No body is lying here - your are suggesting that you German friends will be laughing - don't see much laughing going on in Brussels. If it weren't for our own MPs including our own Speaker siding with Europe against their own country their would be a lot more glum faces in Europe. The UK leaving is a huge issue for the EU - you and you relatives might think its a laughing matter, I doubt Tusk/Barnier/Jonkers/Merkel etc are laughing.

You have been named and shamed so life is too short to go through hundreds of pages to pander to your over inflated ego.

Why do you insist on portraying other people who want what is best for their country as traitors? Why do you insist on portraying our peaceful neighbours as an enemy, to be hated and feared?
What kind of person speaks like that? What kind of person [ithinks [/ilike that?

Why did Macron announce that the May deal would give the EU "tremendous leverage" against the UK within hours of the deal being struck? Not very friendly and peaceful IMO. And what is best for our country is not necessarily what people like Blair and Bercow think.

Tut, tut. My relatives in Germany are bloody furious. They much prefer a peaceful, co-operative Europe to the one some of them experienced. There is also the small matter of how the British ones amongst them who travel to a neighbouring EU country every day for work are going to get on. Or move backwards & forwards to the UK. What they will laugh at, & won't miss the irony, is an ignorant xenophobe quoting factless cliches from a newspaper who supported the Nazi's in the 30s

50% aren't, 50% are.

I agree about - she didn't want to leave and soon took over from Davies when it looked like he might be making progress towards a deal. Everything May touched was a disaster - the Foreign Office, the 2017 GE, the Brexit negotiations she was one of the worst if not the worst ministers we have ever had.

Everyone said including Cameron if we leave it will be on WTO terms - nobody could be under illusions that that wasn't the case. No deal is better than a bad deal etc.

How many times has the IFS made predictions that have actually been accurate? Are they basing their predictions on Yellowhammer or on the latest situation - even the BOE have reduced downwards the impact of no deal.

It is obvious that their will be short term impacts - given the likes of Germany are already in recession the impact of pound euro may not be be as bad as initially thought - who knows.

Let's be fair compared to the monies Labour is going to borrow need to buy all the utilities/trains etc the no deal impact whilst large will pale into insignificance by comparison.

The Good Friday agreement is being used as if Ireland will become another Syria - more people are getting killed in London than ever were in Ireland 3,500 people died over a 32 year period so 100 a year 2 a week is that really worth negatively impacting 60m people for? Lets get some perspective here - this is yet another blocking mechanism to stop Brexit.

After all of your "rant", you are basically saying "sod the people in N. Ireland" and if Brexit trashes the Good Friday Agreement, something that EVERYONE has said they wont do, it's tough.
Do you not think that it may have been better to first of all, realise that there may be a problem in Ireland, before making wild fantasy promises about just how easy all of this was going to be.
You create numbers about people being killed in London but, these are not quite the same as the sectarian killings of the 70's and 80's are they.

Desperate is the word that best describes your current position so, at least you have something in common with our Prime Minister.
Fag packet ideas instead of workable solutions doesn't help any of us.

Gambling with all of our futures is just bloody ridiculous and even if/when we leave, there will still need to be a close trading relationship (for both sides), which will mean that as suppliers into the EU, we will still have to comply with much of their legislation.

I've got an old empty packet of Embassy no 6 somewhere and I'll send you it, just in case you need to scribble down your ideas on solving this fiasco.

David Davis flushed his reputation down the toilet with remarkable brio, I can’t believe anybody would want to recruit him to their argument! Mind you Boris Johnson is Prime Minister, so clearly opinions vary. I accept that Cameron may have said that about the WTO, but it wasn’t something I expected. On the other side, it is easy enough to find footage of Farage lauding the success of Norway as an example of what can be achieved outside the EU (with huge amounts of gas and oil, and a tiny population, obviously).

Given that many of us see Brexit itself as negatively impacting the UK, the hypothetical deaths of 2 people a week in Northern Ireland (or Brighton, Birmingham, Warrington etc.) does seem a high price to pay. The murder rate in London is slightly higher, per week. But not by head of population. The population of London is about 5 times that of Northern Ireland.

Also, assuming we’re cool with a few violent deaths here or there, the economic impact of a return to the Troubles would be significant.

ATEOTD, killings are the responsibility of the killers. But this is a real issue - the UK isn’t the only place where people feel strongly about national identity, sovereignty and real/perceived wrongs done to them by people from across a few miles of salt water.

Didn't he also say that WTO was the absolute worst case scenario?

I'm reasonably up to date with politics but have to admit to not having much of a clue of the implications or requirements of WTO. I would say the vast majority of the population know even less than that.

A pretty well written Brexit-perspective on what Remain said about access to the single market and about the customs union, from last year: https://brexitcentral.com/knew-voting-j ... ade-clear/

A pretty well written Brexit-perspective on what Remain said about access to the single market and about the customs union, from last year: https://brexitcentral.com/knew-voting-j ... ade-clear/

And there we have it folks. The Brexiteers have gone so utterly insane in support of their extremist ideology that they've started rationalising Brexit in terms of how many people need to die before it starts to look like bad idea.

They have truly gone down the rabbit hole.

(out of interest, Brexiteers, if 100 people a year were being killed in the UK by radical Islamic terrorists would you have the same view that any attempts to stop it weren't worth "negatively impacting 60m people for?"icon_wink.gif

Lad is on a wind up, surely?

The 100 deaths a year thing Sal, that was a pee take yeah?

What’d be the Remain equivalent? ‘As long as denying the 17.4 million leads to no more than 14 new Tommy Robinsons and 6 new Katie Hopkins...’?

Anyway, Varadkar and Johnson seem to have maybe made a little progress at least.

Big changes in language from the EU in the last few days, from frantic to positive.

Boris is telling them over and over, in no uncertain terms, that we are leaving in 3 weeks, deal or not deal. They believe him, and they are scared.

I've always maintained the EU will blink at the last moment [i(unless a no-deal is impossible)[/i. They simply cannot be seen to fail, resulting in an unavoidable hardening of the border in Ireland and damaging Ireland enormously economically, as well as innumerable European businesses. The EU can't negotiate a deal to protect it's members and economy? Not a good look.

In truth Varadkar has lost the plot. He approached this entirely the wrong way. He should have aligned his interests with the UK for obvious reasons, instead he chose to take the 'us vs them' approach and view the UK as the opposition rather than willing partners. He placed his bets on the UK revoking A50, a 2nd referendum or giving in to a very soft, EU-driven Brexit. Boris's hard line is scaring him witless and he know he has to move.

Meanwhile the UK is gambling on the deadline. I don't actually think Boris is necessarily bothered whether the current deal is accepted or not, so legally speaking we would be out on 31st Oct unless Boris writes to the EU and they agree an extension. There are, apparently, ways around that, which is why you're seeing hints of a mixture of EU compromise and panic. Mark my words, we will see increasingly provocative and probably insulting rhetoric up until the deadline but I think they'll continue to offer small concessions.

The answer depends on what you personally define as 'best' and 'country'.

Is 'best' a gradual erosion of the nation state, a weakening of borders, handing over many of your hard-fought democratic freedoms to a body that - despite their most earnest protestations - is about as democratic as the USSR was, [iwhere it matters[/i.

Do you define the nation-state as a vague and outdated concept fit to be frittered away or something you identify with and cherish? Do you care if the ultimate goal is totally centralised power in Brussels? Do you identify as English, British or European first?

You woke Europhiles probably associate patriotism with racism and xenophobia. Yet I bet you mumble the national anthem at internationals. Would you sing the Anthem of Europe? Why the EU thinks it needs an anthem at all should be a stark indicator of where it's heading.

Our neighbours may be peaceful, but that doesn't mean they have our best interests at heart. Indeed, much of the language they use - and if you've seen the Brexit Behind Closed Doors documentary you'll agree - is often anything but friendly. I can't necessarily blame them for that right now, but in fact this behaviour goes back decades to when De Gaulle did everything he could to block our entry to the Common Market, and has been repeated over the years.

The UK has never been the most beloved of European nations. We're too rebellious, too outspoken and in their eyes uncultured, unsophisticated and arrogant (an hilarious accusation coming from the French, Germanics, Italians & Scandies). And to be fair we're obnoxious drunken s on holiday. This grotty little island has punched above its weight for hundreds of years often to the detriment of our European neighbours and while there's curious fondness for our sense of humour it's more in the nature of those uncouth cousins you tolerate but tend not to invite to family gatherings.