In the last knockings of the talks, it seems to have come to basic hard bargaining:
The UK is to table its long awaited finance bill next week but anticipated controversial clauses to override the Brexit withdrawal agreement are expected to be axed if a trade deal is struck beforehand...The EU has warned that trade talks will be pulled immediately if the government goes ahead with a second batch of legislation granting itself unilateral powers to renege on part of the withdrawal agreement signed in January.
Wise move by Johnson to have that ace up his sleeve really.
Meanwhile, I can't easily look it up and reference it, so this is only what I recall and I might be being unfair, but a bit of last night's Newsnight was interesting:
Lord Dodds of NI pointed out that having a border betweeen NI and the mainland UK as the EU proposed would also breach the Good Friday Agreement and cause tensions -- people had just forgotten the Loyalist case. So had E Maitlis, it seemed, who was forced to insist that the EU was far too wise to take any risks like that.
E Maitlis then went on to expess scorn and incredulity that fishing should be an obstacle. She had looked it up, she said, (asked one of her mates?) and the industry that made metal frames for windows contributed more to the GDP. You don't get many fishermen in Islington, of course, although I am surprised they have also heard of metal window frames,(she was a bit sneery) or dreamed that someone actually made them somewhere.
On another story, E Maitlis was interviewing 'both sides' as in 'balance' over the recent High Court ruling regulating trans puberty-blocking treatment. She had one of the people bringing the successful case in the studio, and the CEO of Mermaids online. EM was typically one-sided, let one speak at some length with encouraging questions, and interrupted the other with hostile comment. The BBC seem to have given her a mute button so she can just override online speakers.
It was slightly surprising in that that it was the Mermaids CEO who got the hairdryer treatment, perhaps because the studio guest had already announced she was vulnerable, but the techniques were on show in all their glory -- scorn, scoffing, interruption, cutting across, lengthy comment, dubious appeals to common sense. There was no swearing, but if that wasn't bullying, especially by modern standards, I am M. Barnier.
It might be nasty of me but I do hope the trans lobby go for her and she gets Twittered for a change.
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