Brexit 2019 and Poland

Don't worry too much Dolno,as you know,Poles are survivors,they will do whatever they have to,to survive.

But that is what May is gambling on you see. Breciteers will hope that Labour members will be deselected. That can happen to Tories equally. Corbyn is a Trotskyite, but it wont matter. The SNP will hold it's majority in Scotland, the DUP party will still exist of 10 members as now, whether or not it retains it's Kingmaker status,the Lib Dems have their fanbase (they are the weakest link) and I am absolutely convinced that at the very least, Labour will hang onto its' seats. So the worst scenario IMO is that the election is a glorious waste of time and has served it's purpose of fatally delaying Brexit.

The Lefties in the media are wrong when they babble on about this election again being about social inequality and austerity. This potential election is not about the poor in Blackburn.

It is a 100 percent Brexit referendum election. And Labour will most certainly win. Or I have learnt nothing about trends and how mass opinion moves. I believe if you look at this thread I have been close on 100 percent proved right so far...?

Poles will be ok they will still have freedom of movement, but my Brit friends will be stuck under the red flag (and all that entails) if labour are in power without a deal allowing full freedom of movement.

Gone barking mad have you?


You're surely not suggesting that Brits will say "Oh! Let's all decamp enmasse to that haven of enlightenment and richness that is the PIS republic of Poland"?

Your retirement fund might amuse you, but for millions here, life is a constant struggle. Not that you care.


I know you are old like me Dolno - but are you being deliberately obtuse? English is one of the worlds' easiest languages, which is why Poles love Britain. How is their German, or their French?

Freedom of movement my arse.

Maybe life in Poland is a struggle for you Doug, but the majority where I am are doing ok, no vast riches but getting on with it.

As for your comment about me caring I can only assume you are trying to get a rise out of me or are trying to take this off topic.

Again for your benefit I was talking about British people fleeing a new post brexit totalitarian state under new labour.

As for me being barking mad, its not for you to call, well unless you are also a psychiatrist, or are you just trying to bait me as per your last post.

I refer you to the fact that a million Poles are in Britain. They like it. Obviously. And the election would not be about the rubbish that is Corbyn's unelectable Labour - but about the dictatorial Tories.

I know my own people. They are your people too. But our opinions differ. I say that this potential election will not change the numbers towards the government, but rather, it will change them in favour of Remain. Remainers are in the majority, and it doesn't affect you really. You don't live full time in the UK any more, even though you let slip that you might return there if and when.... You are an economic refugee.Others don't have that luxury. Britain is their home, and they are richer in the European Union.

The result of an election now is only an opinion, and it is May's last bluff. I suddenly feel that I am getting old now, and have pulled a few bluffs in my time - some of them spectacularly unsuccessfully. So I've been there, and can smell the coffee. May knows that an election will cost her and she cannot win. As with poor bluffs, she has nothing to lose, and the people know that, so will turn against her. As I said, my opinion as to Brexit has been pretty much on the money so far :)

Pointless debating with you when you throw in a personal insult into every post you make.

Good night.

With 2,400 zl ZUS you bet your arse it is. And all the time Poland is full of lazy fuckkers who don't want to work because they have 5 kids. Yet you babble on about "communist" Britain.

I could slag Poland off. Generally I don't, as I had a fantastic family life here.You lived in Britain all of your life and were raised there. Yet you constantly besmirch it. It gave your parents a home and made you who you are.

Please don't let me think of you as scum.


Good night.

Ha I was just brushing my teeth, no I do not besmirch Britain I just don't want to see it fall under new labour communism as Poland did.

As for Zus I pay the same as you for me and the wife so shut up with your moaning, at least you will have a pension payout from it I only get health cover.

And if you have any further off topic remarks please post in random .

Right with that out of the way it's time to fill the hot water bottle, then bed.

In fairness, the Tories are in a right mess internally. May trying for a 4th time to win a vote on her deal is beyond ridiculous, but it looks like she's resigned to the fact that she can either leave as one of the worst Prime Ministers in history, or she can leave having somehow managed to secure a withdrawal deal that allowed the country to painfully move on while respecting the result of the referendum.

The news from Scotland is that the SNP are possibly willing to back a full Customs Union / Single Market deal if it prevents a no deal Brexit, so preserving the things that are important for the Scottish economy - the four freedoms of the EU. It's still not enough, but it puts those in favour of the Customs Union within touching distance of winning a vote in the Commons.

Pointless. Not as good as being in the Union and having a place at the table, yet we pay in. No - only a long extension and revocation will do now. In the meantime May 4 will not be allowed, unless it is again cleverly disguised. The Dougpol electometer suggests that May would go down again by 35 votes in any version of her plan.

And I would have thought the election thing is a bluff, and Labour would win.

Agreed, but the alternative of no deal is also frightening, and I fear that May will simply run out of time.

At this point, I really start to think that no deal would be the best option, because it would at least condemn the Tories to ruin when the public realises just how crap it is to stand for hours in Alicante Airport ;)

It always was the best position from which to start negotiations,because The EU Don't want that either.
But TM was not brave enough and mistakenly thought that a more friendly approach would do better.
The trouble is that in serious negotiations like this,you have to play hard and not blink.
She played soft and blinked....... :-(

This is not about bravery but leverage. May had been under intense pressure from day one from UK buisness to avoid a no-deal Brexit. Various prominent buisness figures declared publically that a hard Brexit would be disastrous.

Meanwhile the key politicians on the other side faced no such pressure. Because e.g. unlike what David Davis predicted, the heads of VW and BMW did not pressure Merkel to avoid a hard Brexit at any cost. Instead they proclaimed that the preservation of the single market would be more important to them than buisness with the UK.

So naturally the EU negotiation team is well aware of May's desperate situation, and thus any attempt to threaten them would have been laughed away.

I disagree,if Britain had gone for No Deal first,The EU would not have been laughing.....

A very interesting observation that gives some proof that Germany is in control of the EU and not the EU parliament.

I think Tacitus will find it very difficult to deny that fact.

Another interpretation would be that the bosses of BMW and VW signaled to Merkel and other leaders of the EU that the British threat of German car manufacturers losing big time in a No Deal BREXIT scenario should be ignored if necessary. I've read a million times in British newspapers that the EU needs Britain more than vice versa -- giving "desperate" German car manufacturers as an example. That's BS, just like Trump's tariffs. Brits who want to drive a nice Beamer or a VW will simply pay more than in the past, that's all, and the people who can afford these cars do not care about an additional 2000 Pounds added to the sales price.

This observation just gives further proof that the Brexiteers never understood how the EU works. Because even if this calculation had been correct, Germany is in no position to force the EU to comply, because every country has the ability to veto the treaty with the UK. And countries like Ireland habe pledged to do so if their interests are not properly respected.

The strategy of the Brexiteers is so flawed because it was based on wishful thinking and their own ideology. They want to believe that the EU is dominated by Germany, despite all evidence to the contrary, because it fits into their existing beliefs and further justify Brexit. Brexiteers like to claim that the negotiations went so badly because of May's weakness, or because of the nefarious EU, but the truth is that their own entire approach to the negotiations was wrong.

All of this would have been predictable to anyone who has a basic understanding how the EU works. That someone like David Davis who got things so wrong still continues to be a prominent Brexiteers illustrates how clueless many of them are. And this misreading of the EU is further based on a basic misreading of Germany's interests. Because the EU is so vital for Germany's economy, it was always clear that it would want to avoid anything that could undermine the EU. Furthermore Germany's history made it more receptive to e.g. the interests of Ireland, especially if the chancellor of Germany is from the former GDR.

That being said, my original point was that May was in no position to bluff precisely because everybody knew that she had been pressured to avoid a no-deal, while Germany (the country the Brexiteers were mistakenly counting on) or any other for that matter did not face the same pressure. And everybody knew that, it was even in the papers. Barnier could have simply called her bluff by quoting any of the prominent British buisnessmen who warned against a hard bBrexit.

This was not the only time the British were blindsided, remember when the Spanish made some pressure because of Gibraltar?


Indeed, and that even leaves out that the damage of Brexit could be better absorbed by the EU. Sure every country would suffer to some extent, but the country that would be simiarly affected to the EU would be Ireland. A small country that relatively easy be stabilized by some additional EU funds.

Indeed - no deal would decimate Britain's two biggest manufacturing industries - pharma and aerospace - and decimate its biggest business of banking and finance. There was no way anyone could credibly open negotiations but suggesting it. The stuff about VW is just a simplistic fantasy.

What should have happened is that on 24th June 2016 the govt should have started work on honest impact assessments and released them to the public to help steer debate in a sensible direction. As it was they finally told the public what no deal would mean a few months before it was due to happen.

And of course Boris on hearing this said "f@#$ business" - I hope that gets plastered on billboards with his other lies.

I think that it was a no-win situation for May from the beginning. Playing hard wouldn't resolve the Irish border question, and what's proposed now (letting all goods in without any attempt at controls) is madness, as every dodgy Republican within 50 miles of the border will simply get their VAT refunds processed at the RoI side of the border while then moving lorries full of stuff VAT-free into the north, which will in turn ruin Unionist businesses.

This is not a negotiation for a pay rise with your boss or like asking your manager to put you on the transfer list. It is a complex situation with has many players, many angles and one side far more powerful than the other.

Add to that the fact the UK made a fatal mistake set the clock ticking themselves (mainly to appease a few Brexit MPs by showing they were doing something). Without clear aims and a clear timetable you could be as hard as you want in negotiations but it would not do you any good.

This mess is the fault of the people who voted for it - politicians handled it badly but the benefits promised in the referendum are undeliverable

On one British terrestrial TV channel this morning we have the Opposition deputy leader saying in the event of Labour winning an election, there must be a confirmatory second referendum for any deal, and that is Labour policy.

And on the 2nd terrestrial channel we have the Opposition foreign secretary saying that Labour would campaign in a second election to leave the European Union - because that is Labour policy.....

Why on earth didn't those two clowns have a wee chat and briefing over breakfast to present a united front? That is usually what should happen in a perfect world FFS!

You couldn't really make it up. Netflix has to get it's writers and actors together now while the going is good, because this soap opera will run and run.

Exactly. The British are bound by the terms of the Good Friday Agreement as indeed is the Republic of Ireland. The border issue was never negotiable. The Republic of Ireland now faces the task of keeping the border open and in the event of 'no deal' at the same time protecting the EU single market. It's ridiculous that we, who had nothing to do with instigating Brexit should be placed in that position by the UK, not to mention the cost of all this, running into hundreds of millions of euros even now. We've already spent 250 million euros in preparations that had to be made, just in cast there's a no deal exit.

Just in:


I saw this in the news:

Atch, has there been any announcement of what the Irish government intends to do about customs controls on the land border? I've been looking, and all I've found is infrastructure at the ports, but nothing has been done on the land border, I think?

I think the Irish government has more important matters taking up its time...

thesun.ie/news/3931056/taoiseach-leo-varadkar-kylie-minogue-letter/

Probably not worse than a condolence letter on the occasion of Hitler's death.... (no, Ireland is never living that down... I promise not to uveruse it, but.... I take it back, I promise nothing!)

They are still adamant that there will be no controls on the border. There were a number of border protests over the weekend and community feeling is very strong.I notice that although the BBC reported it, the people they quoted were the milder ones talking about access to health care etc. However, here's another side:

"We won't allow the very hard right-wing Tories and the ERG (European Research Group) and especially the DUP to destroy this community and bring us back to days when this was an economic wasteland." (Declan Fearon, Border Communities against Brexit)

and from Colin Harvey of Queens University:

"We have long experience of people trying to put walls in our way and we take them down. If anybody attempts to put barriers on this island again they are coming down. Any obstacles on this island will be removed............ There will be no hard border on the island of Ireland."


OMG! That's hilarious! Love the photo, he looks like a real starstruck gay fan :)) I wonder if he cavorts around his living room to the strains of Kylie after a hard day's night in Dáil Éireann, to work off the Brexit stress.

So all that the economic migrants will have to do after Brexit is to travel to Ireland and then illegally cross the open border? Bullet meet foot...

No, not quite. Ireland and the UK (as well as the other jurisdictions in the Common Travel Area) broadly look after each other, so for instance, an Irish guard who suspects that some guy from India is actually heading to the UK will question the Indian, and if their plans to go to the UK are confirmed, they'll be denied entry into Ireland.

The problem will be with EU citizens, who won't be scrutinised by Irish border police as to their intentions. The odds of EU citizens working illegally in the UK are quite low anyway, as it wouldn't be worth the hassle when they've got plenty of other countries to work in legally.


That's a pretty clear statement of intent that even technological obstacles in Northern Ireland will be demolished by Republicans within hours. It will probably be possible to hide surveillance equipment (same as now - there's no way that the UK government isn't monitoring the Irish border), but that's got no hope of determining the difference between an empty truck and a full one.

One of my best friends is from a border community, and she says that there's a real sense of unease about the whole thing.