"We don't want a border on the island of Ireland," say the people who want a border on the island of Great Britain, and who are in fact already enforcing one, on highly questionable authority.
I have yet to read the deal, so I am not yet passing comment on it. Unlike the purported Leader of the Opposition.
Starmer is right that it’s a “thin deal”, modelled on Canada, exactly as the Conservative eurosceptics wanted. It sounds very good-no deal at all on defence, foreign policy, security or financial services.
ReplyDeleteBut in return we are free of the European Arrest Warrant, European defence and foreign policy, Single Market, Customs Union and European Court of Justice.
The EU has kept a sizeable proportion of its catch in British waters for a "transition period", and we all know about those. Moreover, even as initially agreed, that period is to last a whopping five and a half years.
DeleteAnd we are to remain subject to the State Aid rules via the "level playing field" mechanism, thereby rendering impossible the economic regeneration of the areas that made the decisive difference for Leave at a referendum that now feels like a lifetime ago.
This will not do at all. WTO terms, the great bogeyman of No Deal, would indeed be better than this. The Liberal Democrats seem poised to vote against this deal as one last stand against Brexit itself, thereby hoping, perhaps realistically, to pick up the votes of many of the people who had hitherto placed their trust in Keir Starmer.
Well, there are 11 Lib Dem MPs. Let there be at least 12, elected as Labour a year ago even if not currently in receipt of the whip, who will vote in the same lobby but for the opposite reason. Let there be at least 12 who will make a stand for huge investment in manufacturing, for increased productivity, and for local procurement, all in the interests of working people and of ethical trade.
We know that that will not be the Labour whip. Quite the reverse, in fact. And we know that at least two of the MPs who might vote for this would already have been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party. But I am the Independent parliamentary candidate for the archetypal Red Wall seat of North West Durham. What are you doing?