Jellyfish swims into brick-wall appears to be the state of play in the Brexit negotiations with almost zero progress 16 months after the referendum. Which is much as former Greek Finance minister Yanis Varoufakis foretold in his Adults in the Room, ‘a searing indictment of the anti-democratic, underhand and downright mendacious tactics used by what he calls the EU’s “deep establishment” to make the Greeks grovel. He predicted Brussels would seek to browbeat the UK in the same way and that we would do better just to walk away. Otherwise we would become entangled in the grip of a monster with more tentacles than the mythological Scylla.’ (Philip Johnston, Telegraph). Varoufakis wrote: “Brussels is a democracy-free zone. It is the nature of the beast to treat the will of electorates as a nuisance that must be, somehow, negated.”
The EU does have a 12th house Pluto (dirty dealings behind the scenes) in a ruthless square to Mars in Sagittarius. And both Juncker and negotiator Barnier have Mars Pluto oppositions in their natal charts so they fit the ethos. Sakoian & Acker say of this aspect: ‘The temptation is to use collective power for self-aggrandizement. Must learn to use power correctly. Want to rule and remake others causing resentment and conflict.’
The EU Pluto moves by Solar Arc to conjunct the EU 2nd house Neptune, exact in the spring of 2019, which will create a devastating situation for EU finances; with discouraging tr Saturn moving into the EU 4th from the end of this year and conjunct the Capricorn Sun in late 2018 bringing an unhappy populace; with a panicky and uncertain 2020 to follow as tr Neptune squares the EU Saturn.
The UK chart has its partnership Sun/Moon midpoint at 14 Aries which had been hammered by tr Uranus square tr Pluto in the two years before the Brexit referendum which might have been a hint. No marriage would survive that intact. Tr Saturn is now aiming to square the Sun/Moon midpoint in late Jan/early Feb 2019, which would normally put the last nail in the coffin of an alliance. Though Saturn does sometimes have a timelag. Even earlier over Christmas December 2018 tr Saturn is conjunct the UK and EU Capricorn Suns.
I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it ended in a No Deal. The EU negotiator Michel Barnier, 9 Jan 1951 4.40pm La Tronche, France, is muddling his way through a stressful 2017/18 with tr Pluto conjunct his Sun, and worse square his Neptune; with a directionless tr Neptune conjunct his MC in 2019.
There’s an interesting and timely side story this week about a 2003 sweetheart deal struck between Luxembourg, when Jean-Claude Juncker was PM, and Amazon. The EU’s competition commissioner is now poised to land a bill for hundreds of millions of euros in back taxes on Amazon, alleging that the tax deal granted it almost a decade of illegal state support from Luxembourg, the hub for its European operations. This could prove awkward for Juncker though he’ll no doubt shrug it off. But instructive all the same.
”You’re quite right about the witless Brits complaining about EU regs when other countries blithely ignore them.”
Eh! No Marjorie the witless Brits had EU regs at their disposal that they could have abided by, easily complied with, to defuse for example the immigration situation, but didn’t. THEY, in fact, blithely ignored them at some cost. A cost reckoned to be catastrophic at the end of the day by the vast majority of experts from a number of fields.
One has to ask why Theresa May as Home Secretary didn’t do so, much to Cameron’s chagrin. Leading of course to Brexit and Cameron’s resignation. Theresa May was a complete failure as Home Secretary now being exposed as being an absolute failure as Prime Minister. Let’s face it who in their right mind would appoint Johnston as Foreign Secretary, Gove as Environmental Secretary and Fox as International Trade Minister with their track records (online reports horrendous). It just beggars belief.
And of course EU nationals are going to be replaced with non-EU nationals from countries like Bangladesh. I don’t mind but that doesn’t seem to equate with keeping the UK natives happy.
Support for Independence in Scotland is on the rise (not being reported by the MSM) especially with so many EU academics in Scotland being threatened by Brexit (600 alone at Aberdeen University), as is the reunification of Ireland. You’ve stated before that you don’t see Scotland leaving the Union. I’ve looked at the 1005 (noon) progressed / solar arc chart and they are extremely interesting. Could you think of taking another look at them?
A bit of a one-sided article placing the blame …. “Brick-wall appears to be the state of play in the Brexit negotiations 16 months after the referendum.” … squarely on the EU.
Is the EU solely to blame for the state of affairs? The UK Government hadn’t given a thought to losing the Referendum and had absolutely nothing prepared when it came to pass, such as what to do about Ireland. We also know that lies were told to influence people to leave but more than anything the vast majority of people had no idea of the concepts of single market and Customs Union. The UK Government should have clarified all of this prior to the vote. To make matters worse we then find out that hundreds of thousands of pounds (at least) coming from countries outwith the EU were being channelled through the DUP in Northern Ireland (used to finance Brexit), which is the only part of the UK exempt in relation to naming donators.
The Tories should have been prepared for Brexit and got themselves moving within weeks of the result, but no A50 wasn’t triggered for another 9 months followed by a ridiculous snap General Election creating even more delays. Since then the three crucial issues, divorce bill, EU / UK migrants, Irish border, still haven’t been dealt with to enable discussion to proceed on trade deals.
I should also add the one of the main reasons for the Brexit vote related to immigration, free movement of labour, and yet the UK Government had the power to control EU migrants by using EU policy such as the 3 month limited stay if one had no job / insufficient funds to support oneself. Additionally they were offering benefits such as child benefit for working migrant’s children living in their home countries, which 25 out of the 28 EU countries didn’t do. This obviously made the UK a much more attractive country to relocate to. The UK had total control over numbers of non-EU migrants but did nothing about that either. Now we hear that the thousands of EU staff who are already leaving the UK are being replaced by nurses / doctors / home care workers from India, Pakistan and the Phillipines. Add to that future trade deals with countries like India involve issuing many more visas.
To my mind this has been a complete and utter disaster with the UK populace being duped. Recent polls also show that the vast majority, 80% +, of Brexiters don’t care if Brexit leads to the breakup of the Union or the return of troubles to Northern Ireland. Both of which are on the cards especially if it’s “no deal is better than a bad deal.”
We know that the EU is far from perfect but changes are on the way and the UK could have been part of shaping the future. Instead they’ve become a main player alongside those countries that want to see the EU disintegrate. Countries that we would normally avoid like the plague.
Jellyfish wasn’t intended as a compliment. But I doubt if even an enraged rhino would make much of a dent.
You’re quite right about the witless Brits complaining about EU regs when other countries blithely ignore them. Hence (small example) the fuss in the south of France because all the yachts are skipping to Spain and Italy who don’t put the mandatory EU tax on fuel. My impression also is that France toss undesirables back from whence they came and let them appeal later. And if they get fined 20k euros it’s still cheaper than keeping them in prison endlessly on legal aid (memo to TMay, Home Secy.)
Frankly it’s a plague on both their houses. Pluto in Capricorn tearing down pretence about governments being fit for the job almost anywhere.
I voted Leave, and with all due respect to the injured, I’m glad Remainers can now see what motivated a good deal of us on poll day via the events in Spain.
A handful of us could *sense* the corporation’s true nature back then. The police response in Spain was appalling, and yet not altogether surprising for me.
Solaia, They managed to get themselves together enough to bale out the German and French banks who had fed the profligacy in Greece. I was highly critical of Greek mismanagement at the time and didn’t like Varoufakis much. But he’s not wrong about a good many things.
I was a Remainer and pro the ‘ideal’ of Europe. I just never saw how anything that squashed wildly different national identities together could ever work in practice. The grotesquely expensive and undemocratic way they run the technocracy in Brussels/Luxembourg is obscene; never mind the imbalances of having a one-size-fits-all currency, which it doesn’t. They don’t listen to the popular vote because they know if they did several countries would want to revert to the status quo ante as well.
And no centralised EU response to police brutality? The EU was born as an antidote to fascism. I’m not for the kind of fragmentation the Catalonians want but the Madrid government’s response was much as you might have expected of Russia, Egypt etc.
Marjorie, it’s stunning how it seems everything with EU seems to be an one side issue with you, even if we are talking about an union of 28 Independent Countries, often with conflicting interest, so there are at least that many sides to matters. This really makes it hard for anyone, even Germany, to really force the hand in any issue. For instance, you wrote EU did nothing to condemn Police Brutality in Catalonia. Well, maybe they didn’t, but numerous leaders of different sovreign EU countries did. This will be brought to table in further meetings. Also, EU critics often tend to give Merkel and her “minions” powers they do not have. They are not all powerful, as proven by many countries ignoring any resolutions to the refugee crisis without consequences.
I think Brittish Brexit negotiators (who are undoubtably talking to the press and representing the situation as hopeless) would do a service to themselves and Brittish people if they remembered this. EU can be worked. Varoufakis you quote here never understood this. He grandstanded, played victim and refused to admit Greek Governments had anything to do with their grim situation. He endangered the second bailout. This is why he was let to go, by his own Government. His successor, Euclid Tsakalotos, was grilled for 17 hours by other Ministers of Finance in July 2015, but managed to secure a second bailout plan with better terms of payment. In 2016, Greek economy grew by 2.7 percent, and the growth will continue in 2017. This is very important, because it kept Greek Government from running out of money in July.