Soon we’ll all enjoy supermarkets more – once the crowds of low-skilled migrant staff have been deported
Comments: "Sounds a lot like "who will pick the cotton if we get rid of the slaves". Author should be ashamed of himself."
"Why does the left like to use blacks and illegals as their slave labor? They will never change."
As the EU bails out Germany, we should thank God we left - "We hear plenty of people blaming Brexit for travel delays, shortages in the shops and many other ills. But how often do they stop and ponder some of the things which would now be going wrong if we were still members of the EU? Yesterday, EU members agreed to cut their gas consumption by 15 per cent in reaction to yet another cut in gas supplies from Russia – only 20 per cent of the gas flowing through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in February is still flowing now. The cut in gas usage has been forced upon member states which don’t even import much gas from Russia, but may now be forced to ration gas for homes and order factories to suspend production in an effort, effectively, to bail out Germany for its short-sighted policy of relying on Russian gas. Were we still in the EU, this agreement would have involved Britain, too. The Government would today be scrambling around for emergency cuts in energy usage. That could have involved scheduling blackouts as in the Three Day Week in the 1970s or ordering factories and other plants to scale-down production. The option we are trying to pursue, of trying to maintain supply by upping North Sea production and increasing imports of liquified natural gas from the US and Qatar, would not have saved us, since under the EU agreement we would have had to cut usage by 15 per cent regardless of how well we were able to substitute Russian oil and gas imports with fuel sourced from elsewhere. While there are exceptions for Ireland, Cyprus and Malta, which are not connected to the European grid which sources gas from Russia, every other member state has come under political pressure comply. Yes, it is technically voluntary, but isn't it telling that only Hungary is so far holding out against the agreement? The EU’s response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine – indeed, since the annexation of Ukraine in 2014 – has been an embarrassment. Germany signed the deal for Nord Stream 2, which further engrained its dependence on Russian gas, a year after Crimea. After the Ukrainian invasion, there was grand talk of ending energy imports from Russia, but the oil and gas continued to flow. It is Vladimir Putin, not the EU, who is now dictating EU energy policy, by forcing it to go without Russian energy well ahead of the schedule drawn up by EU nations. Europe is in this situation partly as a result of a misconceived environment policy"
Brussels is tightening its grip on the internet - "There’s nothing like a public-health emergency for bringing out the illiberal streak in the governing classes. This is doubly true with the EU, which is always anxious to present a benevolent facade of democracy, while keeping real power distant from the people... Some of the code’s requirements are unobjectionable. For instance, it has rules against deliberately misleading adverts and product placement masquerading as news. But some stipulations, however well-meaning, are more questionable. One is that firms should invest in algorithms that prioritise ‘authentic and accurate’ information in internet searches and social-media feeds. Another encourages firms to look to an ‘independent network of fact-checkers facilitated by the European Commission’ for help in judging what counts as ‘disinformation’... It even has private-messaging services in its sights, because they ‘can be misused to fuel disinformation and misinformation, as observed in recent electoral campaigns and during the Covid-19 pandemic’... The new guidance also calls for platforms to ‘demonetise’ disinformation. In plain language, this means denying someone access to advertising (or other) revenue because they have been judged guilty of spreading falsehoods. This rule would catch out a lot of people. A footnote in the guidance suggests this ‘disinformation’ should include things like climate-change scepticism. What’s more, it even says that those who spread ‘disinformation’ should be barred from accessing any online payment, sales or crowd-funding functions. The EU’s authoritarian shopping list goes on. Under the innocent-sounding rubric of ‘safe design’, the guidance says platforms should warn anyone who is trying to pass on information that has been ‘debunked’. And they should ‘prioritise and lead users to authoritative sources on topics of particular public and societal interest or in crisis situations’ – for example, by installing pop-ups or banners. Even private-messaging services should direct users to approved fact-checking services... The Commission foreshadowed these proposals with a document last year, which, with no sense of irony, was called the European Democracy Action Plan. Those of us who have always been suspicious of EU-style ‘democracy’ are being proved right once again."
The EU now wants to colonise our minds - "The rule of law is a foundational principle of democratic society... The rule of law requires an independent judiciary and a clear separation of power between the courts and political institutions... Unfortunately, the EU has adopted a legalistic ideology that erodes the distinction between politics and the law. It is weaponising the rule of law in an attempt to force some of its member states to adhere to moral values that are alien to their own national cultures. The political philosopher Judith Shklar described the ideology of legalism as an outlook in which questions of morality are always reduced to simply following rules. This sums up the EU’s approach to the rule of law. Over the past decade, the EU bureaucracy has been working behind the scenes on cobbling together so-called rule-of-law instruments to ‘safeguard fundamental values’. What the EU oligarchy means by ‘fundamental values’ are the latest fashionable ideals promoted by anti-traditionalist culture warriors. For example, the LGBTIQ culture, and the values associated with it, is now being instrumentalised by the EU against societies that feel uncomfortable with the ideologies promoted by woke identitarians. The EU even has an Orwellian-sounding vice-president for values and transparency, who is in charge of policing values. The commissar for values is Věra Jourová. When, last month, the European Commission launched its ‘first-ever EU strategy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, non-binary, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) equality’, Jourová declared that ‘this is what Europe is about and this is what we stand for’. The implication was clear: her view of ‘what Europe is about’ is paramount and it is beyond debate... ‘I also want to repeat it here – the EU law has primacy over national law and [the] rulings of the European Court of Justice are binding on all national courts.’ Jourová and her colleagues have all but given up on the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality that were laid out in the original Treaty on European Union. When that treaty was enacted, no one imagined that Brussels would assume authority over the cultural, personal and family values of member states. Nor did most governments imagine that, one day, their cultural norms would be policed by a commissar for values and transparency. Until recently, governments believed that the EU oligarchy wouldn’t want to meddle in personal and cultural affairs that have no bearing on others outside the borders of individual member states. Now, however, the EU is demanding that its view of sexuality and its definition of gender must prevail over more traditional views that might exist within states. Especially states like Hungary and Poland... This mission to harness the power of rules to promote certain values is a dangerous enterprise. Controversies over values cannot be reduced to an issue of ‘rules’. For centuries, enlightened governments have recognised that matters of morality and conscience must, whenever possible, be protected from values policing. The very ideal of tolerance – a foundational principle of an enlightened society – recognises the right of people to live in accordance with their conscience. A tolerant culture recognises that values should not be imposed on people. The use of rules to impose moral conformity is driven by a totalitarian impulse that disregards the moral autonomy of the individual and which seeks to shut down ‘dissident’ values. That is why an integral element of the EU’s LGBTIQ strategy is to extend the list of ‘EU crimes’ under Article 83 (1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The expansion would include new forms of hate crime and hate speech, including when the targets are LGBTIQ people. In essence, this means that opinions that question the EU strategy on LGBTIQ will be criminalised and shut down. The ideology of legalism presumes that legal claims are more important than moral ones. Yet there is nothing inherently moral about following rules that are imposed on you. Hannah Arendt drew attention to the dangers of blind legalism in her discussion of the trial of Adolf Eichmann... the EU’s new strategy celebrates the values associated with trans culture and stigmatises those who uphold the binary distinction between the two sexes; the idea that there are men and women... EU bureaucrats’ obsessive interest in gender politics is in part motivated by their determination to marginalise traditional values in relation to family, marriage, sexual relations and the upbringing of children. And through attacking these values, the EU also calls into question the core value upon which the exercise of these traditional ways of life depends — that of sovereignty... Ever since the end of the Second World War, supporters of European federalism have always been concerned about the weak normative foundation on which their project rested. This weakness has been widely recognised, and in the absence of moral authority the EU has increasingly come to rely on the authority of the law. Its legalistic ideology relies on passive obedience, and in some cases forced obedience, rather than on genuine moral motivation. But the EU’s rules, constructed through policymaking and deliberation, cannot match the influence of values and norms that have been cultivated over generations in various countries. The EU oligarchy recognises this — that is why it has so wholeheartedly committed itself to criminalising the traditional values of certain nations. History shows that, on their own, administratively created rules and procedures always lack the moral depth necessary to give meaning to human life. That is why the EU’s attempts to transform its politicised rule of law into a sacred value are bound to fail. What we have in the EU right now is not a genuine embrace of the rule of law, but a promotion of the law of rules."
Self-hating Remainers are blind to the EU's flaws - "It has been obvious for over 20 years what the European Union’s systemic institutional flaw is: the euro itself, designed to lay the groundwork for a federal state. As economists and politicians warned at the time – and were ignored – a single currency in a continent marked by deep economic, cultural and political differences would be a cause of constant tension, because it would enrich some regions and impoverish others. As under the old Gold Standard, weaker performing regions would just have to tighten their belts and work harder. Even outside times of crises, this meant increasing inequality and migration, especially of the unemployed young from southern Europe. A German think tank calculated in 2019 that since the introduction of the euro, the average German had gained €23,000, the average Frenchman had lost €56,000, and the average Italian had lost €74,000. Italy’s economy has been stagnant for a generation. All these countries have accumulated huge national debts, while Germany has garnered the world’s biggest trade surpluses. It is no surprise that the latest challenge to the EU comes from Italy... Across eastern and southern Europe, parties critical of EU policies have been rising. Emmanuel Macron, the EU’s remaining champion, has lost control of parliament. Yet the eurozone straitjacket has so far made protest sterile, as the Greeks discovered when the European Central Bank (ECB) threatened them with financial meltdown... How long can it keep the plates spinning? Another eurozone crisis is in the offing. On top of this chronic problem has come the sudden energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Germany’s choice to rely on Russian gas has made Putin’s aggression possible and gives him a devastating economic weapon. The EU is contemplating an enforced cut in gas consumption for all its members of more than 10 per cent, including those not dependent on Russia and those pretty indifferent to Ukraine. Will it work? Will it cause further political upheaval? Will the EU cave in to Putin? Europe’s fragile economy rests on the shifting foundations of its “green” energy policy, in which Britain is supposedly a leader. Germany has ended nuclear power generation. France and Britain have allowed theirs to wither. So we have made ourselves partly dependent on wind and solar power, but mostly dependent on imported gas. Despite promises that wind power will usher in a new era of cheap sustainable energy, basic facts will not go away: a gas-turbine generator small enough to go on the back of a lorry will produce the same electricity, faster and more reliably, than 10 offshore wind turbines the size of the Eiffel Tower. Europe has for some time been deindustrialising and has become dependent on Asia, and especially China, for most of its wind turbines and panels. The promised jobs in green energy have not materialised – except in China, of course, where “green” power equipment is manufactured using cheap energy from coal, so even the planet gets no benefit. (I am optimistically waiting for Extinction Rebellion to glue themselves to the Chinese embassy.) On its present trajectory, Europe will at best jump out of the Russian frying pan into the Chinese fire. Our present problems might then seem minor in comparison... there are still many voices in politics and the media that want us to paddle back towards the EU. Project Fear is being revived. The Guardian recently showed remarkable ingenuity by managing to make the good news that manufacturing exports to the EU were increasing into a scare story about our “dependence”. Current affairs magazines such as the New Statesman and Prospect run long articles on the supposed disasters of Brexit. Do they not notice what is happening in the EU? I have never believed that the EU would suddenly collapse. But I thought it likely that it would gradually run out of political capacity due to lack of popular legitimacy. Many, like myself, have drawn a comparison with the Austro-Hungarian empire: divided, weak but unreformable, aiming at best to maintain (as one of its rulers put it) “a stable level of discontent” among a resigned population. This now seems optimistic. Not only is it unclear whether the EU can carry out its policies, it is unclear that it has any policies, or that there are any that could solve its problems. Its member states follow increasingly diverging paths. The ECB hesitates between unpalatable alternatives. Support for Ukraine is at best ambivalent. As a diplomatic player in the world’s affairs, the EU has practically vanished. So why are there still Remainers or Rejoiners? This week I read two new books attacking Brexit, which give a clue. One thing they have in common is that they say nothing at all about Europe or the EU. All their considerable verve is spent in attacking what they see as pathological characteristics of Britishness. This has been typical of Remainer discourse since 2016. Those 1930s enthusiasts for communism who visited the Soviet Union came back with descriptions of a workers’ paradise. True, they were blind to the starvation, the repression and the fear, but they did have a vision of what they wanted, however illusory. But I’ve never read a Remainer book (and I have quite a collection) describing how wonderful the EU is: the talents of its Commission, the friendly atmosphere of the Parliament, the spacious motorways built with regional funds. I have read many on how contemptible Britain (or rather England) is, how weak, how isolated, how mocked by the foreign press. But not much sign of knowledge of or interest in Europe. Their real aim is to discredit the Brexiteers by any means available. At the moment, that even includes supporting tax rises at a time of pressure on modest incomes and probable recession. Would even a collapse of the EU change their minds? No, they would blame it on their great bête noire, Boris Johnson."
The EU is now a geopolitical irrelevance - "Russian and American representatives are discussing, and perhaps deciding, the future security of Europe... In 1938, the Czechs were excluded from the Munich conference and the French were marginalised. This time, the EU has been excluded from the talks in Geneva: an astonishing void – except that no one seems to be astonished... Federalists such as Emmanuel Macron (who has declared Nato “brain dead”) would doubtless say that this proves their case: only when it has real sovereign powers and its own armed forces will the EU count. Perhaps. But at the moment this is fantasy. France is the only bloc member with considerable armed forces. Much of the EU has allowed itself to become dependent on Russia for energy. Several larger members are in a political and legal standoff with Brussels... As for Britain, its position is, as always, that of Europe’s leading Nato member. As such we are assisting Ukraine to strengthen its defences, and maintaining a military presence in the Baltic states to show that aggression will not be a walkover. In what sense have we lost “influence” by leaving the EU? The problem with the EU, in geopolitical terms, is its vulnerability; political, economic and military. It is incapable of ensuring the security of its own frontiers or its “near abroad” – the preoccupation of every empire in history. Some people used to fear (some still do) that the EU was a superpower in the making which Britain could not afford to stay out of. The reality is that for the foreseeable future it will remain largely impotent... It seems unable to accept its limitations and try to function as an economic union of sovereign states. It pursues an illusory federalism without democratic consent. EU politicians have clearly given up on winning popular support for the “European project”. Instead, they rely on the Court of Justice, the Central Bank and the secretive Council to build an unaccountable technocracy. Such a shallow system is doomed to weakness. In Britain the debate – if it can be called that – drags on. Rejoiners still flourish every anecdote, however trivial, to prove that “Brexit is a failure”. At no point do they discuss the EU’s direction and whether we would ever again want to be part of a faltering and increasingly post-democratic system. “Tell me one thing we have gained from Brexit,” they say triumphantly. Imagine Mrs Pankhurst being confronted by some red-faced reactionary in the 1920s: “Tell me one thing you women have gained from getting the vote!” I think we can guess her response."
From January
The EU is a failed empire that has condemned itself to irrelevance - "the European project was, and remains, an illusion: a 1950s Disney fairytale wrapped in Continental legalese. It is a failed federation not just riven by power struggles and vanity, but tormented by suspicion of “Anglo-Saxon” freedom. This has been more evident than usual lately, and every day seems to bring a fresh reminder to even the most disillusioned Brexiteers of exactly why we left. Emmanuel Macron continues to use the EU as an electoral weapon, petulantly agitating for a blockade against the UK, albeit with little success. Relations between Brussels and some East European states have reached new lows, amid accusations of backsliding on rights, and Poland's president has even said the EU will collapse if it blackmails his country. The bloc is an irrelevance on almost every major foreign policy issue, from the Iranian nuclear talks to the Western pivot towards Indo-China. Anti-Brexiteers nonetheless remain entranced by the EU’s mythology. How they gush at its iron integrity and cheered on every supposed “blinder” pulled off by chess grandmaster Michel Barnier in the Brexit talks. But they make the rookie error of mistaking dogmatism for ideological strength."
The EU's petty isolationism is wrecking Europe - "Britain signed up early to buy the Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine and approved it swiftly. The EU’s leaders: first, accused us of cutting corners on safety, thus encouraging anti-vax nonsense; second, found themselves at the back of the queue after incompetently negotiating a bad deal; third, took an age to approve it in a display of astounding bureaucratic lethargy; fourth, castigated AstraZeneca for failing to give in to pressure to allow them to jump the queue; and fifth, tried to impose a hard border in Ireland just to stop the Northern Irish getting vaccines. These are not the actions of an ally and friend. In part two, despite wanting the vaccine so badly they were prepared to tear up contracts and treaties, in a fit of pique at the fact that it was British, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel started speculating falsely that the Oxford vaccine was ineffective in the elderly, thus putting their population off it so much that millions of doses accumulated unused... The funniest take on this came from the Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who argued that if we had stayed in the EU we would have ensured that it did a better deal on vaccines. This argument managed simultaneously to sound arrogant, make the case for Brexit and exaggerate our past influence in Brussels. When a Dutch friend reprimanded me for Brexit a few years ago, saying that Britain’s influence was much valued by northern Europeans, so it was irresponsible of us to leave, I responded: “Then why did you not try harder to listen to us when we requested reform?” This is not a cause for rejoicing. It was no fun being locked in a continental cupboard with people who thought in such a Napoleonic way, but it is not much fun being their near neighbours either. Back in December, we recalled Parliament to ratify the trade “and cooperation” agreement with the EU. They have not had the courtesy to ratify it yet, in March. Here is a beautiful and cultured continent being run as if it was the Ming empire: with mandarins deciding what should be done and how, with the same inflexible rules in every corner, with a distrust of enterprise and innovation, and with a mercantilist, zero-sum approach to trade that beggars both belief and neighbours."
From 2021
Post-Brexit shortfall of EU workers cancelled out by staff from rest of world - "The Brexit shortfall of EU workers has already been filled by staff from the rest of the world, official figures show. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveal that the rise in jobs filled by people from non-EU countries more than compensated for the drop in those occupied by EU workers... Migration from the EU to the UK last year went into reverse for the first time since 1991 as a net 94,000 EU nationals left the country during the Covid pandemic. Madeleine Sumption, the director of Oxford University's Migration Observatory, said the figures confirmed that employment of EU migrants had not recovered to pre-pandemic levels by mid-2021. "This will be in large part a result of the post-Brexit immigration system, which means that new EU citizens can no longer move to the UK to take up work in sectors that previously relied heavily on free movement, like hospitality and construction"... "the biggest decline in EU employment was in hospitality, where very few jobs are eligible for work visas, while the increase in non-EU workers by contrast was driven by the health sector. "There is one case where we know from separate data that employers have switched from EU to non-EU workers to some extent – that is agriculture, where there is a dedicated low-wage visa open to non-EU citizens.""
Weird. I thought Brexit was racist because it was about discriminating against white Europeans by not giving them free access to the UK (unlike brown, black and yellow people from the non-EU world)
Energy prices: How a truck driver shortage in Europe could hit your wallet in the US - "Europe is becoming the focus of an all-out energy crunch causing blackouts and factory stoppages there -- but that's also affecting prices in the US. One example: The price of natural gas, which heats half of US homes, is up 180%. Oil prices have skyrocketed too, thanks to long-depleted production by OPEC and the US. Analysts expect that gasoline prices will continue to rise... CNN's Julia Horowitz lays out how multiple factors converged to create Europe's energy crisis"
Damn Brexit! Damn money printing!
What has caused the driver shortage in Europe and the United Kingdom? - "The Driver shortage is caused by a number of factors – the main reasons being:
The trucking industry continues to restore capacity to pre-Covid levels, and as new trucks join companies’ fleets, more drivers are needed. In addition, as a result of the EU mobility package more drivers per truck are needed due to resting and home trips rules;
The main challenge and goal needs to be to improve driver facilities and working conditions, as driver salaries are not the only factor influencing people’s decisions to either join or to leave the industry;
Older & experienced drivers are retiring, while trucking is not a very popular industry amongst the younger generation, and we have to improve the image and the reputation of the industry and the profession"
Morrisons drops ‘anti-EU’ chicken labelling after boycott threats - "Morrisons has been forced to redesign some of its food packaging after Remainers threatened to boycott the supermarket chain because they were offended by labelling on chicken that mentioned “non-EU salt and pepper”. The supermarket was on Tuesday accused on Twitter of pandering to Brexiteers by advertising British chicken with non-EU seasoning, when in fact the supermarket was only obeying rules originally set by Brussels... Brussels rules require the “non-EU” label on packaging when products contain ingredients from more than a single country outside the bloc. The regulation on country of origin labelling was introduced in the EU in April 2020. It took effect in the UK, even though it had legally left the bloc on January 31, because Britain was in the Brexit transition period."
Also, there is surely a high overlap between those who want GMO labelling and those offended by factual "non-EU" labelling
Finally, Remainers have fessed up about ‘Project Fear’ - "Stuart Rose has admitted that the Remain campaign exaggerated the economic cost of Brexit. Rose, of course, was chair of Britain Stronger in Europe – the official campaign fighting to keep Britain in the EU... This is not the first time Rose has let the truth slip. Back in 2016, Rose was asked by MPs what might happen to wages after Brexit. He acknowledged that they might actually rise – but that this was ‘not necessarily a good thing’. Not a good thing for the elites, perhaps."
Remoaners calling Trump anti-democratic? Give me a break - "where did today’s cavalier disdain for democracy come from? How has the democratic ideal come to be in such tatters in the 21st century? It’s because of the behaviour of anti-populists; of the bruised, upset technocratic elites, from Remoaners in the UK to Hillary Clinton and her cheerleaders in the US, who have used their influence to try to trash democratic votes and the wishes of the people."
The Remainers were wrong about literally everything - "Let’s look back on some of their most spectacularly botched predictions and miscalculations.
‘Businesses will flee the UK’...
Nissan said this year that Brexit is an advantage for the company – and it has committed to creating more jobs in the UK... Brexit Britain is attracting new investment. According to financial consultancy Bovill, around 1,000 EU firms are considering opening new offices in the UK. Economic projections from the IMF (which strongly opposed Brexit) now show there has been no negative impact on economic growth from leaving the EU. In fact, Britain’s growth is expected to be higher than the rest of the EU’s in the coming years.
‘Trade will collapse’...
Although exports to the EU fell in the months following the transition period, they have already recovered. Imports remain down, but they are catching up, too. Who’d have guessed that the EU would still want to do business with one of its biggest trade partners post-Brexit?
‘Brexit will make us ill’
Many Remainers were convinced that Brexit would be a disaster for the nation’s health. Some warned hysterically that trade barriers could even lead to a shortage of medicines. Back in 2019, the then chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, warned bluntly that Brexit put lives at risk. Other ‘experts’ entertained the ludicrous fear that Brexit would unleash a wave of infectious diseases across the UK – including super-gonorrhoea – unless Britain maintained close health cooperation with the EU. Of course there was an outbreak of infectious disease in the form of Covid. But this had nothing to do with Brexit. In fact, Brexit has helped the UK fight the pandemic – because the UK rightly avoided signing up to the EU’s ultimately disastrous Covid vaccine programme. Of course, Remainers wailed that lives would be lost if we didn’t stick with the EU programme. Lib Dem health spokeswoman Munira Wilson called the decision ‘unforgiveable’, and fellow Lib Dem Layla Moran moaned that the government was putting ‘Brexit over vaccines’. But thanks to opting out of the EU’s car-crash programme, the UK is now miles ahead of every EU member state in vaccinating its people. Brexit did seem to affect Remainers’ mental health, however. Some actually admitted that Brexit had sent them potty: the Metro ran an article in 2019 with the headline, ‘Brexit has triggered my anxiety and depression – and I’m not the only one’. It was clearly a challenging few years for Remainers’ sanity. Brexit Derangement Syndrome led Labour MP David Lammy to ask if Dominic Cummings was a Russian spy. And Green MP Caroline Lucas ended up advocating a Remainer coup, demanding the replacement of the elected government with an all-female ‘emergency cabinet’ of Remainers.
‘Brexit can be reversed with a People’s Vote’
Remainers were sure that they would win the 2016 referendum. The man who called the vote, David Cameron, was so confident that he reportedly ordered the civil service not to prepare for a Leave victory. But losing the vote wasn’t Remainers’ only electoral embarrassment. Many also campaigned tirelessly for a second referendum – or a ‘People’s Vote’, as they insisted on calling it... Labour suffered its worst electoral defeat since the 1930s. The Conservatives, meanwhile, won an historic victory under the mantra of ‘Get Brexit Done’. Two years on, with Brexit a reality, polling shows that more people want to stay out than rejoin. Remainers never got their People’s Vote. But perhaps they were lucky to avoid another humiliation at the ballot box.
‘Change UK will shake up politics’...
At the 2019 European Parliament election, the group got just 3.3 per cent of the vote. In the 2019 General Election, its few remaining MPs (the rest had defected to other parties by then) got a paltry 10,000 votes between them. Not a single one of the MPs who originally joined Change UK – including those who jumped ship and stood as Lib Dems – retained their seat after the election. Less than a year after forming, the group dissolved and was consigned to the dustbin of history. Elite Remainers thought they had a right to rule. They thought their knowledge of politics, economics and the EU made them superior. But events since the referendum have shown how divorced these people are from reality. They should never be allowed to forget it."
The Brexit bounce is underway | The Spectator - "The collapse in UK-EU trade after 1 January was widely reported. What has not been reported nearly as much is that UK exports have made a near-complete recovery... What these and other numbers are telling us is that even this bit of the Brexit scare stories will not come true. If you look at the latest IMF data and projections in the graphic above, you don't find a discernible macroeconomic effect of Brexit in the first ten years after the referendum. UK growth fell by more last year than eurozone growth, but this will be offset by higher growth this year. The future prosperity of the UK will depend to a large extent on the future policies of the UK government — Brexit or no Brexit. The mistaken Brexit forecasts reflect three separate but overlapping phenomena. The first is political capture by official forecasters. The UK Treasury and the Bank of England were, of course, not neutral players. International institutions, like the IMF and the OECD, have the UK government among their shareholders. A second group got it wrong because they allowed their political preferences to take over their economic judgments. That's most of the others. Brexit has been the most emotional policy dispute in recent times. It drove some people to insanity. I know very few people who are were genuinely neutral. Almost everyone's expectation of the economic effects correlated 100 per cent with their political beliefs. A third group, largely economists, got it wrong because they relied on bad models... Welcome to the widget school of economics. It is about things and containers, geography and manufacturing supply chains, the stuff of the 20th century economy. What it ignores is that events and technologies intrude. In the future, we will not only be trading different products, but an increasing proportion of trade will come in the form of data. This is an area in which the UK could benefit from regulatory divergence from the EU. The EU’s business-unfriendly general data protection regulation inoculates it against artificial intelligence, which many Europeans regard as an American disease. Virus tracing apps, traffic-AI, face-recognition technology and military drones all depend on data sharing. With GDPR the EU gave itself a regime geared towards an analogue consumer in the pre-digital age."
The EU export numbers have remained strong throughout the year. So much for Project Fear
The EU has learnt nothing from Brexit | The Spectator - "Switzerland and the UK are among the richest countries in the world. Both are very old democracies. What inspired the Brits to leave is exactly the same EU approach that has now stopped the Swiss from half-joining. In both cases, the debate was accompanied by Project Fear threats about inevitable economic decline. The pro-EU argument was utilitarian. It didn’t work politically because utility is not distributed evenly across the voting population. In other words, there is one class that enjoyed the benefits of EU membership while another saw little to no benefit at all. And to the surprise of economists, not all voters are as utilitarian in the way economic models demand them to be... The EU should reflect deeply about Brexit and the Swiss 'nein' — and avoid assuming this is a right-wing conspiracy. In the UK we heard the expression of bad people lying to stupid people. If that is what you want to believe, go ahead. But it won’t solve your problem. Instead of this insistence of rigid and ratcheting alignment, the EU should offer an outer layer of membership — an associate membership — that includes the customs union but not the single market. That way it respects the democratic rights of all countries, in and out, and presents them with a choice of benefits and obligations. It’s the half-in status — the one that the UK rejected — which causes all the problems."