Why? The UK sent a letter invoking article 50 and after an extension they're out.
The UK is a third country and no more an EU member.
Leaving is very simple if you're willing to face the consequences.
And this is the true problem of the UKs exit. That they're neither willing to face the truth nor the fact that's it a third country now with all restrictions that come with that status.
You are suggesting that the consequences of leaving where well defined, upfront and the UK was simply not "willing to face the truth" - this is not true. The consequences of leaving were established, and negotiated after the invocation.
You should also take note of my comment below - there is no "they" wrt the UK, as the country was divided, and actively fighting over the issue - with some actively trying to prevent a brexit.
> You are suggesting that the consequences of leaving where well defined,
I'm not suggesting that at all. Actually I think that it was enormous stupidity to send that letter before England even defined what it wanted exactly.
It didn't help at all that Ms. May tried to appease the Brexit extremists in the conservative party. People that, as we now know , cannot be appeased, ever, since they just move the goal post to an even more extreme position.
> You should also take note of my comment below - there is no "they" wrt the UK, as the country was divided, and actively fighting over the issue - with some actively trying to prevent a brexit.
I appreciate that. Nevertheless 52% of people that bothered to vote wanted out.
Pissing off their European partners at every turn also certainly doesn't help
Unless Britain gives up it's extremist position I predict a world of hurt once the EU is no more willing to kick the can further down the road.
Long queues at immigration, when vacationing in Spain will be the least of your worries.
From a trade perspective, Northern Ireland is treated as part of the EU at the moment. This allows the Irish border to remain open, as there's no feasible way of enforcing it otherwise. For some context: The European union as a whole has 137 border crossings with third countries to its east. The Irish-Northern Irish border has 275.
Northern Ireland is still saying its goodbyes and looking for its jacket. And even GB is still caught up in hundreds of temporary exemptions and is in many senses operating as part of Europe.
Northern Ireland is still abiding by EU free movement of goods rules and EU Customs Union rules, and goods from the rest of the UK are inspected when they get to Northern Ireland.
Can you be more specific? As far as I can tell, the difficulties with Brexit are entirely self-inflicted, as a consequence of poor planning and self-contradictory goals.
The UK wanted to leave the EU and the common market. That means a border. That much has always been clear. That's basically the whole point of the common market.
The UK also doesn't want a border between Ireland and Northern Ireland but that's stricly an issue between the Republic of Ireland and the UK. Obviously as Ireland is a member and the EU is a constructive and diplomatically open entity, it was more than ready to negociate. Actually, multiple solutions have been proposed and at least one was tentivaly accepted before being reneged by the UK government.
I mean at some point in a negociation if the weak party can't come to its sense, you have to stop wasting everyone's time and tell them to get lost which is more or less what's happening with the UK.
The UK would have had to breach or at least seriously jeopardize the GFA to do so. An agreement they willingly signed up to. The UK brought that upon themselves.
Brexit doesn't, but the GFA was only possible because of the seamless border between the two countries. That lack-of-a-border can only exist if NI remains in the customs union. The rUK can only have a seamless border with NI if it's either in the customs union, or neither are. The UK decided the rUK didn't want to be in it. So now there's a border in the Irish sea.
> Threatening a return to violence in Ireland over Brexit is what I mean by "making things difficult".
Recognizing that putting in jeopardy an international agreement that brought an end to the troubles might incite violence, is not the same thing as threatening violence. It's common sense.
> The Troubles were not about sausage shipments between Belfast and Dublin.
You're right, they were an ethno-nationalist conflict, during which the British government sanctioned the murder of its own citizens, and now continues to protect those murderers from prosecution.
> You're right, they were an ethno-nationalist conflict, during which the British government sanctioned the murder of its own citizens, and now continues to protect those murderers from prosecution.
You're being intentionally obtuse now. If you can't see why an open border is vital for the continued peace, and why removing it would place tension on a peace that took decades to achieve, then you've already made up your mind.
I suppose I should have expected it when you blamed the EU for the self-inflicted woes of Brexit.
The UK is a third country and no more an EU member.
Leaving is very simple if you're willing to face the consequences.
And this is the true problem of the UKs exit. That they're neither willing to face the truth nor the fact that's it a third country now with all restrictions that come with that status.