Will Britain really leave EU?

CLAPTON

tara747 wrote: »

From Dublin to Liverpool?

actually between dublin and holyhead by boat but same difference;

airlines seem to demand passports as a matter of course

movilogo

When flights land from Ireland to UK, it lands in domestic terminals and thus no passport check.

vivatifosi

N1AK wrote: »

We also heard Brexiters promising £350m for the NHS... in short, don't expect politicians to be honest when it suits them to lie.

It doesn't matter what was in place before we joined the EU; can you name another place where the EU has a soft border with a non-EU country? Ireland has had to stay out of Schengen to maintain its soft border with the UK, it won't leave the EU entirely to do that.

Now, maybe, they'll find a way to allow a soft border between Ireland and the UK but unless the UK is part of some free movement arrangement I think people are being very naive to think the EU is just going to happily ignore all norms around external borders because it suits us.

I think that there will be political will on both sides to keep the border open. Apart from anything else, there's no good reason to disadvantage Ireland, as in the eyes of the EU it has done nothing wrong.

I don't think all land borders will be straightforward though, the one with Gibraltar could be a different example altogether.

Although the border with France is not a land border per se, it is interesting that people can smuggle themselves under the border by land. Again, I think that border could be more thorny due to the Calais checks. Initially France said that nothing would change, but is starting to suggest the opposite.

N1AK

vivatifosi wrote: »

I think that there will be political will on both sides to keep the border open. Apart from anything else, there's no good reason to disadvantage Ireland, as in the eyes of the EU it has done nothing wrong.

There will be a political will on both sides, but that doesn't mean we can do whatever we want and the EU will happily change its rules to accommodate us. I maintain that it is naive to think that we can end free movement with the EU and expect to have a soft border with it.

I've been around ex-Yugoslavia in both EU and non-EU members. They were far more integrated 30 years ago than the UK and Ireland have been for around a century... They have hard borders.

And in that case the non-EU member want and are going through the process of becoming EU members, whereas we're leaving.

N1AK

movilogo wrote: »

Why can't EU reform itself to permit free movement of goods but not people?

For the same reason that Brexiters didn't just reform themselves into wanting free movement: The EU wants free movement, why would it reform it.

CLAPTON

N1AK wrote: »

There will be a political will on both sides, but that doesn't mean we can do whatever we want and the EU will happily change its rules to accommodate us. I maintain that it is naive to think that we can end free movement with the EU and expect to have a soft border with it.

I've been around ex-Yugoslavia in both EU and non-EU members. They were far more integrated 30 years ago than the UK and Ireland have been for around a century... They have hard borders.

And in that case the non-EU member want and are going through the process of becoming EU members, whereas we're leaving.

I'm not entirely sure what 'hard borders ' mean but I don't think the UK would want them in Ireland and I would guess that it would be political suicide for any Eire government to impose them.

N1AK

Tammykitty wrote: »

San Marino is not in the EU and yet there is no hard border between it and Italy

That's the same San Marino that is landlocked, has no airports, and no trains. The same one that you cannot get to or get out of from outside the EU without going through a hard border. It uses the Euro, and the primary reason it isn't a proper member is that the EU's treaties weren't designed with microstates in mind. This is actually something the EU is looking at and it's very likely these states will have a formalised relationship with the EU reasonably soon.

Perhaps if we close all Northern Irish airports and let the EU patrol the Irish coast and do passport checks they'd consider it a remotely similar situation...

vivatifosi

I think that the FYRs are a different case. Not only are the borders between some of them still disputed since the war that led to its break up, but there may also be issues with other, neighbouring Balkan States. This is quite different to the Irish/UK border, which really does only affect two countries, both of whom have the political will to maintain the status quo.

I still think that the UK will experience major issues as a result of Brexit, just that this won't be inevitable.

mayonnaise

martinthebandit wrote: »

To be seen to renage, in some way on the result of that referendum would be political suicide and that's not something the Tory's, unlike Labour, seem to do very often.

Being at the helm during the economic decline which will inevitably come with a 'hard' brexit would be equally political suicide.

CLAPTON

mayonnaise wrote: »

Being at the helm during the economic decline which will inevitably come with a 'hard' brexit would be equally political suicide.

One notes that, the much regarded IMF, forecasts a higher GDP growth of the UK in 2017 than it does for the EU.
Hopeful we can look forward to the political suicide of most of the EU politicians.