What is really required is member states enforcing their laws. There are paths to removing member state citizens from your country. They are not all that difficult or unreasonable, for example there are time limitations on getting a job. These just need to be enforced.
There needs to be a wider bloc discussion on passport programs for investors, in that it should be entirely banned.
The UK could rejoin the European Union without adopting the Euro but must accept freedom of movement, the bloc’s former chief Brexit negotiator has said.
Michel Barnier said it was “perfectly possible to begin such a negotiation [on membership] without any kind of obligation to take part in” the EU’s single currency.
But what remains “unnegotiable” is “the condition to join the single market”, he said. That would require accepting freedom of movement of people as well as of goods, services, and capital.
“As far as the freedom of movement is concerned, I can only repeat that the four freedoms are linked together and are not negotiable,” the former French prime minister, once dubbed the bloc’s “Mr Brexit”, told Sky News.
Oh yeah I wouldn’t expect anything less. Obviously the freedom of movement thing will annoy the right, but that’s their problem.
well, and the lower class left – working rights of locals being undermined by cheaper foreign labour is a less vocal part of the anti-immigration noise
Jobs moving abroad doesn’t really have anything to do with immigration though.
but labor moving in does
If you are being replaced by immigration workers who are prepared to accept low wages go report that to the relevant authorities because that’s illegal.
It kind of sounds like you’re trying to shill for the racists, who absolutely do not have any kind of point.
Hanging flags on lamps post does not make you a patriot, it just makes you an idiot.
So - the same thing as before, only after losing billions.
Cool.
It’s called the conservative promise.
They constantly trying to argue that Labour don’t have a grip on the economy while simultaneously making everybody else poorer.
Apparently conservative votes are happy with Kemi’s performance. I assume that is because they have low standards and don’t have anyone better.
They should be required to join Schengen, though. For one, not having to have border facilities at railway stations would open up a lot of very useful cross-Channel rail routes.
Makes sense. Why would there be an argument against that other than the UK and Ireland were never part of it to begin with? Which is still a shit argument.
I imagine Ireland would greatly prefer to be in it, and resent that its historic and geographical ties to the UK stymie this.
Maybe. But Ireland can’t act in its own interest, right? If it reacts to be in Schengen it can. There’s nothing stopping them from requesting it.
I imagine they’ve actually done the due diligence and figured out it’s not worth it rather than feeling they’re still historically tied to the UK. Jaysus, if anything the Irish would love to get rid of the UK.
You might be forgetting the Good Friday Agreement. Ireland is restricted in what it can do on visa-free travel, because it has an open border in Northern Ireland with the UK. If the UK doesn’t allow people from a specific country, then they can’t come into Ireland visa-free either.
That’s not the Good Friday Agreement. That’s the Common Travel Area which has been in place long before the GFA and long before Schengen. The UK and Ireland both opted out because, at the time, they saw little benefit in joining.
The wording of the treaty makes Ireland’s opt-out from eliminating border controls conditional on the Common Travel Area being maintained. An important reason for the Schengen Agreement was to make daily cross-border commuting by workers easier as a part of free movement for workers. The United Kingdom and Ireland have a short land border, which is only to part of the UK, making this reason less important to them.
The British government has always refused to lower its border controls as it believes that the island status of the CTA puts the UK in a better position to enforce immigration controls than mainland European countries with “extensive and permeable land borders”. While not signing the Schengen Treaty, Ireland has always looked more favourably on joining but has not done so in order to maintain the CTA and its open border with Northern Ireland.
So Ireland could, if it wanted to, join Schengen. But had clearly deemed it of little benefit to them if they then need to police a border they have no intention of policing.
Two conditions, actually. We also get to forcefemme Charles. UK was better when it had a queen anyway.
kidding
I’m joking, of course! Monarchy is abhorrent and we don’t need another one in the EU. Republic or gtfo
yes abolish the monarchy we should forcefemme the president instead
also kidding
Apart from the constitutional monarchies that are now grandfathered in?
They should be abolished too, but that’s another matter
If the UK did join the eurozone, it would be by choice. All you have to do is promise to join it. Then just sit on your heels. No one will actually make you. Case in point: Poland.
Since the convergence criteria require participation in the ERM, and non-eurozone member states are responsible for deciding when to join ERM, they can ultimately control when they adopt the euro by staying outside the ERM and thus deliberately failing to meet the convergence criteria until they wish to.
I didn’t realise Poland didn’t use the Euro.
The main reason the UK doesn’t want to use the Euro is that the pound is actually more valuable than the Euro so it doesn’t really make a lot of sense, and also because we’re not part of mainland Europe so is not as if people can just drive down the road and suddenly they have to use a different currency, which is what it was like traveling through Europe in the past.
“Brexit is a con, a trick, a swindle, a fraud, a deception that will hurt most of those people it promised to help, a dangerous fantasy which will make every problem it claims to solve worse . Friends on this side of the House tell me to appease Labour voters in industrial towns - the former miners, the factory workers, those who feel they’ve been left behind. I say we must not patronise them with cowardice, let’s tell them the truth - you were old a lie. Immigrants have not taken your jobs, our schools and colleges failed to give you the skills, hospitals are not crumbling because of health tourists but decades of austerity that ground them down to the bone, you cannot afford a house because both parties failed to build, not because of Mohammed down the road who moved in, and wealth was hoarded in London when it should have been shared across the country. Blame us, blame Westminster, do not blame Brussels for our own country’s mistakes and do not be angry at us for telling you the truth, be angry at the chancers who sold you a lie … Just as I speak plainly to the government this time around, let me also speak to the opposition about some home truths. There is no leftwing justification for Brexit. Ditching workers’ rights, social protections and ending environmental cooperation is not progressive. This is a project about neo-liberal deregulation, it’s Thatcherism on steroids pushed by her modern-day disciples. Leaving the EU will not free us from the injustices of global capitalism, it will make us subordinate to Trump’s US. Socialism confined to one country will not work, whether you like it or not, the world we live in is global, we can only fix the rigged system if we cooperate across border lines. The party of Keir Hardie has always been international. We must not let down our young supporters by failing to stand with them at the biggest issue of our lives."
For anyone else wondering, that was David Lammy’s speech to the house of commons in Januray 2019.
Raging genocide supporter and status-quo supporter (I.e. neoliberal) David Lammy? That guy? Wow with cheerleaders like this for returning to the EU it’s a wonder why we haven’t done it already!
Burnham is being exceedingly cautious about the ~40% who still somehow believe in Brexit.
40% is quite a lot, and probably more of the original 52% would regain their opinion if Brexit came to the fore again, rather than being sat on. He’s right to be cautious!
Okay yes, 40% is a large proportion of the electorate, but they held a referendum that 48.11% rejected and still treated it like a divine mandate, even though it was non-binding. One side’s preference is consistently treated with more reverence in this.
I think the mandate came from the subsequent general elections in 2017 and 2019, where the Tories, a declared Brexit party won significant majorities. In fact, between the first one and the second one, they gained almost 50 seats in Parliament.
The people were lied to, but they believed the lies.
I don’t think Andy Burnham, or for that matter anyone in the Labour party, or anyone outside whatever iteration of Farage’s party and the Tories (and of those, not all of them) treated it like a “divine mandate” or with reverence.
Look, here we’re all annoyed about Brexit, because it’s shit and we knew it would be. We’d like it to be reversed as soon as possible. But undoing the most significant change to the UK’s constitution a mere 6 years after it was enacted and 10 years after it was decided is unthinkable. So we’re not being cautious now because of “reverence” for Brexiter’s preferences, but because it is a think that deserves to be treated with caution. It was a decision that was taken with rank recklessness, but unfortunately that doesn’t mean we can undo it with the same recklessness. That won’t solve the problems; it will help cement the idea that membership of the EU, or other serious, difficult, significant changes to the country can be done and undone on a whim.
I get what you’re saying, it just doesn’t resonate with me. Maybe because I’m an immigrant here. All I see is a massive fire and we can’t put it out because it’s normal for things to be on fire, and we wouldn’t want to upset anyone.
This sums up a lot of the hand-wringing a lot of British people who consider themselves to be politically enlightened.
“We can’t possibly act rashly, we need to have 17 committees for consideration of a possible future decision.”
Meanwhile, everything is on fire and the people in power (which they will criticise but never condemn) are fucking things up all over the place and leaving everyone else to have a town hall meeting for a potential committee to discuss what pieces should be put back together. Fucking infuriating.
You mean people such as these?
…I bet it’s really emotionally fulfilling to be a fucking idiot, don’t you think?
