Center One, LLC, a Buffalo, N.Y.-based call center company with operations in Pennsylvania and New York, violated federal law by refusing to provide religious accommodations for an employee’s religious observance, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit it announced today.
According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, in October 2016, a call center employee at Center One’s Beaver Falls, Pa., location, who is an adherent of Messianic Judaism, sought a reasonable accommodation of his religious beliefs and practice that he abstain from work on days of religious observance. The lawsuit states that Center One imposed disciplinary points against the Messianic Jewish employee for his absences in observance of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Center One required that the employee provide a certification from a religious leader or religious organization “on letterhead” as a precondition of granting him time off as a reasonable accommodation and imposed disciplinary points against the Messianic Jewish employee for his absences in observance of those religious holidays, the EEOC said.
The Messianic Jewish employee was not a member of a congregation at the time of his requests, but supplied other documents supporting his need for the religious accommodation. The EEOC charged that Center One wrongfully persisted in its demand that the employee provide certification from a religious leader or organization and forbade the employee from taking any additional days off for upcoming religious holidays. The employee was compelled to resign due to Center One’s refusal to accommodate his sincerely held religious beliefs, according to the suit.
Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits religious discrimination and mandates that employers provide reasonable accommodations, such as excused absences, for the sincerely held religious beliefs and practices of their employees unless it would pose an undue hardship. The EEOC filed suit (EEOC v. Center One, LLC, Civil Action No. 2:19-cv-01242) in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, after first attempting to reach a prelitigation settlement through its conciliation process.
One can dispute whether employment law should require employers to exempt religious objectors from various generally applicable job duties (such as the requirement to show up each weekday). But Title VII does impose such a requirement, at least when the accommodation isn’t an “undue hardship” to the employer; and that requirement can’t turn on whether one belongs to an established religious congregation. (See my post on The Individualistic American Law of Religious Exemptions for more.)
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Schwarzman: US Politics Today Feels Like Just Before The Civil War
The latest pundit to make an ominous, indirect warning that the US may be on the verge of a civil war, was Blackstone’s billionaire co-founder, Steve Schwarzman, who said that U.S. politics is nearly as heated and polarized now as it was in the days just before the Civil War.
“We are clearly going through some very unusual times and enormous difficulties getting groups of people to agree on things,” Schwarzman said in an interview with Bloomberg TV’s Francine Lacqua, noting that the “adversarial nature in politics” recalls the situation in the 1850s – just before the US civil war broke out – “when people weren’t even civil in politics” or anywhere else for that matter.
Private Equity titan Schwarzman, who has a fortune of about $16 billion, was described by Bloomberg as “a prominent adviser to President Donald Trump” and also “the president’s Palm Beach neighbor, a regular guest at his Mar-a-Lago resort and one of his most generous donors” and he has at times functioned as an intermediary between the U.S. and Chinese governments.
The Blackstone chief said his assistance hasn’t been limited to Trump: “It is not just this president. There have been other ones. People need advice or they need help in some area. I am like an equal opportunity employer: if I can do something that’s helpful in my view – not bias, but helpful for the greater good – I like to do things like that” said the altruistic financier who also happens to be America’s largest landlord and the “largest owner of real estate in the world.”
After indirectly warning that the US political environment is a explosive powder keg, Schwarzman pivoted to defending his line of work, and said “the image of private equity funds loading up the companies they acquire with debt and adding no value was wrong” explaining that fund managers need to make companies grow if investors are to make a profit.
Well, that, or they can just extract all the value they can from an investment via dividend recap while loading up the company with untenable debt and then, once it has been squeezed dry, letting the company file for bankruptcy.
Asked how to spot an overheated market, Schwarzman pointed to the issuance of debt securities that pay no interest and an abundance of available credit as signals:
“When your stupid friends are getting rich, this is usually a sign there is too much credit available,” he said at a time when all of his stupid friends were getting rich, as increasingly more debt was being issued that paid no interest.
Center One, LLC, a Buffalo, N.Y.-based call center company with operations in Pennsylvania and New York, violated federal law by refusing to provide religious accommodations for an employee’s religious observance, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit it announced today.
According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, in October 2016, a call center employee at Center One’s Beaver Falls, Pa., location, who is an adherent of Messianic Judaism, sought a reasonable accommodation of his religious beliefs and practice that he abstain from work on days of religious observance. The lawsuit states that Center One imposed disciplinary points against the Messianic Jewish employee for his absences in observance of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Center One required that the employee provide a certification from a religious leader or religious organization “on letterhead” as a precondition of granting him time off as a reasonable accommodation and imposed disciplinary points against the Messianic Jewish employee for his absences in observance of those religious holidays, the EEOC said.
The Messianic Jewish employee was not a member of a congregation at the time of his requests, but supplied other documents supporting his need for the religious accommodation. The EEOC charged that Center One wrongfully persisted in its demand that the employee provide certification from a religious leader or organization and forbade the employee from taking any additional days off for upcoming religious holidays. The employee was compelled to resign due to Center One’s refusal to accommodate his sincerely held religious beliefs, according to the suit.
Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits religious discrimination and mandates that employers provide reasonable accommodations, such as excused absences, for the sincerely held religious beliefs and practices of their employees unless it would pose an undue hardship. The EEOC filed suit (EEOC v. Center One, LLC, Civil Action No. 2:19-cv-01242) in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, after first attempting to reach a prelitigation settlement through its conciliation process.
One can dispute whether employment law should require employers to exempt religious objectors from various generally applicable job duties (such as the requirement to show up each weekday). But Title VII does impose such a requirement, at least when the accommodation isn’t an “undue hardship” to the employer; and that requirement can’t turn on whether one belongs to an established religious congregation. (See my post on The Individualistic American Law of Religious Exemptions for more.)
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As I write this, news feeds are buzzing with questions and confusion over the October US/China trade talks. In September there was a massive propaganda campaign within the mainstream media to push the notion that a deal with China was imminent, which boosted markets otherwise on the verge of a plunge due to a hailstorm of bad financial news. This media campaign also indicated to me that there would be no deal in October – best case, there will be an announcement of “progress” and a temporary pause in tariffs, which will fall apart once again in a month’s time. Worst case scenario, the talks will falter before they ever really begin. Either way, the trade war will continue well into next year.
“…Every couple of months the trade war deal hype is recycled and every couple of months the markets are hit with renewed disappointment. The latest trade talks are set for October and if they happen at all, it is unlikely they will result in anything of significance. At most, they will be heralded as the “start of a great deal” and both sides will claim “progress was made”, and then, once again, nothing will happen and the conflict will accelerate. You would think people would have figured it out by now, but the investment world learns very slowly and functions solely on blind hope. At the very least, economic analysts are starting to realize that no deal is coming and that the situation is only going to get more tense. In fact, it is designed to get more tense…”
The trade war is only one of many major distractions being implemented at this time. While Trump plays his role for the globalist establishment as a bumbling populist villain and a Herbert Hoover clone, the sheer scope of events is becoming quite epic. This crash must be treated slightly different from the crash of 2008, because if we are to predict the pace of the implosion, we have to measure the number of geopolitical signals rather than just the financial signals.
That is to say, the globalists will trigger a Lehman Moment when there is enough geopolitical tension to keep the public mesmerized. In this way, they hope to conjure a “perfect storm”, one that can be blamed for the crisis they created. It would seem that as we close in on the end of 2019 we are very near to the avalanche…
Here I would like to briefly cover a number of developments that have accelerated in the past couple of weeks and give my take on what they mean to the liberty movement and the economy at large. Some people might question the idea that these events have economic implications. I suggest they look at the bigger picture. Much of what is happening today is engineered by the establishment not only as cover for the financial downturn, but also as partial fuel for collapse.
Trump/Ukraine Impeachment Circus
As I noted in my last article, Trump cannot be anti-globalist while working directly with global elites on a daily basis. The impeachment farce, like Russiagate, is carefully crafted 4th Generation warfare designed to keep leftists rabidly extreme while pushing conservatives fearful of a leftist takeover into the waiting arms of Trump, a puppet of the banking elites beholden to the Rothschild family for saving his fortune in the 1990s. The elites have no intention of getting rid of Trump at this time – he is too useful to them and their script, which requires an unstable conservative nationalist anti-globalist that eventually destroys the American economy.
The impeachment proceedings are far more likely to blow back on Joe Biden and remove him from the Democratic primaries, opening the door to an alternative candidate (probably Elizabeth Warren). With Bernie Sanders much too old and heart attack prone, Warren makes the most sense as the establishment choice for the 2020 Dem candidate.
Talk of Hillary Clinton entering the race as a kind of Cracker Jack candidate seems like Kabuki theater to me. Warren’s scandals are rather minor compared to Clinton’s, and really, the leftists don’t care anyway. Her lying about being fired from a job in the 1970’s for a pregnancy will be forgotten well before November, especially in the event that we are in the middle of a 2008-level economic crash. Liberty movement activists should not get too worked up about Clinton, they should focus more on Warren, and overall, they should stop deluding themselves into thinking that the election matters in the slightest.
As for Trump’s impeachment, it will probably fall apart by the end of the Democratic primaries, but this in no way secures Trump’s presidency (for those that still actually think that Trump is on the side of the liberty movement). Trump’s role as president will only continue so long as the US economy limps forward. If we do see a Lehman moment before the election, then Trump is slated to be removed from office.
The only wild card scenario I could see taking place in terms of the impeachment is that it hangs on until the election and throughout the economic downturn, and is shockingly successful. In this case, Trump would be removed from office (potentially) just before he was about to lose the election anyway. Why would the establishment make such a move? Because it would galvanize both the left and the right into a possible widespread conflagration; more so that merely replacing Trump with someone like Warren.
Believe it or not, there are actually a minority of dummies in the liberty movement that want to fight a civil war over Trump. I suggest that it would be a strategic disaster to fight a civil war over a banker puppet that is TRYING to take credit for the market bubble and by default the crash. It would be the fastest way for the liberty movement to lose all credibility. If we do end up in a war, it should not be in the name of Trump and should be focused on the banking elites, not the Democrats. Beyond this, if the elites need a distraction and scapegoat for their controlled demolition of the economy, a mindless left/right civil war would be more than enough to do the trick.
US/China Trade War On The Edge Of Something More Dangerous
The trade war has lasted for around 22 months; far longer than most analysts in the mainstream and alternative media predicted. Do not be surprised if it goes on until the end of 2020, or perhaps even longer. The conflict (like Trump) is FAR too useful to simply get rid of at this time
There are some analysts out there that assume that the globalists want to keep the current system propped up. They assume that the elites need it to continue, or they will “lose their power”. I wish it was that easy. Sadly, these people have been blinded by a narrow view of events and history. The elites are VERY AWARE of the consequences of what they are doing, and they absolutely intend for those consequences to happen. In order for them to build their “new world order”, the old world order has to be dismantled.
Part of this process will eventually require the end of the US dollar’s world reserve status and it’s replacement with a basket currency system and a eventually a cashless society, as has been openly discussed by globalist institutions like the IMF.
I can’t think of a better way for the elites to kill the dollar than to spark off a trade war with China until China uses the “nuclear option” as the largest importer/exporter in the world and abandons the dollar in global trade. With China dropping the dollar, numerous other nations will follow their lead in order to maintain ties to their manufacturing base. China has already begun dumping US treasuries exponentially. People tracking the trade war should understand that the final outcome if the trade war continues will be the end of the dollar’s reserve status.
Dollar advocates and fanboys will cry “No way!”, but they will be proven wrong in due course.
The Turkey/Syria/Kurdish Debacle
Over a year ago the Trump Administration pronounced the end of US troop involvement in Syria. This action was applauded by conservatives and liberty advocates as a sign that Trump was finally going to follow through on his campaign promises to stop the endless wars in the Middle East. Of course, it was announced only a week later that US troops would be staying where they were.
Now, we see the propaganda narrative that Trump is “fighting the establishment” yet again as he returns with ANOTHER declaration that US troops will be removed from Syria, this time in the face of a potential Turkish invasion in the region. I’m not sure how, but the Q-cult is spinning this move as a “Win” for Trump, perhaps because the Republican establishment is stating it is against the move. Already, Trump has been walking back his statements and indicating that troops will indeed be staying in Syria (but still not interfering in the ethnic cleansing of our Kurdish allies by Turkey).
This merely shows that nothing Trump says can be taken seriously and that we should wait and see what ACTUALLY happens in the coming weeks. In all likelihood, a Syrian “withdrawal” is meant to trigger a separate agenda, and this agenda may include an economic or shooting war with Turkey.
I have said for many years, long before the Syrian civil war was instigated by western covert agencies, that Syria represents a key component for a wider war in the Middle East. With so many interests involved in Syria, from the US to Iran to Russian to Turkey, one conflict in the region could spread into many conflicts. At the very least, it looks like my prediction in January that Turkey would leave NATO by the end of 2019 might be proven correct.
Brexit Confusion
I continue to see the Brexit storm in the UK resulting in a “No Deal” outcome, or, a bad deal outcome that looks a lot like a No Deal. I believe the Brexit itself, while noble in the movement that supports it, is actually a highly beneficial situation for the globalists IF it ends in a ‘No Deal’. The mainstream media and multiple elites have set the narrative that a No Deal will result in fiscal calamity. Of course, the elites have already ensured economic calamity by creating and then popping the Everything Bubble; but as with Trump in the US, they need someone to blame in Europe for the damage that is about to be done to the public.
The Brexit movement and sovereignty activists are the intended scapegoats. While the intricacies of parliamentary gymnastics in the UK are difficult to track, so far it appears that Boris Johnson will seek to follow through with Brexit at the end of this month. While there is a potential for a three month extension, I still see no indication that Johnson plans to acknowledge it. Even more interesting is that the EU is hell bent on refusing any deal, all while painting the Brexit campaign as uncompromising. It’s as if the European establishment WANTS a No Deal…
This makes sense on a surface level, as any good deal that ends with the British leaving the EU might encourage other nations to leave the supranational union as well. A No Deal ending in disaster for the UK and parts of Europe would inspire Europeans to want even more centralization. As the new head of the IMF stated this week, nations must ‘unite to halt the global economic slowdown’. In other words, give up your sovereignty or you will be made to suffer. But going much deeper, a No Deal blamed for an economic crash would also set up sovereignty activists in Europe as the bad guys, all while the banking elites elude any scrutiny.
The Perfect Storm?
I have to say, even more so than 2016, 2019/2020 is shaping up to be the most unstable time period in modern world history. I do not think this is a storm of coincidences. The evidence does not support this notion. Rather, the evidence shows a deliberate agenda of destabilization, one that serves the interests of a globalist minority that functions much like an organization of guerrillas, or terrorists. One of the primary goals of any guerrilla war is to covertly undermine the infrastructure and economy of a system so that the population is forced to adapt to a new way of thinking – and the globalists already have a particular ideology in mind.
In other words, chaos is useful in that it can be exploited to frighten or manipulate the public psyche. The most important target of a war is the mind of the enemy. Everything else is peripheral. Killing an enemy is not enough. There are always more to replace the ones you kill. But if you can trick the enemy into giving up, or thinking just like you do, or even trick him into admiring you, then your enemy becomes your slave without knowing it. No one will replace him, and thus, there are no more opponents to fight you. This is the path to total victory that the globalists most desire.
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Lawmakers Investigating “Strange Requests” To Monitor “Multiple” Journalists
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) has called on the State Department to respond to rumors of “strange requests” to use government resources to monitor journalists, according to the Washington Examiner.
Citing a letter from former GOP congressman Pete Sessions to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Nunes said that concerns were raised over former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch for “not serving the Trump administration well.”
“We also have concerns that possibly they were monitoring press from different journalists and others,” Nunes added. “That we don’t know, but we have people who are giving us this information and we’re going to ask these questions to the State Department and hopefully they’re going to get the answers before she comes in on Friday.”
With Yovanovitch set to testify before the House this week as Democrats ramp up their impeachment inquiry spurred by Trump’s communications with Ukraine, Nunes said Republicans “will give her an opportunity to answer these questions.”
Hannity said he has heard from multiple sources who “believe there is evidence that government resources were used to monitor communications” of American journalists, including new Fox News contributor John Solomon, related to Ukraine and posited that Yovanovitch may have been involved.
But Nunes would not get into specifics and noted that if there was some sort of surveillance, it may have been done properly. –Washington Examiner
“What I’ve heard — and I want to be clear — there’s a difference. What I’ve heard is that there were strange requests, irregular requests to monitor not just one journalist, but multiple journalists. Now perhaps that was OK. Perhaps there was some reason for that — that it can be explained away. But that’s what we know and that’s what we’re going to be looking into,” Nunes concluded.
Having already lifted stocks by noting that the Chinese Vice Premier will be here tomorrow, President Trump told reporters that trade talks “went very well” and will continue tomorrow…
And instantly, Dow futures surged over 100 points…
The price we’re paying to keep our heads above water steepens while the pay-off is dropping off a cliff.
A good friend related a story that goes directly to the heart of what’s broken in our way of life. My friend went to a reunion in Silicon Valley attended by the most successful cohort in America: super-smart, highly educated people in their mid-40s who have achieved the highest levels of professional accomplishment and built enormous financial wealth, with net worths not just in the millions but in many cases in the tens of millions of dollars.
These are people at the apex of the American economy and society, those who did everything right, worked hard and grasped the brass ring of conventional success.
Yet when the meeting broke into small groups and individuals were asked to speak briefly about their lives, more than a few people teared up and began weeping. My friend was struck by the disconnect between their tremendous success and their personal misery–of failed marriages, of being trapped in their jobs, in feeling their sacrifices weren’t worth it and in sensing the shallowness of their success and the poverty of their inner lives.
Not every super-successful person was miserable, of course; some had shifted gears to lower-paid work they found more fulfilling and others still loved their careers. But what was near-universal was the desire to get the heck out of Silicon Valley and leave its pressure-cooker lifestyle in the dust.
It takes a great deal of honesty and inner strength to admit in public that conventional success hasn’t delivered the glorious fulfillment and happiness we’re scripted to expect.
Ours is a culture of forced optimism. The scripts of forced optimism are repeated daily in endless loops: the “fix” for misery is gratitude (hence everyone interviewed after a “win” must express gratitude and humility) and a menu of self-help tricks: mindfulness, better management of our productivity, etc., in a near-infinite profusion of “5 things you can do to improve your life” lists that gush out of America’s prodigious self-help industry.
All of this is intended to obscure the reality that even the wealthy are poorer in everything that really matters. We measure “wealth” in financial terms, but as the super-successful and super-wealthy discover, financial wealth doesn’t translate into well-being, fulfilling relationships, agency, health or the other forms of intangible capital that make up “real wealth.”
The book also examines the constantly hyped faith that technology will inevitably make us all richer, the implicit premise being that every technological advance is automatically making our lives better in every way, every day.
A corollary of this forced technology optimism is that robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will inevitably generate trillions of dollars in profits that will enable us all to 1) quit working because robots will do all our work and 2) draw a substantial monthly “dividend” from this endless gusher of tech-generated profits.
Nice, except every one of these assumptions is demonstrably baseless. AI might enrich the few who own the platforms and monopolies, but even that is unlikely, given that these technologies are rapidly being commoditized.
These are difficult dynamics to understand, but if we want to become wealthier in meaningful ways (including sustainable financial wealth), we have to understand these concepts at the deepest level. If it was possible to explain these complex realities in a 200-word list of 5 easy tips, I would, but alas, it took 38,000 words just to manage a modestly comprehensive overview.
As all the costs we don’t even measure pile up, we’re all getting poorer whether we are able to admit it or not. A society / economy that’s fragmenting and failing is not making us all richer, despite the signaling device of a rising stock market and gamed statistics (unemployment at a 50-year low, etc.).
This book is also the result of my personal journey through burnout, a topic I discussed earlier this year in Burnout Nation. The price we’re paying to keep our heads above water steepens while the pay-off is dropping off a cliff. While we’re constantly told to focus on the rising value of our stocks and homes (if we have any meaningful equity in either one, which many do not), our well-being, health, social mobility, agency, trust in institutions, non-financial capital and security are all declining.
Burnout forces us to re-assess costs, sacrifices and pay-offs in a wrenching reckoning that can no longer be put off. The recession that is slowly but surely unfolding will increase the stress on many of us, and force all sorts of personal reckonings on people who have spent years avoiding just such a reckoning.
My goal in writing this book was to help everyone going through a personal reckoning understand the impoverishment meted out by our broken socio-economic system, an impoverishment that may be invisible even as we sense it weighing more heavily on us every day.
How do we turn around this decline in everything that matters? The first step is to recognize and measure all forms of capital, tangible and intangible alike, and make a personal balance sheet of all the forms of capital we own or have access to, and prioritize which ones are the most important to us.
There’s much more in the book. Please take a look at the first section for free (PDF). There’s a 15% discount on both the digital and print editions through the month of October.
A note of thanks to those who buy the book: As an independent writer, book sales are a substantial part of my livelihood. I receive no funding from any trust fund, university, philanthro-capitalist foundation, think-tank, shadowy C.I.A. front, media giant or government agency.
After Overnight Chaos, Trump Trade Tweet Sparks Stock Buying-Panic
“home on Thursday”, “home on Friday”, small-deal, no-deal, mini-deal, skinny-deal, “meet with Trump on Friday” – all sent US equity markets flying overnight but when Trump talked of meeting Liu He in The Oval Office, markets got very excited.
Chinese stocks rallied overnight with the small-cap, tech-heavy indices dramatically outperforming…
Source: Bloomberg
European stocks ended higher, helped by Trump’s tweet…
Source: Bloomberg
Futures show the utter carnage of the overnight chop in US markets…
And in context some key technical levels…
All US Majors were higher on the day after Trump’s tweet…Trannies are back in the green for the week…
Very late on we got headlines of a deal coming BUT smaller than expected…
Odds of a (major) trade deal lifted very modestly today…
Source: Bloomberg
Cash equity markets chopped around their key technical levels all day…
Momo was very choppy today…
Source: Bloomberg
Dramatic short-squeeze at the open and again in the afternoon…
Source: Bloomberg
Global bank stocks are worth keeping an eye on…
Source: Bloomberg
VIX tumbled to a 17 handle…
Treasury yields were notably higher again on the day, rising around 7-8bps across the curve…
Source: Bloomberg
Pushing 30Y Yields back above 2.15%…
Source: Bloomberg
The Dollar dropped near 3-week lows today…
Source: Bloomberg
As Yuan exploded higher overnight (a 7 handle spike at one point)…
Source: Bloomberg
Cable soared on optimistic Ireland headlines…
Source: Bloomberg
Cryptos drifted lower today…
Source: Bloomberg
Commodities were mixed given the dollar weakness – oil and copper rallied, PMs were slammed…
Source: Bloomberg
Gold traded back below $1500 even as ETF holdings reach record highs…
Source: Bloomberg
WTI rallied on chatter about extended, deeper OPEC production cuts
Source: Bloomberg
Softs sold off after WASDE forecasts (led by corn), heading for worst week since May…
Source: Bloomberg
And finally, US CEOs are signaling an imminent recession…
US China Business Council: A Deal Is Coming (But It Will Be Small)
With just minutes left until the close, traders were desperate for hints whether there will be a thumbs up or thumbs down overnight into tomorrow’s trade negotiation deadline. And moments ago it appears they got it when the VOA’s Steve Herman quoted the US-China Business Council’s Doug Berry that a US-China trade deal is coming, although it “is going to be smaller than some people had hoped.” Still, as Barry says, “a deal of any kind is more than a lot of skeptics have felt.”
US-#China trade deal “is going to be smaller than some people had hoped. But a deal of any kind is more than a lot of skeptics have felt,” Doug Barry of @USChinaBusiness tells @voamellman.
Of course, if Trump opts for a purely optical package, one which doesn’t address any of the core issues in the US-China feud, the move higher in risk will be brief and shallow, perhaps similar to this…
… and will reverse quickly as there have been numerous such “ceasefires” in the past which lasted at most a few weeks.
For now, however, it will do and allow Trump to boast, however briefly, that he has a deal. At least until China pisses him off again, and he desperately needs a foreign diversion at which point the war can begin afresh.
In an effort to win a deal with the EU27 that might have a chance of making it through the House of Commons (where Theresa May’s hated withdrawal agreement was defeated three times), Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s negotiators have proposed what Sky News described as a “pared-down free trade agreement” to hopefully end the Brexit stalemate by striking a mutually amenable deal that could be passed by the Oct. 31 ‘Brexit Day’ deadline.
Johnson has insisted that the UK will leave the EU by the Oct. 31 deadline, though MPs have already passed a law requiring the PM to request an extension if there’s no deal by Oct. 19 (following a weekend summit that’s widely seen as the last chance for both sides to strike a deal). The PM and his Irish counterpart met at Thornton Manor on the Wirral, Merseyside in Ireland on Thursday for what their offices described as a “private meeting” ahead of next week’s European Council meeting (the above-mentioned summit).
Though the latest British proposal isn’t “fully formed”, the free-trade agreement pitched by Johnson was described to Sky as a “pared down free trade agreement” that might form the foundation of a plan that could end the Brexit stalemate.
Johnson’s team is optimistic about the plan, and believes that the support of Irish PM Leo Varadkar might help convince the rest of the EU27 to come along. Several EU nations have already pledged to support an agreement if Varadkar, whose country will be most heavily impacted by Brexit, gives it his seal of approval.
Traders were convinced, and the news sent GBP soaring all the way to $1.2460, erasing all of its losses for the month of October, and then some.
Per Sky, UK negotiators have become extremely frustrated with Michel Barnier, the lead EU negotiator, claiming that his opposition to British proposals, along with his overall refusal to give any ground in the negotiations, doesn’t make sense. Johnson’s latest proposal supposedly satisfies several of the requirements that Barnier laid out in a speech last October. However, when Johnson released his plan, Barnier swiftly lambasted it as unworkable.
So they have shifted their focus to winning the support of Varadkar, whom the British believe can convince the rest of his EU27 compatriots to come along.
However, one senior Brexit reporter, ITV’s Robert Peston, warned that Johnson’s optimism might be a “ruse” to lessen the pressure from Tory backbenchers and give Johnson more room to maneuver.
I pass on, with little confidence or real understanding, that @BorisJohnson seems to believe that @LeoVaradkar and Dublin have lessened their objections of principle to his Brexit offer. Maybe both sides are moving in a signficant way. We’ll see. What I should point out…
however is that if the negotiations were to collapse this weekend, that would be the worst timing for Johnson, because it would spur rebel Tory MPs to use SO24 next week to take control of commons business – and they would try to get a motion passed in favour of a…
referendum on May’s gone-but-not-forgotten Brexit deal. When that flopped (as it probably would), the rebels would go for a vote of no confidence, to engineer Johnson’s removal. As I understand it, this has been their plan. However if Dublin and [tomorrow] Brussels signal a…
deal is a genuine possibility, even the ultras among Tory rebels will feel obliged to give Johnson and his negotiators the time and space to try and conclude that deal. In other words, Johnson’s optimism and apparent readiness to adapt his offer may be real or may…
be a ruse. Either way, the hint of an entente is perfectly timed, to limit the risk that backbench MPs take Johnson hostage before next Thursday’s EU council meeting, when EU leaders face their darkest Brexit hour and hardest Brexit decision – namely whether to close the door…
on a Brexit offer from Johnson they hate, and trust that backbench MPs will usurp him, rescue them and prevent a no-deal Brexit. In keeping the talks going, Johnson is massively increasing the jeopardy for EU leaders.
