Category: UK Labour Party

Article 50, Brexit, Brussels, Conservative Party, Rees Mogg, Theresa May, UK Labour Party

No point giving UK more time to just “kick the can around” on #Brexit?

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This blog was written on Saturday morning, April 6thMay_Donald Tusk

 

Next Friday, the UK is due to leave the European Union, with or without a deal. As I write these words, and having been a close observer of Brexit for quite some time now, I have no idea how the coming week will play out.

Last Friday morning the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, wrote to Donald Tusk, at the EU Council, to ask that the leave date be pushed back until June 30th. She says that this would allow time for her government to complete talks with the opposition Labour Party about an agreed way forward on Brexit and for the necessary legislation to be put through parliament.

She acknowledged that this date would require the UK to participate in European Parliament elections in May but she hoped that the Withdrawal Agreement would be through the House of Commons before May 22 allowing the UK to cancel its participation in the elections at the last minute. In other words, “Can we screw about with your elections. They are not that important, after all, are they?”

However, by Friday evening the talks with the Labour Party appear to have collapsed. Rather than seeking a compromise, it seems that May’s representatives spent their time with the Labour team trying to “educate” them in just how good the Withdrawal Agreement was and why they should back it.

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Article 50, Brexit, British Government, UK Labour Party

While #Brexit is a big thing, it’s the little #Brexit things that will add up and hurt…

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This bog was written on Friday Feb 8, 2019

ehiccard

It was a week of Brexit big things:

  • Nissan announcing that new models would not be manufactured in Sunderland after all.
  • Theresa May turning up in Northern Ireland and Brussels to tell people that she had a problem, but no solutions.
  • The Labour party setting out proposals which would see the UK as an equal partner with the EU in a “mini customs unions and single market”. But without the stuff the Jeremy doesn’t like.

Big things.

Yet it is the little things in the great scheme of things that people going about their daily lives generally care about. For the most part, few of us bother with politics. Politics are something that happens somewhere else as we just get on with organising the kids for school, driving to the job, doing the shopping, getting home, cooking dinner, falling asleep in front of the television. Life is just everyday ordinariness.

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Brexit, British Government, Northern Ireland, Single Market, UK Labour Party

A Never Ending #Brexit

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This blogpost was written on Sunday Nov 4th, 2018
The Prime Minister Meets DUP Leader At Downing Street
Prime Minister May with DUP leaders

It is Sunday and the weekend papers are awash with suggestions that the Brexit negotiators are close to a breakthrough. The Sunday Times reports, almost breathlessly, on “May’s Secret Brexit Deal”. RTE’s European editor, Tony Connelly reports it somewhat differently – and far more soberly.

As usual, the potential deal-breaker is the Irish backstop.

Apparently, what is now being discussed is that the while the whole of the UK would stay in a “bare bones”, temporary customs union with the EU, Northern Ireland (NI) would stay within the full EU customs code and the single market for goods. Regulatory checks would take place in factories and businesses away from the actual border. Instead of the border being down the middle of the Irish sea it might be somewhere in a factory in, say, Liverpool. But then Liverpool was always part of Ireland, really.

Were this deal to be finalised between the negotiators it is being suggested that it would allow UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, to argue that her redlines of no divisions within the UK have been respected and that the NI backstop would never have to be used in practice.

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Brexit, Conservative Party, Michel Barnier, Negotiating, UK Labour Party

Chucking Chequers and #Brexit… there are just too many ‘unknown unknowns’ in play

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
marr gove
Michael Gove with Andrew Marr (Photo via Jeff Overs/BBC/PA Wire)

I took the last week off to spend a few days outside Chatal, on the west coast of France. But even there, there was no escaping Brexit.

It is important to understand that Europeans are not obsessed with Brexit in the same way as people are in the UK. Talking to people in France, Belgium or Spain over the past few months leaves you with the impression that most people think the UK is “nuts” or “mad” to leave the EU. But they also believe that the UK never really wanted to be part of “Europe” in the first place, so, goodbye to them.

Nevertheless, quite often when people in France, Belgium or Spain hear you speak English they ask you “What do you think of Brexit?” My first response is to tell them that I am Irish, not English.

It’s amazing the difference that little sentence makes. Any suggestion of hostility immediately disappears as they begin to tell you about a fishing trip they once took on the Shannon or their cycling tour of Connemara.  When they were much younger, of course.

“So, how will Brexit end up?”, they ask. My answer is that I have no idea. I have been following Brexit developments in detail over the past two years and have written some 60 or so of these Briefings. Yet, I have absolutely no idea of what is going to happen between now and March 29th next year. Quite frankly, neither does anyone else.

There are just too many “unknown unknowns” in play, political molecules bouncing around, crashing into one another, producing unintended effects.

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Article 50, Brexit, British Government, Conservative Party, UK Labour Party

#Brexit: A New UK Politics in the Making?

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This blog was written on Fri March 30th, 2018

out out
Leave the EEC campaign – 1975 UK Referendum

In the Ireland of the 1950s and 60s, in which I grew up, you had no choice but to go to Sunday mass. You might get away with not going in the big cities, but not in rural Ireland, the valleys of the squinting windows, where everyone knew your business.

Those who were reluctant mass-goers would wait a few minutes until after the mass had started, then slip in and stand furtively at the back. Needless to say, they did not “participate” in the mass and you would rarely, if ever, see them join in the singing of hymns, much less walk up the church to take communion. As soon as the priest gave the final benediction they were out and gone. There in body, but not in spirit.

It often strikes me that this is a useful way of looking at the UK’s membership of the EU: arrived late, stood at the back, participated as little as possible, and a lot of the time, seemed to wish it were elsewhere.

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Article 50, Brexit, Michel Barnier, Negotiating, Theresa May, UK Labour Party

From “Cakeism” to “Half-Bakeism” on #Brexit

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This blog was written on Feb 25th, 2018:

Chequers meeting

“The fact that the UK cabinet can spend entire days debating its preferred Brexit choices while completely ignoring what is actually negotiable with the EU never ceases to amaze” wrote John Peet, lead for the Economist on Brexit, in a Twitter post.

The post came after the UK “war cabinet” spent a day at the prime minister’s country house in Chequers trying to work out the “end state” of the Brexit process. Trying to find an answer to the question: Just what commercial and trading relationship does the UK wants with the EU in the future?

In the words of Donald Tusk, president of the EU Council, the answer they arrived at was “pure illusion”.

While we won’t know for certain what the cabinet decided until the Prime Minister, Mrs. May, makes a major speech next Friday setting out their plan, leaks suggest that the cabinet has decided that not only does it want to have its cake and eat it, it now also wants to own a half-share in the bakery as well.

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Brexit, British Government, Conservative Party, UK Labour Party

#Brexit: It’s not the Economy, Stupid, It’s Politics

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This blogpost was written on January 27:

3140It has been one of those weeks when you have to stop and ask yourself just exactly what is Brexit, given that the UK government and the wider political community seem incapable of agreeing on an answer.

Certainly, Brexit means the UK wants to leave the EU, but on what terms? When does it really want to leave, and what happens afterwards? Reading about the way UK politicians are approaching Brexit I am often reminded of the hassled parents who, patience worn thin, tells the kids to “get in the car, we are going for a drive”. When the kids demand to know “where are we going” they are told to “just get in the car, we’ll decide on the way”. As soon as they are in the car the parents start arguing as to where to go, all the while the kids creating a noisy racket in the back.

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Brexit, British Government, Macron, Negotiating, Theresa May, UK Labour Party

#Macron says: “Be My Guest” while UK’s two main parties are gripped by #Brexit cakism

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This piece was written on January 19th 2018.

_99662678_selfieWith just three words, “Be my Guest”, French President, Emmanuel Macron, on a visit to the UK this week, made it clear that the EU would not bend or break its rules to accommodate the UK in any post-Brexit deal.

“In” means in, and that means abiding by the EU’s rules. “Out” means out. And the choice was the UK’s to make. No doubt, a wry smile crossed the face of the spirit of General De Gaulle, wherever he may be.

As the Europeans see it, Brexit isn’t difficult or complicated. In fact, it is fairly straightforward. It is UK politics that are difficult and that are making Brexit hard for the UK.

We believe that the EU see Brexit as follows:

1.       Following a vote on June 23, 2016, some nine months later, in March 2017, the UK wrote to the European Union saying that it would be leaving the EU at midnight on March 29th, 2019. Continue reading →

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Brexit, Negotiating, Theresa May, UK Labour Party

“Plan for the Worst: Hope for the Best” – the Fading Hope of #Brexit Deal

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

Posted on Friday, Oct 6th 2017:

4221396001_5597581765001_5597568337001-vsThe major party conferences have come and gone and still we are no wiser as to how Brexit is going to unfold. As we noted in last week’s Briefing, the Labour Party’s policy appears to be that they will deliver Brexit, but a Labour Brexit, not a Tory Brexit, whatever that means. Brexit is Brexit and Brexit means being outside the European Union (EU), the single market and the customs union.

However, Labour is in opposition and, so, for the moment what it says is important but nowhere near as important as what the Conservative government says, as it is charged with negotiating the Brexit arrangements with the EU. Whether it can get whatever deal it negotiates, if any, through Parliament, especially the House of Lords, is another matter.

This week’s Conservative Party conference was dominated by three issues:

  1. Brexit;
  2. Who is going to succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader, and when;
  3. and Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

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Brexit, British Government, Negotiating, UK Labour Party

#BREXIT: All Changed, Changed Utterly

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

Written on August 28th 2017:

Commenting on the Irish insurrection against the UK in 1916, the poet W.B. Yeats penned the words:

All is changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born

StarmerThe announcement on Sunday August 27, by way of an article in The Observer, that the Labour Party now backed a transition arrangement for the UK after it leaves the EU in March 2019 changes everything, utterly.

Writing in The Observer, Keir Starmer (photo), the Labour spokesperson on Brexit said:

Labour would seek a transitional deal that maintains the same basic terms that we currently enjoy with the EU. That means we would seek to remain in a customs union with the EU and within the single market during this period. It means we would abide by the common rules of both.

If Labour can push this through it restores for business the vital prospect of greater stability in trading terms with the EU and labour market free movement for at least 3 or 4 years ahead.

How this is to be achieved is not stated but if it involves the complete acceptance of all EU rules, including free movement and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, then finding a way to do this should not be that difficult. The full article can be found here. Presumably, Labour also accepts that after 2019 the UK will no longer have any involvement in EU governance, no commissioner, no MEPs and no European court judge.

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