Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

Rather than leaving options, considering what's best for the country and giving themselves, on both sides, latitude to monitor the situation and adjust position appropriately. May eliminated a bunch of options unnecessarily to score UKIP votes and then having done nothing to prepare triggered Article 50 according to an arbitrary timescale. McDonnell and the Corbyn posse blagged to try and keep the young, and overwhelmingly favourable to the EU, vote, while simultaneously trying to ward off the nationalist vote the Tories are going after.

Davis and Fox's departments being created have both had the unsurprising impact of sticking functions that should be handled in tandem in silos, and caused extensive overlap with existing departments. We lost a bunch of time trying to ramp the civil service up to properly staff those departments, and it has shown in that it's taken until this month to start producing 'position papers', and those that have been produced are half-arsed and basically come down to, in the short term at least, trying to remain in the EEA under a different name.

It's ended up in that ridiculous situation because politicians couldn't keep their mouths shut in an attempt to win as much support from the 52% as they could, and wasted time on internal party and civil service squabbles, in between urinating away a couple of months on a pointless election.

The EU have made their positions abundantly clear - http://jackofkent.com/brexit-negotia...resource-page/

The UK politicians continue to negotiate with one eye on the Express, Mail and Sun, and most of the other on 2022.

We need to get serious. The EU are being inflexible. We need to make it easier for them to show some flexibility by actually telling them in which direction we want them to bend. For them to break away from the positions set out in the documents will take months of agreement and ratification as, contrary to popular belief, the EU isn't a dictatorship and those documents were agreed by rEU-27 and must be modified by consensus too.

The clock's ticking. If we aren't going to make a serious attempt it's time to stop wasting taxpayers' time and money and stop feeding further uncertainty into the economy, take the hit and jump off the cliff. The current situation is demeaning to the UK and diminishing our reputation for stability, diplomacy and pragmatism even further abroad. A reputation we will be relying on worldwide if we don't either join EFTA or remain in the CU.

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

I was confused by this as in 2015 Election, UKIP had 3,881,099 total votes. In the snap election in June, they had lost millions taking their final total vote tally to just 594,068.

I read previous analysis that that loss of over 3 million UKIP votes, that Labour were the major beneficiaries, but I now admit after reading the FT article linked below, it seems that the UKIP collapse, that it was the Tories that did.

https://www.ft.com/content/dac3a3b2-...a-1e14ce4af89b

I do remember on Election result night that many of the key seats, saw Labour get a wrath of surprise big swings from UKIP and I naturally assumed they were the big earners that night. As they say, assumptions are the mother of all...

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

I agree with your cultural point to a degree. Most of my team are in India, some are in China and the rest in the US. There are some higher level "Project Managers/Solution Architects/Network Engineers/Business Analysts" in India (less so in China) and as you point out, the most are in the US (HQ specifically).

However, the majority of the senior managers, etc. in the US are of Indian and Chinese origin ..

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

I think the Ukip voters defecting to the Conservatives explain why Theresa May is taking the position she is taking. A softer approach to Brexit could result in the Conservative vote being threatened in some constituencies in the event of a by-election. And every seat counts as the DUP knows.
But the Government also knows that the current approach could lead to companies leaving the UK, and not just the banks which attract less public sympathy than car workers. That is why the UK Government is working hard behind the scenes to try and keep manufacture of the next Astra in Ellesmere Port. Closure of this factory blamed on Brexit could influence public opinion towards Brexit negatively. It has an impossible job.
Labour needs to take a different approach particularly if it wants to hold onto the younger pro-EU electorate.

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

I had the same in the UK - Indians/Chinese who,had become acculturated; they had adapted to our methods of working/managing, so rose up the management ladder.

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

The ultimate solution must involve getting back our sovereignty, taking back control of immigration, no more excessive payments to be wasted by the EU and making our own trade deals.

All this talk of remaining in the common market or customs union is irrelevant if any of these cannot be achieved by so doing, because those were the main points made by the Leave campaigners and are what resonated with the public.

---------- Post added at 09:35 ---------- Previous post was at 09:32 ----------

Andrew, we cannot have a 'sofr' or 'softer' approach to Brexit if it means we cannot make our own trade deals. We cannot make Brexit work without this.

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

I prescribe 1 of these to be taken as required:

:banghead:

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

there is no cure for the Klingon plague

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

The terms "hard" and "soft" Brexit are Orwellian in the truest sense. They condition the debate and make it almost impossible to examine the issue clearly.

There is no such thing as "soft" Brexit. "Soft" as defined by the continuity remain campaign is remaining in the principal structures of the EU whilst relinquishing what direct influence we presently have over those structures. We will have left the EU in name only.

In order to achieve repatriation of parliamentary and judicial sovereignty and freedom to negotiate with the rest of the world on equal terms, we have to get entirely out of the EU, and then consider forming a relationship with the bloc, from outside.

That is the position outlined by HMG and it is one I entirely support.

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

'Klingon' to the EU no matter what presumably... :D

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

We never lost our sovereignty and the home office was too busy trying to impress the press with pointless fights with the ECHR to use the control we did have over immigration.

As far as making our own trade deals go, apparently we're going to copy/paste the EU's and as we've taken back control amend them as we see fit.

This is ridiculous, but if taken on face value this woman appears to think it's entirely within the UK's gift to make trade deals with other nations on terms they agreed with the EU then amend them as we see fit.

If this is the best we can do after 14 months we're in some strife.

If I may, the idea that 98% of leave voters voted to leave the EEA seems at odds with polls from before the referendum indicating that 2/3rds of all voters supported EEA membership, this taking in about 25% of eventual leave voters.

However, from the moment Gove and Johnson faced the cameras ashen-faced, and Boris realised his plan to go down in flames and use it to launch his leadership ambitions had gone completely pear-shaped things changed.

On a slight tangent it's actually pretty amusing. You look at the look on Trump's face when it became clear he was going to win and Johnson's face when leave won and you can happily tell they were two men having to do something they really didn't want to.

---------- Post added at 18:13 ---------- Previous post was at 17:59 ----------

All this said you mentioned sovereignty. In the UK Parliament in sovereign and have done a number of things in the past that were not favoured by the majority, so it wouldn't be unprecedented.

We'll see what happens, those are old arguments endlessly recycled as an attempt to make the case to remain in the EU and very tiresome.

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

You'll have to take the use of "soft" up with Old Boy. I used the term "softer" but for some reason he decided to use the term "soft" in a response to my post.

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

:tu:

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

How can you get equal terms if the country or trading bloc you are negotiating with is significantly larger than you?

---------- Post added at 20:51 ---------- Previous post was at 20:41 ----------

It's gone from talks of the third world war to the web wide war.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a7920181.html

Re: Brexit: Article 50 Has Been Triggered !
 

Size is hardly an issue when almost every country in the world has a smaller economy than us.

In any case, it isn't the overall size of the economy that's most important, it's the parts of their economy we're well placed to exploit and vice versa to mutual benefit.