Likely consequenses of brexit

No other way than copy and paste. Letter from Lord Adonis to Jeremy Corbyn:

Dear Jeremy,

We are both avid rail enthusiasts, perhaps the strongest bond two men can forge at a distance, outside support for the England football team. My mission now is to form an equally strong bond with you in fighting Brexit.

I know some colleagues think that, on Brexit, the more silence the better from Labour. “Never interfere with your enemy while he is making a mistake,” was Napoleon’s dictum. In the week of David Davis’s botched midnight coup, followed by Boris Johnson attacking Theresa May for trying to turn Britain into a colony of the EU, the Tories are giving a masterclass in disarray.

There are also arguments that any clear line from Labour simply divides our electoral coalition, and that gains in Brighton become losses in Basildon.

However, you cannot aspire to govern the country without engaging with it on the biggest issue of the decade. The denouement of this crisis will be parliamentary votes on May’s Brexit deal or no deal, within a matter of months, in which a Labour abstention would be tantamount to abdication.

Abstention, let alone support for a Tory Brexit, would also be a profound betrayal of Labour values and Labour voters. You accept this in your campaign for a ‘jobs-first Brexit’ and Keir Starmer’s ‘tests’ for the Brexit deal, which are first and foremost a deal which protects the economy and delivers the ‘exact same benefits’ as the European customs union and single market.

It is now starkly obvious that a ‘jobs- first Brexit’ is a contradiction in terms. Maybe, with a wise Labour government in the best of all possible worlds, this need not have been so. But since Brexit is a neo-Thatcherite project in origin and leadership, and May defined Brexit from the outset of her premiership as disengaging from the economic institutions of Europe, it was always going to end this way.

To try and wangle a deal with the EU, May is now making a half-in, half-out offer to Michel Barnier. But in the unlikely event that she secures even this, it will lead, in her words, to “less market access” between Britain and the EU27. May herself no longer pretends that Britain will be better off with her Brexit, so it is bizarre that Labour is still suspending judgement.

And this is before one gets to European peace, freedom and solidarity, and the development of ‘social Europe’ since Jacques Delors, which explain why Labour members and trade unionists are so overwhelmingly against Brexit. As one Young Momentum activist said to me, “I don’t want to be shut up on a small island with Johnson, Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg”.

Ultimately, therefore, we will be voting against May’s deal or no deal. And now that the Chequers fudge has demonstrated her position to be wrong and craven, we should start publicly mobilising against it now.

Our ideal outcome would be a general election returning a Labour government before Brexit can happen next March. Just possibly this might occur if May’s government collapses in the forthcoming Brussels negotiations and/or the subsequent parliamentary ratification. But the lowest common denominator is a powerful solvent for a Tory party which still puts power above all, so this is an unlikely outcome.

Far more likely, if we act consistently and skilfully, is a Commons majority, comprising all the opposition parties plus the 30 or so anti-Brexit Tories, for a People’s Vote on May’s deal, or no deal, with the alternative option being to stay in the EU. The big attraction of this to the Tory rebels is precisely that it does not require an immediate general election.

Part of being skilful is keeping your options open so that either an election or a People’s Vote are possible, yet one or the other – and the defeat of May’s deal or no deal – are seen as inevitable at the hands of a resolute Labour party leading a growing anti-Brexit coalition in parliament and the country.

Would we win a referendum? I believe we would do so convincingly, under your leadership. You have already humiliated May in one national campaign. In a People’s Vote next year, compared to the 2016 referendum, there would be nearly five million new voters, and a higher turnout than ever among the Corbyn-worshipping young. I can take you through the figures: they are as fascinating as the timetable on the newly-nationalised LNER line from London to Edinburgh.

Politics is never static. Victory in a People’s Vote would create a new, broad Corbyn-led coalition for the next general election, whenever it comes. It would also reinforce Tory divisions and perhaps even precipitate a split.

Oh and Napoleon. He ultimately lost at Waterloo, ending up on an island in the South Atlantic too far from South America even to take part in demonstrations.

Regards, Andrew

Jura your post quoting one of your "pupils":

"Always strikes me how many people don’t see that being in the EU/SM has struck us the right balance between capitalism and socialism in many ways. Providing us with the markets and prosperity to create jobs, but at the same time creating a club where those markets can be tempered by employment rights, consumer rights and ethics".

I have to responds to this writer and take issue with her.
She says the 'right balance between capitalism and socialism". Sadly we are unable to ask questions of the writer, however one has to ask what does she mean by “right balance between capitalism and socialism”? She later adds “In Corbyn’s ultra socialist world, people do matter, collectively rather than individually, but can be sacrificed for the greater good of ideological aims”. I imagine she is ensuring that Corbyn being a socialist and against the EU along with many other ‘socialists” are discounted as ‘not proper socialists, therefore can be removed from her argument. I should also point out that the EU is not a political organisation. The Country’s of the EEA all have differing political views that are becoming more and more extreme, polarizing in fact. In Italy, Greece and Germany coalition extreme right and left are coming together against the EU. Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia, all moving away from centric politics to Protectionist political views, all as a reaction to the EU regulations and Directives.

Let us clarify this notion that the EU introduced "employment rights and consumer rights into the UK. There is a proud history of industrial, pre industrial and consumer protection in the UK. Wikipedia says:
“ The history of labour law in the United Kingdom concerns the development of UK labour law, from its roots in Roman and medieval times in the British Isles up to the present. Before the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of mechanised manufacture, regulation of workplace relations was based on status, rather than contract or mediation through a system of trade unions. Serfdom was the prevailing status of the mass of people, except where artisans in towns could gain a measure of self-regulation through guilds. In 1740 save for the fly-shuttle the loom was as it had been since weaving had begun. The law of the land was, under the Act of Apprentices 1563, that wages in each district should be assessed by Justices of the Peace. From the middle of the 19th century, through Acts such as the Master and Servant Act 1867 and the Employers and Workmen Act 1875, there became growing recognition that greater protection was needed to promote the health and safety of workers, as well as preventing unfair practices in wage contracts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_labour_law_in_the_United_Kingdom

•Factory and Workshop Act 1901
•United Kingdom mines and quarries regulation in 1910
•Shops Act 1911
Liberal reforms from 1906[edit]
Around the start of the 20th century, the judiciary moved into a reactionary phase, passing the notorious judgment of Taff Vale Railway Co v Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants,[6] which made trade unions liable in economic tort for the costs of industrial action. Although a combination of employers in a company could dismiss employees without notice, a combination of employees in a trade union could not, by withdrawing their labour, do the same without sanction. This was soon reversed by an increasingly representative Parliament after the United Kingdom general election, 1906. The Liberal government and the Liberals, among whom David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill were rising stars, quickly passed the Trade Disputes Act 1906 with the additional support of the Labour Party. This laid down the essential principle of collective labour law that any strike "in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute" is immune from discriminatory civil law sanctions. The Old Age Pensions Act 1908provided some minimum security for people who retired, the Trade Boards Act 1909 created industrial panels that would fix minimum wages and the National Insurance Act 1911 levied a fee to insure people got benefits in the event of unemployment.
•Workmen's Compensation Act 1906
Inter war period[edit]
See also: Whitley Report and 1926 United Kingdom general strike
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Treaty_of_Versailles,_English_version.jpg
The Versailles Treaty.
Representation of the People Act 1918 gave universal suffrage to men over age 21 and women over 28. A new beginning was promised by the victors to their people. The Versailles Treaty created the International Labour Organization to draw up common standards between countries, for as it said, "peace can be established only if it is based on social justice", and echoed the US Clayton Act 1914 in pronouncing that "labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity or an article of commerce".[7] But the international system remained disjointed as the United States Congress withheld its approval to join the League of Nations. Within the UK the postwar settlement was to make a home fit for heroes. Whitley Councils extended the Trade Boards Act 1909 system to Joint Industrial Councils that encouraged (non legally binding) fair wage agreements,[8] while the Ministry of Labour actively organised and advised the growth of trade unions.[9] This was based on a theory of industrial democracy through collective bargaining, agreement or action, advocated by Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb in Industrial Democracy to remedy the inequality of bargaining power of workers.[10] Without legal force behind collective agreements, the law remained in a state of collective laissez faire, encouraging voluntarism for agreement and dispute settlement between industrial partners. The 1920s and 1930s were economically volatile. In 1926 a General Strike against coal miners' pay cuts paralysed the country, though was broken by Winston Churchill, by then the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 was subsequently passed to prohibit any secondary action. The Labour Party had formed Parliamentary majorities in 1924 and 1929, but achieved little in the way of reform, particularly after the onset of the Great Depression.
•New Ministries and Secretaries Act 1916, created the Ministry of Labour
•Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 (c 22)
•Trade Boards and Road Haulage Wages (Emergency Provisions) Act 1940 c. 7
•Truck Act 1940 c. 38
•Workmen's Compensation and Benefit (Byssinosis) Act 1940 c. 56
•Workmen's Compensation (Supplementary Allowances) Act 1940 c. 47
Post-war consensus[edit]
the first statutes to prohibit discrimination focused on gender and race emerged in the 1960s as the Civil Rights Act was passed in the United States. Discrimination in employment (as in consumer or public service access) was formally prohibited on grounds of race in 1965,[13] gender in 1975, disability in 1995, sexual orientation and religion in 2003 and age in 2006.[14] A complicated and inconsistent jamboree of Acts and statutory instruments was placed into a comprehensive code in the Equality Act 2010. Much discrimination law is now applicable throughout the European Union, to which the UK acceded in 1972. While the prominence of labour issues in the early European Treaties and case law was scant,[15] it was not until the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty was drafted that labour issues were formally incorporated into the EU's jurisprudence.
•Wages Councils Act 1945
•Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1946 c. 52
•Wages Councils Act 1948 c. 7
•Employment and Training Act 1948, employment service
•Workmen's Compensation (Supplementation) Act 1951 c. 22
•Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1952 c. 17
•Reinstatement in Civil Employment Act 1950 c. 10
•Terms and Conditions of Employment Act 1959
•Wages Councils Act 1959
Conservative government[edit]

In 1997 the new Labour government brought the UK into the EU's Social Chapter, which has served as the source for most reform in UK law since that time. Domestic led reform was minimal. The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 established a country-wide minimum wage, but did not attempt to reinvigorate the Wage Board system. The Employment Relations Act 1999 introduced a 60-page procedure requiring employers to compulsorily recognise and bargain with a union, though union membership remained at a steady 30 per cent level. While the UK retains essentially the same legal framework as evolved through the 1980s Following the election of David Cameron and the formation of the Conservative—Liberal Democrat coalition, the Equality Act 2010 passed into law which unified anti-discrimination laws including the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1976 to provide a unified approach to anti-discrimination protections in the workplace covering sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and a number of other factors.
The Coalition also implemented a number of measures from the Work and Families Act 2006 and the Pensions Act 2008. They also introduced the Agency Workers Regulations 2010.
Following the Conservative success at the 2015 general election, the government introduced the National Living Wage by amending the National Minimum Wage Act 1998.
In July 2017, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that the government’s introduction of tribunal fees for people bringing cases to employment tribunals was unlawful. The fees were scrapped and fees paid by claimants refunded.
See also[edit]
•History of labour law
Late 19th century Acts of Parliament
•Hosiery Manufacture (Wages) Act 1874
•Public Health Act 1875
•Truck Act 1887
•Truck Act Amendment Act 1887
•Truck Act 1896
•Stratified Ironstone Mines (Gunpowder) Act 1881
•Coal Mines (Weighing of Minerals) Act 1905
•Notice of Accidents Act 1906
•Coal Mines Regulation Act 1908”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_labour_law_in_the_United_Kingdom

The sheer extent of the history of our evolving protective laws over century's should destroy the writers argument on the EU being the first set up to come up with protective laws.

Your 'pupil' brings up the word ‘ethics’ what does she means by ethics in the context of the EU? You obviously cannot answer for her nor can she answer for herself since this is a second hand comment. Until the context is established it is a comment that cannot be rationalised, since it is not clear what is meant.

She then goes on to say, “Because ethics and protections cost money. In the world of the hard Brexiters we are heading to, they are an irrelevant nuisance to be removed as soon as possible because they eat into profits and remove some of the absolute power of the markets. Pure globalist capitalism - and disaster capitalism too- where people are an expendable commodity.”
Well what a statement. Easy to say and very much harder to substantiate so that is probably why she does not attempt to do so.

However I would like to take a closer look at the words she is using. “Ethics and protections cost money”. Guessing of course that she means in connection with employment and consumer protection, all I can say is that we already have these protections and have a long history of ethical legal structures with behaviour gradually increasing those rights and protections long before the EU, as with all things the degree and intensity has changed and improved with knowledge.

She says with regard to her view of a “Brexiters world” that I assume she is still referring to employment and consumer protection and ethics because this is not clear. First let us make it clear, that being independent of a single market and customs union and moving towards free trade is not as she says “globalist capitalism” there is misunderstanding of the terms here. Nor is it as she says “disaster capitalism” again clearly misunderstanding the term. Her view of Brexit on the basis of these comments is fallacious.

This statement is of course correct “.... ethics and rights still cost money, and still need the commitment to upholding them from everyone who’s in the trading game”. Well yes, all these protections are on our Statute and are upheld in Law. Why would the UK deny it’s Citizens the rights and protections of hundreds of years of history and implementation of employment and consumer rights, that are on our Statute, that means in our Laws. These comments are evidence that the writer has very little knowledge of the deeper workings of Statute. She then still attempting to trash the the type of ‘socialism” that does not support her weak argument she says “Whatever Corbyn thinks he wants, we just won’t have the money and we won’t have any say in the rules, on our own against countries like the US (particularly Trump’s US), who do not share those commitments”. Good gracious, such tosh! I am no supporter of Corbyn, but when something is so badly presented and so naïve in it’s construction as an argument as this is, then one even has to support Corbyn in this context. Trade is done by agreements and treaties in those there are conditions, just as the EU place highly restrictive ones on us, we will have regulations, conditions that ensure that the trade between the UK and any other Country including America, who do have very strict Employment laws, and consumer protection themselves, will comply with UK law’s, and regulations, on standards, and every other stringent rigour that UK ethics demand. Not knowing that this is how “the world of Brexiters” as the writer put’s it, is, and will be, is simply astounding and naïve.

I'll pass your comments to Angela - I am sure she will be fascinated ...

I certainly was.

allyg why don’t you start your own blog.
That way you could cut’n’paste to your heart’s content and wouldn’t have other posters questioning your reasoning, your sources and your grammar.

mostly what a good idea! Thanks for your advice.

mostly....do check out other threads, where many others are happily cutting and pasting info, and nobody says a word!
Of course, why should they? But sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander IMO.
Don’t read it if you don’t want to, it’s not compulsary, but unlike links, it doesn’t take you away from the page.

Flippin eck Jura that's the longest post I've ever seen on GN. lost the will to live

Apologies, that sounded rude.

ally. Have you actually read any history or do you just fly to wikipedia for things to copy and paste?

The gulf between acts on the Statute book and the implementation of those acts was immense.

I think you'd be better off looking at EU legislation on workers' rights and UK legislation since 1973 if you want to see if UK legislation was superior and/or EU legislation redundant

Chewbacca it's a good thing that threads are governed by the number of posts and not by the length.

I am losing the will to read
nothing I say or do will make any difference except my X on the ballot paper.

we are talking about all those wonderful pre and post EU legistlation on workers' rights being threatened at the moment by Brexit. But yes, agreed that much of it was pre EU - we, the UK, have actually ensured that it is included in EU regs for the benefit of all.

So, presumably, this is all still part of our legislation unless it was superseded by EU regulations, or should automatically become enshrined in our laws after Brexit.

mostly....do check out other threads, where many others are happily cutting and pasting info, and nobody says a word!
Of course, why should they? But sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander IMO.

I don't think anybody objbects to cut and paste, per se, lemon. It's just a question of degree.

Most people just cut and paste a bit they think is particularly pertinent to the point they are making and give a link so that people can read more if they want to. By cutting and pasting enormous chunks Ally runs the risk of people not being bothered to read her posts at all and thus her being cut out of discussions.

I may have missed something pertinent to the discussion when I posted

I think Ally is willing to take that risk MaizieD.

So, presumably, this is all still part of our legislation unless it was superseded by EU regulations, or should automatically become enshrined in our laws after Brexit.

I'm not sure that all of EU legislation on workers' rights is covered by UK legislation made prior to EU legislation. But I'm afraid I don't have time to research it at the moment

It would need to be updated, so presumably some of the EU legislation will automatically be enshrined in UK law.

I expect Ally is well able to speak for herself at length lemon

"By cutting and pasting enormous chunks Ally runs the risk of people not being bothered to read her posts at all and thus her being cut out of discussions."
Or putting an end to discussion, which could be the aim here.

As, I believe, some of the Brexit Ultras are looking forward to repealing some legislation on workers' rights post Brexit, Jalima, I wouldn't be too confident about its retention in UK law.

Dominic Raab wants much of that legislation cast aside- he wants to make it easier to hire and fire and make people work more than 48 hours a week plus take away the responsibility for employers to have to pay minimum wage. You can find clips of him saying all this on various programmes.

Well, let's hope they are not in charge, they are falling by the wayside.

MaizieD yes, of course she can speak for herself but you wrote that post to me.

One of the main reasons Rees Mogg and co want to get rid of unskilled workers from Eastern EU, is to encourage investment in agriculture.

You do realise what that means?

Same in other industries and businesses, including stores, transport, etc, etc.