More on Brexit
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They forgot to put a cross against booze cruises. The Vote Leave government’s withdrawal from the Erasmus programme allowing students from European countries to study in other European countries seems just a vindictive expression of anti-rest of Europe phobia. Even the official reason given — that it cost the UK more as more students from other countries came to study here than vice versa— is shabby. Apparently it is to be replaced by a programme to pay for UK students to study in top universities in other countries, inevitably mostly those in the USA. No more need then to learn another European language.
Looks like they have achieved their aims: stopped freedom of movement and paying benefits, cut the payments to the EU, and ended ECJ jurisdiction: the price is excluding (financial) services from the EU market (but that also frees UK banks from EU regulation) and of course customs regulation. Instead of a predictable judicial relationship, we have a political Joint council (though that means the UK talks to the EU Commission, not the Council of Ministers, a demotion).
This from that link shows just how bonkers this type of Brexit is from a capitalist point of view:
“Examples of inevitable change on 1 January 2021:
The free movement of persons will end: UK citizens will no longer have the freedom to work, study, start a business or live in the EU. They will need visas for long-term stays in the EU. Border checks will apply, passports will need to be stamped, and EU pet passports will no longer be valid for UK residents.
The free movement of goods will end: Customs checks and controls will apply to all UK exports entering the EU. UK agri-food consignments will have to have health certificates and undergo sanitary and phytosanitary controls at Member States’ border inspection posts. This will cost UK businesses time and money.
The free movement of services will end: UK service providers will no longer benefit from the country-of-origin principle. They will have to comply with the – varying – rules of each Member State, or relocate to the EU if they want to continue operating as they do today. There will be no more mutual recognition of professional qualifications. UK financial services firms will lose their financial services passports.”Johnson has redeemed his promise to “fuck business”. Will they forgive him?
Johnson has redeemed his promise to “fuck business”. Will they forgive him?
As long as he is good at fucking the wealth producing workers.
The UK doc (with UK spin, like the emphasis on no role for the ECJ – I bet in small print there’ll be some clarification that ECJ is the final arbiter on what EU rules are…).
So, this thread I think hits the nail on the head:
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1342762377599709185
Particularly:
“going back to EV/ battery example..if UK embarked on aggressive strategy of regulatory competition designed to win market/ invest share from EU (for some the point of Brexit) EU wouldve gone to same firms & said “tariff free access not guaranteed”, well before rebalancing “bites””
So, by removing the judicial process of the ECJ (and in its place an interstate arbitration process that allows retaliatory tariffs) UK has achieved its aim of independence at the expense of long term business confidence. The mere threat of potential future tariffs is enough to deter long-term investment.
Also note, ECJ and UK courts are expressly not “bound” by each others’ decisions, but it is inconceivable that they would ignore each others’ decisions, and the reasoning of the arbitration panels.
From a working-class point of view, was leave/remain the non-issue we said it would be? In terms of the WSM’s core aim of abolishing capitalism, obviously it was, but there are so many ways things are going to be more awkward for a lot of people. Even the problems for business and trade are going to cascade down to the workers – more general frustration all round.
Also, if many of the British working class as a whole will be worse off, to balance that out is there any section of the working class anywhere in the world that will be better off?
In other words, with hindsight could we have regarded voting remain as a ‘beneficial reform’, or at least an attempt to not make things worse?
Yes, these two tweets seem to be particularly pertinent;
”The whole thing is the illusion of sovereignty and the ability to diverge while acknowledging in reality that the EU is a regulatory superpower and we will therefore continue to follow its standards.”
and
”No surprise at all from an Irish perspective. Prior to the single market, Ireland had to shadow many a UK regulation and law, because of economic necessity. That this bit of economic reality is formally codified in wooly language in the EU/UK treaty is probably a good thing.”
The agreement also provides for tit for tat tariffs as currently going on between the USA and the EU. Be interesting to see if this comes to anything or is just the Daily Wail dreaming.
“The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, it seems.”
Or as Max Hastings puts it in today’s Times:
”The completion of Brexit represents a declaration of British exceptionalism. The great question that lies ahead, which will not be fully answered until years after this prime minister has resumed his lucrative career as an entertainer, is whether we possess enforceable economic and political claims to such specialness.”
By “we” of course he means the UK state acting on behalf of the British capitalist class.
Actually, Rod, I think Brexit can be classified as a bad reform ie a change within capitalism that will make things worse for many workers. Certainly the promised benefits of it are bogus as far as workers are concerned.
So, if someone held a gun to our head and said you must choose between Leave and Remain we would have had to choose Remain.
The same can be said of a Scottish breakaway from the rest of Britain. It too would put the clock back (to 1707!) and also make things worse for most workers living there.
But, surely, just as we don’t campaign for reforms even if they do improve things for workers so we don’t campaign against reforms that make things worse — especially as in both the above cases this would involve campaigning and voting for a status quo which is far from satisfactory.
So, basically, we campaign only for socialism and neither for nor against particular reforms, while denouncing some proposed reforms as counter-productive and/or anti- working-class.
“The same can be said of a Scottish breakaway from the rest of Britain. It too would put the clock back (to 1707!) and also make things worse for most workers living there.”
ALB, i’m not so sure you can say that Scottish separatism would have been detrimental to Scottish workers. Some could justifiably argue that they would be marginally better off than the English and the Welsh workers. Others would argue against that. To declare for either conclusion is speculative.
Sticking to this topic, Brexit wouldn’t have been an issue for Scottish or EU migrant workers post-2014 although no doubt the scenario would be similar and even more complicated to the Northern Ireland/EU border problem. England and Wales would perhaps find themselves even more isolated economically with a hard border. There would be severe ramifications for a EU-Scotland losing that huge English market. But would the 2016 referendum actually arisen and even if it did, how would have the debate been conducted? Who knows?
My opposition to Scottish nationalism is that of a world socialist. I view Scottish nationalism as sectionalism. Similar to the Catalonian nationalists who assert their claims that the region is more prosperous and carry the poorer parts of Spain, they were willing to cast aside international solidarity and to go it alone for whatever benefits could be accrued from an new independent state at the price of weakening fellow-workers elsewhere in the the British Isles.
As some on the left have explained, Scotland’s claim for independence is not based on any special oppression or repression such as language or culture, and that the Scots were willingly complicit in the British Empire colonialism. It too has the streets and statues of Scots who profited from slave trade
The main rise of Scottish nationalism began in the 60/70s with North Sea oil and a claim of sovereignty over it, a bounty that the SNP claimed would be shared out in public spending for just the people in Scotland. In later decades when it became apparent that the oil bonanza couldn’t be relied upon, the SNP campaign turned to Keynesian solutions versus the Westminster prevalent Thatcherist/Blairite policies. Again the emphasis was that if Scots jettisoned the 1707 treaty, the Scottish workers would be in a better position than their counterparts across Hadrian’s Wall.
Would they be? In some regards some would because they would be in a stronger negotiating position in the union-employee against employer, particularly in the State sector, (basing my assumption on my own experience as a postal worker.) But would others be? Ineos at Grangemouth?
Dividing the strength of a national trade union would have been counter-productive. It would pitted the workers in the UK against one another. I know that goes on with re-locations of businesses where region vying against region but with full independence it becomes a nationalist priority to set one country’s workers against another for the crumbs from the capitalist table.
Being a world socialist I stand with the principle, an injury to one is an injury to all, regardless of nationality. Independence may offer workers in Scotland new gold-plated chains rather than old rusty iron chains but it will take united global actions to strike off all our shackles.
“ i’m not so sure you can say that Scottish separatism would have been detrimental to Scottish workers. Some could justifiably argue that they would be marginally better off than the English and the Welsh workers.”
I can’t think of a single benefit, not even a marginal one, that workers in Scotland would gain from Scotland becoming a separate capitalist state. Many workers from Scotland might believe that it would but not “justifiably”.
I can only think of disadvantages such as the disruption to their daily life caused by the change-over (new currency, new border control, etc). Then there would be the more virulent nationalism. You hint that a separate Scottish government might be able to pursue a Keynesian policy (of engineering smooth growth out of which social reforms can be financed) but why should this work in Scotland when it has failed everywhere else? Especially when the British capitalist state’s subsidy to the Scottish administration is ended.
At best the creation of a separate “independent” capitalist state would be pointless from a working class point of view.
By the way, you have already started a border dispute by annexing the territory currently in England between the Scottish border and Hadrian’s Wall.
I think the electorate in Scotland will just play the SNP for suckers again. No! to leaving the UK and Yes! to contiued SNP rule in Scotland for as long as they sound and appear, less Tory than Labour.
They like Sturgeon’s appearance of competence set against the UK PM even when she gets it wrong, but this is so too, for some if not a lot, of the English electorate.
The fact of the UK having some kind of Brexit deal, no matter how bad, will be the clincher.
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