Courtesy of Mish
At the top of the list of absurd Brexit advice is the notion that a bad deal is better than no deal.
But that’s what Andrew Duff at the European Policy Center says.
Drop the Clichés
The British side should stop pretending that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’. It is not. In fact, there’s really nothing worse than no deal. So it’s not a clever tactic for the UK to start off negotiations by repeating a cliché that at best nobody believes and at worst sounds mildly threatening.
Mathematical Idiocy!
The position of Duff is mathematical idiocy. The EU demands as much as €60 billion in exit fees, adherence to four principles (that the EU itself does not follow), fishing rights, etc.
Giving into those demands, or most of them, is like leaving for no reason at all.
Clearly, no deal is better.
Duff is nothing more than a staunch “Remainer” who refuses to accept reality.
€60 Billion in Exit Fees
Eurointelligence takes to task the notion that €60 Billion is remotely close to a starting point for negotiations.
Werner Mussler offers the most detailed account of the financial issues we have seen so far. The €60bn have several components, the largest being a back-of-the-envelope calculation on the EU’s open positions, also known as “reste à liquider“, spending commitments made in the past that have to be paid in the future. They stood at €217bn as of end-2015, and are likely to grow to €240bn by end-2018. Britain’s part would be about €29bn. In reality, that position would be lower since many of these funds are never called.
The second large position regards pension payments to EU employers – not just British – as the EU does not distinguish between UK and other nationals. Locking in a British net contribution for the lifetime of these payments seems ludicrous to us, but it is fair, of course, that the UK pays at least for the pensions of EU employees who are British nationals. If the EU insists on the UK paying for the pension of non-UK nationals post-Brexit, there can be no Brexit agreement. Mussler concludes that the €60bn is a purely political number.
We found ourselves in rare agreement with Holger Stelzner, the FAZ’s conservative economics editor, who asks what kind of community the EU is that wants to penalize a member state for exiting. He also notes that there is no legal basis for the €60bn claim.
Surrender
Duff would pay the full bill on the absurd grounds that a “bad deal is better than no deal”. The UK may as well hoist the white flag and sue for peace in Duff’s absurd model.
Theresa May Has Things Correct
“Not partial membership of the EU, associate membership of the EU, or anything that leaves us half-in, half-out. We do not seek to adopt a model already enjoyed by other countries. We do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave. No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain.” Theresa May, 17 January 2017
Odds of No Deal
May’s position makes perfect sense mathematically. Nonetheless, Bloomberg writer Simon Kennedy repeats the nonsense A Bad Brexit Deal May Be Better Than No Deal After All.
Walking away with no regime for 230 billion pounds ($287 billion) of annual exports to the bloc and the 3.3 million Europeans in the U.K would be “perfectly OK,” says Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Not “frightening” at all, says Brexit czar David Davis.
But analysts are painting an entirely different picture of an outcome they view as increasingly plausible: An official in May’s government puts the chance of the talk collapsing at about 30 percent. EU negotiator Michel Barnier this week said the bloc should ready to deal with the “serious consequences” of a breakdown, such as longer queues at borders to how to handle transportation of nuclear materials.
Fearmonfering
Kennedy drones on and on about all the ways the UK would lose. Here are just two examples.
