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The decision on whether to extend the transition period must be made by 30th June. Does it need extending?
Barnier says that the biggest obstacle is that “the EU will not agree to any future partnership that does not include a balanced and long-term agreement on fisheries” (Euractiv). If that was all then you might have imagined that a trade deal could be obtained by January 2021 so what is the problem?
The problem goes deeper. The UK wants to have a trade deal like Canada or South Korea. A deal about trade. The EU wants to bind the UK into a sort of EEA deal in return for free trade.
The EU expects that the UK will commit to keeping EU standards on social and environmental policy, as well as state aid, in return for a free trade deal with zero tariffs and quotas. In Barnier’s latest Press Release he says that the UK must agree to the supremacy of the European Court of Justice on many matters and accuses the UK of holding up negotiations because it will not accept an EEA style of agreement. Barnier even maintains that “Our free trade agreement must include an agreement on fisheries. This agreement should provide for continued, reciprocal access to markets and to waters with stable quota shares.” This cavalier attitude to the territory of the UK is shocking, how would the EU feel if every summer the British launched fleets of combine harvesters across the EU to reap their natural resources?
Barnier is basically saying that unless the UK decides not to really leave the EU it cannot have a Trade Agreement. It is clear from the Press Release that Barnier still thinks he is dealing with a broken government led by a Remainer.
Do you remember the last negotiations? Here is the EU view of what they achieved, this is a real recording taken from a documentary, fortunately the UK rejected May’s deal:
The EU is not negotiating in good faith, Barnier does not want to ease leaving the EU he wants to punish the UK. The only way the UK will achieve an unencumbered trade deal is to leave without a deal and then negotiate a deal later. The EU is, as ever, calling what it thinks is the UK’s bluff. The EU really believes that the UK will accept onerous terms rather than become independent. They think we are bluffing.
How expensive is leaving without a deal?
First of all, the coronavirus crisis has shown that the UK can manage with its major trade routes in tatters. Vital supplies can be obtained and the country can continue. Compared with coronavirus leaving the EU is a storm in a tea cup.
The prediction of Remainers for the effect of leaving the EU was roughly zero when the effect of the fake baseline is taken into account. Remain economics correspondents have been careful to hide the fact that the predictions of slower growth in UK GDP after No Deal were made by comparing rather negative predictions for what might happen in the UK economy by 2030 with a fantasy baseline that was constructed by simply drawing a straight line that projected 2015-16 growth far into the future, all the way to 2030. (See No Deal Brexit will be fine). Even with this egregious deception they could not get more than a few percent deviation in growth over twelve years. The Remain No Deal Predictions are nonsense. No economist can predict more than 2 years hence and very few can do even that.
The extension of the Transition Period is the last chance for Remainers to keep a connection with the EU. They will try everything to get an extension. They must be stopped because they will leave the UK in thrall to the EU with no possibility that we will ever sign up to the Euro and pay 2% of GDP in EU budget contributions, both of which would be demanded by the EU for re-joining. We will be in limbo, we will be subject to a negative trade deal, the UK will not be independent and the Remainers will not be able to push the UK back into the EU.
This post was originally published by the author on his personal blog: https://pol-check.blogspot.com/2020/04/extending-tarnsition-period-for-brexit.html
