Brexit

A workers' response to Brexit

March to Rejoin the EU, Saturday 23 September, central London, from 12 noon. Left bloc meets at 12, corner of Curzon Street and Park Lane. More here and here Brexit has meant and will mean: • An end to the free movement which enabled millions of workers from other European countries to join the British workforce not, like other migrant workers these days, with a visa status dependent on employers’ goodwill, but as workmates with equal rights. Freedom of movement also enabled large numbers of British-origin workers and students to travel the other way with equal rights. In other words, Brexit...

Protocol patch-up

On 27 February, Rishi Sunak announced that the EU had agreed a wide range of easings to “overlay” the Northern Ireland Protocol attached to the 2019-20 UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement. The Protocol allows Northern Ireland both to be in the EU Single Market (and thus have no “hard” border with the South) and to be in the UK. Since the Tories plan to depart widely from EU regulations — Sunak still seems intent on that — the Protocol requires some border checks between Britain and Northern Ireland. The new agreement minimises those. The ultra-Brexiter Tories have backed Sunak’s deal. The DUP, the main...

Thousands march to rejoin the EU

Thousands marched in London on 22 October to demand the UK rejoin the EU. The demonstration was less ethnically diverse than London’s population, and had no real organised labour-movement presence, but reflected a 67% majority among Labour voters who are for rejoining.

The ideological roots of the Truss government

This June 2019 interview with Andrew Gamble, emeritus professor of politics at Sheffield University and author of many books on Marxist theory and studies of the Conservative Party, is out of date in numerous important ways. But it sheds some interesting light on the character of Liz Truss' government. There are at least three relatively longstanding strands of division in the Conservative Party now in play: US orientation vs European orientation; English-nationalist orientation vs UK orientation; and ideological orientation vs traditional pragmatic small-c conservative orientation. What roles...

Tories stage EU clash on protocol

Right-wing Unionist demonstration British government plans to rip up the Northern Ireland Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Agreement are in flux, even though Boris Johnson survived the 6 June confidence vote among Tory MPs. On 17 May Liz Truss made a statement to the House of Commons promising a Bill to unilaterally disapply certain elements of the Protocol. The Bill would lead to the creation of a “green channel” for goods going to Northern Ireland from Great Britain that would not go on to the Republic of Ireland, halting mandatory checks for these exports. Also expected is a trusted trader...

This climate-denier and friend of Farage should not be a Labour MP

Manchester Labour MP Graham Stringer is a climate change-denier. That is long-established. Stringer, once seen as being on the Labour left, is a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). GWPF is a climate change-denying lobby group which has very few members and hides its funders, but is known to received a lot of money from at least one major Tory donor, hedge fund boss Michael Hintze. That in itself is or should be a scandal. But Stringer's climate denialism has jumped into the news because he has agreed to speak at the Bolton launch, on 26 March, of the “Vote Power Not Poverty...

Starmer echoes Rees-Mogg on Brexit

After several months of silence on Brexit, Keir Starmer has echoed the language of the Tory Brexiteers, saying he wants to “make Brexit work” and “take advantage of the opportunities” (BBC Radio Newcastle, 14 February). When the Tory right talk about “taking advantage of opportunities”, they mean using Brexit to push forward a radically anti-working class agenda, demolishing EU-derived social standards as part of moving Britain towards an even more neoliberal model of capitalism ( “Singapore-on-Thames” ). The language Starmer used is a close echo of the language used by Jacob Rees-Mogg, the...

DUP flounders in Brexit crisis

Since 2 February the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has appeared to step up its efforts to end the Northern Ireland Protocol, the part of the Brexit deal which requires checks on goods transported between Great Britain and the Six Counties. First Edwin Poots, DUP Health Minister of Northern Ireland, instructed officials in his department to stop carrying out these checks. On 3 February, DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson announced that the DUP First Minister of Northern Ireland (NI), Paul Givan, would resign. Under the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement this means that the Deputy First...

Morning Star silent on Irish impasse

The tragi-comedy that is the Democratic Unionist Party’s inability to deal with the consequences of Brexit continues. Last week they attempted to pull the plug on the Irish sea border checks that are required under the protocol negotiated by Johnson and Lord Frost (even though both of those now talk as though they had nothing to do with it). Then the DUP first minister Paul Givan resigned, leaving the province without a functioning government. This is the culmination of a series of disastrous misjudgements going back to the DUP’s original decision to jump on the Leave bandwagon in the...

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