Briefings for Britain (ne Brexit) has kept aloft the light all this time and has produced an admirable presentation of data, measurements on performance on various indices, making its case:
The conclusion is that Brexit has had little impact, either good or bad, and that the real factors affecting economic performance lie elsewhere and have been obscured.
For real nerds, there is a more substantial Report from the same authors.
Knighthoods all round!
Several ups and downs for the Remainerati in the GHraun.
First a headline
UK may shelve controversial Brexit protocol bill in show of goodwill to EU
a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) source denied the law was being paused. ..the UK government said on Friday it would further delay calling an election in Northern Ireland in order to to give Brexit talks a chance. But senior EU sources said only “slow progress” was being made, with both sides warning there were still significant differences.
As leave voters’ Brexit regret rises, will political parties dare to follow?
Even leavers might be changing their minds, but there’s little incentive for opposition to revisit issue, say analysts
UK voters’ scepticism about the project has increased through the past 18 months, as the economic outlook has darkened.
As the elections expert Prof John Curtice put it in a blog post last week, “rather than looking like an unchallenged ‘fait accompli’, Brexit now appears to be a subject on which a significant body of voters has had second thoughts...the shift has been mainly driven not by changes in the makeup of the electorate – with younger voters coming of age, for example – but by leavers changing their minds....support for rejoining the EU had increased to 57%, against 43% preferring to stay out, according to a poll of polls by NatCen social research
But discontent appears to politicians rather ambiguously:
“It tends to come in two forms: one sense is, we’ve got all this trouble and we could do without it; and then there’s another sense, which tends to be a bit grumpier, which is that it could have been done well but politicians have fluffed it,” {and] after living through the unedifying political turmoil of 2016-19, when Brexit preoccupied the country’s politicians to the exclusion of almost everything else, many voters were reluctant to see Brexit return to the top of the agenda.
Even the Lib Dems, whose hearts lie firmly inside the EU, believe there is little to be gained from using up precious airtime attacking Brexit, when the public is more focused on more immediate crises – and already very receptive to the argument that the government is to blame.
Ford, who is the co-author of the book Brexitland, about the politics of leaving the EU, argues that any plan to rejoin now would be likely to hit a brick wall in Brussels anyway.
So what do the fuckers want?
J Freedland may have the answer...
Amid the continuing mystery of what Remainers actually want to do now (apart from whinge endlessly), new reasons for despair emerge,partly from recent polls showing no surge to Labour, and large numbers of don't knows.J Harris in the Graun today:
The wreckage of Brexit is all around us. How long can our politicians indulge in denial?
If both parties ignore the uncomfortable facts, politics will be flooded with dangerous conspiracies and betrayal myths
the wreckage of Brexit is all around us but our politicians will still not acknowledge it. The evidence now encompasses reduced trade, diminished investment and the fact that the UK has been the only major economy not to have returned to its pre-pandemic size.
The government responds to such news with its usual ludicrous evasions... Meanwhile, even now, Tory zealots cling to the belief that life outside the EU could still deliver all the promised prosperity and general magic, if only ministers would try harder. [and] the English political right – by which I mean a cacophony of voices, including Conservative MPs, the Mail and the Telegraph, and the kind of pundits now given a megaphone by GB News and TalkTV – has become steadily more eccentric and unhinged.
He cites the campaigns against wokery here, including stuff criticising Meghan Markle
And Labour? The tensions of Keir Starmer’s position are translated into denials of things that are self-evidently true. ...Amazingly, he and his colleagues also rule out any return to the EU’s customs union....The reason this once-devout remainer doggedly sticks to these lines is obvious: even if opinion polling suggests that residual popular belief in Brexit is now ebbing away, the Labour party has to secure the support of people who voted leave in 2016, switched from Labour to the Tories in 2019, and would supposedly greet any talk of revisiting the basics of Brexit with anger and dismay.
The grifters and chancers who took us out of the EU are still around [and a few voters], threatening their usual mischief ...even darker forces may also fancy their chances...[Citing the 1930s -- in the UK?] betrayal myths and conspiracy theories – which have a much greater purchase on public opinion than anyone in politics and the media currently seems to realise ...do not ignore uncomfortable facts. When mainstream politicians indulge in denial, demagogues often make hay.
Pink Floyd album evoke the essential problem “Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time / Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.” This is what Brexit has done not just to politics, but our sense of the future.
I suppose I ought to cover these signs of growing nagging in the Remainer camp. There have been a few of them lately.
This one is fairly easy to deal with, beginning with the old myth that the EU gave us money.It also begins with a big scarey headline although the story gets much more complicated for anyone with the stamina to read on:
UK ministers pledged to match EU funds after Brexit. How’s that going?
Delays to new programmes have affected support for vulnerable people, ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’
In recent years, two flagship EU programmes were a lifeline for communities across the UK. The European regional development fund (ERDF) and the European social fund (ESF) poured €10.8bn (£9.26bn) into roads, factories and social inclusion projects including further education colleges and into places such as Wales, north-east England, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly – paying for everything from carpentry workshops for blind people to an upgrade of Hayle harbour in Cornwall to facilitate an offshore windfarm.
The ERDF sank capital into everything from new roads to university facilities, business hubs and sports centres in economically deprived regions, while the ESF skills training, back to work schemes and other projects helped those “furthest” from jobs.
...ministers pledged to match EU funding for the duration of the parliament, setting up the UK shared prosperity fund (UKSPF) last December promising that the government, rather than Brussels, would choose where money was spent – part of the Brexit dividend.But it hasn’t turned out like that; in Wales, people speak of a cliff edge in funding that has caused “despair” and “disappointment” [Wales and Scotland seem to be the main complainers -- funny that]
Hundreds of voluntary organisations have had to shut up shop or end support programmes for the most vulnerable in society because of government delays in replacing EU funding, it has emerged.
Getting to details, though:
the EU-funded £15m sports centre is still an eye-catching monolith in the former steel town of Ebbw Vale, where 62%, the highest percentage in Wales, voted to leave.[but] They wanted jobs, not sports centres, the town lamented back in 2016.
The government pledged to keep splashing the cash to replace the EU programmes until 2025 and in December announced £2.6m had been earmarked for its long-awaited replacement scheme, the UKSPF, which would “turbo charge levelling-up” and give “local leaders greater say in how the money is spent”.
But the announcement, welcome as it finally was, was too late for “hundreds of organisations”.... the problem that we have with the UK shared prosperity fund is that all that experience is being lost.”[because] the eight-month delay is crippling projects
And, right at the end of a fairly long article:
The UK received the equivalent of £1.35bn a year under the old system. ['received back' that should be,of course] December’s announcement accounts for just under £870m on average a year, but the government has pledged to ramp up the UKSPF funding to £1.5bn by 2024-25....The UKSPF was the only fund that explicitly replaces EU funding, but Cornwall, for instance, reckons it is getting the equivalent of EU funding when two other government funds are included....
Analysis of the UKSPF allocations by local authority and nation shows there is money for everywhere, not just the deprived areas.
“Every place in the UK has been allocated a share of the UKSPF, with even the smallest places receiving at least £1m. This recognises that even the most affluent parts of the UK contain pockets of deprivation and need support,” the government said in its prospectus....It added that under the spending plans, “England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all receiving at least as much as they did before”, while “local councils and local partners will have the opportunity to adapt each plan to reflect new economic priorities over the period to 2025”....The big advantage of the post-Brexit scheme, said Gardner, is that it is the council, not a Brussels deprivation metric, that determines where the money goes.
More details in the Times
Although the couple do not talk about Brexit in the Netflix documentary, commentators in the programme make the link between racism and the vote to leave the EU. Harry talked about “unconscious bias” in the royal family and “racist undertones” in media coverage.
The imagery used in the programme includes clips of a Brexit protest and Boris Johnson promising to “take back control of the country”.
The historian and author David Olusoga provides commentary that the pair’s relationship was “embedding itself in a nation having a pretty toxic debate about the European Union”. James Holt, executive director of their Archewell Foundation, called the 2016 referendum a “perfect storm that gave credence to jingoism and nationalism”.
Lord Frost, who was Brexit minister under Johnson, said the link “resurrects the tired old criticism that our decision to leave the EU was driven by racism and even asserts that such attitudes worsened the pressures on their marriage”. He added: “This smear just does not stand up to examination.” He told the Daily Mail the couple were “either ignorant of the real facts or making deliberately incorrect claims for political reasons”.
Serving as their proxy, Hirsch rejected the established purpose of the modern Commonwealth since its founding in 1949 as “the free association of its independent member nations” to promote good government, education, economic development, environmental policies and human rights. Instead, she offered a malevolent and wholly inaccurate view. The Commonwealth was nothing less than a “privileged club” that she called “Empire 2.0”. She said its purpose was to extract wealth from former colonies and keep them “inter-generationally poor”. It was an astonishing repudiation not only of Charles but the legacy of his late mother.
In the Daily Mail (sorry),Lord Frost is quoted at slightly more length:
'All opinion surveys show that Britain is an unusually welcoming country to people of all backgrounds, has among the lowest levels of racism in Europe, and is most positive about diversity [certainly the EU's own one does -- see Briefings for Brexit or this blog passim]
He went on: 'Polling at the time of the Brexit vote shows that the real reason for the decision to leave was a wish to restore self-government and the sovereignty of our institutions, concepts about which one might have expected members of our thousand-year-old Royal Family to have a greater understanding and empathy.'
Among the guests on the Harry'n'Meghan Netflix lovein were Graun stalwarts Afua (call me Afwah, you racist!) Hirsch and D Olusoga. Both have appeared in this specific blog, Hirsch most spectacularly for saying in the run up to the Referendum that one(!) black man she had spoken to had predicted the return of Teddy Boys running through the streets beating up black people .
Olusoga has produed some very good work on the history of slavery in the UK and traced the massive amounts of compensation paid to British families after the trade was stopped. Since then he has been an enthusiastic member of the lobby that sees racism as everywhere, in all sorts of subtle and covert forms, in microaggressions like raised eyebrows, nods, winks, glances and questions like 'Where do you come from?' It has been developed by Black Lives Matter and its academic wing Critical Race Theory and is currently very popular, strong enough to affect the content of some academic journals in fact.
The Netflix documentary was apparently awash with that perspective although I didn't watch it. As a supporting act on the Netflix piece, Olusoga's remarks concerned British racism. The Graun misses the specific chance to link the two issues, and the only item I coud find on Hirsch's contribution was a piece by Olusoga in the Graun in 2017) on the phrase 'Empire 2.0' which Hirsch used in the documentary ( but did not invent -- they just take in each other's washing):
Whitehall officials had described plans for Britain’s post-Brexit trading relationship with the Commonwealth as “Empire 2.0"
The Graun today offers a general review, which follows most of the British press in seeing the 3-hour documentary as overblown, but recommends:
3. David Olusoga and Afua Hirsch should present a show about the British empire
By far the most enjoyable parts of the series have been the bits where Harry and Meghan leave David Olusoga and Afua Hirsch to give us a potted run-through of the British empire. In these parts, the weird reality-show pity-party vibe gives way to something much more meaty. We hear about British slavery, and how much of it was controlled by the royal family. We hear about the Commonwealth, and how it’s really just a last-ditch effort to cling to past glories. We see old colonial relics that line the palaces of the UK. What’s fascinating is that Harry doesn’t seem to be entirely onboard with the notion; there are times where he speaks fondly of “travelling halfway across the Commonwealth” as if he thinks it’s the entire world. But anyway, a whole show like this, unvarnished and contemporary, would be tremendous.
Returning to the missed links with Brexit, according to the Spectator:
Probably the most amusing part of the series is the insinuation that somehow the vote to leave the EU in 2016 was linked to criticism of the couple. A grim-faced Harry says the series is not ‘just about our story’, adding: ‘This has always been much bigger than us’.
Academic David Olusoga then says, unchallenged, that the ‘fairy tale’ of Harry and Meghan was ’embedding itself in a nation that is having a pretty toxic debate about the European Union.’ He continues that ‘immigration was at the absolute centre’ of that debate, and that ‘immigration is very often in this country a cipher for race’, followed by a series of clips of Brits making racist comments.
Latest Graun prod in the creeping campaign to do something Remainerish -- Swiss deal? Norway again?Full rejoin?
Brexit has worsened shortage of NHS doctors, analysis shows
Exclusive: More than 4,000 European medics have chosen not to work in NHS since Britain left EU, data reveals
Official figures show the NHS in England alone has vacancies for 10,582 physicians.[That is,overall] ...Britain has 4,285 fewer European doctors than if the rising numbers who were coming before the Brexit vote in 2016 had been maintained [NB!] since then, according to analysis by the Nuffield Trust health thinktank which it has shared with the Guardian....a “slowdown” in medical recruitment from the EU and the EFTA quartet [NB!] of Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Lichtenstein....longstanding [NB!] doctor shortages – anaesthetics, children, psychiatry, and heart and lung treatment – failing to keep up with a demand for care heightened by Covid and an ageing population [NB].
Not just EU medics then, but a general shortage, a 'slowdown' which includes EFTA countries, a background of 'longstanding shortages', and a 'heightening' due to Covid and an ageing population.
The background is the general campaign to reintroduce cheap migrant labour from the EU that has bubbling under for a while:
The findings come amid calls from business leaders for ministers to rethink how immigration into Britain works to help overcome economy-wide labour shortages. These have deepened in recent years, partly as a result of the UK ending automatic free movement for EU nationals. The Confederation of British Industry has been particularly vocal in that demand.
While we are here:
Brexit has had a far more damaging effect on the NHS’s ability to hire nurses from the EU. While 9,389 nurses and midwives who had trained in the bloc came to work in Britain in 2015-16, only 663 did so in 2021-22, data released by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) in May showed. However, that dramatic drop has been offset by a huge rise in the number of those professionals coming from the rest of the world, notably India and the Philippines, the regulator said
This has been discussed before,and another factor was the increased number of jobs available in the bloc as their economies picked up
Research published in March 2021 * found Brexit had left many European doctors already in the UK feeling unwelcome, alienated and insecure about their future working lives in Britain....A spokesperson said: “This analysis is inaccurate and we don’t recognise or agree with its key conclusions. We are making significant progress in training and recruiting a record number of nurses, doctors and healthcare professionals. There are over 9,000 more nurses working in the NHS and there are over 26,000 more hospital doctors now than in 2016.”
Fifty-nine doctors participated in the questionnaire with 52 (88.1%) providing one or more responses to the three free-text questions. Twenty-seven doctors provided answers to all three free-text questions (51.9% of included sample). Thematic analysis was used to analyse this qualitative data.
Brexit was reported by the majority of participants to have a profound impact, although some respondents felt it was too soon to assess the potential consequences. Five themes emerged including: feeling unwelcome in the UK, Brexit as racism, uncertainty on legal ability to work, strain on relationships, and in contrast, a current lack of concern about Brexit.
The Leave campaign ran heavily on anti-immigration messages that consequently resulted in legitimising existing xenophobia and an increase in hate crime around the time of the referendum [34, 35]. Such sentiments, by both the population and politicians such as labelling Europeans as ‘queue jumpers’ [36] has created a sense of othering and hence threatens the cultural component of national identiy [12, 37, 38].
The most commonly expressed perspective across the sample was no longer feeling welcome in the UK (n = 20/52; 38.5%): “Got the message- I am no longer welcome here”. This included description of a change in mentality within the British over time against Europeans:
39% overall expressed this perspective -- not even half of this miserable sample of Remainers
Doctors (n = 7/52; 13.5%) explicitly described Brexit as indicative of racism within the UK where Brexit was perceived to reflect racist ideology
14% then. Seven overall! That doesn't stop the authors saying that
Although our study did not pose specific questions on racism, we found that respondents discussed the link between Brexit and racism, unprompted by us, suggesting that further research in this area is necessary
And
Some doctors (n = 9/49; 18.4%) described their future working life in the UK to be insecure and uncertain.
A common theme (n = 11/52; 21.2%) was the strain that the Brexit vote and its’ aftermath had taken on doctors’ relationships.
eight participants (n = 8/52; 15.4%) described themselves as not being concerned on the effects of Brexit on their lives
Even by these pathetic results, this is still a larger percentage than described Brexit as indicative of racism, yet there seems to be no call for necessary further research in this area.
Presumably, they got their headline claim -- that 'Brexit was reported by the majority of participants to have a profound
impact', by adding up the minorities reporting seperate impacts to sum to an overall 'profund impact'.
