rejoineu

The rEUle of law

I once attended a HoC home affairs select committee where I saw that some Tory members were quite shocked that the EU would require guarantees on the rule of law to both accept the European arrest warrant and police co-operation through Europol. By guarantees, they require adoption of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and enforcement/appeal to the EU Court.

Democratic control of state surveillance is a global problem and one about which most of Europe due it its history is much more attuned. The UK’s current legal framework is the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, proposed by Teresa May, and “opposed” by Andy Burnham and Sir Kier Starmer.

The whole of Labour’s ploy is to create something beyond the EU, to offer to share access to weapons & intelligence in exchange for single market opt-outs, a single market for munitions, but not for labour or people.

They probably want to keep the justice pillar opt-outs too, although given the changing politics of the EU and the Labour government, there is little point. The opt-outs were negotiated to protect the British state against the EU court’s potential interference in UK immigration and labour laws. But escaping the CJEU is not enough; it should also be noted that most of the recent ECtHR losses by the British government have been over the administration of justice, not unexpected when one reviews the recent Home Secretary and Justice Secretary incumbents …

Starmer, Berlin, rejoineu and delay

Even the press and some commentators noticed that Kier Starmer visited Berlin and repeated his Brexit red-lines and yet claimed to want to reduce trade frictions between the two countries.

Germany is not in a position to negotiate this. Trade with 3^rd countries is an EU competency. Starmer’s growth mission will be easier if the UK were to rejoin the single market [and customs union]. This involves him changing his mind, and talking to the Commission [FT] to the Commission in Brussels.

The British people would seem to want to rejoin the EU but the Labour Government and too many experts would seem to be still pursuing the chimera of a mercantilist patchwork trade deal which must be called “Cakeism” in the UK and will be called cherry-picking or extrawurst in the EU. This is not available, neither is a swiss style multi-treaty deal.

Starmer’s government seems to think that revamped Anglo-German military treaty will help the cause of reduced friction trade. There are three problems with this. Just as one shouldn’t start trade negotiations in Berlin but in Brussels, military co-operation needs to involve Poland which now has one of the largest armies in the EU. Since the British ambitions are broader i.e. beyond military co-operation and to include intelligence sharing and cybersecurity but since the UK was kicked out of Europol as part of Brexit because it no longer recognised the EU’s Charter of Fundamental rights, intelligence sharing will need a common recognition of privacy and judicial rights of citizens. The children and grandchildren of fascist and Stalinist societies will not permit their governments to outsource surveillance to an unrestricted and and unaccountable body. The third problem is that suspicious member states will characterise the UK position as wanting freedom of movement for weapons and ammunition, but not of people, and a single market for guns but not for anything else.

As a counterpoint, Richard Bentall writes in a thread where he states that “the only way to slow it [rejoining the EU] is by saying it’s too difficult”, to which I add that holding out for better opt-outs is merely delaying rejoining. As a reinforcement, Blade of the Sun argues that rejoining is simple,

You apply to rejoin.
They tell us what you need to do.
You do it.
Rejoin

And it is that simple, no opt-outs, no special deals but I fear that this Government are not yet ready to drop their dreams of a swiss-style/cakeist deal supported by too-clever academics and journalists, who are looking to ‘hack the treaties’. They need to make their mind up, do they want to be seen to be clever, or change the world; too often this is a choice and one that many academics and journalists fail to address or get wrong. …

The colour of my passport

I’m losing hope on my next passport being burgundy.

The only way the UK will rejoin the European Union he’s when it’s ready to be a good citizen.

It is clear that Labour’s leadership despite the opinion polls, have a view that better terms short of membership can be obtained. Firstly, i don’t think it’s desirable, and secondly, I’m not sure it’s available. All the intelligence suggests that the EU has no interest in replicating the Swiss arrangement and that the single market is indivisible.

Pretending that the Tory deal has failed due to its design and that all it needs is “grown ups in the room”, a view reinforced by numerous academics attempting to prove how clever they are by designing a new relationship, Is unlikely to succeed.

At the moment EU accession requires a unanimous vote on the EU council; this would mean the UK reacquires its political rights and full access to the subsidy programmes. This is unlikely to happen while we have a big bill poster signposts that we proposed to continue to behave as we did before we left.

It looks as if the people are ready to rejoin, but without leadership and a vigorous explanation that the opt-outs have gone and we need to be good citizens within the union I think it unlikely we will persuade the EU that we are suitable candidates.

The EU would almost certainly require a referendum to show that the government mandates is supported. It’s been said many times, that the EU don’t wish to play okie cokie with us.

It is sad that the elections to the European Parliament will have damaged both programmes for reform of the European Union. The Federalist proposition will have been weakened by the losses to the Greens and ALDE (Liberals) in the EP, and the growth of the ECR, who are campaigning to return competencies to the member states, and the alternative, “Sailing the High Seas”, which I characterise as Prix Fixé as opposed to a-la-carte, will have its support weakened by the French and German results where the sponsoring Governments both lost support.

I am of the view that StHS with it flexibility would be a better target to rejoin than the current EU or the Federalist alternative but rejoining the EU is needed to fix our economy and our democracy. People’s sovereignty requires access to human rights courts, and the UK needs an internal subsidiarity agreement, which I hope implementing the Brown Commission proposals will give us although the Labour manifesto promises the devolution without the funding and structural reform to embed such devolution. …

Reading Labour’s tea leaves

I wrote about the possibility of a youth mobility proposal from the EU; I’d say it’s now dead and that may be what the Commission was trying to achieve, to stop the UK cherry picking, stop us levying the NHS fee and high [unreasonable] visa fees, although the Commission may not give up. The bad news is that it has enabled those that oppose freedom of movement to reinforce their arguments.

During the discussion I was pointed at the FT’s comments on David Lammy’s Foreign Affairs article extolling “Progressive Realism (in foreign affairs)”. On the EU, it is my view that Labour will seek to use enhanced security co-operation to further their cakeist approach to the single market. The FT article on Lammy’s speech https://www.ft.com/content/7a8484d5-3348-4df6-810f-81c1b53dd4ad?shareType=nongift makes it clear that using our military budget as a negotiating tool for single marker opt-outs will not be easy and everyone in the UK is ignoring the fact that justice co-operation requires a common basic law and that the majority of the UK’s recent case losses at the ECtHR have been on issues of justice. Lammy also repeated/published his views in a Guardian piece. Lammy in his article, and in his speech to Labour Party conference 23 has articulated the need the greater cooperation with both the European Union and its member states. He always adds the mantra of the new red lines, but he clearly sees and speaks for the need for greater cooperation over a range of issues.

I have also been pointed at Martin Kettle, in an article, “Starmer can’t dodge the Europe question for ever. In office, the economy will answer it for him”. He reckons, it’ll be Reeves who’ll break first, I don’t agree. She’s remarkably stubborn and well trained by the high priests of QMT in the Bank & Treasury. I wonder if it might be Lammy. While I gave up trying to read the tea leaves from the speeches of Labour’s front bench, Lammy’s speeches read as if he may want to do something else but adds the red lines because he has too. …

We can do better than supposed sensibleness

Martin Wolf, the Chief economics correspondent at the FT, just before Xmas published a piece of clickbait, entitled, "Britain won’t rejoin the EU for decades — if ever", with a tag line, “The sensible approach for the UK is to seek a closer and more co-operative relationship with Brussels”. He starts with an alleged piece of mystic folklore, that one can’t cross the same river twice, which stripped of its source and supposed wisdom of its age is clearly nonsense. Of course, you can cross a river twice and anyone that commutes from Canary Wharf to Westminster does it twice a day.

This rest of this article, overleaf, article looks at what Wolf said, refutes the arguments, exposes the lack of evidence and concludes that it's a failed project and that failure and the prospect of rejoining cannot be suppressed.

Pipe dream or inevitability

Larry Elliot wrote a piece of click bait in the Guardian on why since Britain is not a basket case, it should not rejoin the EU. He also argued that the growing strongman nationalism, and racism amongst some member states is a reason for avoiding the EU.

I wrote a reply which I shortened and offered to the Guardian, and was eventually published on Another Europe’s web site. I have also posted a copy on my Medium blog, outside the paywall.

I argued that the economy was in a poor state, certainly worse than it might have been and quoted the OBR and my “Remain” article, from this blog, posted in 2016 that the 4% growth underperformance was about where the forecasters had predicted.

I pointed out that his investment successes were selective good news, and only talk about yesterdays driving technology. He like most seem to fail to recognise that we have already missed the boat on renewable energy manufacturing.

I conclude by arguing that the UK is not inoculated from the racism inherent in authoritarian rule. It must be fought not avoided, starting by the repeal of Tories immigration laws.

I really conclude by stating that rejoining the EU is an inevitability not a pipe dream. …

The (EU) reform train is at the platform

The Guardian reports, “European Commission president said Brexit could be fixed because leaders had ‘goofed it up’” This has caused some excitement in the Brexit fantasist camp. This article is poor though, as ever, focusing on the UK, provoking both Sunak’s extremely rapid and intellectually vapid rebuttal and a ‘senior Labour source’ confirming that Labour will not rejoin the single market. They all fail to take account of the EU’s needs to prepare to accelerate the admission process for the Western Balkans and Ukraine/Moldova. Von der Leyen is also arguably speaking to the über-federalists who will not make a choice between enlargement and integration, or if they do, choose integration. She was also not talking in the short term. Although I expect she is hoping for a more rapid return than Starmer/Reeves’s “not in 50 years”.

In the short term, we can examine the European Parliament (EP) Resolution calling for a Convention, see also the full text published on the EP site, which is arguably the manifesto of the Federalists, and “Sailing the High Seas” aka the Report of the French & German experts which foresees that the EU needs a pause on integration and to offer those not ready for next steps confidence that they belong.

It’ll be a difficult choice.

The EU needs to avoid the idea of an a-la carte choice to EU membership with each member state negotiating its preferred opt outs. One of the fuels for British exceptionalism was the four opt-outs, and the expectation that more could be obtained. “Sailing the high seas” proposes tiers of membership, a bit more prix fixe and less a-la carte. The EP resolution confirms the indivisibility of the four freedoms of the single market.

The Union needs greater economic integration, even if only to pay for the Ukraine war, and for that to happen they need to change the way decisions are taken and change the goals of the Union’s current economic management regime. Enlargement also is a reason for increasing the decision making speed of the Union and its institutions. The size of the union budget is too small to perform effective demand management. At the moment, it is prohibited from raising direct taxes and thus the Union’s economic policy tools are exclusively monetary and thus mainly impact on euro zone states. The EP resolution proposes to reinforce full employment as an equal goal to the current debt management goals.

One of the key proposals in the EP resolution are about decision making and the powers of the Council. The EP proposals removes the member state veto from many areas of decision making and transforms many of them from Council decision to a Parliamentary co-decision.

The EP resolution carried by a slim majority with large parts of the EPP abstaining may not have the political weight it should, but it calls for a significant extension of competencies, which is what the EU refers to its areas of jurisdiction.

The list of extensions is extensive including exclusive Union competence for the environment and biodiversity as well as negotiations on climate change. It proposes to establish shared competences on public health matters and the protection and improvement of human health, especially cross-border health threats, civil protection, industry, and education especially when transnational issues such as mutual recognition of degrees, grades, competences and qualifications are concerned.

The Parliament proposes to further develop Union shared competences in the areas of energy, foreign affairs, external security and defence, external border policy in the area of freedom, security and justice, and cross-border infrastructure.

CTOE has called on the Council to agree to a convention and demands, “that any treaty revision process ought to include citizen participation, deliberation and consultation from the start and not wait until it will again be too late: failed ratification referendums.” It also observes that, “the proposals regarding the democratic life of the EU remain deceptively modest”.

The train maybe leaving the station; it’s certainly the case that the EU’s member states have little interest in supporting Britain’s political parties as they gather the courage to move beyond triangulation despite the polling evidence on the British people being ready and wanting to rejoin.

Here are my notes and links on Von Der Leyen’s speech, initially focused on a EuroIntelligence piece. I have been tracking these developments in wiki articles, EU Reform and Sailing the High Seas, … . …