Brexit - the next steps

[jeremyp]

More information from a journalist friend: you can be in the single market, but leave the customs union, and therefore do trade deals with anybody.   Also, you are out of CAP and Fisheries.   I think there is a problem with the court (ECJ), but this seems confused.   Any advance on this?   Rather similar to Flexcit (Richard North), that is, a gradual Brexit, which is flexible.

Your journalist friend is talking out of his or her bottom. What we can and can't do is entirely contingent on what the other 27 states in the EU are prepared to give us. If free movement of labour is non negotiable, there is nothing we can pay them that will give us access to the single market (except free movement of labour).

[jeremyp]

I doubt that very much. Remember the government are tories and the tories are in thrall to business and the markets. And those people willing be telling them that loss of the ability to recruit in a flexible labour market, effectively to access low skilled workers when brits won't do the job, and high skilled workers where there is a shortage of brits with appropriate skills is essential.

We tend to forget the half of immigration is from non EU countries, often half way around the world. That migration has been completely under the control of the UK government for ever - yet they haven't clamped down on nurses from the Philipeans or Nigerian doctors or cleaners from Ghana. Why, because the labour force market requires them. And so it will continue after brexit, no doubt with some sop to try to make it look like they are tougher.

Bingo.

I have been saying this since before the vote. The government could reduce immigration by 50% today at a stroke and yet chooses not to. Apart from the rabid Brexiteers, there is no political will to do anything about immigration. It's good for business and it's good for government finances.

[Udayana]

Bingo.

I have been saying this since before the vote. The government could reduce immigration by 50% today at a stroke and yet chooses not to. Apart from the rabid Brexiteers, there is no political will to do anything about immigration. It's good for business and it's good for government finances.

It has been this way for quite sometime - at least since Blunkett was Home Secretary ... but note that whatever the level of immigration allowed it does not stop successive PMs and the Home office from blaming migrants for all our ills and thus stoking anti-immigrant and anti EU feeling.

[Jack Knave]

Your journalist friend is talking out of his or her bottom. What we can and can't do is entirely contingent on what the other 27 states in the EU are prepared to give us. If free movement of labour is non negotiable, there is nothing we can pay them that will give us access to the single market (except free movement of labour).

It's your bottom that is talking for you here. We can say no thanks and be like the US and be totally free of the EU claws.

[Jack Knave]

Bingo.

I have been saying this since before the vote. The government could reduce immigration by 50% today at a stroke and yet chooses not to. Apart from the rabid Brexiteers, there is no political will to do anything about immigration. It's good for business and it's good for government finances.

But that would cut off the skilled workers we need. What the EU gives us much of the time are the scum and vagabonds of East Europe!!!

[Jack Knave]

It has been this way for quite sometime - at least since Blunkett was Home Secretary ... but note that whatever the level of immigration allowed it does not stop successive PMs and the Home office from blaming migrants for all our ills and thus stoking anti-immigrant and anti EU feeling.

This is because all our political elites are in admiration of the Neo-Liberal project; globalization, the financial system etc.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Looks like hard brexit off the cards since there are developing electoral dangers for the Conservatives.

Recent report on BBC by John Curtice on an electoral alliance against tories and UKIP sees labour as gaining most, liberal democrats second, and greens third.

[jeremyp]

It has been this way for quite sometime - at least since Blunkett was Home Secretary ... but note that whatever the level of immigration allowed it does not stop successive PMs and the Home office from blaming migrants for all our ills and thus stoking anti-immigrant and anti EU feeling.

I don't think I've ever heard a PM or home secretary blame immigrants for our ills. The ones guilty of stoking up anti-immigrant feeling are the right wing media like the Daily Mail.

[jeremyp]

It's your bottom that is talking for you here. We can say no thanks and be like the US and be totally free of the EU claws.

What are you foaming at the mouth about now? Of course we can tell the EU no thanks. What we can't do (and what my post was about if you'd bothered to take a minute away from rabid hatred of our neighbours to read) is buy entry into the single market - or at least we can, but free movement of labour will be part of the price.

[jeremyp]

But that would cut off the skilled workers we need. What the EU gives us much of the time are the scum and vagabonds of East Europe!!!

So you finally reveal your naked xenophobia.

There's no reason to suppose that EU immigrants are any worse than immigrants from elsewhere. You just hate the Europeans because they are better than you.

[floo]

But that would cut off the skilled workers we need. What the EU gives us much of the time are the scum and vagabonds of East Europe!!!

You are a nasty piece of work you really are!

[Jack Knave]

What are you foaming at the mouth about now? Of course we can tell the EU no thanks. What we can't do (and what my post was about if you'd bothered to take a minute away from rabid hatred of our neighbours to read) is buy entry into the single market - or at least we can, but free movement of labour will be part of the price.

So are you saying that the US, China etc. have no access or entry, as you put it, to the single market? Come on, Jeremy, get a grip on reality!!!

[Jack Knave]

So you finally reveal your naked xenophobia.

There's no reason to suppose that EU immigrants are any worse than immigrants from elsewhere. You just hate the Europeans because they are better than you.

It is all about our control of who comes and who doesn't depending on our needs. Having a load of dirty pig farmers swarming here because they have free access due to the stupidity of EU rules doesn't help us at all.

[Jack Knave]

You are a nasty piece of work you really are!

And you're easily baited. 

[Aruntraveller]

Just for clarification here, is it the pigs who are dirty or the farmers?

[Jack Knave]

Just for clarification here, is it the pigs who are dirty or the farmers?

It's a reference to their general life style and attitudes. This is why when they come here they are quite happy to live 10 in a two up two down house, and as such they can then be paid next to nothing to work causing the fall in wages and cutting off our own people from getting the jobs - because they aren't slobs who are willing to live like 'pigs'.

[Sebastian Toe]

It's a reference to their general life style and attitudes. This is why when they come here they are quite happy to live 10 in a two up two down house, and as such they can then be paid next to nothing to work causing the fall in wages and cutting off our own people from getting the jobs - because they aren't slobs who are willing to live like 'pigs'.

Who is causing the fall in wages?
The employers paying them or the workers accepting them?

[wigginhall]

That makes me laugh.  I grew up on a rough council estate, all white people then, and believe me, some of them did live like pigs.  In fact, eventually, they knocked it down, as nobody could figure out a way of refurbishing it, as the white people would immediately wreck it.   Talk about a projection.

[floo]

It's a reference to their general life style and attitudes. This is why when they come here they are quite happy to live 10 in a two up two down house, and as such they can then be paid next to nothing to work causing the fall in wages and cutting off our own people from getting the jobs - because they aren't slobs who are willing to live like 'pigs'.

What a nasty sweeping generalisation, but the sort one would expect from you!

[Jack Knave]

Who is causing the fall in wages?
The employers paying them or the workers accepting them?

Market forces. Simple economics that a child could understand.

[Jack Knave]

That makes me laugh.  I grew up on a rough council estate, all white people then, and believe me, some of them did live like pigs.  In fact, eventually, they knocked it down, as nobody could figure out a way of refurbishing it, as the white people would immediately wreck it.   Talk about a projection.

No doubt your younger years were destructive and there are types like that of white British decent but that doesn't mean we need to import even more of them who have none of our cultural background. Those types that are British are therefore our responsibility and concern, and to that fact to our shame as a nation.

[Jack Knave]

What a nasty sweeping generalisation, but the sort one would expect from you!

It was a reference to the unskilled, and generally low skilled lot, from areas like Eastern Europe. You just keep on taking the bait don't you.

[Sebastian Toe]

Market forces. Simple economics that a child could understand.

Are you against market forces?

[Jack Knave]

Are you against market forces?

Not when they are rigged.

[Sebastian Toe]

Not when they are rigged.

You are not against them when they are rigged?