Brexit matters

[DynamicSpirit]

I agree that it's not draconian. It is, however, a restriction and an administrative hurdle that didn't exist for a long time and for zero objective gain.

Surely the objective gain is that the UK is better able to determine who and how many people should be able to move to the UK, and what skills we expect those people to have, which therefore makes it a bit easier to plan population growth and infrastructure etc.

The fact that visas were required for countries outside the EU is just whataboutism.

I think it's relevant because it shows that the freedom that @nw1 seems to claiming as some kind of fundamental right in fact was no such thing - because it only applied to a small proportion of the countries that UK citizens might wish to move to. Before Brexit, if you wanted to move to an EU country.... great! If you wanted to move to a non-EU country... in most cases, you had to apply for a visa. If as @nw1 seems to be suggesting, having to apply for a visa to go live in a foreign country is a terrible, awful, thing, then why on Earth were there no complaints before Brexit about the fact that we'd have to apply for a visa if we wanted to go and live in - say - the USA, or Canada or China or somewhere?

 

[najaB]

Surely the objective gain is that the UK is better able to determine who and how many people should be able to move to the UK, and what skills we expect those people to have, which therefore makes it a bit easier to plan population growth and infrastructure etc.

Given that we didn't make use of the powers that we had to control immigration while we were in the EU, I have zero faith that we will take advantage of the additional powers that we have now that we are out.

 

[edwin_m]

Surely the objective gain is that the UK is better able to determine who and how many people should be able to move to the UK, and what skills we expect those people to have, which therefore makes it a bit easier to plan population growth and infrastructure etc.

That's what we should be doing now, but no sign anyone is actually doing it. And central planning of labour is probably incompatible with giving businesses the ability to recruit the people in the places they need them.

 

[nw1]

Surely the objective gain is that the UK is better able to determine who and how many people should be able to move to the UK, and what skills we expect those people to have, which therefore makes it a bit easier to plan population growth and infrastructure etc.



I think it's relevant because it shows that the freedom that @nw1 seems to claiming as some kind of fundamental right in fact was no such thing - because it only applied to a small proportion of the countries that UK citizens might wish to move to. Before Brexit, if you wanted to move to an EU country.... great! If you wanted to move to a non-EU country... in most cases, you had to apply for a visa. If as @nw1 seems to be suggesting, having to apply for a visa to go live in a foreign country is a terrible, awful, thing, then why on Earth were there no complaints before Brexit about the fact that we'd have to apply for a visa if we wanted to go and live in - say - the USA, or Canada or China or somewhere?

Geographical closeness? People are more likely to emigrate to either places geographically close, or speaking the same language. And on that point, in all honesty I would have attempted to extend (by appropriate bi-party agreements) FoM to and from the USA and Canada, at least. If you want to "level things up", do it by extending rights, not restricting them.

A more general point is, why should the UK be different to every other European country northwest of Serbia? Why should the UK be the odd one out? Why should we not have those immigration/emigration rights when our 30 closest neighbours in the rest of western and central Europe do? What's different about us? And don't say "island nation". Ireland. Iceland. Malta. Cyprus.


== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 Nov 2022 ==

Surely the objective gain is that the UK is better able to determine who and how many people should be able to move to the UK, and what skills we expect those people to have, which therefore makes it a bit easier to plan population growth and infrastructure etc.

Is loss of freedom a price worth paying though? And also, how do France, Germany and so on cope with all those EU migrants pouring in?

If freedom of movement really was such a terrible idea, the rest of Europe would have abolished it too.

 

[Annetts key]

Surely the objective gain is that the UK is better able to determine who and how many people should be able to move to the UK, and what skills we expect those people to have, which therefore makes it a bit easier to plan population growth and infrastructure etc.

Why? The U.K. has no real control over how many children people already in this country have, or what professions they go into or what skills they get. And there is no real control over who decides what training or retraining they have and hence their skill set. And there is no internal controls to prevent people in this country from moving from one place to another.

So your argument that trying to control immigration makes it a bit easier to plan population growth and infrastructure is not very realistic. As I’ve said before, the poor decisions of our own government have much bigger effects on the lack of infrastructure. Especially if the spending on public services and infrastructure is limited (only just at the rate of inflation or less).

And by not having a legal and reasonable way for people to move to this country, we actually encourage unofficial immigration, which makes things even harder and more chaotic, plus creates a black market which in turn funds criminals.

 

[E27007]

No. It doesn't. As pointed out numerous times already, Brexit played no part in the vaccine development or roll-out process.

I seem to recall reports of in-fighting between EU member states leading to delays, in-fighting by members backing the vaccines by their favoured domestic pharmaceutical companies in the hope of trousering the business of the billions to be paid out for the vaccine contracts.
The French vaccines, didn't they fail their trials? UK, in the political calm of Brexit, we were straight onto the task of inoculation of our population.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Why? The U.K. has no real control over how many children people already in this country have, or what professions they go into or what skills they get. And there is no real control over who decides what training or retraining they have and hence their skill set. And there is no internal controls to prevent people in this country from moving from one place to another.

Sure there is some unpredictability from those things. But just because you can't control one source of unpredictability that might hinder infrastructure planning etc. doesn't mean you should give up on the things that you can control. Besides, as I suspect you well know, the population growth from FOM migration for most of the years prior to the EU referendum far outstripped anything due to things like people in the UK having children and was causing real problems for many communities. (Plus, regarding your particular example of people having children: Newborn babies generally won't need their own houses for another 18-20 years, so in principle you have plenty of time to plan to build them. People migrating from other countries tend to need their own places to live *immediately* - so, no time to plan the infrastructure you need)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 Nov 2022 ==

That's what we should be doing now, but no sign anyone is actually doing it.

Yes, I would agree. Brexit gives us the opportunity to better control immigration, and therefore to plan how much infrastructure we need. But that does require the Government to actually do that planning and investing - which so far the Government hasn't really done.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 Nov 2022 ==

Geographical closeness? People are more likely to emigrate to either places geographically close, or speaking the same language. And on that point, in all honesty I would have attempted to extend (by appropriate bi-party agreements) FoM to and from the USA and Canada, at least.

I guess I can't fault your consistency on your last point about FoM to/from the USA/Canada But to be honest, I think what you're arguing for is a lovely ideal that is in practice totally impractical in today's World.

Is loss of freedom a price worth paying though? And also, how do France, Germany and so on cope with all those EU migrants pouring in?

As I suspect you well know, the answer is that FOM never really caused the kind of influx into France and Germany that it did into the UK. For various reasons, the UK turned out to be particularly attractive to EU migrants. You can argue about what those reasons were, but that's not really relevant: The point is that FOM caused the UK problems with unexpectedly high immigration to a much greater extent than it caused to other EU countries. And we all know the resultant history: The EU wasn't prepared to modify FOM rules in any way that would meaningfully address the unsustainably high rates of migration to the UK, and that was one of the crucial things that motivated so many people to vote for Brexit.

 

[najaB]

I seem to recall reports of in-fighting between EU member states leading to delays, in-fighting by members backing the vaccines by their favoured domestic pharmaceutical companies in the hope of trousering the business of the billions to be paid out for the vaccine contracts.
The French vaccines, didn't they fail their trials? UK, in the political calm of Brexit, we were straight onto the task of inoculation of our population.

None of which has any bearing on the fact that our vaccine roll-out was fully compliant with EU rules since we were still in the transition period at the time.

It also ignores the fact that most (all?) EU countries exceeded our vaccination rates after a few months.

 

[Falcon1200]

Apologies for being overly snappy last night. Long day at work got the better of me!

No problem ainsworth74, no offence was taken!

 

[class ep-09]

As we speak, Jeremy Hunt is announcing measures that will hurt a lot of people financially, such as freezing tax thresholds until 2028 in a time of high inflation, which will bring a lot of poor people into the tax net and hit everyone already above the threshold to some extent. He has said that this is all necessary to promote growth, in a different way from the disastrous measures proposed by Kwasi Kwarteng to achieve the same objective.

Of the G7 countries, the UK is the only one that hasn't yet grown back to its pre-Covid position - worse than Germany and Italy who are far more exposed to Russian gas supplies. So what is it that is stopping growth in the UK only? Either Brexit or the other stupidities of the Tory government that swears by it.

We have businesses that can't economically export or have to transfer activity (including jobs and tax payments) into EU countries in order to survive. Any business that wants to expand is likely to have difficulty finding the labour. Even the prospect of diverging technical standards is hugely disruptive, and any inward investment is likely to go to countries that don't have these handicaps.

Brexit is now hurting all of us. And all for what - a warm cuddly feeling for those who choose to ignore the facts and who clearly don't care about the people who are suffering from this?

Agree 100% .
I’d add that Inward Foreign Investment collapsed since 2016 .
That in itself is another reason for higher inflation as foreign businesses will think twice if to buy £££ to be able to invest , meaning that the £££ is valued less , meaning we have to pay more £££ for imported goods , including most of food we eat.

 

[DerekC]

The whole point of freedom of movement EU style is that it is an engine for economic growth. It goes with the customs union and single market. You can see how it works in the USA, where it has been in place for a couple of hundred years. The enterprising up sticks and move to successful areas like California where they help to generate wealth which benefits the whole union. Brexit happened primarily because the Brexiteers played on the tribalist tendencies that are probably innate in most people and promised (according to the Johnson "cakeist" principle) that you can have the benefits without the emotional downside. It is becoming 100% clear that you can't.

 

[jon0844]

A big problem for Brexit now is that a lot of businesses that supported it are demanding changes because the additional changes (like working rights, changes to minimum wage etc) that were part of what the ERG wanted and people like Liz and Jacob were meant to help implement, may not now happen in this current parliament and soon there may be no Tory Government in charge at all.

That puts Brexit in a very bad position. If we can't change things so we can slash pay and working conditions/rights, or give visas to people from India to come and work as cheap labour, how to we solve the problems that Brexit created in the short term?

We have loads of vacancies and people here unwilling to work for the wages offered, so we need the cheap labour market to fill them. Before, we had EU citizens that could take the jobs and live in sometimes cramped conditions on a temporary basis, and businesses still need that labour market.

The obvious answer is to improve pay and conditions so British people will take those jobs, but that isn't happening and likely won't happen - so where do we go from here?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The obvious answer is to improve pay and conditions so British people will take those jobs, but that isn't happening and likely won't happen - so where do we go from here?

I'd love to know by what logic, on the very day that it's been announced that the minimum wage for over 23's will rise from £9.50 to £10.42 per hour (with similar increases for the rates for younger people), you can with a straight face claim that improving pay won't happen.

 

[jon0844]

Did you read what I said? The people within the party that wanted to go down the route that Jacob spoke of, along with others and the Britannia Unchained nonsense, have for now lost their grip.

I am no fan of Hunt, but the budget speech sounded fairly decent yesterday and wasn't anywhere near as bad as it sounded like it would be (classic trick; tell people it's going to be terrible, then they'll thank you when it's only pretty terrible).

Without the changes that Brexit allowed to happen, we're going to be in a state of limbo and I think it's now more inevitable than ever that we'll start to listen to the businesses who are crying for help.

All the extra red tape for doing business, the mess of UKCA, customs checks, as well as how we can get foreign labour and so on will HAVE to be addressed.

 

[najaB]

I'd love to know by what logic, on the very day that it's been announced that the minimum wage for over 23's will rise from £9.50 to £10.42 per hour (with similar increases for the rates for younger people), you can with a straight face claim that improving pay won't happen.

A 9% increase when inflation is running over 10% isn't really an increase worth shouting about.

 

[class ep-09]

Fortunately for this country , the tide is turning :

Brexit: Record low now think UK was right to leave EU

Brexit now considered a mistake by significant majority of the population as UK’s economic fortunes fade

www.independent.co.uk

Perhaps not during the next Parliament but joining Single Market and Custom Union is on the cards within next decade .

I just wonder which political party first will jump the ship and start calling brexit by its name: one big sh….t show , cooked up by some tax dodging individuals that made a lot of money by tanking the economy .

And if any members of this forum still think it was good idea - sorry to say but you are beyond help .

 

[jon0844]

Just as the media likes to change opinions when they see opinions change, as Murdoch recently has in the USA on Trump, and the Daily Mail and others regularly do when politicians outstay their welcome, I can fully see more parts of the media adjusting their opinions and coverage, giving over more space to the many businesses and people in general now coming out saying Brexit wasn't what they expected/wanted/voted for.

Who knows, maybe even the BBC will mention Brexit more than just a casual and dismissive mention in stories about the problems facing the nation.

I do wonder which paper will turn out of the pro-Brexit camp. Ironically, many papers (like the Express) have been publishing negative stories about Brexit for some time - much to the amusement of people on social media showing two totally contradictory front pages, demonstrating so succinctly how so many (all?) promises made turned out to be lies.

Now, going forward, it's going to be how politicians sell much needed changes to the public. If it's true that most were voting Brexit because of the migrants coming via boats or lorries, then offering to work closer with the EU (but still without having to abide by their rules) might be doable as long as we promise to still work to reduce numbers of asylum seekers coming by boat.

A customs union may have to come with freedom of movement, but we've always had the ability to set rules on how people can come and work or claim benefits, so if we actually did what we could have always done in the EU, we might just be able to get somewhere. I think a lot of people also didn't realise that by stopping EU citizens coming here freely, it also impacted on us going there.

While I obviously voted remain, if we'd had a softer Brexit akin to Norway or Switzerland, I think we could have survived far better. The current situation is only going to continue getting worse and worse.

I think even a pro-Brexit PM like Rishi can see that, as I do actually think he's pretty sensible and pragmatic.

 

[AM9]

Just as the media likes to change opinions when they see opinions change, as Murdoch recently has in the USA on Trump, and the Daily Mail and others regularly do when politicians outstay their welcome, I can fully see more parts of the media adjusting their opinions and coverage, giving over more space to the many businesses and people in general now coming out saying Brexit wasn't what they expected/wanted/voted for.

Who knows, maybe even the BBC will mention Brexit more than just a casual and dismissive mention in stories about the problems facing the nation.

I do wonder which paper will turn out of the pro-Brexit camp. Ironically, many papers (like the Express) have been publishing negative stories about Brexit for some time - much to the amusement of people on social media showing two totally contradictory front pages, demonstrating so succinctly how so many (all?) promises made turned out to be lies.

Now, going forward, it's going to be how politicians sell much needed changes to the public. If it's true that most were voting Brexit because of the migrants coming via boats or lorries, then offering to work closer with the EU (but still without having to abide by their rules) might be doable as long as we promise to still work to reduce numbers of asylum seekers coming by boat.

A customs union may have to come with freedom of movement, but we've always had the ability to set rules on how people can come and work or claim benefits, so if we actually did what we could have always done in the EU, we might just be able to get somewhere. I think a lot of people also didn't realise that by stopping EU citizens coming here freely, it also impacted on us going there.

While I obviously voted remain, if we'd had a softer Brexit akin to Norway or Switzerland, I think we could have survived far better. The current situation is only going to continue getting worse and worse.

I think even a pro-Brexit PM like Rishi can see that, as I do actually think he's pretty sensible and pragmatic.

I think you are right about the right-wing media crawling back to a more balanced position on the EU. Given that the more rabid of them underpin their position by weaponising xenophobia to absolutely reject any migration to the UK, it will have to be the tacit acknowledgement that the economy continues to rely on easy access to both skilled and unskilled labour from EU countries. In previous swings of government we've seen how Murdoch papers have played their part. Only when this happens can we expect the beleaguered BBC to present a more relaxed unbiased position.

 

[jon0844]

I don't know if newspapers still have the same influence they once did, but if The Sun switches to backing Labour ahead of the next election, we'll know for sure the tide has turned.

 

[Annetts key]

 

[ainsworth74]

I'd love to know by what logic, on the very day that it's been announced that the minimum wage for over 23's will rise from £9.50 to £10.42 per hour (with similar increases for the rates for younger people), you can with a straight face claim that improving pay won't happen.

I mean it's welcome enough but lets not pretend it's actually all that helpful when inflation is as high as it is along with rocketing energy bills and housing costs and so on. When you actually crunch the numbers someone working 35 hours per week will have an extra £21(ish) per week in their pocket after tax. Again, welcome, but not exactly going to lure people into doing jobs that they weren't already interested in but which often attack minimum or near minimum wage levels of pay.

 

[E27007]

That's arguably because much of the population realised that the EU didn't actually have that much influence over the UK's affairs, so those that wanted out of it were disproportionately likely to vote. The flipside is that the vast majority of the UK's considerable problems can be laid at the door of various Westminster governments.

If further evidence is needed as to the democratic deficit of the EU Commision and Eu Parliament, here is an example, The Bluefin Tuna Vote, illustrates an elected member of the House of Parliament and Secretary of State being bullied / treatened with punishment by the an unelected bureaucrat of the EU Commission for an MP Secretary of Sate exercising a democratic right :



I wondered whether your experiences of dealing with the EU from DEFRA made you at least slightly sympathetic to some of the Eurosceptic critique of the EU’s shortcomings?


Hilary Benn (HB): Well, I think the best example of that was the row over the vote on blue fin tuna. We are members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) as an individual country, not withstanding our membership of the European Union. There was going to be a vote on banning trade in bluefin tuna. The EU had a common position, and I said to the officials, ‘We are going to vote for the EU common position, but if it goes down the pan then we are going to vote as an individual country to say we want to ban it’.

This caused the most almighty kerfuffle. Number 10 came back, and said, ‘You can’t possibly allow your Secretary of State to do this. Duty of sincere cooperation and all that’. I said, ‘I’m going to cooperate sincerely, because we are going to vote for the EU position, but if that fails we are voting for a ban.’ It went back and forth and they were really worried and it was escalated to a very senior level. In the end I said, ‘Well, I’ve given the instructions to the delegation. That is what we are going to do’. That’s how we voted.

After the event, because this was just before the election in 2010, the Commission apparently wrote and said, ‘We are going to fine the United Kingdom for its behaviour’. In the end my former Principal Private Secretary said that a lot of humble pie was eaten, and no doubt my name was taken in vain as a wayward Secretary of State who had now departed. On bended knee, apologies apparently warded this off.


Now, my reaction to hearing that story was, it’s an absolute outrage that some official in the Commission thinks he or she can tell an elected Member of Parliament, who happens to be the Secretary of State of a member state, how they can vote as an individual member of an international body, after they have loyally supported the common EU position.

 

[najaB]

If further evidence is needed as to the democratic deficit of the EU Commision and Eu Parliament, here is an example...

If that's the best you can come up with then, as the kids would say, you ain't got nuthin.

 

[E27007]

If that's the best you can come up with then, as the kids would say, you ain't got nuthin.

Actually I have more, but since we are out of the EU and unlikely to rejoin, it would only labour a point already made here and elsewhere

 

[class ep-09]

If further evidence is needed as to the democratic deficit of the EU Commision and Eu Parliament, here is an example, The Bluefin Tuna Vote, illustrates an elected member of the House of Parliament and Secretary of State being bullied / treatened with punishment by the an unelected bureaucrat of the EU Commission for an MP Secretary of Sate exercising a democratic right :



I wondered whether your experiences of dealing with the EU from DEFRA made you at least slightly sympathetic to some of the Eurosceptic critique of the EU’s shortcomings?


Hilary Benn (HB): Well, I think the best example of that was the row over the vote on blue fin tuna. We are members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) as an individual country, not withstanding our membership of the European Union. There was going to be a vote on banning trade in bluefin tuna. The EU had a common position, and I said to the officials, ‘We are going to vote for the EU common position, but if it goes down the pan then we are going to vote as an individual country to say we want to ban it’.

This caused the most almighty kerfuffle. Number 10 came back, and said, ‘You can’t possibly allow your Secretary of State to do this. Duty of sincere cooperation and all that’. I said, ‘I’m going to cooperate sincerely, because we are going to vote for the EU position, but if that fails we are voting for a ban.’ It went back and forth and they were really worried and it was escalated to a very senior level. In the end I said, ‘Well, I’ve given the instructions to the delegation. That is what we are going to do’. That’s how we voted.

After the event, because this was just before the election in 2010, the Commission apparently wrote and said, ‘We are going to fine the United Kingdom for its behaviour’. In the end my former Principal Private Secretary said that a lot of humble pie was eaten, and no doubt my name was taken in vain as a wayward Secretary of State who had now departed. On bended knee, apologies apparently warded this off.


Now, my reaction to hearing that story was, it’s an absolute outrage that some official in the Commission thinks he or she can tell an elected Member of Parliament, who happens to be the Secretary of State of a member state, how they can vote as an individual member of an international body, after they have loyally supported the common EU position.

How would you describe party whips behaviour , when they force elected MP”s to vote against their conscious?

Democratic ?

 

[dosxuk]

Doesn't sound all that different to all those story MPs the other week who suddenly supported fracking, despite campaigning against it and having it as a manifesto commitment to stop it.

 

[edwin_m]

And yet despite this, Hilary Benn remains pro-EU. There's a difference between disagreeing with specific actions and wanting to get rid of the entire institution.

 

[najaB]

Actually I have more, but since we are out of the EU and unlikely to rejoin, it would only labour a point already made here and elsewhere

It's customary, if one is going to present one out of a number of arguments, to choose the strongest.

Given the nothing burger that you used I have to believe that you've got a folder of pointlessness.

 

[jon0844]

Is that the same folder Mike Lindell has full of US election fraud proof?!

 

[brad465]

This looks interesting, the Government are apparently looking towards a Swiss-style relationship with the EU, according to The Sunday Times:

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