Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

The government is facing the prospect of being sued by campaigners for EU citizens in the UK and British nationals abroad who were denied a vote in the European parliament elections.

John Halford, a public law specialist at Bindmans, said this week’s electoral fiasco was something a democracy should not tolerate.

“The right to vote is the foundation for all citizenship rights,” he said. “Last Thursday saw a large-scale, systematic, openly discriminatory denial of that right. The case we plan to bring will show that this is not something the law will tolerate and that there must be accountability and consequences.”

Halford is working with the the3million group in the UK, which campaigns for the rights of EU citizens after Brexit, and British in Europe, which campaigns for Britons settled elsewhere in the bloc.

A crowd-funding campaign was launched on Saturday to finance the legal case, which is being urgently explored in consultation with barristers, including Anneli Howard and Dinah Rose, who conducted a BBC investigation into abuse allegations against Jimmy Savile.

Rose, known as the tiger of the bar, represented the Guardian in its successful case overturning a gag on publishing Prince Charles’s secret letters four years ago, one of a series of legal victories over government secrecy that have elevated her public profile.

Howard, a barrister at Monckton chambers, has said it could be argued that there were multiple breaches of EU treaties, including article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which states that EU nationals have “the right to vote … under the same conditions as nationals of that state [of residence]”.

They are exploring their legal options and said a judicial review test case “to expose the discrimination in all its forms and clearly rule that it was unlawful” was likely.

If successful, they will seek to raise £100,000 and explore how to take cases on behalf of individuals “to seek compensation for unequal treatment, emotional distress and out-of-pocket expenses”.

Many EU citizens were turned away from polling stations with their names crossed off the ballot while Britons overseas protested that their ballot papers only showed in the days before or did not show up at all.

The Guardian has received almost 1,000 case stories from EU citizens and Britons abroad, both in Europe and from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
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Sweden is embarking on a tour of the United Kingdom to reassure its 100,000 expatriates and British-based Swedish businesses worried about the threats posed by a hard Brexit.

Torbjörn Sohlström, the Swedish ambassador to the UK, said thousands of Swedes in the UK were very concerned about their right to remain in the UK and that “taking this pop-up embassy to them across the country will hopefully reassure them”.

Sohlström, who kicked off the two-week tour in Brighton on Saturday by inviting the Brighton Gay Men’s Chorus to sing Abba hits 45 years after the Swedish foursome won Eurovision in the town with Waterloo in 1974, said the UK-wide bus trip was as as much about trying to reassure Swedish businesses as it was Swedish people in the UK.

“Swedish companies believe in the UK, but I know of quite a lot of investments that are not taking place because of the uncertainty,” he said. “I speak to most of the big Swedish companies, and I know that there are investment decisions that are not happening. All the big Swedish companies are delaying because of the uncertainty. This is very worrying.”

Sohlström, who was appointed ambassador to the UK before the referendum but took up his post after the June 2016 vote, said concerns raised by Swedish people and businesses were being echoed in the embassies of the other EU 27 countries outside the UK.

“It is similar for every embassy,” he said. “Even if there are guarantees that people will continue to have the right to remain there are a lots of questions about citizens rights. It is terribly complicated, and the people feel reassured speaking to authorities.”

Sohlström said concerns among Swedes was heightened last week when many were among thousands of UK-based EU nationals who were unable to vote on Thursday in the European elections . “We are concerned to hear that a number of Swedes were not able to vote in the UK European parliament elections, despite having done everything they could to register.”

More than 1,000 Swedish companies have operations in the UK, employing more than 100,000 UK workers. The biggest Swedish companies in the UK are Ikea, which employs 12,000 people, clothing company H&M and security firm Securitas.
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I believe the polarization to which you referred has become increasingly common throughout the Western world. Certainly it exists un the United States, ...

How will these converging events affect the near term political future of the EU? The absence of the UK in EU governance could well open up some frictions between France and Germany in their central roles in leading the Union and holding the fractious parts to the South and East together.

Underlying that, of course is the still unresolved boundary between ...

I don't think the Irish border issue is very important either way. There appear to be a number of workable alternatives already on the table.

I do think the Irish border issue is very important many ways.

I don't have any impressions of the particular political perspectives of the EU Parliament, or any really decisive role it has in EU governance. That may, in part, be a result of my own lack of understanding. My strong impression is that the various national leaders have a stronger role than that of the very large (and perhaps unwieldy) EU parliament.

georgeob1 wrote:

I don't have any impressions of the particular political perspectives of the EU Parliament, or any really decisive role it has in EU governance. That may, in part, be a result of my own lack of understanding. My strong impression is that the various national leaders have a stronger role than that of the very large (and perhaps unwieldy) EU parliament.

I've heard, your president tries to bypass "parliament" where possible. Similar in the EU.

Boris Johnson must appear in court to face allegations of lying to the British public during the Brexit referendum campaign, a judge has said. The Conservative leadership frontrunner was summonsed after a man brought a private prosecution over claims that EU membership cost the UK £350m a week.

It came after the EU slapped down Tory leadership hopefuls aiming to alter the Brexit withdrawal agreement, with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker warning the bloc was “crystal clear” that “there will be no re-negotiation”.

Also on Wednesday, candidates to be the next prime minister promised not to “speak ill” of each other. One signatory to the initiative promoted by Dominic Raab was Matt Hancock, who pledged not to “engage in personality attacks” just a day after lashing out at Mr Johnson’s previously reported “f**k business” remarks with profanity of his own: “F**k, ‘f**k business’”.

Boris Johnson is to go on trial for allegedly "lying and misleading the British public" about the consequences of Brexit.

The ruling follows a crowdfunded move to launch a private prosecution of the MP, who is currently the frontrunner in the Tory leadership contest.

Johnson lied and engaged in criminal conduct when he repeatedly claimed during the 2016 EU referendum campaign that the UK sent £350m a week to Brussels, lawyers for a 29-year-old businessman who launched the prosecution bid told Westminster magistrates court last week.

A legal team assembled by Marcus Ball, who has accused the former foreign secretary of misconduct in public office and raised more than £400,000 to finance the prosecution, laid out their case in front of the district judge, Margot Coleman.

The case concerned the “now infamous claim” by Johnson about the £350m, Lewis Power QC told the court. He said the case was not about preventing or delaying Brexit.

Coleman ruled: “The allegations which have been made are unproven accusations and I do not make any findings of fact. Having considered all the relevant factors I am satisfied that this is a proper case to issue the summons as requested for the three offences as drafted. The charges are indictable only.

“This means the proposed defendant will be required to attend this court for a preliminary hearing, and the case will then be sent to the crown court for trial. The charges can only be dealt with in the crown court.”

Acting for Johnson, Adrian Darbishire QC, told the court last week that the application by Ball had been brought for political purposes and was a “political stunt”.

Q&A
What is 'misconduct in public office'?

“Its true purpose is not that it should succeed, but that it should be made at all. And made with as much public fanfare as the prosecution can engender,” he said. “The application represents an attempt, for the first time in English legal history, to employ the criminal law to regulate the content and quality of political debate. That is self-evidently not the function of the criminal law.”

However, in her ruling on Wednesday, the judge said she was satisfied that there was a prima facie case for the allegation that there had been an abuse of the public’s trust in a holder of office.

She referred to statements provide by Ball’s team from members of the public that addressed the impact that “the apparent lie” had on them. She also cited the contention by Power that “there will seldom be a more serious misconduct against a member of parliament or mayor than to lie repeatedly to the voting public on a national and international platform, in order to win your desired outcome”.

While there was no immediate reaction from Johnson, long-term critics of the MP and opponents of Brexit hailed the ruling.

The Liberal Democrat MP Ed Davey said: “Given Boris Johnson wants to be the next prime minister of this country, it’s only right that he is held accountable for the lies he told in 2016.”

Nearly £100m of public money has been spent on private consultancy firms recruited by the government to provide Brexit advice, including no-deal planning, a leaked Whitehall report obtained by the Guardian reveals.

The draft report by the National Audit Office (NAO), which scrutinises spending for parliament, details how government departments have paid at least £97m to Brexit consultants up to April this year and criticises them for not meeting transparency standards.

Marked “official sensitive”, the investigation warns Whitehall spending on Brexit consultancy work could hit £240m by 2020, as officials scramble to plan for departure from the EU.

The leaked figures highlight the government’s reliance on hired consultants to provide expertise as the country heads towards leaving on 31 October without a deal currently in place.

It also shows significant growth in spending on consultants beyond Brexit, rising from £513m in 2015-16 to £1.54bn in 2017-18.
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All political parties were too self-absorbed to see it coming, but Nigel Farage’s 32% European election vote created a new dividing line in British politics – taking us well beyond the leave-remain split that has defined Britain since the referendum and threatens to dominate its politics for the foreseeable future.

In the three years since 2016, when we should have been debating the bigger issue that the referendum raised – what kind of Britain we want to become – our rulers have been obsessed with one very narrow question: not even our future relationship with Europe, but merely the terms of our departure from it.

Any leader of our country should have seen that we had to be clear about the Britain we wanted before we could be clear about the Brexit we negotiated – and it is frustration at that failure that has allowed Farage to move in from the wings.

After last Thursday, what is now at issue is far bigger than Brexit: it is a new battle for Britain. This is a battle against intolerance, prejudice, xenophobia and the manufacture of distrust and disunity.
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A close look at the facts shows Farage is out to hijack British patriotism: to whip up a politics of division and hate; weaponise it by deploying the language of betrayal and treachery; and target, demonise and blame immigrants, Europeans, Muslims and anyone else who can be labelled “outsiders” or “the other”. Thus redefining our country as intolerant, inward-looking and xenophobic.

At a time when antisemitism and Islamophobia need to be outed, Farage wants to undo the very anti‑discrimination and equality legislation that protects minorities. He would set back gender equality, promising, for example, to end the right to maternity pay. And instead of honouring the Brexit campaign’s promise of £350m a week to the NHS, he would demolish it by means of US-style private insurance.

While his anti-immigrant views are well known, the full extent of his instinctive prejudice is shocking; from feeling “awkward” sitting on a train next to people not speaking English, to demanding local referendums on new Muslim mosques and, in a direct attack on free speech, proposing to ban university courses in European studies.
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