Tag Archives: brexit

NewsHound

LibLink: Shirley Williams: Bring all sides together to negotiate our future with Europe

By NewsHound | Sun 10th July 2016 - 2:26 pm

While Tory and Labour parties rip themselves apart, the Liberal Democrats have spent a great deal of time offering ideas and solutions. The latest is Shirley Williams in today’s Observer:

She succinctly sums up the mess we are in:

With every passing day, the problems confronting the new prime minister multiply. The balance of payments worsens, the pound sinks against the dollar, the London property market, no longer attractive to ambitious young bankers and financial experts, declines and Brexit begins to look more and more like snake oil.

How do we face those challenges? Well, it needs strong government and opposition:

To get through the business of negotiating an alternative to membership of the European Union, and to do so without our country falling apart, will require patience, tolerance of different and often strongly held views and good, grown-up government. None of these were evident in the bitter, brutal referendum debate. We need not just good government but a serious, responsible opposition as well.

She draws parallels with the mess of the Labour Party in the 80s.

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Jenny Randerson

Baroness Jenny Randerson writes…For our transport sector Brexit means we are currently going nowhere fast

By Jenny Randerson | Sun 10th July 2016 - 8:55 am

Although few people have talked about it, Brexit is going to raise serious issues about how we get about. Our transport sector faces practical problems that need to be solved, or at least grappled with. These are issues that affect us in everyday life. I am pretty sure that people who voted to leave still expect to be able to fly abroad to their summer holidays and to buy goods that have been transported safely and in a timely manner from other countries. There is a simple, practical fact about which nobody—no referendum, no decision—can do anything: the continent of Europe, the land mass, stands between us and much of the rest of the world.

One immediate issue is the Channel Tunnel. The dream of the Channel Tunnel long predates the European Union, but the tunnel was constructed while Britain was a member and it has been executed and managed with EU membership at the forefront. It is privately financed and privately run by an Anglo-French consortium and its scale is simply enormous—400 trains a day, 50,000 passengers a day and 54,000 tonnes of freight a day. We cannot ignore that the British border is in France, an arrangement which has already been put under considerable doubt.

It is clear that many who voted to leave did so in the expectation of tighter border controls. This conflicts with the inspiration behind the Channel Tunnel, to have freer and faster movement of both people and goods between Britain and France. Any moves to implement tighter controls or to apply them in different ways will inevitably have an impact on business and on the enormous investment that the Channel Tunnel represents.

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Joe Otten

Even UKIP have no plan for this

By Joe Otten | Thu 7th July 2016 - 2:50 pm

Sheffield Full Council yesterday was met with a large pro-EU rally with speakers from all parties and other groups, including Sheffield Lib Dem group leader Shaffaq Mohammed.

Sheffield Stay

The debate continued in the chamber, on item 10, which was moved up the agenda in response to the demo. Sheffield is one of those councils that has this kind of debate quite regularly in full council, the business of running a council being decided in cabinet. Whether this is a good use of everyone’s time is questionable, but it is how we do things.

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Katharine Pindar

Liberal Democrats must seize the moment

By Katharine Pindar | Wed 6th July 2016 - 4:15 pm

Both the main parties are currently paralysed as political forces by their leadership battles. The Government is leaderless, the country at a standstill politically. This is our moment to assert our right to be heard as former and future political leaders, and force our presence on the airwaves and on social media. Moreover if the right-wing press will not accept our voice, this is surely the moment to invest in national advertising.

The week of the Chilcot report is the time to remind the country that it was the Liberal Democrats who opposed the attack on Iraq, along with a great mass of the public whose voices were also ignored. We should now claim again to represent the majority of the public, not by ignoring the result of the Referendum, but by acknowledging the many doubts that were felt by people voting either way, and pledging to try to meet the needs that were  ignored by their self-obsessed leaders.

While the politicians of the two main parties fight for supremacy, we, the united Liberal Democrats, must fight for the people. With a growing recession, we must fight to protect the poorest, demanding government measures to alleviate probable rising food costs, and extra rises if necessary in the Living Wage. We should demand investment for growth, so that jobs can be created that are not just short-term or on zero-hours contracts, and social security reform to stop penalising those least able to protect themselves. We must insist on more funds for the NHS, more integration of health and social care – and also a welcome and thanks to the immigrant doctors and nurses and care workers. We should demand more social housing and some re-introduction of rent controls. We must develop economic policies which highlight the scandal of excessive pay rises for top executives, challenge the power of sophisticated predators linking hedge funds with top Tories, and promote greater equality through taxation.

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Paul Walter

Post-Brexit: We need to embrace plan B

By Paul Walter | Mon 4th July 2016 - 10:58 am


Flag of EFTA

Tim Farron is playing a blinder at the moment. Our clear support of the European Union, while accepting the referendum result, is absolutely right.

But we need a dual track approach here. We need to have an alternative to EU membership lined up. “Plan B”, if you like.

It seems to me that rejoining the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) (we left in 1973 after 13 years membership) and staying in the European Economic Area (EEA), is the answer to the current UK post-Brexit conundrum.

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Caron Lindsay

Should Parliament put a stop to Brexit?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd July 2016 - 11:06 pm

Most suggestions for resolving the “What the (insert expletive of choice) do we do now?” conundrum tend to involve various degrees of access to the Single Market or a General Election. Few are brave enough to suggest that Parliament simply declines to invoke Article 50. Until now.

Professor A C Grayling, Master of the New College of Humanities in London, has written to all MPs telling them that they have a responsibility not to support any such motion. He lists several reasons, not least the paucity of the campaign, the likelihood of the break up of the UK if we leave the EU and the fact that the threshold for such a huge change was set way too low. He has a point. You can’t change the number of places on a toddler group committee without a 2/3 majority. When the party conference considers a vast swathe of constitutional amendments in September, they will need a 2/3 majority to pass. With hindsight, you have to wonder why on earth we let such a major change through on a simple majority.

Harvard’s Professor Kenneth Rogoff agrees that the threshold is too low:

In terms of durability and conviction of preferences, most societies place greater hurdles in the way of a couple seeking a divorce than Prime Minister David Cameron’s government did on the decision to leave the EU. Brexiteers did not invent this game; there is ample precedent, including Scotland in 2014 and Quebec in 1995. But, until now, the gun’s cylinder never stopped on the bullet. Now that it has, it is time to rethink the rules of the game.

Grayling isn’t a fan of referenda anyway:

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Caron Lindsay

Farron: Lib Dems will champion right of EU citizens to stay in Britain

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 3rd July 2016 - 11:50 am

Tim Farron has set out why the Liberal Democrats will fight for those EU citizens who have made their homes in Britain to be allowed to stay post-Brexit.

Both David Cameron and Theresa May have only guaranteed their future to the conclusion of the negotiations. How awful, how unfair would it be if people who had settled, worked hard, married, had families here were forced to leave after the goalposts changed?

How cruel is it to put these people through years of uncertainty?

Tim said:

There is real, and legitimate, upset and worry from European citizens across our country about their long-term status in the UK. Liberal Democrats will not stand by whilst our communities are divided by uncertainty. Regardless of the outcome of any negotiations with Europe around Brexit, EU citizens who have made Britain their home must be allowed to stay.

To Europeans whose lives are now rooted in the UK my message is simple – the Liberal Democrats stand with you, and will speak for you. To the French family raising their children in Manchester, to the Polish mother working to pay her mortgage in Portsmouth, to the German graduate starting his business venture in Birmingham – the Liberal Democrats value you, we will stand by you and we will champion your future here in Britain.

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Controlled migration with free movement – squaring the circle

By Stevan Rose | Fri 1st July 2016 - 10:07 am

No matter how we try and fool ourselves, migration issues played a substantial part in the Leave vote, and many Remain voters, myself included, voted to remain despite reservations about immigration levels. Doubtless racism played a part, perhaps 2 million of those Leave votes representing the percentage that the BNP received in 2009. The racists didn’t stop being racist, they simply moved to a new home. But over 90% of the 33 million voters were not racists.

When you dig down further as to why people are concerned about migration there is a common theme. As a country we have hugely expensive housing whether buying or renting. We have a creaking and overcrowded public transport infrastructure that is painful to negotiate and roads with commuter jams at 6:00am. We have a healthcare system that cannot cope with the demand yet struggles to pay off PFI stupidity promoted by Brown. We have schools that cannot deliver the quality our kids deserve and in some areas are hamstrung by the number of children with a poor grasp of basic English. Our infrastructure was not built for the numbers of people now trying to use it, and yet still more come in never-ending numbers. Patience has snapped and we must deal with it.

Freedom of movement is a precious right, for me probably the most important, although when it was first established it was reasonably balanced. The freedom to import labour at will, whether for agriculture or high tech projects, is critical to our economic success. And the EU will not allow us the benefits of unfettered access to the free market without freedom of movement whatever fantasyland Boris is currently living in. So we are in a near impossible position. What we need in terms of free trade relies on conceding free movement that we cannot cope with.

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Graham Watson

Sir Graham Watson writes…Is there a way back from the Brexit decision?

By Graham Watson | Sat 25th June 2016 - 12:02 pm

What happens now?

Initial reactions in London and Brussels have been stark, along the lines of ‘Out means Out’. Will they change with more considered reflection? As the foreign ministers gather in Berlin today and the leaders of Germany, France and Italy meet on Monday to prepare Tuesday’s European Council (‘summit’) meeting, economic interests may have started to impinge on political considerations. It seems most likely, however, that when David Cameron arrives in Brussels on Tuesday he will find his 27 counterparts almost all singing from the same (German-language) hymn sheet.

In a statement Friday by the Presidents of the European Council, the European Parliament and the European Commission it is made clear that there can be no further renegotiation and that the concessions made to Cameron in February are now null and void. The summit can be expected to rubber-stamp this.

The most Cameron can hope for is a period of 12 weeks for the UK to sort out the shitstorm which will now be unleashed by the most calamitous case of self harm in Britain’s democratic history. The EU Treaties leave it up to the country which seeks to leave to decide when and if to invoke Article 50, to start the formal process of withdrawal. But the continental clamour for it will be deafening. Britain’s footdragging, wheel-spoking and taking home of wicket in recent years has drained any patience or sympathy our partners might once have felt.

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Matthew Campbell

A new Union of Democratic Control?

By Matthew Campbell | Sat 25th June 2016 - 10:45 am

It may be a mistake, but in my idiosyncratic way, I tend to approach the present – and the future – through the past.

So I feel the need to point out at this time, that in 1914 during the earliest days of the First World War, there arose within the British Left a movement called the ‘Union of Democratic Control’, one of whose prime movers was a Liberal Radical journalist called ED Morel. (He had already led a very interesting life, and went to have a short but even more interesting life subsequently, including both imprisonment and beating Winston Churchill as a candidate in a General Election).

The UDC initially had three aims: to subject to scrutiny in the House of Commons the secret pacts and war aims agreed between the UK and its allies as pan-European war broke out; to push for a negotiated settlement to prevent conflict escalating into mass loss of life, and to investigate the influence of the arms trade upon UK politicians.

Needless to say, in the short term, their campaign was not successful and was regarded with suspicion and official opposition.
But their guiding principle – that the nation had a right to have its foreign policy and strategy debated by its democratic parliament for its moral and ethical worth – was fundamentally right.

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Bernard Aris

Johnson and Gove, like Trump, believe in the magical power of the word

By Bernard Aris | Mon 20th June 2016 - 4:07 pm

 

In a recent analysis  in the Washington Post of why Republican voters keep on supporting Trump and his “macho gone beserk”-rhetoric, the veteran American political analyst E.J. Dionne cited a classic book about Right-Wingers and their rhetoric, what they believe their phrases can accomplish.

The social scientists Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab observed in their classic book from 1970 “The Politics of Unreason/ Right Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970” that:

Right-wing extremists have always highlighted ‘the magical power of the word’ and the faith that just saying the right thing, believing the right thing, is the substance of victory and remedy.

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NewsHound

Jo Cox: Brexit is no answer to real concerns on immigration

By NewsHound | Fri 17th June 2016 - 5:15 pm

As part of our tributes to Jo Cox, we’re linking to this article in the Yorkshire Post, published last Friday. In it, Jo Cox very persuasively argues that Brexit will not solve concerns over immigration. She accepts that those concerns are genuine – sincere worries about pressures on GP surgeries or schools.

But she explains that Brexit will not answer the concerns and calls for practical steps to improve the situation.

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Posted in Europe Referendum | Also tagged , and | 15 Comments
Bernard Aris

Official, authoritative Dutch government calculations: “Every Dutch citizen stand to lose 1000 euros through a Brexit”

By Bernard Aris | Mon 13th June 2016 - 10:52 am

 

The morning papers in the Netherlands and NOS (our BBC)  all reported last week on a report of the government’s Centraal Plan Bureau (CPB = Central Planning Office, authoritative since its start in the late 1940’s like your IFS; they seldom are far off the mark in their predictions). I base this piece on articles in De Volkskrant (our Guardian) and Financiele Dagblad (equivalent of the Financial Times) and the NOS news website. It makes for worrisome reading.

The immediate effect of a Brexit is, according to the report, that it will cost 1.2% of GDP by 2030, that is, 575 euro per Dutch citizen. Indirect consequences like loss of innovation because of lower trade can increase that by 65%, to 1000 euro each. The damage will be sector specific; the most seriously affected (around 5% loss) will be

  • the chemical sector (that is for example DSM, and our petrochemical sector near Rotterdam);
  • electronics (Philips, just now specializing in expensive medical technologies);
  • food processing (our emblematic dairy industry: Friesland Foods and our extensive chicken and pork breeding industry; in Brabant province there are more pigs than humans).
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Joe Otten

Brexiters have nowhere to hide on crime, policing, terror and intelligence

By Joe Otten | Tue 19th April 2016 - 1:38 pm

With the Brexit debate currently focusing on the question of trade, Brexiters are able to wrongly claim that the UK would enjoy better trade agreements outside the EU, sooner or later. This exercise in hand waving complacency is not available when it comes to our security.

This is not just about the European Arrest Warrant, responsible for the

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Joe Otten

Brexit as political arson by David Miliband

By Joe Otten | Tue 12th April 2016 - 10:40 am

It isn’t the done thing here to link to opinion pieces in the newspapers by Labour politicians. So much that I’m not even sure what category to use. We have LibLink for links to articles by Liberal Democrats, and we have the slightly oddly named “Independent View” for articles by non-members.

But sometimes, hang the taxonomy, this is important enough to link to anyway.

David Miliband steps away from arguments over the costs of membership and Brexit, of whether we could get back the agreements on trade, policing, etc, that Brexit would tear up, the implications, if any, on immigration. Instead he looks at the bigger picture.

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Simon Parker

Is it possible for us to “take back control of our borders”?

By Simon Parker | Mon 29th February 2016 - 9:32 am

 

A number of problems spring to mind as we plan to “take back control of our borders” in the event of Brexit. Inevitably envisioning various scenarios demands a degree of speculation, but the following causes me a good deal of concern.

I suspect Calais may become less of a flash point, though I have an inkling Cherbourg may develop as more of a destination de choix.

Four times a week a giant ferry leaves there for Rosslare. For desperate people that have trekked across a continent and a half I doubt it’ll be seen as too great an added imposition.

Once there the UK border is now approx 277 km away, all 500km of it!

Crossings are available by motorway, country roads, dirt tracks, rail, boat and any number of random fields and….yes.. bogs.

The border was policed, often quite officiously and occasionally with bullets, between 1923 and 1993. It is one of the great triumphs of late 1990s diplomacy that this is no longer the case. Once breached, a trek north to Antrim brings the wretched traveller to within 12 miles of the Scottish coastline,

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Chris White

David Owen – remember him?

By Chris White | Fri 26th February 2016 - 4:30 pm

William Rodgers, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins & David Owen with funds from SDP supporters, Feb 1981

Some of us were members of the SDP and recall still the various reasons why this new political party was created – not least to combat the anti-European mood which then gripped Labour (the Conservatives were largely fine on the issue. The irony…)

Six years later, Owen refused to accept the will of his own Party to merge with the Liberals. He pretended for a while that the majority who joined the merged party had somehow ‘left’ the SDP and he could therefore continue as Leader of the much reduced force. He finally killed it off when it was overtaken by the Monster Raving Loony Party in a by-election in Bootle.

Since then he has floated around the political scene, with sporadic not terribly perceptive interventions on Radio 4 as a ‘former Foreign Secretary’ and the occasional advice to his imagined followers to vote this or that way in General Elections.

So it comes as no surprise that he is reduced to appearing in the Sun urging people to trash their future by voting for Brexit.

His arguments are thin to say the least. For example this insight:

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Joe Otten

Playing chicken with a 27 headed opponent

By Joe Otten | Fri 26th February 2016 - 2:33 pm

The game of chicken involves driving head on towards your opponent, as they do the same, and the loser is the one who swerves out of the way first. If neither swerves, then both lose in a much bigger sense. I was reminded of this as Michael Howard was trotting out the usual arguments for Brexit on the Today programme this morning

Howard argued that a trade deal with the EU would still happen, bringing us continued access to the Single Market, because it is in their interests. He even suggested that following a vote to leave, the rump EU should …

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Alan Depauw

A positive case for remaining in the EU

By Alan Depauw | Mon 28th December 2015 - 12:35 pm

 

Many voices express concern that pro-EU activists should avoid emphasising the dire outcome of Brexit because, as we learnt during the Scottish referendum debate, concentrating on the negative makes for a dismal campaign.

Yet how can we not point out that a Brexit, with its consequent uncertain trade agreements especially with the UK’s major partner, would be catastrophic? But yes, we must also give a positive message. Proclaiming past EU achievements doesn’t seem to play well; too many people take them for granted, believe they would have happened anyway and in any case find them boring. However, everyone who supports continuing membership acknowledges the EU’s many flaws. Why not tackle these failings head-on and make improving the EU Britain’s mission? With its Liberal and Social Democrat tenets, LibDems are particularly well placed to develop an optimistic and constructive reform agenda.

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The Voice

LibLink: Catherine Bearder says that any post-Brexit deal would be tough on the UK

By The Voice | Thu 26th November 2015 - 8:32 am

 

Catherine Bearder, our only Lib Dem MEP, has been interviewed about the consequences of Brexit by the EU Observer.

She doesn’t think that an arrangement similar to Norway’s – being in the European Economic Area but not in the European Union – is achievable.

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Bernard Aris

Dutch economists & ex-ministers: Brexit so disastrous that Dutch government should campaign against it

By Bernard Aris | Wed 25th November 2015 - 4:03 pm

Netherlands’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte discusses the UK’s negotiations over EU membership with David Cameron

Two prominent economists who also were Dutch ministers and still are influential “public thinkers” about macro-economic, budgetary and fiscal affairs, have come out in their weekly column for a strong Dutch government involvement in the campaign against Brexit.

write in their Sunday column (15th November 2015) in the biggest Dutch newspaper The Telegraaf, that the OECD may predict a sunny future for the Netherlands, but that uncertainties like the slump of China and others Emerging Economies (see: The Economist) can scupper those rosy predictions.

But a second danger looms on the horizon: a Brexit can also harm the economic and political interests of the Netherlands. Vermeend and Van der Ploeg point out that with a Brexit

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John Marriott

Working together to stay in the EU

By John Marriott | Mon 9th November 2015 - 2:43 pm

 

I was personally impressed by the article in last Wednesday’s Guardian by Labour’s Pat McFadden MP, which challenged the Brexiters to spell out just what life would be like for us if we chose to leave the European Union. Coupled with the recent sensible remarks from his party colleague, everyone’s favourite ex-postie, Alan Johnson MP, and the furious back tracking of Messrs Cameron and Osbourne, it gives me hope that all like minded people WILL bury their differences and show a united front against forces both political and popular that seem to think that we can throw our weight around as we did a hundred years or more ago.

As someone who has concerns about the current Lib Dem tactics on the upcoming EU referendum, which seem to be operating in a bubble, with no reference to political reality, the chances of politicians from most, if not quite all, parties sharing both physical and media platforms in the run up to the vote, whenever it takes place, makes a great deal of sense.

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Central Bank Independence

By Michael Cooke | Mon 9th November 2015 - 1:06 pm

 

Support for multilevel governance seems a prerequisite for any Lib Dem. Devolution from the centre to the periphery, from Westminster to Holyrood and the Welsh Assembly is one example. There has also been devolution upwards to the supranational institutions such as the EU Statesman are no longer the preserve of government; governance is now very much a fixed concept.

However, there has been devolution or delegation to other institutions besides devolved bodies and the EU. The Bank of England’s independence is an interesting point in case. If LDV readers do support Central Bank Independence as a theoretical concept in the abstract, then its internal consistency should also have an external consistency when applied to the specific case of the Bank of England.

At this point, I would really like to start a debate on the following:

What should the size and scope of the Bank of England’s remit be?

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Catherine Bearder

Catherine Bearder MEP speaks… Britain after Brexit

By Catherine Bearder | Tue 7th July 2015 - 2:51 pm

Bearder Oxford UnionCatherine delivered the following speech to the Oxford Union, painting a picture of what life would be like after Brexit.

I want to take you to a land, not so far away. Close your eyes and think of Britain after Brexit.

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | 14 Comments
Dick Taverne

Lord (Dick) Taverne writes… Cameron heads for Brexit

By Dick Taverne | Fri 28th November 2014 - 4:20 pm

David Cameron - head in handsIf Mr Cameron becomes Prime Minister again after May, he is likely to be the Prime Minister who will lead the UK out of the European Union.

From time to time Mr Cameron has expressed enthusiasm for Britain being at the heart of the EU. In his Bloomberg speech in January last year, he declared:

“I believe something very deeply, that Britain’s national interest is best served in a flexible, adaptable and open European Union and that such a Union is best with Britain in it….There is no doubt that we are more powerful in Washington, in Beijing, in Delhi because we are a powerful player in the European Union. That matters for British jobs and British security.”

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Joe Otten

…or you could vote for not having an opinion

By Joe Otten | Fri 2nd May 2014 - 6:41 pm

imageOn Wednesday I went to my first hustings as a European Parliament candidate (number 3 on the Yorkshire and the Humber list). When the Green candidate announced that he supported staying in the EU, I had a quiet conversation with the Labour candidate sitting next to me.

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Joe Otten

Nick Clegg’s letter from the leader: People count

By Joe Otten | Sun 27th January 2013 - 10:20 am

This week Nick covers the economy, the fall in unemployment, the big problem with David Cameron’s speech on the EU, and rounds off with reform of the royal succession.

The point that while the economy is weak, employment is surprisingly strong is something that is perplexing the economists (video) and I’m surprised it doesn’t get more attention.

It hasn’t hit the headlines, perhaps because the fall in unemployment was thought to be a blip. But after over a year, this is clearly something to be welcomed. I’d like to …

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Joe Otten

The speech that never was

By Joe Otten | Sat 19th January 2013 - 10:00 am

David Cameron - License Some rights reserved by Statsministerens kontor While David Cameron’s much hyped speech on Europe has been postponed, it is not clear that this makes much difference. The key points were briefed to the press in advance so we can see the point.

Full marks for not wasting good copy already written go to the Economist which draws four conclusions, including this one:

The prime minister is trying to Europeanise Euroscepticism. The British often assume they are the

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