Category Archives: European Union

Britain, Economic, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

Should we really despair over Brexit? Europe is in a mess.

BREXIT–EUROPE

THE Brexit debate has plunged British politics into a rollercoaster of agony and self-doubt.

Following a year of political high drama and turbulence, and, given the parliamentary impasse over the Prime Minister’s deal, there are significant anxieties about the consequences of leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement in place.

Some will ask whether it will plunge us into an economic depression? Others are predicting that prices will rocket and ask whether essential goods will be in short supply? And some doom-mongers even suggest that there will be riots on the streets as the ugly new social divisions opens up as Brexit plays out.

We shouldn’t doubt for one moment that these concerns are wholly understandable, and it is right that we focus on them.

But we are also in a position where we should be counting our blessings. We are not the only country experiencing turmoil – and for many of our European neighbours it is far worse.

Around Europe, many leaders have spent the last few months contemplating chaos and political confusion, widespread public dissatisfaction, growing unrest and even violence. For some, economic winter is already descending.

Indeed, the continent of Europe confronts a growing crisis which could yet cause the collapse of the EU.

So whatever our Brexit troubles – and there are doubtless more to come – we should remind ourselves that unemployment is at a record low, and that since 2009 the UK has enjoyed continuing economic growth.

Compare this with Spain. Whilst our rate of youth unemployment stands at just 9.3 per cent, the comparable rate in Madrid is just under 35 per cent – and more than a third of young people who are able to work have never had a job. Moreover, this human tragedy is directly linked to Spain’s membership of the EU because the euro has rendered large tracts of the Spanish economy hopelessly uncompetitive.

Economically, Italy’s story is even more harrowing. Its economy is barely any bigger than it was twenty years ago, employment stands at 10.6 per cent and youth unemployment is 32.5 per cent. The national debt stands at almost 2.5 trillion euros – more than 130 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. That money will never be paid back and Italy is heading once more for bankruptcy.

No wonder so much of the country feels total frustration and fury at distant EU bureaucrats whom they believe – and with some justice – have condemned Italy to economic decline and failure, let alone their incompetency on migration, which Italians feel they are now bearing the brunt of.

In Greece, the very birthplace of European democracy, an epic tragedy continues to play out: membership of the eurozone has wiped out businesses, jobs and entire industries that will take generations to recover.

Let’s look, too, at fraud and corruption. We’ve had serious problems on this front here in Britain, not least among scores of MPs who infamously were found to have fiddled their expense claims. And, yes, the occasional business executive is disgraced or imprisoned. But Britain is a remarkably honest country compared with what has been happening throughout the EU.

Take Malta, viewed by most Britons as a holiday paradise. Recently, a dark underside came to light with the murder of a journalist investigating government corruption, including the sale of EU passports to shady figures from the former Soviet bloc. Many believe Malta escapes sanction from Brussels because the country’s deeply compromised ruling elite can be relied on to do what the European Commission tells it to do.

Romania and Bulgaria are two other countries where corruption flourishes. The culture of greed and backhanders in these two former Iron Curtain nations helps explain the poverty and mass emigration to the rest of the EU. The problem is so flagrant that the Romanian government has sacked the EU-backed chief anti-corruption prosecutor.

As for concerns about law and order, well we have no reason to be complacent. London has seen 131 murders during 2018 – an increase of 38 per cent (excluding deaths by terrorism) on 2014.

There is public anxiety about the ability of our police forces to deal with everyday crimes, while the recent events at Gatwick – when the drone scare brought the airport to a standstill – did us few favours by exposing lax security.

Politicians were slow to react, while the police, military and intelligence services were made to look foolish.

But compare that with France, where for more than seven weeks now, the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) fuel protestors took violent unrest to the streets.

The protests are about more than just France; they are of existential importance to the EU because President Macron has become the poster boy for the European project as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s star starts to fade in Germany.

Macron’s response has so far been weak. He has responded with a mixture of police brutality and concessions to rioters which so far have not worked.

As for political stability in Europe, well therein lies the greatest crisis for the EU.

In Britain there have been warnings that the two-party system which has governed us for more than two centuries may collapse – damaged irreparably by the Brexit fallout. And there are menacing signs that the far-Right racist parties are on the rise, all the more so now UKIP employs the thug Tommy Robinson as an adviser.

No one should dismiss the reality of these fears. Only Italy’s government, out of the EU’s Big Four (France, Germany, Spain), has strong support and a clear political majority.

And that is for the so-called “government of change” – made up of two populist parties – which has flouted EU budgetary edicts, and rails heavily against immigration policies.

Consider also the bitter dispute between Madrid and the Catalan separatists, whose leaders either await trial at home or are in exile.

In Germany, social democracy is on the wane and the far-Right poses a menacing threat with the electoral successes of the popular nationalists of the neo-fascist Alliance for Germany party.

Even Belgium, the headquarters and the centrepiece of the EU, is in a political shambles. Prime Minister Charles Michel has resigned leaving a vacuum, while concerns about chronic unemployment and immigration fester.

Further east, the situation is much more threatening with the rise of far-Right parties exploiting popular fears about immigration. Poland and Hungary, both at daggers drawn with Brussels, increasingly present a chilling authoritarian alternative to the EU model of liberal democratic politics.

Brexit confronts Europe with a fresh problem. As one of the biggest financial contributors to the EU, the UK has been essential for balancing the books.

At a time of economic stress, Germany, Holland and the other large contributors will refuse to pay more. However, supplicants such as Bulgaria and Romania will be furious at receiving less.

Elections are due in the spring for the European Parliament and these may prove a shock to the EU elite as Right-wing parties score more significant gains. We will see new populist politicians emerge.

There is no question the EU is about to enter the greatest crisis in its 60-year history – and Brexit is just a small part of it.

This is not a reason for the Brexiteers to gloat. Trouble among our closest neighbours will hurt us badly at home. We are entering truly troubling times, but we should keep a sense of perspective during 2019 and remind ourselves we have every reason to feel some pride in the stability, prosperity and decency of 21st-century Britain.

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Britain, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

A Brexit Plan B is needed

BREXIT

TIME is running out for Theresa May to save her Chequers plan.

The Cabinet have given the Prime Minister one last chance to sell her proposals to EU leaders at a summit next week.

Ministers have now warned, however, they will demand a Plan B if there is a repeat of the humiliating rejection she faced in Salzburg last month.

European Union negotiators have been talking up the chances of reaching an agreement at the meeting on issues such as the Irish border. But, largely, they are still refusing to accept the proposals set out in Mrs May’s Chequers plan on how a trade deal could work.

The European Commission is expected to offer the UK a “supercharged” free trade deal but will reject about 60 to 70 per cent of the Prime Minister’s blueprint, including the demand for frictionless trade.

Despite the anticipated setback, ministers are planning to hold off on moves to force Mrs May into ditching her Chequers plan until after next week’s meeting in Brussels.

Hopes of a breakthrough in Brexit talks have continued to rise as Ireland said the chances of a deal were good.

Dublin’s deputy prime minister Simon Coveney said: “The withdrawal treaty is already about 90 per cent agreed in terms of text – the issues that have not been signed off yet relate predominately to Ireland and the two negotiating teams need to lock themselves in a room.”

The more optimistic remarks came after both European Commission president Jean Claude Juncker and his counterpart at the European Council, Donald Tusk, delivered an unusually upbeat message.

 

YET, Theresa May remains adamant that it is either her Brexit plan or nothing. Brexiteers, most notably Boris Johnson, takes issue with Mrs May’s assertion and set out an alternative approach that would keep the promises previously made to leave the EU in a manner that fulfils the referendum mandate to return control to the UK.

Mr Johnson resigned from the Cabinet in July in protest at the policy thrashed out at Chequers, so his antipathy to that plan is well known. But, in the meantime, it has become clear that not only does he and many Conservative (and Opposition) MPs oppose Chequers, but so does the EU. Mrs May’s humiliation at Salzburg should have convinced the Prime Minister that her way is a dead end. Instead, she has decided to plough ahead with a set of proposals hardly anyone thinks can work.

The alternative put forward by Mr Johnson – as it was by the European Research Group of Conservative MPs recently – is for Britain to seek a Canada-style trade deal when talks on the future relationship begin after Brexit.

Mrs May insists that this would not solve the problem of the Irish border, in that the so-called “backstop” to which she has agreed would mean Northern Ireland staying – unlike the rest of the UK – in a customs union with the EU, thus breaking the Union.

Mr Johnson’s answer to this conundrum is for Mrs May to withdraw that promise. As he appreciates, that would mean a different type of withdrawal agreement would have to be negotiated and the Irish border question settled as part of future economic arrangements. It would, indeed, be a “difficult step” for Mrs May, who made the ill-advised pledge last December in order to move on to the next stage of the talks, only to find that it is proving an insuperable stumbling block to an acceptable agreement.

It may be a difficult step, but it is one she must be ready to make if the impasse is to be broken. We are now just days away from what is supposed to be the summit to settle the withdrawal agreement and only six months away from the Brexit date itself. We need a Plan B, and Mr Johnson has offered one. Not only Mrs May, but the Cabinet, too, need to consider that with time running out fast, accelerating towards the cliff edge is no longer a realistic option.

. See also Scotland’s EU Continuity Bill now being tested in Supreme Court

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Britain, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

A second referendum is getting closer by the day

BREXIT

IN Arthur Cash’s biography of the audacious 18th-century constitutional reformer John Wilkes, the author remarks that Wilkes’s lifetime spanned “the American Revolution, which he admired, the French Revolution, which he hated, and the Industrial Revolution, which he did not know was happening”.

Revolution, too, is in the air with Brexit a messy and complicated process. If the country isn’t to be caught out with unsatisfactory compromises being made that does little for her gaining true independence, it’s time to seriously talk about referendums – who organises them, and how. Those who want a new referendum on Europe must face questions about how, when and by whom this still-anomalous bolt-on to our constitution is to be organised. If Remainers are scornful of the Brexiteers’ refusal to propose an alternative, then they themselves must not make the same mistake.

This discussion is becoming urgent: another vote on Europe is moving fast from the highly unlikely to the distinctly possible.

Only the broad outlines can be discerned of the proposed exit deal that Theresa May’s negotiators and the EU are working on; but these will invariably be a development of the “soft” Brexit proposals agreed at Chequers earlier this year. Hardline Brexiteers hate it. There is little enthusiasm anywhere for the plan. There is, however, a growing suspicion that this may be the only available common ground with EU negotiators. It is for this reason that Theresa May stands a fair chance of getting her proposals through parliament’s “meaningful vote” near the end of this year. Staring into the muzzle of what could blast to smithereens a Tory government and very possibly Britain’s March 2019 exit from the EU, it would surely take nerves of steel not to blink first. Many Brexiteers will blink first.

But not all. Steel nerves (or straw brains) can be found among MPs in the European Research Group. It would only take about a dozen of these irreconcilables to sink May’s proposals.

There’s also a chance Britain and our EU partners will fail to find any agreement at all. The more Mrs May compromises, the more the irreconcilables’ numbers grow. The chances that her hoped-for deal is sunk either by Brussels or by her own MPs is floating at around 40 per cent.

Let’s suppose the prime minister does get a draft deal, then faces defeat over it in the Commons. What then? It’s unlikely she’ll want to resign, and will need a good, democratic reason not to. To put her deal to the people in a national referendum would provide such a reason.

Better still, announce that this is too momentous a decision for normal party whipping and make the vote on the deal a free one for government MPs. She could still lose her proposed treaty, but, unwhipped, such a defeat would not be a resignation issue.

But what next? The pressure for a referendum on her proposals would be strong. She has said she won’t countenance another referendum but in these unforeseen circumstances she might relent. Even if she did resign, demands for a general election could only be countered by an acting Tory prime minister pledging a referendum.

By different routes we keep coming back to a referendum as the constitutional logjam-breaker. Labour appears to have gone for this following its conference last week. Although not the likeliest scenario, there is now a strong chance. A government victory in the “meaningful vote” or a general election are equally likely.

 

WE should know who would actually make a referendum happen, what the question should be and what this would do to Britain’s plan to leave the EU on March 29, 2019.

There is probably consensus that the current deadline for negotiating our departure from the EU will have to be extended. The Electoral Commission would want a two or three-month period for the referendum campaign. Our EU partners would no doubt agree to an extension for this purpose.

Lord Adonis, a key figure in the “people’s vote”, along with Open Britain, a campaign group for another referendum to be held, believes parliament could “direct” the government to hold a plebiscite. The biggest problem would be the wording of the referendum question. Open Britain suspects that the Electoral Commission would want clarity, and would recommend a binary [two-option] question.

It would have to be a straight choice between the government’s Brexit proposals and remaining in the EU. But wouldn’t Leavers call this a false dichotomy by insisting there were other options on offer?

Open Britain insists that those who have campaigned to leave the EU have held the country to ransom for years. Referring to them as “charlatans”, the Remain body says they’ve had years to say what they propose.

How about “no deal” as a referendum option? Adonis says there’s no such thing as a no deal. Even leaving on World Trade Organisation terms would leave hundreds of agreements and arrangements having to be remade with our former partners. Bilateral trading agreements are hugely expensive.

Adonis has also posed the question that if the hardline Tory European Research Group can’t define what it is they propose, how can we put it to a referendum?  He also added that the government has a duty not to put to people a proposal they don’t think can be implemented. The inference here is that any proposal must honour Britain’s obligations to Ireland in our “backstop” undertakings to the EU over the Northern Ireland border issue.

 

IF parliament rejects the government’s Brexit plan, a referendum could take place without (depending on its result) impeding Brexit. A six-month extension of the negotiating period could very likely be arranged.

For Remainers, nothing short of getting their way (whatever that is) will be accepted by them as fair. However, a new referendum should be one of the ways in which an impending constitutional crisis could be averted. Let it not be said we sleepwalked into this. The time to start thinking about ways through is now.

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