transition ends, given that it still needs to go through a series of legal hoops.

EU leaders, the European parliament, and the UK government will all need to now approve the agreement on their own.

The legal text of the agreement will first be translated, reviewed and approved by all 27 EU member states.

Once all member states give their sign off, it will then go back to the European Parliament, where Members of European Parliament (MEPs) will vote to ratify the deal.

But the European Parliament has said that it is too late to hold an emergency voting session before the transition period ends on December 31.

Instead, they plan to apply the EU-UK agreement "provisionally," with MEPs reconvening formally to ratify the deal in the New Year.

Ralph-Wiggum wrote: Tue Dec 29, 2020 10:18 am I would've never voted for Brexit if I knew what was going to happen was what every critic said would happen.

The one benefit of Brexit?

"The U.K. may have been able to approve a vaccine more quickly because it no longer had to take part in the EMA’s drug assessments since the Brexit transition period began"

malchior wrote:At least they got their sovereignty back.

Carpet_pissr wrote: Sat Mar 27, 2021 9:01 am

malchior wrote:At least they got their sovereignty back.

I hesitate to draw analogies, since all my ties to London and its people were cut several years ago, but it sounds a lot like our little domestic problem: you have a very large portion of the voting population willing to be inconvenienced, financially hurt, etc, based on delusions of grandeur.

To be fair, the deluded don’t see it like that. They see it as willing to take a potential (or certain) hit for The Good of the Country. So they do it proudly, and use it as a symbol of pride. And leave many outside that bubble wondering why the bubble people are voting against their own interests.

Disclaimer: can’t speak to the other side of the ponders on THIS point, but I would be surprised if we didn’t also share at least some of the STIGGINIT as incentive (amongst the bubblers).

Concerns about their citizens in the UK have countries from Spain and Portugal to Poland making clear that ultimately, they’ll allow Brits to stay only if there is reciprocity and their citizens get settled status in Britain. For example, Spanish authorities are saying British expats will have the same rights in Spain post-Brexit as long as the UK extends residency rights to Spaniards already living in the UK.
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Still, questions remain as to which former EU residence rights each country ultimately will extend to newly arrived British citizens, who would have become third-country nationals now the 11-month transition period has ended. (The EU has a running list of all 27 countries here.)

The good news is that UK nationals who have settled status before the transition deadline get to stay forever under the UK/EU Withdrawal Agreement. But there are currently no protections for UK nationals arriving after 2020.

In some countries such as France and Spain, Brits never have had to register as permanent residents, which introduces another layer of anxiety. Until they get their long-term residence status as a third-country nationals, they’ll won’t be able to leave their host country after 1 January 2021, then return as anything but tourists.
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Bottom line: Wherever they are living now, British citizens should apply for a long-term residence permit sooner rather than later. Because they can take awhile to get and unless they have one, it will be hard for them to re-enter their country of residence should they, say, need to return to the United Kingdom for a visit.

Carpet_pissr wrote: Mon Mar 29, 2021 8:54 am I’m shocked so many people are readily admitting how stupid they were. Unless there are like 10 of these that just keep getting rehashed in the news.

/Yes I voted to leave, and it had x “EASILY FORESEEN And even discussed ad infinitum in the press” dire consequence on my personal life. I am now shocked. And sad. And regretful. /

I’ve seen/read LOTS of those anecdotes.

Sales of milk and cream to the EU are down an extraordinary 96 per cent – and chicken and beef by almost 80 per cent – because of Brexit, new figures show.

Overall, the trade barriers erected in Boris Johnson’s deal have cost exporters more than £1.1bn since the start of the year, The Food and Drink Federation says.

The organisation said it was “essential” that the UK urgently restarts talks with the EU to resolve the crisis – something the prime minister has so far refused to do.

The statistics lay bare how withdrawal from the EU – rather than the impact of Covid-19 – lies behind the collapse in exports, since the transition period ended on 31 December.

Food and drink exports to non-EU countries rose by 8.7 per cent, between February 2020 and February 2021, but fell by 40.9 per cent to the EU.

Boris Johnson’s government is accusing Brussels of adopting a “purist” approach to meat regulations enshrined in the Brexit withdrawal deal – warnings that the import of sausages from Great Britain to Northern Ireland could be blocked entirely.

The rows comes ahead of a looming “grace period” deadline in a temporary agreement, which has allowed Northern Irish supermarkets to continue importing chilled meats – including those all-important sausages.

Why so much fuss over sausages?EU food safety rules mean that only frozen meat can be imported into its single market. And under the Northern Ireland Protocol, those food safety rules are imposed on good moving across the Irish Sea.

Mr Johnson’s government has threatened to act unilaterally to ignore legally-required checks on chilled meats such as sausages and mince moving from GB to NI when the current “grace period” expires at the end of June.