Labour, its manifesto and the EU

Labour, its manifesto and the EU

Here is a swift call to action on Labour’s National Policy Forum, on relations with the European Union. I made an extract of the document to collect what they say. Earlier this month, Labour issued its NPF report in draft form. Members have the ability, through their local parties, to amend the this report; Labour Party members have until May 29th to notify, through their CLPs, their CLP NPF Reps of changes they want to see in the draft policy document. 

Perhaps the critical paragraph is,

An improved relationship with Europe

To deliver prosperity at home, it is vital to re-establish the UK as a trusted and reliable partner. As part of our mission for the UK to achieve the highest sustained economic growth in the G7, Labour will seek to improve the UK’s trade and investment relationship with Europe while maintaining its new role outside of the single market and customs union.

Labour’s NATIONAL policy FORUM dRAFT rEPORT 2023

I believe that the UK should rejoin the European Union but that a first step is that, it is necessary to rejoin the customs union and single market to alleviate and reverse the decline in economic activity and prosperity; it is now obvious to the vast majority of the UK population that this is the direction required. I also believe a failure to get the position on the EU right will jeopardise Labour’s electoral prospects.

Labour must,

1. call for a new relationship with the EU involving the adoption of the single market and customs union, including a reciprocal freedom of movement to work and that as part of this, Labour must repeal the cruel hostile environment.

2. commit to rejoin Horizon Europe and Erasmus+

3. add to the draft the recent promise to permit EU citizen/residents to vote in UK Parliamentary elections

The Labour Movement for Europe are proposing that, the Party must promise to negotiate direct access to the single market and a selective visa waiver system. We believe we must commit to the single market’s free movement of labour with no sectoral reservations but wish the LME well. We think their position will be less acceptable to the EU since their position is that the four freedoms are indivisible. To me it’s an example of our continued attachment to “Extrawurst”!

The featured image is one of mine. CC DFL 2017 BY-SA …

Rejoining EU, what’ll it take?

Rejoining EU, what’ll it take?

I attended the EU’s citizens panel on virtual worlds over the weekend. One of the most inspirational aspects of this event was the ability to meet so many people from across the European Union. I took the opportunity, to talk to some about how they felt about British re-entry. One Dutchman felt we hadn’t suffered enough, and that we needed to wait. One German was anxious that we re-joined so as to reduce his tax burden. Another very well-informed Dutchman, said he felt that British public opinion under estimated what the EU would ask to allow us to rejoin and one Finn, said his condition on us re-joining was that we be forced to enter FIFA competitions as a single nation. I think this was a joke, but he seemed quite upset about Finland’s record against the UK nations’ football teams.

My informed Dutch correspondent started by talking about the euro. Some of what he said particularly on the Euro was a bit worrying, but it’s a price worth paying if that’s what it takes. I suggested that the Swedish precedent on the currency is important and that there may be dangers to the EU in attempting to subsume another global reserve currency too quickly. I also wonder if those nations hosting cities that have replaced London’s international financial trading capability, really want to see the London market makers able to trade in euro instruments so soon. To me more importantly on the currency and macro-economic convergence, are the limitations entrenched in the ‘stability and growth pact’. Debt levels and deficits should be the result of a democratic mandate and not embedded in an unchangeable treaty; the need to breach the stability and growth pact limits during the pandemic is a proof point to this truth. Perhaps the EU member states will take the opportunity to amend the requirement of Stability and Growth Pact. We agreed that the other opt outs are all gone; the UK will have to forgo its financial rebate, our charter of fundamental rights exemptions and comply with and join the Schengen treaty.  These terms are acceptable to me. We need to start talking about them. …

We want our star back

We want our star back

The Rejoin EU movement held a national march today, the Evening Standard reported that it was well attended by 15,000 people, and @femi_sorry who took a film of the march and posted it on twitter at 12 times speed, so not as large as others

I’d love to thank the interpretive dancers performing to ‘ode to joy’, the car and van drivers that supported us, and the one builder who told us to “fuck off”. …

Back to the single market?

Back to the single market?

I have been published on Brexit Spotlight. The article reviews the macro economic reporting and increasingly obvious failure of Brexit, it critiques the Labour Party leadership’s recent response reported at least by me in these two blog articles, Sensibleness Postponed, and my take on Lammy’s speech a week earlier , looks at other political forces within and outside the Labour Party. It highlights the Redfield Wilton opinion polling showing growing support for the single market and rejoining the EU and ends with a warning, that Labour “is terrified of setting out a principled case that seeks to lead, not follow, the electorate. Ironically, he i.e. Starmer risks losing Labour voters – especially young and working-age voters – with this strategy”. …

The economics hurdle for rejoining!

This was published on the London 4 Europe web site, arguing that the Euro and “Banking Union” are potential political obstacles to rejoining. I just observe that the author has not caught up with the change in macro-economic management, the Stability and Growth Pact has serious credibility problems given the numerous breaches. We can hope that with a new coloured government in Germany the deficit fetishism of the EU will be weakened. Secondly, banking regulation is global and emanates from the G7 and BIS in Basel. The EU has little room for manoeuvre, although of course, should it be in a position to join BIS that would change things. This is an article designed to show how clever the author is and fails in that goal.

The ECB, Frankfurt CC DFL 2011 BY-SA

I note the article focuses on Sweden, which has agreed to adopt the Euro and not Denmark which has an opt-out. When we get to negotiating re-entry, the size of the UK economy and the sterling zone will be issues which may lead to us being given an opt-out or a Swedish deal, although I was interested to note that Nordea, Sweden’s largest bank has moved to Finland to locate in the Eurozone.

A serious analysis will come later, when both parties need an answer dealing with transaction volume, prudential regulation and fundamentally macro-economic policy. Let’s note that we had an opt-out of the compliance clauses of the SGP, we doubt we’ll be getting that back.

Macro-economics will be a problem if we have a left led Labour Govt., that wanted to pursue a policy of full employment but more importantly will be the need to meet the democracy criterion of the Copenhagen Criteria, where parliamentary sovereignty, the House of Lords and first past the post together may be seen as obstacles. Starmer’s Labour lacks the will to confront the issue of rejoining the EU but would probably welcome the shackles of today’s Stability and Growth pact. Actually, the Stability & Growth Pact is a serious barrier to rejoining for the Left; perhaps the sterling zone will save us from that too.  …

Sophie’s choice

I had the pleasure of meeting Rachel Reeves (MP Leeds West) last weekend; she was guest speaker at a Lewisham Labour fund raiser and I was fortunate enough to be able to ask her a question as she was leaving with her sister, Ellie (MP Lewisham West & Penge). I asked where she got her mandate to say we are not going to rejoin the EU in 50 years. She said that it came from Keir and when I said that I’d ask him the same question, she said that we have to win back the Red Wall seats and that even hers remained in jeopardy unless we had a firm position. I did say that “not in 50 years” will lose votes in London, wish I’d made it clear that the “policy” may be posing a choice between the two sisters’ seats.

There’s an interesting asymmetry in the estimated Brexit votes between the two seats, Leeds West 53% leave, Lewisham West and Penge 35% leave. …

Ukraine, war & Britain

Ukraine, war & Britain

I wrote a piece two days ago, focusing on what UK  citizens and residents of good will should do about the war in Ukraine but feel I need to clarify.

I congratulate the Ukrainian people and their armed forces for the defence they have put up. It proves to me that the UK, because that is what I know , was fooled by the hybrid war conducted by Russia who weakened the UK’s will to resist its imperial adventures and defend its own democracy. Russia funded the Brexit campaign and much of the Tory Party; Brexit is a massive weakening of the European self defence capability as we can see by the EU’s speed in responding to the Russian invasion compared with the UK’s pedestrian pace. Russia’s propaganda presented us with a view as to the invincibility and overwhelming numeric superiority of the Russian Army.  This imbued in some British people, including me, a moral cowardice. This cowardice, equivalent to appeasement in the 30’s will have been reinforced by the moral subversion of NATO due to its US led adventurism in the Middle East.

NATO is the only alliance that can act but to call it a great achievement is hubristic and sectarian overstatement. Today’s NATO is not the same organisation as it was thirty years ago. The need for NATO will be proven if Sweden and Finland seek to join but all its fans need to recognise that the US is not the reliable and generous ally it once was. Trump explicitly questioned the US commitment to Article 5 and Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was not agreed by NATO.

The Ukrainian state is not pretty, it has the 3rd worst record in front of the European Court of Human Rights, and is judged by the EIU democracy index as a Hybrid State. In terms of both metrics the Russian record is worse. NATO member Turkey is the second most frequent breacher of the ECHR. But the Russian invasion is a war crime which it seems will now be investigated by the ICC. Good!

Throughout this we must not forget the brave Russians who are expressing their opposition to the war.

At home, a government that speaks for me must

  • Implement effective sanctions
  • Set up effective and generous refugee acceptance programmes
  • Purge itself of Russian funded corruption
  • Develop a defence policy that defends us against real threats not fake ones.

I would add that we should rejoin the EU but that will not happen until it ceases to be a partisan issue, however this will take much less than 50 years. …

The EU, too early to ask to rejoin?

The EU, too early to ask to rejoin?

I am standing for anothereurope’s national committee, the poll closes tonight, if you’ve not voted, please do so and put me first, I explain why in another article on this blog and in this article I look at rejoining. I had thought “rejoining the EU” to be off the table for years but the post Brexit trade deal is turning to shit even more quickly than I expected. Again, I over-estimate the Tories; if I was planning to fuck up the economy, and betray noisy element of my electoral coalition, I’d have sort have planned to do it over a period of time, inspired by the instruction manual of how to boil a frog, hoping they wouldn’t notice. But no, within days, it’s clear that the threats identified by ‘Project Fear’ are well founded. I believe that we should rejoin, but there are two problems, one the Tories and secondly, there will need to be unanimity amongst the member states and many of them will be fed up with our behaviour over not only the last 11 months but in much of the time leading up to our 2016 vote. We will need to show that we’ll be better Europeans and probably show it for a sustained period. It will take time; in order to mitigate the damage being done to the economy now, I think we’ll have to pursue a stealth mission to re-join the single market either via a swiss route, of a bilateral agreement, by developing the future relationship agreement. This will be hard with this current Government and Parliament, partly because of its hard on for ‘controlling our borders’. The full article says more, with hyperlinks on the economics and on the paths to rejoining, ...