Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
AFTER A VIDEO conference call yesterday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told their chief negotiators they must work “intensively” in the coming weeks to iron out a Brexit trade deal.
Months and months have passed without a breakthrough as the deadline of 31 December looms ever closer. After that date, the transition period will end and – if there’s no trade deal between the UK and EU – there’ll effectively be a no-deal Brexit.
Such an arrangement would be economically bad for Ireland, as well as the UK, as World Trade Organization rules would apply and slap major tariffs on goods in and out of the UK from Europe.
More recently, the UK has drawn the fury of the EU for introducing legislation that would renege on the withdrawal agreement reached last year – particularly in relation to Northern Ireland.
Time is running out and, with a key EU meeting on 15 October looming, both sides will need to reach a compromise soon to ratify a deal before the end of the year.
So, what do you think? As EU and the UK enter last-ditch talks, do you think there will be a Brexit trade deal?
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
I think the British are deluded to think that Brexit will be successful. With all that’s going on at the moment they need to reevaluate the situation. Times have changed and recession has already started. I’m shocked that they haven’t asked for a twelve month extension due to Covid 19.
@Kevin Conway: Not alone that. The disquiet amongst it’s own member states. Brexit looks to only be the beginning of the end of the UK. They really cant or refuse to acknowledge this. The stubbornness of them is unbelievable
@Kevin Conway: The Dominic Cummings effect. These guys are not stupid, they have a lot riding on a no deal Brexit.
@Kevin Conway: It has a slim chance to be successful in about twenty years, but no one that voted for it is doing it for the next generation.
The reality is, that they have to agree a deal in detail across a wide range of complex issues, not some non binding broad strokes intentions to further negotiate waffle.
And therein lies the problem, the UK wants gain everything and give nothing in return and the EU can’t agree to that, without undermining entirely the point of membership…
They think that other deals will be better than access to the European market. USA have poorer quality of meat and most of their goods are manufactured in China cheaply.
Plus Boris can’t be trusted anymore
@Eddie Michael: he never could be
@Eddie Michael: You say, ‘they think they’ll do better trading elsewhere outside of Europe’. Who’s the ‘they’ here though?
Johnson & Cummings et al or the great British public?
It’s well known that countries tend to do more trade with other countries that are closer in proximity. It’s logical.
IMO, British voters were sold a pack of lies and those who sold it to them are too wealthy to care of carnage that’ll follow economically.
Cummings seems to have some utopic ideal in his head for Britain and has somehow carved out a situation where he’s got carte blanche to do it.
Eu will not compromise in Eu rules, benefits for members. Otherwise trouble with Poland, Hungary, France and other countries. There has to be a reason to be an Eu member. Existential crisis for Eu so can’t offer Eu benefits to non-Eu Uk.
@Damian Moylan: except when it’s France and Germany compromising on state aid rules. Eu rules are for countries to maintain good finances, the EU never had passed an audit on its finances.
Last Thursday I heard Ray Basset on Newstalk and he said that our politicians played it all wrong Ray believes we should have helped Britain and I am inclined to agree
@Richard Russell: we did Russell. They threw it back in our faces
@Richard Russell: Hahahahahaha
@Richard Russell: The UK were offered a Norway style deal and they refused it, the were offered a Canada+ style deal and they refused it. As Boris once said “We shall have our cake and eat it”. But all they have now are a few crumbs.
They chose to leave the EU, they weren’t thrown out. They and they alone are responsible for the mess they find themselves in.
@Richard Russell: Why is that exactly, because he was an ambassador to Canada ar known Anglophile and speaker at the Irish Freedom Party and Eurosceptic.
Our politicians have always been on the UK side in the EU but when push came to shove faciling the little Englander attitude and decisions being made in the UK.
They were not going to destroy our country backing up a country and only has ever cared for itself
How can there be a deal with this amount of fing around by the Brits. While I don’t want a border and would like a deal I think it would be foolish of the EU to sign up to one. F them out and let them clean up there own house first.
The EU can’t take the Tories’ bait and cancel negotiations because that’ll play into their narrative that the EU is to blame. But they can’t cave in either. So there’ll be some flimsy deal to patch up the most serious issues, but nothing that could reasonably be considered a trade agreement – let alone a free one.
I think Boris will roll over and take what ever deal the EU offers (with some fudging on fish quotas) selling it as a great victory. Then his ERG backers who were always in it for the tax evasion will try to defeat it in parliament. It will probably go down to the wire and they will do what ever is worst for Britain just like everything they did for the last 5 years.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I believe in the eleventh hour a compromise will be agreed and the British will request or be offered a twelve month extension and use Covid as a get out with the rebels within the Tory Party.
I agree with Edmund Murphy. I think the fight is gone out of Boris since he got the virus. I think that Internal Trading Bill backfired and gave Ursula the upper hand. The British forgot that the Germans get up an hour earlier than them every morning and she has them well boxed in at this stage. The Irish have played a blinder. We rattled the Bris from the inside, kept the Europeans focused and brought the US cavalry up on the horizon with perfect timing. Cummings is under massive pressure in Whitehall and the Commons, and Amal Clooney has caused him serious damage. The virus is widespread over there and they’re unable to cope. All in all the Brits are now looking for a way to settle this and quickly.
I think the the UK think the EU will give in and do a deal. They are pushing their needs in a big game of chicken.
But they didn’t factor in the fact the the EU is strong! In this game of brinkmanship, I reckon the UK will be the chicken at the last minute. I suspect that the UK fishing deal will be sacrificed and, at the last minute, a deal will be done. But Uk won’t come out smiling.
@Anynews43: If the EU give-in, the risk of contagion across the EU is huge. Giving-in to UK demand is not an option.
@Anynews43: the UK sold its fishing rights years ago
I can’t see how a deal can be agreed while the Internal Markets Bill is still tabled.
The bill is a clear risk to the Good Friday Agreement as it risks the need for a border on the island.
But then, I could never understand how #10 signed the Withdrawal Agreement as it’s a clear risk to the ‘United’ Kingdom… NI effectively becomes an economic union with the Republic… that’s the start of the break-up of the UK with Scotland to follow.
It’s a huge mess.
Perhaps, as some have suggested here, they go for an extension and kick the can down the road??
The UK govt signed the Withdrawal Agreement to push Brexit across the line. Because at the time calls for a 2nd referendum were gathering pace. But they did negotiate the legal status of the Northern Ireland customs zone to have it subject to UK customs law, so apparently they already had the Internal Markets Bill in mind at the end of last year.
That bill, as I see it, is intended to pressure the EU into throwing Ireland under the bus. There can’t be a land border, so no deal would imply Ireland being squeezed out of the single market. The British are hoping this prospect will force the EU into giving them the FTA they want, but it doesn’t seem to be working.
@Mick Tobin: Ah now Mick, that’s a fairly outrageous claim. You honestly think #10 hatched a plan for their future with the EU that pivoted on Ireland leaving the bloc too?
It’d be an interesting discussion to kick around over a pint but I’m not buying it… if nothing else, imagine the optics It’s almost akin to serving-up Palestine to Israel… there’s no chance. Beyond no chance. Curious angle tho… :)
@Greg McGarry: No Gary, not quite pivoting on Ireland leaving the EU, but actually on using the GFA as a bargaining chip to pressure the EU into giving the British a have-cake-and-eat-it FTA.
I do actually think it was Dominic Cummings’ plan to renegotiate Theresa May’s original WA to put NI’s aligning itself with the EU under UK customs law with a view to abusing that idea in the current Internal Markets Bill controversy.
To what extent #10 actually believe that strategy can still work, well, I’ve no idea, but I do believe it was their plan to at least try and blackmail Ireland and the EU with it.
@Greg McGarry: Ireland wouldn’t be leaving the bloc under our own volition, the Tories will force the EU to protect the SM via a steady influx of non-tariffed products and substandard meat entering the bloc over the irish border. Eventually the EU will have to place checks on Irish goods as they arrive to the continent. Thus Ireland would be effectively outside the SM.
We’ll need to protect the SM right here, at the border if we want to remain members.
There will be a deal……too much pressure from big business and stakeholders…politicians will have a road to Damascus moment
There would be a deal, Bojo knows that the UK needs a deal but a lot of his base still have the notion of the great days of the past. There is a lot at stake for the UK and the Tories know it.
For EU manufacturers and exporters, Britain is too big a market for them to lose even for a short while.
It is essentially a captive market of 60 million people.
Because of the legacy of Thatchers destruction of Britain’s native manufacturing industries and their ability to exploit it’s natural resources, particularly coal and steel, it is no longer self sufficient and depends in imports of foodstuffs, clothing, energy and oil to survive.
Not only is a trade deal mutually beneficial, for Britain in particular it is essential.
@Garry Coll: They wont lose the market they may see loses but they have been worked into the plan. A lot of the UK manufacturing industry, the car makers particularly, rely on EU made parts and that does not bode well for them. Engines gearboxes etc.
As you say for the UK it is essential and that puts them in the weaker position. The EU have the better cards and are fed up with the BS for the UK and its politicians.
@Gary Kearney:
That was part of what I was trying to say Gary, every major manufacturing plant, especially the motor factories, are all foreign owned.
Mostly by cotporations in the EU.
Almost all their public utilities are owned by conglomerates based, again, mostly in Europe, and they have to import 80% of the gas, oil, coal and electricity that keeps the lights on, and homes, hospitals, factories and other workplaces heated.
The manufacturing plants are there because their owners have been bribed to locate and stay in the UK, and exist at the whim of boardrooms around Europe and the world, Britain has no control of it’s own fate.
Leaving without a trade deal could conceivably see parts of the country starve and freeze if the winter us particularly bad.
I think BJ will fudge one at this stage. Itll be the same deal, but he will rebrand it as something completely different and claim a glorious victory against those krauts (no one else….just the Germans)
I love the way that so many people didn’t vote “not sure” despite the outcome being completely unknowable without time travel. Classic Dunning-Kruger.
@Hundredth : you’d be right if the question was ‘will there be’ but it wasn’t, it asked do people THINK there will be an agreement. Oh and by the way it wouldn’t allow me post using your full username.
Of course there will be a deal. Far too many egos at stake to go down in history as diplomatic negociating failures…..
@Peter B: BoJo is not afraid of failure (see his handling of the pandemic and breaking the law).
@Peter B: ‘Failure’ is not telling the EU to F off in the little world occupied by Cummings & Bojo.
Boris Johnson wants a no deal brexit he has always wanted a no deal brexit and more importantly, his business palls like Jacob Reese Mogg want a no deal brexit. It’s just now they’re having second thoughts with covid 19 etc!
Brits will get what they want nothing surer.
Yawwwwwnnn
Yes, there will. Boris now preparing for Irish Sea border. Resurrecting the crazy talk about a bridge between NI and Scotland is just the preamble to throwing the DUP under the bus….
Will be a COVID 12 month suspension of Brexit and during that time the whole thing will be shelved.
@Mark: it can’t be shelved because they’ve already left.
I might be wrong but i think Jonathan will use all his card to avoid deal
Probably by December, but unlikely any sooner than that.
have your say