More on Brexit
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The government’s planned post-Brexit trade deal with New Zealand will have a negligible effect on the British economy and could actually make it shrink slightly and leave people worse off, according to government forecasts, the effect on GDP (gross domestic product) from the deal will be “close to zero”
What did they expect? New Zealand only has a population of less than 5 million.
Now the government says it wants to join the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-approach-to-joining-the-cptpp-trade-agreement
I wonder what they think of its notorious provisions to allow companies to sue governments that had people jumping up and down? I can’t remember the exact terms but maybe there was something on our blog about them.
So Britain would be no more a sovereign lawmaker than when subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
The blog has several posts on TPP.
The blog has several posts on TPP.
Not half. Good work there.
This is the bit I was referring to:
“The TPP also gives global corporations an international tribunal of private attorneys, outside any nation’s legal system, who can order compensation for any “unjust expropriation” of foreign assets. The tribunal can order compensation for any lost profits found to result from a nation’s regulations.”
Not sure that even the ECJ could order that. But the point is that the UK would be subject to the jurisdiction of an outside legal body and so not completely ”independent” as in the Brexiteers’ dreams.
Some of the criticisms seem to have been scaremongering on the part of reformists and in any event irrelevant from a worker’s point of view, later revived by Remainers as part of their campaign for the capitalist Britain to stay in the EU.
And of course in the end the US under Trump refused to ratify it ( Trump Sanders — Same Fight) and so the US is not a part of it. The papers are saying that the UK government is banking on Trump losing and Biden then ratifying the US joining. And so getting a trade deal with the US via the backdoor.
Like we said over the EU, the trading arrangements of the British capitalist class are for them to settle and no concern of the working class.
The government has just announced, via that oddity Gove, that it is going to spend £705 million to make the border with the rest of Europe “the world’s most effective and secure border”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-politics-53375713
What a waste and what an unnecessary inconvenience for ordinary people wanting to travel to the Continent and back. Less border controls not more would be better for them.
It reminds me of a Minister some years ago returning from Brussels and announcing that he had secured Britain’s exemption from some agreement amongst other EU member states abolishing border controls between them. He trumpeted this as a good thing but it meant that people from Britain would have to go through the hassle of queuing to show their passport to get back in while in large parts of Europe people could move from country to country as if there wasn’t a border.
It meant in fact that the border posts fell into disuse and became overgrown with weeds. Now that was good news about borders and is what will happen to them everywhere when we get socialism.
That’s right, keep the damn foreigners at bay. With all the security checks in place now anyway, it’s been bad enough getting in or out while in the EU.
I don’t get it – aside from it being bad for the general public going on holiday, surely this can’t be good for business travellers either?
Well, the pro-US section of the capitalist class beat the pro-EU section both in the 2016 referendum and in the general election last December and so get the power and legitimacy to implement their policy. So there’s going to more of these sort of restrictions to trade and barriers to travel to the Continent. The pro-EU capitalists are just going to have to lump it like the rest of us.
Elections are how the capitalist class settle disputes amongst themselves and why they attach importance to who controls political power. Our view too of course and why we say that the workers should aim at getting control of it too, both to take it out of the hands of the capitalist class and to use it to play a key role in the socialist revolution from capitalism to socialism.
The new immigration rules
It seems as the UK is about to become a rogue outlaw state
And they say the Tories are the law’n’order party
It is not clear what the government is up to with its Bill to deliberately break an international treaty signed only last year. I know we have always said that treaties are just pieces of paper that a state can find a pretext to tear up if the interests of its capitalist class require this. It has happened many times.
In this case, however, it is difficult to see what is the capitalist interest, even that of the minority section which was anti-EU and pro-US instead. Northern Ireland is of no consequence to the UK capitalist class; in fact it’s a drain on their resources. So that can’t be the reason.
The only rational explanation would seem to be that it’s a negotiating ploy to get the EU to agree to a better trade deal from the UK point of view. We will see.
This article brings out rather well the diplomatic and electoral duplicity involved, but then we already knew that politicians tell lies to win elections though Johnson is clearly more brazen about this than most others.
The accompanying video is good too on the implications for the Irish capitalist economy.
Comrade CS has sent in this;
“The only rational explanation would seem to be that it’s a negotiating ploy to get the EU to agree to a better trade deal from the UK point of view. We will see.”
But I disagree.
It seems more likely to be deliberate sabotage of the process to rule out any possibility of any deal, because the core group driving policy is the Vote Leave caucus led by Gove and Cummings (Johnson too but I believe the other two regard him as the populist clown who wins votes from morons but who is a bit of a moron himself) – and they have always been determined on a complete crash out, for the reason that the super rich benefit from no deal Brexit as it means zero need to respect any regulation whatsoever.So: tax havens, hyper- exploitation, Victorian capitalism etc….. Also don’t forget that Cummings, though not nearly as clever as he thinks he is, is nevertheless a weirdo whose hobby is social experimentation, eugenics, social engineering, manipulation of populations etc – he has pay masters (possibly including friends he made in Russia when he worked there for several years) but no political principles or ideas, other than ruthless pursuit of power and control of populations. He really is the “mad evil professor” of popular culture – and the crisis of late capitalism has given him power, shockingly & terrifyingly so!There was a vacuum in UK politics as for a generation there has been NO opposition party of any credibility or passion. Promotion of Corbyn played right into the hands of this far right silent coup, and they may even have had agent provocateurs to that end. Starmer is no better – he pulls his punches, hesitating to rip Johnson apart in PMQs, easy as that would be. Just imagine if we had a good socialist speaker with gusto, a Tony Turner or a Steve Coleman tackling PMQs against Johnson! That would be a pleasure to watch, not this pusillanimous shit of the establishment, Starmer……..The Swiss understand where their interests lie
George Monbiot on Brexit
Interesting new terms for capitalism
housetrained capitalism. It seeks an accommodation with the administrative state, and benefits from stability, predictability and the regulations that exclude dirtier and rougher competitors.
warlord capitalism. This sees all restraints on accumulation – including taxes, regulations and the public ownership of essential services – as illegitimate. Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of profit-making.
I prefer them to such euphemisms as neo-liberalism and corporatism …and such like
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