Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

Scotland's campaign for a new independence referendum begins
Latest update : 14/12/2019

Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish National Party (SNP) will start their campaign next week for a second independence referendum - whether Westminster likes it or not. The SNP will be hoping the economic consequences of Brexit will fuel the movement for independence.

During the build-up to last Thursday’s British general election, Sturgeon’s message was simple: the future of Scotland is on the line.

Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister,  made her party’s campaign a single-issue one, and the SNP went on to win more than 80 percent of seats in Scotland. This result was the second-highest ever win for the SNP, with the party increasing its number of seats in Parliament to 48, an increase of 13 from the 2017 election.

Speaking in Edinburgh after the results on Friday morning, Sturgeon described the outcome as “an overwhelming endorsement of our campaign, message and vision”.

“It is clear, beyond any doubt, that the kind of future desired by the majority in Scotland is very different to that chosen by much of the rest of the UK. Scotland has rejected Boris Johnson and the Tories, and yet again we have said no to Brexit.”

The Scots seem to be the only sane Brits these days.

Boris Johnson’s large majority means he can push through a Brexit deal that unionists say will weaken Northern Ireland’s position in the UK, stoking anxiety about constitutional status and identity. But the Tory majority also ends the DUP’s leverage at Westminster, giving the party stronger incentive to revive Stormont. Sinn Féin, also chastened, has reason to make a deal.

The British and Irish governments are shepherding all parties back to talks on Monday. Despite looming Brexit challenges, Northern Ireland may be stumbling towards progress.

Boris Johnson’s adviser Dominic Cummings would have challenged the EU referendum result as “invalid” had Vote Leave lost the Brexit campaign.

According to documents seen by the Observer, the prime minister’s chief aide told the UK’s data watchdog that he would have contested the result because UK elections are “wide open to abuse.”

In an email sent in 2017 to the information commissioner’s office, Cummings, the former head of the Vote Leave campaign and architect of Johnson’s stunning election victory, said: “If we had lost by a small margin I would have sought to challenge the result as invalid.”

The UK voted to leave the EU by the slim majority of 52% to 48% in the 2016 referendum, with many Brexiters subsequently attacking the losers as “Remoaners” who refused to respect democracy. On Friday, Cummings openly criticised “educated Remainer campaigner types” for failing to understand the country and “driving everyone mad”.
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The emails suggest that the reason Cummings would have challenged the result of the EU referendum and other polls if he had been defeated was because “the entire regulatory structure around national elections including data is really bad” and “wide open to abuse”. He cited allegations that individuals who claimed to have voted illegally in the 2016 EU referendum were seemingly ignored by the elections watchdog.

“The Electoral Commission took no action in response to widespread public claims by people on social media that they had voted illegally to stay in,” the correspondence said.

The emails added: “There has been no proper audit by anybody of how the rules could be exploited by an internal or foreign force to swing close elections.”

Downing Street was recently accused of wilfully ignoring evidence of Kremlin interference in the 2016 referendum by refusing to publish an intelligence committee report into Russian infiltration of British politics ahead of the election.

The emails were acquired by the parliamentary inquiry into disinformation and democracy after the Electoral Commission was compelled to hand over correspondence to MPs.
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For the first time, unionism no longer has a majority at Westminster or Stormont - a statistic many would have believed unthinkable just a few years ago.

And what about the national picture - what does that mean for Northern Ireland?

It looks like Boris Johnson will be able to press ahead with his Brexit deal through Parliament in spite of opposition from the DUP - the party's influence is gone and its concerns about the withdrawal agreement will probably fall on deaf ears.

It was noticeable that the DUP MPs who did retain their seats used their victory speeches to urge the return of power-sharing in Northern Ireland.

After the last general election the DUP and Sinn Féin were riding respective waves of success at Westminster and felt no need to go back to Stormont.

Two and a half years on, with devolution still not back in place, perhaps some voters used their ballot to punish the big two parties this time.

Another round of talks is due to begin on 16 December aimed at kick-starting Stormont.

If it fails the government has insisted a new Northern Ireland Assembly election will be called.

Given the latest results the DUP and Sinn Féin might not be keen on facing the wrath of some voters at the ballot box again so soon.

And anyway, indications during the campaign pointed to the two parties already moving towards some kind of compromise.

The question now is what exactly that compromise will entail and just how soon they will reach it.

Johnson will abolish DExEU, the Brexit department, on January 31, sending its best staff to join David Frost’s EU negotiating team in the Cabinet Office and the international trade department.

“That’s agreed,” a source said. “It’s happening.”

The prime minister will also spend the Christmas break drawing up plans to make “big changes” to other Whitehall departments. Those in the works include:

● Setting up a department for borders and immigration separate from the Home Office to improve security and the operation of the visa system after Brexit

● Merging the Department for International Trade with the business department to create a powerful outfit that can do trade deals with the US, Japan and Australia while transforming the economy in the north of England

● Merging the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development to help co-ordinate Britain’s aid budget with foreign policy goals

● Splitting energy and climate change from the business department again.

far left agenda of the Labor party

I doubt that Brexit was the main or only issue in this result.

Boris Johnson has fuelled fears that workers' rights and environmental safeguards will be ditched after Brexit after the government watered down a promise to enshrine them in law.

Downing Street suggested that the prime minister is no longer committed to pledges, made to MPs before the general election, to guarantee that standards will not be weakened when Britain leaves the EU.

A promise that MPs would be given a vote on whether or not to extend the transition period at the end of 2020 to avoid leaving the EU without a trade deal has also been ditched and will not be included in a key Brexit bill to be reintroduced this week.

The pledges were made by Mr Johnson and his team in October as they attempted to convince MPs to vote for the prime minister's Brexit deal.

The bill implementing the deal passed its early stages in the Commons before Mr Johnson opted to pull the plug and instead call a general election. The subsequent poll delivered a governing majority of 80 for the Conservatives.

The government plans to reintroduce the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which implements Mr Johnson's deal, this week. No10 said it would be based on the deal that the prime minister secured with the EU, and would not necessarily include the guarantees made since then.
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Legal block on finalising deal after 2020 removes safety net below negotiations with EU

Boris Johnson will attempt to mark his election promise to “get Brexit done” by writing into law that the UK will leave the EU in 2020 and will not extend the transition period.

As MPs begin to be sworn in at Westminster on Tuesday, the prime minister’s team is working on amending the withdrawal agreement bill so that the transition, also known as the implementation period, must end on 31 December 2020 and there will be no request to the EU for a further extension.

A Downing Street source said: “Our manifesto made clear that we will not extend the implementation period and the new withdrawal agreement bill will legally prohibit government agreeing to any extension.”

Johnson’s move to make his manifesto promise legally binding was mooted during the election campaign. His pledge not to ask for another extension was used by the Brexit party leader, Nigel Farage, as the reason why he would stand down his candidates in 317 Tory-held seats.

Brussels prepares to restrict scope of talks in light of British PM’s ‘strange’ move

Boris Johnson’s plan to make it illegal for the government to extend the Brexit transition period beyond 11 months has been described as “strange” by Ireland’s deputy prime minister, as Brussels prepared to limit the scope of the coming negotiations.

Simon Coveney said it amounted to the “UK deciding to tie itself in terms of options” while the director general for trade in the European commission, Sabine Weyand, said the ambition of any deal would need to be pared back.

When the UK leaves the EU on 31 January, difficult and complex negotiations over the future relationship will begin. The country will remain in the single market and customs union until 31 December 2020 with an extension of the arrangement permitted for up to two years if it is both found necessary and agreed before 1 July.

The government has said, however, it will legislate to prevent such an extension.

While the move cannot prevent the prime minister from changing the law again at a later stage to allow for extra time, government sources have suggested the symbolic legislation will focus minds in Brussels.

In response, Coveney said the history of the Brexit negotiations over the last three years suggested the UK did not prosper when false deadlines were drawn.

He said: “Nobody is forcing the UK to apply for an extended transition period but they have the option to do it if they want to up until the middle of next summer, and what Boris Johnson is doing is essentially ruling out an option that was put into the withdrawal agreement for Britain.

“We all know that the negotiations post a British exit from the EU is going to be very complicated. It’s going to deal with multiple areas, not just a free trade agreemen. It has also got to deal with security, data, fishing. There are multiple sectors which will require detailed negotiations.

“The EU hasn’t missed a deadline yet. It has been the UK that has missed deadlines in the past. I just think if we’ve learned anything from the first round of Brexit negotiations … [it] is that we shouldn’t be closing off options.”

Speaking at an event organised by the European Policy Centre thinktank in Brussels, Weyand, who was EU’s deputy chief negotiator, echoed comments made by the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who warned last week that 11 months would be insufficient to negotiate a comprehensive deal.

Weyand, who is now the lead official in the commission’s trade department, said areas such as trade in goods and access to UK waters for European fishing fleets would be prioritised as with other areas of law where there was no international fallback position.

“I think, given all the signals we are getting, and now these signals are translated into law, that we are well advised to take seriously that the UK doesn’t intend to go for an extension of the transition, and we need to be prepared for that,” she said. “And that means in the negotiations we have to look at those issues where failure to reach an agreement by end 2020 would lead to a cliff-edge situation.”

Theresa May had asked for the transition period – also known as the implementation period – to allow the UK to prepare for a newly negotiated relationship with the EU. She had initially sought a two-year period but received 21 months with an option to extend.

The proposed sequencing of the talks could lead to permanent solutions on key areas such as data-sharing, transport, and arrangements for the services sector being left open until after 2020.

Campaign for second Brexit referendum was falling apart before landslide Tory majority

Last weekend, after the election, messages went up on connected WhatsApp groups, asking if people were willing to back a new organisation: Rejoin. “I can’t say there was any enthusiasm,” said one campaigner. “It’s over.”

Exclusive: shadow Brexit secretary calls for end to party infighting and return to being a ‘broad church’

Starmer was given few opportunities to speak for his party during the election campaign as Labour strategists sought to dodge the fraught question of Brexit. But he believes he could have made a better job than Corbyn of criticising the central claim of the Tories’ campaign.

“I don’t think we tackled the ‘get Brexit done’ slogan strongly enough,” he said. “We should have taken it down. Frankly I’d have liked to opportunity to have done it.”

Starmer, whose remain stance was partly blamed by some allies of Corbyn, including Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, for losing Labour the election, conceded that the argument for a referendum had been “swept away” by the election result.

But he said his party must not give up the fight against the Conservatives. “The Brexit debate changes,” he said. “We will leave in January and the argument will have to be about the type of deal that we have with Europe: and we will argue, as we argued before, for a deal that protects our economy, protects our jobs, and working standards, the environment and consumers. That is really important.”

Drawing on surveys of voters and focus groups in Labour heartland areas - Bishop Auckland, Walsall and Bassetlaw - the report rejected the claims of Mr Corbyn and his inner circle that Brexit was to blame for drowning out the party’s message.

Blaming Brexit “would blind the party to the real reasons for the scale, consequences and reasons for this historic defeat”, the report found.

“It was the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and the politics he represents that caused the real rupture with long-held loyalties.”

The European Parliament could block Boris Johnson's Brexit deal over the UK's treatment of EU citizens, its Brexit coordinator has said.

Guy Verhofstadt called for the "remaining problems" with citizens' rights to be solved before consent could be given by the parliament, which is yet to vote on the agreement.

MEPs are worried that problems with the UK's settlement scheme for EU nationals could cause problems and leave some citizens with no immigration status.

"Everyone presumes the European Parliament will give automatically its consent to the Withdrawal Agreement. Not if the remaining problems with the citizens' rights are not solved first," Mr Verhofstadt said on Wednesday. "Citizens can never become the victims of Brexit."

Ultimately, Mr Verhofstadt does not control the votes of MEPs in the parliament – so his warning could ring hollow if group and party leaders decide they would rather swing behind the plan.

But his comments illustrate concerns in Brussels and other EU capitals that there could be another Windrush scandal waiting for their citizens who have made their home in the UK.

Ministers have said that EU citizens could face deportation if they don't make the deadline to sign up for the Home Office's settlement scheme. The number of exceptions are reported to be relatively narrow, according to lawyers briefed on the plans.

Mr Verhofstadt has previously said that the settlement scheme should be "declaratory" rather than an application process and that the Home Office should have to find reasons to reject people, rather than the other way around.