Quote:
Originally Posted by 1andrew1
The trouble is the UK is now coming across consistently as reneging on its promises. There was the original threat to breach the NI treaty in a "specific and limited" manner which went down badly in the EU and US, there was the u-turn in the aid commitment and now this attempt to re-write an agreement.
Trust is easy to lose and harder to gain. If the UK acted in a more trustworthy manner, we may have harnessed our goodwill to renegotiate the NI agreement. Unfortunately, our goodwill tank is currently empty.
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In your opinion.
If you have a credible international source to demonstrate that the UK’s reputation globally as a place to do business has suffered materially, please share it. Such indices do exist. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble.
As regards “specific and limited” - as you continue to carefully ignore, it was crafted to produce precisely the reaction that it got. Only super-triggered remainers are still wailing about it.
And as for good will: clearly you still haven’t worked out what’s actually happening here, despite it having helpfully been spelt out multiple times. Whether you agree with them or not, the UK government is not seriously seeking a renegotiation and doesn’t particularly need the EU’s good will. It believes that the current arrangements are an unacceptable infringement of sovereignty and that in the long run history will agree. It further believes that such interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state is somewhere France and Germany will not go, once it is forcefully presented in those terms internationally (the EU apparatchiks, left to themselves, most likely would do so). Further still, the rest of the trade agreement is bedding in nicely and the flow of goods is near normal. If the EU attempts to suspend the agreement it will be responsible for bringing all that down. Lest we forget, there is a general election in Germany in September and in France next year.