BREAKING NEWS: BREXIT

[Jeffersons Ghost]

Britain's Frost Not Seen Offering New Ideas on Brexit Backstop
Sept. 4, 2019, at 4:21 a.m.
BY GABRIELA BACZYNSKA and John Chalmers

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British Brexit negotiator David Frost is not expected to offer new ideas to replace the Irish backstop when he arrives in Brussels for talks with the European Union on Wednesday, British and European diplomats and officials said.

The question of whether Prime Minister Boris Johnson has a new plan to reach a deal with the EU or is bluffing to run out the clock before an abrupt exit goes to the heart of the political crisis in London, where opponents of an exit with no deal have seized control of parliamentary business to stop it.

A British official said London was unwilling to put anything on the table for fear it would be swiftly shot down. Europeans, for their part, said they were skeptical whether Britain had any new proposals to offer at all. https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2019-09-04/britains-frost-not-seen-proposing-new-ideas-to-replace-brexit-backstop

[Denzil_DC]

1. That's ridiculous. They had concrete ideas a few days ago:

... Sky News reports that a draft legal text drawn up by the government to present to the EU is simply the existing backstop protocol in the treaty, with the relevant articles on the backstop crossed out.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/irish-backstop-brexit-no-deal-draft-barnier-johnson-varadkar-a9089001.html

[Jeffersons Ghost]

2. thanks for that report; but a "few days" makes LOTS of difference

[Denzil_DC]

3. In case of any doubt, I was being snarky:

... Sky News reports that a draft legal text drawn up by the government to present to the EU is simply the existing backstop protocol in the treaty, with the relevant articles on the backstop crossed out.

[Ghost Dog]

4. Germany - Lack of British proposal on Irish border raises risk of no-deal Brexit

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany sees an increased risk of a no-deal Brexit next month because Britain has so far failed to come up with an alternative proposal to solve the Irish border question, a government document from last week showed...

... “So far, the British government has not made any concrete proposals,” the German government said in the document. “The likelihood of an disorderly exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union on 31 October 2019 has thus increased.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed that issue with Johnson during talks in Berlin on Aug. 21 but the document suggests that the British premier had not presented any fresh ideas to solve the problem. “The British government is currently sticking to its far-reaching demand that the arrangement agreed in the Withdrawal Agreement for the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, the so-called backstop, should be replaced by so-called alternative arrangements,” the document read...

... The EU views the British request to remove the backstop from the Brexit deal as unacceptable and the European Council has repeated this point. At the same time, the EU has called on the British government to propose legally-operable solutions that meet the same non-negotiable objectives as the backstop: preserving all aspects of the Good Friday Agreement, especially the open border, and ensuring the integrity of the EU internal market...

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-germany/germany-lack-of-british-proposal-on-irish-border-raises-risk-of-no-deal-brexit-idUKKCN1VP16E