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Originally Posted by OLD BOY
The 'spanner in the works' is the attempt made by those stubborn remainers to thwart Brexit.
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This is your claim - however it doesn't stand up. Labour, for instance, are committed to negotiating a deal to leave the EU.
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I don't buy your doom-laden views about a no-deal Brexit, which would free us from the sticky web of the EU. As has been pointed out before, there is the rest of the world to trade with. Many of these countries have more rapidly-growing GDPs than the EU.
We do not have to be flooded with tariff-free goods. We could apply quotas if supply exceeded demand.
Anyhow, it is pretty obvious to me that if we cannot secure a deal, we simply agree with the EU to set out how far we've got in our thinking about a trade deal and apply Article 24 of GATT. Given the EU's public declarations that they want a deal, I see no reason why that would be refused. It takes away the time pressure and we can forget the withdrawal agreement completely and just go straight into discussions about a trade agreement. Backstop issues disappear overnight.
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Nor do I buy your absolutely baseless claims about how good Brexit will be. Article 24 of GATT doesn't work - that's been disproven time and again. WTO terms mean we need to offer the rest of the world trade terms we offer the EU until we reach an agreement. That's at the absolute core of the WTO that trading terms cannot be discriminatory.
As soon as something is 'obvious to you' in this space it's immediately discredited to be honest.
The rest of the world may have more rapidly growing GDP but there's absolutely no guarantee that means anything positive for us, it's not clear what we have to offer these countries
at all? A 20% drop in the value of the pound hasn't improved our exports - what tariffs will be removed that improves trade? With who? In what sector?
All unknown.