Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter > Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza

UK politics: Post-Brexit edition

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Jubal:
Well here we are - the day of infamy/destiny has happened, and now we buckle in and see what happens next.

In practical terms, the UK now has one year of regulatory alignment in which nothing changes and everyone probably gets lulled into a false sense of security, and the government has to panic over a new trade deal (and replacing all the UK's other EU-linked trade deals). And then... we'll see. The noises from the UK government are currently heavily against regulatory alignment of any kind, but the less we have of it, the less trade we get. After the December election the parliamentary stuff at our end will be easy, but it's now all on PM Johnson to try and deliver on his promises - or more accurately on what his voters feel like they were promised, which may not be the same thing at all. There's still a lot that's unclear about the UK's world role outside the EU - integration has been been central to Britain's post-war strategy since the 1960s and it's not clear where we sit without it, especially as our relationships with the Commonwealth and the US were predicated economically on the UK being a gateway to the EU market, which it won't be any more.

Meanwhile the opposition: two leadership elections (first Labour, then the Lib Dems) are coming up. Labour's is first, between former public prosecutor and Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer, Corbynite left-loyalist Rebecca Long-Bailey, longstanding shadow cabinet member Emily Thornberry, and northern, slightly more Eurosceptic backbencher Lisa Nandy. Starmer is basically running as "elect a sensible, slightly less left wing man who looks and sounds like people expect a Prime Minister to", Nandy is running on a fairly strong "reconnect with lost small-town voters but also be modestly socially liberal" platform, and RLB is running on "Corbyn was great and we should keep doing that". Honestly no idea what the Thornberry pitch is. My expectation is that Starmer will win - Labour are clearly now desperate for a winning candidate. The LD race I can do in more detail but I'll leave to a later post.

Finally worth noting: a poll recently put Yes ahead on a "should Scotland be independent" question and the SNP are heavilly lobbying for a new referendum, Northern Ireland has major upcoming problems with a customs border set to run down the Irish Sea, and Spain has reiterated that the status of Gibraltar will be on the table in the upcoming trade negotiations. Outside England, there are some serious problems brewing for the Johnson government, and how those will be solved, if at all, is still something of a mystery.

dubsartur:
A.J. West, a British scholar of pre-Columbian Southeast Asia, can't live in the UK with his wife without putting 60.000 GBP in a bank account for six months and paying several thousand GBP for an Indefinite Leave to Remain.  (He also gambled on starting a PhD in the Netherlands without funding, and the dice turned against him; I rolled a Venus and got federal government funding from my home country).  In Austria you need some money in an account to immigrate without family ties but not so much.

Jubal:
Merged post from the 2019 topic into the more recent newer topic

And yeah, the high and increasing wealth and income barriers for UK migrants are going to be an increasing problem in the coming years. It's a horrible system. :(

dubsartur:
That is OK!  I thought maybe I deleted the tab without posting it since I did not see it and did not see a warning/message.

Jubal:
Yes, sorry, that was just me half-doing the moving job and then forgetting about it. D'oh.

Interesting UK oddments lately:


* Hull's Liberal Democrat group managed to get a motion passed with Labour help calling for a minimum income pilot in the city. They're the first LD group to have tried something like this and it got good coverage, as well as the party's acting leader (who is usually on the party's economic right) tweeting in support of them. I'd like to think that my work getting mincome trials into party policy has helped create the climate for this to happen, though I don't know how much impact it really had.
* One friend of mine has been posting a lot about twinning, and seeing this as an important thing to revitalise post-Brexit: twinning arrangements have often become very mcuh reduced to councils, and getting them more properly set up again with school and community group links could be a good way to get rural UK communities in particular reaching out to people in other countries better.
* This fantastic article from Nick Barlow, which I think is immensely worth reading in terms of understanding the roots of some of our problems with local politics in the UK (and the liberals' fairly crucial if tragic part in unwittingly causing them).

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