Irish Exporters Association calls on all parties to prevent a no-deal Brexit scenario (21.09.2018)

Dublin, 21st September 2018, The Irish Exporters Association (IEA) acknowledges, with great concern, UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s statement on the current state of play of negotiations on the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. To ensure that Irish exporters continue to be able to trade with the UK as frictionless as possible after 29th March 2019, we call on all negotiating parties to prevent a no-deal scenario.

On Mrs May’s statement, Simon McKeever, Chief Executive Officer of the Irish Exporters Association commented: “The Irish exporting industry heavily relies on our long-standing strong and open trading relationship with the United Kingdom. The UK remains one of our largest trading partners, source of investment and provides a vital land bridge for Irish exports to the European continent.

We have always known that these negotiations would be tough, complicated and ongoing until the final straight. With a final deal required within the next 4 – 6 weeks, negotiations have reached an impasse – significantly increasing the chances of the EU and UK missing their negotiating deadlines. In addition, the ongoing political rhetoric and uncertainty in the UK, is further increasing fears whether a deal can be reached, and, even if a deal were to be reached if it could pass in the House of Commons.

As the voice of the Irish exporting industry, we call on all negotiating parties to reach an ambitious, comprehensive and legally enforceable Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future relationship in the remaining weeks to provide businesses with certainty. For that, the transition period agreed to earlier this year is vital.

In light of the increasing risk of a disorderly exit, we welcome the Irish Government and EU’s no-deal preparations. In particular, we welcome the announcement for hiring up to 1000 additional personnel to facilitate the expected increase in customs requirements.”

Statement by President Donald Tusk on the Brexit negotiations (21.09.2018)

Brexit: Theresa May is playing a game she cannot win!

Anything which fails to respect the referendum or which effectively divides our country in two would be a bad deal and I have always said no deal is better than a bad deal” – Theresa May (21.09.2018).

What today’s statement or speech from Prime Minister Theresa May has revealed is that the Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in coalition cannot be able to configure an agreement, which all parts of the Tories, even all in the coalition combined are agreeing on putting forward. As the European Research Group (ERG) of MPs are blocking several ideas, while the DUP has their ideas and the PM has others. That is why the speech of her is revealing this. This has been shown over time, as the United Kingdom has simplified the implicated criteria without working within the framework of the revoking Article 50 from the European Union. All of that is a graceful disaster.

However, what the speech is showing, is lack of skill, lack of conduct and even lack of negotiating tactics within own realm, before meeting the counter-party of the EU. Which will be much harder to please, considering they have Union Protocol to consider and not loose face for the current Member State and keep the Single Market intact. Therefore, UK could have played this smarter, if they thought it through, they we’re invaluable asset and a needed force within EU, but now they are a fringe state in a limbo.

The proof is when the PM stated this:

First, there are over 3 million EU citizens living in the UK who will be understandably worried about what the outcome of yesterday’s summit means for their future. I want to be clear with you that even in the event of no deal your rights will be protected. You are our friends, our neighbours, our colleagues. We want you to stay. Second, I want to reassure the people of Northern Ireland that in the event of no deal we will do everything in our power to prevent a return to a hard border” (Theresa May, 21.09.2018).

It’s like the Piccadilly Line straight to heaven when it comes to this woman. You just get your Oyster Card and rumble into the pearly gates. Because, the way she puts things forward, is blatantly arrogant and without real concern. Since, if she really feared the hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. She would actually have ensured that in the negotiations, as the preliminary agreement with the EU said. Which was the basis for all further negotiating. However, she really tries to play high stakes and hopes for reward, but right now she is just loosing.

What is worse is that she would not lose alone at this point, because she is playing with a house of cards. The PM is supposed to bridge the gap, but instead she asks the workers to make it further between the shores of Calais and Folkestone. If it was PM orders, she would have bombed the tunnel and ordered the HM Government to make ferries available. Because the deal of trade and movement between the EU and UK cannot cease to function in this manner. That is initially what it sounds like. That is what Europe is hearing and achieving out of this. If the Industry and the British exporters hear her, they should be worried about the warehouses and the stocks, as the piles should be shipped out before a no-deal. To ensure funds for the rainy-days of no-deal bad-trading agreements and longer time Customs Arrangement with WTO standards between EU and the UK. It is like she doesn’t care for the working places of the people who needs this. That is really magical indifference.

So, it is like the PM are playing a game she cannot win, as she either loses support within the Tories, DUP or with the EU Standards. Peace.

Dominic Raab MP letter to Keir Starmer MP on wanting clarification on Labour’s Brexit Policy (19.09.2018)

The Hypocrisy of Theresa May: Could gamble a snap election for personal gain, but not a Brexit referendum 2.0?

Just as the Conservative won a majority in the General Election of 2015, as David Cameron stepped down has his gamble on the Brexit Referendum in 2016. That is when the battle for the leadership of the Conservative government happen. Which was won by Theresa May, who has since been the Prime Minister and has put all her stakes in the basket of Brexit. Without delivering anything promising or anything positive for the future. The British and the Her Majesty’s Government haven’t become stronger, as she had a moment of clarity while on a trip in Wales in 2017, which lead to a snap-election the same year. That she called just two years into the term of the Representatives at the Parliament. However, she lost her majority on the 8th June 2017 election, which made a coalition with the Northern Irish Political Party – Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Therefore, what she called out today, is hypocrisy!

Let me show you briefly, because she is back-tracking and misusing words… as she could call an election for possible gains of her party, which would help the Conservative in the negotiations with the European Union as they we’re withdrawing. However, that back-fired. That is why she will not call an election now. As she is afraid of losing for a second time in two years.

May had a moment of clarity in 2017:

Asked in an interview with ITV News later if there was a ‘moment’ when she changed her mind, Mrs May said: ‘As we were going through the Article 50 process the opposition attempts to jeopardise or frustrate the process in future became clearer. ‘Before Easter I spent a few days walking in Wales with my husband and thought about this long and hard. ‘I came to the decision that to provide that stability and certainty for the future this was the way to do it, to have an election. ‘I trust the British people’” (Daily Mail – ‘How only a handful of Cabinet colleagues knew about May’s June 8th election bombshell – after she reached ‘moment of clarity’ during holiday in Wales’ 18.04.2017, link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4420886/Theresa-calls-General-Election-June-8.html).

Call the same a betrayal in 2018:

But the PM adds: “We would get through it and go on to thrive.” She goes on to insist in her article that her government will not back another vote. “In the summer of 2016, millions came out to have their say,” she writes. “In many cases for the first time in decades, they trusted that their vote would count; that after years of feeling ignored by politics, their voices would be heard. “To ask the question all over again would be a gross betrayal of our democracy – and a betrayal of that trust.” (BBC News – ‘Brexit: May vows no compromise with EU on Brexit plan’ 02.09.2018, link: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-45385421).

I have a hard time to take her seriously, as she could call a General Elections after her takeover and lose majority in 2017, as the Brexit loomed on the Tories. Now, that the negotiations are going badly and the deals are becoming more damaging to the United Kingdom. Therefore, people are seeing the stats and reality of not being a member-state and the possible hardships of being outside. Now she wants the public to be respected, but their will wasn’t that endangered when she promised a strong and stable government in 2017, as she wanted to add majority on the David Cameron victory of 2015. However, that back-fired as we know.

That is why I have a hard time seeing the betrayal of the British people, when she has already called for snap-election herself, only months into her role as Prime Minister post-Cameron. Now, she is in a pickle and worried about the possible result. Than, it is an issue to call a new election or new polls. That is double standard. She will only call election when she thinks her party and her role can benefit. But not what is the best for the British in total. That is political back-stabbing to the public. Brexit are looking and looming, becoming more hazardous. Instead of trying to back-peddle and secure the future, she rather risk the status and the industries as she keeps power. That will be the legacy.

She could call an election as a moment of clarity on vacation in Wales. Maybe the Tories should send her to the mountains of Wales again. So, that she could get a new moment with her husband and maybe see a more favorable outcome. She might lose the months of negotiations with Brussels and possible damage of face, but that cannot be worse than how she danced in South Africa or Kenya, anyway. We know that. She knows that. Peace.

A Rebuttal to Friedman: There is no “lid on Africa” also addressing his misconception on Migration!

The Cambridge Dictionary defines “taking the lid off” as: “to cause something bad that was previously kept secret to be known by the public” (Cambridge Dictionary, Cambridge University Press). A writer like Thomas L. Friedman in the New York times should know this perfectly well, as he used this term in his column ‘ Opinion Can I Ruin Your Dinner Party?’ published on the 7th August 2018. This is the reason for why I writing this. Because of two paragraphs that needs to be addressed, I will first let his words speak, before showing what the EU says about the matter. As a European, the American writer doesn’t make sense.

The key part was:

Toppling Qaddafi without building a new order may go down as the single dumbest action the NATO alliance ever took. It took the lid off Africa, leading to some 600,000 asylum seekers and illegal migrants flocking to Italy’s shores in recent years, with 300,000 staying there and the rest filtering into other E.U. countries. This has created wrangles within the bloc over who should absorb how many migrants and has spawned nationalist-populist backlashes in almost every E.U. country” (Thomas L. Friedman – ‘Opinion Can I Ruin Your Dinner Party?’ 07.08.2018 link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/opinion/can-i-ruin-your-dinner-party.html).

I don’t know in which world Friedman is residing, but the words of the EU, Zelesa and MPC are clearly not opening any jars of uncertainty. Yes, there been a growing amount of illegal and non-asylum seekers through the United Nations or Bilateral Organizations, which they have come from War-Zones as in the past. As the EU Member States takes their quota of refugees and asylum-seekers as a global task of helping people in need, as that cannot happen where they are or they are living in temporary shelters awaiting hopefully a helpful nation to become their guardian. However, no else is saying it is NATO fault or even the fall Qaddafi, which is the reason for crossing across the Mediterranean sea. There is more porous borders as well as the conflict in the Sahel Region that has continued. These are all reasons for the transport of refugees from the rest of the Sub-Saharan Africa. However, there was never a lid to be taken of the continent.

The EU Science Hub states:

Between 2008 and 2016, the total annual number of African migrants remained stable. However, legal immigration was declining in this period, while the number of irregular arrivals and asylum claims of Africans increased. Irregular arrivals of Africans via the Mediterranean started to decline again in 2017.In Europe, the majority of African immigrants come from North Africa, with most people making the move to reunite with family members already settled in a European country” (EU Science Hub – ‘New perspectives on African migration’ 01.07.2018 link: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/new-perspectives-african-migration).

EU Project opened more nations for Immigration:

Clearly, African immigration to Europe was marked by increasing diversification both in the number of countries sending and receiving the immigrants. Particularly remarkable was the emergence of the southern European countries, principally Italy, Portugal, and Spain, themselves longstanding emigration countries, as immigration countries. This was as much a product of the improving economic fortunes in these countries and their integration into the prosperity and political sphere of Western Europe as it was of mounting immigration pressures on their borders to the east and the south. Enclosed in a new European transnational space, new identities of ethnicity and citizenship began to emerge that entailed creating both symbolic and material borders to keep away or distinguish the immigrants. The Europeanization of these countries and the rebordering of the Mediterranean that it implied required the separation and stigmatization ofimmigrants from the global South (Suarez-Navaz, 1997; Royo, 2005)” (Paul Tiyambe Zeleza – ‘Africa ‘s Contemporary Global Migrations: Patterns, Perils, and Possibilities’ P: 39, June 2010).

Migration Profile – Libya:

Despite Libya being, first and foremost, a country of immigration, the deterioration of immigrants’ conditions in the country has also made it an important country for transit migration and particularly for the many migrants trying to reach Malta and the Italian Isle of Lampedusa As to emigration patterns, Libya has never recorded significant outward migration flows. However, during the 2011 unrest, there was an upsurge of Libyan nationals fleeing the country. According, though, to the authorities in neighbouring countries, the great majority are believed to already have returned to Libya” (…) “To conclude, two considerations can be made about the impact of the Libyan crisis on international migration movements. On the one hand, Sub Saharan nationals were without any doubt the people most at risk, both in Libya and at the borders (where repatriation activities led to an impasse). On the other hand, the capacity of neighbouring African countries to manage the crisis in terms of the reception of migrants was remarkable. (IOM, 2012)” (Migration Policy Center – ‘MPC – MIGRATION PROFILE Libya, June 2013).

As we can really see, is that what Friedman is saying is wrong. The African Migration to Europe has lasted long. That is not new and has usually followed to the previous Colonizers of the ones migrating. However, with the change of he European Union, has changed that pattern, but not opened up something. The Libyan Crisis and fall of Qaddafi have had is effect. However, the results by the EU and the IOM are stating not as bad as previously stated. Also that the “illegal” are rising, but less of the direct asylum-seekers, meaning their means and ways has changed, but the end-game are more of the same. They are still fleeing from crisis and wars in Sub-Saharan Africa, but they doing so by the shores of Northern Africa crossing into EU Countries.

So, the taking the lid off by invading and deposing Qaddafi seems like far-fetched. That is a lie, also a relic of the past, as Friedman sounds like they opened a box with a box-opener. This was simply done with getting rid of one dictator. He seems like that is the reason for the whole transit in Libya, not the whole conflict within the continent and neither the true nature of it all. As people are doing whatever they can to get shelter and hope for the future, because the International Community isn’t reacting or caring about the oppression in their nations. They are forgotten and know they will not get help, as the Western Powers are boasting these leaders who oppress and then people want to flee from these shores.

No lid was taken, it was never a lid there to begin with? Are there a lid that was opened so that United States could have space for all the slaves in the past? Or is there a lid taken of the brain of Trump? We all, the rest of the world really want to know.

Enough of this nonsense. Peace.

Brexit: Lord Adonis letter to Prime Minister Theresa May – “Northern Ireland – Urgent Action needed” (27.07.2018)

Brexit: A “No Deal” will be hurtful to the UK!

Surprise, Surprise, not really though, but for someone this will be insights into an open field May-Day, and we are not talking strong and stable Conservative Party government. No, we are talking May Day, as in all aboard a ship sailing in stormy waters without any significant captain into the abyss. Theresa May, if she goes for the No-Deal with the European Union, she is risking a lot and will not gain much for the Kingdom, except for keeping the Brexiteers on her side and if that is worth it is another bargain.

Today, the European Commission published ‘Preparing for the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union on 30 March 2019’, which is various amount of document saying what will happen, other than the notices of withdrawal, which they have made for all types industries and stakeholders within the Union. Today, they have unleashed documents showing possible outcomes if the negotiations fails.

What is most striking was ‘Main consequences of scenario 2: withdrawal on 30 March 2019 without a withdrawal agreement’, where the arch nemesis of possible soft transition from being a member state to become a third country to Union appear. The results are devastating at least and at best a big blow to everyone who thought it would be genuine good idea to do it in that way.

First assessment as a third country, the EU Laws Cease to apply in the United Kingdom, which is cool in itself and gives, added freedom as a sovereign. The rocks starts to hit the boat, when the second assessment hits, that is “Citizens: There would be no specific arrangement in place for EU citizens in the United Kingdom, or for UK citizens in the European Union”. Meaning, there are no plan or any legal framework for how to take of or, if the UK citizens in the EU has to leave or the EU citizens has to leave as well. This is putting many lives of expats into limbo in the EU, but also in the UK.

The Third assessment by the EU concerning a no deal is: “The European Union must apply its regulation and tariffs at borders with the United Kingdom as a third country, including checks and controls for customs, sanitary and phytosanitary standards and verification of compliance with EU norms. Transport between the United Kingdom and the European Union would be severely impacted. Customs, sanitary and phytosanitary controls at borders could cause significant delays, e.g. in road transport, and difficulties for ports”. Therefore, it is not like this will frictionless either, the EU will with all means put up a hard-border with checkpoints, to secure the transit of goods, it will be like in the past and the duty on goods will appear. The goods will be going through a massive check compared today and prolong the travel-time of the goods going into the Union. In addition, it will also be more costly, be more time consuming and add costs to the consumers, as the taxes on the products will come in the aftermath too.

The Fourth assessment: “Trade and regulatory issues: The United Kingdom becomes a third country whose relations with the European Union would be governed by general international public law, including rules of the World Trade Organisation. In particular, in heavily regulated sectors, this would represent a significant drawback compared to the current level of market integration”. This is yet another blowback, as the financial businesses and banking industry, will be left behind, not only the goods transiting to the Union, but all business will be left with WTO rules and tariffs as a third country, they will not have specialized agreements or securing trade between the Union and UK. This will surely hit industry, financial inclusion and all other cross-border businesses there are today between the parties, this will surely be costly and make it less accessible for Union Companies to access UK and vice versa.

The fifth assessment: “Negotiations with the United Kingdom: Depending on the circumstances leading to the withdrawal without an agreement, the EU may wish to enter into negotiations with the United Kingdom as a third country”. This is implying that the UK will have to configure their deals with Union and will come as a third country into negotiations, as they are outside and will not have benefits of previous membership. This meaning that they will come to Brussels as an outsider. They are really left with nothing and will start fresh negotiations without any pre-empty strikes or significant advantage, as they are not involved internally within the Union or based on the principals of the Union as whole.

The sixth assessment: “EU funding: UK entities would cease to be eligible as Union entities for the purpose of receiving EU grants and participating in EU procurement procedures. Unless otherwise provided for by the legal provisions in force, candidates or tenderers from the United Kingdom could be rejected”. This is showing the first cuts of funding and spending directly as a third country, as the Union funding and grants dries up. Therefore, the programs and the sudden closure of these will hit the UK. The collective spending on UK will stop and this will be costly for the UK. The UK will also not pay into these funds as a Member State, but will lose vital parts by the end of the membership.

Therefore, nothing good comes out of the no-deal. No securities of the citizens, goods will hectic and time consuming, the borders will be hard and the transit will take more time, the WTO laws put into effect and the trade regulations of free movement without tariffs will be gone, also trade in general across borders will be stifled. The final negotiations will be in another narrative, than today as the measures will be for a third country and not former member. The last issue that funding will cease, as much as the legal framework of the Union will stop too. There are little good news in this, other than becoming a sovereign, but all alone, which loose the benefits of today and have to pay a lot to gain anything positive in the future. Which is all but uncertain, the EU puts barriers, but as their protocol for a third country, the Tories cannot pick and mix. Even as they are putting legislation in, who knows how this will hit.

But this should be a reality check for those who says “No-Deal” is a no problem, because the EU certainly have protocols they will follow and the consequences are dire. Peace.

Brexit: Darren Jones MP letter to the members of House of Commons asking for a Public Inquires into the Brexit Referendum (17.07.2018)

Brexit: Scott Mann MP Resignation Letter as PPS to the Treasury (16.07.2018)