Tag: Single Market

SINGLE MARKET CHALLENGE TO CORBYN

 

NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT.

Jeremy Corbyn does not take easily to adulation. This weekend he would probably prefer to be tending his allotment than hearing “Oh! Jeremy Corbyn”, ringing out from the Brighton conference centre.

But Labour’s surprisingly good performance (they failed to win for the third time by the way) in June’s General Election has confirmed Corbyn in the leadership for years to come if he wants to stay. Except for Alison McGovern’s Labour Campaign for the Single Market, most moderate Labour MPs have become political zombies. They remain because of an admirable sense of loyalty, hoping the tide will turn. I fear they will be disappointed.

In Brighton at the weekend we will see the hard left not only buttress the current leadership in power but take steps to make the left revolution permanent. Corbynistas are set to take control of the Conference Arrangements Committee and National Constitutional Committee. Most people have never heard of these bodies but the former used to be used by New Labour to keep embarrassing subjects like unilateral nuclear disarmament off the agenda. The latter body came into existence after the expulsion of Militant in 1986, but would be unlikely to expel similar people today. “No enemies to the Left” is likely to be the guiding principle.

But Corbyn’s people are looking beyond the day when Jeremy returns to his marrows. The percentage of Labour MPs needed to nominate a leadership candidate is being reduced so that in future left wingers will not need misguided moderates like Frank Field and Margaret Beckett to put them on the ballot paper.

Don’t expect a huge row on the conference floor about all this. The outside chance that the Tories might implode under Brexit strains and Labour come to power in yet another General Election will probably ensure good behaviour.

 

BREXIT REVOLT?

If there is to be trouble for Corbyn, it is likely to come from the Wirral South MP Alison McGovern and her attempt to get the party to commit to staying in the Single Market for ever. The Shadow Brexit Secretary Kier Starmer won a surprising partial victory in getting the Eurosceptic people around Corbyn to commit Labour to the Single Market during the Brexit transition period. McGovern wants to go further with all the implications that has for continued freedom of movement. McGovern belongs to the Blairite Progress faction in the party which has recently suffered a huge financial blow from the total withdrawal of funding by Lord Sainsbury.

LIB DEMS STICK TO THEIR GUNS.

While Labour try to walk the tightrope between Remain and Leave supporters, Tory Cabinet infighting was patched up just ahead of the Prime Minister’s Florence speech. But that was after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson repeated the lie over a £350m Brexit windfall for the NHS. Let’s remember we do not send £350m to the EU each week. After the rebate and European aid is considered the figure is £161m.

Meanwhile I was in Bournemouth with the Lib Dems. They were celebrating the EU with flags and yellow starred berets. They also reaffirmed their commitment to letting the people vote on the Brexit deal.

It would have been easy for the new leader Vince Cable to have taken the party’s poor election showing as an excuse to abandon this policy which shows no sign at the moment of being popular.

However, talking to representatives, I detected a hope that public opinion will undergo a massive change when the consequences of the botched Brexit talks become apparent. Let us hope that change of view is lead by the North, the area that was sadly deceived by the Boris bombast and which has most to lose from leaving.

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WILL CHANCELLOR HOLD HIS NERVE ON PAY?

 

LISTEN TO THE GREY BEARDS.

The minority Labour governments of the late 1970s were plagued with disputes with the unions over public sector pay. This Tory minority administration is facing the same problem. It seems that those who want to spend money the nation hasn’t got can sense the weakness and put pressure on the politicians.

I don’t envy Philip Hammond. It is an open secret Mrs May wanted to sack him. Now he is being publicly undermined by flaky Cabinet Ministers hinting that they favour easing up on austerity for nurses and council staff. One would expect the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to be in favour of higher pay for NHS staff, but other ministers who’ve sought to pull the rug out from under the Chancellor include right wingers like Defence Secretary Michael Fallon and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling.

Those coming to the aid of Spreadsheet Phil are largely from the elder statesmen category. They include former Chancellors Norman “je regrette rien” Lamont and Ken Clarke. They know what they are talking about but don’t need the assistance of Call Me Dave. The ex-Prime Minister David Cameron’s demand for pay restraint whilst picking up a tidy sum for a speech in Seoul was unconvincing to say the least.

So, let’s consider what the former Tory Chancellors say. They point to the continuing deficit and to the fact that increasing public sector pay even by an extra 1% is very costly. They also have their eye on the politics. Cabinet Ministers calling for an easing of the purse strings are panicking in the presence of Jeremy Money Tree Corbyn. The Labour leader has skilfully captured the public mood for a splurge after years of austerity. But he’s at least 60 seats short of ever being able to do anything about it. Jez we can. Now we can’t. Lest we forget the Tories remain in power.

What will happen if Phil gives in to the pay review bodies who will now all recommend hefty increases? The Tories will avoid some criticism for being stony hearted but could lose their reputation for economic stability.

Public sector workers are suffering from rising inflation and economic uncertainty, both caused by Brexit which brings me to my second topic….

LABOUR EURO REBELS MAY BE DOOMED.

Seven North West Labour MPs defied the whip last week to support our continued membership of the Single Market. They were Luciana Berger (Wavertree), Ann Coffey (Stockport), Maria Eagle (Garston), Louise Ellman (Riverside), Kate Green (Stretford), Alison McGovern (Wirral South) and Barrow’s John Woodcock.

They moved too soon. They made themselves vulnerable to the charge that they had reopened the split between Corbyn and the Parliamentary Party in the hour of Labour’s election success. But more importantly they needed to wait till public opinion swings more clearly in favour of having second thoughts about the whole Brexit project.

What they have done is expose the euro sceptic credentials of Jeremy Corbyn. Sacking members of his shadow ministerial team for their pro-European views is far more honest than last year when he masqueraded as a Remainer heading Labour’s half-hearted campaign to stay in the EU.

The problem for the North West Seven and the forty other colleagues who rebelled is that they are in a party whose formal position on leaving the Single Market is the same as the Tories. All the stuff about a jobs led strategy and staying as close to Europe as possible is for the birds.

We need an opposition party that wants to stop the Brexit madness. I’m having lunch with Vince The Cable next Tuesday and I’ll tell you what he thinks in my next blog here.

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ON THE BRINK OF BREXIT: NORTH VOTE TO REMAIN !

 

JO COX.

I have always believed throughout my journalistic career that the vast majority of MPs and councillors go into public life to do good. Jo Cox was indeed one of them. My sympathy to her lovely family and the many Labour MPs who were close friends and are bitterly grieving at this time.

IMMIGRATION MAY DECIDE IT.

We are on the brink of voting to leave the European Union. Sunday’s polls show a stemming of the Remain advance, but it remains likely we will vote to leave.

The immigration issue is overwhelming the very strong economic arguments to stay in. So what needs to be done to avoid this disastrous result? Increasingly lurid threats about emergency austerity budgets probably won’t do it. An appeal to solid Labour voters in the North of England will help. They hold the key to next Thursday’s vote. So let’s put the Remain case to Labour voters who feel their jobs and neighbourhoods are threatened by “uncontrolled” immigration from the EU.

It is not actually uncontrolled. We do deport EU migrants who break our laws. The Prime Minister has negotiated that they won’t get unemployment benefit. If they haven’t got a job in six months they will can be asked to leave and it will be a full four years before they can claim full benefits in the future. The “pull” factor of being able to get £10,000 a year benefits on arrival is going. All that said most EU immigrants staff the NHS, pick the fruit, pay their taxes and add to our diverse culture as they have done since the Anglo Saxons enforced free movement on the indigenous Celts.

Another “pull” factor is also diminishing. One of the reasons for the large influx of EU workers has been the disparity between the UK economy which has been doing well and the poor performance of the Euro zone. That is now reversing with the latest figures indicating that the Euro zone is doing better than the UK economy which has been hit by all the uncertainty of the referendum.

Turkey will not be joining the EU for years, and we have a veto anyway. It is the case that more immigrants come here from outside the EU.

Finally I have no doubt that if by any chance we narrowly vote to stay in, the politicians and Commissioners of the EU will have got the message that something has to be done about free movement in the Single Market. Senior Labour figures are already indicating they support this.

Other messages to northern Labour voters are these.

Most major employers are urging a Remain vote. Jobs and investment is at risk. Also some Tory Brexiteers have their eye on scrapping workers rights provided by the EU.

BREXIT WILL BE AWFUL AND FOR EVER.

If we vote to leave, there is no going back, no second thoughts. The whole complex and expensive process of detaching ourselves from forty years of engagement with our former friends will begin. It will be carried out against a background of economic downturn and turmoil. Just look at what has been happening to the pound and the markets as the likelihood of a Brexit vote has loomed.

The lie about us paying £350m a week remains on the Brexit bus. It is half that and the EU has funded projects in the north of England that Whitehall would never have done as our MD Frank McKenna argues powerfully in his blog.

The Brexiteers have no answer about what is going to happen to the Northern Ireland border with the Republic crossed by 200 roads.

The EU has ensured 70 years of peace after a thousand years of conflict in Europe. Vladimir Putin wants a Brexit vote to destabilise the EU.

This is not a referendum on a David Cameron, a here today gone tomorrow Prime Minister. It is about the future of this country in Europe and the world for the rest of this century. Let us maintain our role of leadership in Europe and respect from the rest of the world by voting to Remain.

 

HURRAH FOR THE EUROPEAN UNION!

 

PROUD TO BE EU.

Here’s one person who’s prepared to be joyfully enthusiastic about our remaining a member of the European Union. Somebody needs to get away from the grinding negativity of both sides in the referendum campaign and state boldly why they are proud that Britain is in the EU and would be ashamed if we left.

Yes ashamed that a country like ours with so much to give to the EU in terms of common sense and our different perspective, should turn its back on our 27 friends and try our luck in an uncertain world.

I am proud that two million Brits are comfortable working in the EU, that many of our elderly are able to move easily to Spain to get some sun in their retiring years and that British Ministers and MEPs are at the negotiating table when trade negotiations are done. We are not done down all the time in these votes by the way. 95% of the time our partners see it our way.

NORTH BENEFITS FROM EUROPE.

The North has benefited hugely from its EU membership. Merseyside was pulled back from the brink of collapse by the EU regional and structural funds. We remain a major recipient of such aid currently worth £800m. Leave claim it is “our” money coming back. However there was no guarantee British governments would have given Merseyside that priority, indeed Mrs Thatcher’s administration was advised to manage the decline of Liverpool.

The International Festival of Business(IFB) is about to start in Liverpool. It is supported by organisations like Downtown and the North West Business Leadership Team (NWBLT). The conference continues right through the drama that will be Referendum Day so will provide a fascinating forum for instant business reaction to a result that could have momentous consequences for northern business. Our own Chief Executive Frank McKenna has made his position clear on wanting to remain and the NWBLT is now putting its shoulder to the Remain wheel. Its Chief Executive, Geoffrey Piper points out that the Midlands and North are most dependent upon our trade links with Europe particularly in respect of the car and engineering sectors. Membership of the Single Market (which Leave now admit we couldn’t be part of) gives us real clout with the rest of the world.

Piper addresses the argument of Leave that there is a world beyond the EU waiting to do deals with an isolated Britain. He points out that the major trade negotiation with the US and others, like Japan, will soon mean that 80% of the world will be covered by EU agreements. He concludes we would get less favourable global deals on our own.

Freeing ourselves from EU red tape is the cry of Leave, superficially attractive to any business person. But this “red tape” usually ensures that workers aren’t exploited over their hours, that they get maternity/paternity leave, that machines are safe and products reliable. As Piper points out there is one set of regulations for 28 countries. Leave and we’d soon be in a blizzard of red tape.

The NWBLT also address the thorny issue of immigration with a brave assertion that, whilst the vast majority of our northern workforce is recruited from UK nationals we do need specialists from the EU in the boardroom and staff from the EU to keep the NHS running.

…. HOWEVER BREXIT ARE WINNING.

Whatever NWBLT, Downtown, most economists and international organisations think, the polls are showing Leave edging ahead. Immigration is becoming more salient than economic common sense.

Everyone who believes in 28 nations bound together in harmony and with a common purpose must get out and campaign for Remain. That’s especially the case with Labour and young Remain supporters. Every vote is going to be vital. It will be very close and there is no going back from Brexit.