I don’t think that article has aged at all well (of course I would say that, right?) and you could stun a team of oxen in their tracks with the sheer tonnage of what he’s written since 2016 with a different POV.
The sheer incompetence - and bare faced lying, eh Mogg? - of the Brexiteers isn’t making their case much easier, but basic realities have overtaken Brexiteers ambition.
Whatever slant one puts on why people voted for Brexit - a Norway EEA option, EFTA, gobbledygook bespoke deal nonesense, Mogg’s FTA paradiso, I feel pretty confident that they most certainly did not vote to be substantially poorer, nor to put at risk the state of the Union. Would you agree that Brexit is now, fundamentally, about damage limitation?
I’d be the first to welcome and congratulate some articulate joined-up thinking from the Brexiteers, but I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany. Or something.
Lastly, the Parris article perpetuates the myth of intra-EU migration being un-controllable. This is and always has been factually incorrect, and - leaving facts aside for a mo - I’m the living, sweating, weazing proof of this not being the case.
I think that my view is that the (non-racist) concerns about immigration simply mask the fact that we’re not willing to address issues with our tax and benefits system. People are worried that Eastern Europeans come over here and get an immediate life of luxury, subsidized by state benefits while moonlighting on black market jobs, paying no tax.
Ironically I think it’s probably more Brits that do this than immigrants, as the latter come here to work. But perception is a hard thing to change. And either way, the system needs changing.
I think you’re right about T&B, though only once rinsed of myth: sure, some EU workers will use the housing, legal, schooling & health system, and its unquestionable that within some fields they drive down wages too… but the vast majority of EU workers who come here are a bloody gold mine: they pay disproportionally high levels of tax while never drawing down from state on a wide range of areas, doing plenty of jobs that Johnny English prefers not to (perhaps another reason to look at T&B) or that we don’t have the bodies / minds for.
Most sensible EU member states have a worker registration system for EU nationals: no job after three months? Do one, Pedro.
Quite why we never did this is beyond me, quite why the myths were never robustly challenged by politicians brave enough to stick their neck above the Daily Hate parapet, I’ll let history judge
If Brexit was really about controlling migration from other EU countries, then we never needed to leave the EU - we should just have done what every other bugger does (and the EU should have spelled this out in font size 200 when Cameron came crawling for his ‘re-negotiation’ instead of accomodating him)
Addendum: pull up a chair, we’re gonna be here a while
Nicky Morgan, Chair of the Commons Treasury Committe summing up the evidence on Brexit from HMRC presented today:
I want to summarise where I think we are at the end of this session … We are going to have a functioning but sub-optimal border on January 2021 where there will be a trade off between friction, revenue and security. It will take three to five years [to get new customs arrangements in place] depending on which of the two options [is chosen], but that can’t even start until a political decision has been made.
HMRS is recruiting about 5,000 people to make this happen, leaving aside people at the border.
The highly streamlined option is going to cost businesses £32.50, approximately, per customs declaration. That’s a cost of between £17bn and £20bn a year. The NCP (new customs partnership) will have set up costs of about £700m but could be ultimately net neutral [in terms of costs for business] if tariffs are reclaimed.
Just in this current financial year [HMRC is spending £260m implementing Brexit]. And there are 39 other HMRC projects which have either had to be stopped or significantly slowed down in order to get Brexit through.
I’m going to ask you an unfair question now which I strongly suspect you will not want to, or not be able to, answer. But wouldn’t it be a relief if parliament just voted for a customs union?
The HMRC evidence on the costs of Max Fac was dismissed by No 10 as speculation.
Working out a plan to complete online customs forms for less than £32.50 and providing an outsource solution to UK businesses to reduce their £10 Billion cost of doing business with the EU should a customs union fail. I may also offer this to EU importers to save them some of their £10 billion.
I wonder how much customs clearance costs for the RoW, must be a dammed sight more if the EU cost to business is estimated at £32.50/online form.
On a more serious note I imagine Phil the spreadsheet has dropped this information into the select Committee at a very opportune moment. It certainly wasn’t chance.
The Today report this morning pretty much said that the civil servants involved forced the information onto the committee despite them expecting it only to come in a subsequent written answer.
Wow, quite a lot to digest in this exhaustive / exhausting (depending on your POV) speech by Ivan Rogers
Luckily there’s a highlights package on this thread (see below) who don’t have 30 mins spare to wade through it (though it’s well worth the read and ridiculously informative.)
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