Brexit: Ireland's Idle threats

It's in the news today that Ireland is threatening to Veto any agreement to move onto post-Brexit trade talks without a guarantee that there will be a "soft" border between Southern and Northern Ireland.

First off, that threat isn't necessarily aimed at the Uk, but more towards the EU. It's their remit as to whether we have a soft border or not, not ours.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but if we leave the EU, the EEA and EFTA, then the border HAS to be a hard one.

The outcome of the referendum is that we are leving the EU. The governments's (and most of those voting to leave) stance is that we leave the control of the ECJ, which then removes the EEA option.

Which only leaves membership of EFTA as a viable option. But then by default the border is then a lot firmer than the transparent border that Southern Ireland demands.

So Ireland are demanding the impossible. Certainly without some option that bestows some unique and so-far unavailable and possibly magical status on Northern Ireland.

The other thing is that Ireland has a veto at all. I thought that qualified majority voting had taken over, so no one country had a veto. It seems that the Brexit negotiations and trade negotiations in general haven't yet caught the majority bug (conveniently for Ireland).

Just like the stupidity of the Waloons stopping the EU-Canada trade deal earlier this year. Ireland will push Brexit to a place it doesn't want to go and is unnacceptable to the leave voters.

The more Brexit gets pulled from pillar to post by all the various factions, the more a "no-deal" scenario plays out. Just like I voted for in the reerendum and were told by the remainers before voting. No soft choices, but cold, hard reality. Out of the EU, out of the customs union, out of the single market.

Out means out.

The negotiations and the setup of the European project will not allow any soft options.

It's now up to us to plan and make the very best of the completely out options.

Of course the UK and Ireland could just unilatterally decide not to have a border without EU agreement. How that pans out for Ireland is anyone's guess. Would the EU demand Ireland impose a closed border? How could they enforce it?

Budget: Rehashed Housing News as I Predicted and More Fuel on the House Price Fire

Love how a politician can stand up and rehash old news as something supposedly new and spectacular.

Stand-out amongst thise was the so-called "Oxford-Milton Keynes" corridor.Many thousands of houses promised in the budget that were announced years ago in the Bicester New Town/City scheme.

No radical plans at all and very little new news.

Stand-out amongst the new plans was more support for Help-to-Buy and tweaks on stamp duty. Neither of which actually reduce the cost of housing, but instead prop up the status quo and even fan the flames, helping to prop up unsustainable house prices and saddling first-time buyers with houses that cost lots more than they are worth.

Way to go Chancellor!

Tories "Building the Future" but with not Enough Actual Building.....

The Tories have launched a new slogan, "Building a Britain Fit for the Future", except my understanding is there isn't going to be any actual building.

Yet another wishy-washy mish-mash of rehashed, already launched policies, packaged up into something to talk about during next week's budget. Financial incentives, planning changes, but nothing concrete (if you'll excuse the pun). You can have that one for free, shadow Chancellor.

Labour need to be prepared to counter-strike and knock down each of the Tory's proposal. That means credible and detailed homework from the left to be able to deflate every one of the pumped up policies from the Conservatives.

It would also be nice if Labour put a few shots across the bows of the Tories beforehand, signalling intent to really sink their teeth into the Tories unless there are radical, substantial, new proposals to sort out the housing crisis. Tinkering at the edges or rehashing old news will. not. do.

Hopefully with a few well-placed broadsides from Labour, the Tories can be persuaded against presenting a PR campaign as a budget and get them to produce an actual policy with real targets, a real budget and demonstrable progress against those targets.

What Labour cannot do is just trot out the same old anti-Tory plattitudes, the ones that turn voters off and do nothing to change Tory policy. They have to give detailed and credible opposition and strip the veneer from the Tory plans so the voters can see the lack of detail underneath.

But given the superficiality of politics at the moment, I doubt I'll see any of the above actually happen.

One of those times you really wish you were an MP and able to give such superficial people a slap. (before it gets banned) ;-)

Back here I outlined my thoughts on housing and how the crisis should be managed. Government managed housing stock, outside the remit of local authorities needs to be started. Local authorities we all know are corrupt, with contracts going to friends that had surprisingly well-informed tenders. keeping it central (for once) seems to be the preferred option. From the planning perspective national government involvement means it's easier to quote national interest and make the planning stage eaisier. There are plenty of laws the government can invoke to build new housing, or they can quite quickly release old MOD land for building if necessary.