The Brexit Thread

[Tubby Isaacs]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: That's not really just corbyn's fault though. No-one in UK politics south of scotland has a fucking clue what the EU is for or about or how to proceed.

50 Labour rebels on Article 50. Not enough but you just need one to lead. They then say to the rest "You back me or it'll be McDonnell". They'd back them.

It can be done. If all 3 Rhondda Cynon Taf MPs get it, then no reason others won't.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

What are they going to argue differently for when it comes to workers' rights, EU nationals, etc, and how might their small number of MPs achieve anything important?

Well, obviously the Lib Dem block in the Commons can do very little, but by fighting and winning by-elections on a pro-EU rights platform the Lib Dems keep the flame. Labour have been sending very mixed messages throughout the process - partly it seems out of wishful thinking about how our independent sovereign parliament might act, partly out of sensitivity to the anti-immigration mood among part of its target voter demographic, whilst the Lib Dems have been clearer.

[johnr]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

San Bernardhinault wrote: The problem with Corbyn isn't that he lied. It's that he's hardly expressed anything at all. He hasn't explained why leaving's a terrible idea. He hasn't said why we should remain in the single market. He hasn't argued the case for free movement of people within Europe. He hasn't offered a strategy to prevent Brexit. He hasn't offered a strategy to delay Article 50 - and in fact whipped his party to vote for it. He hasn't offered a strategy to push for soft Brexit. He's done absolutely fuck all, and said absolutely fuck all of any use. It's easy to be honest when you say nothing, and do nothing.

Some of that is true, and some isn't (for example, he actually said quite clearly why he wouldn't offer a strategy to prevent Brexit). Some is related to the media ignoring him in favour of the Tory war in the lead-in to the vote, some is his '7/10' stance (though I don't think him suddenly going '10/10 would have changed many minds). I'm not sure what a strategy to push for soft brexit could be - this sort of thing?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

It's certainly not too late to go properly for Soft Brexit. There have been some better signs.

[Lang Spoon]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

I really think the vagaries of sudden swings in FTTP could deliver a near wipeout for Labour: the Tories and Lib Dems benefiting from Labour still fighting left/right while England has followed the dividing the vote on constitutional lines a la Scotland or Nordies. I can see a near future where the city enclaves like Manchester are Lib Dem to bits. This was Labour's ground for the taking and the Cleggites can edge in thanks to Captain Shit and the Brains Trust being scared by polls they can't read (or the alternative, that Corbyn and McDonnell and Fucking Starmer have no fucking idea at all what the EU is or why a soft Brexit with immigration restrictions is a pile of wank).

[Tubby Isaacs]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

I think Starmer gets it fine. There were restrictions in Cameron's emergency brake, and it could have been stronger if he hadn't told the EU to do it all in February last year so he could hold and fuck up the referendum in June. As long as they don't try and attack the Tories from the right on immigration, I don't really mind.

May oddly refused to say immigration would fall when we left. Maybe she's had a few worried Tory interest groups on the phone.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Corbyn made more some interesting noises. Didn't support a second referendum "at the moment". I think that's promising, and right.

[Ginger Yellow]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Tubby Isaacs wrote: It's certainly not too late to go properly for Soft Brexit. There have been some better signs.

Where?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

The Lords vote, these tests, the nod to a second referendum there, "Blairite" backbenchers who voted for Article 50 coming to life.

I see May's latest gambit is "give us what we want or we might not cooperate properly on terrorism".

Unbelievable. What sort of pariah would that make us?

[Ginger Yellow]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

The Lords vote, these tests, the nod to a second referendum there, "Blairite" backbenchers who voted for Article 50 coming to life.

So, a whole bunch of things that failed to do anything?

[Lang Spoon]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

None of those things amount to any real support for soft Brexit among those who hold all the power. It doesn't matter what Labour do outside their own long term viability: they will have next to no say in the next two years negotiations now. And the Tory grandees that can see beyond the short term electability of the Tories among their core should anything but the Hardest of Brexits be delivered, they don't matter two fucks.

Those cunts in govt seem to be doubling down and resorting to blackmail, now they realize what a tiny hand they hold outside their specialisation in Security.

I can't see a way out of this for Labour, without the old left dying and becoming a new thing (and how will the New be born under FPTP?).

[Snake Plissken]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Considering that May (or rather, her UKIP/newspaper masters) want her to get us out of stuff like the European Arrest Warrant, I'm not sure the "crime and terrorism" thing kite is going to fly.

[Geoffrey de Ste. Croix]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

So here we go. The Tories wrap their “bonfire of controls” up in imagery of the 1832 reform act one day and lo and behold shortly after we see the reappearance of the 1834 Poor Law Reform Act.



At the heart of the 1834 poor law reform act was that workers should accept any job the market offered regardless of wage levels or conditions. Those who refused would be offered the absolute minimum sustenance to avoid starvation, a dole considerably lower than the wages on offer. In addition conseiderable stigmatization should be used to coerce “the workshy” into the jobs market irrespective of the wage and conditions on offer. Fox's statement above is a clear allusion to this.

It cannot be re-emphasised enough. Brexit is a power grab by hard-right nutcases who still view Capitalism in 18th and 19th Century terms. Fox, Hannan, Raab and the Britannia Unchained lot, exponents of red in tooth and claw capitalism, a capitalism with an insatiable desire for surplus value. They will not stop until the stark utopia that Karl Polanyi warned about in The Great Transformation is complete. A utopia in which the market and competition embeds and inveigles itself in every social relationship and in every aspect of civil society.

Don’t for a minute think that the Conservative Party will not bend itself over to accommodate big capital’s demands in the light of leaving the single market. At the heart of this as Fox makes clear in his statement above, is making the British workforce as ‘lean, mean and flexible’ as possible to increase profits. UK wages have already seen the second lowest growth rate in the developed world. It is a long held belief among the hard right of the Conservative Party that the British workforce is lazy and has to be further disciplined to the demands of the market in order to gain the “Asian work ethic”.

This is the bright sunlit uplands facing the British worker as EU working directives are chucked on the bonfire. As Brexit and Farage supporting John Lydon infamously shouted – “ever had the feeling you’ve been cheated?” There’s a substantial percentage of Leave voters who will realise they have been cheated in the coming months and years, however there will never be a time when migrants, foreigners and the workshy can no longer be used as the convenient scapegoats. As things deteriorate the media rhetoric will be ramped up against the usual suspects as well as the treacherous EU and any other sector or group which can deflect anger from the real culprit- governmental policy.

A leaner, meaner, uglier, overworked, desperate future. Brexit is going exactly to plan. In The Great Transformation, Polanyi spoke of the double movement in which a counter-movement combats the market utopians. Where this counter movement is going to come in the near to mid future, I have no idea. It’s grim alright.

[Ginger Yellow]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Davis on the BBC:

The white paper takes on board all the EU law so that on the day we leave we are in exactly the same position

I mean, I get the general point, but it's just not that simple. EU law, unsurprisingly, envisages that the people implementing it are EU members and subject to regulation by EU entities. To take an example from my field, several EU laws require firms to have authorisations under MiFID to do various things. To be MiFID authorised, you have to be established in the EU. If we were to simply transpose EU law, suddenly no UK firm could do those things.

[Calvert]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Lydon's a fucking gobshite who'll tell you a different thing depending on what day of the week it is. He always has been. I must admit I was surprised at being surprised by him.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.ind...451.html%3Famp

[sw2borshch]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...s-after-brexit

David Davies announces Enabling Act.

[Etienne]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Davis has just said that there could be a separate vote on leaving the EEA, which you'd think the government could lose.

[sw2borshch]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Why do I keep calling him Davies when it's Davis?

[Ginger Yellow]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

the Bill will provide that historic CJEU case law be given the same binding, or precedent, status in our courts as decisions of our own Supreme Court

Taste the sovereignty!

[Ginger Yellow]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

I'm no lawyer, but it seems like we're about to get the EU equivalent of what Americans call the common law of England. Which is a bit ironic, given that most EU countries are civil law jurisdictions

[Satchmo Distel]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

Fox says that because capitalism is cyclical, labour rights should also vary according to the cycle. Would he apply that to other rights? Maybe we should scrap all human rights at the whim of the markets? Rights, by nature, are meant to be intrinsic to democracy not an option that just applies to boom times.

[Ginger Yellow]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

So, um, no more devolution?

In areas where the devolved administrations and legislatures have competence, such as agriculture, environment and some transport issues, the devolved administrations and legislatures are responsible for implementing the common policy frameworks set by the EU. At EU level, the UK Government represents the whole of the UK’s interests in the process for setting those common frameworks and these also then provide common UK frameworks, including safeguarding the harmonious functioning of the UK’s own single market. When the UK leaves the EU, the powers which the EU currently exercises in relation to the common frameworks will return to the UK, allowing these rules to be set here in the UK by democratically-elected representatives.

...

In parallel we will begin intensive discussions with the devolved administrations to identify where common frameworks need to be retained in the future, what these should be, and where common frameworks covering the UK are not necessary.

I mean, it's not an unreasonable stance as an interim measure, given that the EU frameworks do apply now, but the clear implication is that these areas are no longer subject to full devolution and the UK government reserves the right to legislate in them.

[ursus arctos]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

This excerpt from the FT is an excellent illustration of how the current UK manufacturing supply chain would be massively damaged by Hard Brexit

[Kevin S]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

That Fox quote is from five years ago - has he said the same again this week?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Brexit Means: Leaving Single Market, Customs Union European Court of Justice

ursus arctos wrote: This excerpt from the FT is an excellent illustration of how the current UK manufacturing supply chain would be massively damaged by Hard Brexit

Just in time.

They're not going to honour anything if they lose money. Nor should they.