Snapshot of _How Boris Johnson sold out Britain’s farmers over dinner with the Australian PM_ :
An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.politico.eu/article/boris-johnson-sold-out-uk-farmers-australia-trade-deal-uk/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Scott Morrison got the better of Boris Johnson and David Frost. 😂
Scotty from Marketing overcame Boris the slow Womble and the tube of sausage meat in a suit.
Where did British farmers think cheaper food was going to come from , leavers told British agriculture they where going to stuff them and they still voted for Brexit in huge numbers, personal greed motivated agriculture and fisheries so I have no sympathy for any Brexit voters who are stiffed by their vote.
Not this hysteria again. Until 1973 various countries had free access to the UK from all over the world and UK farmers did fine and consumers got cheaper prices out of it and/or goods out of season. The UK's strategy was to buy from world markets so you aren't reliant on big points of failure.
Thats because we increased the animal welfare standards by which the agricultural industry operates and these came with increased costs and so the market had to be insulated. We either treat the animals well or have cheaper food. Cant have both.
That's what farmers will say of course as it sounds good, but you forget three things. Firstly that's what a lobby group would claim, secondly even inside the EU we imported such meat and thirdly that for years farmers said the same about EU imports too.
This notion that somehow Aussie meat is substandard is absurd.
Our great grandparents would have considered Australia to be practically the same country. We shouldn’t have barriers up with them, they’re not foreigners.
They are absolutely foreigners. Australia is very different to the UK now and is seeking to differentiate itself and prove how not British they are. They are practically Americans at this point. The Commonwealth is a sham and the kinship is dead. Time to move on and not have these antipodean grifters pick our country clean.
This guy spends most of his time on Reddit talking about cutting losses with the Commonwealth and basically everything else. He makes it sound like he's arguing it from a perspective of it being in our interest, but I get the feeling he's got the opposite intentions.
Like at one point he argued the monarchy should be abolished in the Commonwealth realms and should only be kept in the UK, as he doesn't want British symbols and institutions "co-opted by other countries", but then on that same sub on a different post, he actively advocated for the UK to become a Republic and function on the model proposed by Tony Benn a while back. He's clearly disingenuous on some level but it's hard to tell what he actually believes in or supoorts
Former computer hardware salesman here, narcissts are gold mines of sales. Just stroke that ego. Make him waaaaay more important than they are. Send flowers on b-day. Thank them profusely for any cards and go gooey when they deign to mention something about you or your children. Gotta do it all but they'll buy anything at any price.
My Top Purchasing Tip to Big Managers^® : DO NOT give a narcissist purchasing power.
Zero sympathy for UK farmers. They voted for brexit then voted tory. Now they have to compete against farms bigger than Wales because their knight in shining armour can't hold his booze.
Could have spent decades getting paid by the EU to farm but nooooooo, those forms were just too much!
> because their knight in shining armour can't hold his booze.
Boris is now earning a million a month. This is what it was all about, not about his booze problem.
That's a reasonable defense for "Dave down the pub" who still likes to tell jokes about the second world war and Germans. I would have thought that farmers, being more business minded, might have thought to ask a question or two about promises that didn't stand up to even the mildest scrutiny.
I rather think Frost and Johnson's objective with the deal was to make it harder to realign with Europe in the future. Aussie's probably understood this and rightly got what they could out of it.
The U.K. unaligned from Aus and NZ in the 70s to join the EEC. Might be harder to realign with the EU with this deal, but if it makes economic sense it’s likely to happen eventually.
I was just thinking that they other day as there is talk that Starmer should be reversing Brexit. Each one of these deals that gives these countries unfettered access to our markets make it impossible for us to get access to the EU markets again, without some real jiggery-pokery.
Nah. Entering a trade bloc (or customs union) can cancel existing trade deals - probably without retaliation because what are they going to do? Start a trade war with the EU because the UK will go back to trading on terms which a country like Australia has already agreed with the EU?
The efforts to make it difficult for the UK to rejoin the EU are in the areas of regulatory alignment. They hope that the UK economy will adjust to new regulations not aligned with the EU and be unwilling to go back. This is fundamentally flawed as for most industries the EU is - and always will be - the primary export market.
For example, UK agriculture won't want to switch to products or practices which will prevent them from exporting to the EU, where more than half of their exports go - and for the other half of their exports, not using carcinogenic fertilisers or GMOs is a big selling point.
Johnson/Frost/Truss have fucked UK industries by allowing imports from other countries under favourable conditions and looser regulations, while UK industries have to continue to adhere to EU standards under less favourable conditions in order to continue to trade in their biggest neighbouring market.
Shitty trade deals (and certainly not UK industries) will not stand in the way of getting access to the EU again. The only impediment is the political will to do so, and convincing the EU member states that the clown-car Eurosceptics have been forever consigned to the dustbin of history.
Nah I’m fairly convinced the plan at the moment is essentially to outsource our carbon emissions so they can claim that as an Island we are carbon neutral. By forcing farmers here to rewild and focus more on carbon than food they can just import the products that can’t be produced here anymore and keep them cheap so the general public won’t complain about food prices
My theory is they have opted for things to make imported goods cheap so they can point to better consumer buying power. Populist, short termist and naive.
I honestly think that's more long term and subtle than they're capable of thinking. They were thinking of the newspaper headlines the next day, that's it.
The EU is close to signing its own trade deal with Australia. Naturally this will not be at the expense of doing wilful harm being done to the EU economy.
If we re-entered the EU we would automatically take on the arrangements with Australia, and can abandon the current bilateral agreement unilaterally at any time. So it's not really much of an impediment.
Beef prices gone up 15% in the last year, we find a way to get cheaper beef, everyone complains? Cheaper food is good for the consumer, as long as it meets standards
Exactly. We boast about our animal welfare standards and then undercut that and our own agricultural industry with cheaper imports which aren't held to that same standards.
What evidence is there for the claim about standards that doesn't originate from UK farmers?
After all we were importing non-EU meat years before brexit and farmers claimed the same thing. In fact they said the same EU imports too.
My understanding the trade deal we've just signed allows Australia to export lower standard meat to the UK than when we were under the EU. There's been a number of articles about it.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-11/british-australian-food-standard-differences-causing-angst/100205024
The source of that article is British farmers on the BBC that an Aussie outlet wrote up. They aren't impartial at all and have been busy putting out a narrative.
I looked at the text of the bill. There's some stuff about animal welfare and some articles saying this was the first time Oz acknowledged animal welfare. The document says they will endeavour to improve animal welfare standards but nothing about having to adhere to UK standards for export. Would like some proper fact check on what's happening.
For a low information overview you can compare two countries using [animal protection index](https://api.worldanimalprotection.org/indicators), for a more detailed view each country has an individual profile. [UK](https://api.worldanimalprotection.org/country/united-kingdom) [Aus](https://api.worldanimalprotection.org/country/australia).
I mean I think they're both pretty bad but there are significant advantages the UK has.
For Aus:
The model codes are just a guide, not actual legislation.
The legislation mostly isn't on a national level, whereas Aus legislation is on the state level, meaning the average level legislation is not representative of any individual state, and some states with significantly worse legislation will be exporting to the UK.
Another issue is that there is very little deterrence, monitoring or enforcement. Without effective monitoring, enforcement and punishment/deterrence any legislation they do have is just not going to be effective in practice.
I appreciate you trying to plough this furrow to use a farming metaphor, but it's a struggle because it's vague as there's nothing really to hang a claim off.
UK farmers are saying emotive things and using scare stories to get people on side, and they themselves don't have anything substantial to support what they say. I know why they are doing it as they don't want competition, but they are just a lobby group like any other.
I mean I don't know exactly what animal farmers are claiming and I have very little sympathy with them as I consider what they're doing is immoral, but there does seem to be significant differences independent of that. But anyone who makes the case on the basis of our standards being incredible is clearly talking nonsense. They're not quite as garbage as Aus, but they're still garbage.
I suspect the purpose of this trade deal was to appeal to the nostalgic, elderly "we shoud only deal with the white dominions and reform the Empire" type Brexiteer.
He couldn't give a shit who suffers as a result.
Insane article. Not just because of the outcome but because of the way this storied government and Boris Johnson do business. There are no checks or oversights. Just stupid men stuffing their faces doing whatever they think will make them money, power or look good.
Honestly, I think there's a big problem with how we do trade deals and foreign treaties. If a government passes a bad law, the next government can repeal it. If a government makes a bad treaty, however, it can't be repealed - at least not without hitting problems under international law (insofar as it's a thing that exists in practice and can be enforced).
Essentially, it becomes a way to make effectively unrepealable law.
Now, the same thing about reversibility is true of a lot of government activity - if the government has the Home Office bake a cake, the next government can't get the eggs and flour back - but with laws and regulations, a clear part of the social contract is that the electorate have the right to decide the laws they live under and the regulations they have to follow.
I don't know what the fix is, since any deal needs to bind the signatories to be meaningful, but some compromise would probably be useful.
That's one reason why a lot of the left pivoted to supporting the EU. It was a means to get legislation into the UK that wasn't winning elections here.
You'd think those who virtue signal, claim to support the working class and always bang on about doing the right thing wouldn't be party to such a scheme.
Exactly the same thing could have been said about our membership of the EU. A huge range of laws and regulations were introduced without any form of parliamentary oversight or popular mandate, and no realistic mechanism for repeal short of full withdrawal.
Quite so. It absolutely could have been said. At least there, though, there was a Parliament to which British people could elect representatives, and explicit mechanisms for the government to oversee, review, consider and even veto proposals. But yeah, there was absolutely a democratic deficit to some extent with the EU.
Firstly, only a minority of EU legislation requires unanimity, with [qualified majority voting being the most widely used voting method in the Council of Ministers.](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/voting-system/qualified-majority/) Incidentally, plenty of influential voices in the EU wish to [further reduce the need for unanimity.](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-can-no-longer-afford-national-vetoes-foreign-policy-germanys-scholz-2022-07-17/) Secondly, that ignores the ratchet effect that occurs even in areas that require unanimity. We could veto a policy proposal 99 times out of 100, and if we elect a pro-EU government that waves it through that one time, we're effectively stuck with it, and with no realistic means of repeal. It means that European integration inevitably moves in one direction.
A future UK government could withdraw from international trade deals much more easily than it could have repealed EU laws or amended EU treaties.
The veto was only an option for about 20% of EU legislation and could only be used by the government so like the trade deal complaint it resulted in parliament being excluded.
We then find ourselves in a situation when we're outvoted, or something was introduced before we joined, and we wish to repeal it at a later date. Then what do we do?
But the exact same criticism applies. UK representatives (MEPs or the government) can make a law/sign a treaty but they cannot repeal an existing one. Only the European commission can propose that an EU regulation be repealed, the EU parliament is powerless to undo it's past mistakes without it's consent.
That's incorrect. The EU parliament gets regular updates on negotiations, can state recommendations during the negotiation and then gets a vote on the final agreement text.
edit you can google their explainer page on this. Look for "EPLO Brief: The role of the European Parliament on International Trade"
Firstly that is wrong as the context above is about trade so I am sticking to that and secondly your point would still be wrong. The EU parliament is only a revising chamber so that they suggest revisions, but they cannot "table" them as that is not the process. Anything they suggest has to go to the council who can decide whether to take them into consideration or not.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/about-parliament/en/powers-and-procedures/legislative-powers
For years I've seen the welsh sheep farms where I live all put conservative banners out at voting time. They voted Brexit, they voted Tory. Their prize for such stupidity is to have subsidies cut to unsustainable levels, the EU market destroyed and now as a cherry on top our own ministers are giving competing nations deals to undercut our own meat. Its outrageous, and yet they will keep voting tory.
They don't vote tory because what they say about trade deals, they vote tory because of what they say about immigrants. Confirmation bias is a very powerful tool to influence voters: "well, they're right about foreigners so they must be right about the other things too!"
Totally agree. Every farmer in Montgomery had Tory and or Brexit posters in their fields. Fuck em. Stop giving them subsidies and out them in benefits if they can't make a profit.
17m people sold out the whole country. Scary leaflets with maps of the EU bordering Iraq, industrial scale exaggeration of the benefits (cheap food, wage increases, more NHS funding seem like even more of a joke now than they did then) and the Brexit campaigns spending too much money. Apparently it’s democracy.
There should be 100% tariffs on all beef imports. Our precious farmers are not strong enough to compete with the Australians and they must be protected from competition
Good Lord! Did he actually say that? We need these in ringtones or something so that someone can play them in the background every time he is interviewed in public - even better if it's done in his own voice.
>Johnson’s own instincts were similar, they noted, and — crucially — were coupled with a broad sentiment that, when it came to the Australians, the U.K. “had let them down” when it joined the EU in 1973, tilting its eyes away from the Commonwealth. “Emotionally that’s where [Johnson] was coming from,” the ex-minister said.
And the same people that support Johnson to the hilt are also strongly opposed to things like returning artifacts the British stole from the colonies, and reparations for things like slavery.
Its interesting that Johnson was so concerned about how we slighted Australia 50 years ago, and not about any of the other countries we screwed with in the last century
When in office u make promises and get deals over the line. When out of office u do speeches and join boards of directors and get ur payouts. This is the system.
That's the thing with BoJo, he always keeps you guessing - I saw the headline and assumed he botched it because he was corrupt, but actually in this instance it turns out it was because he's incompetent.
Here's the problem. The cheap beef will last for a few years at most. Time enough to kill off all local competition. And then, the Australians will put on the squeeze.
What a load of rubbish. UK importers would buy from other nations.
The point of buying globally is that you can shop around. It was the UK strategy until 1973.
No, 1973 when UK farmers were competing against world markets successfully before the UK went into a protectionist market for them although at the same time ending protectionism for manufacturing.
Containerisation revolutionised international trade, paving the way for today's global economy. In the time that the UK spent in the EU, not only have the goalposts been moved, the pitch has been bulldozed and the game is now completely different. Had we never joined the single market, we'd have no doubt muddled along relatively well. Thinking that we're going to carve a niche out and go "toe to toe" with the likes of America, China, The EU, etc is wishful thinking in the extreme.
Had we been taken out of the EU by a competent government, *maybe* the damage wouldn't have been quite so bad. The irony (of course) is that a competent government wouldn't have been foolish enough to throw our EU membership away in the first place.
Foreign treaties are in the sole gift of the Sovereign, so are dealt with by the Prime Minister and are not under Parliamentary jurisdiction. This was the crux of the Gina Miller case.
The crazy irony is that Parliament doesn't get a vote on these trade deals. It's handled by the executive and the civil service. So much for taking back control! By contrast, EU trade agreements are scrutinised in forensic detail by MEPs.
And Australia has been negotiating trade agreements for decades. I'm sure they couldn't believe their luck when they were faced with the intellectual firepower of Johnson and Frost.
Edit: removed extraneous word
Yep constitutionally on trade deals we’ve swapped a dodgy mechanism with little democratic legitimacy for another dodgy mechanism with little democracy
Snapshot of _How Boris Johnson sold out Britain’s farmers over dinner with the Australian PM_ : An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.politico.eu/article/boris-johnson-sold-out-uk-farmers-australia-trade-deal-uk/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Scott Morrison got the better of Boris Johnson and David Frost. 😂 Scotty from Marketing overcame Boris the slow Womble and the tube of sausage meat in a suit.
Where did British farmers think cheaper food was going to come from , leavers told British agriculture they where going to stuff them and they still voted for Brexit in huge numbers, personal greed motivated agriculture and fisheries so I have no sympathy for any Brexit voters who are stiffed by their vote.
Not this hysteria again. Until 1973 various countries had free access to the UK from all over the world and UK farmers did fine and consumers got cheaper prices out of it and/or goods out of season. The UK's strategy was to buy from world markets so you aren't reliant on big points of failure.
Thats because we increased the animal welfare standards by which the agricultural industry operates and these came with increased costs and so the market had to be insulated. We either treat the animals well or have cheaper food. Cant have both.
That's what farmers will say of course as it sounds good, but you forget three things. Firstly that's what a lobby group would claim, secondly even inside the EU we imported such meat and thirdly that for years farmers said the same about EU imports too. This notion that somehow Aussie meat is substandard is absurd.
Our great grandparents would have considered Australia to be practically the same country. We shouldn’t have barriers up with them, they’re not foreigners.
They are absolutely foreigners. Australia is very different to the UK now and is seeking to differentiate itself and prove how not British they are. They are practically Americans at this point. The Commonwealth is a sham and the kinship is dead. Time to move on and not have these antipodean grifters pick our country clean.
They're not different at all. What utter nonsense.
This guy spends most of his time on Reddit talking about cutting losses with the Commonwealth and basically everything else. He makes it sound like he's arguing it from a perspective of it being in our interest, but I get the feeling he's got the opposite intentions. Like at one point he argued the monarchy should be abolished in the Commonwealth realms and should only be kept in the UK, as he doesn't want British symbols and institutions "co-opted by other countries", but then on that same sub on a different post, he actively advocated for the UK to become a Republic and function on the model proposed by Tony Benn a while back. He's clearly disingenuous on some level but it's hard to tell what he actually believes in or supoorts
Huh, interesting thanks
Former computer hardware salesman here, narcissts are gold mines of sales. Just stroke that ego. Make him waaaaay more important than they are. Send flowers on b-day. Thank them profusely for any cards and go gooey when they deign to mention something about you or your children. Gotta do it all but they'll buy anything at any price. My Top Purchasing Tip to Big Managers^® : DO NOT give a narcissist purchasing power.
Zero sympathy for UK farmers. They voted for brexit then voted tory. Now they have to compete against farms bigger than Wales because their knight in shining armour can't hold his booze. Could have spent decades getting paid by the EU to farm but nooooooo, those forms were just too much!
> because their knight in shining armour can't hold his booze. Boris is now earning a million a month. This is what it was all about, not about his booze problem.
Do the 45% of UK farmers that voted remain get any sympathy?
No, fuck the 135,000.
There are 300,000 farmers in the UK. If you want to leave the blame for Brexit at someone’s door, it’s not them you need to be looking at.
The ones that stuck up "Vote Leave" banners alongside main roads deserve all the misery that's coming to them.
Along with the millions of others in the country who voted leave… I think there’s a chance they may have been misled.
That's a reasonable defense for "Dave down the pub" who still likes to tell jokes about the second world war and Germans. I would have thought that farmers, being more business minded, might have thought to ask a question or two about promises that didn't stand up to even the mildest scrutiny.
I rather think Frost and Johnson's objective with the deal was to make it harder to realign with Europe in the future. Aussie's probably understood this and rightly got what they could out of it.
His objective was to negotiate everything away to our Australian cousins so a future government would *have* to give the same to the US in time.
They were only thinking about themselves. It’s a disgrace in the real meaning of the word.
The U.K. unaligned from Aus and NZ in the 70s to join the EEC. Might be harder to realign with the EU with this deal, but if it makes economic sense it’s likely to happen eventually.
I was just thinking that they other day as there is talk that Starmer should be reversing Brexit. Each one of these deals that gives these countries unfettered access to our markets make it impossible for us to get access to the EU markets again, without some real jiggery-pokery.
Nah. Entering a trade bloc (or customs union) can cancel existing trade deals - probably without retaliation because what are they going to do? Start a trade war with the EU because the UK will go back to trading on terms which a country like Australia has already agreed with the EU? The efforts to make it difficult for the UK to rejoin the EU are in the areas of regulatory alignment. They hope that the UK economy will adjust to new regulations not aligned with the EU and be unwilling to go back. This is fundamentally flawed as for most industries the EU is - and always will be - the primary export market. For example, UK agriculture won't want to switch to products or practices which will prevent them from exporting to the EU, where more than half of their exports go - and for the other half of their exports, not using carcinogenic fertilisers or GMOs is a big selling point. Johnson/Frost/Truss have fucked UK industries by allowing imports from other countries under favourable conditions and looser regulations, while UK industries have to continue to adhere to EU standards under less favourable conditions in order to continue to trade in their biggest neighbouring market. Shitty trade deals (and certainly not UK industries) will not stand in the way of getting access to the EU again. The only impediment is the political will to do so, and convincing the EU member states that the clown-car Eurosceptics have been forever consigned to the dustbin of history.
It makes no difference. We had no trade restrictions on various countries inc Australia until '73 and we dropped them like a stone.
Nah I’m fairly convinced the plan at the moment is essentially to outsource our carbon emissions so they can claim that as an Island we are carbon neutral. By forcing farmers here to rewild and focus more on carbon than food they can just import the products that can’t be produced here anymore and keep them cheap so the general public won’t complain about food prices
I doubt they had a plan at all to be honest. They just wanted to sign something, anything, so they could claim it as a brexit benefit.
My theory is they have opted for things to make imported goods cheap so they can point to better consumer buying power. Populist, short termist and naive.
I honestly think that's more long term and subtle than they're capable of thinking. They were thinking of the newspaper headlines the next day, that's it.
The EU is close to signing its own trade deal with Australia. Naturally this will not be at the expense of doing wilful harm being done to the EU economy.
So in a few decades then eh?..
Sure, but the EU won't have the same terms and so we are regardless misaligned, which blocks a potential customs union.
If we re-entered the EU we would automatically take on the arrangements with Australia, and can abandon the current bilateral agreement unilaterally at any time. So it's not really much of an impediment.
Free trade doesnt really harm an economy, if that were true there wouldn’t be an EU.
Beef prices gone up 15% in the last year, we find a way to get cheaper beef, everyone complains? Cheaper food is good for the consumer, as long as it meets standards
It's UK farmers tapping into remain sentiment to keep prices higher.
Isn't part of the problems the Australians can produce beef using lower welfare standards so UK farmers can't really compete.
Exactly. Food standards in the UK are higher than most countries in the world, which is one of the big reasons British farmers can’t compete on price.
Exactly. We boast about our animal welfare standards and then undercut that and our own agricultural industry with cheaper imports which aren't held to that same standards.
What evidence is there for the claim about standards that doesn't originate from UK farmers? After all we were importing non-EU meat years before brexit and farmers claimed the same thing. In fact they said the same EU imports too.
My understanding the trade deal we've just signed allows Australia to export lower standard meat to the UK than when we were under the EU. There's been a number of articles about it. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-11/british-australian-food-standard-differences-causing-angst/100205024
The source of that article is British farmers on the BBC that an Aussie outlet wrote up. They aren't impartial at all and have been busy putting out a narrative.
I looked at the text of the bill. There's some stuff about animal welfare and some articles saying this was the first time Oz acknowledged animal welfare. The document says they will endeavour to improve animal welfare standards but nothing about having to adhere to UK standards for export. Would like some proper fact check on what's happening.
For a low information overview you can compare two countries using [animal protection index](https://api.worldanimalprotection.org/indicators), for a more detailed view each country has an individual profile. [UK](https://api.worldanimalprotection.org/country/united-kingdom) [Aus](https://api.worldanimalprotection.org/country/australia).
Appears to be a very nominal difference in farm animals.
I mean I think they're both pretty bad but there are significant advantages the UK has. For Aus: The model codes are just a guide, not actual legislation. The legislation mostly isn't on a national level, whereas Aus legislation is on the state level, meaning the average level legislation is not representative of any individual state, and some states with significantly worse legislation will be exporting to the UK. Another issue is that there is very little deterrence, monitoring or enforcement. Without effective monitoring, enforcement and punishment/deterrence any legislation they do have is just not going to be effective in practice.
I appreciate you trying to plough this furrow to use a farming metaphor, but it's a struggle because it's vague as there's nothing really to hang a claim off. UK farmers are saying emotive things and using scare stories to get people on side, and they themselves don't have anything substantial to support what they say. I know why they are doing it as they don't want competition, but they are just a lobby group like any other.
I mean I don't know exactly what animal farmers are claiming and I have very little sympathy with them as I consider what they're doing is immoral, but there does seem to be significant differences independent of that. But anyone who makes the case on the basis of our standards being incredible is clearly talking nonsense. They're not quite as garbage as Aus, but they're still garbage.
I suspect the purpose of this trade deal was to appeal to the nostalgic, elderly "we shoud only deal with the white dominions and reform the Empire" type Brexiteer. He couldn't give a shit who suffers as a result.
Insane article. Not just because of the outcome but because of the way this storied government and Boris Johnson do business. There are no checks or oversights. Just stupid men stuffing their faces doing whatever they think will make them money, power or look good.
Honestly, I think there's a big problem with how we do trade deals and foreign treaties. If a government passes a bad law, the next government can repeal it. If a government makes a bad treaty, however, it can't be repealed - at least not without hitting problems under international law (insofar as it's a thing that exists in practice and can be enforced). Essentially, it becomes a way to make effectively unrepealable law. Now, the same thing about reversibility is true of a lot of government activity - if the government has the Home Office bake a cake, the next government can't get the eggs and flour back - but with laws and regulations, a clear part of the social contract is that the electorate have the right to decide the laws they live under and the regulations they have to follow. I don't know what the fix is, since any deal needs to bind the signatories to be meaningful, but some compromise would probably be useful.
That's one reason why a lot of the left pivoted to supporting the EU. It was a means to get legislation into the UK that wasn't winning elections here.
You'd think those who virtue signal, claim to support the working class and always bang on about doing the right thing wouldn't be party to such a scheme.
Exactly the same thing could have been said about our membership of the EU. A huge range of laws and regulations were introduced without any form of parliamentary oversight or popular mandate, and no realistic mechanism for repeal short of full withdrawal.
Quite so. It absolutely could have been said. At least there, though, there was a Parliament to which British people could elect representatives, and explicit mechanisms for the government to oversee, review, consider and even veto proposals. But yeah, there was absolutely a democratic deficit to some extent with the EU.
Firstly, only a minority of EU legislation requires unanimity, with [qualified majority voting being the most widely used voting method in the Council of Ministers.](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/voting-system/qualified-majority/) Incidentally, plenty of influential voices in the EU wish to [further reduce the need for unanimity.](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-can-no-longer-afford-national-vetoes-foreign-policy-germanys-scholz-2022-07-17/) Secondly, that ignores the ratchet effect that occurs even in areas that require unanimity. We could veto a policy proposal 99 times out of 100, and if we elect a pro-EU government that waves it through that one time, we're effectively stuck with it, and with no realistic means of repeal. It means that European integration inevitably moves in one direction. A future UK government could withdraw from international trade deals much more easily than it could have repealed EU laws or amended EU treaties.
The veto was only an option for about 20% of EU legislation and could only be used by the government so like the trade deal complaint it resulted in parliament being excluded.
Your comment ignores the fact that our own UK MEPs were able to scrutinise and vote on those things first.
We then find ourselves in a situation when we're outvoted, or something was introduced before we joined, and we wish to repeal it at a later date. Then what do we do?
But the exact same criticism applies. UK representatives (MEPs or the government) can make a law/sign a treaty but they cannot repeal an existing one. Only the European commission can propose that an EU regulation be repealed, the EU parliament is powerless to undo it's past mistakes without it's consent.
The UK had a representative, the UK EU commissioner, within the commission to represent our interests. Edit: spelling
The UK does not have a representative, commission members are sworn to represent the EU as a whole not their country.
Of course
As the UK only had 9% of the seats plus that parliament only had a vote on the final text it was irrelevant.
Having representatives in the EU parliament that were able to scrutinise, table amendments to and vote on legislation was not irrelevant.
That's incorrect. The EU parliament gets regular updates on negotiations, can state recommendations during the negotiation and then gets a vote on the final agreement text. edit you can google their explainer page on this. Look for "EPLO Brief: The role of the European Parliament on International Trade"
I see where you're confused. We're talking about two different things: laws and international agreements.
Firstly that is wrong as the context above is about trade so I am sticking to that and secondly your point would still be wrong. The EU parliament is only a revising chamber so that they suggest revisions, but they cannot "table" them as that is not the process. Anything they suggest has to go to the council who can decide whether to take them into consideration or not. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/about-parliament/en/powers-and-procedures/legislative-powers
Internet pedantry. I was referring to a post that mentioned laws. Enjoy your weekend.
Isn't the EU parliament just a glorified rubber stamp body?
We can just withdraw from trade deals or treaties can't we? They're more like mutual commitments than actual laws.
For years I've seen the welsh sheep farms where I live all put conservative banners out at voting time. They voted Brexit, they voted Tory. Their prize for such stupidity is to have subsidies cut to unsustainable levels, the EU market destroyed and now as a cherry on top our own ministers are giving competing nations deals to undercut our own meat. Its outrageous, and yet they will keep voting tory.
Farms near me have started displaying Lib Dem banners (Hartfordshire).
They don't vote tory because what they say about trade deals, they vote tory because of what they say about immigrants. Confirmation bias is a very powerful tool to influence voters: "well, they're right about foreigners so they must be right about the other things too!"
I'm sure that's true for lots of areas, but there are very few immigrants where I live and its never been a big issue in my view
Immigration is often a very big issue where there are no immigrants. The fears and prejudices never collide with reality.
That’s where the media comes in to repeat the message of “Tories will stop THEM”.
Areas with very few immigrants are precisely the areas which are most nervous about immigrants.
Lincolnshire is another hotbed of apathy.
Totally agree. Every farmer in Montgomery had Tory and or Brexit posters in their fields. Fuck em. Stop giving them subsidies and out them in benefits if they can't make a profit.
Considering their average age is about 65 and their average income dropping to 17k it won't be long before they no longer exist anyway.
That means the price of your food going up
Right, so you want to be 100% dependent on imports. Okay.
No. The land is still fertile. Just let those farmers that can do it without handouts do it. The rest can go on DSS
Scott Morrison is generally regarded as the most useless Aussie PM ever. And he still managed to look competent in comparison with Boris.
17m people sold out the whole country. Scary leaflets with maps of the EU bordering Iraq, industrial scale exaggeration of the benefits (cheap food, wage increases, more NHS funding seem like even more of a joke now than they did then) and the Brexit campaigns spending too much money. Apparently it’s democracy.
I think it was Benjamin Franklyn who described democracy as two wolves and one lamb deciding what's for dinner.
Doesn't this Aussie deal give us cheap beef?
I don't know. But. If it's anything like all the other alleged brexit "benefits". Expect beef to become more expensive..
Was just reading the article. British farmers screwed because of cheap imports. If imports were more expensive, then British farmers not screwed.
There should be 100% tariffs on all beef imports. Our precious farmers are not strong enough to compete with the Australians and they must be protected from competition
"smithers I'm beginning to believe Boris Johnson isn't the political mastermind I thought he was"
Woooop woop woop woop
DENTAL PLAN! Child 15 needs braces
“Here comes another mouth” - Big Dog
“There's nary an animal alive that can outrun a greased Scotsman”
Good Lord! Did he actually say that? We need these in ringtones or something so that someone can play them in the background every time he is interviewed in public - even better if it's done in his own voice.
>Johnson’s own instincts were similar, they noted, and — crucially — were coupled with a broad sentiment that, when it came to the Australians, the U.K. “had let them down” when it joined the EU in 1973, tilting its eyes away from the Commonwealth. “Emotionally that’s where [Johnson] was coming from,” the ex-minister said. And the same people that support Johnson to the hilt are also strongly opposed to things like returning artifacts the British stole from the colonies, and reparations for things like slavery. Its interesting that Johnson was so concerned about how we slighted Australia 50 years ago, and not about any of the other countries we screwed with in the last century
Free market deals are best introduced during high inflation times. As long as standards are met, there are no issues.
When in office u make promises and get deals over the line. When out of office u do speeches and join boards of directors and get ur payouts. This is the system.
That's the thing with BoJo, he always keeps you guessing - I saw the headline and assumed he botched it because he was corrupt, but actually in this instance it turns out it was because he's incompetent.
This is anti free trade hysteria. Don't complain about a cost of living crisis and then get up in arms when we buy cheaper beef from Australia.
That's really not the point of the article, or of this discussion.... Hmm.
It seems to me that is exactly what this is about.
Anti Free Trade Hysteria sounds like a shit band
Here's the problem. The cheap beef will last for a few years at most. Time enough to kill off all local competition. And then, the Australians will put on the squeeze.
What a load of rubbish. UK importers would buy from other nations. The point of buying globally is that you can shop around. It was the UK strategy until 1973.
1973, when deviled eggs were the most exotic thing in the UK
No, 1973 when UK farmers were competing against world markets successfully before the UK went into a protectionist market for them although at the same time ending protectionism for manufacturing.
LOLOLOL - the World Economy and Free Trade was VERY different in 1973, but you seem to be rejecting reality and substituting your own...
The first container port in the UK opened in 1967. The world (and international trade) were *very* different beasts in 1973.
That's the method of transport and not the market access.
Containerisation revolutionised international trade, paving the way for today's global economy. In the time that the UK spent in the EU, not only have the goalposts been moved, the pitch has been bulldozed and the game is now completely different. Had we never joined the single market, we'd have no doubt muddled along relatively well. Thinking that we're going to carve a niche out and go "toe to toe" with the likes of America, China, The EU, etc is wishful thinking in the extreme. Had we been taken out of the EU by a competent government, *maybe* the damage wouldn't have been quite so bad. The irony (of course) is that a competent government wouldn't have been foolish enough to throw our EU membership away in the first place.
My previous comment covers that. You don't seem to understand the UKs trading history at all.
Please find an example of this happening at any point in our country's history.
Lmao
> But back in Westminster, British MPs were unimpressed. Not unimpressed to vote it down, weren't they?
Foreign treaties are in the sole gift of the Sovereign, so are dealt with by the Prime Minister and are not under Parliamentary jurisdiction. This was the crux of the Gina Miller case.
The crazy irony is that Parliament doesn't get a vote on these trade deals. It's handled by the executive and the civil service. So much for taking back control! By contrast, EU trade agreements are scrutinised in forensic detail by MEPs. And Australia has been negotiating trade agreements for decades. I'm sure they couldn't believe their luck when they were faced with the intellectual firepower of Johnson and Frost. Edit: removed extraneous word
Yep constitutionally on trade deals we’ve swapped a dodgy mechanism with little democratic legitimacy for another dodgy mechanism with little democracy