Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117982230#Comment_117982230

"Brexit is done" is the Tory line. Starmer doesn't have to accept it or endorse it. Starmer can be quite open about saying that the EU will always be the UK's closest and most important neighbour, and its most significant foreign relationship, and that the UK-EU relationship will always justify care, attention and investment of time and effort. He can paint the Tories as delusional for believing otherwise, or as dishonest for pretending to.

So, as regards Brexit, Starmer's selling point that distinguishes him from the Tories will not be his personality - Johnson has bags of "personality", and see how much use that has been to the UK - but his realism and awareness in relation to the UK's European interests.

You're absolutely right that the Labour party need to point to the failures of Brexit, but their judgment - and I'm sorry to say, but I think it's a correct judgment - is that, if they want to win the next election, they have to paint those failures not as fundamental failures in the whole concept of Brexit, but as failures in the design, implementation and execution of Brexit by the present shower. Look forward to plenty of criticism of "the Tory Brexit", and an emphasis on the many, many ways that the Tories made Brexit harmful to the UK in ways that it didn't have to be. Labour has to adopt a position that allows Brexit supporters to vote for Labour, while also allowing opponents of Brexit to reckon that Labour is a better option than the Tories. Starmer has no path to victory unless he can ride both these horses at the same time.

rock22

"Labour has to adopt a position that allows Brexit supporters to vote for Labour, while also allowing opponents of Brexit to reckon that Labour is a better option than the Tories. Starmer has no path to victory unless he can ride both these horses at the same time."

Perhaps you are right.

But there are many different types of Brexit voter. And at least some of them believed the 'Leave' spin, that they would be better off, that they would free themselves of Brussels bureaucracy, etc. Those voters can be shown that Brexit can never make them better off, that rather than free them from rules, it means UK has to continually chase around as a rule taker. But Starmer is doing none of these things. He seems reluctant to even acknowledge the reality of the damage being done in order to appease the extreme Brexiteer. And he never will appease the extreme Brexiteer.

You are right that he must accept that the UK have left the EU. But he is making no effort to argue for a move towards a closer relationship with the EU. Right now, as least from my perspective, there is almost nothing to distinguish the Tory and Labour vision for the future relationship with the EU( and with us in Ireland in particular). Right now for instance, the chancellor is saying that brexit was a plan to raise wages and move towards a high wage /high productivity economy. That was never mentioned before. The Government could have always move towards higher wages. Why isn't Starmer pushing the government on this, suggestion opposition support to move the minimum wage to a real living wages. Clearly the HG driver shortage is down to Brexit and a lack of planning. Again , what are labour saying about that?

Appeasing the red wall voters is not going to be enough. Starmers strategy can be summed up as " no matter what you believe in , no matter what your values, we agree with them and therefore vote for us" . Unfortunately the Tories have got there first.

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117982583#Comment_117982583

Yes, where is the Brexit alternative that Labour are proposing? They are being incredibly vague about future relations with the EU (yet again for fear of enraging the Red Wall voters). Can this be called 'opposition' at all?

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117982656#Comment_117982656

I think the spectre that is haunting Labour is the result of the 2019 election. That's the last time they offered an alternative to Brexit and their vote collapsed. Disastrously so. This is why I'm suspending judgement on Starmer. He hasn't had a fair go yet. I've seen footage of him in the House of Commons at various points calling out Johnson over his handling of Covid but he's largely invisible as a result of restrictions imposed by the government.

The problem Labour face is that their road to power is much rockier than the Tories. Scotland is lost to them, more or less for good if current trends continue and since the SNP keep winning as they have this seems likely. The north must be won back, there's no two ways about it. A coalition with the SNP won't work and the Liberal Democrats and the Greens are too weak under FPTP. Wales and NI are too small to make a difference.

The south isn't going to flip in any big way. The Lib Dems have made some inroads and plenty of fiscally conservative voters aren't going to be happy sending money north of the M25. Fortunately, it looks like Johnson's levelling up shtick is just that. The question remains how upset red wall voters will be when they realise he's not going to actually do anything for them.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117981909#Comment_117981909

The biggest risk, is that the longer he goes along with brexit, the more complicit he becomes. He can blame Boris for screwing up, all Boris has to say is 'well you voted for the deal didn't you, you weren't calling for us to rejoin the EU etc'

And all the anti brexit sentiment becomes frustrated by Starmer's weakness on this issue, so they'll look to alternatives, or vote Labour only to get the tories out, which is the least committed support any party can have

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117983180#Comment_117983180

He isn't going along with Brexit and never has. Anyone here who is anti-Brexit knows full well that it's a Tory project by Tories and always was.

salonfire

One thing that struck me was that the claim immigration did not surpress salaries turned out to be a falsehood. As soon as that tap was turned off, wages shot up.

It'll be interesting to see if Brexit will result in better productivity for the UK as business there now has to invest in staff and equipment.

A lorry driver hauling 20,000 litres of milk getting paid 20 pound/hour more adds 0.001p to the cost of a litre of milk.

He'll be well able to absorb that cost when he goes to the shop for his own milk with the additional 20s bulging in his pocket.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117983434#Comment_117983434

You have conclusive and objective evidence that immigration suppresses wages?

yagan

Britain's own myth is blinding the nation to the absolute insanity of Brexit and unfortunately things have to get to a state of total collapse before they'll snap out of it. There does to be seem similarities to the last days of the USSR where everyone knew the system was floundering, but no one could envisage what should come next so they continued on til the end in a state of hypernormalisation.

That's where I think Britain is now, at the start of a hypernormalisation where they try to pretend that all shortages are temporarily covid related and nothing to do with brexit, but deep down they're losing confidence.

salonfire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117983489#Comment_117983489

Yes. When it was turned off in Britain, wages there shot up.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117983531#Comment_117983531

So, nothing then. Who's paying for these wages?

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117983531#Comment_117983531

Due to no more immigration, or a crippling labour shortage as a result of no more immigration? Are workers paid more because they're British, or because there's no one else to do the work?

Sam Russell

Haulage costs are not a major cost to food or other products sold in shops.

The cost of freight from China has gone up nearly 10 fold which has an effect on prices. Delays caused by Brexit paper work put up costs and denude shelves.

What has put up costs of labour is not so much the absence of east Europeans but the lack of British people willing to do the work. It is not a simple equation because the HGV drivers need training and testing and continuous ongoing certification. HGV drivers must be professional drivers, not part-time occasional amateurs. So even someone who was an HGV driver 5 years ago needs to be recertified.

Of course, we are now in month 10 of (real) Brexit, and week one of the solution to the HGV drivers problem. I think that smells of incompetence.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117983531#Comment_117983531

Wages have not shot up

Strazdas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117982982#Comment_117982982

Yes to all of the above but one major change is that Brexit had not seriously gone off the rails in autumn 2019. This surely has be factored in - the thing is going disastrously and impacting on numerous aspects of the UK economy and yet Labour are acting as if it's the day after the general election and still terrified of criticising Brexit in any way.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117983933#Comment_117983933

HGV drivers, what few remain are probably making more money though some sort of evidence would have been nice so we could have an idea how much.

The problem, though is two-fold. The first is that this might just be the first of many essential professions to experience shortages. A shortage of HGV drivers may not affect the price of food in and of itself but if meat packers, slaughterhouse employees and others involved in the food industry prove to be in short supply then that will affect both prices and supply. Wage increases are meaningless if they're outpaced by inflation which they will be.

The second is what happens if this applies to other sectors. Care is the one that springs to mind. Currently, the British model involves dumping the elderly on underpaid care home staff who are paid the absolute bare minimum. Last time I checked, a fifth were EU migrants. Councils have had their budgets gutted by 40% by the coalition and council tax rates are based on property valuations from the 1990's. More tax rises are likely as a result.

We could of course have a meaningful conversation about pay and conditions but instead, we get this sloganeering as if food and petrol shortages are somehow in people's interest.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117984035#Comment_117984035

Tangible effects of Brexit, for those who didn't see their jobs or themselves get relocated to the continent, only started manifesting in a tangible way recently for most people. There's no point banging on about it when people don't want to hear about it. "Get Brexit done" worked for a reason. People wanted it over one way or another. I voted for Labour for a second referendum but it didn't happen. It is what it is.

People like Johnson inevitably overreach. It's one of the main recurring themes of history, no matter how powerful a minister or monarch, they become victims of their own success and fall spectacularly. I don't know where the line is but there's no spin that can distract people from food shortages if they get much worse.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117983221#Comment_117983221

Labour have said that they will 'Never restore freedom of movement' according to the Times

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-revives-blairs-policy-on-crime-jsv5vhv0n

That's a commitment to a hard brexit because any negotiations with the EU to access the single market or customs union will involve some degree of freedom of movement

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117984203#Comment_117984203

I don't see any reference to this in the three opening paragraphs which are all I can read. Labour can say one thing today and another tomorrow. The Conservative party does it often enough.

It's not a commitment to anything.

ambro25

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117984078#Comment_117984078

Abattoir jobs are not low-wage to start with.

Around £37.5k according to the NFU head/spokeswoman in some Tweet I saw yesterday.

Your second point is a bullseye: there’s no “what if this applied to other sectors”, it IS happening to MOST other sectors (that relied upon semi-skilled and skilled EU workers).

Care, hospitality, agrifood, warehousing, driving, healthcare, (etc)

They were a stable non-trivial proportion of the total labour volume required to meet the aggregate market demand, establishing job/pay equilibriums in the sectors concerned over years and years pre-Brexit and pre-Covid.

There are now acute labour shortages in very many fields of business across the UK. You/we are just hearing most, about the most visible part of that particular iceberg.

Wages get pushed due to this imbalance, naturally but, for abattoir and hospitality and (…) workers, it’s no different to HGV drivers: in the firefighting stampede, the best-resourced employers pay more and get their staffing, the less-resourced employers do without until they go under.

So some workers (out of the entire working population) are getting pay rises, and some of those before others according to troubleshooting imperatives. Yesterday, HGV drivers. Today, meat packers. Tomorrow, vets.

But everybody is paying more for their output in the meantime, as supply gradually scales down to the surviving employers.

ancapailldorcha

There are acute labour shortages in very many fields of business across the UK. You/we hear most, about the most visible part of that particular iceberg. Wages get pushed due to the imbalance, but for abattoir and hospitality and (…) workers, it’s no different to HGV drivers: the best-resourced employers pay more and get their staffing, the less-resourced employers do without until they go under.

So some workers are getting pay rises. But everybody is paying more for their output.

So we'll see more consolidation in favour of the larger firms. Sounds about right.

This isn't so much about wages in the short term as opposed to supply. If that's interrupted much more than it has already been, Johnson only really has one option and that's to just abandon standards. His party aren't going to stomach free movement (or any form of the idea of allowing more foreigners into the UK). I saw an article in the Mirror recently where pigs are just being shot and dumped because the labour isn't there to cull and process them:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/pigs-set-shot-dumped-skips-25114024

Retr0gamer

I think labour have a visibility issue as well. Tory owned media and the BBC just aren't covering anything they do leading people to believe that they are doing nothing. I keep hearing about starmer doing little to oppose the Tories yet if you follow the right people you will see him in the HoC eviscerating the Tories while they sit there unable to respond but it never gets covered.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117984382#Comment_117984382

I've seen footage of this but largely see the likes of PMQ's as being completely insipid. Starmer is miles ahead of Johnson but nobody's going to broadcast that so he's essentially invisible.

Joe_ Public

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117984382#Comment_117984382

Pmqs is carried live on BBC and sky every week, so people can tune in if they like. The reality is the general public just not that interested in the ins and outs of the Westminster bubble, that's not any different for Starmer as it has been for any previous leader before him. And over the last 3 weeks we've had 14,000 word essays and 90 minute conference speech carried live in full across the channels and, guess what, his rating still going down this week. Still remain to be convinced visibility is the issue there, or whether it's all that much of a negative at all quite frankly!

20silkcut

I find this clip unbelievable Johnson is doubling down on the pigs are killed all the time argument he used with Andrew Marr. it’s like a spitting image skit. He keeps asking the interviewer repeatedly if he has ever ate a bacon sandwich? Worth a listen.

https://youtu.be/RTq5sjP7TYU

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117984382#Comment_117984382

Coverage is decided in garden parties in Islington.

Enzokk

On wages, no use having wages rise when inflation is on the rise as well. For some any rise will be wiped out by inflation. The Tories will shout about the one and that will be amplified, but they will ignore the other.

As for Labour, Johnson has a 80 seat majority. Most of these seats will have been taken by MP's who will have been chosen to stand as they didn't think they would actually win in those seats. Those MP's will jump after Johnson into the fire as he is responsible for them being in Westminster. So whatever they do, crying and shouting and being the best ever opposition, it won't matter. Johnson will get what he wants as he showed already what will happen to MPs who stand against him. Look at how they behaved today. They cheered him on, the country is suffering. They didn't care.

Therese Coffey just cut £20 per week for those most vulnerable in a time where costs are rising, and she was singing "I've had the time of my life" after this came into effect. This is what will sink the Tories, not what Labour does. They are too far behind in terms of seats to make any meaningful difference. We also know Johnson will use anything he can to nail Labour. If it looks like they are pro-rejoin he will turn that against them holding up the recovery and this is the reason why people are suffering.

The cult of personality is strong with Johnson, but you suspect once the veil slips it will be ugly. But there is still a long way to go before that happens.

Seth Brundle

Another negative Brexit piece of news...

The boss of Intel says the US chipmaker is no longer considering building a factory in the UK because of Brexit.

Pat Gelsinger told the BBC that before the UK left the EU, the country "would have been a site that we would have considered".

But he added: "Post-Brexit... we're looking at EU countries and getting support from the EU".

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58820599

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117983531#Comment_117983531

Yeah, but if that's what's happening, it's a form of inflation. Wages are the price of labour; the rise in that price will flow through the economy and cause other prices to rise. No extra work is being done - in fact, less work is being done - so the total wealth of the community is likely to fall, not rise.

When you generate an artificial shortage of labour (by introducing laws which encourage or compel people to leave the workforce, or which prevent people willing to work from being hired by people willing to hire them) and wages rise as a result, what is happening is that employers are bidding up the price of labour in order to poach scarce workers from one another. The successful employer has to put up his prices in order to pay the higher wages and keep his business profitable; the unsuccessful employer either has to offer higher wages to attract workers from someone else (and so put up his own prices) or simply stop doing that particular business because it is no longer profitable. On the scale of the economy as a whole, it's a bit of both.

What's really going on here is people competing with one another over the division of a cake that is, overall, smaller than it used to be. There are fewer workers in the economy; there is less work being done; there are fewer goods and services being produced. There are always going to be more losers than winners in this situation ; it is indeed possible that everyone will be a loser, since even the workers who get higher wages may find that this is more than offset by higher prices. More likely, though, is that a minority will be better off (e.g. HGV drivers) at the expense of the majority who are worse off. But when you net it all out, the overall effect is that the country as a whole is worse off.

This is a lousy wages policy and no modern economy attempts it. The Tory party are saying that this was the plan all along but they are, of course, lying. The very constraints which are leading to these wage increases are things that they have consistently denounced as "project fear" for the past several years.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117984182#Comment_117984182

I agree with this. Johnson got the majority he did in 2019 because everybody was heartily sick of Brexit and he held out the promise of moving on from it. He hasn't delivered, of course, but people are still pretty sick of the whole thing and I think the politician who tries to lead the focus back to Brexit will pay a price. Starmer evidently thinks so too. The Labour party has to wait until the public mood demands that the problems of Brexit be confronted, and then be seen to respond to that demand. Happily for them, because of the electoral cycle, time is on the Labour party's side; they can wait for public dissatisfaction with Brexit to escalate.

The Tories know this too, which is why they are desperately looking for non-Brexit fights to fight. Hence their absurd preoccupation with a largely fictional "wokeness", their vicious, racist, hatemongering against refugees and asylum-seekers; and their desperation in one way or another to stoke a culture war.