Category Archives: Brexit

There is simply no subtlety to the UKs adventures in self-parody these days. Take the so-called Festival of Brexit and the criticism levelled at this 120m deceased elephant by everyone from appalled auditors on the culture select committee to visitors who somehow didnt enjoy being forced to sit through what they were being shown. Total fiasco, you say? Appalling waste of public money, you say? Completely different to what was promised, you say? Despite having been years in the planning, no one knew what it was actually supposed to look like, you say? The people who came up with it are blaming its failure on anyone but themselves, you say? I mean I mourn the time when a metaphor stole imperceptibly into the British consciousness instead of grabbing it by the lapels, shaking it like a rag doll and head-butting it in the nose while screaming, I AM A STONECOLD METAPHOR, OK PAL?

If you were one of the 67 million-odd UK citizens who missed this event over the summer, the Festival of Brexit was formally rebranded as Unboxed, given the ominously woolly aim of celebrating creativity in the UK, and has been running all round the country since late spring with a series of events that were this week laid bare with hilarious dryness in a quite majestic article in the House magazine. Any connection with what was once feared to be a jingoistic-sounding idea was actively shunned by the various organisers, and in many cases heroically undermined. Unfortunately, a hugely successful national moment did not ensue.

The many creative happenings seem largely to have run the gamut from the deranged and poorly executed to the deranged and poorly attended. Lowlights are too numerous to cover in full here, but special mention must be made of the unwatchable (and indeed unwatched) video content culled from some misconceived lamplight/drone event on the Norfolk Broads whose wildly expensive funding would arguably have been better handed to the disadvantaged women and victims of abuse who somehow found themselves participating in it.

Other standouts? At one leg of a strand called Tour de Moon, the reporter watched a deeply moving speech by a man in a wheelchair explaining how his life-changing fall had left him excluded from his passion for clubbing. This was immediately followed by a DJ shouting: Come on, everyone needs to stand up from their chairs for this next tune! Any number of quotes from people featured in the article could have found their way on to a sarcastic poster advertising the discreet charms of Unboxed. Nadine Dorries absolutely loved it. There were a lot of learning curves, euphemised the creator of the worlds first inflatable playground, which in practice proved physically unstable.

Unboxed was tilting at what its impresario called a stretch target of 66 million visitors. It got 238,000. The entire thing clocked in at 120m of taxpayers money, which strangely has yet to prompt a government minister to fume about how many nurses it could have paid for instead. (But of course, despite bringing pleasure to millions and occasionally billions, only footballers are judged by how many nurses or teachers they could have paid for.)

To put it in alternative terms, each visitor to one of Unboxeds many events could have been given 500 cash instead of being, for example, smashed over the head by kids toting inflatable moons, as happened at one malarial-sounding thing entitled Moon Games. Looked at in another way, Unboxed cost more than four times the money spent on the Platinum Jubilee. (Surely there could have been economies of scale with the latter event? At the very least, both could have featured hardline national treasure Joan Collins.)

The disowning by Brexiteers was under way before it had even begun. South Thanet MP Craig Mackinlay complained that not calling it the Festival of Brexit was a great opportunity missed. Like communism, which has simply yet to be done right. Or because all metaphors now have to be so sledgehammer as to result in head trauma like Brexit itself.

Looking back, were there any clues that Unboxed/the Festival-of-Brexit-as-was would be a complete turkey? Well, yes. Not least that from the get-go it was described as an excellent idea by Jacob Rees-Mogg. In Hollywood, youd lose your job if you greenlit a flop this big; I note Rees-Mogg is widely tipped to become business secretary under Liz Truss, the Conservative rights latest ridiculous and obviously terrible idea.

As for the ideas genesis, it was unveiled in Theresa Mays 2018 speech to the Conservative party conference. If youre a fan of how the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft to shit, do consider that this precise May speech was entitled Campaign 2022. This was a reference to the 2022 general election date she was apparently strategising brilliantly towards.

Anyway here we all are, in 2022. As you may recall, what with having been forced to live through it, we have suffered two prime ministerial defenestrations since 2018, and are now staring down the barrel of Trussonomics. Or the unlit uplands, as some are now calling them.

Even back when May debuted the plan, which she apparently envisaged as a celebration of national renewal, the Festival of Brexit proved a straight-to-meme idea, as did most of the other things said at that particular conference. To pluck some at random, Jeremy Hunt took the opportunity to compare the EU to Stalins Soviet Union for stop[ping] people leaving. Amazingly, he would end up being the sensible candidate in the next leadership contest.

Rees-Mogg himself was back then touting a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Canada Brexit model to the party faithful, explaining: That is a word developed by a nanny, and nannies are jolly good things. Brexit will be a success, he added, because it is a Conservative thing to be doing. So yes: any idea that came out of the 2018 Conservative party conference should have had a concrete dome built over it, with all those operationally responsible gifted with a show trial and a restorative trip to the labour camps.

Instead, many of the architects are eyeing up seats around yet another cabinet table, while 120m is probably the smallest single sum wasted on their epochal vanity project thus far. As for Britains renewal, that is once again predicted to be just around the next corner.

And yet, is it? Despite the fact that a bizarre amount of journalism has now made itself about predicting events as opposed to reporting on them, I do aim to avoid any serious forecasts in my columns. But an internet search reveals that back in the day, I suggested that by the time the Festival of Brexit came around we would be pooling our corned beef and lightbulbs. A reminder that pretty much the only thing recent administrations have delivered on is making grimly facetious jokes come true.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber, 18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at the Guardian Bookshop

Marina Hyde will be in conversation with Richard Osman at a Guardian Live event in London on 11 October. Join them in person or via the livestream book tickets via the Guardian Live website

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It would have been better for everyone if the festival of Brexit had stayed in its box - The Guardian

If you're asked to leave London for a financial services job in the European Union, it seems reasonable to assume you'll take a pay cut. After all, data from the European Banking Authority on the number of people working in finance and earning seven figures in the UK versus the whole of the European Union, regularly shows that there are more than twice as many in London than the whole of the EU. And high pay at the top percolates down.

However, as banks have shifted staff out of London following Brexit, there's evidence that EU pay has been hiked. In Germany, for example, nearly 550 in finance people earned 1m or more in 2020, up from 390 in 2017.

Last week's court judgement concerningZhuofang Wei, a Princeton and Stanford graduate, who worked in strategy for Canadian bank CIBCin London, shed some light on the dynamic through which pay has been bid-upwards.

Working in London in 2019, Wei was paid247k in total compensation in her role as a CRO, which amounted to286k euros under the then-exchange rate.

CIBC planned to move her to Luxembourg for a new combined CRO and COO role. Using benchmarked data from McLagan, the bank determined that average pay for a head of risk in Luxembourg was253k and that average pay for a chief operating officer in the Duchy was anything from225k to 350k. CIBC could conceivably, therefore, have cut Wei's pay by around30k in Luxembourg(although it could also conceivably have increased it to the300k- 400k a headhunter saidit could cost to find someone externally).

Instead, of cutting pay to the lowest possible level, however, CIBC was prepared to pay Wei206k in salary, plus117k in bonus. This would have resulted in total compensation of323k.

Wei left the bank before taking the new role. But she wasn't the only CIBC banker to receive an offer more generous than might otherwise have been the case. The court notes indicate thatThomas Pellequer, the chief executive of CIBC Capital Markets in Luxembourg was offered target compensation of1,025,000 to move to Luxembourg from London in May 2020. This was despite the fact that it was more than double the amount a Luxembourg recruiter said was required to fill the role. It was also on the 75th percentile of CEO pay in Luxembourg according to McLagan. WhenPellequer was initially offered a salary below his London base, he reportedly expressed his great unhappiness and said he'd take a few weeks to consider the offer. CIBC then made amends (by increasing his salary and reducing his role-based allowance).

The fundamental issue seems to be that CIBC - like most banks - couldn't persuade its staff to move unless it compensated them at least on a par with London. And in addition to London-level pay, it was compelled to offer a relocation allowance.

While Brexit has therefore been a headache for EU banks trying to keep pace with pay for incomers, it's been much better news for bankers themselves. They've often transferred to cities with lower costs of living, but been paid the same or more than in London. With the pound potentially set to drop further against the euro under the new government of Liz Truss, this may be something to keep in mind.

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How Brexit bid-up bankers' pay in the EU - eFinancialCareers

Brexit: the gift that keeps on giving. Here are some of the latest examples of how Britons lose out as citizens of what is now a third country as regards the EU.

They include: Eurostar has decided to stop direct services from London to Disneyland Paris from next summer, citing the fallout from Brexit and Covid.

They are quoted as saying: Our border environment has also toughened post Brexit, and further complexity is expected with the launch of the EUs Entry Exit System.

As well as Disneyland, Eurostar is unlikely to reopen its stations in Kent where they would now have to organise customs checks, which makes the procedure more expensive.

So now it is not clear if the stations at Ashford International and Ebbsfleet will ever reopen.

A Wandsworth resident found that the NHS app with UK-approved Covid pass meant nothing in Poland for the Border Guard.

It wasnt recognised, only the EU-wide one.

That meant he was not allowed to board his plane home to London.

He had to rebook for a week later, thereby losing one weeks earnings and around 150 for another booking.

Another Wandsworth resident has dual nationality and a cottage in Sweden as well as a small flat in London.

The Swedish countryside was the perfect place for self-isolating during the pandemic, but in autumn 2021 they were planning to go back to London for the winter.

They had already taken all their winter clothes coats, boots, woolly hats and gloves with them when they travelled to London for a long weekend in September.

Omicron struck in early December 2021, and they decided to stay in Sweden, despite missing yet another festive season with family and friends.

However, they needed their winter gear and asked one of their children to pack it all and send it over.

The shipment got stuck in Customs, because they couldnt show receipts that VAT had already been paid on their old clothes.

Some of those items are 15-20 years old from an era when we had free movement and didnt need to worry about keeping receipts for decades.

Since they couldnt prove VAT payment, they had to pay 25 per cent of the value of their second-hand clothes plus a Customs administration fee to release the shipment, some of which had been bought in Sweden a long time ago.

On Saturday September 10th there is a National March to Rejoin being held in London:https://marchforrejoin.co.uk/

If you believe Brexit was a national mistake, do join the marchers.

Barbara CallenderChairwoman European Movement Wandsworth & Merton

Picture: Pixabay/stux

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The gift that is Brexit just keeps on giving not! - London News Online

A number of Scottish groups are set to head down to join a mass pro-EU march in London on Saturday in an event being labelled "extremist" by a leading pro-Brexit think tank.

Thousands of people are expected to descend on the UK's capital for the march which has been called the "March to Rejoin" with a GoFundMe for it raising 20,000.

Two Scottish groups have already confirmed plans to take part in the event in Glasgow Loves EU and European Movement in Scotland with the London SNP also attending.

READ MORE: Wetherspoon owner Tim Martin calls on UK to ditch 'f***ing tariffs' and make Brexit work

A number of pro-EU commentators will also be speaking at the march including Steve Bray and Femi Oluwole of the OFOC group (Our Future Our Choice").

Despite the UK voting to leave the EU back in 2016, the rejoiners are continuing to dispute the vote by holding the event which is expected to get coverage on BBC and Sky.

Pro-Brexit think tank Facts4EU highlighted the event as a sign that the fight to stay out of the bloc was not over, considering the breadth of support the march had received.

They wrote: "On Saturday the BBC, Sky News and ITN will no doubt be giving significant coverage to the March to Rejoin. Whilst most of the marchers will be from the extremist fringe, this march should nevertheless send a warning to all Brexiteers the fight is not yet over.

"We may well be looking at the rump of the Remain movement but its very well-funded and very active on social media and in its political campaigning. And its clearly on the rise.

"The GoFundMe site for this march shows that a total of 20,101 has been raised for this single event at the time of writing (4am, Sun 04 Sept 2022).

"20,000 for a single days output The Facts4EU.Org team would love to have this sum for an entire months output, researching and publishing seven days-a-week. We count ourselves fortunate if we receive a total amount like that for six months work."

The SNP want to join the EU if they become independent as they claimed to have been taken out of the bloc without their permission after Scotland voted to stay in it.

But they have yet to publish their independence paper which would state how they would do this, although it is understood to be coming out before their planned referendum next October.

Leigh Evans, Chairman, Facts4EU.Org and Chairman of CIBUK.Org, urged his fellow Brexiteers to get ready for the potential onslaught from remainers this weekend and in the future.

He said: "One more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

Brexit is not done, sadly. Not only do we have to ensure that the United Kingdom is reunited and that all of it is removed from the yoke of EU laws, we must also ensure that all the dividends from being an independent country again are realised as quickly as possible.

As the Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP told me last month :-

'Well, weve scarcely started, have we? I mean, it's still very disappointing. It's great news that we finally got out, despite Parliament's worst efforts to thwart the will of the British people. But we got out with a deal, which Boris Johnson had substantially revised from Theresa May, but it still left us under some elements of EU control, which I find deeply disappointing.'

All those who voted Leave over six years ago have a right to expect the full delivery of Brexit. Its something called democracy a concept that Rejoiners would do well to acquaint themselves with. It might also help if they bothered to acquaint themselves with some official facts.

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Scottish groups to take part in anti-democratic 'March to Rejoin' Brexit event in London - Scottish Daily Express

The UK governments plan to increase R&D spending requires a skilled workforce which its universities and research institutes will struggle to assemble, expert witnesses told the House of Lords science and technology committee today.

The attractiveness of the UK as a destination for scientists might have decreased in recent years, said Maggie Dallman, vice president for international affairs and associate provost for academic partnerships at Imperial College London.

In a strategy published in March, the UK government renewed its commitment to reaching a public and private R&D spending target of 2.4% of GDP by 2027, in a new five-year strategy.

The strategy says the UK needs to grow and diversify its R&D workforce by 150,000 people over the next eight years. Harry Anderson, policy manager at Universities UK, which represents 140 institutions, told the committee the government has not provided any details about how it plans to do this. My question is, are we actually on that trajectory? How are we going to meet those targets? he said.

Plans for establishing new international science links after breaking away from the EU have not been very successful do date. A visa scheme that aimed to attract leading scientists from around the world has failed to attract applicants.

The subtext is that the UKs reputation as an international science and technology hub has been damaged by the governments post-Brexit stance on immigration.

Imperial is currently experiencing some challenges when recruiting, said Dallman. The messaging on welcoming highly skilled scientists to the UK is really increasingly drowned out by post-Brexit rhetoric and policy to reduce overall immigration into the UK.

Ottoline Leyser, CEO of UK Research and Innovation, the main public funding agency, said the government should give a stronger indication of its political and financial commitment to research and innovation.

It's absolutely critical that the UK signals really clearly and loudly, with long term commitments from a funding point of view, its intention to drive up research and innovation, investment and opportunity right across the UK economy, Leyser said.

The hearing took place as Liz Truss was being appointed as the UKs new prime minister. In her previous posting of foreign secretary, she last month announced legal proceedings against the EU for blocking its membership of the 95.5 billion research programme, Horizon Europe, in a move which move could set the scene for an increasingly heated dispute over EU-UK science cooperation.

Visa issues

Universities and research institutions are having a hard time getting suitable candidates from abroad partly because the UKs visa system is costly for researchers hired on longer term contracts who want to bring their families with them. As a result, academics have started asking for shorter contracts, said Anderson.

He gave the example of a Turkish academic who was planning a move to the UK but the upfront cost including the visa, accounted for as much as ten times their salary in Turkey. Some universities do have loan repayment schemes to help cover these costs, but that option is not available everywhere. I think that's a real challenge and a real barrier, Anderson said.

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Experts warn UK is becoming less attractive for international research talent post-Brexit - Science Business

This is a re-post of an article originally published on pundit.co.nz. It is here with permission.

The British economy is struggling. As in the case of China and Russia, the situation is slowly unfolding, but compared to almost every OECD economy, and certainly compared to the others of the big seven (G7), Britain is doing dreadfully.

Its current consumer prices increased 9.1 percent over the last year with the expectation they will continue to rise (possibly doubling the current rate in 2023). The official figures for GDP, for to show that all sectors of the economy declined over the last year. The economy is only 0.9% bigger than it was in November 2019, while its population has grown about 1.5%. Unemployment has fallen to low levels but is beginning to rise. Wage increases are a long way behind inflation.

Russias troubles are easily explained. Despite strong hydrocarbon exports, the economy is being slowly strangled of component imports by the sanctions imposed because of the invasion of Ukraine. Chinas are because its giant property sector is switching from a Minsky boom to a Minsky bust.

Most economies in the world have been badly hit responding to the Covid pandemic (that includes China).The Ukraine war has raised prices of commodities like grain and hydrocarbons, although the worst increases are retreating. Wars disrupt economies even if the country does not deploy fighting men.

The Covid pandemic has disrupted international supply chains, a timely reminder of how interdependent the world is. It is not just that components are produced in different countries from the users. They have to be shipped. Shanghai, the biggest port in the world, is in a lockdown. So there are ships anchored offshore, waiting to enter. That means there are fewer ships for the rest of the world and so, for instance, trans-Tasman shipping capacity is limited; evident by the gaps on your supermarkets shelves. (Shipping prices are more three times than their pre-pandemic level.)

But these effects are not peculiar to Britain, so they do not explain why it is doing exceptionally badly. Nor can it be explained by Britains economic cycle being out of phase from everyone elses, a common source of confusion, especially by those who are after dramatic headlines. The relative deterioration has been going longer than a business cycle.

One sort of explanation is that once Britain was the workshop of the world, but other economies caught up. However, the catchup countries are now doing better. Only slightly better in any average year but the deficit accumulates.

I am not sure that the data is that reliable. International comparisons are difficult, especially for non-traded goods and for services. But suppose Britain is growing more slowly. One argument is that the economy is over-regulated. But is it more over-regulated than comparable economies? While I think good quality regulation is preferable, I am not convinced that it affects economic growth as much as the promoters of this view argue. Our strongest recorded economic growth boom was under the First Labour Government after the Great Depression recovery, when there were increasing interventions. The market liberalisations from the 1980s often cost a fortune, as in the case of leaky buildings. On average, they probably improved the quality of output, which GDP does not measure well, but there is no evidence of their improving the material growth rate. Similarly the strongest period of recent British growth was under Tony Blair; NewLabour is not remembered for liberalising economic regulation.

Another explanation for the long-term decline is that Britain has specialised in exporting services (particularly financial services) but at the cost of its manufacturing sector. Allow me to skip the longer analysis and note that the dominance of City of London has been at the expense of the rest of Britain (those promoting levelling-up take notice) but that the share of manufacturing would have declined anyway for the same reasons it has done in other affluent economies.

However, any such weakness does not explain the recent relative deterioration. Surely it is Brexit and the economic consequences. It is not hard to compile a long list of anecdotes which describe the difficulties the British export sector is currently facing.

Let me begin in good Popperian fashion, by setting out the strongest argument for the economic benefits of Brexit. They are not the slogans which people voted on, and I acknowledge that those who value constitutional independence might be willing to pay a premium for it in lower material output. I focus on the economic argument that the British economy outside the EU will be better off in the long run.

Note that this version of the argument accepts that any shock as large as the Brexit will cause damage in the short-to-medium run as industries adjust to the new situation. Could there be gains in the longer run?

The Brexiteers case seems to be that EU regulations were clumsy and holding back the potential of British industry. A less interventionist regime will liberate that potential and eventually lead to faster economic growth.

A New Zealander is allowed to be sceptical. That was the argument for Rogernomics and, as I said, there is no evidence, other than anecdotes and statistical distortions, to indicate that our market liberalisation speeded up economic growth (or even that the economy recovered the loss from the Rogernomics stagnation). The economy continues to trundle along at much the same growth rate as it did before Rogernomics despite, according to the World Bank, being at the top of the list of countries with which to do business. Of course, the Brits may have more sophisticated regulators than ours, thereby getting more of the upsides of the liberalisation and less of the downsides. We shall see.

There is also a sense that regulation as increased has a result of Brexit. While the Brits can liberalise their internal domestic market, they face increased red tape at the border. An exporter to the EU still has to meet EU standards; because the EU market is over six times the size of Britains, the EU determines the standards. Additionally, the additional documentation now required for exporting to the EU is a form of regulatory overload.

It is true there has been some liberalisation at the borders for other markets but the British trade deals have been mainly the ones that the EU did anyway. The good news is that both Australia and New Zealand got better access for their agricultural exports from Britain than the EU gave us.

Perhaps the Brits are hoping to do a better deal with the US than they would have got had they remained in the EU. We shall see, but I am sceptical. The US are tough, inward protecting bargainers as we saw with the TPP. Britain hopes to join the CPTPP; it would be a good win for them (and us) but will not offset the loss of the EU market.

Withdrawing from a trade agreement is akin to a breakdown of the supply chain. This time though, it is not so much being able to get the shipping as that the ships one does get are expensive rust buckets.

Even so, in a declining economy there will be some who do well. In Britains case, it is the retired, who are not threatened by unemployment, living on affluent investment incomes which benefit from higher profits and interest rates and who are nostalgic about the England they grew up in when it was still possible to pretend Britain was a world power. All they want is income tax cuts. They sound very much like the members of the Tory party who are voting for Liz Truss.

*Brian Easton, an independent scholar, is an economist, social statistician, public policy analyst and historian. He was theListenereconomic columnist from 1978 to 2014. This is a re-post of an article originally published on pundit.co.nz. It is here with permission.

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Paying the cost of Brexit | interest.co.nz - Interest.co.nz

There is a widespread assumption that freedom of movement with the EU is highly unpopular among people who identify as Leavers.Paul Willner, Todd Hartman, andRichard Bentallpresent data from a large (>2K) sample showing that this assumption is mistaken: freedom of movement is almost as acceptable to Leavers as it is to Remainers. This finding has implications for the positioning of political parties on freedom of movement and membership of the EU Single Market.

Six years after the EU Referendum, the Brexit project is in disarray. A series of authoritative reports have confirmed predictions that Brexit would inflict serious damage on the UK economy. In June 2022, a report from the Centre for European Reform estimated that UK GDP is 5.2% smaller than it would otherwise have been, investment is 13.7% lower, and goods trade 13.6% lower; a report from the Resolution Foundation estimated that Brexit will cost each UK worker 470 every year over the coming decade; and the Office for National Statistics reported the worst balance of trade figures since records began. An earlier report from the LSEs Centre for Economic Performance estimated that the cost of Brexit to the UK economy is likely to be more than double that of the COVID-19 pandemic, a view shared by the Chair of the Office for Budgetary Responsibility. And this is without full implementation of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which the Minister for Brexit Opportunities has said would be an act of national self-harm.

Meanwhile, the problems over the Northern Ireland protocol appear irreconcilable, and the governments solution (to unilaterally cancel swathes of this international treaty that they signed amid great jubilation and claimed as a diplomatic triumph only two years ago) threatens to shred the reputation of the UK as a trustworthy partner in international affairs. This state of affairs is widely recognised: opinion polls on the question of whether Brexit is going well or badly have shown a steady deterioration in public support, with well over three times as many now thinking that Brexit is going badly than think it is going well (54% to 16%).

An obvious remedy for this malaise is readily available. Rejoining the Single Market would at a stroke overcome the barriers to trade with our European neighbours and solve the problem of Northern Ireland, as well as restore lost rights to UK citizens. But Single Market membership would mean the return of freedom of movement, which, it is believed, would so anger leave voters that they would withdraw support from a party advocating it. (We argue that this assumption drives Labour Party policy on Europe.)

Here we present evidence that the received wisdom is incorrect: freedom of movement is NOT toxic to leavers. Our data are from the eighth wave of an ESRC-funded nationally representative survey (grant no. ES/V004379/1), stratified by age, sex, and household income, conducted online on the Qualtrics platform in June 2022. Participants were identified as Leavers, Remainers, or neither from their responses to a questionnaire with three leave-supporting and three remain-supporting items (e.g. I identify strongly with people who voted to leave/remain in the European Union). We then presented participants with a range of different scenarios for the future of the Brexit process. Rather than asking them to identify their ideal or preferred outcome, we aimed to identify outcomes that could be acceptable to both Remainers and Leavers if they were achieved as the endpoint of a process of negotiation between the UK and the EU.

In an earlier survey, conducted with a representative sample of 1,408 adult UK citizens in 2021, we found that, unsurprisingly, a scenario labelled An Independent, Sovereign UK (essentially a hard Brexit) was acceptable to 41% of Leave voters, but unacceptable to 64% of Remain voters; conversely, a scenario labelled Rethink Brexit (calling a second referendum) was acceptable to 65% of Remain voters but unacceptable to 56% of Leave voters. However, a scenario labelled A New Deal with Europe was acceptable to a majority of both Leavers and Remainers, while unacceptable to less than 20% in either group.

In our new survey, alongside the hard Brexit and second referendum options, we offered three alternative visions of what a new deal with Europe might mean, involving either free trade, freedom of movement, or both. Each scenario was presented with an explanation of what it would mean, and a rationale (see Table 1).

A total of 2,166 participants responded to the survey: 587 participants (28%) self-identified as Leavers, 902 (42%) identified as Remainers, and 677 (31%) did not express a Brexit identity. We found that the hard Brexit option was unacceptable to almost 50% of the participants, and acceptable to less than 25%. The second referendum option was somewhat more acceptable (46%), which is unsurprising as significantly more of the sample self-identified as Remainers, but still unacceptable to almost 30% of participants. However, all three new deal options were acceptable to well over 50% of participants, and unacceptable to only around 15%.

In Figure 1, these data are broken down according to participants Brexit identities. For the hard Brexit and second referendum options, the results from participants identifying as Leavers or Remainers were very similar to those obtained from Leave and Remain voters a year earlier: unsurprisingly, the hard Brexit option was highly unacceptable to Remainers (A), while the idea of a second referendum was highly unacceptable to Leavers (B). However, the three new deal options were all similarly attractive to Leavers as to Remainers (C,D,E): each of free trade, freedom of movement, and the combination of both elements, was acceptable to a majority of both Leavers and Remainers, and unacceptable to less than 20% in either group. Participants who did not express a Brexit identity also reported very low (10%) levels of unacceptability for all of the new deal options. We considered whether, within the Leave-identifying group a stronger Leave identity might be associated with grater antipathy to freedom of movement: it was not (correlation = 0.044).

These data suggest strongly that the conventional wisdom is mistaken: when the meaning is spelled out, freedom of movement is not toxic to leavers, who are almost as positive about it as Remainers. Moreover, almost identical levels of support were found for the third new deal option which envisages both free trade and freedom of movement a close approximation to Single Market membership. It appears that, contrary to received wisdom, the return of freedom of movement with Europe and rejoining the EU Single Market are policies that could command wide support across the Brexit divide.

___________________

About the Authors

Paul Willneris Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Swansea University.

Todd Hartmanis Professor of Quantitative Social Science at the University of Manchester.

Richard Bentallis Professorof Clinical Psychology at the University of Sheffield.

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New research shows freedom of movement is not toxic to Leavers, who are almost as positive about it as Remainers - British Politics and Policy at LSE

The repercussions of the UKs withdrawal from the European Union are still of critical importance and the Government must work to protect 90 billion worth of annual trade between the UK and the Republic, the British Irish Chamber of Commerce has said.

In a pre-budget submission, the chamber has, among other things, called on the Government to set up a contingency fund to support Irish businesses that rely on the all-Ireland supply chain from the potential fallout of the impending Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.

Paul Lynam, director of policy at the British-Irish chamber, said that with UK-Ireland trade growing back towards pre-Brexit levels, the contingency fund could provide much-needed stability for businesses.

This vital trade link will be disproportionately impacted should the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill be implemented, he said.

It also wants to see the establishment of what it calls a shared islands fund, modelled on the existing Shared Island Fund, to foster collaborative initiatives between Ireland and the UK. Announced as part of budget 2021, the Shared Island Fund ringfenced 500 million in capital funding until 2025 for collaborative North-South projects.

Additionally, the British-Irish chamber said the Government should review economic ties with the North and set up a regional partnership programme to act as a counterweight to the Dublin-London corridor.

It has also called on the Government to set up an office of tax reform, similar to the UKs office for tax simplification.

While the chamber is as concerned as the Government when it comes to energy security and inflation, the repercussions of Brexit remain of critical importance, Mr Lynam said. This is why, it is firmly the view of the chamber and our members, who represent a comprehensive range of sectors, that Ireland now needs targeted supports to achieve recovery and growth.

Originally posted here:

Brexit repercussions remain 'critically important' in Budget 2023 The Irish Times - The Irish Times

Apparently, you can now see the ring of human excrement surrounding Brexit Britain from space, the raw sewage of Brexits environmental fallout lapping at the shores of our sceptic isle. The Chinese astronaut Wang Yaping, whom I befriended at one of Robin Ince and Brian Coxs Hammersmith Apollo space-comedy events while dancing to Charlotte Churchs indie-pop covers band, contacted me from her sleep pod on the Tianhe space station module to describe the sight. Oh Stewart! From space, Britain now looks like a beautiful green jade earring, but a beautiful green jade earring that has been dropped in an oyster pail Chinese takeaway box full of dog diarrhoea. Oh Stewart! Wang sighed, clearly distressed, no fine ladies will want to wear that filthy earring that is Brexit Britain now. So sad. So sad for you. How is your Edinburgh fringe going? I hear Kunt and the Gangs Shannon Matthews: The Musical is very good.

Like me, I am sure you remember reasonable Remainers warnings about the incoming non-availability of European manufactured, sewage-refining chemicals being dismissed as project fear; like me, I am sure you remember how Michael Gove snorted with haughty delight as he promised us leaving the EU would enable us to enjoy even tighter environmental protections, rather than being swamped with raw sewage. Another Brexit-non-bonus; like me, I am sure you worried that the EUs fines for water pollution by privatised water companies were all that was saving us from capitalism crapping into every culvert, as big business kleptocrats asset-stripped the water infrastructure and processed the profits abroad; like me, I am sure you realised that the Conservatives October 2021 decision to vote down an amendment that would have stopped the dumping of raw sewage into seas and rivers would mean their friends who own the water companies would be free to choke our waterways and coastlines; and like me, I am sure you were more than a little bewildered to find that the most consistent voice of reason in this crisis is former Undertones frontman and keen fly fisher Feargal Sharkey. Who can forget the prophetic hit single, Here Comes the Summer, with its classic couplet: Keep looking for the girls with their bodies so fit, lying on the beaches all covered in shit?

To be fair, Sharkey is only one of a long line of Northern Irish punk musicians currently engaged in specific water-related political activism. Former Stiff Little Fingers guitarist Henry Cluney is especially concerned about climate changes impact on the breeding cycle of the water boatman (Corixa punctata); Ronnie Matthews, of Big Time hitmakers Rudi, sponsors a rare pelican eel at Belfast Zoo; while one-time Moondogs bassist Jackie Hamilton has attempted to raise awareness of depletion of the habitat of the gasterosteidae family by living for a year as a stickleback in Fermanaghs mysterious Lough Erne. Nonetheless, Sharkeys pop career change is only the second most startling in rock, beaten by that of Jeff Skunk Baxter, who vacated the bassists hammock of 1960s Boston acid rockers Ultimate Spinach, and subsequently the comfortable leather armchair of the same position in Steely Dan, to co-develop the Pentagons Son of Star Wars weapon system.

As water bosses dividends rise our rivers are suddenly more polluted than ever and our beaches are befilthed by sewage discharge in a way not seen since the 1970s, when I well remember seeing human turds bobbing around the face of Bobby Ball as he bathed blissfully in the Blackpool brine between shows. Back then, we were known as the dirty man of Europe. Today, the dirty man of Europe is Iain Duncan Smith, whose preferred pastime of picking his nose and gobbling down the crusty mucous in the Commons has become a hit Try not to gag meme among continental teenagers. But filthy Britain may yet become the dirty man of Europe again.

Ironically, the clogging of the seas around Britain with untreated excrement already threatens the core values of Brexit. Currently, I am in Edinburgh, performing two sold-out shows a day of so-called woke comedy. Between the middle ages and the 19th century, the spot currently occupied by Princes Street Gardens was home to the Nor Loch, an artificial lake that became so clogged with the human filth that ran down from the crowded tenements on the north slope of the Royal Mile that in hot summers a crust of excrement would harden across it strong enough to bear the weight of a man.

Indeed, in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), James Boswell recalls Samuel Johnson betting him a hundred guineas that he could not bear him upon his back over the encrusted sewage-lake. Boswell tried his best, but the creme brulee sliver of human waste cracked at around the point where the Ann Summers shop stands today and both Johnson and Boswell fell floundering into the filth, while much hilarity ensued. The problem for the Brexit government is that on a calm day, with a hot sun, the surface of the enshatted English Channel itself could similarly harden, allowing migrants in their millions to simply walk into Brexit Britain on foot, a spectacular own goal of Brexits regulations bonfire.

So, swim at your peril, middle-class wild river swimmers, unless you fancy being confined to your ersatz rustic Airbnb travellers wagon with sickness, diarrhoea and your children.

But remember Brexit Britain, as you crawl from the sea coated from head to toe in human excrement, its what you voted for! Freedom from their red tape! We may be swimming in shit, but at least its the shit of Britons unbowed by the yoke of Brussels! Where will this bonanza of post-Brexit deregulation take us next?

Stewart Lee is appearing in a show to raise funds for the David Johnson Emerging Talent award on 28 August, 6pm, at the Gordon Aikman theatre, Edinburgh; Snowflake is on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer at 10.30pm on Sunday 4 September, followed by Tornado on Sunday 11 September

This article was amended on 29 August 2022 to correctly refer to Lough Erne, rather than Loch Erne.

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At last, the Tories prove that Brexit has polluted the UK - The Guardian

Jonathan Portes answers the criticisms of those who claim that what the Brexit campaign was really promising was lower levels of immigration

In a recent article for ConservativeHome, I described the Governments post-Brexit immigration policy as a rare success: a Brexit promise that had largely been successfully delivered.

I argued that ending free movement, and equalising conditions for work and study visas between those coming from Europe and elsewhere, had both fulfilled the terms of Vote Leaves stated commitment and its objective of shifting away from lower-skilled and paid immigration. The new system also seems to command widespread public acceptance.

The results should be welcomed by economists and pro-migration liberals. A substantial rise in migration from outside Europe, particularly in higher-paid and more skilled jobs, largely offsetting reductions in EU migration. At the same time, political developments have resulted in a sharp rise in refugee flows from Hong Kong, Ukraine and Afghanistan.

Unsurprisingly, this thesis has not been met with universal acclaim.

The first criticism of it is that what the Brexit campaign was really promising and what those who voted for Brexit really wanted and voted for was much lower immigration. But this simply isnt the case.

Cutting migration to the tens of thousands was promised by David Cameron in the 2010 Conservative Manifesto, and again in 2015, and then reaffirmed by Theresa May in 2017 all Remainers of course. But the Vote Leave campaign was careful, understandably given Cameron and Mays record of failure, not to give any such hostages to fortune.

Its undoubtedly true that there was a strong undercurrent of xenophobia in the Leave campaign not just Nigel Farages notorious Breaking Point poster, but also the official Vote Leave scaremongering over Turkeys possible future accession to the EU. Its also true that a substantial majority of voters, both Leave and Remain, did indeed expect that Brexit would reduce migration flows.But this misses the point.

If the Leave-voting public had indeed been taken for fools by a campaign which implicitly promised much lower immigration, and has delivered no such thing, then wed expect a sharp backlash now.The usual suspects on the ethno-nationalist right are doing their best to conjure up the spectre of exactly that.

Eric Kaufmann has long argued that what British voters really want is fewer non-white migrants. Writing in Unherd, he has claimed that reducing immigration is the way to reclaim national populist voters. Except that even by torturing his own dodgy data, and making some fairly obvious errors in the process, he cant show any such thing. Similarly, Ed West has said that the Brexiteers had one job and argues that what voters really want is to reduce non-European migration.Neil OBriens article, to which I was originally responding, is a carefully sanitised version of the same argument.

Essentially, their argument is that the British public is suffering from false consciousness and that when they discover whats really going on, there will be a backlash, and it wont be pretty.

Their position has a lot in common with Remainers on Twitter who persist in arguing that Brexit voters are going to be extremely unhappy when they notice that what Brexit has meant in practice is fewer European migrants, but lots more Indians and Nigerians.But so far, it simply hasnt happened.

Immigration remains well down on the list of issues of public concern.Even in the Conservative leadership campaign, despite the candidates race to the bottom on wider social issues and their enthusiastic endorsement of the Rwanda policy, neither has proposed any significant changes to the wider immigration system.

As I have written in these pages previously, this looks less like a simple hostility to immigration than the schizophrenic approach of New Labour: economic liberalism, combined with an instinctive hostility to refugees.

If it was really the case that there was a silent majority in favour of much lower immigration, then specific policies designed to achieve that would be very popular and politicians like OBrien would be advocating them. But they dont actually seem to have the courage of their convictions.

Not many mainstream Conservatives are advocating cancelling the Hong Kong visa scheme, or further aggravating NHS and care sector shortages, or making it much harder for international students to come to the UK for the simple reason that such proposals would not only be damaging but also unpopular.

The more valid criticism of the thesis is that the pendulum could easily swing back. If public acceptance of high levels of immigration is driven by the realisation, post-pandemic, of how dependent the UK is on immigrant workers, and current labour shortages, then it may not survive a sharp slowdown. Moreover, the media has so far largely ignored the recent increases in migration flows, with the more xenophobic elements preferring to concentrate on Channel crossings. That could change.

And its possible the debate will get more difficult. But there is an element of unnecessary fatalism here an assumption by pro-migration liberals that the vast majority of Britons are at best insular and at worst racist, and that theres little that can be done to change that, so any improvements to the system have to come by stealth.

This ignores that the shift in public opinion on immigration isnt a recent blip its been trending in this direction, slowly but steadily, for a decade.

Might it be possible that argument and advocacy by migrants organisations, unions, civil society and (dare I say it) economists may, over time, actually change peoples minds? This isnt an argument for complacency but at least for cautious optimism.

Finally, I was criticised for ignoring the labour shortages that are a very visible consequence of the end of freedom of movement in a number of sectors.While as far as we can tell, given the difficulty in interpreting the data overall migration for work is probably running at about the same level as in the years leading up to the pandemic, there has been a substantial shift in the sectoral distribution of migration flows.

Overwhelmingly, visas are now being issued for jobs in health and social care, IT and business services and finance; other sectors that previously saw large inflows from Europe, in particular hospitality, are finding it very difficult to recruit staff, while agriculture suffers both from the end of free movement and the Ukraine are.

This will certainly impose an economic cost. Employers face a set of unpalatable choices raise wages to recruit more resident workers, increase productivity through investment or more efficient working practices, or simply reduce output. But this is a feature, not a bug, of the new system.

The Brexit argument, of course, was always that free movement drove down wages and removing it would result in a high wage, high productivity economy. Theres little or no evidence of that so far not only are real wages falling across the board, but so far at least higher-paid workers and sectors have suffered the least.Nevertheless, over time, we might expect some increase in relative pay in the most affected sectors, and some investment in labour-saving machinery in, for example, agriculture.

Much of the adjustment will have to come in other ways, but it will come. Some sectors may shrink, as some business models become uneconomic; some production may move abroad.This is an inevitable consequence of the end of free movement, with its flexibility, lack of bureaucracy and responsiveness to labour market conditions.

But while regrettable as is, of course, the loss of Britons rights to live and work wherever we want in the EU this is an inevitable consequence of our exit from the Single Market.Its not in itself a convincing critique of the new system.

There remains lots wrong with the current system, even leaving aside the cruelty and racism of the Rwanda policy: high visa and settlement fees, especially for families; vindictively restrictive policies on spousal visas; and the broader cultural dysfunction of the Home Office.But that shouldnt stop us from recognising that the new system is, unlike much else, fit for purpose.Sometimes we should take yes for an answer.

Jonathan Portes is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the School of Politics & Economics at Kings College London

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'The Government's Post-Brexit Immigration Policy is a Rare Success' Byline Times - Byline Times