John Hemming's Web Log

Given that Brexit is now certain the UK has a challenging negotiation. It was to be expected that the UK would not immediately give notice to the EU under Article 50. What the UK needs to do ideally is to negotiate the settlement in substance before giving notice. Time and delay is in the UK's interest as is obvious from the comments by the EU Commission. The challenges to negotiate is how much the UK has to pay to the EU for access to the Single Market and what the continuing rules on freedom of movement will be. If the UK were to cease being a member of the EU without some solutions to many of the major issues then it would cause considerable economic disruption (beyond what is in the financial markets). On the other hand this would not really impact the EU that much. Hence the UK needs to avoid being forced into the corner and delaying on giving notice is the only solution for this. Interesting articles Nick Cohen James Strong Experimental Traffic Alerts System...

The Vienna Convention on the law of Treaties 1969 A European Parliament briefing on withdrawal from the EU

Because the UK's realistic alternative to the EU is membership of the EEA it is worth comparing Norway's situation to that of the UK. This is a relevant story about how being in the EEA (not having to follow the CAP or CFP) can mean countries having to follow laws and regulations the setting of which countries have not participated in. However, there is also the question about cash. Full fact have looked at the issue of what our net contribution to the EU is. They conclude it was about £8.5bn in 2015. Norway was a lot less. Their contribution according to This page from the Norwegian government is around 388+447+6+25 Million Euro per year. (ie 886 million Euro - see page for detailed breakdown. However, Norway has a population of only 5m and we have a population of 64m. If you look at the per capita contribution it is £132 in the UK and 177 Euro in norway. The Euro Sterling Exchange rate has varied recently from almost 1.5 to 1.25. Yesterday was 1.267. Converting £...