Category Archives: European Union

Britain, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

Brexit and immigration…

BRITAIN

1-1

Immigration was a central argument during the Brexit vote. But now the Government in Britain must make clear to EU nationals resident in the UK what the position will be before Britain departs the European Union.

Intro: The status of around three million EU citizens in the UK when we leave is still uncertain

Since June 23, the day 17.4 million voters in Britain decided that the UK would leave the European Union, the persistent refusal of the UK economy to collapse in ruins following the vote must be rather frustrating to diehard Remainers. For those who advocated Brexit, statistics showing unemployment at an 11-year low must be quite cheering. That more people in Britain have jobs than ever before – almost 32 million – is another indicator of just how successful open markets and labour laws can be when overbearing bureaucracy such as the power of the trade unions are curbed.

No-doubt, some of the rise in employment will be accounted for by people from outside the UK. The number of Eastern European migrants employed in Britain rose by almost 50,000 between July and September. That can only be attributed to the strength of the UK economy, but must raise the question as to whether EU citizens are coming to the UK to qualify for residency before Brexit.

The status of around three million EU citizens in the UK when we leave is still uncertain. Some suggest that any EU national resident in the UK on the day we leave should be entitled to stay; others argue that right should only be conferred on those individuals’ resident in the UK prior to June’s referendum.

The prime minister still holds the line that we must first have assurances about the future status of Britons living elsewhere in the EU before the UK can commit on how Europeans here will be dealt with.

While the British Government is protective of its negotiating hand before Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is enacted, there is a clear risk of unintended consequences: not just by encouraging migrants to enter the UK before the legal position is decided, but also in causing angst and uncertainty for those people who live and work here legally. Many have families with children at school and are holding down full-time jobs with securities such as mortgages tied to their homes. The distress for such people has become palpable.

Theresa May faces allegations from EU leaders that her Brexit policy lacks clarity, hypocritical insinuations when we consider the political crisis gripping the continent. A recent remark, too, by German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was also telling. Even as Mrs Merkel hinted at changing EU welfare rules to deny benefits to migrants, she insists that the basic right of free movement cannot be compromised to suit Britain, “because everyone else will then want these exceptions”. But that is an admission that voters across Europe want to end the free movement laws their leaders insist on upholding.

Westminster has held firm to the view that “Brexit means Brexit”, and, despite legal anomalies to still be worked through, such as when and how Article 50 can be triggered, Britain alone has the chance to create an immigration system that allows it to admit and retain the best talent while meeting the public’s demand for better control. Mrs May should prevaricate no longer and should set out the principles that will underpin that system. This should include a clear and unambiguous statement about the status of EU nationals currently resident in the UK.

Standard
European Union, NATO, Russia, Turkey, United States

Russia and Turkey’s rapprochement

RUSSIA/TURKEY

Intro: For Russia, this is an opportunity to drive a hard wedge between Turkey, NATO and the EU

The unfolding diplomatic rapprochement between Russia and Turkey is likely to become a significant challenge for the European Union and NATO. For centuries now, these two countries have remained implacably opposed to each other. Efforts just a decade ago to forge a strategic partnership were curtailed by the civil war that has been raging in Syria. With Moscow clearly propping up Bashar al-Assad, Ankara either stayed out or implicitly supported his enemies. In more recent times, relations hit another low point last November when Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber near the Syrian border for violating Turkey’s airspace. Russia imposed sanctions and the damage to relations between the two countries seemed irreparable.

But even before events last month in which an attempted military coup failed, President Erdogan had decided he could no longer afford a cold war of attrition and stalemate with Moscow and began making overtures with the Kremlin. The putsch appears to have expedited matters: yesterday Mr Erdogan met with Vladimir Putin to agree the normalising of relations. This will send shock waves through the EU at a time of unprecedented uncertainty.

For Russia, this is an opportunity to drive a hard wedge between Turkey, NATO and the EU and will help to abate Russian anger over the jet incident. President Putin must recognise in Mr Erdogan a leader cut from the same cloth – a democratically elected nationalist who has been behaving more like a despot.

Mr Erdogan’s ruthless purge of opponents after the thwarted coup has alarmed EU leaders who had encouraged Ankara to believe it could join the European Union at some future point and had pledged to introduce visa-free access for Turkish travellers to the Schengen area. No date, however, has ever been set or given for either and several EU countries have made it abundantly clear they would veto Turkey’s accession citing its human rights record, loss of press freedom and other economic shortcomings. Angela Merkel of Germany has been desperate to keep both options open in order to stop Turkey reneging on a deal to keep Syrian refugees from crossing into Europe.

But Mr Erdogan seems to have been cooling towards Europe, none of whose leaders have been to Ankara since the failed coup. Turkey’s leader is seeking alliances elsewhere. Improving relations between Russia and Turkey will have significant implications both for policy on Syria and for NATO itself. The US nuclear base at Incirlik is a key part of western defences, but, if Turkey were to leave its loss would be a serious blow to the organisation.

These developments will be concerning for European leaders. But for the Russian president this is a chance to cause fresh consternation in the capitals of Europe and in Washington. Mr Putin seems certain to grab a gift horse that couldn’t have come at a better time for his own interests.

Standard
Britain, European Union, Government, Politics

Theresa May: Britain’s new prime minister

A ‘BREXIT’ GOVERNMENT

stream_img

– Theresa May speaking outside 10 Downing Street on Wednesday, 13 July. Mrs May will head a Government in Britain that will see the country exiting the European Union.

Intro: Mrs May’s biggest test will be Brexit. She has experience of Brussels, most notably her negotiating skills in successfully carving-out Britain’s opt-out from most EU justice and home-affairs policies in 2014

ON JULY 13, Theresa May, the home secretary, became Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister. The coronation went uncontested after her only remaining rival, Andrea Leadsom, pulled out of the leadership race. Leadsom had the backing of only 84 Tory MPs, as against Mrs May’s 199, the reason she said as to why she withdrew from the contest. But what counted more was that, under pressure, she had shown her unfitness to govern with several gaffes. She hinted that, as a mother, she was somehow better equipped and qualified than Mrs May who has no children.

Following Britain’s decision to leave the European Union a new Tory prime minister is but one feature of the redrawn political landscape. The opposition Labour Party has sunk into ever-deeper chaos and turmoil under Jeremy Corbyn, who now faces a leadership challenge. The populist UK Independence Party has a vacuum at the top following the resignation of its leader, Nigel Farage, on the achievement of his career’s ambition.

Mrs May backed the Remain side in the Referendum, unlike most Tory voters. Yet they welcomed her victory if only because she has shown more political nous than her pro-Brexit opponents. It is quite remarkable that those who sought to break Britain away from the European Union have now largely fled the battlefield, leaving the Remainers to sort out the mess Britain finds itself in. But while Mrs May was only ever lukewarm about the EU, she has promised that ‘Brexit means Brexit’

As home secretary for six years, she built a reputation as a moderniser, picking fights with the police and grappled hard with anti-terrorism laws, deportations of foreigners suspected of terrorism links and the controversial issue of immigration. She was quicker than most of her fellow Conservatives to identify which way the wind was blowing on issues such as gay marriage; in 2002 she warned that many voters saw the Conservative Party as the ‘nasty party’. Mrs May comes to the office of Prime Minister without the privileged background of her predecessor, David Cameron, or many of his inner circle.

Her first task was to form a cabinet. Philip Hammond, previously the foreign secretary, is to be the new chancellor. More surprisingly she gave Boris Johnson, a popular but undiplomatic Brexiteer, the Foreign Office and Liam Fox, a fellow Leaver who resigned from the cabinet in disgrace less than five years ago, the job of international trade secretary. David Davis, a veteran Eurosceptic, will take charge of the Brexit department. Amber Rudd, the energy secretary, will become home secretary. Damien Green heads the Department for Work and Pensions.

A pressing question for Mrs May will be whether she wants or needs a stronger democratic mandate. In 2007, when Gordon Brown assumed the premiership without any Labour challenger, she accused him of running scared by not holding an election to test his credentials. Yet, she now insists that no election is needed before the current parliamentary term ends in 2020. Whilst the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 makes it harder than it used to be for prime ministers to opportunistically call early elections, Labour’s disarray and the state of party politics may yet tempt her to try, perhaps as early as next year.

Undoubtedly, Mrs May’s biggest test will be Brexit. She has experience of Brussels, most notably her negotiating skills in successfully carving-out Britain’s opt-out from most EU justice and home-affairs policies in 2014. She also ensured that the UK opted back in to some 35 measures, including Europol, the European Arrest Warrant and the Passenger-Names directive. Mrs May is likely to be welcomed cautiously by EU leaders, most of whom she has not yet met. She has some affinities with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, including an upbringing as a pastor’s daughter. It is likely that EU leaders will say it is for her to explain how she wants to proceed (and how quickly).

The new prime minister insists there will be no attempt to remain inside the EU and that there will be no second referendum. She has also indicated that she will not trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the legal route to Brexit, until she has fixed her own negotiating position. And, although as home secretary she was fiercely anti-immigration, she has been careful to insist that free movement of people in the EU cannot continue as it currently operates. She knows the value of full membership of Europe’s single market, and she understands the trade-off that may be necessary between preserving this and setting limits on free movement. It is within this framework that the hard bargaining with Britain’s partners will eventually take place. A ‘Norway-plus’ (or Norway-minus) is a concept that is currently being floated, an idea which would involve trying to keep as much as possible of Britain’s membership of the single market while being permitted to impose some controls or an emergency brake on free movement.

It will help that the recession that is now widely predicted will have the side-effect of curbing immigration. In other respects, though, the economy will be the second big headache for Mrs May. Sensibly, she has abandoned her predecessor’s target of balancing the budget by 2020, and in a speech before being appointed as prime minister she talked of more investment in infrastructure and of the need to improve Britain’s lamentable productivity. More forthrightly, she spoke of having a ‘proper industrial strategy’, widely seen as criticism of the former chancellor, George Osborne, who has left the Government. She also evinced a surprising hostility to foreign takeovers of British companies; and she has leaned towards further social reforms by proposing that workers and consumers should sit on company boards, as well as limiting executive pay by granting shareholders the right of veto over increases to their pay and emoluments. Mrs May’s declared goals of ‘building an economy that works for everyone’ (and not just for the few), as well as doing more to help the poor and disadvantaged who have suffered the most over the past decade, are admirable. Some will argue that Mrs May will need to curb her more interventionist instincts.

The best asset at Mrs May’s disposal, however, will be the chaos of the opposition party. The Conservative Party precipitated the Brexit vote for internal reasons that split their members and decapitated their leadership. But it seems extraordinary that in such a period of upheaval and major change the Conservative Party now appear the more united of the two main political parties.

Standard