Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

Jyllands Posten. A liberal Danish newspaper

Theresa May will offer the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland a “direct line” to the Brexit secretary, David Davis, to allow them to help shape the UK’s strategy for leaving the EU.
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By placing future discussions on a formal footing, May will say she is giving the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish leaders “the chance for them all to put forward their proposals on how to seize the opportunities presented by Brexit and deliver the democratic decision expressed by the people of the UK”.

But a thinktank has issued a stark warning to May ahead of the JMC, predicting that a “full-blown constitutional crisis” is imminent unless agreement on the key terms of Brexit can be reached between the government and the UK’s devolved administrations.

In a report published on Monday, the Institute for Government said unless all four leaders agree on the key elements of the UK’s negotiating position before the prime minister triggers article 50, formally starting the Brexit process, the result could be “a serious breakdown in relations between the four governments and nations of the UK”.
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For Britain, Quitting the E.U.’s Market May Be a Tough Sell



If it is possible to have a rational discussion about the British vote to quit the European Union, it is impossible to have one without discussing the “single market.”

But what is it? And why does it matter? Can Britain leave the European Union and still be a part of the single market, or just have “access” to it, and of what kind?

Simply put, the single market is the zone of free movement that the European Union created, where goods, services, capital and people can flow from place to place and nation to nation without impediment at internal borders. It began as a duty-free “common market,” but it has become much more.

The single market means that a citizen of any of the (still) 28 member states has the right to travel, live and work in any other member nation, and to buy, sell and invest there without paying any more taxes than the locals do. It encompasses some 500 million people and 21 million small- and medium-size enterprises, worth more than $11.5 trillion.

At least, that’s what it is in principle.

In fact, considerable barriers still exist that make it harder to take advantage of the single market than one might expect. For example, car prices are often fairly low in Slovakia compared with other European states, but local taxes of various kinds tend to make a car bought there no great bargain by the time you get it home.

The barriers can be particularly complicated in services, which make up 70 percent of Europe’s economy. The European Union has been working hard to minimize those barriers — for example, it has capped mobile-phone roaming charges and is on the way to abolishing them — but there is still much to do.

Creating a single digital market has proved particularly difficult. Take major televised sports events like Premier League or Bundesliga soccer matches. National networks pay big fees for the rights to broadcast them — and they don’t want their viewers to be able to see them more cheaply through a foreign subscription. In another example, Britons pay a license fee to support the BBC and watch it on any device, but they cannot connect outside Britain. Why not? And should non-Britons have to pay, too?

Even so, duty-free access to such a huge market is a boon, and it was a large part of why many big non-European companies like Nissan and J. P. Morgan chose to locate in Britain. Once Britain leaves the European Union, those companies’ British operations will probably lose that easy access.

People who favored Brexit insisted that Britain could continue to enjoy the single market’s free movement of goods, services and capital while restricting immigration and the free movement of people. But an à la carte membership like that appears to be very unlikely.

So some, like David Davis, the minister heading Britain’s new Department for Exiting the European Union (Dexeu), favor a “hard Brexit,” forgoing any effort to stay in the single market. Others, though, like the powerful chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, still seek a “soft Brexit,” hoping to negotiate at least partial access to the single market — whatever its flaws.

Theresa May’s efforts to involve the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in her Brexit plan have fallen flat after the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon branded them "deeply frustrating".

The Prime Minister had offered to engage leaders of devolved bodies in regular discussions to quell concern about her handling of Brexit.

But leaving Downing Street, Ms Sturgeon signalled her unhappiness. She said: "We had a frank exchange of views. I don't mind admitting large parts of the meeting were deeply frustrating."

Number 10 tried to play down any fallout, claiming the talks had been "constructive", but divisions had already been marked out before the talks began.
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What is the JMC?

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“I think the economic arguments are clear,” she said. “I think being part of a 500-million trading bloc is significant for us. I think, as I was saying to you a little earlier, that one of the issues is that a lot of people will invest here in the UK because it is the UK in Europe.

“If we were not in Europe, I think there would be firms and companies who would be looking to say, do they need to develop a mainland Europe presence rather than a UK presence? So I think there are definite benefits for us in economic terms.”
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At Goldman Sachs, May also said she was convinced Britain’s security was best served by remaining in Europe because of tools such as the European arrest warrant and the information-sharing between the police and intelligence agencies.

“There are definitely things we can do as members of the European Union that I think keep us more safe,” she said.
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Britons who voted Leave in the 23 June referendum are most likely to have voted for reasons concerning immigration.

This is according to a Survation survey for ITN published on Tuesday which found concern about immigration outranked other stated motivations, such as EU corruption, red tape, bailing out countries such as Greece or Portugal and greater trade options.

In order of popularity, here are the options Leave voters selected when asked why they voted as they did, when asked to choose between three.

Britons who voted Leave in the 23 June referendum are most likely to have voted for reasons concerning immigration.

47% of the Leave people which means about half of the Britons are concerned about immigration.

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Just to recap, for those who understandably find this confusing: Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, campaigned for Brexit but was suspected of wobbling privately towards remain. Our leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, campaigned for remain but was suspected of wobbling privately towards leave. And our prime minister was presumably either faking it in front of the Goldman Sachs faithful, or is faking it now when she insists that hard Brexit will be a rip-roaring success, or is secretly in two minds about the most totemic issue of the day – but dammit, the British people ordered a burger, and that’s what they’ll get. And we wonder why people don’t trust politicians.
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But the fascinating thing is that if you compare the recording of May trotting out the pro-European line then with her rather different script now, it’s surprisingly hard to tell which one sounds fake.

Even Johnson, who famously wrote one newspaper column arguing for Brexit and one against it before settling on the former, couldn’t manage that. His unpublished ode to Europe, salvaged from the bin for a forthcoming book on Brexit by the Sunday Times journalist Tim Shipman, arguably goes some way to restoring the old rogue’s reputation because you can feel his heart wasn’t really in it. But the sphinx-like May sounds equally inscrutable whichever way she’s arguing.
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The Goldman tapes do not, in themselves, make May a hypocrite. Only she could do that – if she sought to pretend that everything she said is no longer true, or that the downsides of Brexit will, like fairies, magically die away just because 52% of voters don’t believe in them. Every decision has problems and consequences, which we elect politicians to analyse and overcome: odd that it’s only in the case of Brexit that it’s deemed undemocratic even to mention what might go wrong. Never mind the detail; swallow this.

But May should remember that the mistake John Gummer made all those years ago wasn’t just to drag his daughter into politics. It was to treat the rest of us like children, incapable of understanding the risks for ourselves.

Many continental observers were surprised that the Brexit vote seemed to disintegrate Britain rather than the EU. Far from accentuating tensions among the remaining EU member states, it seems to have reinforced splits in a deeply divided British political system. However, the short-term political drama may hide long-term trajectories that will only become visible in a few years. Although we will only be able to see these outcomes with real certainty once they have come about, it may be useful to reflect on the possible trajectory of the EU after Brexit.

The most immediate concern for many leaders, and certainly for the Berlin government, is to avoid contagion. If Brexit demonstrates that abandoning the disadvantages of EU membership but keeping most of the benefits is viable, the likelihood of exit referenda in other member states increases. The pick-and-choose approach puts a core principle of the EU (and of any political system) at stake: membership is not based on pure cost-benefit calculations but is a give-and-take, and a long-term commitment. It is thus a vital institutional self-interest of national leaders to make exit costly. This is why many insist on the indivisibility of the ‘four freedoms’: they do not want to punish Britain, but want to avoid a chain reaction of exit referenda. This is backed up by the idea that on the whole, the EU market for most economic sectors is more important than the UK market.
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In short, the most likely post-Brexit scenario for the EU is integration as usual – unless there are major exit referenda in other member states or electoral victories of Eurosceptic parties. This means slow and step-by-step moves in selected areas. A large leap forward after the UK has left is unlikely given eurosceptic publics in other member states, and the unclear value of such a bold move. Instead, the EU will continue trying to solve problems the member states cannot solve alone, in policy areas where they can act more efficiently and more effectively together. At the same time, some states may continue to be exempted from participating in certain policies (such as Denmark in military affairs).

A partial or complete disintegration of the EU because of Brexit seems unlikely as well. Those favouring it are the parties of the Eurosceptic right (much less than on the left). Their electoral success may make mainstream parties of the centre left or centre right more reluctant about further integration. But they are mostly minority parties, and at present, leaving the Eurozone or leaving the EU does not look attractive for most voters.

This does not mean that the upcoming negotiations about the concrete shape of Brexit will not be just as hard for the EU as for the UK, or that there will be no conflicts among the remaining member states. In the Eurozone crisis or in the migration crisis, these conflicts have been very strong. But the EU may be able to deal with them with its well-established tools: making compromises, supporting weaker members, agreeing on partial solutions and allowing strong dissenters from new policies to delay or suspend participation. In other words: integration as usual.

47% of the Leave people which means about half of the Britons are concerned about immigration.

The survey is based on respondents who voted Leave in the EU referendum. (See links above)