Leaving the EU (not really a rant)...

[steelemonkey]

British Sugar make from UK grown beet, T&L make from cane (grown abroad). Her Maj for some reason prefers the forrun stuff in her tea.

The poor old girl is probably trying to maintain the interests of the empire.

[Chrisch]

...The business has been supplying British Sugar with kit for over 50 years-....

Ooo. I might have touched some of your kit when I was a youff. There's a thought.

[Chrisch]

The poor old girl is probably trying to maintain the interests of the empire.

[Neilwood]

This made me chuckle

https://youtu.be/9Ml6tCtuIOw

Brilliant!

[Jay_Benson]

Well the negotiating tactics that the government used in the trade deal negotiations are starting to be revealed.

For those that are employed in the music industry or those that like live music this one is going to be a bit of an annoying read:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-visa-free-work-musicians-eu-brexit-b1784600.html?fbclid=IwAR1wu6FNe_mG3tlxozQFTt_FJZ5 Yq0jL-P1TU8PeECvofwJrLwynS2VUYp4

Essentially the EU offered to allow performers to have a 90 day visa free access to the EU but the UK rejected that as we would have to allow EU performers access to the UK for up to 90 days as well. Priti Patel objected as we were moving away from free movement.

[Paulo]

Gotta love how the Leave.eu campaign have now moved their registered offices to Waterford in order to keep the domain

[Chrisch]

..
Essentially the EU offered to allow performers to have a 90 day visa free access to the EU but the UK rejected that as we would have to allow EU performers access to the UK for up to 90 days as well. Priti Patel objected as we were moving away from free movement.

Theresa May set a red line of no free movement as it was "immigration by the back door". She perfectly understood why the vast majority of people voted to leave and what she needed to do and say to keep them on team. Virtually every other argument put forward to leave was (and still is) dishonest. Leaving the EEA was a prerequisite to ending free movement and why the rather obvious compromise of retaining EEA membership never got a look in. The so-called "Norway" option as was touted around at the time.

Patel understands this just as well. A large number of the UK Asian community were lied to and led to believe that post Brexit it would be easier for them to get family and relatives into the UK and that they were discriminated against as Poles could come but Bangladeshis could not. A number of Tories/brexiters promoted this falsehood at the time, needless to say nothing has changed you still need to meet the same thresholds as before. Nothing has been done to help the shortage of curry chefs and I guess nothing will now with the problems of the hospitality trade.

The only certainty of leaving was the ending of free movement. Every other issue (whether seen as positive or negative) was debatable and open to opinion (some cranky opinions but nevertheless not hard fact). Ending free movement was a hard fact, immutable. It could have been negotiated away by agreement, there was no desire to end it by the EU27. Only one party wanted it ended, the UK. Within the UK only one group of people. Opinion polls at the time showed that leave voters often wanted free movement to continue once it was explained to them it would also affect British people. IIRC some 60% of leave voters would have accepted free movement to continue.

So it is the hardcore 40% ish of 17m ish that stopped it. Or about 7 million people - bit less. Or about 10% of the population that have screwed the other 90.

[Chrisch]

As an update Starmer drops the pledge to re-open the free movement debate on Marr this morning.

Seems like he wants the red wall back.....

[Doomanic]

Without the red wall the pledge is meaningless anyway as he'll never get a majority.

[Chrisch]

Without the red wall the pledge is meaningless anyway as he'll never get a majority.

I think you are right - a depressing thought, another decade or two of the current scum.