The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[Alexbass08]

Amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill designed to asses the impact of a deal or no deal scenerio before a meaningful vote in parliment has been voted down. This makes no logical sense, if parliment are going to have a vote on the final deal wether to take it or leave it there should be an assesment on what would be best for the country at the time and in the future so they understand the best way to vote. But what can you expect from people that didn't do impact assments before going into negotiations.

[StefanAVFC]

What an absurd front page this was, for so many reasons

 

[darrenm]

I don't understand how this isn't getting headlines. Unless I'm misreading, this is Labour basically backing remain.

"if Parliament does not agree to the agreement or no deal, then the Government must request a revocation or extension of article 50"

Corbyn apparently whipped MPs in favour of this.

[mjmooney]

It would be quite a gamble for Corbyn to swing behind a Remain stance. I wonder if he's thought it through? 

[chrisp65]

15 minutes ago, darrenm said:

I don't understand how this isn't getting headlines. Unless I'm misreading, this is Labour basically backing remain.

 

I think you're misreading it.

He wanted a vote. I can't find anywhere that he has switched from being set on leaving the single market, to wanting to go full remain.

I still believe his goal is to set up the tories to fail. We will leave, it will be bad, he will get rewarded for this at a subsequent election. As we are out of europe, he can then nationalise stuff.

I think that's the Corbyn end game.

 

As ever, more than happy to be put right on that, other than being assured there's a secret plan.

[tonyh29]

52 minutes ago, darrenm said:

I don't understand how this isn't getting headlines. Unless I'm misreading, this is Labour basically backing remain.

"if Parliament does not agree to the agreement or no deal, then the Government must request a revocation or extension of article 50"

Corbyn apparently whipped MPs in favour of this.

same way that the 48 who defied him on the other vote yesterday about staying in the single market hasn't had a mention either  ,  I guess

[mjmooney]

33 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

I still believe his goal is to set up the tories to fail. We will leave, it will be bad, he will get rewarded for this at a subsequent election. As we are out of europe, he can then nationalise stuff.

I think that's the Corbyn end game.

Why couldn't he nationalise stuff if we stayed in? 

[tonyh29]

6 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Why couldn't he nationalise stuff if we stayed in? 

I think like a lot of EU stuff it seems to be ambiguous ... EU regulations promote competition between operators irrespective of ownership structure, which kinda means the state would have to compete with rivals to win franchises, renationalised or not ?

so Virgin can bid but won't win the contract because the government bid was better  .... but boxes have been ticked ?

 

 

[Chindie]

I believe numerous EU countries have nationalised systems. It usually inevitably comes up in the train debate. 

[a m ole]

50 minutes ago, Chindie said:

I believe numerous EU countries have nationalised systems. It usually inevitably comes up in the train debate. 

I think Italian train network is nationalised. And from what I’ve heard works well.

[tonyh29]

1 hour ago, a m ole said:

I think Italian train network is nationalised. And from what I’ve heard works well.

and it's profitability is the highest in the industry (or at least it was in 2016 )  .. mainly fuelled by it's oversees investment in other countries railways 

 

the group was able to pay a dividend of 300 million to it's shareholders .. i.e the Italian government  ..  no idea what that equates to in Nurses though 

 

 

Edited January 18, 2018 by tonyh29

[ml1dch]

1 hour ago, tonyh29 said:

I think like a lot of EU stuff it seems to be ambiguous ... EU regulations promote competition between operators irrespective of ownership structure, which kinda means the state would have to compete with rivals to win franchises, renationalised or not ?

so Virgin can bid but won't win the contract because the government bid was better  .... but boxes have been ticked ?

Ish. It's mainly made to work by manipulation of the tender process. So Berlin City Transport Authority (for example) made it a condition of tender that any winning bid to run the S-Bahn had to provide €1bn of new rolling stock.

Unsurprisingly, only Deutsche Bahn were interested. So a bit of a sneaky workaround, but all within the rules. 

What can't really be done under EU rules is full on Bolshevik style Communism. Apparently there was nothing in the last Labour manifesto that couldn't have been implemented, according to a study by Andy Tarrant and Andrea Biondi (no, me neither) which is easily Googleable.

 

[a m ole]

39 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

and it's profitability is the highest in the industry (or at least it was in 2016 )  .. mainly fuelled by it's oversees investment in other countries railways 

 

the group was able to pay a dividend of 300 million to it's shareholders .. i.e the Italian government  ..  no idea if what that equates to in Nurses though 

 

 

that’s £300m of the £350m we give to the EU every week covered! 

[chrisp65]

8 hours ago, mjmooney said:

Why couldn't he nationalise stuff if we stayed in? 

Corbyn in the Guardian

Quote

Jeremy Corbyn reignited a decades-old debate inside the Labour party this week when he claimed a socialist manifesto might be blocked by the European Union’s rules on state aid if the UK tried to stay in the single market

I could wriggle and say I was misinformed by slightly mis remembering.

There are rules on competition. I remember lots of talk of not being able to state aid Port Talbot Steel.

But I think the short version is that I was wrong on that.

Edited January 18, 2018 by chrisp65

[bickster]

could have gone in the UKIP thread but more relevant here I feel

 

 

 

[snowychap]

Worth having a read of this thread:

 

[ml1dch]

Ian Dunt was suggesting similar a week or so ago:

I thought everyone was on the same page on this. It'd go on for two years and we were going to keep everything as is.

There are still difficulties. We need to address the deals the EU has with other countries. These go from full free trade deals with countries like Canada, to smaller trade agreements, to treaties guaranteeing regulatory cooperation on things like aviation and nuclear regulation. All told there are about 750 of them.

I thought Liam Fox said he'd get all this sorted?

Yes he did. It may or may not surprise you to learn that that was all nonsense. London is going to have to convince Brussels to help.

Will that be hard?

Hard but not impossible. Brussels has selfish reasons to want the deals to roll-over. German manufacturing, for instance, occasionally relies on goods going from the UK to South Korea under an existing trade deal. But we're going to have to go cap-in-hand to the EU again, after months of Fox's demented chest-thumping. The two sides can then present a united front to other countries and face down any complaints from those demanding a trade remedy.

Is that it?

Doubtful. Europe knows it has us over a barrel on avoiding a March 2019 cliff edge, so member states are likely to start ratcheting up the demands on transition. Many of them are baffled as to why Brussels offered it at all, given that it reduces their time advantage.

http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2018/01/18/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-brexit-endgame-in-five

The whole thing is a decent read.

 

[peterms]

On 18/01/2018 at 19:25, chrisp65 said:

There are rules on competition. I remember lots of talk of not being able to state aid Port Talbot Steel.

State aid seems pretty complicated - we've had to get legal advice for a small scheme which I would have thought isn't what the rules are meant to be there to guard against - and at the same time it seems we take a very conservative approach, against our own national interest.  Civil servants have a default position of telling people to get advice on state aid, and assuming the onus is on them to prove that state aid doesn't apply, rather than the opposite.  Guilty until proven innocent.

So small vol orgs will be prevented or scared off from from doing certain things, and the idea of supporting far bigger key industries which whole towns depend on is assumed to be impossible, while other countries seem to take a much looser approach.

The fault for this doesn't lie with the EU.  Thier rules are often daft, and they often implement them in a slow and wooden fashion, but we manage to make it much worse than it need be.  Part of the general presumption that we must create as much space as possible for any private company to come and do what they want, I suppose.  Or in the case of rail, that we should let foreign state-owned companies take over our services.

[chrisp65]

2 minutes ago, peterms said:

State aid seems pretty complicated

Agree with all the above. I had a bit of a read around it and it does appear that we, as ever, have our own unique interpretation of what can be done. With anyone questioning the march to 100% privatisation being told 'ah but, EU computer says no'.

Nationalisation turns out to be a bit like blue passports, other than it's an actual important issue and therefore too hard for our politicians and media to deal with.

 

[peterms]