Very cool, if true

Random thoughts.

(1) Although I suspect there’s no way he could get his party to support May’s deal, I tend to think Corbyn doesn’t care about a customs union per se but just needs an opposing position to her that doesn’t reject Brexit.

(2) That said, a customs union does make the backstop problem go away and that is not nothing. And I think he does care about Irish nationalism, which might influence his position on this.

(3) I think that coalition would be a great deal more stable than a majority Labour government.

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I do wonder about whether the Labour position is actually "Whatever would cause the Conservative Party to implode if Theresa May offered it to us."

And yes, I'd much rather that coalition than a Labour majority.

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nojay

The Labour position is written down on a piece of paper and you can read it rather than wondering. The Labour Party Conference decision last year was basically "leave the EU, Customs Union or similar, absolutely no 'No Deal' crash-out". The NEC has since modified that to include a second referendum if no practical withdrawal agreement consensus can be reached with the baby-eating Tories. Labour is aware of the Conservative Party's habit of snacking on kiddie kebabs and is quite rightly keeping them at arms' length in the "negotiations" currently going on despite PM May telling them to sit down, shut up and do as they're told.

The Lib Dems will join a coalition with anyone to get their feet under the table as proved by their previous gig acting as a ventriloquist's dummy for the baby-eating Tories. The SNP, I don't see them getting 50-odd MPs in a GE ever again but they'd want a guarantee for another Independence Referendum from Labour if they held the balance of power.

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Oh yes, I know that the Labour party have an awful Brexit policy.

Delighted to see them doing badly at the council elections. Hoping they do even worse for MEPs.

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dewline

And that Farage's crowd does even worse than that.

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Oh yes, absolutely.

In a ranked system Labour would be my fourth choice. Farage would get nothing.

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Current opinion polls put the SNP in a range that tops out at 53. Labour 1 seat, Lib Dems 4, Tories 1. Depends on the breaks. There are lots of seats with narrow majorities.

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Just because the Labour Party policy is written down it doesn't mean it isn't designed primarily to cause the Tories the maximum discomfort.

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Sadly I do not think their position is that coherent.

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skington

Labour's position since the start has been, constantly, “just a little bit more Remainy than the Tories”. It's a more hideously-cynical form of triangulation than nearly anything that New Labour came up with, which is depressing.

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nojay

Labour and many left-wing thinkers regard the EU with some suspicion for several reasons. One is it seems to be very business-friendly, encouraging movement of labour to depress wages in richer countries like the UK and such. They do like things such as the ECHR but don't think it goes far enough and the European Parliament gives a voice and influence to some rather obnoxious and extreme right-wing proto-Fascist groups.

The real problem is the Labour leadership and the NEC is well aware that many lifelong Labour supporters and voters are racist, sexist and anti-Semitic and they can't do without their votes come election time. They're a large part of the reason UKIP got 3.8 million votes back in 2015 since most of the Tory Leavers stayed with the baby-eating party. It was only after the Referendum and the Tories agreed to invoke Article 50 that the UKIP vote dropped to about 600,000 in the 2017 election and Labour recovered some ground on the baby-eaters with the UKIP-supporting left coming home to their traditional roots.

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If they'd backed AV wholeheartedly that would be less of an issue.

And those awful Labour supporters are thankfully less numerous than the more decent ones.

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/news/101666/backing-brexit-will-cost-labour-more-votes-iraq

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autopope

The real problem with that coalition is that Labour in Scotland hate, loathe, and fear the SNP, who they see as their opposition — as much their opposition in Scotland, in fact, as the Tories are in England.

There's some reason for this (as Andrew knows): the SNP cannibalized Labour's base from about 1995-2016, driving them from being a party which, as a friend of mind put it, could propose a plank as a candidate and get it nailed into a council seat, to being in danger of becoming a permanent opposition. Since the Scottish parliament came into being exactly 20 years ago today, the SNP has been in power (albeit often as a coalition/minority party) since 2007, and they're the largest rank-and-file party in Scotland by a mile. They're also broadly social-democratic, except on the one specific issue of independence, so they're competing for the same voters!

So, firstly Labour would be incredlby reluctant to form a coalition with the SNP (almost as much so as with the Conservatives), and secondly, what would the SNP price for joining a coalition be? Either cancellation of Brexit (not on Corbyn's agenda, currently), or another independence referendum (not inconceivable, but something any Westminster PM would be extremely wary about).

On the other hand, a sufficiently machiavellian Labour-LibDem-SNP coalition could push through left-wing policies unpopular with voters in middle England and blame then on "those SNP socialists" … except that's unlikely to work with Corbyn in the driving seat (he's to the left of Sturgeon). So where does that leave us?

Edit: just saw Mike's comment below, I think he's probably (80%) correct on there not being another coalition after the way Cameron bent the LibDems over the proverbial barrel in 2010.

Edited Date: 2019-05-06 02:44 pm (UTC)

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He’s also not very Machiavellian, or at least not very good at it (and I tend to suspect the former; most of his career has been about protest).

That said, I get the impression (not on sufficient data to be authoritative) that he’s really very keen to be Prime Minister, and it’s remarkable* the effect that can have.

*or maybe not.

Also, how much voice does Labour in Scotland have in this? They have 7 MPs IIRC.

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skington

There's a theory that Jeremy Corbyn isn't particular smart full stop, and that he's an ideologue with predictable positions on particularly everything because that avoids having to think about issues.

McDonnell, however, appears to be sharper, and may have internalised that those Labour seats in Scotland aren't coming back. At the moment, there are 35 SNP, 13 Tories, 7 Labour and 4 LibDem, so Scotland being in the Union is a net -33 MPs from the Tories' point of view; but if you consider posturing about being the largest party only, the Tories are already ahead, and arguably a Labour minority government trying to form a confidence and supply agreement might already be in trouble if it could only guarantee a deal with the LibDems. I've long reckoned that the Tories will only win in Scotland when everyone who remembers the Poll Tax is dead; but it doesn't take many SNP seats falling to the Tories before Scotland becomes a net negative from the point of the UK Labour Party.

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autopope

Good numbers. The problem, I suspect, is that Scottish Labour will have a cow if UK Labour make nice with the SNP. Not for ideological reasons: a UK-level Lab-SNP pact directly threatens their jobs by putting their whole reason for existing into question (both parties are broadly left wing/social democratic, and if the SNP can cooperate with Labour at UK-national level, then what use is Scottish Labour anyway?).

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Aye.

I'd go further. The SNP are a pure existential threat to the Labour Party in Scotland. I think they fear that other than a difference over the Constitution there's no difference between them. There's a risk that Labour just stop having a point.

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skington

“What use is Scottish Labour anyway?” is pretty much the story of Scottish politics for the last 10 years or so.

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At some point there’s going to have to be a coalition of someone. The two party system isn’t going to get anyone a sufficient majority. But that point might not be as close as the council elections suggest.

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skington

As I understand it, the customs union doesn't get rid of all of the Irish border problems, though. To make the Good Friday / Belfast Agreement properly safe, you need the Single Market as well. Nobody's been talking about this much because even the / a Customs Union is a long stretch at the moment.

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Yes, actually, now that you say it I do see that. You can’t in principle have free movement and then an open border on NI and a hard border on GB. Why isn’t this talked about more? (I suspect it’s more easily bodged than the CU because of standards, but could be quite wrong; this is the first time I’ve thought about this.)

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Do you need free movement of people between Eire and NI or just the right of Republic and NI citizens to move without restrictions between the two areas?

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You need a border if you’re to have control over either?

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Yup. Otherwise how do you check who is allowed and who isn't?

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So I wasn’t sure whether Dan’s comment was a meaningful difference in this context? But might well be overlooking something.

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I can't see it myself.

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Does that "without restrictions" include "without someone stopping you at a border to check if you're an Irish citizen"?

Because if not you've just reignited the troubles.

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I think the distinction is something like this.

Option 1) You have something like a Schengen area where there are no border controls.

Option 2) You have a free movement area where people are allowed to move from state A to State B in order to 1) work, 2) look for work 3) purchase goods 4) offer goods for sale 5) consume services 6) provide services and they can do so for a day or a year or a forever. You more or less have the same rights as anyone else up to and including voting in local elections. There can be border checks, mostly these are aimed at filtering out citizens of state C.

Option 3) You have unrestricted rights of residence - a person can move from state A to state B and set up there but they might not have the same rights as a citizen of state B, for example voting rights or the access to health care or tertiary education on the same terms as citizens of state B.

I think it is possible to run a system with no border checks and still have a regime in place closer to Option C. We don't check your passport at the border between state A and state B but if you turn up at hospital you'd better have your State B ID card or a credit card. If you apply for a job we'll want to see your passport and that's how we weed out any state C interlopers. How well this works in practice is debatable. If you prevent 99% of illegal job applicants from state C by doing a passport check at the time of hiring and 99.5% with a full border check - do you care about the 0.5% enough to have an actively checked border.

So that's the hypothetical I'm thinking of.

I don't know what the Good Friday Agreement stipulates. Does it require the free movement of Irish and British citizens on the island of Ireland or does it just grant a right to take up residency in the Republic or in Northern Ireland if you are already a resident in the jurisdiction? It's complicated by the fact that many people in the Republic and in Northern Ireland have (or are entitled to ) dual nationality.

But fundamentally what I'm wondering about is whether you could, in terms of the Good Friday Agreement, have border checks between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland which are just there to check that you are either Irish or British (no need for a visa) or a citizen of country C (needs a visa)?

(The question of whether such a situation would, in practice, be acceptable to Irish Republican para-militaries is a separate question to the legal one.)

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First two paragraphs here tell you this is completely out of the question :
https://fullfact.org/europe/avoiding-hard-border-ireland/

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In practice or in accordance with treaty obligations?

Because the Common Travel Area bumpf at that link seems to suggest that passport control is permissible.

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"Both the UK and the EU agreed in the first year of discussions that they would commit to avoiding a hard border"

"A ‘hard border’ is the term used to describe checks on people and goods―and the staff, buildings and equipment needed to do that―on the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland."

I mean, that seems really simple and straightforward to me.

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Agreed to make a treaty is not the same thing as signing a treaty. Signing a treaty is not the same thing as enacting legislation.

This is particularly true when a) the UK Parliament has voted against the first stage of signing that treaty and b) it is a matter of some controversy who has the power to make treaties, the British government or Parliament.

So, I'm still no further forward. The question isn't what the UK and the EU might or might not have agreed to agree to in the future. The question is what do the existing treaties, and their resulting domestic legislation, between the Republic and the UK say about the rights of movement, residency, citizenship and so on.

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I disagree entirely.

The question is how do you stop The Troubles kicking off again.

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I expect the Troubles re-starting can be prevented the way they were stopped in the first place, with a massive intelligence penetration of the Nothern Irish para-military organisations followed up by the SAS having a quiet word with the senior leadership of those organisations, in person.

The Good Friday Agreement is what happens when the British and Irish no longer want to pay for the security operation to keep para-military activity below a very low level (but not drug trafficking or fuel smuggling).

It might be the case that stopping there being a single market (including the free movement of people) that includes both the Republic of Ireland and Nothern Ireland so irritates the people of Northern Ireland that sufficient of them are motivated to re-start a campaign of violence but perhaps not.

Breaking the treaty obligations of the Good Friday Agreement in an act of bad faith might motivate a resumption of the violent campaign.

I've yet to see it clearly established that the actual bi-lateral treaty obligations between the UK and the Republic of Ireland require, as a point of law, both areas to be in the Single Market and therefore subject to the Free Movement of People under the Citizens’ Rights Directive 2004/38/EC.

I completely agree that both the Republic and NI being in the Single Market makes it very easy to operate the Common Travel Area and the other bi-lateral obligations under the GFA. I completely agree that people in NI and those in Eire who are physically or commercially near the Eire / NI border will be mightily inconvenienced if Eire and NI aren't in the Single Market and will be aggrieved. I completely agree that people generally assume that the GFA guarantees the Free Movement of People including Schengen-like non-controls between Eire and NI rather than that people in the island of Ireland can move around without asking for permission first and can take out citizenship of either or both the Republic of Ireland and the UK but I haven't see that writen down anywhere.

Maybe the perception of the border is enough to motivate a return to violence. I'd be loath to find out whether it is or not. That's a bloodly stupid idea. The whole thing is a bloody stupid idea. Brexit and the Troubles both. But I'm not sure that claiming that the UK broke its GFA treaty obligations is a persuasive battle-cry if we actually didn't.

And so, what I'm interested in is what happens if there is a No Deal Brexit, what actual obligations do the UK and the Republic have to each other and to their citizens? What survives us not being in the same Single Market with each other? Do we have a way of managing those rights which doesn't massively mess with the lives of people along the border?

And it seems to me that the question of non-compliant goods is much harder to manage without a border than the question of people who will need to provide some documentation before they can get a job, buy a house, go to the doctor and so on. Certainly from our end, harder to manage at the EU end but that is one reason why Ireland is not in the Schengen area.

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