EEA/EFTA and #Brexit – Round 2 : @goddersbloom

I am afraid Godfrey, that your plan is overly simplistic. Not least from the fact that having lost a referendum, the Government would be loath to take anything further from their Corporate masters. Free movement of Labour is the one real tenet of the EU, it is the means of forcing an overabundance of cheap labour which is entirely to the benefit of the Corporate Employers.

Your assertion that an ‘Emergency Brake’ can be applied under Articles 112-3 just does not hold water.

To quote from Richard North (who together with Christopher Booker instigated this ridiculous ‘Flexcit’ plan), applying such a brake would be excessively difficult. (see: http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=85340):

“Open Europe, on the other hand, believe that Mr Cameron should “stay clear of an ’emergency brake’ on EU free movement”.

An emergency brake, says this “think tank”, would be targeted at flows of new EU migrants not the existing stocks, aimed at “destabilising flows”. This, though, it says, remains a vague term that could mean many different things, and pinning down a precise meaning could prove incredibly tricky.

However, that is to accept the Open Europe characterisation, allowing it to frame the debate. What they skate past is the volume issue where, as we saw recently, net long-term migration to the UK was estimated to be 260,000 in the year ending June 2014, up from 182,000 in the previous 12 months.

That alone is sufficient to apply the brake, and that is a perfectly legitimate application for the measure. The real questions are how and under what circumstances it should be applied. And it is here that Open Europe have no suggestions, and only difficulties to offer.

In fact, it is indeed very difficult to apply. In a country where we have 34 million overseas visitors annually, and visa-free access from EU member states, it would not be possible to exclude visitors.

Once in the country, it would then be very difficult to exclude them from the workforce. There exclusion would be determined only by their date of entry, and there is currently no ready means of identifying when individuals entered the country. Should they apply for a National Insurance number, they would have to be given.

On that basis, an “emergency brake” would look to be unrealistic. But there again, this applies to the current state of the art. Already it is being proposed that entry and exit records are kept, whence it would be quite possible to exclude particular nationals from the legitimate workforce. Simply, they would not be issued with NI numbers.

Similarly, there is already a measure coming into force, via the Immigration Act 2014 which prevents private landlords renting accommodation to illegal immigrants.

Similarly, the government has produced a legal right to work database, which could be adapted to take on new categories of foreign nationals. Mandatory checks should reduce drastically the number of workers employed without entitlement. ”

North has explained that the concept would be very difficult to employ because we cannot stop visitors from the EU coming to Britain but then goes on to suggest that the problem could be reduced by a Government system of recording who enters and leaves Britain. This together with various ‘right to work’ databases and controls on landlords would ease the situation.

You and I both know that there is a complete lack of inertia from the Government in implementing these plans. They all should have been implemented years ago as any sane Government would have done. Even if the Government somehow found the will to do this, even setting aside the usual incompetence, it would take years to implement.

As a former Military man, you are perfectly well aware that our security problems from immigration are immediate and cannot wait for such an occurrence. Our only possible defense is to place an immediate and unilateral moratorium on any immigration until the business is made viable.

You go on to say that your Norwegian and Swiss ‘chums’ are quite happy with their lot, but it was only a year or so ago that the Swiss attempted to secede from ‘Free Movement’ and were told quite categorically that it ain’t gonna happen. Helle Hagenau of the Norwegian ‘Opposition to the EU’ is quite explicit in that the general population wish to leave EFTA/EEA because, typically, the EU does not play fair with the EEA Agreement and is more likely to walk rough shod over it even more than they already do with Lisbon.

I do not know whether you followed the link that I gave you to an independent poll (http://www.tradersadvocate.com/pages/orphan_pages/ExclusiveBrexitPollUpdateDoTheMat#.VzTFBvkrLctQFNNhfXV2xNByV59WiTWPmwIq6i_1V7yg==&c=a79d40izd0vLZVeCSBV1Y9DtMBzwD77waTkdpHLmqr6LTk672QBhww==&ch=TG28xZRjb_kDUcaxHJ0fV4UdW2Pr8zADOZI3lYvZ6yhiOnkGDClkuQ==) but the hypothesis put forward is a really powerful one.

The pollster suggests that even the 50-50 leave/remain polling figures do not take account of voter complacency and it is the ‘leave’ campaign that has by far the greater commitment and only a 5% difference in voting can win or lose the referendum. Recent reports in the newspapers that public polls put out by the likes of Mori have shown a lead for the Brexit side for 5 consecutive weeks.

By all means, continue to tell the waverers that an EEA Agreement will solve all their worries and persuade them to vote out but please, desist from voicing this ruinous course too much in public.

A resounding vote to leave the EU will leave us without the need to go any other route than to true freedom and the odds are already on our side.

2 thoughts on “EEA/EFTA and #Brexit – Round 2 : @goddersbloom”

Peter Brown says:

12th May 2016 at 7:14 pm

I am afraid Godfrey, that your plan is overly simplistic. Not least from the fact that having lost a referendum, the Government would be loath to take anything further from their Corporate masters. Free movement of Labour is the one real tenet of the EU, it is the means of forcing an overabundance of cheap labour which is entirely to the benefit of the Corporate Employers.

Your assertion that an ‘Emergency Brake’ can be applied under Articles 112-3 just does not hold water.

To quote from Richard North (who together with Christopher Booker instigated this ridiculous ‘Flexcit’ plan), applying such a brake would be excessively difficult. (see: http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=85340):

“Open Europe, on the other hand, believe that Mr Cameron should “stay clear of an ’emergency brake’ on EU free movement”.

An emergency brake, says this “think tank”, would be targeted at flows of new EU migrants not the existing stocks, aimed at “destabilising flows”. This, though, it says, remains a vague term that could mean many different things, and pinning down a precise meaning could prove incredibly tricky.

However, that is to accept the Open Europe characterisation, allowing it to frame the debate. What they skate past is the volume issue where, as we saw recently, net long-term migration to the UK was estimated to be 260,000 in the year ending June 2014, up from 182,000 in the previous 12 months.

That alone is sufficient to apply the brake, and that is a perfectly legitimate application for the measure. The real questions are how and under what circumstances it should be applied. And it is here that Open Europe have no suggestions, and only difficulties to offer.

In fact, it is indeed very difficult to apply. In a country where we have 34 million overseas visitors annually, and visa-free access from EU member states, it would not be possible to exclude visitors.

Once in the country, it would then be very difficult to exclude them from the workforce. There exclusion would be determined only by their date of entry, and there is currently no ready means of identifying when individuals entered the country. Should they apply for a National Insurance number, they would have to be given.

On that basis, an “emergency brake” would look to be unrealistic. But there again, this applies to the current state of the art. Already it is being proposed that entry and exit records are kept, whence it would be quite possible to exclude particular nationals from the legitimate workforce. Simply, they would not be issued with NI numbers.

Similarly, there is already a measure coming into force, via the Immigration Act 2014 which prevents private landlords renting accommodation to illegal immigrants.

Similarly, the government has produced a legal right to work database, which could be adapted to take on new categories of foreign nationals. Mandatory checks should reduce drastically the number of workers employed without entitlement. ”

North has explained that the concept would be very difficult to employ because we cannot stop visitors from the EU coming to Britain but then goes on to suggest that the problem could be reduced by a Government system of recording who enters and leaves Britain. This together with various ‘right to work’ databases and controls on landlords would ease the situation.

You and I both know that there is a complete lack of inertia from the Government in implementing these plans. They all should have been implemented years ago as any sane Government would have done. Even if the Government somehow found the will to do this, even setting aside the usual incompetence, it would take years to implement.

As a former Military man, you are perfectly well aware that our security problems from immigration are immediate and cannot wait for such an occurrence. Our only possible defense is to place an immediate and unilateral moratorium on any immigration until the business is made viable.

You go on to say that your Norwegian and Swiss ‘chums’ are quite happy with their lot, but it was only a year or so ago that the Swiss attempted to secede from ‘Free Movement’ and were told quite categorically that it ain’t gonna happen. Helle Hagenau of the Norwegian ‘Opposition to the EU’ is quite explicit in that the general population wish to leave EFTA/EEA because, typically, the EU does not play fair with the EEA Agreement and is more likely to walk rough shod over it even more than they already do with Lisbon.

I do not know whether you followed the link that I gave you to an independent poll (http://www.tradersadvocate.com/pages/orphan_pages/ExclusiveBrexitPollUpdateDoTheMat#.VzTFBvkrLctQFNNhfXV2xNByV59WiTWPmwIq6i_1V7yg==&c=a79d40izd0vLZVeCSBV1Y9DtMBzwD77waTkdpHLmqr6LTk672QBhww==&ch=TG28xZRjb_kDUcaxHJ0fV4UdW2Pr8zADOZI3lYvZ6yhiOnkGDClkuQ==) but the hypothesis put forward is a really powerful one.

The pollster suggests that even the 50-50 leave/remain polling figures do not take account of voter complacency and it is the ‘leave’ campaign that has by far the greater commitment and only a 5% difference in voting can win or lose the referendum. Recent reports in the newspapers that public polls put out by the likes of Mori have shown a lead for the Brexit side for 5 consecutive weeks.

By all means, continue to tell the waverers that an EEA Agreement will solve all their worries and persuade them to vote out but please, desist from voicing this ruinous course too much in public.

A resounding vote to leave the EU will leave us without the need to go any other route than to true freedom and the odds are already on our side.

Michael Jose says:

13th May 2016 at 1:50 pm

far too clever Godders, this all perpetuates the myth that it is ‘all about trade’ – when it is now, and always was, ‘all about take over by Brussels’. We cannot stop the migrant hordes, or the stupid laws imposed on our NHS, or even our kettles and toasters, because Brussels rules us. We should just leave and then tell the Germans to play ball if they want to carry on selling BMWs and Audis to us, Vorsprung durch Technik, old chap

2 thoughts on “EEA/EFTA and #Brexit – Round 2 : @goddersbloom”

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