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LittleGravitas, →EU immigrant, UK→ emigrant, anti-Brexit
@catanonim.me
Federalist, anti-Brexit, languages, pro-vape. RT≠E. Masto: @littlegravitas@c.im. en fr de ca es. DigiGarden: t.ly/NA-4v 📧: lgrav24-privateum-net. Signal username by email. I mostly follow back.
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@chrisgrey.bsky.socialhttps://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2024/10/britains-brexitism-test.html

The YMS test On these questions, YMS is quite a good test to set, relating as it does to the neuralgic issue of immigration which played such a central role in the vote for Brexit. YMS manifestly doesn't cross the Labour red line on the restoration of freedom of movement of people, so if the government still sees it as too politically toxic to pursue that suggests two, related, things. One is that within the British polity, generally, the experience of Brexit has still not lanced the populist boil about immigration. The other is that the Labour government is not minded to challenge, but to accept, the orthodoxy of anti-immigration sentiment. It would seem as if that test has already been failed. Unsurprisingly, anti-immigration politics still suffuses Farage's Reform Party as, hardly any more unsurprisingly, it does the Tory Party, whoever its new leader turns out to be. The Tories did have the possibility of saying that, with Brexit, they had delivered the 'points-based' system which Brexiters like Farage used to say was all they wanted. They could then have initiated the 'honest conversation' everyone says they want to have about immigration, for example by decoupling it from asylum-seeking, and by challenging the voters about their view that immigration in general should be significantly reduced whilst those same voters, including Conservative voters, do not support reductions in almost every specific category of immigration. But, whether from fear of Reform, their own preferences, or some combination of the two, the Tories have not chosen to take this opportunity. Nor is there any sign that the Labour government will do so. That clearly extends even to YMS, with reports that the cabinet is split over whether to agree to it, and identifying Home Secretary Yvette Cooper as the main opponent. Cooper played a pivotal and praiseworthy role in preventing Boris Johnson's government enacting a 'no deal Brexit', and a courageous one, too, given the horrendous abuse and threats she faced. So it might be tempting to see her stance on YMS as the latest example of the Home Office capturing its Secretary of State. After all, Theresa May went from challenging her party to stop being 'nasty' to being a distinctly nasty Home Secretary, and the department seems to have had similarly radicalizing effect on one-time Immigration Minister, then Tory leadership candidate, Robert Jenrick.
In fact, Cooper has been arguing against freedom of movement since at least December 2016. And although she must know very well that YMS would not mean anything like its restoration she insists that the EU "see this in the context of free movement", whatever that is supposed to mean, or why it even affects the issue. But it isn't just Cooper. Starmer, too, despite being enthusiastic about the case for freedom of movement as recently as January 2020, is reported to fear the reaction from the pro-Brexit press to a YMS deal. So even on this quite limited measure it seems Labour have no appetite to take on Brexitism, thus failing first part of the YMS test, namely, whether has Brexitism been marginalized. This does not mean that YMS will not be agreed in the end. Many people (including me, for what it is worth) expect that it will be. However, the consequence of having failed the first test is that, if and when YMS is agreed, the UK will also fail the second test. For if it is agreed as, or is presented as having been agreed as, part of some quid pro quo deal to obtain some softening of the economic damage of Brexit, such as an SPS deal, then it will be clear that the UK's relationship with the EU remains within the same transactionalist frame as it has always been. That needn't preclude a 'reset' but places limits upon it, and defines the future 'partnership' in relatively shallow terms.
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2/2 I note the line ↑↑ "In fact, [Yvette] Cooper has been arguing against freedom of movement since at least December 2016". This does not augur well. https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2024/10/britains-brexitism-test.html

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LittleGravitas, →EU immigrant, UK→ emigrant, anti-Brexit
@catanonim.me
Federalist, anti-Brexit, languages, pro-vape. RT≠E. Masto: @littlegravitas@c.im. en fr de ca es. DigiGarden: t.ly/NA-4v 📧: lgrav24-privateum-net. Signal username by email. I mostly follow back.
1.6k followers3k following2.6k posts
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