Brexit A.D.: The EU and the UK - What happens next? (crime rates, illegal aliens)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Gove was one of Boris Johnson's chief rivals for the leadership of the Conservative party. He contributed to taking Boris out at the knees during the 2016 contest, when Theresa May came out on top. During last summer's Tory election scramble, Gove started off reasonably strong, but Johnson was apparently predestined to take over this job, and now he has it.
Gove is intellectually razor sharp and politically extremely talented. He is a real world class leader in a world that is has a major shortage of such people. Johnson refused to give Gove one of the top jobs in his government last September, which made sense considering the tensions that had been exhibited between them in past leadership contests. Fortunately, that short period "In the dog house" was apparently long enough and now Gove will be back in the true inner circle, if this promotion comes to fruition.
Normally there are four major government minister posts (Secretaries here in the US), including Foreign Minister (State), Defense, Attorney General and Treasury. For the British as they come out of the EU, there will arguably be a fifth such position, as the UK will be required to rework ALL of its trade arrangements with other countries around the world.
That fifth major government post for the UK over the next 5-10 years will be the Trade Minister. This will be a position of enormous power, importance and effect not only on the affairs of the people of the UK, but to a lesser extent, literally almost everyone in the world.
Last edited by Spartacus713; 12-15-2019 at 12:12 PM..
Gove has come out today as the first minister of Boris Johnson's government to reiterate the promise that the UK would leave the EU on January 31 and that the transition period for trade purposes would stop by December 31, 2020, which is the date enshrined in the Withdrawal Deal agreed to by Prime Minister Johnson and the EU, which is expected to be voted on and approved by the newly elected UK Parliament next week.
Michael Gove has categorically promised the UK will have a trade deal with the EU by the end of next year, despite deep reservations in Brussels about whether this is possible.
The senior minister became the first in Boris Johnson’s cabinet to repeat that pledge after the election, saying transitional arrangements would definitely stop at the end of December 2020. He said discussions on the UK’s future relationship with the EU “will be concluded next year”.
Despite his confidence, EU leaders are considering a move to take the initiative and request an extension to the transition period, keeping the UK under Brussels regulations beyond 2020.
Where to start....
First of all, the headline on the title of the article above is "Fake news" by the UK Guardian, from whom this article is sourced. Michael Gove did not promise a "Trade deal" by the end of 2020, although in as far as it has anything to do with him, I expect there will be one. What he said was:
“Quite a lot of the details that we need to negotiate is already laid out in the political declaration, so a lot of work has been done. And as a number of people have pointed out, there are areas where the European Union’s interests and the United Kingdom’s interests are already closely aligned, so I’m confident that we will be able not just to leave the EU on January 31 but also to conclude all the details of a new relationship in short order.”
As you can see, he did not put a time limit on the trade negotiations with the EU, although he clearly thinks they should be able to get such a deal done by the end of 2020, considering all the work that has already been done on this over the last 3.5 years.
That being said, both Johnson and Gove do appear to be very aggressively insisting on adhering to the December 31, 2020 transition deadline. The transition basically keeps the current trade arrangements in effect, along with certain other aspects of the UK's current membership in the EU, although the details of that are not entirely clear to me at this point.
As highlighted and underlined in red above, the shenanigans of the EU appear to be continuing into the trade negotiations phase. These people who run the EU are hardcore socialists, many of the school of Marx, which means that they are deep down irretrievable control freaks. They are still planning to try to keep their hooks in the UK by extending the "transition" as long as they can get away with it and they will not stop.
Johnson and Gove need to realize that the EU leaders are likely to keep kicking this "transition" deadline down the road indefinitely, if permitted to do so. They would be smart to force this to some sort of conclusion by the end of December 2020, if at all possible.
You seem to be very keen on the people of the UK exercising their right to leave the EU, but vehemently opposed to the people of Scotland exercising their right to leave the UK. Why the difference in attitudes towards those things?
Prime Minister Johnson is amending the Withdrawal Bill Agreement (WAB) legislation to block any further extensions with regards to the next phase, which is the negotiation of a trade agreement and various other cooperation agreements.
The government is to add a new clause to the Brexit bill to rule out any extension to the transition period beyond the end of next year. The post-Brexit transition period - due to conclude in December 2020 - can currently be extended by mutual agreement for up to two years.
But an amended Withdrawal Agreement Bill the Commons is set to vote on this week would rule out any extension. The PM told MPs it would put an end to years of "deadlock, dither and delay".
Of course the WAB was passed by the previous Parliament, but they vetoed the timetable for its implementation, thereby blocking it, yet again. Now with an 80-seat majority, these kinds of shenanigans are no longer expected to be an issue.
While the Parliament ruling out any extension of the transition period past December 31, 2020 will surely help to focus everyone's attention during the negotiation of these agreements, there is nothing stopping Johnson and the Parliament from passing another bill later changing their mind about this. But considering the political unpopularity of "extensions" with the UK public, specifically the Tory supporters, this would be a hard vote to explain. And PM Johnson is not going to want to stand up in Parliament to try to provide any such explanation.
What seems more likely is that these agreements are negotiated in phases, somewhat like what we are seeing now between the US and China in their trade negotiations. Some of these agreements need to be done right away. Others can probably wait.
Anyway, this is a good move by PM Johnson, as the EU will drag this process out over a decade or more if allowed to do so. It is time to start wrapping this process up to the greatest degree possible.
Getting agreement by December 31 will be really really difficult because so many countries are involved. Every single country in the EU has to agree and there are so many countries involved. CETA for example was held up because of a region of Belgium which had objections:
I vaguely recall that those objections were only eliminated when the EU promised some benefit to that region. So refusals to sign may be strategic by countries, hoping to be bribed to sign.
Getting agreement by December 31 will be really really difficult because so many countries are involved. Every single country in the EU has to agree and there are so many countries involved. CETA for example was held up because of a region of Belgium which had objections:
I vaguely recall that those objections were only eliminated when the EU promised some benefit to that region. So refusals to sign may be strategic by countries, hoping to be bribed to sign.
If they were just getting started, it surely would be. But they have been working on all of this and have known it was coming for 3.5 years now. Also, the EU and the UK know each other as intimately and fully as any nations possibly can.
The EU still want to find a way to impose as much control over the UK as they can through these agreements, and barring that, they want to continue to drag this out as long as possible in order to frustrate not only the British people and their leaders who are handling these negotiations, but also any other member of the EU who would dare to consider leaving the EU themselves, as several others have to some degree already begun discussing.
It may be that there are elements of these agreements that they decide to postpone beyond December 2020. But they need to get the main and most important parts done by then. They can get this done, if they determine to do so.
Prime Minister Johnson is amending the Withdrawal Bill Agreement (WAB) legislation to block any further extensions with regards to the next phase, which is the negotiation of a trade agreement and various other cooperation agreements.
Of course the WAB was passed by the previous Parliament, but they vetoed the timetable for its implementation, thereby blocking it, yet again. Now with an 80-seat majority, these kinds of shenanigans are no longer expected to be an issue.
While the Parliament ruling out any extension of the transition period past December 31, 2020 will surely help to focus everyone's attention during the negotiation of these agreements, there is nothing stopping Johnson and the Parliament from passing another bill later changing their mind about this. But considering the political unpopularity of "extensions" with the UK public, specifically the Tory supporters, this would be a hard vote to explain. And PM Johnson is not going to want to stand up in Parliament to try to provide any such explanation.
What seems more likely is that these agreements are negotiated in phases, somewhat like what we are seeing now between the US and China in their trade negotiations. Some of these agreements need to be done right away. Others can probably wait.
Anyway, this is a good move by PM Johnson, as the EU will drag this process out over a decade or more if allowed to do so. It is time to start wrapping this process up to the greatest degree possible.
Lol, can't they just get out, if that's what they want, and spare everybody the drama. Considering the downturn that's coming, you would think that the waste of time is counterproductive.
PM Johnson is adding another modification to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) from the last time it was passed and which will be voted on again this Friday. The lower courts are being empowered to overrule EU law, apparently starting on February 1, 2020.
Boris Johnson has split the cabinet with a plan to give British judges new powers to overturn rulings by the European Court of Justice, The Times has learnt.
Theresa May’s government agreed to transfer all existing European Union case law into British law after Brexit, a decision opposed by Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party. The commitment meant that only the Supreme Court in England and the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland would be allowed to “depart” from EU case law.
A new clause in Mr Johnson’s withdrawal agreement bill will let lower courts overturn ECJ rulings. MPs will vote on the bill on Friday.
As noted above, Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement (which was voted down three times) left these decisions to the British Supreme Court and the Scottish High Court.
It seems to me that it was a good move to enshrine the last 40 years of EU law as part of the UK's own common law, as that has been the judicial arrangements that they have existed under until now. But the UK will almost immediately begin departing from these precedents, as the UK Parliament passes new locally based legislation to replace the EU laws and the courts also start making decisions based primarily on UK interests and priorities.
So this was inevitable, if the UK was truly going to leave the EU, as this move again indicates that they definitely are.
The EU is apparently preparing for a "quick-fire" trade deal in response to the UK Parliament legally ruling out an extension of the transition period past December of 2020. Of course these people are nothing if not conniving and crafty. The UK would be foolish to presume they are acting now in good faith.
That being said, this looks really good and I hope this is how they proceed. There is no need for every last detail to be finalized by the end of December 2020. But the critical elements of a trade agreement should be completed and probably the security and immigration components should be largely completed as well.
BORIS Johnson's move to legally rule out extending the transition hit home in Brussels as EU chiefs drew up plans for a quick-fire trade deal. EU negotiators will respond to the PM's ultimatum with phased talks that will see a tariff and quota free agreement on goods in place by the end of 2020. Both sides would then apply interim measures for other areas - like services and security - while the future relationship is fleshed out in stage two.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
