- 21 Nov 2020 03:59
#15138421
In the next few days an announcement will be made that Britain and the EU have churned out a deal. It will be followed by a market rally and cheers across the continent. The usual narratives will play out. Britain got this, EU got that, now "we will be free of the British sabotaging our project" the EU will proclaim. "We will be free and independent" the British will say.
Britain will get most of what she wants because she holds most of the cards. There are essentially 3 important areas that are being negotiated:
1) The nature of the trade relationship.
2) The UK's territorial waters.
3) The power of the EU to curtail British protectionist policies and set manufacturing/consumer/bank standards in Britain.
The EU is demanding access to UK waters and some power to curtail British protectionism and set standards in the UK in exchange for a free-trade deal.
The problem the EU is facing with this logic is that she has already signed very privileged variations of free-trade deals with Canada, Australia and Israel without demanding any of those things she is demanding of Britain. Another problem the EU is facing with her logic is that even though Boris and the UK argue that the UK should be free to impose protectionist policies and set its own standards in effect this is a moot point because the UK is the least protectionist in Europe by a far and wide margin and the one who has been setting both the EU's and global standards anyway. Effectively the EU has absolutely no carrots to offer to the UK and her sticks are totally hollow. Her biggest stick is for the UK to go into WTO terms which is only mildly painful(0.7% of GDP over 5 years ) and only for a very limited period of time and that only because Boris has not created the appropriate infrastructure for it and that alone should inform you of how seriously he actually takes EU threats on that.
It will not take very long until economies like Spain & Italy start crunching the numbers but they can be kept in the fold by threats of coercion a lot easier than the UK, the biggest concern will be France who is growing more and more tired of German thick-headedness. Germany has shown that she will never budge to anything, making it almost impossible to cooperate with. German consensus means everybody conceding to the German position and that becomes more and more evident with every passing decade. Remember, France left NATO a couple of decades ago for much less reasons.(sub note here: if Nato survived the loss of France during the bloody Cold War, it can easily survive the loss of Turkey)
The UK has already started a new global initiative called the D10 which will indeed take centre-stage for global relations in the following years. This will also undercut the EU's hold over her periphery who rely on the EU for support against Russia & Turkey while the EU's own foreign policy has proven that she will throw any [pro-]EU country under the bus even if it marginally affects German trade with the aggressors. Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, even the Kurds were betrayed by the EU first, politically and diplomatically. Apologists hide behind faux anti-war messages that have enabled the war destruction of all these countries while hypocritically pointing the finger at the US alone but these nonsense only go as far as the idiots in a room.
Now, we have reached a point where Germany openly & shamelessly argues that we should either reward Erdogan to entice him to stop invading official EU territory or to "punish Turkey" by not rewarding Erdogan with a brand new & fantastic trade agreement that we are persistently refusing our British brethren. Reward or let Erdogan be as he already is. Wrap your heads around that if you can. Again, apologists will hide behind custom union terms and other jargon to obfuscate matters in order to deny the very simple truth that in both cases the bottom line is that both countries want to enhance their free-trade access into the EU so that they can increase their trade balance. Turkey is being offered carrots for her outright invasion of official EU territory while Britain is being offered sticks for her aloofness.
PS: Boris will also manoeuvre Scotland into a corner when he hands Scottish fishermen 4 times the catch they had under the EU, then he will be able to claim that pro-EU Scottish politicians are "traitors" who care about "EU bureaucrats more than their own people".
The EU of course will not simply die from one day to the next, she still has time to respond and has a heavy arsenal of carrots to strategically deploy if need be.
Britain will get most of what she wants because she holds most of the cards. There are essentially 3 important areas that are being negotiated:
1) The nature of the trade relationship.
2) The UK's territorial waters.
3) The power of the EU to curtail British protectionist policies and set manufacturing/consumer/bank standards in Britain.
The EU is demanding access to UK waters and some power to curtail British protectionism and set standards in the UK in exchange for a free-trade deal.
The problem the EU is facing with this logic is that she has already signed very privileged variations of free-trade deals with Canada, Australia and Israel without demanding any of those things she is demanding of Britain. Another problem the EU is facing with her logic is that even though Boris and the UK argue that the UK should be free to impose protectionist policies and set its own standards in effect this is a moot point because the UK is the least protectionist in Europe by a far and wide margin and the one who has been setting both the EU's and global standards anyway. Effectively the EU has absolutely no carrots to offer to the UK and her sticks are totally hollow. Her biggest stick is for the UK to go into WTO terms which is only mildly painful(0.7% of GDP over 5 years ) and only for a very limited period of time and that only because Boris has not created the appropriate infrastructure for it and that alone should inform you of how seriously he actually takes EU threats on that.
It will not take very long until economies like Spain & Italy start crunching the numbers but they can be kept in the fold by threats of coercion a lot easier than the UK, the biggest concern will be France who is growing more and more tired of German thick-headedness. Germany has shown that she will never budge to anything, making it almost impossible to cooperate with. German consensus means everybody conceding to the German position and that becomes more and more evident with every passing decade. Remember, France left NATO a couple of decades ago for much less reasons.(sub note here: if Nato survived the loss of France during the bloody Cold War, it can easily survive the loss of Turkey)
The UK has already started a new global initiative called the D10 which will indeed take centre-stage for global relations in the following years. This will also undercut the EU's hold over her periphery who rely on the EU for support against Russia & Turkey while the EU's own foreign policy has proven that she will throw any [pro-]EU country under the bus even if it marginally affects German trade with the aggressors. Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, even the Kurds were betrayed by the EU first, politically and diplomatically. Apologists hide behind faux anti-war messages that have enabled the war destruction of all these countries while hypocritically pointing the finger at the US alone but these nonsense only go as far as the idiots in a room.
Now, we have reached a point where Germany openly & shamelessly argues that we should either reward Erdogan to entice him to stop invading official EU territory or to "punish Turkey" by not rewarding Erdogan with a brand new & fantastic trade agreement that we are persistently refusing our British brethren. Reward or let Erdogan be as he already is. Wrap your heads around that if you can. Again, apologists will hide behind custom union terms and other jargon to obfuscate matters in order to deny the very simple truth that in both cases the bottom line is that both countries want to enhance their free-trade access into the EU so that they can increase their trade balance. Turkey is being offered carrots for her outright invasion of official EU territory while Britain is being offered sticks for her aloofness.
PS: Boris will also manoeuvre Scotland into a corner when he hands Scottish fishermen 4 times the catch they had under the EU, then he will be able to claim that pro-EU Scottish politicians are "traitors" who care about "EU bureaucrats more than their own people".
The EU of course will not simply die from one day to the next, she still has time to respond and has a heavy arsenal of carrots to strategically deploy if need be.
EN EL ED EM ON
...take your common sense with you, and leave your prejudices behind...
...take your common sense with you, and leave your prejudices behind...