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Originally Posted by Chloé Palmas
That is the part of this that you are not getting ; there is no deal to negotiate. Does not matter how many times over May says that it is a negotiation / process under way the "no" will mean just that from Brussels. No to SM access without FM, no to FT without CU membership etc. These are not negotiations - they are refusals.
If they go hard / a hard leave then there is nothing to negotiate. If it is soft / a soft leave then there are simply going to be rules and stipulations that the UK must abide by and given that it can't then perks are going to be forsakes I suppose.
The EU won't decide which option the UK goes for - but whichever it is, the UK will have to abide by whatever is required in return ; whether that be sacrificing access or independence. One or the other.
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There is a deal to negotiate but that's between the members of the Cabinet who need to agree what rules they want to follow
There are some areas around the fringes like health cards, repayment periods etc and maybe the terminology used for any UK-EU customs union but generally, what's on offer depends on what rules the UK is happy to follow. Want to use the golf club toilets if you're in the area and caught short? You must pay £1 towards costs and agree to flush the toilet afterwards or the club chairman will fine you. Don't agree to allow the club chairman to fine you if you don't flush the toilet? Sorry, you can't use the toilet, that's unfair on the members.
As you point out, it's apparent from postings on here that many fail to get this but this lack of understanding also extends to some Labour and Conservative MPs. And some who do get it will doubtless be happy to talk up a potential deal that could only happen if Aslan and not Theresa May was PM.
There is a great quote that summarises the situation:
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“There is not an issue of general distrust towards the UK. That’s not the issue, but the EU is a rules-based system. Why is that? It’s because 28 member states do not trust each other spontaneously; they trust each other because they work on the basis of agreed common rules with common enforcement, common supervision and under a European court that will make sure they all apply the same rules in the same manner. They trust each other because there are remedies available. If you don’t have these remedies, you’re a third country.”
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The third country bit was not fully appreciated by MPs when British classic car fan and EU Chief Negotiator Guy Verhofstadt appeared in front of the Exiting the European Union Committee in Westminster recently.
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You could hear the same question, repeatedly from the MPs: “So we can’t stay in Galileo?” “So we can’t stay in Europol?” The answer from Verhofstadt was always the same: “No, because you will be a third country.”
Andrea Jenkyns even asked: “Why is the EU not just giving the Brits what we want?” Verhofstadt explained this is not a simple two-way negotiation: the single market is a legal entity and you cannot just break those rules to appease a member state who wants to leave...
I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds it incredible that a lot of Westminster still doesn’t get this. But they should get it – the UK signed off on a joint report with the European Commission in December 2017, which makes it abundantly clear that you cannot cherrypick the bits of the EU you do like and pretend the other things don’t exist.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/voices...-a8416076.html