LongTimeLurker

Really? It's a bit rich for Spain to complain about Gibraltar's status revolving around what the people who live there want when they still control Ceuta and Melilla on the coast of Morocco on a similar sort of basis. If the Northern Ireland soft border backstop is dead then it looks like the only two viable options are a complete U-turn to an EEA style customs union and maintaining the single market complete with freedom of movement or a no deal WTO rules Brexit. Not hopeful that the latter will be avoided as there are way too many careerists in the Tory party who won't follow their Remain convictions if it risks their political future and it's not clear what Corbyn's real agenda is given his tolerance of Kate Hoey and co.

The world was a very different place before political correctness kicked in.

The guy I wound up used to regularly come out with opinions like people from the UK being prone to hay fever and being generally defective in other ways because they are seriously inbred as there have been no regular invasions like the ones Poland has experienced across the North European plane to keep mixing up the gene pool, so like a lot of people he could dish it out, but wasn't quite so good at taking it . Having listened to his patter on a daily basis for a few years I could definitely tell that it wouldn't be much fun being a gay Jewish communist in Warsaw (or Lodz in his case).

And that gives 27 countries a lot of leverage to extort concessions out of the UK in exchange. So far that has only revolved around the RoI-NI border as that has been what has been prioritised by the EU, but other issues like the status of Gibraltar and access for Danish fishermen to UK coastal waters could easily still rear their head and make nothing other than WTO level no deal Brexit doable on the very limited timeline available, because the sane and rational ways of dealing with Brexit like a Norway style EEA status have already been rejected.

Can remember winding up a Polish guy that I was working with in Canada back when communism was collapsing in Eastern Europe that I thought General Jaruzelski would eventually be remembered as a hero for saving his country from Soviet invasion and handing over power to the opposition as soon as it was safe to do so. Safe to say that didn't go down too well, although the next day he said I was probably right but should be very careful who I said it to as I might get my head kicked in. Don't think it ever dawned on him that I might be taking the piss.

At least he's being honest about where things are heading right now unlike Theresa May. Most people still seem to be in deep denial over what could happen with the RoI-NI border because they forget or are blissfully unaware of how for example nobody in the former Czechoslovakia wanted a hard border between the Czech Republic and Slovakia after the velvet divorce but it was the inevitable outcome of no longer having a single market and customs union. Suspect Rees-Mogg couldn't care less about whether this ultimately leads to UI, and views the DUP as useful idiots.

There's also an MLA called Carla Lockhart: who could be viewed as a contender on this.

Doubt it. Even a proxy vote is participation rather than abstentionism.

There's been others I've seen that are a bit more ominous for Unionism than that, but nothing that suggests UI is in any way imminent or likely to trigger a border poll while the DUP are in coalition. Hopefully we are a Westminster election away from some semblance of sanity where relations with the EU are concerned. Economic meltdown across the British Isles should be a more pressing issue than the location of the national capitals for all but complete cranks.

Not looking good for the EU to show the flexibility May claimed to be expecting: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-44903652 You'd almost get the impression that certain Westminster politicians have yet to grasp that Britannia no longer rules the waves. How dare Johnny Foreigner expect to be able to do things his way and not hop along to London's tune.

They can only do that through a border poll called by the Westminster government's NI Secretary, if there is solid reasons provided to believe that the UI option would win. In other words, the UK government as the sovereign state involved is a not a neutral observer, but has signed up to a mechanism through which UI can be peacefully achieved. I don't see how that changes in any way with a hard border beyond the effect it will undoubtedly have on public opinion.

If you want to go there you can say any person who was born in the ROI before 1937 is entitled to British citizenship. The Good Friday Agreement enshrines citizenship for generations going forward. To say it doesn't make the NI/ROI border unique in European terms is frankly ridiculous Beyond the semantics of all of this, what's the significance in practical terms? Are you saying the GFA is incompatible with a hard border being implemented? If so, how? It's a bit like Catalan UDI. Saying something is the case over and over because you want it to be true doesn't cut it in international law terms.

"...not completely dissimilar..."

Ok, lets try this one. Citizens born in NI are automatically allowed citizenship of ROI due to GFA, I'd say that's pretty unique between two sovereign nations in Europe. Something not completely dissimilar happens in Bosnia with Croatian citizenship and things arguably get pushed further there because Bosnian Croats get to vote in Croatian general elections and have representatives in the Croatian parliament. This happens across a hard border on the outer edge of the EU.

Another day another mental posture from the UK government: https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/theresa-may-eu-must-change-unworkable-brexit-position-1-4771587 The backstop for NI was staying in the single market and customs union, so if that now has to apply as the backstop to the whole UK Rees Mogg and co are not going to be happy but they are the ones who pushed the amendment so that's clearly not the end game. This is heading for a no deal WTO rules level Brexit at this point and expecting the EU to budge is just a way to try to pin the blame on them.

Clearly time for him to go, but the same could have been said about Arlene Foster where the handling of the cash for ash scheme was concerned.

Really? Alex Salmond and co assured us there would be no hard border after independence regardless of what happened on currency use and EU membership. It now should be abundantly clear to all that's not necessarily the case. A no deal or hard Brexit puts Scotland in a very difficult position because the rUK would be the main trading partner but will have needlessly isolated and impoverished itself Free State/Eire post-partition style, and there is no land border with the EU to pivot away effectively enough from that market to undo the damage caused by adding a border with the rUK into the equation. Kenny MacAskill is right in that priority number one right now for anybody who isn't completely obsessed with independence to a degree that is unhealthy should be reversing Brexit and not tilting at windmills with an indyref2.

...or they just gravitated to the side that was waving the Union Flag about a lot more to avoid giving an issue to TUV and co that they could be outflanked on and probably had assumed like most people that Remain would win and have now painted themselves into a corner. It's like watching a political version of a snuff film unfolding at the moment, because this is slowly killing the rational pragmatic case for the Union between GB and NI that a lot of Unionist opinion has really rested on going back even to the days of Edward Carson stone cold dead. It's not just the DUP though, groups like the Corbynistas and Scottish Tories that you would expect to know better are driving this over the cliff as well.

The DUP would never vote for it to be overturned and the Tories need them in confidence motions. This is not easy to reverse.

Not what was on twitter last night: but 71 seemed a bit on the high side.

So why are they not being expelled from the Labour group at Westminster? Think the answer is that Corbyn actually wants a hard Brexit so he has more scope for pushing a far left agenda down the road, but he needs the Tories in power for another year or two as useful idiots to be able to achieve that outcome.

It's not being highlighted so much by the media but the Rees Mogg amendment that effectively killed the backstop agreement where NI is concerned pretty much guaranteed a no deal Brexit, if the EU stick to their negotiating posture from late last year. http://www.itv.com/news/2018-07-17/have-jacob-rees-mogg-and-the-erg-achieved-a-decisive-step-towards-no-deal-brexit/

Suspect the whole Brexit saga also has to run its course and a soft border has to be the outcome before Stormont gets going again. The usual carefully selected flashpoints like the Ardoyne shops not being used by SF to engineer mayhem on and after the 12th this year suggests that's their ultimate end game.

No issues with cover for 100 and the ground being fully enclosed with no way to see in from outside, so it all depends on dressing rooms and toilet blocks. Did Tynieness not claim to have a licensing application prepared and ready to go before he resigned?