Q: Why are the next few weeks so important for Brexit?

A: Brexit is not due to take place until March 2019. However, the negotiations on phase one of the process are due to be completed by the Summit of European Leaders which takes place in mid-December.
That involves three vitally important preliminary issues. EU negotiators have insisted they must be concluded before talks can progress to the next phase, which will focus on trade between the European Union and United Kingdom.
British prime minister Theresa May is meeting President of the EU Commission Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday, which is the deadline for her to table the offer on those three issues. The 27 remaining EU leaders will make a final decision at the Summit in Brussels on December 14 and 15.

Q: What is the first issue?

A: The so-called Divorce Bill: This is the money Britain must pay to the EU for exiting the union. Britain railed against this initially because it is a net contributor. But over time, it has ceded the principle and is now willing to pay very close to the EU’s demand, which is €60 billion. It is reported the British government is now willing to pay up to €55 billion.

Q: And the second of the three issues?

A: The rights of EU citizens in Britain after Brexit and the rights of British citizens in the EU after the UK departure. This proved to be a sticking point but may be largely resolved ahead of the summit. In November Britain offered EU citizens living in the UK a two-year grace period during which they could apply for settled status. The British government said the process would be “seamless”. But that met with criticism from the EU Parliament which said such a right should be automatic. In subsequent talks both sides have come closer to agreement.

Q: And the last issue?

A: This is the most difficult one and aims to settle the question over how the Border between the South and North will operate after Brexit.
The Government has been looking for assurances from the British that the relationship between both territories will remain effectively border-less, as is the case at present.
However, that is tricky because if there is what’s called “regulatory convergence between North and South”, it might mean a divergence between the North and the rest of the UK, because the North would still be (informally) using the EU regulatory framework.
And that has got the DUP’s hackles up. Party leader Arlene Foster has said there could be “no arrangements agreed that compromise the integrity of the UK single market and place barriers, real or perceived, to the free movement of goods, services and capital between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom”.
Tánaiste Simon Coveney said it was regrettable that the Brexit question in the North had been reduced to a green versus orange issue.

More at https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/brexit-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-uk-s-eu-departure-1.3312699

Donald Tusk firmly supports Ireland in Brexit negotiations

The President of the European Council Donald Tusk has weighed his support firmly behind Ireland in the Brexit negotiations, saying if the United Kingdom’s offer on the Border “is unacceptable to Ireland it will be unacceptable to the EU”. Mr Tusk met Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in Dublin on Friday ahead of next Monday’s deadline for British prime minister Theresa May to submit her Government’s final offer for the three issues in phase one of Brexit negotiations.

In a brief media appearance with Mr Varadkar after the meeting, Mr Tusk offered support for Ireland that was much more robust than anticipated. In effect, he said that the EU would give Ireland the right to effectively veto any offer on the Border that is being offered by Mrs May.

“We agreed today that before proposing guidelines on transition and future relations I will consult the Taoiseach on [whether or not] the UK offer is sufficient for the Irish Government. “Let me say very clearly if the UK offer is unacceptable for Ireland it will be unacceptable for the EU,” he said.

He said that such a strong position might be hard for British politicians to understand but the fact was that Ireland remained an EU member while the UK was leaving.

The newly appointed Tánaiste said that Brexit negotiations could not move on to second-phase discussions on the future EU-UK relations without assurances on the future of the Border and “a more creditable understanding of the parameters within which we are going to solve the Border issues in phase two.” “That is all we are asking for and that is why we raised issues like the need to avoid regulatory divergence between the two jurisdictions on the island if we are going to have north-south cooperation that functions in the future,” he told the media after speaking in a public interview at an event hosted by Facebook.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/donald-tusk-firmly-supports-ireland-in-brexit-negotiations-1.3312032

Apologies if this has been posted already.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/30/donald-trump-accidentally-tweets-wrong-theresa-may-row-anti/

First it was Ivanka from Brighton who got a surprise tweet from Donald Trump. Now it’s Theresa Scrivener.

Hours after Theresa May had said it was “wrong” of the US President to re-tweet three anti-Muslim videos posted by a British far-Right group, Mr Trump duly fired off his response on Twitter. In his haste to tweet his testy riposte, though, Mr Trump tweeted to the wrong Theresa May.

“Theresa @theresamay, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!”

However, @theresamay is not the Prime Minister: she is a Theresa Scrivener, who has six followers on Twitter and follows 103 people.

Donald Trump's tweets
Donald Trump's tweets
After joining the social media site in 2009, she has tweeted nine times - but because her account is protected, only her six followers can read them.

She's spending her MSNBC show gunning for Franken, just like she gunned for Hillary whenever she could.

Could you draw Ireland's border with Northern Ireland? The border with Northern Ireland has become a major Brexit stumbling block.

https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/935599685611515904

Some 22,500 more people left country than came in during the five year period to 2016

Ireland is now a country with older and less religious people and with more migrants and travellers, and we are speaking less Irish, according to the first results from Census 2016.

The population of Ireland rose by 3.8 per cent between April 2011 and April 2016, according to results from the Central Statistic Office (CSO) published today.

Based on the census conducted on every home in the country on April 24th last year, the population on that night was 4,761,865. This is the slowest rate of increase recorded since the 1991- 1996 census period.

SNIP

Population change between 2011 to 2016 was largely driven by natural increase, with births outnumbering deaths by 196,000.
Overall migration patterns over the five years revealed that 22,500 more people left the country than entered it.
There are 810,000 foreign-born people in Ireland, representing 17.3 per cent of the population. The number of Poles was virtually unchanged, and they remain the largest single foreign nationality in the country, followed by the UK and Lithuania. The largest increases in foreign nationals since 2011 were from people born in Romania and Brazil. Meanwhile, the number of people holding dual Irish nationality almost doubled from 55,905 in 2011 to 104,784 in 2016.

There were significant changes in the responses to questions about religion, with 78 per cent of the population, or 3.7 million people, declaring themselves as Roman Catholic, a fall of 132,220 from 2011, when Catholics represented 84 per cent.
The second largest group in this category were those declaring no religion, at 10 per cent or 468,420, an increase of 198,610 from six per cent in 2011.

The rate of increase in divorces is slowing, with an increase of 16,125 compared to an increase of 28,236 between 2006 and 2011.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/census-2016-says-we-are-older-less-religious-and-speak-less-irish-1.3038927

Covers Louis CK, his wife's pet farm, his son's illness and his non-relationship with his father, plus much more. Very interesting interview.

This is an article from one of the foremost Irish Economists, Colm McCarthy.

I think I'm restricted in the amount of the article I can post here but there's a free signup for anyone interested below

May can still avoid Brexit train wreck - but she will have to take a new line

The EU-27 won't call the UK's bluff despite its negotiating stance bordering on fantasy

'What the hell does your government think it's doing?" a former Conservative minister asked the Irish Times' London correspondent, Denis Staunton, last week. "Do they not know the pressure she'll come under to just walk away?" The UK Prime Minister Theresa May has already capitulated to pressure from the ultra Brexiteers in her party and has chosen a costly and disruptive route to departure from the European Union. These post-referendum choices are the source of the difficulties over the Irish border and of the bewilderment in Europe about the UK government's negotiating objectives revealed in the leaked memo from the Irish foreign affairs department last week.

The British electorate chose to depart the EU but it is the British government that has chosen to implement this decision in a manner that has created the stand-off with Europe, concerns about Britain's longer-term economic prospects and conflict over the Irish border.

SNIP

Nigel Dodds, the Democratic Unionist Party's deputy leader, told a BBC interviewer last week that he favoured a walk-away position for the UK in the upcoming negotiations on the withdrawal deal. No deal is better than a bad deal according to Dodds, at least as a negotiating tactic, in line with the position expounded regularly by bravura Brexiteers in London. But bluffing in negotiations does not work if your counterparty knows for sure that your stated preference is a bluff. And a no-deal outcome for the UK, including Northern Ireland, would be a chaotic train wreck, as the bravura Brexiteers must surely understand. Michel Barnier and his EU-27 negotiating team regard the no-deal preference as nonsensical and have been ignoring the bluffers.

Neither Northern Ireland nor the Republic should welcome a hard border down the Irish Sea: as Dodds quite correctly pointed out, NI does far more trade with mainland Britain than it does with the Republic, and he must know that the same is true for the Republic.
Speaking later to Sky News, Dodds had this to say about the position of the Irish government: "Their real aim is to try to get to a situation where either they try to force the United Kingdom as a whole to stay within the customs union, which is in their interests clearly. Or, if they fail that, to at least force Northern Ireland to stay within the customs union and the single market…"

The DUP chose to campaign for Britain's departure from the EU, as was its entitlement. But the DUP has yet to explain why the form of departure chosen by May and her colleagues is in Northern Ireland's interests. Why would it be a bad outcome for Northern Ireland if the UK (all of it) left the EU but stayed in the single market and customs union, Varadkar's preference, minimising economic damage and preserving an open border?

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/colm-mccarthy/may-can-still-avoid-brexit-train-wreck-but-she-will-have-to-take-a-new-line-36353480.html

Mock trial of the evidence we know about so far

Just a reminder, on MSNBC, Friday night, 6pm est, Ari Mebler is doing a mock court on Trump Russia collusion using the evidence we know so far.

Might be worth a look.

Update : Fmr. prosecutor @renato_mariotti and defense attorney @AlanDersh present both sides of the Trump-Russia controversy to a live mock jury. Hosted by @AriMelber