UK Labour opts for softest Brexit; EU, Japan cold shoulder Britain

 Britain’s Opposition Labour party has decided to go for continued membership of the European Union single market beyond March 2019, when Britain leaves the EU. The party decision follows marathon discussions led by Labour Shadow Brexit Scretary, Keir Starmer, and party chief Jeremy Corbyn late last week.

The move has sparked an  all-out  intra party fierce debate and even split in both Labour and Tory ranks and is sure to dominate the national scene in the coming days and weeks.

Meanwhile Britian’s ongoing Brexit talks with the European Union seem to be going nowhere with EU negotiators ridiculing British stand as “non-serious. ” Further afield the UK’s upcoming talks with Japan for enhanced trade relations appear to be heading for a cold response with Japan giving priority to talks with EU before anything else.

In its clearest stand yet on the Brexit issue, Labour  would not only continue to accept the EU’s free movement rules, accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice on trade and economic issues, and pay into the EU budget for a period of years after Brexit, it  even leaves the door open for continued EU membership with some leeway for immigration control, if accepted by the EU.

The Liberal party under its new leader Vince Cable has already called for a fresh referendum  to reverse the earlier decision. The Scottish and Welsh First ministers have long favoured to keep Britain in the EU. The former Labour leader  Ed Milliband and the mayor  of London, Sadiq Khan, have also made their position clear in favour  of a fresh referendum or remaining in the EU.

Meanwhile the uncertainty created by Britain’s internal voices against immigration  has led to outflow of European immigrants who feel unwelcome in the UK. Already nearly 50,000 have gone back to their homelands in the recent few months. Liberal leader Cable has even  described the return of the much needed European workers as “brain drain.”

  

Labour’s  policy shift , first revealed in the Observer newspaper on Sunday, aims at softening the impact of  hard exit on the UK economy. The move  comes as music to the ears of not only  pro-EU Labour backers, but could sway a sizeable faction within the Tory ranks who have already raised voices against any hard Brexit. It  could virtually pave the way for Labour leader   Jeremy Corbyn’s  party  leaving  open the option of the UK remaining a member of the customs union and single market for good, beyond the end of the transitional period.

 In the new scenario voters will have a clear choice between the two main parties on the UK’s future relations with the EU. Till now,   since last year’s referendum, Labour’s approach has been criticised for lacking clarity and looked no different from that of the Tories.

The scene is set for a highly charged national debate when the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill returns to the House of Commons for its second reading on 7 September.

The upheaval triggered by Labour’s policy shift inevitably will lead  to an internal shake-out  within the Tory party. Pro-EU Tory MPs, who also support remaining in the single market, will come under intense pressure to come out and declare their stand clearly. The Tory Remainers or anti- Brexiters have a sizeable strength within the party and could make the position  of Prime Minister Theresa May even shakier that it already is.

Immigration has been the long obsession of the UK and remains so till this day, though opposition voices have begun to surface now after decades of a virtual xenophobia. Foreign students , especially from the Commonwealth countries and parts of Africa, have been special targets of Tory governments who have for long declared their resolve to cut immigration to tens of thousands from hundreds of thousands, including overseas students said to be  overstaying in huge numbers.

 A new government survey has just revealed that 97 per cent students actually return home after completing their studies. Barely three per cent students overstay compared with the government’s widely circulated fears of nearly “40 per cent overstayers,”  Prime Minister Theresa May, who previously had been Home Secretary for six long years,  has  been one of the chief hardliners against immigrants.

Tailpiece.  A top ranking nationalist party leader of UKIP, the anti-immigrant  party, John Rees-Evans, has said immigrants should be offered grants of up to pounds 9,000 plus health insurance other benefits to return home permanently.

Brexit claim exposed; Leavers' image dented

Even as Britain’s battle over its EU divorce bill rages amidst confusing claims and counter claims, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is attracting fresh attention. Johnson, who  is the chief guest at the London based  Indian Journalists Association dinner on 15th August,  is being accused of telling ‘a lie’ and  misleading the British public in the run-up to last year’s referendum,  over his claim that the EU was costing Britain pounds 350 million a week. That money, he and his fellow Brexiters said, could fund the ailing National Health Service for a full year. Johnson was often pictured  beside the Brexit battle bus during his countrywide campaign tour.

Figures released by the  government’s Treasury department say that Britain’s net payment amounted to about half that or  pounds156m a week, after taking into account the EU’s payments to Britain.  

Labour MP Wes Streeting, a member of the Treasury Select Committee, said:  “It is now plain to see that this claim was a lie, plain and simple... It is time for the leading lights of  Vote Leave to hold their hands up and apologise for misleading the public.

“We do not send  pounds 350m a week to the EU and therefore will not have pounds 350m a week to spend on the NHS or anything else.”  The claim was a central plank of the Brexit drive.

One of the latest divorce bill cost figures doing the rounds which suggests a bill of pounds 36billion. It has been swiftly  attacked by some and downplayed by others. While the Prime Minister Theresa May  herself is still on holiday, her office spokesman plainly said: “I don’t recognise it (figure).”  As other issues like the free movement of workers or the number of years for the transition arrangements remain unresolved, Gunther Oettinger, the European Commissioner for budget and human resources, has insisted that the UK “must honour its obligations” made as a member of the EU. “London will have to transfer funds to Brussels at least until 2020.”  

Striking a note of realism, Sir Simon Fraser, Britain’s former Foreign Office Permanent Secretary, observed that splits within the cabinet were damaging  Brexit talks. “I don’t  think (the negotiations) have begun particularly promising, frankly, on the British side.”    

Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch is seldom away from news headlines. Currently his empire is being investigated over his 11.7 billion pound bid to acquire 100 per cent control over Britain’s Sky news TV network, 39 per cent of which he and his sons already own.

The Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is investigating into Murdoch family’s suitability to buy Sky after allegations of sexual harassment at 21^st Century Fox television owned  by the group in the USA. Labour MPs in the UK and  campaign group Avaaz have criticised an earlier inquiry by media regulator Ofcom which had cleared the family as “fit and proper” for the ownership. The scandal over the hacking of the phone of the murdered school girl Milly Dowler  which led to the closure of Murdoch owned top selling Sunday paper News of the World also led to the dropping of the Sky bid then.

As if that was not enough, the Fox News report on the murder of a Democrat party aide, Seth Rich, in Washington last year has led to allegations of right-wing bias in the presentation of the incident. Right-wing media groups were alleged to have blamed Seth Rich for leaking Democrat emails to Wikileaks. The Fox report was alleged to have implied that Seth Rich  had been killed by Hillary Clinton supporters as revenge..

Wading into this welter of allegations, Britain’s former Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said: “ Six years ago people vowed that the anguish caused to the grieving families like the Dowlers by the Murdoch empire would never be allowed again. Now in 2017 we see another grieving family - the parents of Seth Rich - also suffering deep anguish at the hands of the empire without so much as an apology. If ever an episode showed why the Murdochs  should not be allowed more control of our media, it is this.”    

Critics of the Murdoch bid fear the UK’s Tory government is likely give it green signal.

Murdoch senior has also been drawing attention in the theatre world. His Sun newspaper’s birth and  its circulation battle with the Daily Mirror is the gripping stuff of a play titled Ink which has just finished a short but highly successful run at London’s Almeida theatre. It’s a peep into the mind of not just the paper’s owner but also of his chosen editor and indeed the entire editorial and managerial team.

Starting a tabloid daily in 1969 in England, the colonial journalist Murdoch (played by Bertie Carvel) from Australia, the ‘sheep country’,  hires a northern English journalist aptly named Larry Lamb ( Richard Coyle). Both cut a good hearted on-stage joke of ‘Sheep and Lamb’ joining hands in the new venture. Happily peppering their dialogues with a few F words, the bumptious duo start their show over a lobster dinner and a select bottle. They carry their project of disrupting the street (Fleet Street, London’s historic newspaper hub now reduced to a bankers’ bazaar bereft any trace of news ink). By Jove, they not only disrupted  the street, they have transformed pop tabloids into a new species.

 The battle with the Mirror was rapidly won with the introduction of  Page 3 display of the female body in ever different poses. The picture stories are embellished with big headlines and  sharp, short, sexy captions.   The Mirror tried to fight it off  with the addition of a new free magazine in old, sensitive style. But the Sun won the battle hands down with its  saucy stories or as Editor Larry Lamb winds up the play with  his secret of success formula: “People want stories.”

However, years later  down the line Murdoch’s Sun  has lost the circulation race to The Daily Mail, the ultra-right-wing tabloid. Murdoch’s Sun is now trying to fight back by bringing part of Page 3 to Front Page itself. But the Mail is hitting back  by bringing a slice of its own sexy product to its Front Page. Interesting times ahead, as the Chinese say.     

Tailpiece: Seven Roman Catholic priests, dressed in black robes and dog collars, walked into a pub in Cardiff  but were refused service  by the manager  who took them for a bunch of fancy dress party jokers. Recognising something was amiss, the pub’s  deputy manager stepped in with an apology and a round of drinks - for free – for the holy seven.