Westminstenders: Boom. The Brexit Backlash starts to hit.

[RedToothBrush]

So it turns out that immigration figures that stated students overstayed were wrong. The home office knew this. And sat on it. Since 2015. Under Theresa.

That smells a bit doesn't it?

Imagine it: "Let's do lunch Paul. I'll cover up and give you a nice immigration story for your front page. In return, crown me PM."

Then tonight BOOM. Labour look like they have made a move. Soft very swishy Brexit. Even less brexity than the Beano Brexit that the Tories have been trying to announce on the quiet over the summer whilst Brexiteers are on holiday.

amp.theguardian.com/global/2017/aug/26/labour-calls-for-lengthy-transitional-period-post-brexit
Labour makes dramatic shift on Brexit and single market
Party opens clear divide with Tories, with support for free movement and paying into EU budgets for up to four years

Labour is to announce a dramatic policy shift by backing continued membership of the EU single market beyond March 2019, when Britain leaves the EU, establishing a clear dividing line with the Tories on Brexit for the first time.

In a move that positions it decisively as the party of “soft Brexit”, Labour will support full participation in the single market and customs union during a lengthy “transitional period” that it believes could last between two and four years after the day of departure, it is to announce on Sunday.

This will mean that under a Labour government the UK would continue to abide by the EU’s free movement rules, accept the jurisdiction of the European court of justice on trade and economic issues, and pay into the EU budget for a period of years after Brexit, in the hope of lessening the shock of leaving to the UK economy. In a further move that will delight many pro-EU Labour backers, Jeremy Corbyn’s party will also leave open the option of the UK remaining a member of the customs union and single market for good, beyond the end of the transitional period.

Why would Labour suddenly do this? It's not just because of the youth vote. What about their leave voters?

Faisal Islam on the subject:
2. On Labour Leavers is very very interesting and involves quite the psephological judgement re the election....
...the calculation appears to be that Labour Leave voters had the chance to vote for Theresa May's brand of Brexit, and bar 5 seats, said No
Was that because Lableave voters were already signalled "hard Brexit"? Or many millions such voters much more concerned about other things?

Have Labour been polling their voters on this?

Theresa has also apparently set her sell by date: Friday 30th August 2019.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/theresa-sets-date-shell-quit-11061894.amp
Theresa May sets date she'll quit as Prime Minister - giving herself time to see Britain through Brexit

The longer the transition and the squishier it gets, the more the more you wonder.

Mr Barnier will enjoy his coffee and newspapers tomorrow as he prepares for round two of Brexit talks starting next week.

The question on his mind most: Will David Davis remember to bring his notes this time?

I don't think Gove would like my history syllabus.

An end to Freedom of Movement. And that will make my life better because
Even if you are in favour of immigration (as I am), it is possible to be against uncontrollable immigration (which is what FOM amounts to) without being a racist. Uncontrollable immigration means that already stretched resources (e.g. for school places, doctors appointments) will not be able to cope. A country without a border is not a country.

Even if you are in favour of immigration (as I am), it is possible to be against uncontrollable immigration (which is what FOM amounts to) without being a racist. Uncontrollable immigration means that already stretched resources (e.g. for school places, doctors appointments) will not be able to cope. A country without a border is not a country.

It's not uncontrollable
Stretched resources are a problem of chronic underinvestment by successive governments
Getting rid of net contributors will not solve that problem
There is a border, were not even a schengen country and even they have borders

Any arguments that haven't already been thoroughly debunked? You lot have had well over a year now.

How has it been debunked? If we stay in the EU, we have to accept that any EU citizen from any EU country has the right to live here. How do you fund and plan for resources if you have no control of numbers?

Just because our government does not use the controls available to it within the terms of FoM and continues underinvestment in key infrastructure such as local government, NHS and Schools does not mean we should chuck FoM. Neither will chucking FoM solve the problem in a cripples public sector. The only thing that will solve that is ending austerity and proper funding.

Free trade is trade without barriers, tariff and non-tariff. Barriers to free trade include the inability to move where the work is, the inability to move money to where it is needed, the inability to access services wherever you are and the inability to move goods to where they are needed. This is why the single market has the four freedoms of goods, capital, services and labour.
Anyone who approves of free trade, thinks we will be better off out of the single market and simultaneously thinks we can negiotiate "better" free trade agreements with other parties is singularly deluded. But it seems to be a common delusion among Leavers.

Cripples = crippled.

How has it been debunked? If we stay in the EU, we have to accept that any EU citizen from any EU country has the right to live here. How do you fund and plan for resources if you have no control of numbers?

For a start the entire premise is incorrect. Not any eu citizen from any eu country has a right to live here. Try reading what freedom of movement means, maybe from an eu source rather than something like the daily mail.

It would be really helpful if people blathering on about how unfair freedom of movement is, actually looked at what the legal obligation under the eu treaty is and saw that most of the EU immigration we've had has been expressly encouraged by the government and will continue whether through work permits or quiet acceptance.

If it hadn't they could have used any one or several of the legal and bureaucratic options available to them to make it so difficult no one would want to do it, or prevent it completely.

Funnily enough, it doesn't fill me with confidence that a political class of this ineptitude (from all parties) should be responsible for delivering the brave new post brexit world when they can't even be bothered to work out what their powers are and adequately resource them.

I know artisan. It's depressing isn't it. You would have though that after all this time and effort they might at least have bothered to find out the basics of what they are arguing against.

Well at least we now know that the only benefit of leaving the eu is to get rid of a mythical beast. Maybe the mythical beast eats unicorns.

I get soooo tired of the 'uncontrolled immigration' argument. It isn't 'freedom to come and live'. It's freedom to come and work. And if you are not working, you can be removed. Belgium and Germany manage it quite well. But then they invest and maintain infrastructure instead of expending all their efforts on keeping the very wealthy happy.

If the UK had bothered to invest in a simple method of tracking who is actually here, we wouldn't be here now. But no, Labour - and I do blame them for this - had to propose the kind of ID card system that demanded intrusive amounts of data and blow the whole thing.

How many EU migrants have been deported for not being in work here?

That's a problem the uk government could have dealt with. They chose not to. That's not the eu's fault. Let's cut our noses off because we were too lazy to exercise our treaty rights.
Other eu countries manage it fine. Because they invest properly. In more that just making the rich more rich.

I love the way that some ignorant people just keep on unwittingly illustrating the Remain case and destroying the Leave case

In the UK? Probably none. Because the UK refused to invest in systems to check who was here. That is entirely down to UK decision making and nothing to do with the EU.

I'm amazed you can't get that into your head.

How many EU migrants have been deported for not being in work here?

An excellent question. How about you put your efforts into asking the Government why they are not putting in place the processes for deporting migrants who have not found work, as they are entitled to do under FoM, rather than arguing to spend a fortune leaving the EU in order to achieve something we can already do?

Shock! Horror! My secret is out! Now I'll have to name change again, what a bother

You do share his (Russell Brand's) penchant for assembling sentences like a fine rococo jeweller might construct a beautiful necklace with each dollop of pompous verbosity outdoing the rhetorical flourish and polysyllabic panache of the last, like many an autodidact, who has recently discovered the joys of Thesaurus.com and desperately wants to prove himself to the lecturers of his former polytechnic, desperate to prove that them Leavers is fick innit and we Remainers are so vair, vair learned and so vair vair erudite yet persistently and doggedly resisting the need to reach a full stop.

PARKLIFE!

I see the fom argument has died then

We're not responding "correctly" so the BOT responses have to re-set

How many EU migrants have been deported for not being in work here?

I don't know that anyone is counting, but it seems that the answer is "hundreds" at least - mainly homeless people from eastern Europe who won't/can't fight back.

Despite the remain narrative that it's freedom of movement only to come and work, this really isn't true - firstly you don't have to be in work (FOM also applies to dependants and job seekers) and secondly it is very difficult to legally deport an EU citizen who has not committed a crime.

The government is getting round this by effectively criminalising homelessness among EU migrants. It is likely that some of these removals are illegal, and that in some cases they affect EU citizens who have already acquired a permanent right to remain, but by targetting homeless individuals who have no money and may have substance abuse problems, the government is not taking much of a risk.

misti it's not hard to deport an eu citizen who is not self supporting or in work. Numerous other eu countries manage it perfectly well.

I love the way DD is calling for "flexibility and imagination" from the EU....... as if it were the EU's responsibility to work out how to invent everlasting cake and find the unicorns

There's nothing actually stopping us from enforcing the right to remove EU nationals who aren't qualified persons after 3 months. We just haven't bothered.

The reality is that you have to be working, studying post school with private health insurance, self sufficient with private health insurance, self employed or a jobseeker. Since 2014 the UK has required that a person who is working or self-sufficient is earning over the Class 1 NI threshold, which is just below 9k now- so you do genuinely have to be doing something that amounts to actual economic activity. There's also nothing to stop us kicking jobseekers out after 6 months, if they can't demonstrate a genuine and effective chance of finding work. But we don't.

Gosh, somecatch, that was rather beautiful. You should take pleasure in language more often, you do it so well. Come join the light side and we can write epic verbosity together like pretentious angels wielding gleaming pens of fire.

Alternatively I can try and keep is simple for you. We can already deport EU migrants who are not working. Why don't we do this rather than leave the EU?

How was that?