Tag Archives: european union

Is this how Keir Starmer wants to stop you getting the wages you deserve?

Keir Starmer: he likes to give speeches in industrial settings, claiming to be on the side of workers. But is he actually betraying them by giving employers a way of keep wages low?

The Tories have found a new angle from which to attack Keir Starmer today, claiming he will allow around 100,000 migrants into the UK in return for restoration of a “returns” scheme that would send back those arriving in the UK by non-approved routes.

Here’s Greg Hands:

And here’s Robert Jenrick:

Presumably they’re all at it but I’ve only seen these.

The claim that Starmer is somehow betraying the UK by seeking to negotiate a solution to the channel boat question is undoubtedly good for the Tories. But it is completely daft.

The UK used to have a “returns” policy along the lines suggested by the stories in the Torygraph and Hate Mail but the Tories under Boris Johnson ditched it as part of their childish Brexit. It had worked very well in keeping down the number of people seeking asylum in the UK from abroad.

Not only that, but it has to be remembered that there would not be as many people coming here if the UK had not engaged in numerous adventures in foreign countries that displaced these people in the first place. Whether because of that or domestic issues, they come because they no longer feel safe in their home countries. The solution to that is negotiation with the governments of those countries to restore them to stability.

And it would put a stop to the “criminal gangs” who exploit the people trying to cross the channel into the UK, more effectively than anything the Tories are doing.

So Starmer’s ideas are not beyond reason, as these Tories are painting them.

They are unacceptable to UK employees, though – and here’s the reason.

The country’s labour market is currently stretched to its limit; there simply aren’t enough jobseekers to fill the vacancies available to them. This is partly due to Brexit and the departure of many foreign-born workers back to the European Union.

In such a situation, employees have a stronger hand when negotiating pay deals. If evidence that average pay has increased by 8.5 per cent in the year to summer 2023 is accurate, then someone has been taking advantage of this.

Employers don’t like it. It cuts into their profits (which have been enormous in some cases but they still want it all for themselves).

The Tories have suggested that they would push sick and disabled people to seek jobs, by making the Work Capability Assessment they must take to receive benefits more difficult. The aim is to force a million people onto the jobs market, even though they are actually too infirm to work.

Starmer’s suggested deal with the EU would bring in at least 100,000 people – initially. And they all have to make a living for themselves.

It seems to This Writer that Starmer wants to undercut UK workers’ wage demands by ensuring employers have access to cheap labour from abroad. This is how he is betraying the UK today.


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Rishi Sunak explains new Northern Ireland trade deal to Parliament

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has struck a new deal with the European Union on the movement of goods to and through Northern Ireland – and it looks like it’s a good one!

Here, he explains the details of what’s being called the Windsor Framework:

The gist is that there will be a ‘Green Lane’ for goods going into NI, and they won’t be checked, while goods going through the province and into the Republic (or the other way, and into the UK) will be subject to customs procedures.

That’s what the EU offered before, and the UK rejected, but I understand the mood music playing in Westminster at the moment is saying we shouldn’t worry about that at the moment.

It will be interesting to see what the Democratic Unionist Party in NI will have to say about it – will they be able to find a reason not to resume their seats in the Stormont Assembly?

And what will the Conservatives in the European Research Group (ERG) have to say about it?

We know what UK Labour leader Keir Starmer said about it. Here he is:

He said he wouldn’t snipe – but he did!

One wonders how long the apparent detente between the two largest political parties will hold.

The BBC has published a checklist of the changes and new measures in the Windsor Framework, which I reproduce below. We’ll all be able to use it to check if anything goes wrong:

Green lane/red lane

  • Goods from Britain destined for Northern Ireland will travel through a new “green lane”, with a separate “red lane” for goods at risk of moving onto the EU
  • Products coming into Northern Ireland through the green lane would see checks and paperwork scrapped
  • Red lane goods destined for the EU still be subject to normal checks
  • Mr Sunak said this would mean food available on the supermarket shelves in Great Britain will be available on supermarket shelves in Northern Ireland.
  • New data-sharing arrangements would be used to oversee the new system
  • Where smuggling is suspected, some custom checks may still be carried out on green lane goods
  • Business moving goods from Northern Ireland to Great Britain would not be required to complete export declarations
  • Bans on certain products – like chilled sausages – entering Northern Ireland from Britain would be scrapped

Pets, parcels and medicines

  • No new requirements on moving pets from Northern Ireland to Britain
  • Pet owners visiting Northern Ireland from Britain (but not travelling on to Ireland) only have to confirm their pet is microchipped and will not move into the EU
  • Under old rules, pet owners had to have vet-issued health certificate and proof of up-to-date rabies vaccination, while dogs needed tapeworm treatment before every visit
  • Medicines for use in Northern Ireland would be approved by UK regulator, with the European Medicines Agency not having any role
  • Parcels will not be subject to full custom declarations

VAT and alcohol duty

  • Under the Northern Ireland Protocol, EU VAT rules could be applied in Northern Ireland
  • Under the new deal, Mr Sunak says the UK can make “critical VAT” changes which include Northern Ireland
  • For example if the government raises or cuts alcohol duty this will apply to pubs in Northern Ireland as well as the rest of the UK, he said

Stormont brake

  • Under the protocol, some EU law applies in Northern Ireland, but politicians had no formal way to influence the rules
  • New agreement introduces a “Stormont brake” which allows the Northern Ireland Assembly to raise an objection to a new rule
  • The process would be triggered if 30 MLAs (representatives in the Stormont Assembly) from two or more parties sign a petition
  • 14 day consultation period would follow, after which, if 30 MLAs still support it, there would be a vote in the assembly
  • To pass, it would need support from both unionists and nationalist representatives
  • The brake cannot be used for “trivial reasons” but reserved for “significantly different” rules
  • Once the UK tells the EU the brake has been triggered, the rule cannot be implemented
  • It can only be applied if the UK and EU agree
  • This new process is not subject to oversight by the European Court of Justice oversight
  • The document states that: “Any dispute on this issue would be resolved through subsequent independent arbitration according to international, not EU, law.”
  • The EU has its own safeguard – if Northern Ireland starts to diverge significantly from the bloc’s rules, the EU has its own power to take “appropriate remedial measures”

Northern Ireland Bill scrapped

  • Government has confirmed it is ditching the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill
  • The controversial legislation, introduced under ex-PM Boris Johnson, would have given the UK the power to scrap the old protocol deal
  • Legal opinion published by the government says there is now “no legal justification” for going ahead with it

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Can Brexiteer Steve Baker be trusted on Rishi Sunak’s new Northern Ireland deal?

Northern Ireland: what will Rishi Sunak’s replacement for the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol of Brexit achieve?

Arch-Brexiteer Steve Baker seems very happy about whatever deal Rishi Sunak has secured with the European Union over the movement of goods into and through Northern Ireland:

But can his word be trusted?

He’s got a particular viewpoint, very strongly asserted over the last eight years, more or less.

The Democratic Unionist Party, which is refusing to take its place in the Northern Irish Assembly at Stormont until a deal is struck that it supports, may feel differently. It is currently the second-largest party in that assembly and may wish to continue finding fault because the longer it stays out, the less time Sinn Fein – the largest party – will have as nominal leaders (NI is ruled under a power-sharing agreement but appearances seem to mean a lot to the DUP).

And Boris Johnson is lurking in the background in Westminster. He’s likely to be stirring up dissent against anything Rishi Sunak does because he wants to be prime minister again. And there are a lot of Tory MPs who reckon they owe him a debt for getting them into their Parliamentary seats.

Finally, there’s a question of democracy. The deal is likely to be debated in Parliament, but will there be a vote on it? If not, then can it really be heralded as the panacea Baker claims it is?

Why shouldn’t there be a vote? Is Sunak’s deal really that shaky?


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Liz Truss is forcing the EU to confrontation over the NI protocol. Or will it wait for a better UK government?

Another ‘grace period’ in which the Northern Ireland Protocol of the UK-EU Brexit agreement is not fully implemented has come to an end and the UK’s Tory government has again failed to respect the deadline.

This means the full effect of the protocol is still not being felt. In the video clip below, Phil Moorhouse argues that the EU has chosen not to formally object because its leaders are hoping the Tories are now in their twilight days and will be removed from power in the UK after the next general election, following which they can have an adult conversation with whoever succeeds them:

It seems that events have already overtaken the clip, in fact. Here‘s the BBC:

The UK has told the EU it will continue delaying customs checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, despite legal action from Brussels over the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The EU is considering its next steps.

The EU has launched a series of lawsuits over what it sees as the UK’s failure to comply with checks on the movement of farm produce from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

It has also started legal action over legislation that would allow the UK to alter the protocol, introduced by Liz Truss when she was foreign secretary.

Phil’s opinion that the UK will never agree to end the ‘grace periods’ seems correct. He’s mistaken in believing the EU won’t launch legal action.

So now what?

It’s hard to tell because the EU’s response will be quiet during the period of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II.

Considering the aims of the European Research Group (ERG) that appears to be controlling UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, it seems clear that a confrontation is coming that the UK will lose badly. Perhaps it’s better to wait for a more reasonable UK government.

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Brexit is pushing your energy bill up. Here’s how it works [VIDEO]

Here’s another hidden cost of Brexit – kudos to Maximilien Robespierre for dragging this into the light.

The UK is an island so it must rely on interconnectors to import and export energy. When it was part of the EU, it was able to take advantage of the systems that operate these underwater cables – but must now rely on energy traders, adding complexity and therefore cost.

Here’s the clip:

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EU citizen registration scheme isn’t risking another Windrush scandal – the first one isn’t over!

Bumi Thomas: this jazz musician’s citizenship of the UK is in the balance and the government has already tried to deport her.

EU citizens living in the UK may find themselves the focus of another Windrush-style scandal if they fail to apply for “settled status” – but it seems the first Windrush scandal isn’t over and people are still being deported.

According to The Independent:

EU nationals are in danger of slipping through the cracks of the government’s Brexit registration scheme and turning into another Windrush-style scandal, citizens’ groups have warned.

MPs on the EU future relationship committee were told by community groups that there was simply no way to tell whether how many people had been left out of the scheme because there were no accurate figures for how many were eligible.

EU nationals in the UK have been expected to sign up for “settled status” because of Brexit bringing an end to free movement, but campaigners have complained that the scheme is poorly designed and will leave some people behind.

There are concerns that some EU nationals – particularly vulnerable people – may not realise they need to register, and may find themselves being removed from the UK without understanding why.

This raises uncomfortable parallels with the Windrush scandal, in which documents showing that people had emigrated to the UK and had every right to be here were destroyed by the Conservative government.

The Tories then contacted these people, demanding proof of a right to live in the UK. When they could not produce it, they were deported.

And they still are.

Yes, government representatives have apologised; yes, they said it would not happen again. Either those Tories were mistaken or they were lying.

So we see twin brothers Darren and Darrell Roberts being threatened with deportation to two different countries after completing prison sentences because – despite having been born in the UK – the Tories say they have no legal status here.

Darren, 24, is being sent to Grenada because that’s where his mother was born; brother Darrell will go to the Dominican Republic in one of the errors for which the Home Office under the Tories is justly infamous – he has no family there because his father was born in Dominica, which is a completely different nation.

All children born in the UK are eligible for citizenship but there is an application process with attached costs, which have risen enormously in recent years. Some might argue that this has happened alongside the rise of overt racism in the UK’s government.

The correspondence received by Darrell is certainly racist; it offers him a financial incentive to “return home” – implying that his home must be a foreign country because he is black. This is a young man who was born in London and has lived in the UK for his entire life, remember.

Legally, the government will undoubtedly say it is well within its rights as neither brother has citizenship. But they were still minors when they were imprisoned and their childhood has been described as “traumatic”, so it may be unsurprising that no citizenship applications were completed for them.

Windrush was about sending black people “home” because they couldn’t prove they belonged in the UK. This is no different.

And what about jazz musician Bumi Thomas, who was born in 1983, after the Tory government of Margaret Thatcher passed their British Nationality Act that stripped automatic citizenship from children born to parents from UK colonies?

Despite having been born in Glasgow in 1983 and living in the UK solidly since 2000, she found herself fighting a -crowdfunded – legal battle to remain in the country of her birth.

An immigration tribunal judge has ruled in favour of withdrawing the threat of deportation, but she must wait two years before she can apply for British citizenship. Her status is still at the mercy of a divisive immigration policy – meaning her application may be turned down and she might have to go through this process all over again.

So it seems to This Writer that we should not be discussing the EU nationals’ registration scheme as “another Windrush”. The Windrush scandal is still going on.

EU nationals are merely in danger of joining the Windrush generations as victims of a racist UK government.

Source: Brexit: EU citizen registration scheme risks another Windrush scandal, MPs warned | The Independent

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The UK has recorded more Covid-19 deaths in a single day than the entire EU. How is this success?

Read it and weep.

Yesterday (June 4), the UK recorded more Covid-19-related deaths – in hospital alone – than all 27 EU countries put together.

Yet members of the Conservative government keep claiming that their policies are a huge success!

Are they saying their policy is to kill more of their own population than any other country in the world?

That seems the logical conclusion…

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Don’t blame Tory ventilator failure on Brexit – it was simple incompetence

Sorry if it’s off-message but This Writer is entirely willing to believe the Tory government’s reason for failing to join a European Union scheme to provide ventilators during the coronavirus crisis.

Some have claimed that the failure to join an EU scheme was a result of Brexit-related prejudice, but this doesn’t ring true.

The announcement that the government had decided to pursue its own scheme smacks of an organisation trying to save face after making a serious mistake – and this is borne out by the later admission that emails from the EU about the scheme had been lost in the government’s system.

(I don’t believe the government didn’t get those emails; it’s far more likely that they simply weren’t redirected to the right people.)

A blunder like that would be entirely in line with Tory behaviour with regard to the coronavirus. I’ve spent most of March 27 writing about failures relating to the various schemes dreamed up by the Tories to cope with the virus and its effects on UK society, which has been almost entirely locked down.

But it didn’t help that they tried to save face with rubbish excuses. Consider this:

Pathetic.

A UK government spokesperson later clarified: “Owing to an initial communication problem, the UK did not receive an invitation in time to join in four joint procurements in response to the coronavirus pandemic.”

And he was then put straight on Twitter:

So, once again, this is a tale of Tory ineptitude and failed attempts to hide it. We had to eliminate the lies to arrive at the fact.

And once again, the fact is that the Tories have stupidly thrown away a chance to get badly-needed ventilators into the UK, quickly. Once again, their stupidity has put lives at risk.

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Gove is hiding the harm we’ll all suffer because of Brexit

Could you trust this face? Don’t. Michael Gove is hiding the facts from you.

Here’s a typical double-standard from Michael “Don’t Trust Experts” Gove:

He’s broadcasting the predicted boost to the economy of a future trade deal with the United States – just 0.16 per cent.

But he’s refusing to admit that the loss of the current trade deal with EU countries – gone because of Brexit – means a loss of 5.2 per cent of GDP over 15 years, and that’s if a “typical” free trade agreement is struck.

It’s all part of the Tory Brexiteer bid to make fools of the general public.

They think we’re so stupid that if they don’t tell us about the harm their policies are causing, we won’t notice.

Are they right?

The economic cost of Brexit was laid bare on Wednesday by Britain’s official budget watchdog, which warned that leaving the EU would hit growth, exports and the public finances at a time of rising uncertainty.

Against a backdrop of coronavirus and slowing global growth, the Office for Budget Responsibility modelled for a 5.2 per cent loss of potential GDP over 15 years if a “typical” free trade agreement was struck.

The watchdog said that Britain had already lost 2 per cent of potential output since the 2016 Leave vote with a further 3.2 per cent to come, blaming rising trade friction, restrictions on migration and red tape.

The warning came as Michael Gove, cabinet office minister, revealed that the government would not publish its own economic impact assessment of the Canada-style trade deal that Britain hopes to strike with the EU.

Mr Gove told MPs he was “sceptical” about economic impact assessments, even though the government has just published a detailed 60-page document setting out the possible economic advantages of a trade deal with the US.

“We are taking a different approach with the EU,” Mr Gove told a House of Commons committee examining the Johnson government’s handling of post-Brexit trade negotiations.

The report also warned that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s new migration regime, which aims to halt the inflow of low-skilled EU labour, would force up Britain’s borrowing costs by £1bn a year in 2024.

Source: Economic cost of Brexit laid bare in OBR forecasts | Financial Times

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New blue Brexit passports are made in Poland by a French-Dutch firm. Satire is dead

The old-style British passport. The new version is to be made entirely in the European Union by an EU-based company.

What else is there to say?

The iconic blue passport has become a symbol of the UK’s departure from the European Union for many people.

I wonder if these Brexiteers will be proud to brandish their new UK passports, in the knowledge that they have been manufactured entirely in the EU?

That’s Tory privatisation for you! They sold off our national resources, so foreign firms bought them – and will keep them, no matter whether we’re in the EU or not.

Source: Blue Brexit passports, made in Poland, unveiled by UK government – CNN

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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