Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Monday that the EU was ready for a no-deal Brexit and that Britain would suffer most under such a scenario.

Speaking at a regular daily briefing, Commission spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud said a no-deal UK exit would never be the EU’s preferred scenario, adding that the Brussels-based executive saw no need for additional contingency preparations at this stage.

“This will obviously cause significant disruption both for citizens and for businesses and this will have a serious negative economic impact,” Bertaud said of any abrupt split.

“That would be proportionally much greater in the United Kingdom than it would be in the EU 27 states.”

She cited Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker as having said that if it came to a no-deal Brexit “it is the British who will unfortunately be the biggest losers”.

In London on Monday, the opposition Labour Party demanded that the U.K. parliament be recalled from its summer break to discuss steps to mitigate Brexit disruptions after leaked government documents forecast possible food, fuel and medicine shortages should Britain crash out from the bloc.

No 10 has rejected Labour’s call for Boris Johnson to recall parliament to debate Brexit, as Jeremy Corbyn vowed to block a no-deal exit and called the prime minister “Britain’s Trump”.

The PM has said believes Brussels will blink first in the Brexit standoff, saying he was “confident” that “our friends and partners on the other side of the Channel” would change their stance on the backstop.

It comes as Downing Street reacts with fury to the publication of the “Operation Yellowhammer” dossier setting out the negative impacts of no-deal Brexit. The Home Office, meanwhile, plans to end the free movement of EU citizens on day one of no deal, The Independent as been told.

Priti Patel’s reported aim contradicts the PM’s promises, says the3million campaign

Ending freedom of movement for EU citizens immediately after a no-deal Brexit would be reckless and could create a hostile environment for European nationals, a campaign group has said.

The3million, a citizens group that represents the rights of EU nationals in the UK, was responding to the news that the home secretary, Priti Patel, intended to impose new border restrictions overnight on 31 October if Britain left the EU without a deal, despite reports that an internal government discussion paper had warned that doing so could present “legitimate concerns of another Windrush”.

The document also set out details of an alternative plan to maintain freedom of movement until January 2021 and to allow EU immigrants who came to the UK in the meantime to apply to stay under existing “settled status” rules.

But Home Office sources told the Times that the document did not reflect government thinking and that freedom of movement for people from EU countries would end “on October 31 should we leave without a deal”.

Amid reports that the government wishes to make the change through a statutory instrument – meaning that MPs would only be required to endorse the move after its implementation – the3million said the plan could open the way to mass discrimination.

The group renewed its call for all EU nationals to be automatically granted settled status and accused the prime minister, Boris Johnson, of undermining his promise to guarantee the rights and protections of EU citizens.

“The idea of ending freedom of movement abruptly on 31 October in case of no deal is reckless politics,” said Nicholas Hatton, the group’s founder. “It hollows out the prime minister’s unequivocal guarantee to EU citizens he has given only three weeks ago.

“Ending freedom of movement without putting legal provisions in place for those EU citizens who have not yet successfully applied through the settlement scheme will mean that millions of lawful citizens will have their legal status removed overnight.

“We have been calling for the settlement scheme to be a declaratory registration scheme, so all EU citizens who have made the UK their home are automatically granted status, as promised by those in government.

“Otherwise this will open the door to mass discrimination under the hostile environment, with employers, landlords, banks and the NHS unable to distinguish between those EU citizens with the right to live and work in the UK and those without.”

A Home Office spokesperson: “The home secretary has been clear in her intention to take back control of our borders and end free movement after 31 October.

“Ending free movement means we are no longer required to give unlimited and uncontrolled access to those from EU countries when they are coming here seeking to work.”

The Home Office minister Brandon Lewis said last week that more than 1 million people had been granted settled or pre-settled status through the scheme, after 1,038,100 people applied by 31 July. It was unclear how many other EU nationals have since had their applications received.

The deadline for applying to the EU settlement scheme if the UK leaves the bloc without a deal is 31 December 2020.

Boris Johnson is facing calls to ensure there is no return to a hard border in Ireland after the prime minister wrote to European Council president Donald Tusk urging him to drop the backstop.

Mr Tusk responded by suggesting the PM was “not proposing realistic alternatives” to the backstop, while one French diplomat called his plan “a joke”. Labour said Mr Johnson’s letter was a “fantasyland wish list”.

Donald Trump claimed the US and UK could move “rapidly” to a trade deal – but Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer vowed to “oppose” any trade deal if there was a hard border enforced in Ireland.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union “contests” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s call for the Brexit backstop to be dropped and regrets his bid to scrap a “necessary, legally operative solution” to avoid erecting an Irish border, a document seen by Reuters says.

The note sets out the agreed joint position of the 27 EU states staying on together after Brexit, after the bloc’s top institutions in Brussels had already rebuffed Johnson’s push to change Britain’s divorce terms.

“The backstop is a necessary, legally operative solution in the Withdrawal Agreement to prevent the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland,” said the note, issued by the European Council, which represents all the member states in Brussels.

“The EU regrets that the new United Kingdom government wants to replace a legally operative solution with a commitment to try to find a solution - yet to be found - by the end of the transition period.”

The note also said the EU regretted that London had not provided “any concrete proposals” for alternatives to the backstop, and that parts of Johnson’s letter were “misleading”.

Here's the catch, Walter; nations don't actually have to join any kind of "union" to trade with each other in goods or services.

Is there a pact for trade between China and the US of A?

Is there a pact for trade between China and the US of A?

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has undercounted its long-term immigrants from the European Union by almost a quarter of a million and overestimated how many non-EU students stayed in the country after their studies, statisticians said on Wednesday.

The awkward admission, which throws into doubt Britain’s main way of tracking migration, comes as the government prepares to tighten immigration rules after the country is due to leave the European Union on October 31.

Concern about the pace of immigration was a major reason why UK voters backed Brexit in the June 2016 referendum.

The Office for National Statistics said that in the year to March 2016 - the most recent data it had looked at - it believed net EU immigration was 16% higher than it had previously published, while non-EU immigration was 13% lower.

Similar errors had occurred in previous years, it added.

The main body regulating British statistics said the ONS’s quarterly immigration data no longer met the highest standards, and backed its decision to reclassify the numbers as ‘experimental’ until they were improved.

“ONS now believes net migration from the EU over the 2009-16 period was about 240,000 higher than originally estimated, while non-EU migration was over-estimated by about 170,000,” Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London, said.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Scottish company and a Dutch port are discussing launching a new ferry line ahead of Britain’s exit from the European Union, potentially providing a swift alternative route for Scottish exports such as whisky if Brexit causes transport delays.

The ferry line would run between Rosyth, near Edinburgh, and Groningen Seaport at Eemshaven, in the far north of the Netherlands near the German border, according to RTV Noord, which named the company as TEC Offshore.

A spokesman for Groningen Seaport confirmed the plan was being investigated but referred questions to “the Scottish side”.

A spokesman for TEC Offshore confirmed discussions but declined immediate comment.

[...]“I said that what one can achieve in three or two years can also be achieved in 30 days. Better said, one must say that one can also achieve it by October 31,” Merkel told a news conference in the Hague.

“It is not about 30 days. The 30 days were meant as an example to highlight the fact that we need to achieve it in a short time because Britain had said they want to leave the European Union on October 31,” she added. ...
“It was said we will probably find a solution in two years. But we could also find one in the next 30 days, why not?” said Merkel, Europe’s most powerful leader.

Johnson repeatedly said that the Irish border backstop - which is a protocol of the Withdrawal Agreement struck by his predecessor Theresa May - needed to be removed in full.

He said Merkel had given him 30 days to come up with alternatives and said there was ample scope for a deal.

French President Emmanuel Macron told Johnson on Thursday that there was not enough time to negotiate a wholly new Brexit divorce deal.

Do you really think that it would work even without such agreements?

Johnson demands ‘highest standards’ of discipline in new ministerial code of conduct

Boris Johnson has warned senior members of his administration against bullying, leaking, or trying to frustrate Brexit, as he published a new edition of the ministerial code of conduct.

Theresa May’s cabinet was described as “the worst example of ill-discipline in cabinet in British political history”, by Julian Smith, her own chief whip and the man responsible for keeping his colleagues in order.

In a foreword to the code of conduct, published on Friday, Johnson said his ministers would “uphold the very highest standards of propriety”. “There must be no bullying and no harassment; no leaking; no breach of collective responsibility. No misuse of taxpayer money and no actual or perceived conflicts of interest,” he said.

Johnson also warned against “misuse of process or procedure by any individual minister that would seek to stall the collective decisions necessary to deliver Brexit and secure the wider changes needed across our United Kingdom”.

May’s government was repeatedly rocked by splits and rebellions, even at cabinet level by the so-called Gaukeward squad of ministers – which included the former justice secretary, David Gauke – who were determined to prevent a no-deal Brexit.

Johnson dispatched most of the culprits to the back benches when he assembled his own team in July, but is keen to send a signal that he will not tolerate fresh outbreaks of dissent. His senior adviser Dominic Cummings, the former Vote Leave campaign director, has stressed the need for discipline, reportedly telling Tory aides that Brexit must be achieved “by any means necessary”.

Johnson’s plea for good behaviour comes after he rehabilitated Gavin Williamson, who was sacked by Theresa May after allegedly leaking details of discussions about the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei and is now the education secretary. May said at the time that an investigation by the cabinet secretary, Mark Sedwill, had uncovered “compelling evidence” that Williamson was responsible for revealing the sensitive row to a journalist at the Daily Telegraph.

Priti Patel, who resigned as the development secretary after setting up unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials, has also been brought back into cabinet by Johnson. And the prime minister also dropped a Whitehall investigation into Mark Field, the Tory MP who was caught on camera manhandling a Greenpeace activist out of a black-tie dinner. Field was a minister at the time of the incident, but was not given a post in Johnson’s government. The prime minister’s spokesperson said Field’s conduct was a matter for May.

In his foreword to the code of conduct, Johnson said his government’s “mission” was to deliver Brexit on 31 October “for the purpose of uniting and re-energising our whole United Kingdom and making this country the greatest place on earth”.

The UK has enjoyed the privileges of the single market. Things are tougher outside it

The blame game is upon us. Since it is hard to believe that Boris Johnson could be so naive as to think that the European Union will reopen the withdrawal agreement or ditch the Irish backstop, it seems likely that he is actively pursuing a no-deal Brexit. But it is obviously in the prime minister’s interest to be seen as the innocent party, especially in the context of a general election that now seems highly likely.

And so, in his recent letter to Donald Tusk, Johnson wrote: “This government will not put in place infrastructure, checks or controls at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.” Few outside the UK take such a claim seriously. If the UK were to follow such a course of action, it would be in breach not only of its World Trade Organization obligation to treat all its trade partners equally but of sundry other international obligations and agreements. The British government’s own Yellowhammer report, which was leaked last week, concluded that attempts to avoid a hard border in Ireland would be “unsustainable”.

Johnson’s claim may be legally dubious but his political intention is clear: if a hard border reappears in Ireland this will be the fault of an unreasonable EU. This is an oft-repeated refrain among Brexiters and Ireland’s tiny band of Eurosceptics, anxious to find a reason to dislike the EU in a country where the organisation is overwhelmingly popular.

The argument gets more traction than it deserves because of a confusion about borders. In particular, there seems to be a common assumption that the absence of checks on goods crossing frontiers is the default state of the world and that the existence of border controls is a weird aberration.

The assumption is false. As even a cursory glance at border arrangements across the globe reveals, border controls are entirely normal: it is their absence that is the aberration. Physical borders are to be found even along those frontiers that have been pointed out by Brexiters as examples to follow, most notably those between Norway and Sweden, Canada and the United States, and Switzerland and France.

The only region of the world where you will find sovereign states coexisting without border checks on the trade between them is the EU. There is nothing accidental about this, since eliminating borders was the great project of the EU. It did so by eliminating the reasons why modern states find it necessary to inspect goods crossing international frontiers: in particular, different tariffs on imports from the rest of the world, implying an incentive for criminals to smuggle goods from countries where tariffs are low to countries where they are high; and different rules on what can be legally bought and sold, implying an incentive for criminals to smuggle goods from countries where they can be legally sold to countries where they are prohibited.

The first reason for border controls was eliminated by the simple expedient of setting up a customs union, which dates back to the foundation of the old EEC and involves all member states having a common trade policy vis-a-vis third countries. And the second was eliminated by ensuring that the rules governing what can be legally bought and sold are the same across the EU: this is the single market, which as you will recall was a largely British invention. When it came into effect in 1993, border controls on trade vanished across Europe.

The combination of the customs union and single market remains to this day the only way that border controls on trade between sovereign states have been eliminated. It was an astonishing political achievement. It has been so successful that many Europeans now take a borderless Europe for granted and find it hard to imagine a world in which lorries crossing frontiers face time-consuming and expensive delays.

Those taking it for granted include, it would appear, many Brexiters. And so they argue that the UK should be able to do whatever it wants on trade and regulation without this having implications for borders; that the UK will never introduce a border with Ireland; that if UK decisions lead to borders, this will be because the EU “chooses” to “reintroduce” them; that the EU, not the UK, will be to blame.

Such claims might be valid if we lived in a world where the absence of border controls was the normal state of affairs. Since we don’t live in such a world, they are a logical nonsense and will remain so until someone finds an alternative way of eliminating border controls on trade while preventing smuggling. The latter consideration is particularly important given that we also live in a world in which legitimate traders and governments will not accept losing business and tax revenue as a result of the illegal activities of organised criminals. To date, there is no indication that such an alternative method exists.

If, therefore, a country chooses to abandon the customs union and single market arrangements that allowed borders to be eliminated in the first place, then border controls will return as an automatic consequence of that country’s choices. Its choices and no one else’s – it really is as simple as that.

However, that will not stop many in the UK claiming that the backstop, which de facto keeps Northern Ireland in the customs union and single market for goods, is not required to avoid a hard border in Ireland; that in a no-deal scenario you wouldn’t need one anyway; that if there are checks on UK goods at Calais this will constitute “punishment” by the EU; and so forth. While many making such claims are just being dishonest, there are probably others who are genuinely confused. And one reason for that is that they’ve so internalised the EU’s greatest success that they assume it is the natural state of affairs.

Which is wrong and also a bit ironic.

• Kevin O’Rourke is professor of economic history at Oxford and the author of A Short History of Brexit

Secret plan to block any delay in leaving EU is likely to anger European leaders at G7 summit

Boris Johnson has asked the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, whether parliament can be shut down for five weeks from 9 September in what appears to be a concerted plan to stop MPs forcing a further extension to Brexit, according to leaked government correspondence.

An email from senior government advisers to an adviser in No 10 – written within the last 10 days and seen by the Observer – makes clear that the prime minister has recently requested guidance on the legality of such a move, known as prorogation. The initial legal guidance given in the email is that shutting parliament may well be possible, unless action being taken in the courts to block such a move by anti-Brexit campaigners succeeds in the meantime.

On Saturday Labour and pro-Remain Tory MPs reacted furiously, saying that the closure of parliament, as a method for stopping MPs preventing a potentially disastrous no-deal Brexit, would be an affront to democracy and deeply irresponsible, particularly given the government’s own acceptance of the economic turmoil no-deal could cause.
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