PV splits with CV, while Elliott holds the fort

People's Vote has split, says the Graun today, between those who want to campaign for a second vote and those who want to remain.It all sounds a bit undemocratic.

The power struggle within the People’s Vote campaign for a second EU referendum has intensified with two of the group’s most senior figures forced out.,,,It follows reports of a power struggle within the campaign for a second referendum, with PR executive Rudd forming a new company to oversee a remain campaign in the case of a second referendum....Tension has stemmed from Rudd’s desire to move the campaign towards a more pro-remain position, with the campaign directors focusing on winning over soft leave voters and undecided Labour and Conservative members of parliament

I am not sure anyone is left who thought that two issues were separate 

Meanwhile, the heroic L Elliott stands alone at the ramparts as Graunies cook leaves in  patchouli oil in sustainable yurts all round him:

Don’t be fooled – the EU is no defender of workers’ rights

[In 1988, at a TUC Conference] Delors said. The domestic political outlook may be bleak but Thatcherism can be circumvented by action at a European level. Brussels has a plan for a social Europe that will protect workers, tame capitalism and prevent a race to the bottom.

it is complete nonsense. Britain’s labour market has been reshaped over the past 40 years by deregulation, privatisation and anti-trade union laws, not by the limited protections delivered by the EU, which are weaker in practice than they sound in principle.There was, for example, nothing in the draconian Trade Union Act 2016 that would have run counter to EU law, not even the clause – eventually dropped as the legislation passed through parliament – that picket supervisors would have to give their name to the police....the overriding principle behind the European project has been to make life easier for capital, which is why multinational corporations like it so much [As in the recent] calls for European labour markets to become more “flexible”....a succession of EU treaties has enshrined in law four basic freedoms for business: the right to provide services; the right to establish an enterprise; the right to move capital; and the right to move labour. These freedoms trump all other considerations, including the right of workers to withdraw their labour.

Anybody who suggested to Greek workers that they should look to Brussels to protect their rights would be given short shrift.. when a structural adjustment programme was imposed on Athens as the price of financial support in 2015, it was the International Monetary Fund that sought to tone down the hardline demands of the Commission and the European Central Bank, for whom the imperative was to safeguard the profits of European banks rather than to protect Greek workers.

[Or try]  the Viking case in 2007. At issue was the concept of “posted workers”, employees hired in one country but employed in another. Viking, a Finnish ferry company, posted workers from Estonia as a way of getting round collective bargaining agreements made in Finland. The action by the company – a classic example of a race to the bottom – was challenged by the International Transport Workers Federation and ended up in the ECJ. The judges sided with the company, with the ECJ advocate general Poiares Maduro saying “the possibility for a company to relocate to a member state where its operating costs will be lower is pivotal to the pursuit of effective intra-Community trade”.

[And] all the progress made thus far to reduce the gender pay gap to about 10% has been the result of domestic pressure and industrial action stretching back to the 1968 strike by women machinists at Ford’s Dagenham plant. The EU was not responsible for the Equal Pay Act or the Sex Discrimination Act. Nor was it Brussels that led to the passing of the Health and Safety at Work Act or the Employment Protection Act.

The notion that only Brussels stands in the way of a barrage of deregulation betrays not just a misunderstanding of the way the EU operates but also a deep and irrational pessimism on the left, a belief that the Conservatives will be in power for ever no matter what they do. The left doesn’t need the EU to fight its battles. What it needs is to make the case for better working conditions and win over a public sick of a labour market loaded in favour of employers.