Ideas on Europe Blog

Is there a connection between the rise of right wing parties in Europe and America, and the devaluation of and the debasement of our languages?  Mike Ungersma thinks there may be a link

Words. They are stones shaped to the hand.
Fling them accurately. They are horses.
Bridle them; they’ll run away with you.

Caroline Fisher

“All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.  When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer”  It was April of 1946 and George Orwell was alarmed at the debasement of English.  “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,” he wrote in his still relevant essay, Politics and the English Language.  Three years later, in the futuristic novel 1984, he attempted to show how the very meanings of words can be turned upside down to support a maniacal and repressive police state.  In the essay he went on:

Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Later, in the same work, he adds: “I should expect to find – this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify – that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.”

Is poetry possible after Auschwitz?

Orwell may have felt he lacked the expertise to link what he perceived to be a degrading of these three European languages to the rise of Nazism, Communism and Fascism, but scholars like the cultural historian George Steiner did not.  In a 1960 article for THE REPORTER, Steiner meticulously traces the connection between the rise of Hitler and the alarming and deliberate misuse of the German language:

Make of the words what Hitler and Goebbels and the hundred thousand Untersturmführer made: conveyors of terror and falsehood.  Something will happen to the words.  Something of the lies and sadism will settle in the marrow of the language . . . It will no longer perform quite as well as it used to, its two principal functions: the conveyance of humane order which we call law, and the communication of the quick of the human spirit which we call grace.

Are Orwell and Steiner – and many others – correct? Is there something special about ‘political speech’?  Do the words, the phrases, the repetition, even the rhythm of a politician addressing a crowd – or more likely today, the TV cameras – differ from the speech the rest of us use?  And why do we ridicule them for such speech?  Or accuse them of lying and avoiding the questions put to them?

At their recent joint news conference to announce a ‘breakthrough’ in their negotiations over ‘Brexit,’ the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, and the European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, employed the language we associate with virtually any modern politician.  Vague generalities, vague promises, few details, with much left unanswered and much more open to competing interpretations.

‘Bare ruin’d choirs’

Like a vicar in a Sunday sermon, May and Juncker were employing the vocabulary of aspiration: “We want the world to be different and better,” not what is, but what ought to be.  For them, politics is a process – a never-ending endeavour to create a better tomorrow.  Unlike the vicar who promises eternal life in exchange for an earthly commitment to sinless living, or damnation for ignoring God’s commandments, the politician can make no such bargain.  For him, there can be  no concrete goal, no identifiable end, no resolution beyond continuing and endless effort.  Like the vicar, the politician seeks to convince, not convert.

Religious homilies and political rhetoric have much in common, but the task of both – the vicar and the politician – has been made much more difficult, religion by the relentless march of science, and politics by the devaluation of language.  For religion, the issue seems decided – at least for Christianity.  Hundreds, thousands of churches today are bingo halls or deteriorating, empty shells, what Shakespeare may have had in mind in his sonnet that spoke of ‘bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.’ Church attendance has plummeted.  Those who identify with Christianity are a shrinking minority.  Sunday is just another day in the week, and even Christmas is robbed of its original meaning.

Just as the Renaissance and its successor, the Enlightenment, eroded the authority and foundation of Christianity, careless use of language may now be undermining politics and even democracy.

Walk into any British pub in the 50s, 60s or even as recently as the 1980s, and you found two permanent fixtures on the bar: a charity box for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and another apt to be labelled, ‘Fifty Pence for Each Swear Word.’  Keep up the flow of profanities, and the publican would admonish – “Gentlemen, there are ladies present.”

The RNLI box remains.  The ‘swear box’ and the landlord’s warning are long gone.

A volley of expletives

Nothing quite devalues a word more than its overuse.  The utter pervasiveness of profanity at every level of modern society has rendered words that were intended to shock useless.  What once was a scale of obscenities that could be employed with gradualness to reach a crescendo of emphasis is no longer available to any writer or speaker.  In every walk of life, profanity abounds – in film, music, theatre, social media, TV – and sadly – even in the school yard.

This one example of the debasement of language has yet to creep into political dialogue – but something else, far worse, has.  Restraint, logical argument, efforts to rationally persuade, all are increasingly replaced by rant, bombast and histrionics.  A new and frightening coarseness and total and intentional disregard for the truth has become the lingua franca of much political rhetoric.  When challenged, the politician responds with the charge of ‘fake news’.  The political right relishes the opportunity to use the tactics this trend offers, and it is having an appreciable effect.

Aided by an enabling technology, the internet and its social media, everyone wants to be heard and no one wants to listen.  Can’t be heard? Then just crank up the volume and shower the world with rage.  Will extreme language lead to extreme politics?  The evidence mounts in virtually every democratic country.

More worryingly, it might even lead to the perfected technique of Nazi Germany, where, as George Steiner notes:

Gradually, words lost their meaning and acquired nightmarish definitions.  Jude, Pole, Russe  came to mean two-legged lice, putrid vermin which good Aryans must squash, as a party manual said, “like roaches on a dirty wall.”  “Final solution,” endgültige Loüsng, came to signify the death of six million human beings in gas ovens.

Steiner concludes his article on post-war Germany, The Hollow Miracle, this way:

Everything forgets.  But not a language.  When it has been injected with falsehood, only the most drastic truth can cleanse it.

Mike Ungersma, Benicassim, Spain

December 2017

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On the other hand, she says we need you all, we’ll be poorer without you, please don’t go.

Can anyone ever believe anything this duplicitous woman says?

In an open letter this week to all EU migrants in the UK, Theresa May wrote:

“I greatly value the depth of the contributions you make – enriching every part of our economy, our society, our culture and our national life. I know our country would be poorer if you left and I want you to stay.”

Oh, don’t give me that forked tongue nonsense Mrs May. For years you have been saying that Britain has too many EU migrants, and we need to bring numbers down to a trickle.

If that had happened, we wouldn’t now have the three million EU migrants you now say the country can’t do without.

People believed you when you said Britain has too many EU migrants. Why do you think they voted for Leave? They voted so those migrants would Leave. They voted because you said you’d bring the numbers down.

Now you’re saying we need them all. There weren’t too many after all. The country will be poorer without them.

Do you really know what you’re doing? You’re messing with people’s heads; and their hearts, and their lives. What you are doing should be a criminal offence.

Oh you closed your letter with:

“I wish you and all your families a great Christmas and a very happy New Year.”

You think you can wave all this away with a Happy Christmas?

For 18 months since the EU referendum result, you have let EU migrants here suffer whilst they have not known whether they can stay here on the same terms as they are here now.

The answer is clearly no. Their rights will not be as good as they’ve got now. (Ditto UK migrants living across the EU).

If you sincerely think that all the hard-working, upstanding, law-abiding, tax-paying EU migrants in the UK are needed and wanted, why didn’t you say so before the EU referendum?

Instead, at the Tory conference immediately prior the referendum, you said the current numbers of EU migrants in the UK are of zero value. Yes, you did.

As Home Secretary, in your speech to the Tory Party faithful in October 2015 you said,

“..at best the net economic and fiscal effect of high immigration is close to zero.”

High immigration to you then represented the three million EU migrants in the UK.

The front-page headline in The Telegraph the next day was your mantra that migration is “harming society”, causing ‘thousands of British people to be forced out of their jobs.’

You said then that, “when immigration is too high, when the pace of change is too fast, it’s impossible to build a cohesive society.”

You added:

“It’s difficult for schools and hospitals and core infrastructure like housing and transport to cope. And we know that for people in low-paid jobs, wages are forced down even further while some people are forced out of work altogether.”

You blamed too many foreign students (how can you possibly call students migrants?) and too many EU migrants.

You said:

“The numbers coming from Europe are unsustainable and the rules have to change.”

You quoted your party’s manifesto, ‘we must work to control immigration and put Britain first’.

(Is it any wonder that President Trump is somewhat confused as to what you support?)

Now you say:

‘As Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, I am proud that more than three million EU citizens have chosen to make your homes and livelihoods here in our country.’

Now you say, ‘I know our country would be poorer if you left and I want you to stay’.

Now you say that those three million EU migrants are welcome here, when you previously made clear that you didn’t want them here.

Now you say you are proud that those three million EU migrants made their homes and livelihoods in our country, when you previously said they were stealing our jobs and putting pressure on our schools, hospitals, homes and wages.

Do you really understand what is true and untrue, Mrs May? Because you cannot have it both ways.

I will tell you the truth, which somewhere nestling in your heart and soul you must surely know, even if it’s a truth you are not principled or honest enough to say.

You know bloody well that the UK needs those three million EU migrants here, even though you and your cohorts made it absolutely obvious that those three million EU migrants weren’t wanted or welcome here.

(That’s why you won Brexit, get it?)

They are needed because Britain has far more jobs than Britons to do them. You know that. That’s why you dare not let those EU migrants leave, even though you previously said you hadn’t wanted them to come here in the first place.

You know that if those EU migrants go (and thousands already have – around 10,000 from our NHS alone in the past year) then we will not have enough Britons to do all the jobs in Britain.

You know that.

You also know that it’s a lie that migrants are stealing jobs, bringing down wages, and putting pressure on schools, homes and hospitals.

EU migrants are not stealing jobs. We have the lowest level of unemployment since 1975. We have more British people at work than ever before.

Yes, we have too many Britons struggling, on unwanted zero-hour contracts, on wages that haven’t gone up in years, on having to use food banks, and only just getting by. But you know, yes you do, that that is not the fault of migrants.

So whose fault is it?

It’s your fault, Mrs May. Yours.

Yours and successive British governments who have miserably failed to invest sufficiently in the infrastructure of our country, to ensure that we have enough homes, hospitals and schools to adequately accommodate ALL the workers the country needs, whatever their nationality.

You know this. That’s why it is so convenient for you to blame someone else. Migrants.

But now the truth is dawning. Because if you act out your nasty, racist, xenophobic rhetoric that we have too many migrants, and they go, our economy will crash. And then Britons will have even fewer jobs, homes, hospitals and schools, and even lower wages.

And then you won’t be able to blame migrants anymore, because they won’t be here, or at least, not in the numbers you previously said were too high, but now magically say are all wanted and needed.

The fact is that migrants are making a massive net contribution to our Treasury and our economy.

Figures released by HM Revenue & Customs show that in the 2014 tax year, EU migrants here paid £14.7 billion in tax and national insurance, but only took £2.6 billion in tax credits and child benefits.

That’s a huge profit for the country, Mrs May; money you should be using to invest in more schools, hospitals and housing.

But like your Brexit Secretary, David Davis, you are not interested in evidence-based politics and policies. If you were, you would take on board the considerable volumes of evidence that EU migrants are a boon, and not a burden to us.

Last year the Centre of Economic Performance, part of the London School of Economics, published extensive research concluding that:

• EU immigrants pay more in taxes than they use public services and therefore they help to reduce the budget deficit.
• The areas of the UK with large increases in EU immigration did not suffer greater falls in the jobs and pay of UK-born workers.
• EU immigrants are more educated, younger, more likely to be in work and less likely to claim benefits than the UK-born.

And a separate study concluded by University College London in 2014 concluded that:

• European immigrants who arrived in the UK since 2000 have contributed more than £20bn to UK public finances between 2001 and 2011.
• Those EU migrants endowed the country with productive human capital that would have cost the UK £6.8bn in spending on education.

And Theresa May’s own office whilst Home Secretary also undertook their own extensive review of the evidence that concluded:

• There is relatively little evidence that migration has caused statistically significant displacement of UK natives from the labour market in periods when the economy is strong.

What’s more, EU migrants – all migrants – enrich our country in so many more ways than just economically.

What’s that, Mrs May? You don’t believe the evidence? Oh, that’s also the common response of Brexiters, who must now be very confused by your welcoming of three million EU migrants that previously you said were unwelcome.

Well get this. I don’t believe anything you say.

You are not fit to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. You are disuniting our country and our people in a most nasty, despicable way, and destroying the reputation of a once fine, tolerant and progressive country.

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Ignorance.

He admits he hasn’t done any in-depth research on the impact of Brexit. He doesn’t believe in it. He just believes in Brexit; it’s a faith for him.

Who needs facts when you’re a self-described “determined optimist”?

But Theresa May will have no such excuse. She’s known all along that Brexit will be bad for Britain. She said so before the referendum when she advised the country to vote against Brexit:

“Remaining inside the European Union does make us more secure, it does make us more prosperous and it does make us more influential beyond our shores.

“I believe the case to remain a member of the European Union is strong.

“I believe it is clearly in our national interest to remain a member of the European Union.”

Mrs May knew then, as she knows today, that the UK cannot get a better deal with the EU than the one we have now.

She knows, and so that makes her far more culpable than David Davis, who knows very little, and cares even less.

What’s more, Theresa May is in charge. She could put a stop to this farce at any time.

Or, if she really had principles, she could resign.

The EU is the world’s largest free trade area.

As a member, we receive huge benefits worth enormously more than the net annual membership fee of £7.1* billion a year (net amount calculated by the UK Statistics Authority) 

As a member, we enjoy free, frictionless trade with our biggest trading partner by far, right on our doorstep, where almost 50% of our exports go to and over 50% of our imports come from. Nowhere else in the world comes close to that.

Prime Minister Theresa is desperate to continue to enjoy similar membership benefits of frictionless trade with the EU after we have ended our membership, because she knows, more than David Davis, that our economy’s survival depends on it.

She has said she wants Britain to continue to enjoy membership benefits as an ex-member, without being part of the EU Single Market or customs union, without agreeing to the rules of the EU and its market, without being subject to the European Court of Justice to oversee those rules, and without paying anything to the EU for access.

She says she aims to achieve this with a new trade agreement with the EU that’s unique to us, that no other country in the world has ever achieved.

It’s never, ever going to happen. And Mrs May knows this.

Before the referendum she said clearly and loudly:

“It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

And this weekend, EU officials have echoed a similar home truth. They have insisted that a bespoke deal more favourable to the UK than other non-EU nations was out of the question.

If the EU allowed the UK to have a better deal than members and non-members enjoy, it would effectively mean the end of the EU.

Already, non-EU countries are complaining that the UK should not have a better deal with the EU than they have.

This weekend an EU official close to the EU talks told The Guardian:

“We have been approached by a number of [non-member] countries expressing concerns and making it clear that it would constitute a major problem for them if suddenly the UK were to get better terms than they get.”

The official added that once the UK is out of the Single Market and customs union in March 2019, there could be no replication of the terms of the current trading relationship, or anything close to it, and no special treatment.

“It is not just an indication of some strange rigid principle. It is because things won’t work,” he said.

“First and foremost we need to stick to this balance of rights and obligations, otherwise we will be undermining our own customs union and single market. Second, we cannot upset relations with other third countries,” the official said.

“If we were to give the UK a very lopsided deal, then the other partners with whom we have been engaging and who entered into balanced agreements would come back and question those agreements.”

The Guardian also reported that Lord Kerr, the former diplomat who drafted the article 50 process for leaving the EU, said:

“The chances of concluding even a modest deal [like the EU- Canada deal] and getting it ratified in all 27 [EU]countries, during a two-year standstill period, verge on zero. So, the cliff-edge still beckons: the standstill only postpones it.”

The UK is heading for a sheer cliff edge, that will cause us all enormous damage, from which it may take decades to recover.

David Davis isn’t fully aware of this. He simply doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to know.

He’s walking us over the cliff with his eyes wide shut. The ‘determined optimist’ just thinks we’ll all be able to walk on air.

But Theresa May, she knows. She is fully aware of the dangers ahead.

She knows there is not a hope in hell of the UK getting anywhere near as good a deal with the EU as we have now.

She knows that leaving the EU is going to cause her country, our country, incalculable pain. Yet, she is still taking us over the cliff.

May is acting with malice aforethought. Davis is acting without any thought.

If you love our country, it is incumbent upon you to speak up.

There is only one group of people who can bring the nation to its senses, and urgently apply emergency brakes to the terrifying Brexit juggernaut now hurtling at speed towards the sheer cliff edge.

It’s our Members of Parliament. They are the ones who are supposed to represent us. They are the ones who are supposed to act in the best interests of the country.

This coming week the Commons will vote on an amendment to give MPs a “truly meaningful vote” on Brexit.

The “meaningful vote” amendment is the brainchild of former attorney general, Dominic Grieve, and calls for MPs to have a binding vote on the final Brexit deal before ministers can go ahead with Britain’s departure from the EU.

Senior figures from across the Commons told the Observer last night that MPs considering whether or not to support the amendment should “put the national interest, not party politics, first”.

For the love of Britain, please write to your MP today urging him or her to back this amendment (known as Amendment 7 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill).

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But that will be too late. Mr Gove made his comment for an article for The Telegraph because he’s clearly concerned that Theresa May’s Brexit has now gone from hard to soft.

This is about Mr Gove wanting a harder Brexit than Mrs May is now pursuing, and probably more importantly, (to him), he wants to be Prime Minister.

He said that if the May administration proves too cautious, the electorate will be able to demand a more radical split with the European Union at the next general election.

“The British people will be in control. If the British people dislike the agreement that we have negotiated with the EU, the agreement will allow a future government to diverge,” wrote Mr Gove.

But if the British people are really in control, then we should be able to vote on the direction of Brexit now, and not after the deal has been done.

There is confusion and disarray within the Cabinet this weekend as to exactly what Theresa May and her sidekick, David Davis, agreed with the EU’s negotiators.

The thorny issue of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland after Brexit was completely side-stepped, to be settled at a future date. And if it can’t be settled, the fallback position according to a joint statement by the UK government and the EU Commission will be for the UK to “maintain full alignment” with the rules of the Single Market and Customs Union.

But this option was completely ruled out this morning by cabinet member Andrea Leadsom, leader of the House of Commons, who stated categorically that the UK will be leaving the EU, and its Single Market and Customs Union.

Justice Minister Dominic Raab clearly outlined how unclear everything is when he said on BBC’s Newsnight last night:

“You can call it strategic ambiguity, you can call it constructive ambiguity… what I am admitting to you, very openly, and honestly, is that we have agreed principles, but that the details still need to be ironed out on this very bespoke set of issues around Northern Ireland which can’t be dealt with properly and responsibly outside of the context of the broader negotiation on customs and trade and all of those other things we have said all along.”

According to media reports, the UK will pay a “divorce settlement” of between £35 and £39 billion. But EU officials have indicated that no firm figure has yet been agreed.

Who really knows what’s going on?

Certainly not the Cabinet. According to The Telegraph Mrs May is now facing a ‘Cabinet battle’ over Britain’s future relationship with the EU amid claims that a “very soft” Brexit had now become inevitable.

Certainly not the British people. Nobody knew in last year’s referendum what Brexit really meant, and we still don’t know.

The government has admitted that they haven’t even done any in-depth research on the impact of Brexit.

Everyone is in the dark, and it’s into the darkness that the government is now taking us.

Our political leaders are blindly going ahead with Brexit because, they say, that’s what “the people” told them to do.

But “the people” were only offered the option of a one-word answer to the extremely complicated question of whether the UK should leave the EU.

Slightly more people chose ‘Leave’ as their one-word response rather than ‘Remain’. But it was not an informed response, because the country was not informed. On the contrary, we were misinformed.

When you have an operation, you have to sign a form that says you give ‘informed consent’ for the operation to go ahead.

Nobody gave informed consent for Brexit, and yet it is still going ahead.

It’s now time to properly inform the nation, and then for the nation to have an opportunity to properly inform our political masters of the true ‘will of the people’, based on the facts.

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That on the face of it appears to be the outcome of last night’s frantic talks to reach a phase one agreement between the UK and the European Union. At least, that’s how paragraph 49 of the 15-page agreement is being interpreted.

You see, the thing is, nobody thought that Mrs May could find a magic way to have an open border on the island of Ireland once Britain leaves the EU. And the thing is, she hasn’t.

The issue has been hung in the air, to be resolved later. And if it can’t be resolved, then the only solution available will be to stay in the Single Market and customs union. Something that Theresa May had – foolishly – completely ruled out.

On the question of the Irish border, paragraph 49 of the agreement states:

“In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement.”

Labour MP Chuka Umunna explained what this means on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning regarding the specific issue of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland:

“Given that there was consensus in the House of Commons not to have special arrangements for one part of the UK… it’s clear that the fallback position is that we would remain in the Customs Union and the Single Market if at the end of this process they haven’t been able to resolve that issue.

“I mean that’s a radical altering of the government’s position to get to the next phase and it’s necessary, I’m not attacking them for that, I just don’t think they should have set those red lines in the first place.”

So, in summary, nothing’s really been settled yet. The hard talks are still to come.

The Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, was right to paraphrase Winston Churchill this morning, “This is not the end, but it is the end of the beginning.”

The Evening Standard reported that, “While opposition politicians questioned whether the deal would satisfy hardline Brexiteers on Conservative benches, UK business leaders said they were “breathing a huge sigh of relief”.

Whether that relief will be short-lived we will see in the difficult days, weeks and months ahead… but not years. There is less than a year to resolve the issues.

All Theresa May has done is to give herself some breathing space… but not much. 

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All except one of Theresa May’s first Brexit Cabinet were in favour of the EU or its Single Market prior to last year’s Referendum.

Now, all her Cabinet are taking the country on the road to Brexit, even though most of them had previously urged that such an action would cause Britain severe economic damage and put our security at risk.

Of course, in a democracy politicians are allowed to change their minds. But none of the facts about the EU and our membership have changed. And Cabinet members, including the Prime Minister, Mrs May, have not provided any explanation for their ‘change of mind’.

Furthermore, even though they have allowed themselves to change their minds, they adamantly will not allow us, the voters, to change our minds. In responses to all enquiries and complaints, Conservative ministers and MPs have been instructed to give voters the following standard response:

“There must be no attempts to remain inside the European Union, no attempts to rejoin it through the back door, and no second referendum.”

That wasn’t the advice or opinion of most of the current Cabinet ministers before the referendum. This is what they said then:

•THERESA MAY, PRIME MINISTER

“I believe it is clearly in our national interest to remain a member of the European Union.”

“Remaining inside the European Union does make us more secure, it does make us more prosperous and it does make us more influential beyond our shores.”

“I believe the case to remain a member of the European Union is strong.”

• PHILIP HAMMOND, CHANCELLOR

“As an historic sceptic about the EU, I believe that, on balance, the benefits of the Single Market with the deal we have got and the unique terms of membership now offered to the UK, mean that we will be safer, stronger and better off if we remain in the EU.”

“So to those who care passionately about Britain’s influence in the world, I say that our voice will be louder and more persuasive if the United Kingdom votes to remain on June 23.”

• AMBER RUDD, HOME SECRETARY

“I passionately believe it is best for us all and our country if we remain a member of the EU – to take advantage of our special status within the Union giving us access to the world’s largest trading bloc.”

“Leading employers are saying investment and jobs are at risk if we leave Europe. That means future generations deprived of opportunities. It means less financial security for British families. It is just not worth the risk.”

• MICHAEL FALLON, DEFENCE SECRETARY (RESIGNED)

“When Russia annexed Crimea, it was only through the EU that we were able to impose sanctions; NATO couldn’t do that. And it is only through British leadership that the EU continues those sanctions today. Make no mistake – a vote to Leave would be payday for Putin.

“Like it or not, the EU is now part of the collective security of the West. If Britain – its largest defence spender – left, the EU would be smaller and weaker. That would undoubtedly be welcomed by Britain’s enemies around the world. No ally, no partner, no Commonwealth country wants us to leave.”

• LIZ TRUSS, CHIEF SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY*

“I don’t want my daughters to grow up in a world where they need a visa or permit to work in Europe; or where they are hampered from growing a business because of extortionate call costs and barriers to trade.”

“Every parent wants their children to grow up in a healthy environment with clean water, fresh air and thriving natural wonders. Being part of the EU helps protect these precious resources and spaces.”

*She attends Cabinet but is no longer a Cabinet minister.

• JEREMY HUNT, HEALTH SECRETARY

“Leaving EU is not ‘taking back control’ it is surrendering control to a huge bloc on our doorstep.”

“I want Britain’s voice to be strong in the world and believe we will be better off and more secure by remaining in the European Union.”

• JUSTINE GREENING, EDUCATION SECRETARY

”Staying in the EU is smart diplomacy and smart economics.

“Smart economics because we keep access to the European free trade area we call the single market. A single market of 500 million people, and we keep a say over the rules of doing business across Europe. That means more jobs, lower prices, and more financial security for British families.

“And it’s smart diplomacy because we can influence more widely by staying within the EU. As President Obama said, this amplifies Britain’s influence.”

• KAREN BRADLEY, CULTURE SECRETARY

“I want a strong UK economy to pay for the public services we all need, and our economy is undoubtedly stronger in the EU. The simple truth is that by leaving the European single market, Britain becomes less attractive to business investment.”

“If you want a stronger, safer, better off Britain, then the positive choice is to vote Remain.”

• DAMIAN GREEN, MINISTER FOR THE CABINET OFFICE

“Those who want to pull us out of Europe and end free movement should be careful what they wish for. We would lose our access to the world’s largest free trade area, the single market, costing us jobs and pushing up prices. We would compromise opportunities for British citizens to work, study, travel, and retire freely in Europe.”

“Plenty of experts agree that being outside the single market would be the main reason why leaving the EU would cause huge economic damage.”

• SAJID JAVID, COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

“If we leave the EU, small firms are on the front line and that’s a gamble with people’s livelihoods I’m not willing to take. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. Let’s not break that backbone with a leap into the dark.”

“Inside the single market we can guarantee continued growth in employment, greater opportunities for our young people, higher investment in our public services and new trade agreements with the world’s global powers.”

• JAMES BROKENSHIRE, N. IRELAND SECRETARY

“Our access to the European Arrest Warrant has allowed us to deport 6,500 European criminals since 2010 – that’s 130 times the number of criminals Vote Leave have identified. If we left the EU, we could no longer use the European Arrest Warrant. That’s just one of the reasons we are safer inside the EU.”

• ALUN CAIRNS, WELSH SECRETARY

“The decision we make on June 23 will affect our prospects for years to come. We have a choice between voting Remain to deliver jobs, investment and growth in our economy. Or we can vote Leave and face the very real prospect of recession.”

• DAVID MUNDELL, SCOTTISH SECRETARY

“Our access to the single market of 500 million people reduces costs for Scottish businesses by removing barriers to an export market, currently worth around £11.6 billion. It secures jobs. The Wilson Review of Support for Scottish Exporting, concluded that over 330,000 jobs in Scotland depend on EU trade.”

“The benefits which Scotland and the rest of the UK gains from EU membership are clear. Stepping away from the EU would be a backwards step.”

• PATRICK MCLOUGHLIN, CONSERVATIVE CHAIRMAN

“One of the things that has shocked me is the way in which people have been dismissive of the single market. Several of those who think we should come out [of the EU] have been saying the single market doesn’t matter. It does matter. It is just vast. It has made the United Kingdom a magnet for investment.”

“We are the world’s fifth largest economy. We’ve been in the European Union for the last 35 years so it hasn’t held us back, it’s actually helped us. That’s one of the things that I think are of vital importance.”

• DAVID LIDINGTON, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR JUSTICE

“I shall vote to remain because our country is better off, safer and stronger in the world because of our EU membership.”

“As part of the single market, we’ve attracted the lion’s share of foreign investment into Europe: every day, foreign companies invest £142 million here. American and Japanese companies tell me that if we quit, we cannot expect that investment or those jobs in future.

“Outside the EU, British firms would still have to conform to EU trade rules to do business there. At present we win 9 out of 10 votes on those rules. Leave, and there’ll be no British voice or vote.”

• GREG CLARK, BUSINESS, ENERGY AND INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

“I believe that we have a brighter future as a leading part of Europe than out of it. For me it comes down to our national interest. We are a trading nation. Nearly half of all our exports go to countries in the European Union – the biggest free-trade zone in the world.”

Even most of those who attend Mrs May’s Cabinet who campaigned for Leave in last year’s Referendum had previously supported membership of the EU Single Market, according to new research published in October by Open Britain.

• BORIS JOHNSON, FOREIGN SECRETARY

Mr Johnson previously said “what most people in this country want is the Single Market”, and he would personally vote to remain a member of it.

He told the BBC Andrew Marr Show in 2012: ″We would like a new relationship. And it’s very simple – what most people in this country want is the Single Market, the Common Market.”

• DAVID DAVIS, BREXIT SECRETARY

In 1995, the Brexit Secretary called the single market “one of our country’s greatest successes” in Parliament, and previously described the European Economic Area (EEA) option as “too good” in a speech 2016.

• LIAM FOX, INTERNATIONAL TRADE SECRETARY

In 1993 the International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox said, “Conservative members believe in the Single Market because we believe profoundly in the importance of free trade and we want Europe to be at the centre of a free-trading world.”

In 2005, he said: “The progress of the single market, albeit at much too slow a pace, has been a step in the right direction.”

• ANDREA LEADSOM, LEADER, HOUSE OF COMMONS*

In 2011 she told MPs: “I am a big fan of an expanded Single Market because I genuinely believe that it is in the interests of all EU member states.”

And in 2012, she said: “The UK has been enormously successful in achieving its strategic aims of enlargement and deepening of the single market.”

*Attends Cabinet but is not a member.

• MICHAEL GOVE, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT • PRITI PATEL, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INT. DEVELOPMENT (RESIGNED) • CHRIS GRAYLING, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR TRANSPORT

In 2014 all three of them voted for a Government that stated that it is, “the Government’s view that measures which promote growth and jobs in the EU, including measures towards completing the Single Market, are the top priority.”

• BARONESS EVANS, LEADER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS, is the only politician attending cabinet who is not on record as supporting membership of the Single Market.
__________________________________________________

Of course, politicians can and do change their minds. But if they can change their minds so dramatically, why can’t voters?

Nobody knew what ‘Leave’ truly meant or involved in last year’s Referendum. As we learn more about the consequences of Brexit, why not let ‘the people’ have another vote?

__________________________________________________

• My graphic shows Mrs May’s cabinet after she first became Prime Minister in July last year. Since the election on 8 June, she promoted to her Cabinet Michael Gove as Environment Secretary and David Gauke as Work and Pensions Secretary. Ben Gummer lost his role as Minister of the Cabinet Office when he failed to win back his seat in the general election. Michael Fallon and Priti Patel resigned.

• The following government ministers, who also attend Cabinet meetings but are not members of the Cabinet, campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU: Jeremy Wright, Attorney General; Gavin Williamson, Chief Whip; Damien Hinds, Minister for Employment, and Brandon Lewis, Immigration Minister.

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What does the EU have to do with ‘sport diplomacy’? In a post published on this site fifteen months ago, I reported on the reflections of a high-level group that was set up by Commissioner Tibor Navracsics in 2015 and that produced a report with a series of recommendations in June 2016.

Since then, the idea has gathered an almost surprising momentum. As early as November 2016, the Council formulated very explicit conclusions on what should be understood by ‘sport diplomacy’, and in May 2017, a Work Plan for Sport 2017-2020 fixing priorities was approved.

All this and more was discussed yesterday, 6 December, in a stimulating seminar organized by the Commission’s Sport Unit in Brussels.

Discussing what makes sense in sport diplomacy.

My major personal takeaway is the slow slide into irrelevance of the ‘soft power’ concept, which has been discussed so often in connection to sport mega-events, from the London Olympics to the Brazilian World Cup or the ‘Chinese (football) dream’.

But the European Union does not need to ‘use’ sport for ‘gaining soft power resources’. The power it wields in external relations is soft by definition. And the EU is at its very best when it plays its modest but efficient role as ‘enabler’, stubbornly promoting a set of values that it wishes to stand for.

The times are changing: the future of sport diplomacy does not lie in high-cost, high-risk mega-events with a huge, but ephemeral, mass media echo and a short-term impact on the ‘Nations Brand Index’. It lies in decentralised, low-cost people-to-people actions, in projects on a modest scale that change people’s lives for the better in a sustainable way (not only for the beneficiaries but also for the enablers, by the way!).

Its success will be based on the credibility and coherence with which values like civil society empowerment, volunteering, gender equality, social inclusion in all its forms are embodied and spread. It will be nurtured by the sharing of one’s own (not so distant) learning curve in matters of good governance, sustainable development, or anti-discrimination. It will be implemented but what Europe already does best: facilitating people-to-people dialogue across borders of all kinds.

It is remarkable that even a national endeavour like the Paris Olympics 2024 seems to have intuitively and enthusiastically understood this: if sport is not ‘made for sharing’, as their lovely slogan claims, and does not aim at making a change for others, rather than only for oneself, it’s not worth it.

Against this backdrop, it is only logical that the ERASMUS+ programme has been identified as the most appropriate, almost obvious, tool for enhancing sport diplomacy actions that are carried by federations, associations, higher education institutions or other actors of civil society with the intention to provide help and assistance to those who are in need of it and to engage in intercultural dialogue.

David Blough presenting one of many (very) good practices.

There is no lack of concrete, convincing examples. Preparing young coaches in countries that do not have adequate training structures, bringing school drop-outs back into education, empowering girls through football, facilitating the integration of refugees in their host society, raising awareness on disabilities and creating organization capacity to address them, building capacity for a new generation of young leaders for the sports movement itself – you name it.

After all the shambles and scandals around large international sport bodies and dubious mega events, the EU kind of sport diplomacy has a promising window of opportunity ahead. If promoted in a modest, but sustained and coherent manner, sport diplomacy can become an extremely positive contributor to the European Union’s external relations. Little by little, step by step, a good idea is making its way.

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Sometimes one has the impression that everyone involved in European politics is a big fan of Douglas Adams: certainly, as far as Article 50 goes, each new day brings absurdity piled upon absurdity.

The last week has made this point better than most, with the sudden rush to agreement on Monday then brutally undercut and a new stasis emerging.

It’s easy to be very negative about it all – confirming as it seemingly does – everything you thought was wrong with everything.

But for once I’d prefer to stress the positives from the latest batch of events, in the spirit of goodwill to all.

The most obvious positive to take away from it all is the capacity of both sides to demonstrate flexibility and movement in their positions.

Prior to the start of last week, there had been little evidence for this. The British government had stuck to its vague pronouncements that didn’t cohere, while the EU seemed to be on a loop in restating its principles and red-lines.

The apparent clarification on finances helped to open this up: the UK committed more clearly to honouring the large bulk of current liabilities, including the RAL (which makes up most of these), which removed one of the biggest blocks in the road. More importantly, the finances was the most fungible of the Phase I issues and the most pressing for most of the EU27, so it set a positive tone for what might come next. The money was thus both important in itself and as a marker of intent, not to mention signalling that the UK might come round much more to the EU’s position than the other way around.

Even if citizens’ rights was still stuck on the role of the CJEU – something that will be coming back before long – the second key development was a consensus among the negotiators that a statement of intent on the Irish border would be enough to move this latter topic on to ‘sufficient progress’.

This matters because the underlying difficulties of resolving the border question remain as stark as ever. The incompatibility of the EU’s single market, the Good Friday Agreement, the common travel area, UK territorial integrity and UK withdrawal from the single market/customs union has no solution in purely formal terms. Even the UK’s vagueness about ‘technical solutions’ couldn’t really address this point, as Dublin had made repeatedly clear.

Importantly, Phase I is the point at which Ireland has the most leverage, especially since the rest of the EU appeared to stand squarely behind it: to let the UK get away with what it had offered previously would be to risk losing any chance to pin it down, as the agenda moved on.

The compromise then was to work on a statement of principles that would apply whatever the outcome – i.e. including a no-deal scenario – to keep the border open and the GFA operative. With some linguistic fancy footwork on ‘regulatory alignment‘, it was possible to carve out a bit of space whereby the EU could claim no regulatory gap – so removing on key arm for needing a hard border – and the UK could claim it had its own regulatory process – albeit one that one have to very closely follow EU rules.

Put differently, the EU moved on form – from a detailed plan to a detailed set of principles – while the UK moved on substance – effectively tying themselves into the EU’s preferences and regulation.

This compromise seemed to work well enough for all the principals to sign off on it, right up to the point that the DUP raised their objections. But this shouldn’t obscure that the movement took place at all. It now sets the agenda for the work going on right now.

And this is the second big positive to take away: everyone’s working very hard for a deal.

Of all the counter-productive language since last June, ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ has been the most problematic (and the one producing the firmest response from experts).

Every since Monday afternoon, when the wheels came off the compromise deal, figures on all sides have been very keen to stress the positives. The May-Juncker press conference was very brief, but couched entirely in such language, while briefings on all sides kept to the script too. While it would have been tempting to stick the boot into the DUP, the Irish government has made repeated positive noises about the chances of salvaging a new text this week or next, and appears determined not to rock the boot for May.

Just as important has been the language in the UK. With Davis distracted by the impact assessments this week – which also says something about the British situation – it was May taking the lead and again pushing the line that agreement was still possible. While it might be understandable, given her position, it was also apparent that most of her party wasn’t trailing the ‘no deal’ line and that Labour was challenging her competence, rather than the substance of what she had negotiated.

Most importantly in all of this is the Douglas Adams point about deadlines. Yesterday had been set by the EU as the last date to get text agreed in time for the EU27 to discuss prior to next week’s European Council. That has now drifted out to at least tomorrow and possibly early next week. Moreover, Leo Varadkar’s statements also open up the possibility of a special European Council early in the new year, should things not pan out, so that Phase II doesn’t have to wait until February.

Taken together, the impression is that Article 50 is still a going concern and that all sides are serious about making it happen. Certainly, the UK still has tremendous problems with its internal politics, but the fact that it could move as it did should give cause for some positivity about it all.

But a final word of caution. This past week also suggests that the outcome of Article 50 is now likely to be only one of two outcomes: either a deal very largely on EU terms, or a complete lack of agreement. The middle path of a more tailored deal looks less and less probably now. That might sound good to some, but the polarisation of outcomes also raises dangers, especially as and when Phase II opens.

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Did you notice her nose grow an inch?

We can’t believe anything this government tells us.

The Brexit negotiations are going disastrously wrong. Did Mrs May fly to Brussels on Monday just for a free lunch? No. It was one of the most expensive lunches in British history.

She went there expecting to announce a deal had been struck with the EU to enable Britain to proceed to discussing a new trade agreement post-Brexit.

Apparently, everything had been resolved: the issue of EU citizens living here, British citizens living there, the amount owing to the EU, and that thorny issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic Ireland.

So, had Mrs May achieved the impossible on the border issue?

Just two days before last year’s referendum, she warned that if Britain voted for Brexit, it was “inconceivable” that there would not be a new hard border with Ireland.
She told the BBC on the eve of the referendum:

“If we are out of the European Union with tariffs on exporting goods into the EU, there would have to be something to recognise that between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

“And if you pulled out of the EU and came out of free movement, then how could you have a situation where there was an open border with a country that was in the EU and had access to free movement?”

How on earth was she going to fix something that only last year Mrs May said was unfixable?

Easy peasy! Just enable ‘regulatory alignment’ between Northern Ireland and the EU.
What does ‘regulatory alignment’ mean? Who knows? Who cares? Clink of glasses. Tuck into the main course.

Oh hold on, the DUP – the small Northern Ireland party that graced Mrs May with the favour of staying in power after last June’s disastrous general election (well for a small consideration of just £1 billion pounds, so easily plucked from Theresa’s famous ‘money tree’) – were having none of it.

With a thunder face, Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, stormed onto our TV screens, with her tiny entourage of MPs, to rule out any move “which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom”.

‘Will you be staying for dessert, Theresa?’ ‘No, Jean-Claude, I had better get home’.
‘But we’ll have to make an announcement to the media’. ‘Ok, but let’s keep it short.’ ‘Will 45 seconds be ok?’ ‘Yes, of course’.

No leading questions from the UK media. Nothing new there.

The DUP now has the real power over the UK’s future relationship with the EU. Mrs May… she just has empty words, and a nose that grows longer by the day.

Did you watch the five o’clock nose (sorry, news)? David Davis the Brexit Secretary, told Parliament that the 58 Brexit impact reports that he’s been boasting about for over a year don’t actually exist.

Like a naughty boy, Mr Davis had been summoned to the Commons Committee for Exiting the European Union to explain why he hadn’t produced full details of the sector-by-sector Brexit impact reports that Parliament had voted he must disclose.

“There is no systematic impact assessment,” Mr Davis replied.

An incredulous Hilary Benn, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, asked Mr Davis if the government had carried out any forecasts on the possible impact of Brexit on the automotive, aerospace or financial services sectors.

“The answer’s going to be no to all of them,” Mr Davis replied.

Asked by Mr Benn whether there had been ANY economic assessment of the impact of leaving the customs union, Mr Davis replied:

“Not a formal, quantitative one.”

Mr Benn said that the Brexit Secretary’s admission was “quite extraordinary”. Mr Davis said it wasn’t (he would say that, wouldn’t he? Does it matter any more what he says?)

In December one year ago Mr Davis told the same committee that:

“We are in the midst of carrying out about 57 sets of analyses, each of which has implications for individual parts of 85% of the economy. Some of those are still to be concluded.”

He added:

“We’ve got a lot to do, but that’s one of the reasons we are taking our time to get prepared on all fronts. That’s why our 57 studies cover 85% of the economy. Everything that’s not affected by international trade.

“So, we are aiming to get ourselves into a position where we can negotiate within the Article 50 process.”

Oh, his nose looked long then. It’s looking longer today.

Mr Davis is not in any position to negotiate anything.

The bottom line is that he and his department have not done any substantial analyses on the impact of Brexit.

He and his Brexit boss and fellow ministers are so intent on getting us out of the EU, that the details matter not one jot to him, or them.

That’s why the government has no vision, no plan, no blueprint, no manifesto for Britain after Brexit. They have not got a clue what Brexit will mean for Britain, and have not bothered to do any meaningful research to find out.

They are running the country blind, because they have blind faith that Brexit is going to be oh, so wonderful.

There are calls now to hold Mr Davis in contempt of Parliament. Surely that’s a mistake?

The entire government should be held in contempt of Parliament. They are running the state whilst being enemies of the state.

The current government is not acting in the best interests of the country.

Brexit was sold to the nation using a pack of lies. And now Brexit is being imposed on the nation using a pack of lies.

I nose that. You nose that. And they nose that.

This government must go. Nothing could be worse than the incompetent, imbecilic, inept gang of charlatans now running Britain to the ground.

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The energy transition known as the “Energiewende” in Germany is key to Europe’s economic success in the future. It is not just about putting up wind farms and solar panels in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: it is also about using energy storage to create smart energy and transport systems, that will no longer be dependent on burning the fossil fuels of coal and oil. The knowledge gained by the implementation of the energy transition in Europe, will itself become an export commodity to countries such as China and India, which are desperate to move away from polluting coal fired power stations, not only to fight climate change, but also to improve the air quality for their own citizens.

There is some resistence to EU environmental protection regulations from those “Bundesländer”, federal states in Germany, that have traditionally depended upon coal for employment. In an article of 22nd August 2017 published on the website of www.tagesschau.de entitled, “Braunkohle-Länder fordern Klage”, which translates as lignite states call for legal action: it was reported that the Minister President of Saxony, Stanislaw Tillich had written a letter to the Minister of Economic Affairs, Brigiite Zypries, of the German federal government complaining about stricter EU regulations limiting the emissions of mercury and nitrogen oxide from lignite burning power stations. Tillich – who was writing on behalf of his own state of Saxony and three other states of Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Saxony-Anhalt involved in the open-cast mining of lignite and electricity generation from burning lignite – said that to keep to the EU’s regulations would be technically impossible.

However the answer for Germany’s future economic prosperity will not be to fight against the EU’s climate protection and anti-pollution regulations, but rather to phase out the open-cast mining of lignite altogether. In the process new technology will be developed to bring many more local clean energy power sources onto the electricity grid. This will involve retraining and re-employment of management and workers – who previously worked in the fossil fuel energy sector – to implement the energy transition successfully. Instead of resisting the EU’s environmental regulations: politicians, energy companies and unions should now be lobbying the EU institutions for grants to help with these structural changes of energy supply towards renewable energy and storage technology, that will phase out fossil fuels, in order to create a clean and sustainable energy future.

Sources

http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/braunkohle-laender-grenzwerte-101.html

http://jolyongumbrell.ideasoneurope.eu/2016/04/05/renewable-energy-deal-europe/

http://jolyongumbrell.ideasoneurope.eu/2015/11/24/obsolescence-coal-oil/

http://jolyongumbrell.ideasoneurope.eu/2015/03/30/will-britain-left-behind-energy-storage/

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She said then that it was “inconceivable” that there would not be any changes on border arrangements with the Republic of Ireland if Brexit happened.

As home secretary, Mrs May visited County Down on 21 June 2016 and told the BBC:

“If we are out of the European Union with tariffs on exporting goods into the EU, there would have to be something to recognise that between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

“And if you pulled out of the EU and came out of free movement, then how could you have a situation where there was an open border with a country that was in the EU and had access to free movement?”

Now, of course, she is insisting that Brexit will not result in a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – but she hasn’t been able to find a way to do it, just as she predicted would happen before the referendum.

How can anyone believe this woman ever again? She is not fit to be our Prime Minister.

In a speech in April 2016, Mrs. May spoke firmly against Brexit and in favour of Britain’s continued membership of the EU.

She said then:

“My judgement, as Home Secretary, is that remaining a member of the European Union means we will be more secure from crime and terrorism.”

And as for replacing the trade we do with the EU with other markets, she asserted that this would be a an unrealistic route. She said:

“We export more to Ireland than we do to China, almost twice as much to Belgium as we do to India, and nearly three times as much to Sweden as we do to Brazil. It is not realistic to think we could just replace European trade with these new markets.”

And there were other serious risks too.

“If we do vote to leave the European Union, we risk bringing the development of the single market to a halt, we risk a loss of investors and businesses to remaining EU member states driven by discriminatory EU policies, and we risk going backwards when it comes to international trade.”

And other risks too.

“Outside the EU, for example, we would have no access to the European Arrest Warrant, which has allowed us to extradite more than 5,000 people from Britain to Europe in the last five years, and bring 675 suspected or convicted wanted individuals to Britain to face justice.”

And leaving the EU, she said, could lead to the disintegration of the EU, resulting in “massive instability” with “with real consequences for Britain.”

In addition, Brexit might prove fatal to “the Union between England and Scotland”, which she did not want to happen.

And if Britain left the EU, she argued, we might not be successful in negotiating a successful divorce settlement.

Explained Mrs May:

“In a stand-off between Britain and the EU, 44 per cent of our exports is more important to us than eight per cent of the EU’s exports is to them.”

She added, “The reality is that we do not know on what terms we would win access to the single market.

“We do know that in a negotiation we would need to make concessions in order to access it, and those concessions could well be about accepting EU regulations, over which we would have no say, making financial contributions, just as we do now, accepting free movement rules, just as we do now, or quite possibly all three combined.”

She added:

“It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

And in summary, Mrs May said:

“Remaining inside the European Union does make us more secure, it does make us more prosperous and it does make us more influential beyond our shores.

“I believe the case to remain a member of the European Union is strong.

“I believe it is clearly in our national interest to remain a member of the European Union.”

Now her tune has changed.

“Brexit means Brexit and we’re going to make a success of it.

“There will be no attempts to remain inside the EU.

“There will be no attempts to re-join it by the back door; no second referendum.

“As Prime Minister I will make sure that we leave the European Union.”

How is it possible for Theresa May to lead Britain in a direction which only last year she advocated was not in the country’s best interests?

Theresa May is a hypocrite. Enough is enough. She has to go.

My vote is for the UK to Remain in the European Union, and for Theresa May – with her hapless band of Brexiters – to leave office.

Now, all we need is a ballot.

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The Union of the United Kingdom consists of four member states: England, Scotland, Wales and the province of Northern Ireland.

In the referendum, two of them voted to remain in the EU: Scotland and Northern Ireland. Yet the UK government is going ahead with Brexit, without the unanimous consent of all the UK’s member states.

That couldn’t happen in the European Union, where all member states of the EU, however large or small, each have an equal vote and a veto on new treaties.

If the UK was run on the same democratic principles as the EU, then the UK could never leave the European Union without the unanimous agreement of all its four members: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

But in last year’s EU referendum, the democratic wishes of Scotland and Northern Ireland were ignored by the UK government, splitting the United Kingdom in two.

Similarly, Gibraltar – a British Overseas Territory which also had a vote in the EU referendum and strongly chose Remain – also saw their objections to Brexit ignored.

Even though Northern Ireland voted for Remain, one party – the pro-Brexit DUP – is being allowed to dictate what future relationship the province will have with the EU (and therefore the entire UK’s relationship with the EU), because it’s only that party that’s keeping the Tories in power.

The EU’s remaining 27 member states will have a greater say and vote on the final Brexit deal than the devolved areas of the UK and the overseas territory of Gibraltar.

Even the European Parliament will have a greater say on Brexit than our Tory government wants to give our Parliament in Westminster.

Brexiters claim that the EU is ‘undemocratic’.

But in reality, the EU is more democratic than our system in the UK, where we still have an unelected second chamber; where the wishes of devolved UK states can be ignored, and where we still have an antiquated voting system of first-past-the-post (MEPs are voted to the European Parliament using a system of proportional representation).

Brexiters tell us that the EU is run by faceless bureaucrats.

But the truth is that all EU laws can only be passed by the democratically elected European Parliament, in concert with the Council of Ministers, that comprise the ministers of democratically elected governments of EU member states.

The European Commission is the servant of the EU, and not its master. The European Parliament elects the Commission President, has to approve each Commissioner, and has the power to dismiss the entire Commission.

If that isn’t democratic, I don’t know what is.

This time last year, Brexiters mocked that a region of Belgium, called Wallonia, had the power to block the new free trade agreement between Canada and the EU.

But that shows how Belgium, a country only a tenth the size of the UK, has a better democracy than ours.

Under Belgium’s constitution, regional parliaments such as the one governing Wallonia, must give their unanimous agreement before Belgium, as an EU member state, can give its consent to any EU Treaty.

The regions of Belgium have much more democratic power than our devolved parliaments of the UK. That’s how Wallonia came to block the EU-Canada agreement, called Ceta.

Eventually, Wallonia sought and received assurances about the Ceta deal, and lifted their objections, so the EU-Canada free trade agreement could go ahead, which it did.

The EU-Canada trade agreement, incidentally, is calculated to be worth an estimated £1.3bn a year to Britain – but of course only whilst we are an EU member.

Last year, whilst the parliaments of Belgium and other EU countries were democratically considering Ceta, the UK’s international trade secretary, Liam Fox, had to apologise to MPs for not allowing our Parliament to have a debate on the Ceta deal.

There’s something else that makes Belgium arguably more democratically accountable than the UK.

Since 1894 voting in Belgium’s elections has been compulsory. Everyone must vote.

Contrast Belgium’s system of compulsory voting with what happened in Britain’s referendum last year, where around 20 million people who could vote, didn’t vote.

That included around 13 million who registered to vote but didn’t, and around a further 7 million who could have registered to vote, but didn’t.

What a difference 20 million voters could have made to the EU referendum result if it had been compulsory for them to vote.

Polls indicate that those 13 million who registered to vote but didn’t would have supported Remain 2-to-1.

So, in summary:

• The Tory government is going ahead with Brexit, without the unanimous consent of all the UK’s countries, and without the consent of our overseas territory, the state of Gibraltar.

• Although Northern Ireland voted for Remain, just one small Northern Ireland party, the pro-Brexit DUP, is being allowed to have the final say on the province’s (and therefore the UK’s) future relationship with the EU, because that party is keeping Mrs May and her Tories in office.

• The Tory government hasn’t allowed Parliament to have a vote on whether Britain should leave the EU, saying the decision was already made by the referendum (even though the Supreme Court ruled that only Parliament could make the decision, as the EU referendum was advisory only).

• The Tory government does not want our Parliament to have a proper vote on the final Brexit deal.

• The Tory government doesn’t want our Parliament to have a say on which EU laws brought into UK law should be kept, amended or scrapped. 

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“..if Brexit isn’t fatal to the European Union, we might find that it is fatal to the Union with Scotland. The SNP have already said that in the event that Britain votes to leave but Scotland votes to remain in the EU, they will press for another Scottish independence referendum.

“And the opinion polls show consistently that the Scottish people are more likely to be in favour of EU membership than the people of England and Wales.

“If the people of Scotland are forced to choose between the United Kingdom and the European Union we do not know what the result would be.

“But only a little more than eighteen months after the referendum that kept the United Kingdom together, I do not want to see the country I love at risk of dismemberment once more.

“I do not want the people of Scotland to think that English Eurosceptics put their dislike of Brussels ahead of our bond with Edinburgh and Glasgow.

“I do not want the European Union to cause the destruction of an older and much more precious Union, the Union between England and Scotland…

“We should remain in the EU.”

• Theresa May’s speech against Brexit – full text 25 April 2016 

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Olivier Bégin-Caouette

In the Europe of Knowledge, there are strong pressures on national governments to increase funding for research; one of Europe 2020’s headline indicators is to increase combined public and private investment in R&D to the equivalent of 3% of the GDP (see graph below). Beyond the amount of resources invested, it appears critical for both scholars and policymakers to question whether funding coming from different sources or taking different forms have a similar impact.

Progress towards investing 3% of GDP in research and development in EU member states. Source: European Commission

Focusing our analysis on four Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden), public funding and research produced in academic settings, we have attempted to analyze the impact of four funding streams, according to the perspectives of actors located within different levels of the higher education systems. Complementing studies based on bibliometric data, our actor-centered approach aimed at grasping the multifaceted and complex phenomenon of research production in a holistic manner. Part of a lager study (see also Bégin-Caouette, 2016), our recent article ‘The perceived impact of research funding streams on the level of scientific knowledge production in the Nordic higher education systems’ published in Science and Public Policy (Bégin-Caouette, Kalpazidou Schmidt, and Field, 2017) relied on a MANOVA processed on 456 questionnaires and a thematic analysis processed on 56 interview transcripts to explore how actors perceived the impact of four funding streams, defined as the funding flows at the actor level including various instruments and consisting in an intermediary layer between public authorities and researchers (Lepori et al., 2007): block funding, competitive funding, excellence funding and strategic funding.

The quality, equity and efficiency of funding streams

Analyzing the average survey scores obtained by the four funding streams, we noted that all streams obtained positive scores, but that, in all countries, competitive funding (defined as funding allocated to researchers based on “traditional” a peer-review process) was perceived as having the greatest impact. On the contrary, strategic funding (defined as a stream stimulating research in specific predefined areas) obtained the lowest scores in all countries but Sweden where it tied with excellence funding (defined as long-term peer-reviewed funding to groups of researchers).

Funding arrangements in Nordic countries have for long being characterized by a large block funding, and participants from all countries and at all levels confirmed it contributed to an equitable distribution of funding, and that equity was linked to the quality of the research produce since no funding body can know in advance where groundbreaking discoveries will occur (Öquist and Benner, 2012). Block funding based on performance measures would also increase research production in an efficient way since the small premium would create a signaling effect and generate symbolic capital for high achievers (Bloch and Schneider, 2016).

The competitive stream was perceived positively across countries because it enhanced quality research in an equitable manner since researchers from all institutions and disciplines could apply. It was however also perceived as being increasingly inefficient because of the diminishing acceptance rates, the correlated ‘Matthew Effect’ (Langfeldt et al., 2013) and the burden of writing multiple applications (von Hippel and von Hippel, 2015). Participants made similar comments regarding an excellence stream, which, despite concerns over equity and efficiency, would enhance the quality of the research production by being more stable, facilitating further grant applications (Bloch and Schneider, 2016) and fostering a critical mass of researchers (Bloch and Sorensen, 2015). Whether commenting on the block, competitive or excellence streams, participants made an association between an equitable allocation of resources and efficiency in research production. Strategic funding, although at the core of multiple recent policy initiatives, was still perceived at the periphery of traditional academic research systems, becoming a niche for emerging areas with less academic prestige (Benner and Sörlin, 2007).

Differences between the four Nordic countries

The MANOVA comparing survey scores by countries revealed some small but significant differences. Finnish participants attributed less importance to block funding than their Danish and Swedish counterparts. Swedish participants, for their part, attributed less importance to excellence funding than their Finnish and Norwegian counterparts. Like previously noted by Öquist and Benner (2012), Swedish participants considered research funding as being decentralized, complex and contradictory. In Denmark, actors attributed significantly higher scores to the block stream, which does represent a higher percentage of their country’s HERD than in other countries. Our thematic analysis is consistent with Välimaa’s (2005) observation that Danish policymakers were more concerned about supporting basic research than innovation, and with Öquist and Benner’s (2012) remark that the Danish National Research Foundation had channeled a massive increase of funding into the excellence streams, thus contributing to the increase in publications and citations.

In Norway, the excellence stream mitigated the negative impact of a scattered competitive stream by stabilizing the research system, fostering strong interdisciplinary centers and allowing promising scholars to attract sufficient funding for path-breaking discoveries (Asknes et al., 2012). It is finally interesting to note that, although the strategic stream is particularly important in Finland and could accelerate the innovation process, participants did not think it had a strong positive impact on the level of academic research produced.

Implications

This study provides concrete example of how different funding arrangements intertwine with existing academic traditions and are interpreted differently by actors located in different contexts. Streams’ adequacy to countries’ culture, history, national environment, industrial R&D and military development could have as much impact as the amount of funding or the specificities of the instrument developed. Despite shortcomings regarding national nuances and differences in actors’ perceptions, our article suggests that funding streams are perceived to have the most impact when they are consistent with academic traditions and the norms regarding an open, equitable and meritocratic competition between scholars.

Olivier Bégin-Caouette, former Canada-Vanier Scholar, is a postdoctoral research at the Inter-University Center for Research on Science and Technology (CIRST), based at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM). He also holds a PhD in higher education (comparative, international and development education) from at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on interactions between political-economic structures and academic research production. He also held the position of visiting scholar at HEGOM (University of Helsinki) and the Danish Centre for Studies on Research and Research Policy (Aarhus University).

Evanthia Kalpazidou Schmidt is an associate professor and research director at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. Kalpazidou Schmidt´s research interests include European science policy and evaluation, science and society studies, higher education studies, and gender equality in science. She has been involved in a number of European Union funded projects and has frequently been engaged as expert in the evaluations of projects funded by the European Union.

Cynthia Field is a doctoral candidate in higher education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include institutional differentiation, academic drift, sessional faculty and the academic profession.

References

Asknes, D., Benner, M., Borlaug, S.B., Hansen, H.F., Kallerud, E.K., Kristiansen, E., Langfeldt, L., Pelkonen, A. and Sivertsen, G. (2012) ‘Centres of excellence in the Nordic countries’. Working Paper 4/2012. < http://www.nifu.no/publications/963610> accessed Jan 25 2017.

Bégin-Caouette, O. (2016). Building comparative advantage in the global knowledge society: Systemic factors contributing to academic research production in four Nordic higher education systems. In C. Sarrico, P. Texeira et al. (Eds).  Global Challenges, National Initiatives, and Institutional Responses: The Transformation of Higher Education, Edition: 9 (pp. 29-54). Netherlands: Sense Publisher.

Bégin-Caouette, O., Kalpazidou-Schmidt, E. & Field, C. (2017). The perceived impact of research funding streams on the level of scientific knowledge production in the Nordic higher education systems. Science and Public Policy. Doi: 10.1093/scipol/scx014.

Benner, M. and Sörlin, S. (2007). ‘Shaping strategic research: Power, resources and interests in Swedish research policy’. Minerva, 45(1): 31-48.

Bloch, C. and Schneider, J.W. (2016). ‘Performance-based funding models and researcher behavior: An analysis of the influence of the Norwegian Publication Indicator at the individual level’. Research Evaluation, 47(1): 1-13.

Bloch, C., Sørensen, M.P. (2015). ‘The size of research funding: Trends and implications’. Science and Public Policy, 42(1): 30-43.

Evans, L. (2015) ‘What academics want from their professors: Findings from a study of professorial academic leadership in the UK’. In U. Teichler and W. Cummings (eds.), Forming, Recruiting and Managing the Academic Profession, pp. 51-78. Dodrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.

Frølich, N. (2011). ‘Multi-layered accountability. Performance-based funding of universities’. Public Administration, 8(3), 840-859.

Langfeldt, L., Borlaug, S.B., Asknes, D., Benner, M., Hansen, H.F., Kallerud, E., Kristiansen, E., Pelkonen, A. and Sivertsen, G. (2013) ‘Excellence initiatives in Nordic research policies’. Working Paper 10/2013. <https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2358609/NIFUworkingpaper2013-10.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y> accessed Jan 25 2017.

Lepori, B., van den Besselaar, P. Dinges, M. Poti, B. Reale, E., Slipersæter, S., Thèves, J., and B. van der Meulen (2007), ‘Comparing the Evolution of National Research Policies: What Patterns of Change?’, Science and Public Policy: 34(6), July, pp. 372-388.

Öquist, G. and Benner, M. (2012) Fostering breakthrough research: A comparative study. Stockholm: Royal Swedish Academy of Science.

The Economist (2011) ‘Academic publishing: Of goats and headaches; One of the best media businesses is also one of the most resented’. Economist, 399(8735), 69. <http://www.economist. com/node/18744177> accessed Jan 22 2017.

Välimaa, J. (2005) ‘Globalization in the context of Nordic higher education’. In: A. Arimoto, F. Huang, and K. Yokoyama (eds.). Globalization and Higher Education, pp. 93-114. Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan: Research Institute for Higher Education and Hiroshima University.

Von Hippel, T., von Hippel, C. (2015) ‘To apply or not to apply: A survey analysis of grant writing costs and benefits’. PLoS One 10(3): doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0118494.

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It’s being called “regulatory alignment” between Northern Ireland and the EU. Nobody is yet sure what that means.

But in any other name, it might be called staying in the EU Single Market.

Or in two words: the ‘Norway option’.

Of course, nothing about Brexit can be simple or straightforward. We will need to await further clarification (not just about this, but about all of Brexit. Nobody knows what Brexit means).

But on the face of it, it seems that the proposal is that Northern Ireland will have a ‘special relationship’ with the EU, but the rest of the UK won’t.

Immediately Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, Tweeted to say:

‘If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others can’t.’

She later Tweeted:

‘If it’s not some kind of Norway status for whole UK, it must mean some kind of special deal for NI. Has to be one or the other. And if latter, why not also for Scotland, London & Wales (if it wants it)?’

Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, Tweeted:

‘Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that it’s possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market & customs union after Brexit. Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs.’

The BBC’s Political Editor Tweeted,:

‘Scotland and Wales will be looking v. v. closely too – if NI can have special deal why can’t they?’

But the DUP – upon whom the Tory government relies upon to stay in power – were having none of it. They said it “will not accept” a deal on the Irish border being brokered by Prime Minister, Theresa May.

Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, ruled out accepting any move “which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom”.

She added:

“We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom.

“We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom.

“The economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom will not be compromised in any way.”

Brexit is unravelling. We knew it would, because it simply doesn’t make sense. It has not been thought through with any measure of forethought or intelligence.

To maintain an open border between Northern Ireland and Ireland almost certainly means that Northern Ireland would have to stay in the EU Single Market in all but name.

Tory Brexiters believe that a hard border could be avoided by the use of clever technology. But that is unlikely to be acceptable (or even achievable).

If Northern Ireland maintains a ‘special relationship’ with the EU, then why not Scotland, Wales, London – everywhere, with perhaps the exception of Boston, Great Yarmouth and Cornwall?

Either Brexit breaks up, or the United Kingdom breaks up. It seems now that it may come down to one, or the other.

There is an alternative, of course.

Let’s get back to normal. Let’s keep our Union of the United Kingdom intact, and our membership of the European Union intact.

Just think how much money we’ll save by just stopping this madness. Were things really so bad before 23 June 2016?

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During the referendum campaign nobody was told anything about the cost of leaving the EU. We were only lied to about all the money we’d reclaim – including the nonsense that the NHS would get an extra £350m a week.

And yet here we are. We’re going to pay a large amount to leave the EU because those are our obligations. We can’t wriggle out of the payments we signed up to whilst a member.

The EU stood firm, whilst Mrs May and her hapless team of Brexit ministers huffed and puffed and let months go by living in denial.

The reality of Brexit is now sinking in fast.

And here’s the oddest thing. The UK government is negotiating to leave the EU, just so they can negotiate another arrangement with the EU to give us as much as possible of what we’ve already got, but on considerably inferior terms.

Does it make any sense?

No. It doesn’t. The EU is the world’s largest free trade area. As a member, we receive huge benefits worth enormously more than the net annual membership fee of £8 billion a year.

As a member, we enjoy free, frictionless trade with our biggest trading partner by far, right on our doorstep, where almost 50% of our exports go to and over 50% of our imports come from. Nowhere else in the world comes close to that.

The UK government is desperate to continue to enjoy similar membership benefits of frictionless trade with the EU after we have ended our membership, because they know that our economy’s survival depends on it.

But the UK government has said it wants to continue to enjoy membership benefits as an ex-member, without being part of the EU Single Market or customs union, without agreeing to the rules of the EU and its market, without being subject to the European Court of Justice to oversee those rules, and without paying anything to the EU for access.

It’s not going to happen. Mrs May knows this.

Before the referendum she said clearly and loudly, “It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

Yet that’s exactly what Mrs May now wants. She says she aims to achieve a new trade agreement with the EU that’s unique to us, that no other country in the world has ever achieved.

Of course, it’s not going to happen. In two words, it will be the EU telling us to ‘sod off’.

What’s the point of a club if you are going to allow non-members to enjoy the same or better benefits as members? What club allows that?

So here’s the bottom line. Britain needs frictionless trade with the EU. We need free movement of goods, services, capital and people for our country not just to survive, but to thrive. We need to continue with the status quo: the arrangement we have now.

Has this sunk in yet?

We’re leaving all the benefits of the EU, only to desperately try and get back as many of those benefits as we can after we’ve left.

We’re going to pay around £50 billion – money that will come from us, you and me – to try and achieve what we’ve got, but less of it, and on considerably inferior terms.

This is complete and utter madness. It will be much better to just keep the current arrangement. It will be cheaper, and we will all be better off.

As an EU member:

• we have a say and a vote in the running, rules and future direction of our continent;
• we have full and free access to the world’s largest free marketplace;
• we enjoy the right to live, work, study or retire across a huge expanse of our continent;
• we enjoy state healthcare and education when living and working in any other EU country;
• we enjoy free or low-cost health care when visiting any EU nation;
• we are protected by continent-wide rights that protect us at work, when shopping and travelling;
• we benefit from laws that protect our environment (and have, for example, directly resulted in Britain’s beaches being cleaned up);
• we enjoy excellent EU trade agreements with almost 60 countries, with more on the way, on advantageous terms that Britain is unlikely ever to replicate.

So, we’re going to pay £50 billion to throw that all away, just so we can get an inferior arrangement with the EU, in which we’d still have to agree to the rules of EU trade (over which we’d have no say) and we’d have less access to our most vital customers and suppliers outside of our home market.

And what are we gaining? Surely something?

No. All the reasons given to leave in last year’s referendum were based on lies and false promises. There are no good reasons to leave.

More sovereignty? Nonsense. We’ll get less. In the EU, we gain a share of sovereignty of our continent. Outside the EU, we’ll still live on a planet and have to obey thousands of international laws and treaties. We share sovereignty with NATO, for example. Is that a reason to leave it?

Fewer migrants? Really? Just think about it.

Most EU migrants in Britain are in gainful employment, doing jobs that we simply don’t have enough Britons to do. So if they all left, we’d have to replace them with about the same numbers of migrants as we have now to get all those jobs done. What’s the bloody point of that?

More houses, schools and hospitals? Think again. Without EU migrants we’ll have fewer builders, teachers, doctors and nurses. Migrants are not the cause of our problems. Blaming them just excuses successive UK governments from investing sufficiently in our country.

Get our country back? We never lost it. If being in the EU means losing your country, why aren’t the 27 other EU member states complaining?

Our own laws? The vast majority of laws in the UK are our laws and passed by our Parliament in Westminster.

But in the EU, we benefit from laws for our continent that no single country alone could ever achieve. Could our UK government have got mobile phone companies to scrap mobile roaming charges across the entire EU? Of course not. It took the might of 28 EU countries working together to achieve that, and so much more.

The EU is run by faceless bureaucrats? Another lie. The EU is run and ruled by its members, the 28 countries of the EU, along with its democratically elected European Parliament. The European Commission is the servant of the EU, not its master, and the European Parliament has the power to choose, and dismiss, the entire Commission.

We are leaving for no good reason, not one. We are paying £50 billion to leave. We will be poorer, and with less sovereignty, fewer rights and protections, and restricted trade, and diminished power after we’ve left.

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If only Parliament would stop interfering, she and her fellow Brexiter Ministers could make much more progress.

Ditto the law.

I mean really, why do we need Parliament and the law when we have such competent people as Theresa May and David Davis?

Honestly, all they want to do is to completely transform Britain to make it a much better country for … well, for all their rich mates, who hanker for a low-tax, low-regulation Britain.

For God’s sake, they want THEIR country back. Is that too much to ask?

Theresa May grabbed at the chance to become the Prime Minister to make Brexit happen.

Yes, ok, she told the country just weeks earlier that leaving the European Union wouldn’t be in the country’s best interests. But, so what?

Becoming Prime Minister was the opportunity of a lifetime. Nobody in their right mind would turn down such a great career move.

Principles? Don’t be stoopid. Her first, then party, then… well that’s it.

The referendum was advisory only and not even a majority of the electorate wanted it, let alone Scotland and Northern Ireland (did I mention nuisance? What a nuisance they’ve become, eh?)

Will of the people! Sounds a bit hollow when most people didn’t actually vote for Brexit. But hey, keep repeating it and the mantra will stick.

Will of the people! Will of the people! Brexit means Brexit! Brexit means Brexit! It’s going to be red, white and blue!

Who says you can’t fool most of the people most of the time?

Look, why does Parliament have to be involved in this when ‘the people’ have spoken?

Of course Theresa May wanted to get Brexit passed without bothering Parliament with the finer details… or actually most of the details.

You can’t blame Theresa May for calling upon the ancient, arcane Royal Prerogative to get Brexit done without the say-so of Parliament.

I mean, Theresa May almost IS royalty. She’s Tory! Blue to the finger tips. Almost certainly blue blooded too.

Cold blooded? All the better. I mean, namby-pamby human rights? Another bloody nuisance. Don’t get me started!

Look, Theresa May, the clever girl, almost got away with it. Passing Brexit by bypassing Parliament. Did Parliament complain? Don’t make me laugh.

Most MPs and Lords and Ladies wanted Britain to stay in the EU. But that advisory referendum soon shut them up, didn’t it? Look who’s sovereign now!

If only that Gina Miller hadn’t interfered. Of course the High Court was wrong. Of course Mrs May was right to spend millions of pounds of our money to fight the ruling that went against her.

Such a surprise that those judges in the Supreme Court ruled that Mrs May’s cunning plans to skip Parliamentary process would be illegal.

What do they know about the law anyway? Enemies of the people!

Did I say Theresa ‘almost’ got away with it? Slip of the keyboard. She DID get away with it.

Parliament didn’t get to vote on a bill for Britain to leave the European Union.

David Davis told Parliament it wasn’t necessary. They could skip that bit because the decision to leave the EU had already been made by THE PEOPLE!

Sshh. I mean, please. Keep this to yourselves. David Davis was lying. Yes, lying to Parliament.

The referendum wasn’t capable of making any decision. It was advisory only. Not legally binding.

So who has made the official, legally-binding, pukka decision to leave the European Union?

Well, um, nobody! Isn’t it wonderful? Britain is leaving the EU without any proper sanction. Did I say Theresa was clever?

Some lawyers are working right now to challenge in the courts that Britain is almost certainly leaving the EU illegally.

But please, don’t encourage them. They need a lot of money to take their case forward. It will just prove to be yet another bloody nuisance to Mrs May’s plans.

You do want her to be successful in transforming Britain forever, don’t you?

Another clever wheeze of this amazing Tory government is the way they’re getting Parliament to vote to transfer all EU laws and protections into British law.

Then, no need for any more Parliamentary involvement.

Government ministers will be free to keep, amend or scrap those laws and protections without the interference of Parliament. It’s called Henry VIII clauses. Good old Henry.

Did I type protections? Another keyboard slip. Of course Tory ministers won’t want to keep protections after Brexit. Don’t you have any understanding of what this is all about?

Yes, it’s important to pay lip service to Parliamentary democracy. Keep them busy, I say. Yes, yes, Parliament can have a say on the final Brexit deal. Why not?

The choice is take it or leave it. Deal or no deal, we’re still leaving the EU.

Parliamentarians will be allowed to vote on whether they like the final deal or not. But like it or not, it won’t make any difference. Brexit, here we come!

That David Davis, he likes to boast a bit, but he’s doing a grand job, don’t you think? He blustered to Parliament, and on the telly, that he’s prepared 58 Brexit impact reports.

Of course they have to be kept secret. If people found out the truth about Brexit, they might not want it anymore.

(That’s why David has to keep saying, “There must be no attempt to remain in the EU, no attempt to re-join by the backdoor and no second referendum.”)

But you can see how Parliament got in the way again. Bloody Parliament!

They voted to see those 58 impact reports. Why on earth do they need to see them? What business is it of theirs? Really.

Well, you can’t blame David for saying that well, those impact reports, they don’t exist. He has to protect the integrity of his exit department, and to ensure Brexit goes ahead, come what may. (Come what May, get it?)

But Parliament insisted. The vote was binding. The Speaker of the House said so (little man in a big chair. Do we really need him? Really?)

So, good old David has done the honourable thing and handed over the documents. He’s a jolly good fellow!

Yes, ok, to protect the country from knowing the truth about Brexit, he and his team had to spend the night blacking out all the sensitive bits with a huge felt tip pen. Actually, hundreds of felt-tip pens. Why not?

Heaven forbid. If people got to see that information, the Brexit game would be rumbled. Seriously.

David says it’s because the information would damage his negotiations with the EU. Good one, David!

(Just a hint: try not to squint your eyes so much when lying. It’s just too much of a giveaway.)

Of course, the EU already know everything there is to know. They openly published dozens of Brexit impact reports months ago. Brexit is going to be a disaster. That’s what the blacked-out bits say in David’s secret reports. That’s why he cannot possibly publish them.

Duh! Don’t you get that?

Amazing that this Tory government doesn’t even have a majority in Parliament. In June’s general election, Theresa May asked for a landslide to get a mandate for her Brexit plans. Instead, she lost her majority entirely.

But she hasn’t lost the plot. She’s carrying on as if the general election hadn’t happened.

Contempt? Oh, it’s much more than that. It’s a coup. The cleverest, sneakiest coup you could ever imagine.

Parliament, and the people, are asleep whilst plans are being made without them.

Let’s hope nobody wakes up too soon. We don’t want any more bloody nuisances getting in the way of Brexit, do we?

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Since the heads of the European Union and NATO signed the Joint Declaration in Warsaw in July 2016, their relationship seems to be in the spotlight again. More and more researchers and policy-makers show their interest in this special partnership. They closely follow closely the developments of the implementations of the proposals, which resulted from the Joint Declaration and the promises made at the NATO Summit in Warsaw. While one might think that the revival of their relationship came out of the blue, this is in fact not the case. Both organisations, and especially on the staff level, have been working on uplifting and revamping it for the last three years – to be more precise, since the onset of the Ukraine crisis. Questions about the actual trigger therefore arises. Are the renewed aggression and military confrontations on the eastern border the cause for strengthening their cooperation? It can be speculated that Russia has indeed played a very significant, and in fact a decisive, part in drawing the EU and NATO closer and revitalising their relationship.

At this month’s Talk around the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin – a collaborative and high-level conference organised by the German Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA DGA), the European Commission, NATO, and the Federal Academic for Security Policy (BAKS) – the EU-NATO cooperation among other hot topics received the main attention. According to Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs and chairman of the presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, ‘it is Russia that currently unites the US and the EU and the member states within NATO’. Moreover, he believes that Russia is indispensable for the unity in both organisations. Russia has always taken a key position when it comes to European and Euro-Atlantic security and defence cooperation. While its predecessor the Soviet Union was the main reason for the creation of NATO, it remained a decisive factor even after the end of the Cold War. In the late 1990s, NATO and Russia signed the Madrid Declaration to cooperate on security issues, and also the EU maintained relations with its neighbour in the East as well. Seen from Moscow, however, ideally, Russia would have become an affiliate of both the EU and NATO with some important privileges.

The most recent events, i.e. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the subsequent onset of the Ukraine crisis and the on-going conflict in the Donbas region, have created a new security environment for Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community. Russia’s latest actions, its new ways of aggression through the use of cyber and hybrid threats and also the Zapad exercise in September 2017 in collaboration with Belarus, have united the EU and NATO on the one hand, but, on the other hand, have also illustrated differences among the two organisations. The year of 2014 has been pointed out as the rapprochement of the two organisations – the melting of the ‘frozen conflict’ between EU and NATO – and the beginning of strengthening their cooperation. Yet, the EU seeks diplomatic solutions to the Ukraine crisis – most notably is the Minsk Agreement – while NATO has increased the number of troops on its Eastern flank in order to send a strong signal of deterrence towards Russia. Moreover, member states in both organisations have different views on and ideas for dealing with Russia and the renewed aggression. Especially the Eastern and Southern states have different threat perceptions and seek different solutions to the conflicts.

While it might be true that Russia is a decisive player for revamping the EU-NATO relationship, and therefore serves as a unifying factor for their cooperation efforts on security and defence issues, it also shows that internally the organisations cannot come up with a coherent strategy and a common position towards their big neighbour. In order to find a solution not only to the on-going conflicts in Ukraine and the Donbas region, but also to maintain relations with Russia, both organisations should approach the country equally and jointly. A common approach has not hurt any actor involved so far.

Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters is a PhD Candidate and Teaching Assistant at the University of Kent.

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If Europe’s economic and monetary union is to be completed and become true to its purpose in a democratic manner, many more steps are needed towards establishing proper democratic processes at the EU level. This will have to include true convergence and the elimination of disequilibria between Member States, an actual mechanism for fiscal transfers to Member States that are in financial difficulties, and, primarily, a forum where different paradigms for the direction of the Eurozone could be heard and materialize.

The Eurozone crisis has brought to the surface the structural weaknesses of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and its ‘crowning jewel’: the Eurozone. The measures that have been marshaled to respond to the crisis can be separated across two main categories: those aimed at providing conditional financial assistance to Eurozone Member States through a variety of mechanisms (EFSM, EFSF SA, ESM) and through an initially ad-hoc and now permanent cooperation with the IMF, and those aimed at improving economic coordination between Member States through an overhaul of the EU modus operandi in financial governance (Two-Pack, Six-Pack, Fiscal Compact, etc.) What has been the impact of these measures on the democratic process of the Eurozone?

The analysis of democracy at the EU level has become known as the EU Democratic Deficit. In essence, the Deficit can be seen either “as an absence of public accountability or as a crisis of legitimacy”. Based on these two aspects, the Deficit scholarship is divided across three main approaches: Input, Throughput, and Output. The main subject of the analysis is whether the EU has the ability to influence key national policies with redistributive effects or not, and if so, whether there exists citizen input through appropriate processes with relevant safeguards in order to ensure proper democratic representation.

In the EMU, Member States had a lot to gain from joining, primarily in relation to a reduction of transaction costs and the promotion of stable financial relations. Concordantly, participation unavoidably resulted in the restriction of national fiscal and monetary sovereignty, and thus the legitimacy of the respective economic programs of each Eurozone members lost considerable ground. The political structure of the Eurozone should, ideally, compensate for the above through adequate provisions that ensure equal representation, emergency fiscal transfers in case of asymmetric shocks, and efficient convergence of economic policies. However, this has not been the case.

The deficit in the democratic process within the Euro area is not owed to mere participation in it, but to its structural weaknesses, which have allowed for considerable influence by and expression of interests of specific Member States vis-à-vis others, the latter also suffering from the resulting imbalances without any capability to address them. The crisis measures seem to have exacerbated, rather than addressed, this phenomenon. The intergovernmental nature of the ESM and the Fiscal Compact allowed for political weight to play a major role in their structure and underlying ideological foundation of ordoliberalism. Consider the introduction of even stricter budgetary policy, with specific limits for when a budget is to be considered balanced (maximum 0.5 percent GDP structural deficit) and for a 1/20 rate per year reduction of the debt if it is in excess of 60 percent GDP. Here, competition between rivaling ideas over budgetary restrictions within the Euro area was absent, harming legitimacy.

Another case is the lack of any meaningful representative input or oversight by the European Parliament in the arguably innovative Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure, and in the breakthrough capacity of the Commission and the Council to scrutinize the budgets of Eurozone Member States before they become binding, and in the Troika (Commission, ECB, IMF). This constitutes a democratic deficiency, as there is no forum within which common economic matters could enjoy direct representative input and competing ideas could be presented and chosen by citizens, and it also harms accountability, as the participating actors are not scrutinized by representative institutions.

Yet, under these adverse conditions in relation to proper democratic process, Eurozone Member States once again relinquish even more authority over key national policies to actors at the supranational level, based on a reinforced ordoliberal paradigm. The authority of the Commission and the ECB has been considerably augmented vis-à-vis the national level in relation to key national policies of Member States, especially the periphery/Southern ones. For example, the wide-ranging introduction of Reverse Qualified Majority Voting across the Six-Pack (e.g. Regulations 1173/2011, 1174/2011, 1176/2011) not only makes it much harder to abolish Commission-proposed acts, but makes a blocking majority virtually impossible without any of the first five most populous countries (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Poland).

Even in the case of financial assistance, which could be considered a form of fiscal transfer to Member States with financial difficulties, the policies implemented, heavy on liberalization, privatisation, etc., were clearly ordo(neo)liberal (e.g. for Greece). In fact, the very narrative employed during the crisis was heavy on the ordoliberal notion that “economic problems only emerge from budgetary indiscipline and not from risky and unsustainable economic behaviour in the private market,” without any regard for the potential balancing effect fiscal transfers may have. The economic problems of periphery/Southern Member States were blamed on profligacy, reinforcing the belief that the financial assistance programs were about German or Austrian or French taxpayers are bailing out Greek or Irish citizens. However, economic booms to periphery Member States were financed by excessive and cheap capital inflows from the core/North Member States leading to a loss of competitiveness with little ability of restoration without access to monetary policy instruments. The implementation of predatory lending practices in the pre-crisis period because of the moral hazard resulting from the absence of a Eurozone-wide  banking union (leaving bailouts as the only option), was kept mostly silent. In the case of Greece for example, the largest portion of financial assistance went towards repaying the financial sector that irresponsibly lent to Greece the amounts it irresponsibly borrowed.

Throughout the crisis measures, EU-level actors have acquired even more authority to influence key national policies, but being restricted to implementing the same ordoliberal paradigm without any challenge or alternative offered, or even without any platform where such an alternative could be offered. While it may seem that certain advances towards completing the Euro area’s true character as an Economic, along with Monetary, Union have been introduced, in reality there is a reinforcement of the application of the ordoliberal model that has constituted a primary reason for its structural weaknesses. Consider the fact that the ECB President mandated specific reforms, including retirement provisions, wage reforms, privatizations, etc., to be assumed in Italy through a letter sent to the Italian Prime Minister. Even more importantly, consider the inability of successive Greek governments from 2010 onwards to implement their electoral platform if and where it clashed with commitments included in the EU-IMF financial assistance programs, reaching a true crescendo during 2015, with the then government being elected on an anti-austerity platform and then, eventually, entering yet another program.

All the above create an absence of citizen input in the direction that economic and fiscal policies take. They also result in an absence of competition of different perspectives. If Europe’s economic and monetary union is to be completed and become true to its purpose in a democratic manner, many more steps are needed towards establishing proper democratic processes at the EU level. This will have to include true convergence and the elimination of disequilibria between Member States, an actual mechanism for fiscal transfers to Member States that are in financial difficulties, and, primarily, a forum where different paradigms for the direction of the Eurozone could be heard and materialize.

Based on the research article published in EuropeNow, Issue 12 (November 2, 2017).

The post The Political Economy of Democracy in the Eurozone during the Crisis appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

After his brilliant performance at Prime Minister’s Question Time this week, Ms Toynbee was moved to write: ‘The Labour leader finally grasps what leaving the EU really means: the greatest harm inflicted on the very people his party cares about the most.’

She wrote. ‘Brexit is the great national crisis of our times and yet the leaders of the opposition have sometimes seemed so muted it has driven remainers to tear their hair out in frustration.’

But all that changed this week, according to Ms Toynbee.

‘Jeremy Corbyn for the first time turned all guns on the prime minister over her incoherent, incomprehensible and impossible Brexit stance. He used all his questions, every one, to wallop her exactly where she and her party are most vulnerable – and not before time.’

Firing on all cylinders, Corbyn hit the Prime Minister with a ‘blistering salvo’:

“Seventeen months after the referendum they say there can be no hard border but haven’t worked out how. They say they’ll protect workers rights, then vote against it. They say they’ll protect environmental rights, then vote against it. They promise action on tax avoidance but vote against it time and time again.”

The Prime Minster, observed Ms Toynbee, offered only a lame response. “Let me tell him, I am optimistic about our future. I’m optimistic about the success we can make of Brexit … blah, blah, blah … building a Britain fit for the future …”

Corbyn gave punch after punch against Brexit. He said,

“The EU’s chief negotiator said this week that the UK financial sector will lose its current rights to trade with Europe. It seems as though neither EU negotiators nor the Government have any idea where this is going.”

More blah, blah, blah by the Prime Minister, then Corbyn jumped up with his left hook:

“In April, the Brexit Secretary was confident that the European Banking Authority would be staying in London; now he cannot even guarantee that banks will have a right to trade with Europe. Last week, the Government voted down Labour amendments to protect workers’ rights.

“The Foreign Secretary has described employment regulation as ‘backbreaking’, and has repeatedly promised to ‘scrap the social chapter’. Why will not the Prime Minister guarantee workers’ rights—or does she agree with the Foreign Secretary on these matters?”

Yet more blah, blah, blah by the Prime Minister.

Jeremy Corby hit back:

“The record is clear: this Government voted down our amendment to protect workers’ rights. The Environment Secretary said he wanted a ‘green Brexit’, but yet again Conservative MPs voted down Labour amendments to guarantee environmental protection.”

The Prime Minster, “I will take no lessons from the Labour Party, blah blah blah..”

Corbyn swung back:

“The right hon. Lady’s predecessor blocked EU-wide proposals for a public register of trusts; again, Conservative MPs voted down Labour amendments to deal with tax avoidance

“When it comes to Brexit, this Government are a shambles.”

And his knock-out punch:

“Is it not the truth that this Government have no energy, no agreed plan and no strategy to deliver a good Brexit for Britain?”

‘Where has Corbyn been?’ asked Ms Toynbee. On a long journey, apparently.

The Guardian columnist explained, ‘A lifetime of instinctive “capitalist club” Euroscepticism has been shed. Passionate distress over Brexit from his young supporters and his trade union allies has brought him round.

‘Besides, the facts have changed. His vague, abstract distaste for the EU has given way to facing the hard reality of what Brexit means: inflicting most harm on those he cares about most. If only those on the opposite benches were on the same reality-check journey.’

Mr Corbyn’s rhetoric has changed lately. On a visit to Shipley in West Yorkshire, he was asked how he would vote if there was another referendum now. It was a question that the Prime Minister and her Chancellor, Philip Hammond, refused to answer. But Mr Corbyn didn’t hesitate: he’d vote for Remain.

Said Mr Corbyn, “I voted remain because I thought the best option was to remain. I haven’t changed my mind.”

And he added, “We must make sure we obtain tariff-free access to the European markets and protection of all the rights and membership of agencies we have achieved through the European Union.”

Mr Corbyn warned, “The danger is, we will get to March 2019 with no deal, we fall out of the EU, we go on to World Trade Organisation rules, and there will be threats to a lot of jobs all across Britain. I think it is quite shocking.”

Is Ms Toynbee right when she asserted in her column, ‘He was, say some, hesitant on unfamiliar policy turf. But now he has found his feet, and his voice and confidence’?

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has challenged the Tory government to answer: what kind of country does Britain want to be, a European model country, or something else altogether?

According to Ms Toynbee, Theresa May doesn’t have a clue, but Jeremy Corbyn does.

She wrote, ‘The European model beckons as the enlightened, internationalist, progressive vision – the Europhobic model is a land of impoverished deregulation.’

This is now something that Labour understands. She explained, ‘There were obvious reasons for Labour’s reluctance to go full-tilt against Brexit.

‘Too many Labour MPs in leave seats had taken fright. But since the election, another picture has emerged: Labour lost votes in some leave seats but gained votes in other leave areas as electors lost faith in the government’s chaotic negotiations.’

Shadow Brexit Secretary, Keir Starmer, has led the way, ‘opposing every government misstep, aligning maximum opposition amendment by amendment.’

Concluded Ms Toynbee, ‘His leaders cannot but see that this is not just right, but politically essential. There is no other place for an opposition to be in this national trauma.

‘My hunch is that the harder Corbyn hits out over Brexit, the stronger Labour’s support will grow. And the word is, that’s what we shall hear from now on.’

If her analysis is correct, it means that Labour offers Britain the best chance to reverse Brexit. So long as they can get into power before Britain leaves the EU.

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