So we blinked...

[Workingman]

The Divorce Bill could now be £40bn after a Cabinet meeting tonight and the ECJ can have some roll in the rights of EU citizens in the UK post Brexit... this will get trade talks moving.

This is not media spin, it is reportedly what was discussed in No 10 today.

We also discover that the Electoral Commission is looking into two Leave payments and submissions from Vote Leave Limited and Veterans for Britain. The pro Brexit campaign is said to have paid £625,000 to clear bills by a student for his work - that's some student bill.They are concerned that both campaigns broke the $700,000 campaign rule

We also learn that the EMA (European Medicines Agency) and the EBA (European Banking Authority) are going to move post Brexit to Amsterdam and Paris. The decision has been made and will happen... Low estimates are that 2,000 direct jobs will go, the peripheral job numbers are unknown.

It is all going so well.

[Suff]

Well 40bn is still well short of the €60 - €100 billion the EU really want.

However did you read the part where that offer can be rescinded if the trade deal is not worth it??

As for EU agencies leaving the UK after Brexit?? Duh, they are EU agencies and we won't be in the EU. That one is a given.

I don't like them caving, but this is a reality of a hung parliament. People who care more for their ideology than the UK get a much bigger say..

[cromwell]

Whatever will be will be.
What I wouldn't like to see is the ECJ having any role in this country.
Also I would not like to see the EU take the £40 billion (although I don't think they will, they will want more) and then stitch us up on the trade deal.

[medsec222]

We voted out so I think we should just walk away without trying to negotiate a deal. If the EU want to negotiate post-Brexit for an arrangement which will be suit both parties then so be it. I am fed up with all the shillyshallying around. It wouldn't be so bad if both sides were prepared to be fair, but I have every confidence that the EU will try and shaft us

[Suff]

meds, if you replace will try and shafts us with are shafting us, I'd go with that.

Leaving with no deal is viable but most Brexiteers don't want to foot the cost.

Personally I would be happy with hard Brexit to focus the EU, but I have no illusions that most people in the UK would be willing to take the hit in order to get a better deal in the long run.

[Workingman]

How, exactly, are WE being shafted?

WE held a fair and open binary referendum and the EU did not try to stop us. When the largest number of those who voted decided to leave it was accepted that WE would leave, the EU did not challenge us. When WE invoked A50, at a time of OUR choosing, the EU did not send it back. The problems WE are now going through are largely of OUR making.

Way back in 2014, long before the format and date of the referendum were known, WE had signed up to the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) as members of the EU. Those responsibilities run until 2020 and the next EU budget. Some, such as pension payments to UK MEPs and UK staff working for the EU, will go on long after, but will gradually get less as people die off. This list of our responsibilities is of 'known, knowns' and will be similar for both sides.... more later.

If we now leap forward to the invoking of A50 WE can see how the above has played against us. Had we held A50 back till about May (I think) 2020 our responsibilities to the EU, apart from the pensions, would end at about the same time as we leave, negating a large part of this Divorce Bill malarkey. We could then have taken on the pensions payments without the need to funnel the money through the EU. All that would be left is the legality, or otherwise, of our debt to the likes of CFP and CAP and environmental projects running beyond 2020.

The irony of where we are now goes back to Autumn last year when 'spurts on both sides of the Channel were coming up with estimates of what the size of the Divorce Bill would be if we invoked A50 on (pick a date). They ranged from something like £17bn to £75bn, the £100bn picked out of nowhere came much later: a rough average would be £46bn. Yesterday we learned that ministers had come to an agreement to pay £40bn ish. Had we stumped that sort of money up during the summer we could be well on our way to a trade deal by now.

FOM and the role of the ECJ having some role in looking after their interests during any implementation period is almost sorted. One suggestion is for a tribunal of the ECJ and the UK Supreme Court. The NI border problem will also be resolved. I read some time ago that it would be technologically monitored for flows of goods with 'customs checks' being done by bills of lading and manifests at source. The only likely visible sign of a 'hard border' will be ANPR and CCTV cameras at crossing points. I have also seen work being done on digital tachographs with GPS, active RFID transponder/receiver, route taken, start and stop times, vehicle health etc. and all monitored in real time. Only politicians are making a big thing of the border, and then only for political point scoring.

[Kaz]

How, exactly, are WE being shafted?
.

Oh we are! Just not by the EU

[Suff]

Let me see. Where do I start. I know, when we joined the EEC and they insisted that we, proportionately, paid more than any other country in the EEC. That little bit of shafting would still be going if it were not for the Thatcher government.

Every single review of budgets and payments in the EU had a component which was designed, solely to screw the UK rebate.

Every single funding request which was approved by the EU, had a rider on it that a large chunk of the money came out of the UK rebate. Meaning that every other country in the EU could get funding form the EU, but the UK d to fund the largest share itself until the rebate was used up, then the EU would der funding UK requests.

THAT is just the money side.

On the side of directives and regulations, the UK has been shafting itself for decades. It is called obeying the law. Something 50% of the EU states find to be a thing which is negotiable.

It has long been recognised that the only way that the EU can get directives through which are damaging to the UK is to use QMV. A somewhat double edged sword they are going to have to live with when we leave.

You think we are not being shafted right now? There is a very VERY good reason why the EU is demanding a fully binding commitment on paying the next decades larceny payments NOW. Because the second we commit ourselves they are going to tell us how we're going to have a WONDERFUL deal. Where the EU has 0% tariff access to the things they want to sell UK and the UK has tariff barriers similar to CETA for the goods we sell to the EU.

There will be no trade talks in December because the EU won't accept the rider on the UK offer, that our 40bn is contingent on a good trade deal.

The people who are shafting the UK, inside the UK today, are those who insist we kneel down to these EU demands and beg.

Of course it will all get twisted up, but the short version is this. The less we give the EU, the better it will be for the UK in the long run.

Or we can let ourselves be shafted.

[AliasAggers]

We voted out so I think we should just walk away without trying to negotiate a deal.
If the EU want to negotiate post-Brexit for an arrangement which will be suit both parties then so be it.
I am fed up with all the shillyshallying around. It wouldn't be so bad if both sides were prepared to be fair,
but I have every confidence that the EU will try and shaft us

Those are my sentiments exactly, Medsec.

[cromwell]

Now we are getting that the Irish government will block any trade deal even if we pay the divorce bill, if the NI border solution isn't fixed to their satisfaction.
It would have been better for us never to have joined.