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?

howabout I was never arguing that house prices weren't higher in London and the SE, only that your statement that prices were only 4 to 5 times earnings outside London was completely incorrect.

You never even mentioned the SE originally.

Your comment implied everywhere outside London had prices which were 4 to 5 times earnings and that's simply not true.

I don't mean to labour the point but it's yet another example of nonsense being touted as fact in order to attempt to defend Brexit.

howabout On a related topic of the UK's reliance or not on EU migrants it is worth noting that 1/3 of all EU nationals live in London although London only makes up 12% of the UK population (less if you adjust for the migrant proportion within London). In terms of the NHS and looking after old people etc it is also noteworthy that London has significantly fewer old and disabled people per head than rUK.

You're going to have to untangle that statement for me a bit. I suspect that what you're trying to say is that only London seems to rely on EU nationals, or that the reliance on EU nationals is over-rated, since it is unevenly distributed throughout the UK.

I'm not sure I can completely see the logic of that, since it surely depends on what those EU nationals are doing? Especially the 2/3 who are not in London.

Also, i can well believe that EU nationals are located in areas with a high economic impact, and that will be unevenly distributed throughout the UK.

It's pretty clear to me that, with low unemployment, the UK is going to struggle.

Am i missing something?

There has always been a North/South divide re house prices. Back in the mid seventies, I bought my first house in S Yorks for £3,200. DB bought a flat, and future DH a small house for ~£9,000 each, at about the same time in Oxfordshire (always an expensive area). Mine was about 1.25 times my annual income. DB and DH's were about 3.5 times their annual income, and required large deposits.

One of the problems now is all this buy to let stuff. It seems madness to me that Council houses were sold off, and are now being rented privately, for much greater rents than Councils ever charged.

Ah well, once we leave the EU the politicians will suddenly have brain transplants and start implementing fair housing policies. .

"The decision notice letter to Wanwan said: “There is no reason why you and Mr Kiff could not relocate to China and enjoy your family life there.”

From the letter to the couple in question whatwouldrondo.
Similar phrasing to posting last night.

Normalised and state racism is still racism.

Worth reporting online racism and violent threats,following exchange between right wing terrorist group and J Maugham:

@JolyonMaugham 58m
Jo Maugham QC Retweeted Sarah Wait
Bound to lose. You fascists bound to lose.Jo Maugham QC added,

@sarahjwait
Nice. Hopefully @metpoliceuk will be dealing with this
DemocratsUK‏

@TheUKDemocrat
Replying to @JolyonMaugham
good for you. hope you reported him and keep up good work

Testimony, reporting and recording is going to be invaluable to prevent this recurring.

peregrina my complete arsehole of an mp voted for right to buy and voted against councils being able to retain the proceeds to build new houses. He then blames migrants for the lack of social housing round our way, not the consequences of the things he helped bring in of course. People are stupid enough to swallow this because it's easier to blame someone else for your own bad choices.

What the 1970s did have was:
over 50% council housing;
strong workers' rights and trades union law;
race and sex discrimination legislation;
free FE and HE;
functioning and comprehensive NHS;
strong feminist movement;
strong anti racist movement.

I do know, I was there.

All these mitigated the worst excesses of a failed capitalist economic model.

In many ways the EU's enforced egalitarianism has veiled the march of the thatcherite economic and social zombies of the 1980s, in some ways it's enabled them, and quite understandably the extreme right has seized the opportunity to pimp the injustice.

i don't see the North-South divide easing after Brexit. My suspicion is that investment in areas outside the SE will trickle to a halt, with the result that the divide will become a chasm.

That's just me, crystal-ball gazing.

I have relatives who live in poorer European countries and the difference between the main cities and the areas outside those is staggering. Electricity is not delivered to some villages, or is available for a few hours a day. Running water likewise. Depopulation is staggering - there are no opportunities for young people. You can imagine the situation with schools and social care. These are modern European nations - just poorer than the UK. I can see us going the same way as the economy and tax receipts dry up.

I know I'm not alone in thinking that but I'm still surprised to see people posting things (elsewhere on MN) that suggests there is still a glimmering of belief that Brexit will sort out the SE-elsewhere divide. I cannot see any way this will happen.

cat there you go, seems to be here:
www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/boris-johnson-seen-as-an-international-joke/news-story/d347758014c69aec4c1f75cef60b6b0c

woman That didn't work for me - but thank you for trying.

Honestly, I am going to really have to improve my skills.

I agree very much with your last two points, by the way.

it is also noteworthy that London has significantly fewer old and disabled people per head than rUK

MrsLH has MS and would have a much poorer quality of life if we lived in my (home town) London.

Which is why I can tell you how much culture there is in London, compared to the provinces

Dreadfully cruel decision by the Home Office, ron

I'm glad these rules didn't apply when my mum came to the Uk - she married dad in the Middle East, when he was stationed there after WW2.
She became a British citizen there on marriage, just a formality
I was automatically born British, as was my late brother.

If Brexiters want to look back to what Dunkirk veterans did, my dad chose to bring a foreign bride into the Uk, an Arab one at that.
Funny, no one tried to stop him then, or kick her out later.

The similarities with the end of USSR are striking, many abandoned northern towns are comparable. 1992 trade union act has a lot to answer for. I'd be back 'up north' if I hadn't been an economic migrant like most southerners. Creating a population which has to be transient for economic reasons is also part of the control.

Poverty and lack of political purchase is the best social control, they've always known that.

An impoverished north is part of their ' business model'.

Howabout If you posted meaning that E27 immigrants are needed so much outside London, did you see my charts up-thread of E27 skilled doctors and surgeons ?

The only housing policy that will work is building more fucking houses

and by "houses" I mean places where families can live.

I CBA to unload the dashcam, but MrsLH and I had a couple of nice long drives through ToryShire this weekend, and the few clusters of housebuilding were all trying to justify their (doubtless) eye-watering pricing by using words such as "exclusive", "executive", "high specification", and "well appointed". No way are the aimed at "average" families. In fact one rather gets the impression that they would rather average families were houses a long way from them.

If any of them had accessibility for a wheelchair (none did) we would have stopped and had some fun. I love taking salespeople down a peg.

Anyway, back on topic. Until we have a plan to build (say) 1,000,000 houses in three years, no one is seriously addressing the politically created "housing crisis".

it is also noteworthy that London has significantly fewer old and disabled people per head than rUK which is just as well since as I found out when researching the sector with the exception of just one specialist charitable provision (Star and Garter) the care homes are not just expensive, they are poorly run and almost entirely staffed with temps from agencies. You have to go some distance outside London before you find quality care for the elderly with permanent, and yes 70% of those are EU / non EU. It is a real and present worry what will happen to that care post Brexit.

One more try! It's in guardian:
Boris Johnson is becoming the Where’s Wally? of international diplomacy. All over the world the geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting yet at this time of huge global significance the foreign secretary is all but invisible on the international stage. On the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, the crisis over Saudi Arabia and Qatar or the clash between the US and China, he is irrelevant. On Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Turkey and Yemen, he is incoherent. Occasionally he surfaces briefly, like a hostage paraded before the television cameras to prove he is still alive, as he did after a visit to Libya last week, but even then he is ineffective because he has ceded all influence to others.

As the US enters an extraordinary culture war under Donald Trump, Mr Johnson remains morally ambiguous, flip-flopping between dismissing criticisms of the president as a “whinge-o-rama” and claiming he got it “totally wrong” in his response to the recent racial violence in Charlottesville. He made a serious strategic error in aligning himself so quickly with a divisive populist across the Atlantic who no longer even has the support of his own Republican Party.

In this country, Labour has finally joined the argument about the implementation of Brexit, but the foreign secretary is nowhere to be seen in that debate. Having fooled the United Kingdom into voting to leave the European Union, by promising that it would mean an additional £350 million a week for the NHS, he has no realistic idea of what Brexit should entail. He suggests the policy should be to have our cake and eat it and that other EU countries can “go whistle” for UK payments, as if this were some kind of public school game rather than a negotiation on which the future of the nation depends. Again, there is an inability or an unwillingness to think through the long-term consequences of his position ...

I’ve just spent a fortnight in America and was shocked by the number of tech entrepreneurs, hedge fund managers and political strategists I met who asked: “Why has your prime minister appointed a fool as foreign secretary?” According to diplomatic sources, even officials at the Trump White House “don’t want to go anywhere near Boris because they think he’s a joke”. If that seems ironic, one minister says: “It’s worse in Europe. There is not a single foreign minister there who takes him seriously. They think he’s a clown who can never resist a gag.”

As well as the E27 skilled professionals leaving the UK, don't forget the scientific braindrain of native Brits, like me

The UK immigration / emigration stats for 2017-2018 may hide a hollowing out of STEM and other professionals that the UK needs
The science base may be disappearing at an alarming rate, judging by those in my field who have left, or are planning to do so.

They are certainly noticing the effects of EU workers in the rural villages of the north I am familiar with, particularly local restaurants and hotels, as well as the hospitals and care sector and agriculture.

The Press Association has now filed its own version of the Jean-Claude Juncker rebuke to the UK. It has a more extensive version of the key quote, although its translation is again slightly different from AP’s PA quotes Juncker as saying:

I did read, with the requisite attention, all the papers produced by Her Majesty’s government and none of those is actually satisfactory*

So there is still an enormous amount of issues which remain to be settled.

Not just on the border problems regarding Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is a very serious problem in respect of which we have had no definitive response, but we also have the status of European citizens living in the UK and UK citizens living on the continent.

We need to be crystal clear that we will commence no negotiations on the new relationship - particularly a new economic and trade relationship - between the UK and the EU before all these questions are resolved.

First of all we settle the past before we look forward to the future

To give Howabout her due, she does argue her points coherently and back them up with links - so it makes it easier to argue with her. We can disagree - but we increase our knowledge at the same time And she doesn't post inane sound bites.

Unlike our recent visitor(s) with their incoherent and easily rebutted sound bites and thinly disguised racism.

As we discussed yesterday, it proves that the Brexit argument has not progressed, despite many of its foundation stones (including "we won't be leaving the Single Market" and "but German car manufacturers...." and "France will follow us out") being removed one by one.

Well, in one respect we had a narrow escape:

Bojo was poised to be PM after Cameron < jeez, think about that >
He just hadn't reckoned on Leave winning and then Gove assassinating him.

I assume the govt is still thinking "Germany wants to sell us cars ..."

because otherwise I can't understand why they have wasted so much time and are still wasting time with DD's bloody stupid "constructive ambiguity"

He seems to be doing a filibuster, deliberately wasting time
The clock is ticking
Without a specific deal, the default Brexit is ... no deal. Cliff edge. Year Zero

Prettybird Thank you.

I find my reactions to Boris Johnson quite interesting. On the one hand, I was so frustrated by the whole: "Oh, he's a super-brain, really, behind the whole populist-clown act" thing. I used to think: "But shouldn't he start doing the super-intelligent thing, instead of the self-interested, spoilt-child thing?"

So when he was given his current role, I found I was quite torn. On the one hand, I knew he was going to have ample room to display his complete inability to do anything but confirm my suspicions and was delighted to realise how evident it would be that he was, indeed, utterly incapable of responsibility. On the other hand, i found myself rather hoping I'd be proved wrong. Because disaster is not good for people like me.

I find I'm quite depressed to find out how right I was. The true dreadfulness of the situation is slightly blunted by the complete lack of surprise. I suspect I'm not alone there. Which is bad, really. It should me a matter for grave concern that he is viewed in such terms globally. Five years ago, someone with such a global reputation would be inconceivable in this role.

But here he is. And our expectations have been lowered to such a level that I think it is just accepted with a shrug.

'Twasn't me - it was woman12345

BigChoc @ "narrow escape".