Okay I think I have got my head around this now and I reluctantly agree with the government.

As I understand it in the withdrawal agreement there was a clause that stated that customs border issues between NI and the EU would be settled by a joint UK/EU committee.

The government is now saying that if there is no trade deal the UK will unilaterally make those decisions. I think that is the correct decision if we cannot do a deal with the EU they should not still have a say in our internal UK market. It is the loss of control that they are complaining about.

Hopefully this is a negotiating tactic and we will have a deal in which case this threat go away. However the idea that countries never back out of international treaties is nonsense the Americans do this all the time.

I think the EU still don't believe that we are being serious about our red lines hopefully this will make it clear we are and that from Jan 1 they can no longer interfere in our country.

The alternative is they stop playing silly buggers and start negotiating seriously.

One final comment. Mrs May wanted the withdrawal agreement and the free trade agreement negotiated and signed at the same time, it was the EU that decided it had to be linear as part of the delaying tactics. They may regret that as they don't have any leverage now.

Anyway lets hope commonsense breaks out on all sides.

Edited by Badger11 (11 Sep 2020 7.40am)

One more point

Breaking the law can be rather a selective activity. A lot of people exceed the speed limit whilst driving, because they either deem it 'safe', or else there are unlikely to be consequences.

For a Government to break the law, they have deemed that the consequences of not doing so would expose the ineptness of Teressa May's 'deal' with the EU.

Being the wife of an American Diplomat, no such moral/practical quandaries apply in such situations.

Edited by Forest Hillbilly (11 Sep 2020 4.40pm)

I disengage, I turn the page.

I can honestly say that in Central Croydon we haven't had a single problem since lock-down.

The new covid19 marshalls will not have anything to do.

We'll simply hand in our guns and collect them if we ever want to leave, but I doubt if we will.

Family responsibilities my friend, family responsibilities, i"m thinking ahead, at-(after trump}.

Was it the same during your service?

That's pretty much it. In order to get a withdrawal agreement May had so sign up to ludicrous proticols over Northern Ireland which pretty much ammounted to the partial annexation of a region of a soverign nation by the EU.

At the time the EU were playing a game with the Irish Boarder where they were making the UK come up with endless solutions to resolve the issue then rejecting every proposal out of hand.

Boris has broken the law, but it's not a criminal act.

The strongest condemnation the EU can come up with is a few statements that this will damage the UK's reputation. What it really does is make the Irish Boarder issues a problem to be solved jointly.

There could be wider implications on the EU. Russia will use it to call the EU hypocritical about the Ukraine.

Somethings got to give, most likely the idea of a level playing field in areas where many EU nations are uposed to giving Ireland concessions because it has a land boarder with the UK for fear they might get a comparitive advantage over other member states.