Fresh and urgent moves to salvage the Brexit negotiations were underway on Wednesday night after Theresa May told the Irish prime minister she will come back with fresh text on the Irish border “tonight or tomorrow”.
The Taoiseach Leo Varadkar revealed that there was “room to manoeuvre” the deal into the right position before the European council summit next week.
Ireland’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar and Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands, hold a news conference in Dublin. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters
He told reporters in Dublin at a press conference with the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte:
Having consulted with people in London [May] wants to come back to us with text tonight and tomorrow. And I expect to move forward as well – I want us to move forward if it’s possible next week. I explained my position to her, she explained her position to me. It was a very good call. We were willing to look at any proposals the UK have. While we were willing to consider them, we believe the one we had on Monday would work for Ireland and had to be assured that any new language would be consistent with that.
Varadkar said he “agreed to look at any text with a positive and open” attitude and opened the possibility of a truce with the Democratic Unionist Party with what appeared to be a soft interpretation of what “regulatory alignment” might mean between Northern Ireland and Ireland post Brexit.
He said that regulatory alignment, which is one of three options for a post Brexit border arrangement in the Brussels deal, did not apply to “everything”, merely areas of “north south” activity.
He said that there was already regulatory divergence on the island – for instance fireworks are legal in Northern Ireland but not in the republic.
Rutte said the EU was “working very hard” to move forward, but it could not without a deal on the Irish border.
urbanknight4 on December 6th, 2017 at 13:05 UTC »
jpdidz on December 6th, 2017 at 12:05 UTC »
Meanwhile the EU has carried out 47 (that they've made publicly available).
Edit: I didn't expect this slightly pithy remark to get so high up on here. Here is a link to the EU Impact Assessment page. At this point the EU is really hammering home how much of a ball ache it is for nations to leave the EU. They are doing a very effective job at establishing a precedence of wave after wave of deterrents.
MutantFit on December 6th, 2017 at 10:22 UTC »
Quick Summary thus far [Fucking RIP to my inbox. This is insane!]
David Davis admits no Impact Assessment has been done Uses the term sectoral analysis instead; says a report that uses the word impact is not an impact assessment Says economic models have all been wrong so he has not requested economic modeling Says that the UK Government has received the majority of all paperwork since remaining paperwork is duplicate or early report Rees-Mogg spins this atrociously by saying "If no Impact Assessments exist then the Government have gone above and beyond by providing paperwork to Parliament since they requested Impact Assessments" (Whichever side of the fence you sit on that was just outrageous; he should have kept quiet) Responds that Brexit will not see a drop in EU nurses in the UK (despite EU nurse applications dropping 96% since Brexit) The EU Parliament has been briefed to a greater extent by UK politicians than the UK Parliament Davis states that a Contingency Plan exist Highlights that Contingency Plans are based on real-life scenarios such as Nuclear Inspections; not theoretical economic events Davis tries to leave; Rees-Mogg reminds him that the Speaker said nothing is more important than giving evidence. Ouch!Davis says that is not the same as an impact assessments.
Final question (which summarises nicely)
Davis: Not a quantitative one, no, says Davis.
Davis: No. The range of different outcomes it too wide. Some free trade agreements have been very effective, and others haven’t. Ministers had to take a judgment.
Additional Context
25 June, Davis: We have got 50, nearly 60 sectoral analyses done06 Dec, Davis: No impact assessments have been done on the impact of Brexit
Dec 2016, Davis: We are in the midst of carrying out about 57 sets of analyses, each of which has implications for individual parts of 85% of the economy.
Dec 2017, Davis: The usefulness of such detailed impact assessments is near zero.