Same old same old

A short (I hope) bout of illness has prevented posting for a month or so. Mostly the news seems to have concerned details of the political processes and the progress of various kinds of talks. The EU and the UK have agreed on ways to settle the Irish border question, the rights of EU citizens and the ludicrously named 'divorce bill' and we are now in for further endless wrangling at Stage 2 -- the trade talks. 

There have been conflicts inside Parliament with the Government losing for the first time over whether and how Parliament gets to  vote on the final settlement, and whether or not there have been 'impact assessments' on Brexit. The Secretary of State was forced into hilariously cynical manoeuvring over that issue, first of all trying to prevent Parliament from seeing these impact statements then having to insist that they did not exist after all. The wider admissison was that no-one in the Government had done anything to prepare for what might happen if the people were silly enough to vote for Brexit, so confident were they that they had us all by the short and curlies. It is all a dreadful confession of Establishment ineptitude.

Nothing much seems to have happened on the ideological front except the strange ways the Remainers kept changing their priorities as particular issues came to the fore. You will remember, O Single Reader my continued quest to establish just what is so attractive about the EU, why it is worth so much passionate support. This last month or so it seems to have varied weekly --first rights for (EU) citizens, then, when that was settled, the righteous demand for a divorce bill, then the Irish border. As each item was settled, the Remainer press was unsure whether to celebrate an EU victory, or to berate the Government for weakness -- K Gurumurthy, Channel 4 news reporter, started every interview with a Tory with demanding to know if this is what Brexit supporters had voted for, as if he was somehow representing Brexiteers. It was really vengeful schadenfreude of the lecturing classes and clutching at straws hoping for a new referendum and cheaper strawberries, no doubt.

Suddenly, everyone in Europe seemed passionately worried about the Irish Question too, although there was little sign in the UK of concern or action during the 30 years of the Troubles. It was all ostensibly about peace, although it also leaked out that the real issue was trade with the whole EU -- if the Republic of Ireland was allowed to trade freely with Northern Ireland, which remained in the UK, so the EU would look odd denying free trade with the rest of its empire.

Classically, EU press releases were just presented as news. K Wark on Newsnight asserted that the Government had just agreed to let EU rules continue during the transition period, even though the UK would have no voice. Brexiteer J Rees-Mogg protested that this had not been agreed by the Government. K Wark was in no position to argue as she/they had evidently not researched this issue, so it was just dropped.

Europe in the Imaginary

Potentially rich material here in el Gordinao's weekend section. Writers have been asked for their views on Europe. It's a kind of upmarket creative writing exercise where you all sit round in a room and have to write something about 'the moon' or 'my pet'. Useful, I thought for my endless quest to find what it is exactly that Remainists want to keep from the EU. 

As we would expect, lots of cultural baggage has to be bolted on to the concept, so the EU becomes some imaginary Europe, itself then reduced metonymically to a beach, a river, a building etc. In the end the EU becomes only one rather insignificant signifier in a whole chain that probably could have been started by any topic including the moon and my pet

Too much to discuss in detail but try these:

Sarah Perry begins with a memory of playing a piece of Czech music at school, then visiting Prague  in 2016. She felt an immediate 'kinship' 

from the moment I first walked over Charles bridge. The stone apostles, the jackdaws, the violinist with his case open for coins; the beggar who corrected my pronunciation of Jak se máš (“good morning”) and let me give a biscuit to the dog wrapped in his coat [bless!] ; Master Jan Hus’s statue in the Old Town Square; and the good black coffee served with cakes very nearly like those I baked at home, but also nothing like at all: these seemed, in some obscure indefensible way, to belong to me

She knows they will still be there, but she will feel like a visitor not a native. Brexit has limited her imagination?

Bee Wilson: 'Yet when I think of Brexit and food, my objections are less practical than emotional. It feels sad and wrong that we should be shunning European neighbours who taught us so much about how to eat. Is this how we repay all that hospitality? All those oceans of prosecco?' 

It was never a commercial relationship then? They just gave us all that food and drink? We won't be able to experience European cuisine once we leave?

Hari Kunzru becomes a ventriloquist to write on behalf of typical Brit Leavers, no doubt because he knows so many, as we can tell from his mastery of current slang: 'What larks!' He actually seems to be channelling the usual literary reresentations of young male proles in the 1950s. There is quite a lot of contempt and hatred. In a rather strange section, they seem to have it in for linguistic philosophy especially:

We’ve had enough of them coming round here, that’s another thing. Apple picking, changing the bedpan, telling us about the new season’s fashion trends. They can fuck off with their metric system, their Code Napoléon [well-informed proles]. Boney in his tricorn hat [still a bogey man then?], snatching the cook’s leg of mutton [too obscure for this ex-prole I fear]  creeping about in the dead of night. We’ve had experience. Dear Professor Wittgenstein, you are a person with no leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom. You have not given any reason why you should be granted leave to remain.

The reasons Wittgenstein might give would be quite interesting, of course.


Simon Garfield is going to become a German citizen (the nationality of both of his parents).

Afua Hirsch seem to have an interestingly mixed ethnic and national background (with some bourgeois highnotes) but she thinks all the social and cultural changes of the last 40 years are down to EU membership and that somehow time itself will be reversed when we leave. Teddy boys will be back!

...one man I interviewed in the run-up to the referendum told me, incredulous. “As a black man [evidently of about 70 years at least], it was not unusual to have teddy boys chasing you down the street, calling you names. We were not safe. The EU has given us more protection – not just from racists, but from rightwing British governments as well. What black person in their right mind,” he continued, “wants to go back to 1973?”

Val McDermid thinks: 'There’s no doubt that the single market has made publishing across borders much easier' and increased our knowledge of European fiction. Now she says she feels 'kinship with Italians, with Germans, with Greeks. And I like that feeling. Their countries have inspired my work. I’ve set bits of books all over Europe – Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Croatia, Greece, Italy. And now that’s going to be irredeemably fragmented'. 

This makes her angry: I want to shout, “How could you? How could you be so short-sighted? How could you do this to us?”...

Do what? Prohibit the sale of Scando-noir?
 

Call me simplistic, but I wish they’d all been force-fed [revealing!] a diet of continental crime fiction. If they’d understood nothing else, they might have grasped the underlying concept – bad things happen to people who do bad things.

Robert MacFarlane gets quite poetic about migratory birds and how they mark the seasons in the UK,  'the movement of the birds that bind us beyond borders, a map that unfolds in time each year'. Nice to have the leisure to notice, of course. Sounding a bit like Ted Hughes he describes his feelings and then concludes:

We are related by birds.

Nope -- still not convinced. Ludicrously luvvie bits thinly conceal a good deal of snobbishness and hatred of the lower orders. This is what the EU stands for?

Legal manoeuvres

A much discussed intervention in the Staggers  from a lawyer (John Kerr, Lord Kerr as he also is, and  'a leading supporter of Open Britain'.) who as he says 'wrote Article 50'. The gist is that Article 50 can be cancelled if the Government so wishes. I must say I have never heard anyone arguing that it cannot be cancelled, or not realising that it was a political decision, but Kerr seems to think that view is so widespread that

some aspects of the Article seem to me rather inadequately reflected, or indeed misinterpreted, in our current public debate.... The national debate about Brexit should take account of the facts that our Article 50 letter could be withdrawn without cost or difficulty, legal or political. While still in, we also have the option of stopping the clock, in order to consult the people again. But once out, there is no easy way back in.

I can't see much more in this than another input to Remainerism, using the pretext of a legal speech to urge us all to think again, perhaps in the light of T May's piece in the Telegraph where she 'plans to enshrine in law the date that Britain leaves the EU'.   

There are a few side issues though. Kerr reveals a certain political ineptitude  by those drawing up Article 50: 

One of their concerns was to demonstrate that the Union was a voluntary partnership of sovereign nation-states, based on treaties between states, not the incipient super-state of Eurosceptic nightmares. Including an Article setting out a procedure for orderly divorce was one of several ways of underlining the voluntary nature of the Union, and I was its author.... I'm certain no-one dreamed that in 2017, a member state would trigger the procedure.

So it was only gestural. They didn't mean it. They never anticipated it. No wonder they have no real strategy for dealing with it and had to cobble together some list of demands in a particular order. And does 'a voluntary partnership of sovereign nation-states, based on treaties between states' warrant all those tired analogies about families, divorces and British gentleman's clubs or drinking rounds? What does Kerr and the others understand by terms like 'voluntary' and 'based on treaties'?

Strange bedfellows...

More on the superior grasp of Graun readers compared to their journalists in the letters column today.

A scare story recently reported that reversion to WTO tariffs if we left the EU 'without a deal' would be very costly.We would have to trade at crippling levels of tariffs.


Today, an economist from the Adam Smith Institute of all places says that assumes we would charge maximum tariffs on imports. The conclusion is contaminated by Adam Smith Institute optimism and liberal economic rationalism but nevertheless:

You report (4 November) on how Brexit will raise the cost of living by as much as £930 per year for a household, based on research published in the National Institute Economic Review. There is a certain logical problem with this assertion...

The WTO allows charging any rate up to the maximum, including zero, after a 'most favoured nation' deal.

Yes, obviously, politics is involved here – but even so, why would we do something as blitheringly stupid as making ourselves poorer in this manner? The entire point of trade itself is to gain access to those imports of the things that foreigners make better or cheaper than we ourselves do. The only rational trade stance to have is thus unilateral free trade, which this country experimented with, most successfully, after the repeal of the Corn Laws. Brexit offers us the opportunity to do that again – to obey the WTO insistences on MFN [most favoured nation] status and charge ourselves nothing for our purchases of the goods and services of the world. As other research has shown, this will make us all richer, not poorer.

Of course, this will then raise doubts about the opposite and contradictory fear, also voiced now and then  -- a flood of cheap imports. 

Will someone please settle a reasonable price for off-season strawberries?

Another unrepentant...

Gisela Stuart, a former Labour MP played a prominent part in the Leave campaign, but you would never think that from media coverage.That focused almost entirely on Gove and Johnson, making the whole thing look like a contest for Tory dominance. The media probably found it hard to locate ideologically a female Labour Leaver (and still do), especially one of German origin. She more or less disappeared after the vote as attention shifted to Tory leadership issues. She quit as an MP at the last election and remains largely unknown and undiscussed.

Anyway, today she returns in the Staggers (which has done the best job overall in trying to allow Leavers a platform).The main aim is to dismiss the claims that Leavers are 'old racist and stupid' but she adds a couple of additional points too: (1) the UK did not join the euro or the Schengen project and so was already less than fully committed to the European political project (do Remainers want us to join these institutions now?); (2) the UK had always operated on a less national-state level with the Empire and all that so the simple choice between flawed nation state and internationalism was less clear.

OK, each of these is debatable, but it's a start...

Ends justifying means

Word of Russian ‘black cash’ financing leave campaigns is fast becoming a torrent. As the inquiries pile up, hard evidence could delegitimise the EU referendum

An interesting opinion piece in the Guradina today. A Putin-led conspiracy to influence Western politics by means of 'black cash' is given a further airing. Normally directed against Trump's campaigns, this time it is given currency and space in a still (just about) sensible newspaper because it connects with the running theme of anti-Brexit hopes and fears.

Russian cash might have funded Brexit campaigns claims Dr Mark Galeotti, 'a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague and head of its Centre for European Security'. Galeotti cites himself writing for the European Council on [sic] Foreign Relations to claim that Russia is actively attempting to interfere with European politics using a number of techniques. And 'Brexit may prove the perfect case study.'

Evidence? Well, 'Russia'  was apparently delighted with the Brexit vote according to a Guarnida article which did a roundup of international reactions, although Putin was not really that enthusiastic himself. Luckily 'the West' is now on its guard though.

But:

A steady trickle of hard information and soft rumour about Russian support for Brexit [from where?] risks becoming a torrent. Some of this support was, frankly, of questionable impact. Too much is often made of the alleged influence of the English-language Sputnik news agency and RT television channel, or even of the online trolling and disinformation campaign. Evidence that they actually changed minds – rather than just pandered to existing prejudices – is still lacking. 
However, there is a growing likelihood that later this year or early next we will see solid evidence of financial support for the Brexit camp, too [and this is likely to have been more effective?]

The evidence that excites Dr Galeoti here is an increasing interest in the finances of A Banks, a prominent Leave supporter, and the recent arrest of a Farage aide on money-laundering charges in the US. There will be more...

 according to US intelligence sources with whom I have discussed Moscow’s activities [bound to be objective then], there are other cases of what the Russian spooks call “black cash” supporting pro-Brexit campaigns and campaigners, likely to be revealed over the course of the several inquiries taking place on the other side of the Atlantic. Of course, assessing the impact of these operations will require careful study and scholarly rigour [not terribly evident so far] . But when has this stopped anyone using eye-catching allegations for political advantage?

The 'political advantage'  might accrue to the Remainers, thank goodness, so that's OK then, even if it is not actually supported by 'careful study and scholarly rigour'  :

Hard evidence of active, covert Russian interference would delegitimise the original vote, given the narrow margin of victory. Hardcore Brexiteers will risk looking like Putin’s “useful idiots”. This would allow the government to re-run or even disregard the referendum without looking as if it is admitting a mistake or challenging the popular will. It would also smooth the way to allowing article 50 to be revoked or ignored with no penalty [apparently,some EU folk would want us punished even if we cancelled withdrawal]...It is possible that his [Putin's] active measures helped tip the balance in the Brexit referendum. Even more likely, they will help tip the balance back.

So naive and virginal are the British electorate that it would never dawn on them that Russia might be trying to influence public opinion in Britain? Nor the USA or the EU?  They would be so shocked to discover the 'facts', and so easily persuaded by Dr Galeoti and the Remainers' pursuit of political advantage that they would abandon whatever other reasons they might have had for voting Brexit and demand a reversal of the vote

What a dog's breakfast  of self-supporting comment, supposition, and reedy straws glued together with die-hard Remaining and ideological paranoia. If the object of this stuff was to argue that the moon landings were faked or that Russia had already contacted alien visitors, I doubt the Guraun would have even read it.

But any old tosh will do if it supports Remainerism

Disciplne and punish

M Bloomberg, ace financier, thinks Brexit is a bad idea and said so at a conference. Naturally, this became news for the Guardian. If reporting remarks at conferences like this is news, it must make journalism very easy and cheap.


There was one odd phrase that reminded me of some issues though:

But what they are doing [Brexit]  is not good and there is no easy way to get out of it because if they don’t pay a penalty, everyone else would drop out. So they can’t get as good of a deal as they had before.”

This policy of 'pour encourarger les autres' has also cropped up in many EU spokespersons' accounts of the talks, and for Remainers it just seems entirely reasonable and unworthy of comment. But it is odd. Other countries have to be threatened with punishment to stay in? Only the threat of punishment keeps them in?

So it is not just economic self-interest that provides the solidarity but something extra, something moral in the sociological sense, something that will invoke a punitive reaction from the guardians of that morality if there are any attempts at autonomy. It's a rather early form of morality at that.

There are unmistakable undertones of such morality in the hurt and vengeful Oedipal willy-waving that we have seen from EU spokespersons especially Juncker. He usually articulates it via lame analogies -- the EU is a family or gentleman's club bound by mutual obligation and honour. He even tried a more populist example by suggesting the UK was somehow ducking out of standing its round in a pub. At its most dignified, the argument is that the EU has prevented war in Europe -- nothing to do with NATO of course. They used to add that it had brought unparalleled prosperity too -- not so easy to claim these days.

These are feeble moral arguments that could be modernised by even basic liberal/social democrat arguments about a role for a State -- as referee, guarantor of economic stability, representing something above the petty conflicts and narrow self-interests of economic life, something like 'civil society', to use the liberal terms. JS Mill would do. But of course, neo-lilberalism has scornfully torpedoed all these arguments. The State is now openly partisan, imposing policies for the benefit of finance capitalism, and to hell with civil obligation. 

So the EU has to reach further back to archaic moralities. We'll be hearing arguments from the Church or the crowned heads of Europe next.

EU obiter dicta=news

Classic Guradina news coverage today after the joint statements about the progress of the latest round of talks with the EU on Brexit. The EU line is the same old same old that insufficient progress has been made because there are issues unresolved, like the price of the absurdly-named 'divorce bill' . Technically, the other issues like the Irish border and the rights of EU citizens are unresolved too: the British side says these are minor administrative matters as indeed are trade tariffs which can just be agreed to be equal. Citizenship rights have also been seen as technically straightforward --existing EU citizens get automatic rights of settlement -- but the sticking point there is the role of the European Court of Justice in overseeing the exercise of these rights.

However, there still seems to be willy-waving on both sides. The EU is playing the mandate card discussed by Varoufakis and used to frustrate the Greek referendum (not on exit but on demanding better credit). Regardless of any particular claims, the EU claims it has a bigger mandate, from the whole 27 ( but only via their spokespersons, not a referendum or anything) , to proceed in a particular way, in this case to insist that their specified issues of separation are settled before any progress can be announced. No-one doubts for one moment that the EU Council of Ministers and or the Presidency could ignore or manipulate this 'mandate' as they do in so many other areas. The prioritising of the actual demands seems pretty arbitrary after all.

British willy-waving seems to be focussed on the European Court. Surely no-one expects it to confront the UK Government in a major way over any disputed rights of EU citizens? The mostly likely outcome is substantial agreement on matters based on the habitus shared among legal elites in all European countries?

The whole thing just seems like the sort of posturing you always get in negotiations. The standard ploy is to raise the stakes by threatening all sorts of dire consequences, and the Brexiteers have been unleashed to give interviews about EU intransigence hardening the resolve to just walk away. But this has frightened the Remainieri. Poor old E Maitlis on Newsnight last night was in a real flap panicking because 'no deal' suddenly seemed actually possible and her interview turned into a counselling session --for her.

El Graun reports the statements in the usual way, outlining the EU view in the headline and on the front page while offering the UK version on p.16 (There is a different form to the story on the website and a new angle with a demand that Government release some anxious views from 'business' ). The whole thing is seen as threatening chaos, deepening the [moral] panic, by combining the EU statement with additional domestic stories about a tide of amendments put down for the next discussion of the Brexit Bill (as if amendments meant actual defeat), and internal plots against the Chancellor by 'hardline' Brexiteers (they could only summon up a long-retired former Tory Chancellor).

One interesting consequence has been that el Garubdia has had to put some support behind not only the Chancellor, but T May of all people.Having slagged her off for weeks as an incompetent robot (unusual combination but not unknown to fans of Marvin the Paranoid Android), they now see her as the only bulwark against hard Brexitism. It doesn't matter what else she may have done -- Remainers must pack in behind.

To my loyal reader

I just posted my 100th blog. I seem to have attracted one reader. Thanks a lot whoever you are. Please comment, anonymously if you wish.I hold no grudges and would like some feedback. Emojis will do if you're busy. I accept any spelling of 'bollocks/bollox'.

Guardian readers show the way (again)

Marvellous clash of understandings of ideology to day in el Graunidio. The paper itself has a piece admiringly profiling one L Kuenssberg,Chief Political Editor for the BBC. The overall tone is that L Kuenssberg cannot be 'biased' because she upholds journalistic values and is generally a very intelligent and overall nice person. a 'titan who would die for impartiality' as the subtitle puts it. 

The old charge of residual misognyny is trotted out (one reason for the withdrawal of a petititon to protest her actions -- although subsequent investigation, of unknown provenance, found not a single misogynistic comment). Kuenssberg has had to have a bodyguard to attend the Labour Conference it seems --although no-one has said what the threat actually is.

There is the old 'if both sides hate us we must be right' schtick:

Laura has hit a nerve with her reporting, quite rightly, because she has every right to hold everyone to account.”[said a friend -- but in whose name?]  ...Kuenssberg’s impartiality is constantly questioned, though she is accused of being both left-biased and pro-Tory [I have never seen an accusation of pro-left views -- but I have a limited reading of the news myself]

Then a hint about the methods modern journalists use (by another political correspondent also accused of bias -- and who was once a Tory candidate, I believe):

"if she says something, it’s not because it’s a hunch, it’s because she knows it’s true because she’s talked to people"

'True because she's talked to people'! How thorough! What an easy issue, truth is!

Another friend adds : "[she is] not one of those pain-in-the-arse type people you think are too much.”

Not one of those pesky experts then, who might not fit in with the mediocracy or cause dissent among the smart set (who have always hated experts) . The mediocracy have absolved her from criticism, of course, despite an unpleasant finding by the BBC Trust that she hasd 'misinformed 'people. That issue is highly illuminating in showing how journos can indeed avoid personal bias but still misreport (as below). The BBC seized on the first point to absolve Kuenssberg but ignored the second.

The Graun profile is rounded off with tributes to her hard work, competitiveness, desire to be right, but also her humorous side. A hard-working honest pro like us -- move along .

Years ago and far away, a group of troublemakers at the Birmigham Centre for Cultural Studies argued that personal qualities and personal adherence to journalist values is not the issue. The issue is the ideological context in which these values are set -- the unconscious and self-evident  notion of a valid grounding consensus about politics, for example that 'balance' is maintained between 'reasonable' positions only. That is only 'common-sense'.  Other terminology points to the 'habitus' journos share, as members of an elite -- their beliefs are unconsciously held (so accusations of bias are genuinely resented) , and capable of infinite extensions to new cases (their journalistic expertise and their unguarded comments).

As we have seen increasingly stridently, anyone who does not share that consensus can be mocked and bullied.The consensus is spelled out for the rest of it in horribly patronising summaries (a Kuenssberg speciality). Conversely, the journos claim to be speaking for the consensual 'silent majority' (a Newsnight speciality). The whole thing is a delightful 'mirror-structure' as a notorious French marxist once said.

Compare this to a set of readers' points about 'bias'. I would use different terminology of course, but they raise some relevant points.

The BBC should properly weigh up the rights of marginal voices like Lord Lawson to mislead its audiences about the risks they face against the rights of its audiences to receive accurate information about those risks.

...does political coverage really offer diversity?...A journalist’s life experiences offer foundations for their querying minds. A balanced media should be representative of all parts of our society.

the real problem is that across the board, mainstream and alternative, we have almost completely lost the idea of journalism as the first draft of history.

... I recall, a TV interview [Nick Robinson] had with David Cameron shortly after Cameron became PM. Cameron rolled out the Tory mantra that Gordon Brown’s Labour government had caused the global financial crisis. The camera panned to Robinson who merely nodded at this claim and made no attempt to question or dispute it. This falsity was repeated more recently by Andrew Marr in respect of his stated view that a Labour government couldn’t be trusted to manage the national economy ...Corbyn corrected Marr, pointing out that the global financial crisis was the direct consequence of irresponsible speculation of the US mortgage market by several US financial bodies, which collapsed as a result, and not the Labour government of the time. Marr, visibly irritated at being corrected in this way, responded with: “It doesn’t matter who caused the global financial crisis.” A remarkable response from someone claiming to be both a journalist and a historian.

The BBC’s importance in explaining complex subjects is constrained by the time allocated to the main news at 6pm and 10pm. Difficult subjects get snippets without time to provide context. Political and business reporters show little understanding of economics so are unable to explain that, for example, the monthly figures they have just enthused over have a wider context that is less positive ... Where are we to get a proper explanation of serious subjects on the BBC?

Spectator gets involved

An item in the Spectator (or rather its blog) -- an unrepentant piece by a Leaver, one Brendan O'Neill,  on the Geat Bus Slogan Debate. I say unrepentant -- it could have been written by me!

It claims:

1  Hardly anyone voted Brexit because of the bus slogan: 'The idea that that bus swung the referendum, that it duped the voting hordes, has become one of the great, and nasty, myths of the Brexit era'.

2. Johnson actually said in his Telegraph article that:

leaving the EU will give us more control over ‘roughly’ £350m a week, and it would be good ‘if a lot of that money went on the NHS...he didn’t say leaving the EU would boost NHS coffers by a tidy £350m a week. He said it would give us say-so over a certain amount of money, and we could choose to spend that money on health if we like.

3. Remainer media, including the Staggers, rendered that as a' one-line summary of Boris’s comments — leaving the EU would ‘result in £350m a week for the NHS [but this ] is directly contradicted by his actual comments' 

4. I have to get balanced here myself and say that the Boris comment is NOT exactly a direct contradiction of the Staggers summary --but it is a different emphasis, still, of course, a bit of spin. The blogger is right to say:

I know standards are slipping in the media, but journalists surely understand the word ‘if’? It’s a conjunction that signals something will happen if something else happens first. In this case if we make a choice to spend that wad of EU-released cash on the NHS. ‘If’ is not ‘it will result in’; ‘if’ is ‘it might result in...Even the bus, which I think was naff, didn’t make a cast-iron cash promise.

4.And

It’s remarkable that the kind of people who usually insist that public spending be well-aimed and used to assist the less well-off can be so cavalier about our pumping of 200 million a week into the EU. This Brussels black-hole suck on British cash will remind many Leavers why they voted against the EU: they see it as a distant, uncaring, filthy-rich oligarchy. Some people, I fear, don’t appreciate how ridiculous they sound to the struggling, everyday Brexiteer when they scoff: ‘Actually, I think you’ll find we only give the EU £200m a week…’

5. Finally:

The reason [Remainer media]  elevate this bus above all else, above all the other BS both Leave and Remain spouted last year, is because they genuinely think it turned voters. That it dazzled our little minds. That it duped the throng. It is so deeply patronising. And it is also a lie.. . Some people obsess over this bus because they cannot face the truth: huge numbers of people voted against the EU, not because they want more hospital beds, but because they wanted to upturn the arrogant establishment and revolt against politics as we know it. 

'Free' movement

The 4 great freedoms of the EU, that are so crucial and so indissolubly bound to the liberal connotations of 'Europe' include freedom of movement of people, perhaps the most 'liberating' of all for many Remainers (and, happliy, a major factor in easy tourist travel and the legendary cheap strawberries, this blog, passim).

I have always thought of Marx's sarcastic remark about the 'freedom of movement' the Scots crofters experienced in the C18 and C19 when they were 'liberated' from old feudal customs by the HIghlands Clearances. They were now 'free' to 'choose' to go to the slums of Glasgow, work in a sweatshop or starve on the streets. Or pack up and emigrate to the colonies, of course -- cross-border freedom of travel.

An article in the Grudina today by H Moir points to another dimension -- the wealthy can buy EU citizenship, in effect, and enjoy their version of freedom of movement, including freely dodging across national jurisdictions to escape tax and the law. They can buy all sorts of other citizenships too.They do this by investing various amounts in the country concerned.

The Cypriot government has raised more than €4bn since 2013 by providing citizenship to the global super-rich, giving them the ability to live and work throughout the EU in exchange for a cash investment. We know that among those who have availed themselves of this right are billionaire Russian oligarchs and Ukrainians accused of corruption. For the financially well-endowed, the deal is a bit of a steal: the Cypriots merely ask for €2m in property or €2.5m in company or government bonds....All we [Brits] ask is for a £2m investment. You can buy citizenship in Greece for €250,000, while Portugal’s “golden visa” scheme lets non-EU citizens gain full residency and unfettered travel rights across the 28 EU nations by spending €500,000 on a Portuguese property.

Other countries, like Grenada will do you a deal too, so you can enjoy reciprocal rights with lots of other countries. As a good liberal, Moir reminds us there are definite economic advantages in attracting inward investment, of course. Inhabitants of London, well used to such 'free movement'  might well also speak of things like the upwards pressure on housing and demands for services from having dodgy oligarchs roaming the streets.

Moir extends the analysis to make a point about ideology too: 

The very rich, the high net-worthers, don’t just see themselves as opportunists using their fortunes to gain themselves maximum flexibility. They see themselves as nomads for whom borders and nationality have little significance...In 2015, when complaints about our offer to high net-worthers led the British government to tighten diligence checks on who was applying and make it more difficult for them to plough funds into property for their own rather than societal advantage, applications plummeted. 

He ends the piece with this welcome note of realism amid the romance about moving about freely as a citizen of the world: 
 

Be wary of high net-worthers’ romantic notion of a world without borders. The benefits aren’t mutual, and the super-rich don’t like too many questions asked.

Lies,damned lies...

The latest maverick speech by B Johnson has renewed the focus on the internal Tory leadership struggles (because he did not 'authorise' the speech,and excited liberals think it is a way of reining in T May from making a really Remainy speech about the EU this week). It has also revived the Great Lie Hoohah. Johnson still claims we will not have to pay a sum amounting to £350m a week - the thing that stings Remainers most of all. The Guardian today mostly went with the leadership challenge issue

Various denunciations of the speech have ensued, with the usual internal stuff enhanced by including one from a statistician (wow!):

In a letter to to the foreign secretary, Norgrove [' the head of the UK Statistics Authority',] slapped down the use of the £350m figure, arguing: “This confuses gross and net contributions. It also assumes that payments currently made to the UK by the EU, including, for example, for the support of agriculture and scientific research, will not be paid by the UK government when we leave.”... It added: “It is a clear misuse of official statistics.”

Same old same old then. An opinion piece by the inevitable M. D'Ancona further rubbishes Johnson as a yesterday's man and mentions the Great Lie issue:

the fact [is] that the UK’s net payment to Brussels is much less (the excellent Full Fact site estimates that the actual figure is around £250m).

A mere £250m then! Peanuts. The 'excellent Full Fact site' is good though, and actually goes on with this:

In 2016 the UK government paid £13.1 billion to the EU budget, and EU spending on the UK was forecast to be £4.5 billion. So the UK’s ‘net contribution’ was estimated at about £8.6 billion.
Each year the UK gets an instant discount on its contributions to the EU—the ‘rebate’—worth almost £4 billion last year. Without it the UK would have been liable for £17 billion in contributions...

The Treasury and ONS both publish figures on the subject, but they're slightly different. The ONS also publishes other figures on contributions to EU institutions which don't include all our payments or receipts, which complicates matters....

We can be pretty sure about how much cash we put in, but it’s far harder to be sure about how much, if anything, comes back in economic benefits....The £156 million figure [a report in the Independent, apparently] is calculated after the rebate has been applied and after the ‘public sector receipts’ for that year have been subtracted. The £350 million accounted for neither of these things....Using these newer figures the amount we sent to the EU, after the rebate but before any money spent in the UK [NB accordingto EU policy, not UK policy] is counted, is £234 million per week. 

Incidentally, there is also an interesting graph showing trends over time: 

 

There is no discussion of the upward trend -- no doubt it is partly due at least to new memebers joining, all of whom have been net recipients? 

Back to days of wind and piss

The UK has released 5 'position papers' and another in draft form was leaked to el Grunadi on immigration policy in advance of the great debate on the  Reform Bill going on in Parliament.There are some really straw-clutching hopes that various Remainers will scupper the bill, advanced inevitably by the increasingly desperate-to-be-loved Nick Watt of Newsnight, a man who has schoolboy conjuring tricks that no-one wants to see.

The BBC seemed to have a plethora of 'why we should be worried' stories ,mostly relating to yesterday's news about a tighter immigration policy. An amazing spokesperson for the leisure and tourism business on Newsnight managed to argue both that the industry will be terminally scuppered if they can't get cheap labour with excess skills (like languages), and that her industry was innovative,dynamic, and an increasing source of interesting work for British people. 

Meanwhile the Guridan reveals to day that one of the major employers for EU nationals is -- domestic households [in my print edition -- couldn't find it on the web] . So it's a threat to cheap strawberries AND cheap domestic servants. God -- the horror!

The contents of the draft immigration papers seem pretty mild really, not really dissimilar to provisions for non-EU countries, and the Graun has to beef it all up with stories of symbolically hurt EU nationals promising to leave. The mild tone is repeated today in the EU's own position papers obtained by the Rudigan. Point one, 'likely to inflame Brexiters' is that the brand names of European produce be preserved -- French burgundy, Greek feta cheese and the like. How ghastly if we bought inauthentic alternatives by mistake!

Other tough demands include: 'Ensuring that any goods in transit on Brexit day would be subject to the jurisdiction of the European court of justice...A warning to the government that it must guarantee EU data protection standards on classified EU documents...Asking [sic] Britain not to discriminate against EU companies which are carrying out state-funded infrastructure projects'

The most problematic is the Irish border issue -- 'Brussels intends to say the UK should shoulder responsibility for the border'. As it has been a central issue in British politics now and then for about 250 years and has spawned really nasty violence, this is surely something that requires no EU nudging. Was the EU remotely interested before?

The impression I got was that the heat had gone from the issue, despite the routine exchange of insults about unrealistic thinking. The Graun and the BBC seem to have borrowed tabloid strategies to up their readership by repeating these pointless insults to 'inflame' the public.

In general, the mood seems more businesslike:

The plans had a mixed reception in Brussels. One source said there was anger and real frustration that the UK is going for a “hardcore domestic immigration policy”.
But many did not share this view. One usually outspoken politician, who closely follows Brexit, declined to comment, deeming the issue “a matter for the UK as a third [non-EU] country”. The issue came up at an internal meeting in the European parliament, where “there was a general sense that it was the UK’s sovereign decision to put in place a migration policy”, a source said.

Capitalism opts for business as usual -- quelle surprise!

Movin' up the Rankin'

More signs of Garitidian promise with a really quite good article by J Rankin on the disputes between the UK and EU  delegates in the discussions about the 'divorce bill'. The two positions are laid out succinctly:

Tensions boiled over in Brussels as the EU accused Britain of failing to reveal its hand on the financial settlement. UK officials hit back at the EU, saying some claims for money had no legal basis.... [a UK source said] “The UK has made it clear that it finds the EU position paper on the money unsatisfactory and nobody would sign a cheque on the basis of the commission’s paper,” said a source familiar with the UK’s position. “It is also clear that they have an issue with the current view around town that ‘serious’ means agreeing with the commission. The UK doesn’t agree with it.”

OK, tensions 'boiling over' is a bit dramatic for the continued willy waving,  but it is a good sound article. It would be good to hear exactly what the dispute about the legality of the claims amounts to but that might be excessive for a short article and Guardianistas might not get to the end, at least without constant references to emotions.

More please. 

PS. She seems rather less prominent these days (October), alas

My dear! Spam!! Tinned peaches!!

A favourite theme in the Garudian today, and another contribution to the great mystery of what luvvies want to remain for exactly.

It's an old concern though -- the poor luvs won't have nice fresh fruit and veg all the year round at reasonable prices thanks to European labour being ripped off.

This piece leads with the worst possibilities: 

Hello spam and tinned peaches: is Britain facing a Brexit food crisis?

The British foodie revolution of the last few decades was made possible by the wealth of exotic produce from the EU. Is the country now sleepwalking into food insecurity – or are predictions of catastrophe as overhyped as the millennium bug?

Well, I think we should be told -- and we are, relying on things like the price of --yes -- strawberries:

Today, we eat two-and-a-half times more strawberries and raspberries than in 1996, mostly homegrown. Without EU labour, we would be forced to import from Dutch and Belgian strawberry-growers or Portuguese raspberry-farmers, sending the price of a punnet soaring by an estimated 50%, and making the elusive five-a-day target even more distant for many.

 And 

When bad Spanish weather caused a shortage of courgettes and lettuce last February, many saw it as a taste of the homegrown disruption to come.

Dear God no! Not courgettes and lettuce too! It will be fish as well as veg since 

most of the oily fish and shellfish caught in British waters are exported to the continent, while we would almost certainly continue to import white fish from non-EU countries such as Iceland and Norway....But snobbery about traditional working-class seaside staples plays a part, too, as does ignorance over how to treat the delicacies that are shipped off to the continent.

Some ambiguity if not downright confusion with fish then. The article is fairly well balanced overall, though, even noting that

A rediscovery of locally sourced produce could compensate for economic harm elsewhere, while at the same time reducing food miles and perhaps addressing the sometimes appalling labour standards that have marred the industry at home and abroad.

But -- the very culture is threatened,dears:

“In the long run, you might see the arrival of a different sort of food culture: served by automated picking and packing and much more mechanised manufacturing,” says Ian Wright of the Food and Drink Federation. “It’s difficult to believe all of that can be done and retain the food culture we currently have.”...“Churchillian romantics who see Brexit as an opportunity to relive imperial or wartime days go silent if the culinary era of tinned peaches and spam is mentioned,” says Tim Lang, a professor of food policy at City university. “It was Europeanisation which coincided with – and, arguably, facilitated – the flowering of modern UK culinary culture.”

Smug BBC git N Watts once slyly confided in E Davis on Newsnight his hope that mechanization will solve the problem AND punish all those stroppy Leavers in rural areas, but

Some hope that robots will provide a solution to Brexit-induced labour shortages on farms, but Newenham is sceptical. “We are still at least 10 years away from a reliable robotic harvesting system,” he says.

We might end up with this:

[Brexit] could make wages here go ridiculous, and everything has to be passed on.

Heaven forbid!!

Guardian separates news and comment!!

My old print edition contained two headlines on Brexit both of which show distinct promise for the future of Graun journalism. Both show that views are quotes from EU persons, not just 'news' as before:

Barnier voices concern over pace of Brexit talks

(replaced with EU's Brexit negotiator tells UK to speed up and 'get serious' on the web version). The print article is nearly good at outlining the different positions too, although the web version stresses EU views rather more.

The second headline is a bit more sly (in the old-fashioned sense) reporting that 

Brexit threatens existing trade accords with US, warn MPs

(on  page 12 -- and it doesn't seem to have made it to the web). At least the 'news' is a (vaguely attributed) quote again, although it is not until you get to the second para that you realize that it comes from the infamous lobby group Open Britain (which says it 'will fight against the hard, destructive and potentially chaotic Brexit path the Government has chosen') -- so not really news then.

The opinion piece is by C Grant of the Centre for European Reform,  'an independent think-tank that is dedicated to promoting a reform agenda within the European Union' according to the Guardian. The Centre's own website says it is 'a think-tank devoted to making the European Union work better and strengthening its role in the world. The CER is pro-European but not uncritical' which makes is rather less independent perhaps: its list of corporate donors is also interesting as a comment on its 'independence'.

The Grant piece concludes with the shock news for Grudianistas that the absence of a deal 'would be bad for the EU (it would get no British money)'.The article also estimates the British annual bill at 'roughly' £10bn or 'roughly' £192 million a week, presumably net, and a couple of billion larger than earlier estimates in another blog -- but what's £2bn a year between friends?

Spelling it out even more clearly for Remainers who think the whole debate is about 'European culture', there would be a serious 'hole' in the EU budget, without continued UK payment until 2019--20, while continuing the payments would be 'a great relief to the European Commission...Many [governments] will find it hard to compromise on money: Brexit means that net contributors will have to pay more into the EU budget, and net recipients are likely to receive less'  

Grant sees this inability to compromise as a reason for obduracy over continuing EU demands for loot, still described absurdly as the 'divorce bill'. For the UK though it must be a Big bargaining chip! Big! as D Trump might say.

PS More encouraging signs today (30th) from the same journalist -- J Rankin. Not only are D Davis's criticisms of the inflexibility of the EU position quoted, they even lead the (small) article -- properly attributed to DD.

Disaster for Brexit as EU continues to use its own laws

New policy papers from the UK Government are appearing this week, to the mixed feelings of Remainers. They are unhappy because the papers seem to demonstrate that the UK really is leaving, despite constant hopes of second referendums and the like. On the other hand, there are always straws to clutch  and triumphant 'told you sos' as actual policies seem to differ from campaign promises (surprise!). As usual, there is a complete refusal or inability to see any difference between 'position papers' and actual final policy on the part of the EU -- what they say simply IS what will happen.

El Guradion led my early printed edition with the news that the  'European court of justice would influence UK law after Brexit' because there will be 'a range of options for resolving future disputes between Britain and the EU – over the rules of any new trade deal, for example – some of which are likely to involve European judges, or the application of ECJ case law'. ECJ law will obviously cover the EU side of things and they will want compliance with UK law -- whether they get it unamended and how much will be open to negotiation I assume will follow. Nothing really to see here then... Thank goodness the headline writer helps us to bring it home:

Theresa May accused of U-turn over EU court’s role after Brexit  

Accused by Remainer MPs that is -- how newsworthy. The actual copy is more moderated as usual:

Wednesday’s paper is likely to point to precedents for international dispute resolution that do not involve a direct role for the Luxembourg court, including disputes between Switzerland and the EU, which are settled through a series of joint committees – though the EU is unhappy with that arrangement, and would like a more judicial approach.

Further attempts to point out the implications for those who might otherwise be uninterested follows in a shorter story inside. As an example of the constant 'banging on' we were promised, we were warned that  'Parents in the UK would find it “much more difficult” to recover abducted children [ie abducted to EU countries?] if Britain fails to persuade the EU to continue legal cooperation after Brexit, according to government officials detailing their latest plans'. Loads of 'ifs' as usual and a nice pretty abstract case for Guardian mums and dads to worry about. Would a nasty EU, still in a fit of pique, really refuse to cooperate in cases of abducted children? How this might compare to cases involving abduction to other countries is not discussed.

After the 'human interest' stuff, the article goes on to make the more general point that 'The (UK position paper) also confirmed that a reciprocal deal would involve foreign judges being able to exert authority over British citizens, despite Theresa May’s past insistence that Brexit would exclude Britain from the rulings of foreign judges'  No reservations or nuances here compared to the longer piece.

The link takes us to another longer story (a different version to the first one) about cross-border cases:

In the latest in a series of policy papers that seek to blur the edges of hard Brexit, the government argues that for the smooth settlement of cross-border disputes it is necessary that foreign judgments sometimes apply to individuals and businesses in the UK...A judgment obtained in one country can be recognised and enforced in another,” said a government source speaking anonymously before the paper’s publication on Tuesday...But the distinction may prove a narrow one for individuals [who?] who could yet find themselves subject to the rulings of judges in France or Germany long after Britain has left the EU.'

Again, hardly news. Isn't this a good thing for the Guaridian though, especially as the Insitute of Directors, no less,

has welcomed the push from government to ensure that the forthcoming paper not only addresses ongoing civil and commercial disputes for businesses operating across the EU but also lays out principles for future judicial cooperation between both sides.

 

 

Guardian manages to hit side of bus

The size of the UK payment to the EU is back in the news with EU leaks of the size of the 'divorce bill' ( sometimes posing as 'news' as usual). 'Moderates' have explained that £36m or whatever is only reasonable since that is more or less what the UK would be paying anyway, especially if there is a transition period. But that has highlighted the vexed issue of the size of the annual payment again.

The careful path between the issues is charted by the Guardian. It is news because the Government has decided to publish its Brexit policy. Apart from that it is all the usual stuff, with 'textual shifters' providing readers with the right steer:

Businesses have long been pressing for more clarity on the UK’s proposals for replacing the customs union, which allows easy transfer of goods across the borders of EU member states. [of course it also blocks easy transfer for the rest of the world]


The Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said last week that rather than pressing the EU for special status for Northern Ireland post-Brexit, it would be better if the entire UK remained inside a customs union with Europe.[no doubt he thinks lots of other things would also be  better for Northern Ireland -- like unification?]

Then on to the issue of finance.
 

Günther Oettinger, the EU’s budget commissioner, told Germany’s Bild newspaper in remarks published on Monday that Britain would remain bound by some previous commitments and would “therefore have to transfer funds to Brussels at least until 2020”.

The Treasury still forecasts payments to the EU until 2020 of a totalling [sic]  £31bn, although it said there were no assumptions about whether they would continue. These include a contribution of £9.9bn next year, £10.5bn in £2019 and £10.4bn in 2020.

The Treasury figures also showed the UK’s budget contribution to the EU has fallen to £8.1bn, its lowest level for five years. The sum is the equivalent to £156m a week, which is less than half the £350m a week that was promised by the Vote Leave campaign. The UK’s gross contribution without factoring in its rebate or payments from EU institutions was about £16.9bn, which still only [!!] amounted to £325m a week.

Horribly close to the figure on the side of the bus after all then, even for the lowest payment for 5 years. ? Quick! We need another textual shifter to reassure our readers...

Chuka Umunna, a Labour MP and supporter of Open Britain, said it showed “you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the side of a bus or that you hear from Boris Johnson’s mouth”.