Westminstenders: The wheels on bus start to fall off, start to fall off…

[RedToothBrush]

The wheels on bus start to fall off, start to fall off…

Since Article 50 has been triggered – 8 days ago:

1. A week after a terror attack in London, the government threatened to stop co-operation over security issues with the EU. This was quickly retracted as ‘not being a threat’. Except it was.

2. The ‘Great’ Repeal Act White Paper was published. Its vague, lacks detail, does not have a draft bill and there is no plan for a public consultation over it. It proposes sweeping powers for the government without parliamentary scrutiny using Henry VIII powers.

3. HMRC have said the new computer system planned for launch in 2019, won’t be able to cope with the additional work which leaving the Customs Union would produce. It would be five times the work load which sounds like a lot more red tape.

4. Spain have said they would not oppose an Independent Scotland being in the EU.

5. May’s article 50 letter did not mention Gibraltar and after the publication of the EU draft document on how the Brexit process would be handled, this looks like a massive error and oversight. One of the clauses was that any future arrangements with regard to Gibraltar had to be settled with Spain bi-laterally rather than by the EU and the UK’s agreement with the EU would not apply to Gibraltar, unless Spain agreed. This has been taken as an affront to Gibraltar’s sovereignty, although the document says nothing about sovereignty. Michael Howard, however, decided this was sufficient grounds to threaten our ally Spain with war.

May has not condemned his comments, and laughed it off. Though she was happy to get worked up about the word ‘Easter’ a couple of days later.

Of course, this situation was entirely predictable and was predicted yet this situation seems to have taken the government by surprise. Our reaction, in the context of everything else, has made the UK look like a basket case.

6. The government’s plan to run talks on the UK’s settlement on leaving the EU in parallel with talks on the UK’s future relationship with the EU has been rejected by the EU. Instead we must do things in stages, with advancement to the next stage only possible after completing the last: Stage 1 – Exit, Stage 2 – Preliminary agreement on future relation, Stage 3 – Exit/Transition Deal, Stage 4 – As third country status enter a new deal.

The effect of this also means that deals we currently have with counties like South Korea through the EU need to be revisited. There is no guarantee these countries will want to continue trading with us on the same terms, if they do not want to.

7. The EU has set out its own red lines. Our deal 'must encompass safeguards against...fiscal, social & environmental dumping'. Our transition deal must not last longer than three years and individual sectors, like banking, should not get special treatment.

Donald Tusk has said we don’t need a punishment deal as we are doing a good job of shooting ourselves in the foot, whilst Guy Verhofstadt said Brexit is Brexit is a 'catfight in Conservative party that got out of hand” and hoped future generations would reverse it.

8. May has admitted that we might well have no deal in place by the time we leave the EU. Until now we have been told we would have a deal in two years. She has also admitted an extension of free movement of people beyond Brexit.

9. The Brexit Select Committee published their report which warned about the dangers of exit without any deal, as well as talking about problems relating to the ‘Great’ Repeal Act, Gibraltar and NI. This is sensible and you’d think uncontroversial, but the Brexiteers threw the toys out of their pram saying it was too pessimistic. The government’s job is, of course, to plan for problems no matter how unlikely – such as disasters – and to hope that never happens. It seems that these Brexiteers don’t want to act responsibility or do their job.

10. Questions at the WTO have been asked about how Brexit will affect them. Interest in the subject came initially from Indonesia about Tariff Rate Quotas, but other parties who were watching closely were Argentina, China, Russia and the United States.

11. Phillip Hammond has openly said that there are a number of Tory MPs who want us to not make any agreement with the EU and to crash out in a chaotic exit.

12. Polling has suggested that people want Brexit to be quick and cheap. Not only that, but the word ‘Brexit’ has started to poll badly. Instead the Brexit department are advising officials to use the phrase “new partnership with Europe”. Lynton Crosby, the mastermind behind 2015’s Conservative victory has also warned that the Tories would probably lose 30 seats they gained from the LDs at an early election.

Of course, even a 2020 election might prove challenging with a transition deal still likely to be unresolved as Brexit drags on. Government strategy is, apparently, to hope that Remainer's anger will have dissolved by 2020.

Eight days in, and the Brexit Bus looks like it strayed into 1980's Toxeth and got torched, its wheels nicked, and graffitied with obscenities over its £350million pledge.

Labour was on a 21% lead in 2001.

May was always Banks' seat warmer, at least that was the plan.

Monetise education and you destroy it, and that's worked well for the tories across the whole country. The main strategy was to deny working class children access to HE, and that's been a success across Britain, particularly since 2010.

Lala The message of that film was that, forget STEM, Area Studies graduates are the true heroes

pretty I am quite sure of it in the case of Mandarin. It is not just that the characters are culturally driven, including with inbuilt misogyny www.chinasmack.com/sexist-chinese-characters-discriminate-against-women. The way in which Chinese children to learn to read develops the pictorial memories . At the same time Mandarin is a very spare concise language, there are no tenses, so I am quite sure this must have an effect on brain development, it certainly has implications for learning and doing business in English even before other cultural influences kick in.

Monetise education and you destroy it

I agree with this. However the Scottish experience is that it becomes ever more difficult not to monetise within an EU system of equal access where other EU countries do. Scotland has some of the best Universities in the World but only represents 1% of the total EU population. It would be a valid choice to educate the rest of the EU, but not for free and not at the expense of excluding Scottish students.

Since when have PMs delivered an Easter message? It's a very Anglican coup isn't it? It is reminding me if when Maggie started to use the royal we, but then when she developed those delusions of grandeur that was when the vultures start to circle......

It makes perfect sense that May is only in it for being able to say she was PM.

howabout That is interesting. In my older DDs year they were saying that putting a Scottish uni down on your UCAS form was proving a waste of a choice as even the best pupils were not getting offers (last year of £3k fees) presumed to be because Scottish students were being favoured. Three years later a bizarrely large proportion of DD2s peers went to Edinburgh, it was a definite shift in offers on the part of Edinburgh, no idea of the why's and wherefores.....

Anyone following polls etc in the Gorton by-election? I can't see Labour losing it, but the Lib Dems seem to think they're closing the (admittedly fucking colossal) gap. It was a very pro-Remain seat.

"Edinburgh Uni the [EU] figures are 5,000 out of 17,000. Only 20% of Edinburgh Uni undergraduate places went to Scottish students last year."

So about 3,400 Scottish students, 5000 EU at Edinburgh
Are the other 8,600 non-Scottish students all non-EU, or does that include English, Welsh etc ?

Whatever, Scottish students should NOT be a minority.

As we've discussed, fees wouldn't be a reason for E27 students to come to the UK, but the world-class unis would be a definite pull factor
Quotas / protection for very small countries like Scotland is an issue that could and should have been negotiated within the EU.
I wonder if any UK govt ever bothered to try ?

Quotas should also prevent English students, fleeing high English fees, crowding out Scottish students - the move from England is obviously easier for travel and language.

Since when have PMs delivered an Easter message?

So May's decided that she is the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury rolled into one, has she? I wonder if she has told either of them?

The Norway Option is being reviewed & analysed again, at least as the only practical transition phase which can be agreed before Brexit, e.g.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/446764/brexit-return-norwegian-option

However, the consensus is that May can't agree to this yet, or maybe ever:

"Sadly, the best guess is that even if the Norway option is offered to the UK,
Theresa May—a politician who not only looks gift horses in the mouth, but shoots them
— will decline it."

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/446764/brexit-return-norwegian-option

which makes close reference to Richard North's recent Norway analysis:

http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=86433

"In effect, this will be EU-lite, for which privilege we will undoubtedly have to make payments to the EU budget.

The problem for Theresa May is that she has left herself without a choice.

Faced with a plane crash Brexit, which is the necessary consequence of the "clean break" that the right wing of her party says it wants, and no time to seek a credible alternative,
Mrs May is being led to down the path to capitulation with the same certainty of a truck full of cattle arriving at an abattoir."

Bigchoc sorry my explanation was quite condensed. For Edinburgh the total student number is 36k. Of this 10k are International, 10k are rUK, 12k are Scottish and 5k are EU (funded places of 17k (12k+5k) are capped and are equally open to all EU (ex rUK) and Scotland). The stats for new entrants are worse as there is a continuing trend of fewer Scottish students each year.

The SNP Scottish government have tried to raise this as an issue for EU negotiation. However there is no consensus on how to tackle it. The Conservatives favour moving to introducing fees while Labour favour expanding free places to accommodate more Scottish and EU students. I have not looked to see how the Scottish Government Brexit paper proposed to tackle the issue - the lead author is the new Chair of the Russell Group. He no doubt has in depth knowledge of the issue but is somewhat conflicted imo. He is also on record as favouring a graduate tax.

Also English students do pay fees to attend Scottish Universities but, I think, at the same level they would pay in England. Their numbers are uncapped and the suspicion is that they are receiving lower offers than Scots. The different education systems make direct comparisons difficult.

The Great Brexit Pepperami Swindle

End of an Idyll

And for a bit of levity - Theresa May uses thing that didn’t happen to reflect on values she doesn’t possess

Cardinal I think the Guardian columnist's sympathy for the average UK Spanish pensioner may be somewhat misplaced. The ones I know kept their properties in the UK for the rental income after having released enough equity to buy their Spanish property. They could easily come back to their UK property or continue to live on rental income plus UK pension.

My old East End London flat was worth about £100k when I left it 20 years ago. It is now worth £800k and commands a rental income of about £18k pa. I am nowhere near retirement age and so I have no doubt there are plenty of older London builders, taxi drivers etc who have even more favourable numbers.

That analysis of the Norway option is really interesting Bigchoc. However I tend to see it from the opposite pov. If this is the flexibility which the EU is prepared to offer Norway it is not much of a leap to enter negotiations with the UK on the expectation that they will settle on a bespoke deal not that far from what TM has outlined so far.

The problem is time, howabout

Norway wasn't battlin the clock and could allow themselves several years to sort out the terms of the deal they wanted.
Norways's first referendum to join the EU decided against in 1972, so they had an interim trade agreement.
However, the "Norway Deal" under which they joined the EEA was in 1994 and iirc there was much negotiation in the meantime.

This deal has been suggested for the UK because it is "off the shelf".
Hence could be possible, with goodwill and speed on all sides, within the 2 years avalable to agree a transitional deal - remember, all the other issues like expats have to be dealt with first.
Also, NI border may be a red line for the EU, even if May and her NI Sec seems

A bespoke deal would take several years and then about 38 parliaments - 27 members plus regional assemblies - would have to agree it.

Bespoke deals, like bespoke tailoring, means one needs to have the time and also something else to use in the meantime.
Or wander around in one's birthday suit, with a cold wind around one's nether regions, during the waiting period

The UK could go for a WTO deal that the Brexit Ultras want- if it is prepared to take several years and invest billions in building infrastructure and internal supplier chains to handle customs, as well as the several years to negotiate trade deals with the rest of the world.

Problem is, quite a lot of businesses would have moved out of the UK long before all that comes on tap and others will have gone bust.

That's an, er, interesting reading Howabout. Obviously all pensioners living abroad are just like the ones you know

To me it was more about the fact that it will no longer be available to those who currently aspire to move to Costa Frinton (who probably voted Brexit anyway).

howabout Norway has access to the single market because it is a member of EFTA and part of the EEA.

The UK could apply to rejoin EFTA, but the all other members would have to agree, and Norway, at least, looks unlikely to consent.

The UK will not be getting a bespoke deal from the EU.

With 46.1% of ballots counted the yes campaign lead is slightly reduced, with 58.58% for YES and 41.82% for NO according to Anadolu Agency

TRT World are reporting the same figures

@marklowen
40% of votes counted an hour after final polls close. You have to hand it to this country - 55m voters and they count extremely quickly

55m votes counted in an hour.

A referendum vote gives a leader who's using religion to support their power base; diminish democratic accountability to the point of a dictatorship; attack minority groups; cite EU countries world war 2 history to defend rabid nationalism etc etc. some more.

We tend to know personal finances of people with similar incomes to ourselves, rather than those much poorer / richer.
I thought I remembered reading that the median income of a UK pensioner in Spain was fairly low, especially those with small fixed private pensions.
However, the mean was distorted by a group of wealthy mc folk on final salary pensions

I expect the wealthy ones won't be affected significantly by the low pound and can pay for private health care.
However, the others are dependent on a deal in which the UK continues to fund their healthcare AND give them the standard UK state pension increases.
And that the deal doesn't send the pound even lower.

btw, the 2009 figure is often quoted wrt low pound - but that was just after the worst financial crash in modern history and the pound didn't stay that low for long, whereas the pound has not recovered simce June 24

Pensioners who have emigrated to Spain, France and elsewhere in the EU are saving the UK about £450m a year in health care costs, a senior official at the department of health has revealed.
It's not significant in terms of UK finances, but it corrects the impression that expat pensioners are milking the Uk

www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2017/feb/28/brexit-labour-criticised-for-voting-with-tories-in-lords-against-single-market-amendment-politics-live

Paul MacNaught told the Heath Select Committee that the 190,000 pensioners living in Europe ... cost an average of £2,300 a year to the UK in payments to local health providers.

which is significantly less than the £4,500 average annual cost of supporting a pensioner in Britain.
(where the UK doesn't pay for infrastructure, or social care either)

"This is one of the advantages of the current arrangements" said MacNaught"

Cardinal I didn't say all pensioners were like the ones I know but the pensioners in the circumstances the columnist suggests are far from typical ime. I also know a fair number of Scots who winter in Spain and summer at home.

I thought it was an interesting article from a Scottish journalist of my parents' generation. It suffers from the usual myopia regarding the plight of generation rent in the UK.

I don't think there is time now for anything but an EU-lite parking spot where we will sit indefinitely, inside both the single market and the customs union, following all the rules but with no seat at the table.

Even the Norway option would need time and investment (Norway is outside the EU customs Union and therefore has a customs border with the EU. We do not have time to do this before 2019).

I think the Norway boat has sailed. The only options will be remain, hard brexit, or an indefinite transitional arrangement (that is, remain without the privileges). Assuming that outright remain is not on the table, we are left with two very unappetising choices. I wonder how hard a bargain the EU will drive for a transitional agreemsnt? It would be hilarious if Schenghen was the price.

Bigchoc I think currency risk always has to be a factor when considering a move overseas unless you are going to earn and spend in the local currency. Even then you have to consider hedging for coming home. That is why most people I know keep a UK asset.

The London example sprang to mind because I met a typical working class Glaswegian woman of a "certain age" in the park in Glasgow straight after the Brexit vote. She was telling me about her similarly WC builder DB who had done very well for himself in London and was now "retired" in Spain. Unlike him I left London 20 years ago and would be priced out of any return - such is the explosion of the North/South divide. She voted Remain due to Project Fear and Fear of Indyref2 while her DB voted Brexit.