Brexit

Sometime ago I said that one of the few upsides to Brexit would be the departure of Mr Anarchy himself who has happily been collecting his MEP salary for the last 20 years while doing precisely nothing to warrant it (besides campaigning for re-election every few years.) Mr Farridge (note the the Anglicised spelling of a poncey foreign-sounding name) has been a waste on resources and a waste of European tax-payers money for two decades. No more. Indeed, another benefit for we Strasbourgeois is that there is now a much reduced chance of running into old gobby in the street, cycling through his cigar smoke or having to put up with his loud narcissism in a restaurant or bar. Yay! The other upsides to Brexit include... er, well I can't think of any right now. Perhaps we'll know in about ten years time what benefits it has brought to the UK and EU. Maybe it's time for a few predictions? Looking back at 2017 when I wrote this post - I wasn't far off what was to befall in [...]

The European elections are upon us once more and once again the British electorate, if the polls are to be believed, are going to return Mister Farage to his very well paid position as uncooperative anarchist at the heart of the EU. However, despite the fact the Farage will continue to live life on easy street (as he has done since he was a child, despite his one time claim to be 'skint') it is hard to begrudge his success. After all, democracy is to blame, not Nigel. The fact that successive governments and the media have failed to explain to the common man what the EU is and how it functions has allowed Farage, Boris Johnson and others to paint their own picture of the institution, to their own, personal, benefit. And, as yet no-one has been able to hold them, convincingly, to account. There are a few simple facts that could do wonders to get the public to actually do something worthwhile with their European vote rather than simply use it as a protest for national issues [...]

So the breakthrough deal is this: The UK is going to 'align' itself with the single market so that there is no hard border in Ireland. So it will be like being in the EEA - with the UK having to obey the rules to keep trading, but having no say in what those rules are. The only difference as far as I can tell will be that the European Court of Justice will not be the final court of arbitration - but rather some new court that takes the ECJ's views into account. If the UK do change something that breaks the rules they'll have to let NI decide what to do - which although no one dares to use the term - would give them special status with one foot in the UK and one foot in the EU. There will need to be an EU body set up to ensure the UK is actually obeying the rules and that untaxed goods aren't making it into the EU via the NI/UK backdoor. There will need to be [...]

Having successfully submitted my dossier for French naturalisation I am somewhat ambivalent to the proposals put forward by the British Government in round one of the UK's Brexit negotiations, not least because, provided my application to become French is approved, they will have precisely no affect on me nor my immediate family. I do have a great deal of empathy though for those living abroad, in the UK or in the EU, for whom the nonsense document published yesterday is supposed to safeguard "the position of EU citizens living in the UK and UK nationals living in the EU." - a document that reads like a C-grade high school Social Science project. Frankly, if anyone wanted clarity on the coming arrangements for citizens they need only to refer to section 33 which, as I am sure you will agree, couldn't be more vague: "The ability of EU citizens arriving after the specified date subsequently to obtain further or indefinite permission to stay will depend on the rules in place at the time at which they apply. These will be [...]