There's a deal now, apparently. Does anyone care to explain it?

Its best to wait a few days for the reporters to read it and tell us what’s in it. But folk are saying that it’s similar to the “Canada deal”. There is tariff and quota free access to the single market, no passporting on financial services and less fish than the Brexiters wanted. Oh and Northern Ireland has been kicked down the road.

less fish than the Brexiters wanted — Punshhh

Less fish too than the fishermen wanted. Part of the advantage of announcing the deal just before Xmas is that no-one wil be able to plough through the 2000-odd pages too thoroughly before the Commons vote. I forecast one or two unwelcome surprises for Brexiteers when it is examined. Boris says no red-lines crossed. We'll see..

Here’s the draft agreement
https://ec.europa.eu/info/european-union-and-united-kingdom-forging-new-partnership/future-partnership/draft-agreement_en

Long live the Commonwealth!

What was up with the fish? I gather the image of a sovereign nation with deep historical links to the sea and to the times when territory was most important. Fishing is a rather small venue for the British economy.

Well, at least Dublin, Frankfurt and other smaller financial centers are very happy about Brexit, if we look for those who are the winners.

From 1st of October this year:

Financial services firms operating in the U.K. have shifted about 7,500 employees and more than 1.2 trillion pounds ($1.6 trillion) of assets to the European Union ahead of Brexit -- with more likely to follow in coming weeks, according to EY.

About 400 relocations were announced in the past month alone, the consulting firm said in a report on Thursday that tracks 222 of the largest financial firms with significant operations in the U.K. Since Britain voted to leave the bloc in 2016, the finance industry has added 2,850 positions in the EU, with Dublin, Luxembourg and Frankfurt seeing the biggest gains.

That's something like 1/10 of the assets managed in the City of London. Wonder how that impacts the economy of greater London.

I agree, but most Commonwealth countries are a long way from Britain, so won’t replace a lot of the day to day trade we have with the EU.

Here is a good summary of the deal.
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/future-relationship-trade-deal/goods

Well, at least Dublin, Frankfurt and other smaller financial centers are very happy about Brexit, if we look for those who are the winners. — ssu

I think this is more to the point. Whilst trumpeting a not-as-bad-as-it-might-have-been deals for goods, the govt conveniently overlooks the 80% of UK exports that are services, not goods. The deal doesn't cover these.

Not sure about the figures re shifting assets though. Other than staff, what assets can you move overseas except cash? And with the internet nowadays cash does not really have a location - it can be shifted anywhere immediately.

Not sure about the figures re shifting assets though. — Tim3003

I would think similar. I assume that it gives just a figure in the ballpark of the amount of assets now transferred to be managed under EU jurisdiction. London was such a convenient place for asset management, you know. Likely it's about portfolio's of institutional or private investors. You see, a hedge fund has still to have a home place.

... Dublin — ssu

Yes, we'll take your jobs and money. Thanks, Nigel. :up:

Looking forward to prospering mightily. Here is an example of what businesses will have to do to trade with the EU.
https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1344691904164855816

Just came across this from A A Gill. On Facebook.

A. Gill (Sunday Times journalist and food critic) writing about Brexit before his death in Dec 2016.
“It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.”
It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”
Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.
We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.
The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.
And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.
All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.
There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.
The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.
Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty
We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.
Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”
When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
Have no doubt, this is a divorce. It’s not just business, it’s not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing we’re supposed to want back so badly, like Frodo’s ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We won’t notice it coming back, because we didn’t notice not having it in the first place.
Nine out of 10 economists say ‘remain in the EU’
You won’t wake up on June 24 and think: “Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and I’m buff with the power of sovereignty.” This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.
Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You can’t have too many wise heads and different opinions. If you’re really worried about red tape, by the way, it’s not just a European problem. We’re perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.
The first “X” I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.
No time for walls: the best of Europe, from its music and food to IM Pei’s pyramid at the Louvre, depends on an easy collision of cultures
There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians aren’t making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job — food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and that’s no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.
The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.
Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You can’t dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?
I understand that if we leave we don’t have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in.”

:D

:lol:

Somewhat red-faced, I have to admit that the saga of Covid vaccine procurement in UK and the EU has added weight to the idea that Brexit was a good thing! The slow, bureaucratic - and now bitter - efforts of the EU have made the UK's quick regulatory approval of the vaccines and swift ordering look very impressive. I'm surprised Boris hasn't made more of this - maybe he knows he has so much ground to make up in his overall handling of the pandemic that he daren't blow his own trumpet yet.

Without knowing what's in both contracts there's no way of knowing who is in the right here.

Well, I found some time to look up the contract with the EU. https://globalnews.ca/news/7607304/eu-astrazeneca-contract-vaccine/ (there's a link at the bottom, which opens a pdf which links to the contract at the bottom).

So it seems the UK production sites were in scope to deliver to the EU as well and Astrazeneca gave a representation they did not have any obligations to another party that would impede the complete fulfilment. Unfortunately, the timing and language of the delivery of the initial 300 million doses is partially blacklined and it's not clear what the latest date is for delivery.

The best reasonable efforts for astrazeneca allow for considerations of efficacy and safety. But that's not general efficacy but efficacy related to performance under the contract. Governing law is Belgian law. So you don't have a too literal interpretation and adjustments for reasonableness and equity by a judge if it would go to court. My estimation is that the representation is what screws Astrazeneca if this goes to court.

Don’t be to hasty, I could give you a list as long as your arm of the political and administrative failures of the UK government in relation to Brexit. Including a threat from Johnson to trigger article 16 two weeks ago. Don’t forget who is the villain here.

Anyway the value of the EU is as an overarching agreement of cooperation and unity among the nations of Europe. Without it Europe would still be beset with squabbles, rivalries and even wars. Imagine the breakdown in relations between Britain and the EU multiplied 27 times. This is why the EU was created and in spite of its overbearing bureaucracy, it works and is a good foundation from which Europe can grow in mutual cooperation.

There was a Daily Express (I know, but it's good) interview yesterday with a woman in exports bemoaning the amount of bureaucracy, the amount of parked up lorries, the amount of traffic, and the drop in custom on the continent. She said if she'd known it was going to be like this, she wouldn't have voted for Brexit.

:meh:

Yes trade with the EU has dropped by about half overnight. Different sectors hit as the penny drops. The fishing industry has virtually died and last week it was pig farmers and pork exports. When the sheep farmers go under in a few weeks the reckoning will start. mainstream UK media has kept quiet during January, you would think Brexit hadn’t happened.

the amount of bureaucracy.... — Kenosha Kid

Wasn’t a big part of the rationale about ‘ditching the Eurocrats’?

The fishing industry has virtually died — Punshhh

Ironic, considering the noise that was made about it throughout the negotiations. Or maybe ‘irony’ is the wrong word.

The slow, bureaucratic - and now bitter - efforts of the EU have made the UK's quick regulatory approval of the vaccines and swift ordering look very impressive. — Tim3003

Why is speed approving a new drug an "impressive" thing? I could approve anything with tremendous speed by just rubber-stamping it, would you be impressed?

I'm surprised Boris hasn't made more of this — Tim3003

I would think considering Boris’ track record on COVID to date, it would be better for him not to boast about anything connected with it.

Wasn’t a big part of the rationale about ‘ditching the Eurocrats’? — Wayfarer

Aye, I genuinely think they'd expected that ending freedom of movement would somehow only effect brown-skinned people. I mean, we're British! Surely we can do what we want!

Why is speed approving a new drug an "impressive" thing? I could approve anything with tremendous speed by just rubber-stamping it, would you be impressed? — Isaac

Given that the EU has taken a month longer to come to the same approval of the Covid drugs as the UK did, they have probably allowed thousands more deaths than if they had started vaccinating when the UK did...

Anyway the value of the EU is as an overarching agreement of cooperation and unity among the nations of Europe. Without it Europe would still be beset with squabbles, rivalries and even wars. Imagine the breakdown in relations between Britain and the EU multiplied 27 times. This is why the EU was created and in spite of its overbearing bureaucracy, it works and is a good foundation from which Europe can grow in mutual cooperation. — Punshhh

I wasnt saying the EU is a bad thing, merely that in the Covid vaccine rollout the UK has benefitted from being outside and free to move at a speed a large beaurocracy can't match.

The clumsy attempt at vaccine exit controls enacted and then removed by the EU shows it is rattled by its failures over this issue. As for the claim that all they want is transparency re vaccine exports - what happens if they do see Astra Zeneca exporting vaccine outside the EU ? Do they just ignore it? As the NI Unionists have said, for all the insistance on no hard border throughout the Brexit negotiations, as soon as the EU sees its own supply possibly affected by vaccine coming in From Eire it slams up a border. This casts Brussells in a very bad light. I wonder if Von Der Leyen will survive?

Given that the EU has taken a month longer to come to the same approval of the Covid drugs as the UK did, they have probably allowed thousands more deaths than if they had started vaccinating when the UK did... — Tim3003

Obviously. But it's only possible to say that in hindsight, so it's utterly irrelevant to the question of whether the action was right or not. Had there been a severe reaction, putting pressure on hospital services just at a time when they're already overstretched, it may have been the other way around and we'd be condemning the recklessness of the UK.

It's daft to judge the rightness of an approach which we all know was a gamble on the basis of whether that gamble paid off.

If I sent a load of people over an unsafe bridge to save money would my actions suddenly become right if, by chance, they all made it across OK?

It's daft to judge the rightness of an approach which we all know was a gamble on the basis of whether that gamble paid off. — Isaac

I don't think the UK's medicine regulators would agree with you that they took a gamble..

I don't think the UK's medicine regulators would agree with you that they took a gamble.. — Tim3003

Really. So you think they considered there to be a zero chance that an increase in the amount of time they took would have yielded anything. What reason can you suggest as to why, on purely scientific grounds, the regulators in Britain seemed to be of this view whilst the regulators from the continent not so. Is it something in the water perhaps? Something affecting the continental brain that they can't see scientific certainty of this kind?

The UK’s procurement was independent of the joint EU scheme. But this is nothing to do with Brexit, the UK would have been independent anyway if we were in the EU. The UK is more independent in this way. It was the experts in Oxford who made the vaccine in record time which presented the opportunity.

It is understandable that the EU reacted the way they did, it is an extreme global crisis. The UK government has been just as chaotic time after time. Also the reckless act of forcing the Brexit arrangements during a pandemic has destabilised relations between the UK and EU. This sort of thing will keep happening in the chaos. It was inevitable that there would be some delays in the EU vaccine procurement due to the size and number of countries involved. Within an hour of the triggering of article16 by an EU official the Irish prime minister and Von Deleyen on a conference call cancelled the action and defused the issue. Preferable to the headless chickens we have on this side of the channel.

I expect Johnson to trigger the same article any day now as the tsunami of Brexit chaos breaks. Today there are port officials in NI considering closing of ports due to aggression from couriers stuck due to NI protocol, making them unworkable. Today leaders of the fashion industry wrote to the PM saying that they are on the verge of collapse due to a total lack of preparation of any kind of agreement enabling fashion shows to go ahead, alongside a mountain of paperwork, just like the musician and artist crisis. Also the EU has just slapped a ban on tens of thousands of tonnes of shellfish which UK fishermen had to freeze, because they couldn’t ship them fresh, from being imported to the processing plants in the EU. All this chaos is going to explode at some point over the next few weeks.

Brexit dividends.