UK announces it will unilaterally change Brexit deal with EU
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
Sorry Indy, that’s the last click you get from me.
However, if the British democratically decide they no longer want to participate, then the EU has no option but to respect their wishes.
In addition to that as soons as the UK diverges in law or regulations enough, free trade will not be possible at all until these differences are handled from both sides in trade deals. This is why unilateral changes are self destructive.
Therefore any such "free trade" agreement has limits and usually involves some sort of harmonization of standards.
Then you decide that being in the club isn't for you any more. So you leave.
And you don't have to pay the membership fee. But you can't use the machines or pool any more. or have any other benefits that you had as a member.
Most people would agree that is reasonable.
The UK left the biggest free market and customs union group in the world and asked to be treated like any other country not in the EU.
The EU has done nothing more than accede to the UK's wishes to leave the EU. It seems that some people who voted the UK's departure from the UK actually had little idea what that meant in practical terms and are now complaining about the loss of their membership benefits.
By contrast, the EU benefits from buying things from and selling things to the UK. Products made in the UK did not suddenly become less safe because of Brexit.
Sometimes upon finding a flaw in an analogy it is at least self-instructive to consider whether the flaw can be repaired rather than abandoned :: sometimes upon finding a flaw in a cooperative venture it is at least worth considering how the flaw can be repaired rather than withdrawing from the cooperative venture.
Analogies are perfectly fine ways to throw away superfluous detail to focus on salient matters. Of course there are bad analogies, including, as you imply, those deliberately chosen so as to throw away relevant detail, however one can still improve such analogies rather than reject them -- let alone all analogies -- out of hand.
Not only are they tools for arguments -- proof by existence -- but they are frequently useful tools for resolving arguments, precisely because they can help choose which are the important details in the real scenario.
"Your analogy can be improved by <insert idea>" is also simply more friendly than "all analogies are terrible" or even "your analogy is terrible", which is something to bear in mind if you enjoy friendly debates.
English economist David Ricardo made a similar statement in the early 19th century. The example he used was Portuguese wine being traded for English cloth. He said both countries benefited from their specializations - England producing cloth, Portugal producing wine. Ricardo's work is a foundation for a modern view of comparative advantage and free trade.
English economist Joan Robinson revisited this example over a century later. She asked what the results over the past century were for the economies of England and Portugal in pursuing this course - one country industrializing to build textile mills, one country remaining more agricultural with much less industrialization. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what she found in that investigation, the answer is obvious.
A lot of people in mainland Europe are pained that the UK left, and in my own opinion (as a non-European), it’s more of a show of pity on themselves than sympathetic with the British. And so, they rejoice at any news of problems and use it as an opportunity to remind the rest of the world that they're right, the EU is nirvana, and the UK is matching to hell. It’s tiring.
It has everything to do with the EU, because Northern Ireland and Ireland don't have a land border because they both were are a part of the EU. The UK wants to leave the customs union allowing the lack of border, while keeping no border, which is practically impossible. It's entirely the UK's fault here - they want their cake and to eat it too. It cannot possibly work, and the only viable long term solution is for Ireland to unite.
Free movement between the UK and Eire long pre-dates the existence of the EU.
I disagree with your point about the the UK not asking to ship things to Poland or Slovakia or France. This is just plain wrong. Of course we are asking to do these things. In fact I have personal experience of this, as we actually do ship things from the UK to Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the EU. I now have to fill out custom forms and get approval before I can do this. Most bizarrely, I have to do it if I want to ship from where we are in Liverpool (in the UK) to Belfast (also in the UK). I have to get a permit to go into the county of Kent if I want to send a vehicle through the Channel Tunnel to France (£300 fine if I don't). I sometimes think that I have fallen into a dystopian parallel universe.
You are correct that NI and the Republic have a long and ingrained relationship, but the separation between them was largely removed only quite recently by the Good Friday Agreement which has brought relative peace to the region. It has everything to do with the EU because the EU were sensible enough to not countenance the re-imposition of a border between Northern and Southern Ireland and so an agreement (the Northern Ireland Protocol) was agreed between the EU and the UK which puts the border relatively speaking in the Irish Sea. So Northern Ireland is still effectively in the EU customs union and single market. If you think that's complicated, we haven't even started yet :) I'm not surprised you're tired.
As far as the EU is concerned, I don't think that many people in mainland Europe really care that much. They have much more interesting things to do. Those that do care think we're a bit stupid. The EU project will carry on quite happily without the UK. I don't see much evidence of rejoicing on the part of Europeans. Also, quite a few Europeans don't have a terribly high opinion of the EU and certainly don't see it as a Nirvana; and the UK will not be marching to hell. Things are getting more expensive and some opportunities have diminished, but it's not an Armageddon as some would have you believe. Leaving the EU was rather pointless, that's all :|
The EU might be regarded as a free trade area with a bunch of extra features related to common rules, laws and courts. Everyone is subject to the same law and same courts, and that enables a lot of optimisations, some big, some small.
You can see this for the current bivalve affair. The EU rules basically say that since everyone from the grower to the final consumer answer to the same court and obey the same law, various processing can happen anywhere along the chain and the same liability/hygiene/safety rules apply everywhere. However, if the grower is in one legal domain and the consumer in another, then some processing has to happen within the grower's legal domain, before it crosses the border.
The UK would like to have the benefits of the optimisations, but decide on their own laws and not answer to the same court as the others. That won't work, because the benefits derive from being within the same legal domain. No amount of good or ill will will change that.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.