As the good news for Brexit Britain continues with UK sales growth, record employment, hi-tech growth, trade options outside the EU and the continued world top ranking of the City of London, it is evident that the EU’s bullying obstruction of “negotiations” has no basis in international law. The Theresa May tactic of friendship, cooperation, reasonableness and giving ground is a recipe for disaster – no wonder the EU welcomed her latest speech!
The UK must fight back and counter-threaten the EU – with our own terms and our own deadlines and if necessary an appeal to international law.
A former European Court of Justice judge – in other words a legal figure at the very heart of the EU’s legal and political expansion – has said that the EU Brexit negotiators should start “talking trade” and the future of the UK-EU relationship. The EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier should abandon his arbitrarily dictated “sequential approach” – because it is bringing no obvious benefits and the increasing costs of commercial uncertainty. Franklin Dehousse Professor at the University of Liege and a former Judge at ECJ said in his article:
“The sequencing is not a legal obligation. According to Article 50 TEU, “the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union.”. The notion of such a future framework can mean a general outline as well as a cooperation treaty. In any case, nothing in the text forbids discussing the withdrawal arrangement and the future framework simultaneously”
And of course the three items which Barnier says must be settled first – the Northern Irish border, EU and UK citizens’ rights and the Brexit financial settlement – are all crucially dependent on the economic and trading consequences of a future trade relationship. 3 million EU “citizens” in the UK are a particularly burdensome import and the idea that these immigrants should have preferential treatment to other immigrants is unacceptable. But the EU seeks to continue its imperial reach after Brexit by claiming jurisdiction over those 3 million by the European Court. Imagine the UK demanding that all British citizens in the USA should be subject to British law!
Meanwhile the economic news in Brexit Britain is remarkably good:
In August UK retail sales grew by 1% compared with the previous month, with sales of clothing and non-essential items reported as strong. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) also said that compared with last August, sales volumes were 2.4% higher. It was the 52nd month in a row that sales have risen.
Financial services play a major role in London in the UK economy and in the Treasury’s tax revenues so – despite the London doom-mongers since the Brexit vote – the City has just kept the world’s financial top spot – indeed moving further ahead of its nearest competitor, New York. In the 2017 Z/Yen Global Financial Centres Index London stays top with a 4 point increase in its rating. New York is second, Singapore third. The top EU rank is for Luxembourg at 14, Frankfurt at 18 and Paris at 32 !
Participation in the UK workforce is at record highs and vacancies as a % of the unemployed rate at a record high. The Latest Manpower Services Commission report (Sept 2017) shows hiring intentions of employers remain optimistic with three times as many firms saying they plan to take on labour than say they will cut jobs.
In the UK’s attempt to diversify its economy – especially from the dangerous dependence on the financial sector – it is very encouraging to see how employment in information and communication jumped 11.4% in the year to June 2017, recording growth every quarter. Finance and insurance has shed 73,000 jobs over the same period, while information and communication more than counterbalanced this with 138,000 jobs created.
NOT GOOD NEWS FOR THE EU
As if continuing massive unemployment in the Eurozone, the migration problem, the violent suppression of an independence referendum in Catalonia and the continuing effect on EU industry and agriculture of the moronic sanctions on Russia were not enough, Liam Fox, the Secretary of State for International Trade, on a recent visit to South Africa, noted that the European Commission’s own figures predict 90% of global growth over the next two decades would be outside the EU.
Since the beginning of the financial crisis the UK has grown 40% while even Germany – the one bright spot in the EU – has grown by only 18%. The extent to which EU citizens are desperate for jobs in the UK was shown by an article which described a police raid on a house in London where 35 East European “EU citizens” were living in a 3 bed semi detached house!
Not only must the UK Brexit negotiators recognise our own enormous strengths, they must remind the EU of its weakness, its historic decline in the world and its inability to even employ its own “citizens”.
