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Originally Posted by 1andrew1
I won't get over-involved in historic situations as I prefer to look forwards, not backwards. But just taking Pierre's first point. Nigel Farage was claiming as recently as 2017 that there would be no divorce bill. We now know that that is false. As an MEP, if he didn't know this then I suspect many others didn't either. And who can forget it taking a Brexit Secretary some two years to understand the importance of the Calais-Dover crossing for UK trade?
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...b09e5f6cce7a5b |
The basis of the EU claiming a "divorce" bill was we had previously agreed a 5 year budget. If that is the case then if the budget had been set for 20 years, would we be liable for another 15 years on top. That would be just silly.
How could we really disagree with anything in that budget? It's not really allowed to disagree with Germany/France. There is nothing in the budgets than set out who is going to provide what money. That is in separate rules which are linked to being a member of the EU. The budgets specify money that would come back to the UK, but now it won't. For those reasons alone there is no real legal basis for most of the "divorce" bill.
All sorts of things create delays with the Dover-Calais crossing. EG weather, strikes, problems with the Eurotunnel. Everything carries on. It won't be a total blockade of any sort. Any delays in lorries for the continent getting into the UK, will be doubled when they return. That will create a lack of available lorries in the EU as they will be held up in the UK. It will add 1 or 2 days to each return journey. Similar to a bad weather situation.