Damp squib manages small pop

After all the hysterics about the terminal effects of Brexit on the City, comes this in el Gruno today:

Brexit: more than 7,000 finance jobs have left London for EU, EY finds

[However]  the total is well down on the 12,500 job moves forecast by firms in 2016, when Britain voted to leave the bloc, [but]  more could follow, [and]  new local hires linked to Brexit totalled 2,900 across Europe, and 2,500 in Britain, where just over 1 million people work in the financial services sector.

 

The correct line reinforced by the Graun editor

None of this recent wobbling about Brexit, the EU and the war in Ukraine (see the post below) for the Graun today: 

The Guardian view on Boris Johnson in Brussels: drop the Brexit rhetoric 

It is true that Brexit doesn’t prevent the prime minister taking an active role in supporting Ukraine against Kremlin aggression. British military hardware is appreciated on the frontline. Mr Johnson can be in the loop of western diplomacy without a seat at the EU table. He will also be attending a Nato summit in Brussels on Thursday...[However]the US president recognises something that Mr Johnson denies – the European Council is a place where decisions of consequence are made. The prime minister would serve his country’s interests better from inside the room.

[Still annoyed at the silly analogy] Mr Johnson made a speech last week drawing a grotesque comparison between Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion and the UK’s decision to leave the EU. Both reflected a common appetite for liberty, the prime minister said, mining a depth of crass cynicism to which even staunch critics did not think him capable of sinking.

[Milking gallant little Ukraine's stand]The trivialising thrust of the analogy was made all the more insulting in the context of Ukrainian ambitions to join the very European project that Mr Johnson casts as an imperial aggressor. For Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the EU and Nato are twin pillars of a democratic European order that stands in opposition to the worldview advanced by Vladimir Putin, where the rule of law is meaningless, might is right and borders are erased at a dictator’s whim.

Mr Putin...sees undermining EU solidarity as instrumental to the goal of sabotaging western interests. That is why he backed Brexit.

[So  what exactly is at stake?]EU solidarity, resolute at the start of the war, is under strain. There are differences over the shape and pace of new sanctions against Moscow and how to meet the cost. The Baltic states and Poland, having more experience of Kremlin hostility, are hawkish in wanting to maximise pressure on Moscow. Germany resists embargos that might weaken European economies by limiting energy supplies and stoking prices. This week’s summit is likely to produce only conditional statements of tougher intent, not tougher action, disappointing those who would push harder against the Putin regime.

That is a debate in which Britain would like a say. As one of the continent’s economic and military powers, it also has sway. Mr Johnson can be influential from outside a Brussels summit, but he has forfeited a say over the agenda. He has no one but himself to blame if decisions are made that he would have opposed had he been at the table.

So let me get this right...we should stay in the EU to have had a say over the agenda? Our single vote would have been set against the other participants producing 'only conditional statements of tougher intent'?  Would that actually do anything for the titanic struggle for 'democracy'? Isn't Johnson already actually doing more to assist Ukraine? Did Brexit do any more to 'weaken' the EU than the divisions between Germany and the Baltic States do already, or that Merkel's policy of economic interdependence did?

How much did that annoying analogy do to blind the Graun! Incidentally, I am grateful to the Facebook poster who pointed out that not long ago, gallant little Ukraine was condemned as 'the most corrupt nation in Europe' (Graun  6 Feb 2015)  and 'having a 'neo-Nazi problem' (Reuters March 16 2018) It must be said,of course, that this reported the case before the election of Zelensky.

'Bitter remainer' has a wobble

H Rifkind in yesterday's Times (subscription barrier) picks up the issue that Brexit somehow encouraged Russia to see 'the West' as weak and thus to risk invading Ukraine. This is now pretty much accepted among Remainers, so it is slightly surprising to see a few doubts with Rifkind a self-confessed 'bitter remainer'

He starts by pointing out the weakness of the analogy between the fight for Brexit and the fight for Ukrainian independence as everybody has (including Johnson who suggested it in the first place in a silly moment). The article also has a reader poll where you can vote whether Brexit has made 'the West weaker' -- when I saw it , 71% of 819 said yes, but ,as usual, quite what they mean was not exactly clear,

Apparently, Cameron had once (2014?) said Brexit would make the West weak and encourage Russia but Johnson had said that 'EU muscularity' was the problem, 'pre-echoing' Putin's language says Rifkind. And several other people, of course. Farage and Banks are cited as pro-Putin and pro-Russian . All of these refer to Russia's takeover of Crimea and bits of Ukraine in 2014.

Rifkind suspects Russia of an unnamed hybrid information campaign in British politics and slyly implies Brexit interference -- but 'my view has always been "probably a bit"'.He also suspects  some of the admiration for Putin might be 'homoerotic'. He does think Brexit served Russian interests in some unspecified ways and quotes  an Estonian spokeserson in support. Putin opposed a second referendum, apparently (so did lots of Brits, of course).

However, Rifkind points out that another possible Brexit scenario might have seen the UK more closely allied to a liberal USA and NATO, and Putin could not have ruled that out at the time. As for Brexit making the West weaker -- at least the Ukrainians are grateful for our military aid. 

Most astonishing of all Rifkind thinks Johnson might succeed after all in forming some sort of solidaristic response to the Russian invasion!

Walking dead return to the fray

It is M Hesseltine again, and this time he has some facts and figures, gathered by his own European Movement. The Guardnian finds time to report them in a comment piece:

there was the report in the Times of the latest survey by the British Chambers of Commerce into the views of its members. A thousand companies were asked to assess the results of Brexit for them; 320 complained of the disadvantages compared with only 59 who were positive....the government’s Office for Budget Responsibility has said it expects Brexit to hit the economy twice as hard as the global pandemic.... the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency says that “since the referendum in 2016, 316 companies have chosen the Netherlands because of Brexit”.... the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations says it expects an enormous public relations campaign to portray the deal as a fabulous victory, but that it will inevitably be seen by the fishing industry as a defeat. That the Food and Drink Federation says sales to Europe fell 23.7% in nine months in 2021.

As usual, I would want to see the small print. Are the 'disadvantages' the result of no longer being able to employ low-wage, no-rights migrant workers? * What exactly does the 'hit' mean? Have any companies chosen Britain? What counts as a 'defeat' for the fishing industry? Was the fall in sales in 2021 temporary or permanent, and due to Brexit or all the other factors?Are any of these agencies likely to be at all partisan -- and so on

I suspect the real beef comes in the last bit:

Nothing so reveals the reality of Brexit as the meeting of European leaders in Brussels, in the aftermath of Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine. Our continent faces a threat as severe as anything since the end of the cold war. I am ashamed that the country that in my lifetime saved European democracy has now absented itself as others determine Europe’s response.

There will, Mr Rees-Mogg, be more councils covering the climate crisis, our environment, international crime, control of the internet. In every case we will be absent. That is what Brexit means.

Tunes of glory fading away...I thought it was Brexiteers who were nostalgic for Great Britain.

 

*I have just looked up the survey here. It is a bit vague but most of the complaints seem to concern the ridiculous paperwork, now and in the future, which the EC requires and how this drives up costs for smaller companies. All the time a punitive stance towards the UK persists I can see this as a continuing problem I must say. Long term, I hope alternative trade outlets will overcome the problems but it was an unpleasant and unrecognised consequence of Brexit.

More die-hards

One of several recent examples of the old art of linking stories and telling us so,this time by D Grieve! :

Seduced by money, and then isolated by Brexit, the UK has foregone its chance to lead in the response to the Ukraine crisis

The key actors in the response to this European crisis are our former EU partners every bit as much as the US. Yet our behaviour over Brexit damaged our standing, and fomented doubts that we will observe our binding engagements with them.

We are no longer alongside them at the table, and have lost a leadership role in our near abroad. We were spectators to the Minsk process of engagement with Russia, led by France and Germany. We have made it harder for ourselves to persuade the EU states to exclude Russia from the Swift payment system.

 

Labour for Brexit?

Interesting(ish)  news in el Grun amidst all the panic about Russia and Ukraine. That looks as if it might drive all the stuff about Johnson and his boozy parties, corruption scandals and rebounding affairs off the front pages for a bit. How did he persuade Putin to do it? 

Anyway, K Starmer is to make a speech setting out the new priorities for a Labour Government whenever we might get one of those. All pie in the sky at the moment of course, but the main points include:

Starmer: Labour will partner with private sector and take advantage of Brexit

Starmer’s support for the government partnering with companies is likely to dismay critics on the left of the party, while his focus on the opportunities of Brexit is likely to frustrate staunch remainers.

In other words, the Graun thinks it is all vague opportunistic stuff to distance himself from Corbyn and start to attack Sunak rather than anything too serious -- we shall see.

Back to 'soft' Brexit?

 In response to the question of what Remainers actually want, S Jenkins might come closest to spelling it out in the Gruan today

The evidence is all around us: life outside the single market is an utter disaster

 [Pointing to events since leaving the single market]  All [sorts of workers, mostly low-paid ones  in agriculture and farming] have benefited in the past from the open market in European labour. All must now lobby Whitehall for permits, visas, waivers and, if not, compensation. Hundred-page documents must accompany every food convoy to and from Dover and Belfast, where hours of tailbacks quietly rot produce.

 [Whitehall] officials are now peering into food containers and poring over job advertisements, exerting the full force of their regulatory zeal. Jobs must be categorised by specialism, shortage, pay and length of stay. Vast Whitehall charts must be mapping labour flows. The Home Office aversion to foreigners has bred a “hostile environment” culture...private care homes were forced to sack 50,000 unvaccinated staff. To pretend to compensate, the government then offered care homes extra visas. It turned out they could be only for one year – despite the essence of care being continuity. As for getting a visa, it is said to take a minimum of 16 weeks. 

 Leaving the EU had some arguments for it. Leaving the single market had none. “Soft” Brexit within that market would have been far been easier to negotiate. Leaving it has meant wrecked supply chains and terminated scientific collaboration. It has undermined recruitment patterns and destabilised Northern Ireland. It has crippled the fish industry and impeded billions of pounds of UK trade. Its consequences have wavered between nuisance and disaster.

Brexit has seen a consummation of the very thing Tories are supposed to hate – bureaucracy... Brexit is estimated to have required a civil service army of 50,000 new officials, more than the entire central bureaucracy of the EU in Brussels. 

 Britain’s position as an island has to be one that trades openly with the mainland....

No, this is not revoking Brexit or rejoining the EU. It is just embracing sanity.

 

As ever, some good points here. There was an underestimate of consequences,especially when the EC played hardball with the restrictive practices. There may indeed be some independent enthusiasm for bureaucracy in Britain. But these are thin gruel. All the consequences are easily seen as the reponsibilities of EC punishments. There has been a compounding influence of covid admitted here. There is a good reason behind some of the policies in squeezing out the low pay/immigrant labour regime of the past. There is no possibility of having 'free trade' without political control by Brussels as well know, so it is still all a pipe dream, and always was -- can Jenkins have forgotten the KitKat option pursued by T May's civil servants? As always, only the insane oppose this common-sense.