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Names will never hurt him
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/19/eu-will-grant-brexit-extension-if-johnson-sends-letter-says-brussels?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Will the EU get Johnson off the hook? Plus – the Queen opens parliament
I saw something today that suggested the EU itself might offer an extension of the deadline to Brexit, apparently without Johnson having to ask for one (which at the moment he is claiming he won’t do, even though he is legally obliged to). This could get him off the hook and save him from a second round of unlawful behaviour. But would he be off the hook if he refused the offer? I can see lawyers making pot loads from this at multiple court hearings, appeals, Scottish appeals, and then Supreme Court rulings, well into next year! But I may be getting too feverish and reading too much into a BBC report. The trouble is, no scenario is too outlandish!
Talking of outlandish, I just saw the opening of parliament: gold coaches, sparkling jewellery, weird outfits, funny hats, and an out-of-tune band. This is the 64th time she’s done it. And she still didn’t laugh! I wanted her to fling off the crown and shout, “Oh come on, bring on the clowns!”
But then, I suppose, they were already there.
The things they say (3)
Sajid Javid was not told in advance of [adviser Sonia Khan’s] sacking by Cummings – Guardian headline
One former Whitehall colleague of Khan’s said: “Let’s hope Saj makes a stand and sticks up for her. I won’t hold my breath though.”
The things they say (2):
Nicky Morgan in June:
You cannot say you are going to take back control … and then go: ‘Oh, by the way, we are just going to shut parliament down for a couple of months, so we are just going to drift out on a no deal.’
Nicky Morgan Thursday:
I’m a member of the cabinet, I fully support the prime minister.
The things they say (new series) (1):
In a Scottish court yesterday a government lawyer, though rightly arguing that Johnson’s proroguing of Parliament was not unconstitutional, uttered the following words about the process in which the queen is constitutionally obliged to follow the advice of “her” prime minister:
It’s the act of the sovereign herself exercising a privilege which is hers alone.
That’s some privilege. The privilege to do as she’s told!
I’ve been away
Meanwhile, back on the ground, in a place that may soon officially become “foreign parts”
– and before you ask, no, it isn’t foreign parts as far as I’m concerned –
meanwhile, I say, life and struggles go on against all the odds. According to today’s Libération, some 200 emergency hospital staff met at the weekend in 33 towns in France. It was a strike movement that has affected 65 of these services across France. At the weekend they decided on a day of action in Paris on 6 June. They have a platform of demands, and they are familiar ones:
- stop the closure of hospital beds;
- raise pay levels;
- increase staffing levels
The national strike committee comprises this group, representatives from various regions of France, plus a united front of trade unions comprising the CGT, Force Ouvrière and the SUD (I don’t know what the last one is). There have been a number of strikes in different places. Dr Francis Braun, President of the Emergency Services of France, has called for a half-hour stoppage today across France. “We have reached the end,” he said. “I have never known anything like this before. The services are at breaking point, saturation point, the point of rupture. Rarely have I seen such stoppages of work.”
This is where we will have to head too, in our own austerity-driven crisis. We need a similar movement of resistance, in solidarity with French and other EU workers. Such solidarity will be more difficult if we leave the EU. But it will have to be done. Or we’re buggered.
Les urgences, entre surchauffe et abattement
https://www.liberation.fr/france/2019/05/27/les-urgences-entre-surchauffe-et-abattement_1729921
Freedom of Movement II
What will immigration policy be after Brexit?
The Tories were clear about their intentions from the beginning. In the Foreword to their White Paper on post-Brexit immigration policy May declared, “As we leave the European Union, free movement will end.”[1] But she also added: “For the first time in decades, it will be the democratically elected representatives of the British people who choose who comes into our country.” This promotes the claim that for the last few decades there was “uncontrolled immigration” – which, as we saw in the previous blog, was not true. Given this bad start, there should be no surprise at the criticisms that quickly emerged. May had said that the government would
introduce a new, skills-based immigration system. This will be a system where it is workers’ skills that matter, not which country they come from.
It will be a single system that welcomes talent, hard work, and the skills we need as a country. It will attract the brightest and best to a United Kingdom that is open for business.
Migrants have made a huge contribution to our country over our history – and they will continue to in the future. But it will also be an immigration system that is fair to working people here at home. It will mean we can reduce the number of people coming to this country, as we promised, and it will give British business an incentive to train our own young people.[2]
The White Paper also announced that skilled workers would have to be earning £30,000 if they were to qualify for entry. In this way, preference was to be given to high earners while low earners would be much less welcome. Sabrina Huck of Labour Against Racism and Fascism summarised much of this approach when she pointed out that
“low skilled” workers from “low risk” countries (countries whose citizens are deemed less likely to commit immigration offences such as overstaying or coming under false premises)[3] can apply to work in the UK for up to 12 months, with no ability to bring family members, access different visa schemes or extend their stay, and without access to public benefits during their time. When the 12 months are up, the person is not allowed to re-apply for this visa until a “cooling off” period of a year has passed, effectively banning them from re-entering for work purposes in this time.[4]
Problems with Labour’s response to the White Paper and the Immigration and Social Security Bill
In her response to the White Paper, Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott was right to point out that the £30,000 salary threshold for skilled workers does not reflect a skills-based immigration system, because skill levels don’t always reflect salary levels. But, as Sabrina Huck noted, “Abbott is not challenging the basic assumption that a person’s ability to enter the country, and to live a life with full citizen’s rights, is determined by their material contribution to the needs of British capital.”[5] She added:
This is a dangerous line for the left to take, as it concedes to the right’s political argument that immigration in itself is not a right, and that people’s worth is determined by their (narrowly defined) value for the economic system. This argument underpins much of the Conservative’s [sic] austerity agenda, the demonisation of the working class, poor and disabled, as undeserving, because they do not “contribute” their “fair share” to society.[6]
Abbott’s response to the Bill itself increased these worries: “The Labour [P]arty is clear”, she said,
that when Britain leaves the single market, freedom of movement ends, and we set this out in our 2017 manifesto. I am a slavish devotee of that magnificent document: so on that basis, the frontbench of the Labour [P]arty will not be opposing this bill this evening.[7]
In the event, the Labour front bench changed its mind and whipped MPs to vote against the Bill, rather than abstain, after protests by several MPs and an immediate on-line and email protest from Labour activists and others. But it took the front bench 90 minutes to do this, after MPs had originally been told they could go home as their votes were not required. Many of them did. Only 178 out of 256 Labour MPs were present to vote.[8]
It is, of course, true that the Labour manifesto appeared indistinguishable from the Tory White Paper and the Bill when it came to freedom of movement: “Freedom of movement will end when we leave the European Union. Britain’s immigration system will change …” it said.[9] It is also true that assurances were given that Labour would not “scapegoat migrants nor blame them for economic failures” and that Labour “will develop and implement fair immigration rules” and “not discriminate between people of different races or creeds.”[10] But how fragile are these assurances in the light of Labour’s incomprehensible original decision to abstain? Such a possibility should not even have crossed the leadership’s minds. For there were overwhelmingly more important reasons to vote against the Bill. In the words of David Lammy, MP for Tottenham:
It will force our NHS and other vital services into an even deeper staffing crisis. There are already 41,000 nursing vacancies in England. The salary threshold still under consideration would exclude many skilled medical staff, including nurses, paramedics and midwives.
It continues the inhumane practice of indefinite detention. We remain the only European country which does not set a time limit for detained migrants. This sullies our international reputation and undermines complaints we make about human rights abuses abroad.
The 1.2 million [UK citizens in Europe] will inevitably see their own rights eroded too. Overnight they could lose their ability to live and work freely in Europe. Young people who overwhelmingly want the chance to live across the continent are having their horizons permanently narrowed.[11]
The Labour Campaign for Free Movement couldn’t understand abstention either:
The Bill would end free movement for EU citizens and subject them to UK immigration control. Rather than having parliament specify what the new regime will be, it would hand over a blank cheque to Ministers who will be able to write and re-write the law themselves – so-called “Henry VIII powers”. The Government’s White Paper last month signalled some of their intentions – a brutal attack on the rights and security of migrants, especially working-class migrants.[12]
It was impossible not to be reminded of the fiasco of the Labour abstention during the Tories’ Welfare Bill debate in 2015, at the height of the first Labour leadership elections. The Bill was set to impose measures under which the most vulnerable in society would have to bear the heaviest burden: measures proposed in the Bill meant that, for the first time, tax credits and family benefits under Universal Credit would be limited to the first two children and that most working age benefits would be frozen for four years from 2016.[13] People claiming the working element of the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) would have their payments reduced to match the Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA),[14] and the benefit cap was to be reduced from £26,000 a year to £23,000 in London, and £20,000 in the rest of the country.[15] Moreover, many young people between the ages of 18 and 21 would no longer be able to claim Housing Benefit.[16] Most people expected Labour to vote against such measures, which impacted so negatively on the poor. But the party’s Acting Leader, Harriet Harman, decided otherwise. She told Andrew Neil on The Sunday Politics:
We won’t oppose the Welfare Bill, we won’t oppose the household benefit cap. [We won’t oppose] what they brought forward in relation to restricting benefits and tax credits for people with three or more children … We’ve got to recognise why the Tories are in government and not us, not because [voters] love the Tories but because they didn’t trust us on the economy and on benefits.[17]
Harman went on to instruct Labour MPs to abstain in the Commons vote on the Bill.[18] This caused much dissent among MPs, and Harman tried to defuse the crisis by tabling a “reasoned amendment” to the Bill, an amendment which changed nothing since it still supported controls on the overall costs of social security and backed proposals such as the lower benefits cap, the removal of tax credits from families with more than two children and the replacing of mortgage interest support with loans. Among the leadership candidates, only Corbyn voted against the Bill.
On that occasion, Corbyn was the hero, together with John McDonnell. They refused to pander to the prejudices and misperceptions about benefits that some voters entertained. Instead they tried to counter and dispel them. John McDonnell made a powerful speech:
I would swim through vomit to vote against the Bill, and listening to some of the nauseating speeches tonight, I think we might have to.
Poverty in my constituency is not a lifestyle choice; it is imposed on people. We hear lots about how high the welfare bill is, but let us understand why that is the case. The housing benefit bill is so high because for generations we have failed to build council houses, we have failed to control rents and we have done nothing about the 300,000 properties that stand empty in this country. Tax credits are so high because pay is so low. The reason pay is so low is that employers have exploited workers and we have removed the trade union rights that enabled people to be protected at work. Fewer than a third of our workers are now covered by collective bargaining agreements. Unemployment is so high because we have failed to invest in our economy, and we have allowed the deindustrialisation of the north, Scotland and elsewhere. That is why the welfare bill is so high, and the Bill does as all other welfare reform Bills in recent years have done and blames the poor for their own poverty, not the system … We need a proper debate about how we go forward investing in housing, lifting wages, restoring trade union rights and ensuring that we get people back to work and do not have high pockets of deprivation in areas such as mine and around the country … I say to Labour Members that people out there do not understand reasoned amendments; they want to know whether we voted for or against the Bill. Tonight I will vote against it.[19]
In the debate on the Immigration and Social Security Bill this week he could have stood ready to counter and dispel the current prejudices and misperceptions about immigration and migrants. Instead he, Corbyn, Abbott and the rest of the front bench stood ready to give in to them. It took a rebellion to stop that happening.
What fears do people have? One of them is the notion that immigrants take jobs from the native population and depress wages. Liberal leader Vince Cable has summarised some of the arguments on this:
At the heart of the politics of immigration is the belief, repeated by Theresa May as a fact, that immigrants, especially unskilled immigrants, depress wages. At first sight the argument seems plausible – and undeniably there is low-wage competition in some places. But there is no evidence that this is a general problem. [In 2013, during the coalition government] I commissioned a range of reviews and studies to establish the facts. They showed that the impact on wages was very small (and only in recession conditions). By and large, immigrants were doing jobs that British people didn’t want to do (or highly skilled jobs that helped to generate work for others). This research was inconvenient to the Home Office, which vetoed the publication of its results.[20]
In 2016, Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies produced a report and asked:
But aren’t all these foreigners taking our jobs? That’s true in the Premier League. The more foreign footballers there are playing for the top clubs, the fewer English players there will be. There’s only room for 11 players in a starting XI.
Yet there is not a fixed number of jobs in the economy. There are seven million more people in work in the UK than there were 40 years ago. Astonishingly, there are nearly two million more than immediately before the recession in 2008. Employment rates among the UK-born are close to record levels. More people means more jobs, not more unemployment. There is absolutely no evidence that higher levels of immigration have increased unemployment among native-born Brits.[21]
On wage levels he wrote:
Evidence on wage impacts is a bit less conclusive. While many studies do not find any evidence of immigration depressing wages, a recent Bank of England paper suggests that the impact of migration on UK-born lower-skilled workers might have been to reduce wages by 1 per cent over a period of eight years. Thus it may have played a part, though only a minor one, in recent experience of low or negative pay growth.[22]
So, just as Harriet Harman should have argued against benefit cuts and voted them down in 2015 instead of pressing the panic button, Corbyn and the Labour front bench should have argued against immigration myths and should never have tried to press the abstain button. They must never do this again.
Corbyn says that after Brexit we will have a new immigration policy. But for some of us our confidence has been shaken by this episode. We need to know what the new policy will be. It should be spelt out now. At a conference last year, the journalist Gary Younge argued that, while the promises and plans of the Labour leadership under Corbyn are welcome news, we still have to hold these politicians to account. In that context, Sabrina Huck has some good advice for us all:
Anti-racism campaigners have a duty to oppose the toxic hostile environment through engaging the public in a positive debate about immigration, challenge the arguments that a person’s value for society can be determined purely based on their economic contribution and by effectively lobbying parliamentarians to oppose legislation enforcing these immigration policies.[23]
[1] White Paper: “The UK’s future skills-based immigration system”: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/766465/The-UKs-future-skills-based-immigration-system-print-ready.pdf, p. 3.
[2] Ibid.
[3] The White Paper counts, among others, Australia, the US, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Singapore as “low risk” countries. Poorer countries (e.g. African and Arab countries) are likely to be classified as “high risk”. Thus, for all the talk of more opportunities for people from outside the EU to come and work in Britain, workers from the global south will be virtually excluded.
[4] “The Immigration White Paper represents a massive attack on migrants’ rights”, Labour Against Racism and Fascism: https://laraflondon.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/the-immigration-white-paper-represents-a-massive-attack-on-migrants-rights/
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] House of Commons debate, 28 January 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/28/labour-in-embarrassing-u-turn-over-immigration-bill-vote
[8] By my calculation, since the government won the vote by 297 votes to 234 (a majority of 63), if the full quota of Labour MPs had turned up to vote against them (another 78), the government would have lost the vote on the Bill.
[9] Labour Manifesto 2017, p. 28: https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/labour-manifesto-2017.pdf
[10] Ibid.
[11] In a series of three tweets on 28 January 2019, before the front bench change of mind, declaring his intention to vote against the Bill.
[12] Labour Campaign for Free Movement email, 29 January 2019.
[13] “Benefit changes: Who will be affected?”, BBC News, 8 July 2015: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33429390 (accessed 29/3/2017).
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] “Labour won’t oppose Welfare Bill”, BBC News, 12 July 2015: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-33498110/labour-won-t-oppose-welfare-bill (accessed 2/1/2018).
[19] Commons Hansard, 20/7/2015, House of Commons, London: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2015-07-20/debates/1507206000001/WelfareReformAndWorkBill (accessed 29/3/2017).
[20] “The Tory fallacy: that migrants are taking British jobs and driving down wages”:
[21] Immigration limits won’t lift Britain: https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/8317
[22] Ibid.
[23] “The Immigration White Paper represents a massive attack on migrants’ rights”, Labour Against Racism and Fascism: https://laraflondon.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/the-immigration-white-paper-represents-a-massive-attack-on-migrants-rights/
Is no news good news?
I have hardly watched any news since just before Christmas. And you know how it is when you’ve been on holiday and when you come back it takes time to understand that you are back and that you will have to adjust to what is called normality, as opposed to the beach, or the mountains, or the Metropolitan Museum? Well, I’ve been away from the news for two weeks (apart from an accidental, careless sight of the Home Secretary telling the nation that asylum seekers are only genuine if they make their applications in the first safe country they cross on their journey and not bother us here; at that point I fumbled for the off-switch, rushed out of the room, and went back into news-blocking mode. Oh, but before I found the off-switch I caught a glance of a newly inaugurated Brazilian president, and then I was really desperate for the off-switch.
Anyway, yesterday morning I watched the Andrew Marr Show and found I didn’t understand much of what was being said. There was Theresa May repeating the words of her old recordings. When she felt that perhaps they had lost some of the impact they once had she reverted to that real old-time-religion favourite: “On the 29th of March we will leave the European Union, take back control of our borders, control of our laws, and control of our waters with a deal that is in the interests of all the British people”, she sang. Her voice took on a slight Thatcher intonation, and the whole performance, with the accompanying jangly necklace, was obviously designed to bring the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg to a premature orgasm. As a matter of fact, I never really did understand what “control of our waters” actually meant, but now, since my news-blocking effort, I don’t understand what any of it means. Still, life goes on and I must try to revise my Brexit vocab.
Then there was Labour Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth, who also repeated a lot of old songs, though without the jangly necklace, about the damage Tory policies were doing. The songs all spoke the truth (and I cheered up a bit) but then he seemed unable to answer any of the really interesting questions, like what Labour’s own policy on social care and the NHS would actually be. From his first words, I think he was saying something like “We’ll look to see what the Tories are offering and then we’ll …” and I felt the urge to block the news again. Then he was asked whether his plan for the NHS would be full public ownership like in the old days. He muttered something about “there will always be a role for the private sector”. This sounded like a kind of partnership – a public-private partnership even. This has usually been code for “private”, both under Tory and Labour governments. These schemes are ones where private calls the shots, makes everything more expensive and rakes in the profit. That’s its purpose. So Jonathan’s words were worrying. Because many of us thought those days would be over under the new politics. Not that we want to go back to the old days, far from it. We thought we would go forward to a democratically accountable public ownership, in which workers and users of services would call the shots. That was never the case in the old days. The old nationalised industries and public services were run by more or less the same people who ran them when they were private. And they ran them on the same lines. At the end of the day they were supposed to make a profit, like their capitalist predecessors. And they mostly did.
It’s time to tell a story. Long years ago, when Sir Keith Joseph was Education Secretary, I interviewed him for an audio magazine for the blind. We touched on the private versus public question. He agreed that publicly owned outfits make a profit: “Oh, yes, they make a profit, of course, but – well, look at that splendid jumper you’re wearing. I don’t know where you got it, where did you buy it?”
“I don’t remember,” I replied nervously. “Marks & Spencer’s probably.”
“Very well, then. What do you want us to do? Nationalise Marks and Spencer’s? And what would happen then? They’d say, ‘You can’t have the colour you want – we’ll choose it for you; you can’t have the pattern you want – we’ll choose it for you; you can’t have the style you want – we’ll choose it for you.’ Is that want you want?”
I can’t remember my answer, but anyway he slowly calmed down. Of course, he wasn’t really worried about my rights, or customer satisfaction, or the service provided. His real concern was that in a publicly owned operation the profits would go to the wrong people: instead of going into the pockets and coffers of his friends they would go to the state, where they might be spent on improving the service. Of course, in “the old days” governments often spent the money on things that, if we’d been asked, we would have vetoed. But we weren’t asked. That’s why now, after Corbyn’s election, the eyes of some of us lit up when we heard the words “democratically accountable” attached to the words “public ownership”. And that’s why my eyes glazed over and I was tempted to head for the news-blocker when Ashworth mentioned “a role for the private sector”. But I thought, No, I’ve closed that door behind me. I must now find my way back to being a responsible citizen. It’s difficult though. There aren’t that many role models.
The other thing I noticed yesterday was that America is in lockdown. That sounds uncomfortable. Like when, during the dockers’ strike in the 1970s the Heath government said they would “sequestrate” the union’s funds. “By heck,” said union leader Hugh Scanlon, “We’re going to be sequestrated – that sounds painful!” But Trump clearly doesn’t understand how workers, even those in government departments, feel when they’re sent home or have to work without pay. “They’re 100% behind me,” declared Trump. Yes, and hopefully they’re all armed to the teeth!
Null and void? Not for these reasons, M’Lud
According to the Independent’s story below, Brexit may be declared “void” because of illegality and “multiple criminal offences” by Leave-supporting business people and politicians.
I doubt it. That’s not going to happen just because they told lies and broke the law. Lies and broken laws have littered political campaigning since it was invented. Most elections that any of us can remember could be declared “void” if the grounds were that porkies were told and crimes committed.
Moreover, in this particular case, Croft solicitors have definitely come up with the wrong solution. May, they tell us, must consider “how best to conduct another referendum”. This presumably means that, of all people, she and her cabinet must devise one where nobody tells porkies and nobody is a criminal.
Difficult. Not to say – no, I will say it – impossible.
There may be a case for another referendum. This isn’t it. This one seems to sit side by side with the one that says Leave voters “didn’t know what they were voting for”. Now, there’s disdain for you; there’s patronising. The people using this latest argument apparently think Leave voters didn’t know that politicians lie and business “leaders” break the law when it suits them. Give me a break.
The idea that we should have a referendum on the grounds suggested by this case should be greeted with a cascade of mockery and laughter.
Dodgy
Capitalism throws up all sorts of dodgy characters and some of them make a good living advising dodgy governments.
Enter Shanker Singham, former adviser on Brexit to Her Majesty’s government.
Whichever side of the Brexit argument you’re on, Shanker is bad news. His credentials are crap. He claimed in a Facebook profile, says The Guardian, that “he studied law at Oxford. However, his degree there was in chemistry.” Then there is a “biography”, “distributed by a former employer” (Sorry?) that says he assisted “governments in the early privatisations during the Thatcher administration”, yet his career began post-Thatcher (in 1992). Singham denies “that this could be misinterpreted”.
He’s right. It’s clear as day: in the words of Sir Robert Armstrong, Thatcher’s cabinet secretary about her, he was being “economical with the truth”.[1]
May didn’t take his advice. Instead her deal, he says, is “a damage limitation exercise”. That’s why he’s pissed off and touring the studios and editors’ offices. But in or out or somewhere in between, we should be worried. Because we need to find ways of holding governments to account for everything they do and for the way they do everything they do. We have had cause to lose trust in governments of all parties and in the machinery of government (the civil service). Labour governments had plenty of dodgy advisers and spin doctors (remember them?) It had a dodgy dossier that told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (remember that?). What we need is an end to dodgy characters and dossiers that capitalism produces from the depths of its bowels like there’s no tomorrow. And for a start, we need some integrity.
Enter Jeremy.
[1]https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/two-moments-of-legal-genius-which-tell-you-more-about-malcolm-turnbull-than-anything-hes-ever-done-in-politics/news-story/99b294dda251d4c3b7de3a5240c1b42b
Bob Mouncer's blog 