Having let David Lammy, and to some extent Rachel Reeves trial a new Brexit line, Kier Starmer is planning a speech with a five point plan, which has been previewed (£) in the FT.

Trade is down the plughole (£), as is inward investment and our GDP is set to flatline for the next 18 months and we have labour shortages which are crippling various industries but most obviously agriculture and inflation is now running at 11%. The economy is not in a good state (£). All of this is caused by Brexit, When studying macroeconomics in the ’70s, we thought these dimensions of the economy were choices and a trade off, and while popular theory has changed, it’s quite an achievement for them all to be wrong and yet another not to want to fix it.

Meanwhile the FT article (£) states,

Starmer will insist that a Labour government would not seek to rejoin the EU’s single market or customs union or reintroduce freedom of movement — let alone seek to reverse the 2016 Leave vote.

I say “why not?”. All three of these measures are obvious and growingly popular solutions to the macroeconomic problems we face today.

The five point plan is important, but leaves glaring holes, does Labour propose to put import checks on products not included in the new agreement, will it try and ease the Labour shortage by allowing workers from Europe to return, why would the EU agree to freedom of movement for the professionally qualified only?. Does any of this help jobs and the environment in the east coast and southern port cities?

Meanwhile, Redfield Wilton report that a majority of voters would vote to rejoin the EU although just as with the original referendum the terms of entry are not clear. Starmer and kitchen cabinet are going to be left behind and are in danger of driving their own core votes into the hands of other parties. RW show that the majority of working age people (at least those under 55) support rejoining.


Image: the port is from unsplash, the plughole is public domain

Sensibleness postponed
Tagged on:                 

6 thoughts on “Sensibleness postponed

  • 5th July 2022 at 2:25 pm
    Permalink

    Here’s the speech in his own words. Yeah Right!

    I repeat that asking for mutual recognition of qualifications to allow the anglo/us professional services firms to operate in Europe without recognising that we want/need their Doctors and less skilled workers in agriculture, logistics and hosptiality is Labour’s version of cakeism.

    Starmer raises the issue of civil security co-operation. This would require some form of agreement to allow the CJEU to supervise our courts even more. (They have a residual jurisdiction in Northern Ireland). Justice ministry co-operation including Europol is only available to EU member states who are signed up to the Charter of Fundamental Rights and its court, the Court of Justice of the European Union.

  • 12th July 2022 at 12:04 pm
    Permalink

    Yougov have run a survey on how this was received, I made this chart of the response of Labour Voters.

    They haven’t learned; there is somewhere else for voters to go and even the simplest of models takes this into account.

  • Pingback:Back to the single market? – davelevy.info

  • 15th July 2022 at 2:45 pm
    Permalink

    When writing this, I missed that most senior politician to question this is not a Love Socialism, Hate Brexit alumni but Sadiq Kahn. We won’t get Scotland back with a Brexit policy, and we are in danger of losing London and the other cities.

  • Pingback:Can ‘boring’ win elections and deliver good policy? – davelevy.info

  • Pingback:Back to the single market? Pressure grows for new deal – davelevy.info

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: