'London should become a city state after hard Brexit'

Written by David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham in north London and first published at the Evening Standard

Last week Nicola Sturgeon stole the headlines by firing the starting gun on another Scottish independence  referendum, but it is London that stands to lose the most from Brexit. To borrow the Prime Minister’s favourite phrase, now is not the time for London to foot the bill for this hardest of all hard Brexits.

Sturgeon complained that the Government has ignored the wishes and interests of Scotland, leaving her with no choice but to push for independence. London’s economy is double the size of Scotland’s and there are almost twice as many people living in London as in Scotland, so why have the capital’s interests been totally sidelined and why isn’t London’s voice being heard?

Throughout history there have been great cities that are essentially also states in their own right — Rome, Athens, Singapore and Hong Kong. London — given its predominance in our economic, social and cultural national life — certainly fits the bill too.

What all great cities have in common is an ability to change with the times. If London is to retain its position as the pre-eminent global city we must recognise that this is not a Brexit that will work for the capital — this is a Brexit for the Europhobe hardliners on the Tory backbenches.

This Brexit at any cost, regardless of the consequences, will be absolutely catastrophic for London and our place in the world. But as things go pear-shaped, there is a way out of this and nothing should be off the table when it comes to protecting the strength and future prosperity of our capital.

Whitehall has begun the devolution of control over adult skills, criminal justice services and employment support to City Hall, but Brexit changes everything, so it is perfectly rational to consider more radical proposals than piecemeal devolution.

Let’s not forget that 60 per cent of Londoners voted to Remain. The referendum result sent a shock wave through the capital, but as the dust begins to settle, London finds itself increasingly constrained by — and at odds with — the policies and priorities of our central Government.

If Scotland can have another referendum on independence, then why can’t we have a well-overdue debate about London becoming more autonomous and independent from the rest of the country? If Brexit was a victory of smalltown conservatism, resurgent nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment, then London’s status as the financial and cultural capital of Europe depends on resisting these shifts.

Earlier this year the London Finance Commission proposed a comprehensive London devolution package in light of Brexit, including additional control over the tax paid by Londoners and London businesses to bring us into line with our global competitors. New York keeps around 50 per cent of the taxes raised in the city and Tokyo keeps almost three quarters, so a comprehensive settlement to enable London to keep more of the taxes generated here would give the capital the tools we need to mitigate the impact of Brexit and stay ahead in the global race.

Take the issue of immigration. Huge swathes of our nation — including the ministers calling the shots around the Cabinet — view freedom of movement as a problem so severe that we must leave the single market in a desperate bid to reduce net immigration to the “tens of thousands”, regardless of how much it hurts our economy. But London would grind to a halt without European migrants coming to the capital to work, and separate visa arrangement will be essential to enable London to maintain access to the talent it needs to grow.

Fast forward a couple of years and London’s status as the world’s pre-eminent global city will be under threat. Our position as the financial services capital of Europe is at risk and could disappear overnight if there is a flight of capital and talent to cities on the Continent.

Over the course of the next two years as the reality of Brexit begins to bite, the economic, social and political cleavages between London and other parts of the country will become more pronounced. London’s status as a de facto city-state will become clearer and the arguments for a London city-state to forge a more independent path will become stronger.

London already accounts for just under a third of all UK tax revenue — up a quarter in real terms since 2005 — so it beggars belief that the interests of the capital have been completely overlooked when planning for Brexit. The Treasury is increasingly reliant on London to subsidise expenditure and investment in other regions so embarking on a course that will hurt London economically is bad for the whole country, not just the capital.

The Office for Budget Responsibility estimated the cost of Brexit at around £60 billion in additional borrowing over the next five years, and it is London that will foot the bill. We cannot afford a lost decade. We are already seeing London schools hit by huge cuts as money is shifted from the capital to the shires. Local authorities in the capital are already on their knees after seven years of swingeing austerity.

This is the last thing we need when urgent attention and huge investment is crucial to address the capital’s housing crisis and a deepening chasm between top earners and workless poor in many London boroughs. We can’t go back to the Seventies: needles strewn across our public parks; our schools falling apart; the National Front marching on our streets; political paralysis, civil unrest and economic turbulence.

What has become clear since June is that the Government will not fight London’s corner in the Brexit negotiations. The case for a London city-state has never been stronger. As Sturgeon told the SNP conference: we are not powerless, we can still decide which path we take. If you identify with London’s values, it’s time to fight for them.

How Progressive Cities Can Reshape the World — And Democracy

Ada Colau

Written by Oscar Reyes, Bertie Russell and first published at Common Dreams

“We’re living in extraordinary times that demand brave and creative solutions. If we’re able to imagine a different city, we’ll have the power to transform it.” – Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona.

On 24 May 2015, the citizen platform Barcelona en Comú was elected as the minority government of the city of Barcelona. Along with a number of other cities across Spain, this election was the result of a wave of progressive municipal politics across the country, offering an alternative to neoliberalism and corruption.

With Ada Colau — a housing rights activist — catapulted into the position of mayor, and with a wave of citizens with no previous experience of formal politics finding themselves in charge of their city, BComú is an experiment in progressive change that we can’t afford to ignore.

After 20 months in charge of the city, we try to draw some of the main lessons that can help inspire and inform a radical new municipal politics that moves us beyond borders and nations — and towards a post-capitalist world based on dignity, respect, and justice.

1. The best way to oppose nationalist anti-immigrant sentiment is to confront the real reasons life is shit.

There is no question that life is getting harder, more precarious, more stressful, and less certain for the majority of people.

In the U.S. and across Europe, racist reactionaries and nationalist politicians are blaming this on two things — immigrants, and “outside forces” that challenge national sovereignty. While Trump and Brexit are the most obvious cases, we can see the same phenomenon across Europe, in the rise of far-right parties like Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and the Front National in France.

In Barcelona, there is a relative absence of public discourse that blames the social crisis on immigrants, and most attempts to do so have fallen flat. On the contrary, on February 18 of this year, over 160,000 people flooded the streets of Barcelona to demand that Spain take in more refugees.

While this demonstration was also caught up with complexities of Catalan nationalism and controversy over police repression of migrant street vendors, it highlighted the support for a politics that cares for migrants and refugees.

The main reason for this is simple: There is a widespread and successful politics that provides real explanations of why people are suffering, and that fights for real solutions.

The reason you can’t afford your rent is because of predatory tourism, unscrupulous landlords, a lack of social housing, and property being purchased as overseas investments. The reason social services are being cut is because the central government transferred huge amounts of public funds into the private banks, propping up a financial elite, and because of a political system riddled with corruption.

While Barcelona played a leading role in initiating a network of “cities of refuge,” simply condemning anti-immigrant nationalism isn’t enough. In a climate where popular municipal movements are providing a strong narrative as to what they see as the problem — and identifying what they’re going to do about it — it’s incredibly difficult for racist and nationalist narratives based on lies and hatred to take root.

2. Politics doesn’t have to be the preserve of rich old white men.

Ada Colau is the first female mayor of Barcelona. She is a co-founder of BComú, and was formerly the spokesperson of the Mortgage Victims Platform, a grassroots campaign challenging evictions and Spain’s unjust property laws. Colau leads a group of 11 district council members, seven of whom are women, whose average age is 40.

BComú’s vision of a “feminized politics” represents a significant break with the existing political order. “You can be in politics without being a strong, arrogant male, who’s ultra-confident, who knows the answer to everything,” Colau explains. Instead, she offers a political style that openly expresses doubts and contradictions. This is backed by a values-based politics that emphasizes the role of community and the common good — as well as policies designed to build on that vision.

The Barcelona City Council’s new Department of Life Cycles, Feminisms, and LGBTI is the institutional expression of these values. It has significantly increased the budget for campaigns against sexist violence, as well as leading a council working group that looks to identify and tackle the feminization of poverty.

The changing face of the city council is reinforced by BComú’s strict ethics policy, Governing by Obeying, which includes a €2,200 monthly limit on payments to its elected officials. Colau takes home less than a quarter of the amount claimed by her predecessor Xavier Trias. By February 2017, €216,000 in unclaimed salaries had been paid into a new fund that will support social projects in the city.

3. A politics that works begins by listening.

BComú started life with an extensive process of listening, responding to ordinary peoples’ concerns, and crowd-sourcing ideas — as summarized in its guide to building a citizen municipal platform.
Drawing on proposals gathered at meetings in public squares across the city, BComú created a program reflecting immediate issues in local neighborhoods, city-wide problems, and broader discontent with the political system. Local meetings were complemented by technical and policy committees, and an extensive process of online consultation.

This process resulted in a political platform that stressed the need to tackle the “social emergency” — problems such as home evictions on a huge scale, or the effect of uncontrolled mass tourism. These priorities came from listening to citizens across the city rather than an echo chamber of business and political elites. BComú’s election results reflected this broader appeal: It won its highest share of the vote in Barcelona’s poorest neighborhoods, in part through increasing turnout in those areas.

On entering government, BComú then began to implement an Emergency Plan that included measures to halt evictions, hand out fines to banks leaving multiple properties empty, and subsidize energy and transport costs for the unemployed and those earning under the minimum wage.

4. A politics that works never stops listening.

Politics doesn’t happen every four years — it is the everyday process of shaping the conditions in which we live our lives. This means that one of the central tasks of a politics that works is to forge a new relationship between citizens and the institutions that we use to govern our societies.

For BComú, the everyday basis of politics means citizens and civil society organizations directly shaping the strategic plan of their city. It means not just consultation, but active empowerment in helping move citizens from being “recipients” of a politics that is done to them, to active political agents that shape the everyday life of their city.

In the first months of occupying the institutions, BComú introduced an open-source platform, Decidim Barcelona, for citizens to co-create the municipal action plan for the city. Over 10,000 proposals were registered by the site’s 25,000 registered users. While that’s a small share of the city’s population, the online process was complemented by over 400 in-person meetings.

The Decidim platform is now being adapted to run participatory budgetary pilot-schemes in two districts, as well as being used in the ongoing development of new infrastructure, pedestrian-friendly spaces, and transport schemes. Meanwhile, the municipal Department of Participation is undertaking a systematic rethinking of the meaning of participation, looking to move away from meaningless “consultations” and towards methods for active empowerment.

This is an imperfect process, and BComú have gotten things wrong at times — such as the failure to properly engage when introducing a SuperBlock in the Poblenou district — but the principle is simple. To govern well, you must create new processes for obeying citizens’ demands.

At the same time, the structures that built BComú remain in place, with 15 neighborhood groups and 15 thematic working groups providing an ongoing link between activists and institutions. No structure is perfect, and it remains unclear if these working groups can help BComú avoid institutionalization and remain connected to social movements, but the hope is that this model provides a basis for remaining in touch with grassroots concerns.

5. Politics doesn’t begin with the party.

BComú isn’t a local arm of a bigger political party, nor does it exist merely as a branch of a broader strategy to control the central political institutions of the nation-state. Rather, BComú is one in a series of independent citizen platforms that have looked to occupy municipal institutions in an effort to bring about progressive social change.

From A Coruña to Valencia, Madrid and Zaragoza, these municipal movements are the direct efforts of citizens rejecting the old mode of doing politics, and starting to effect change where they live. Instead of a national party structure, they coordinate through a network of rebel cities across Spain. Most immediately, this means coordinating press releases and actively learning from how one another engage with urban problems.

That doesn’t mean that BComú can reject political parties entirely. While the initiative arose from social movements, it ended up incorporating several existing political parties in its platform. These include Podemos — another child of Spain’s Occupy-style indignados movement — and the Catalan Greens-United Left party, which had consistently been a junior coalition partner in city councils headed by the center-left Socialist Party of Catalonia from 1979 until 2011.

These parties continue alongside BComú, with their own completely separate organizational and funding structures. But entering BComú has forced existing parties to significantly change how they operate. Coalition negotiations encouraged the selection of new council members (only two of the elected candidates have previously held office), and they are subject to a tough ethics code that considerably increases their accountability.

The fluid relationship between the new coalitions and political parties allows for multiple levels of coordination, without having to pass through a rigid central leadership. It may also be replicated in regional government, where the recently formed Un Pais En Comú seeks to replicate the city government coalition across Catalonia.

On a terrain that contains a different set of politics — not least a strong national-separatist sentiment — it remains to be seen whether this latest initiative will be successful.

6. Power is the capacity to act.

BComú doesn’t subscribe to traditional notions of power, whereby if you hold public office, you somehow “have” power. On the contrary, power is the capacity to bring about change, and the “occupation of the institutions” is only one part of what makes change possible.

BComú emerged after almost a decade of major street-protests, anti-eviction campaigns, squatting movements, anti-corruption campaigns, and youth movements — the most visible form being the indignados protests that began in 2011. After years of being at a high level of mobilization, many within these movements made a strategic wager: We’ve learned how to occupy the squares, but what happens if we try to occupy the institutions?

Frustrated by the limits of what could be achieved by being mobilized only outside of institutions, the decision to form BComú was to try to occupy the institutions as part of the same movement that occupied the squares. In practice, this isn’t so simple.

Politics is a messy game, full of compromises forced by working in a world of contradictions.

In the most practical sense, BComú may be leading the council, but it holds only 11 of the 41 available seats. Six other political parties are also represented on the council, mostly seeking to block, slow down, or weaken its initiatives. Frustrated by these moves — and overwhelmed by the demands of the institutions — BComú formed a governing coalition with the PSC, a move supported by around two-thirds of its registered supporters.

But it remains a minority government, and two left parties that refused a similar pact responded by stepping up their block on almost all legislative initiatives. The resulting political crisis delayed the passing of the city’s 2017 budget, which was eventually forced through on a confidence motion when BComú challenged the opposition to unite around another plan — which it failed to do.

While this experience has shown the resilience of BComú in the confrontational confines of the council chamber, the key lesson here is that occupying the institutions isn’t enough. An electoral strategy is not sufficient alone to create change.

The power to act comes from a combination of occupying both the institutions and the squares, of social movements organizing and exercising leverage, providing social force that can be coupled with the potential of the occupied institutions. The power to change comes when these work in tandem.

It’s been a bumpy ride, but BComú has been able to justify its budget on the grounds that it prioritizes social measures (such as building new nurseries, combatting energy poverty, and focusing resources on the poorest neighborhoods) with reference to the extensive and ongoing process of participation that it has encouraged.

One of the biggest dangers in looking to build radical municipalist movements in other cities is to mistake electoral victory with real victory — to sit back and think that now we’ve got “our guys” in the institutions, so we can sit back and let change occur.

7. Transnational politics begins in your city.

In a time where reactionary political movements are building walls and retreating to national boundaries, BComú is illustrating that a new transnational political movement begins in our cities.

To this end, BComú has established an international committee tasked with promoting and sharing its experiences abroad, while learning from other rebel cities such as Naples and Messina. Barcelona has been active in international forums, promoting the “right to the city” at the recent UN Habitat III conference, and taking a leadership role in the Global Network of Cities, Local, and Regional Governments.

These moves look to bypass the national scale where possible, prefiguring post-national networks of urban solidarity and cooperation. Recent visits of the first deputy mayor to the Colombian cities of Medellin and Bogotá also suggest that links are being made on a supranational scale.

One of the most tangible outcomes of this level of supranational urban organizing was the strong role played by cities in the rejection of the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership, or TTIP — a massive proposed trade pact between the U.S. and Europe. As hosts of a meeting entitled “Local Authorities and the New Generation of Free Trade Agreements” in April 2016, BComú led on the agreement of the Barcelona Declaration, with more than 40 cities committing to the rejection of TTIP. As of the time of writing, TTIP now looks dead in the water.

At this early stage, it remains unclear how this supranational network of radical municipalism may develop. Perhaps the most important step for BComú is to share their experience and support those in other cities that are looking to reclaim politics, helping to build citizens platforms across Europe and beyond.

But the idea of a post-national network of citizens also allows us to dare to dream — of shared resources, shared politics, and shared infrastructure — where it’s not where you were born but where you live that determines your right to live.

8. Essential services can be run in our common interest.

The clue to BComú’s strategy for essential services is hidden in its name: The plan is to run them in common.

At the end of 2016, and faced with a crisis in the funeral sector in which only two companies controlled the sector and charged prices almost twice the national average, the Barcelona council intervened to establish a municipal funeral company that is forecasted to reduce costs by 30 percent.

Around the same time, the council voted in favor of the re-municipalization of water, paving the way for water to be taken out of the private sector at some point this year.

In February 2017, Barcelona amended the terms and conditions for electricity supply, preventing energy firms from cutting off supply to vulnerable people. The two major energy firms — Endesa and Gas Natural — protested this by not bidding for the €65-million municipal energy contracts, hoping this would force the council to overturn the policy.

Instead, a raft of small and medium size energy companies were happy to comply with the new directive to tackle energy poverty, and stand to be awarded the contracts if a court challenge from the large firms proves unsuccessful. BComú is also actively planning to introduce a municipal energy company within the next two years.

However, it’s important to recognize the major difference between the public and the common. As Michael Hardt argues, our choices are not limited to businesses controlled privately (private property) or by the state (public property). The third option is to hold things in common — where resources and services are controlled, produced, and distributed democratically and equitably according to peoples need.

A simple example of what this could look like was the proposal — which narrowly failed only due to voter turnout — for Berlin to establish an energy company that would put citizens on the board of the company.

This difference underpins the Barcelona experience. This isn’t a traditional socialist government that thinks it can run things better on behalf of the people. This is a movement that believes the people can run things better on their own behalf, combining citizen wisdom with expert knowledge to solve the everyday problems that people face.

Scotland Indyref2 – Tell May where to Stick her Hard Brexit

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, fired the starting pistol on a second Scottish independence referendum today, by announcing her intention to hold a vote in the Scottish Parliament on the matter, probably next week.

Although the Scottish National Party (SNP) does not hold an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Green Party announced today that they will support the SNP, and their six MSPs are enough for an overall majority, even if all, as seems likely, the other parties vote against.

Scotland will need authorisation by the full UK Parliament, which may prove more problematical, although the Prime Minister, Theresa May, fell short of over ruling the referendum at Westminster today. What she did say was that there is no demand in Scotland for it, which is open to question, the SNP was playing politics and that it will be ‘divisive.’

What a cheek May has. She has been playing politics all along with the Brexit issue, fighting tooth and nail to stop MPs have a say on the outcome of negotiations with the European Union (EU), and using her hard Brexit stance as way to consolidate her power within the Tory Party. Her predecessor, David Cameron, only held the referendum in the first place to manage the Tory Party Euro-sceptics. And as for divisive, well her hard Brexit stance has further torn apart the country, when what was required was a healer of the wound, a one nation approach, if you like.

No, May has made Indyref2 inevitable with her hard Brexit approach to the issue, and now the chickens are truly coming home roost. May could have aimed for a softer version of Brexit, perhaps retaining membership of the European Free Trade Association (Efta) and through that joined the European Economic Area (EEA) with Norway and others. She could have conceded some ground to Sturgeon on Scotland staying in the single market, but she has refused point blank to concede anything to the Scots.

If the referendum goes ahead, it will be tough for the SNP to win a yes to independence vote, but the opinion polls have been moving in that direction in last couple of weeks, since it has become clear what the UK government strategy is going to be. Demand everything from the EU, and when they don’t let you have it, howl about foreigners aided and abetted by the right wing media, and crash out of the organisation with no deal at all.     

This may be the start of the unravelling of the UK, with much unhappiness in Northern Ireland about the UK government’s handling of Brexit. Northern Ireland as well as Scotland voted to remain in the UK, and if one good thing comes out of all of this, Brexit might lead to the overdue uniting of the island of Ireland.

Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood has also called for an independence referendum in Wales, despite a majority of the Welsh voting for Brexit.

And then there is London, which voted almost as strongly as Scotland to remain in the EU. I’ve written before on the desirability of London independence from the UK, but unfortunately we in London are saddled with a Labour Party mayor, Sadiq Khan, who refuses to countenance the idea. He gave his rather feeble response reported on Labour List today to the latest developments on Brexit. But pressure may now increase on Khan, with Scotland making its intentions clear today. In 2014, at the time of the first Scottish indyref campaign, I saw a poll of Londoners which showed 20% support for London independence, and this time it could well be higher. It seems when the Scots consider independence and it is in the national news, Londoners think along the lines of ‘if they can have it, why not London, with a bigger population and economy than Scotland?’

Who can blame the Scots for wanting to ‘take control' of their destiny, rather than be lashed to the mast of a Tory government in England, hell bent on a potentially disastrous Brexit? Having to live in a shit country, where racism and bigotry is on the rise, when they can rule themselves, in the way they want to be ruled.

Solidarity with Scotland from the people of London.  

   

Lords Vote for Parliament to have a Say on Brexit Deal has made a Snap General Election More Likely

The House of Lords tonight voted by a majority of 98 for Parliament to have a final veto over whatever deal the government agrees with the EU, for the country’s post Brexit relationship with Europe.

MPs in the House of Commons will now vote on this amendment, and the one the Lords passed last week to unilaterally allow resident EU citizens the right to stay in the UK. Tonight’s vote in the Lords causes potentially more problems for the government, in that it strikes at the heart of the government’s Brexit strategy.

This strategy, if we can call it that, is to demand everything from the EU and if we don’t get it, to make no deal at tall. If this amendment is passed by the House of Commons, MPs will effectively be able to send the government back to the negotiating table, to try and get something better.

Of course, whether the House of Commons will vote for the amendment is another matter, as it will require perhaps 20 or 30 of the pro-EU Tory MPs to vote for it. It could be that the government makes some kind of compromise offer, if they fear losing the vote, but this government has shown no signs on compromising over its Brexit stance.

If the vote is passed in the House of Commons, I suspect the government will be amenable to calling a snap general election. If the Tories won the election, which looks highly likely at this stage, it would give it an extra authority over Parliament in terms of a mandate for its Brexit position. Risky maybe, but it would give the government the opportunity to get its way, if it won.

The 2011 Fixed Parliament Act, would have to be got around, but the potential rewards of a snap election for the government are huge. The 2011 Act allows for two ways an election can be called, other than the 5 year fixed term.

The first is for a vote for an election by two thirds of MPs in Parliament, so opposition parties, particularly Labour, would largely need to vote for it. The other way is that a no confidence vote is passed against the government, and after 14 days, another government that did command the confidence of a majority of MPs, could not be formed.

The first option is probably easier, although Labour may block it, despite what its leader Jeremy Corbyn has said about wanting an early election, not all Labour MPs may want this. There are two other possibilities, the 2011 Act could be repealed by a majority in the House of Commons, or it could be bypassed as an exception to the Act, as a one off. Again a simple majority of MPs is required for this.

The former Tory leader Lord Hague has thrown his weight behind the government calling an early election, by one of the means available, as he thinks the government would win easily and so increase its authority over Parliament on Brexit.

The Prime Minister, Theresa May, has said all along that she is not in favour of an early election, as there is no need for it, and no desire from the public for it, but if her Brexit plan is knocked sideways by the Lords vote tonight, and if enough Tory MP rebels can be found to support the Lords, she may have little choice.

It would be a major humiliation for May, if her whole strategy was rejected in this way, and it would leave her vulnerable at the next scheduled general election in 2020, if she made it as far as still being Prime Minister in 2020, which is doubtful. The Tories are ruthless at ditching leaders, and she would be a sitting duck.

It is time her enemies in the Tory put down a marker, Nicky Morgan, George Osborne et al, that they start the process of getting revenge on May for the way she treated them when she became Prime Minister. Will they do it? The odds are still against, but maybe, just maybe.

Lords Urge MPs to get some Backbone with Amendment to Allow EU Nationals to Stay in the UK after Brexit

Yesterday the House of Lords voted by 358 to 256 in favour of amending the Brexit bill, to give EU nationals living in the UK the right to stay in this country. The amended Bill we now be passed back to House of Commons to vote on.

MPs rejected a similar amendment last week, but the tide may have turned on this issue. It is now said that around 30 Tory MPs are considering voting for the amendment, which could swing the vote in favour of the amendment.

Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP and co leader of the party tweeted:

'Great to see Lords defeat govt over rights of EU citizens. Govt must now concede - will fight for that in Commons.'

Government Whips will be out in force to try and ensure rebel Tory MPs toe the line and reject the amendment, and they may be successful. The government has promised that this will be the first issue to be resolved when negotiations begin, and hopes a reciprocal arrangement for UK nationals living in the EU, can be concluded early on in talks.

They also implied that the EU are holding things up, by not allowing pre-Article 50 talks, but this rings hollow, and is probably an indicator of how things will be spun, particularly in the right wing media. Expect furious stories in the Mail, Express etc on how unreasonable the EU is being by not letting us have everything we want out of a Brexit deal. It will not be pretty.  

There are around 1.2 million UK nationals living in the EU and around 3 million EU nationals living in the UK. The government has refused to guarantee EU nationals the right to remain here, saying that this will be part of the negotiations on the UK leaving the EU. It does rather look like these people are being used as bargaining chips in the negotiations, which the government denies, but what other conclusion can be drawn?

Nicolas Hatton, the chairman of the 3 million campaign group which has been lobbying for the rights of EU citizens said that while he had some concerns about the amendment it was a relief that for the first time since the referendum, a majority was secured in parliament to support the rights of the 3 million EU citizens “who came in good faith to live and work the UK”.

I think the government is wrong on many levels in taking its approach:

First of all, we need to reassure people living in the UK about their future here. It is not fair to people, who need to make life decisions. It must be a worry for EU nationals in the UK. As even a Brexiteer like Michael Gove said just after the referendum result, ‘it is a matter of plain decency,’ to allow these people to continue to live and work in the UK (if they wish).

The vast majority of the EU nationals living in the UK are young, whereas the largest grouping of UK nationals living in the EU, are pensioners, living in Spain, roughly about half of the EU total. Younger people are productive in the UK economy, whereas our ex-pats in Spain are not, to a large extent, anyway. 

If these older people come back to the UK they will need more health and social care, a sector of the economy which at present has large numbers of EU nationals doing the work.

The idea of expelling 3 million productive workers is a recipe for a collapse in the UK economy. EU nationals work across all sectors of the economy, and of course pay tax here. It would be madness.

For this to be the opening salvo of negotiations, it will likely harden attitudes in the EU, when we want relations to be as amicable as is possible. To state unilaterally, that the UK will allow all those EU nationals already residing here, to remain, would be a gesture of goodwill.  

And, because it is just plain right to allow people to stay. Natural justice demands that people who came in good faith to this country should not be penalised.

Stoke and Copeland By-election Results Show the Folly of Labour’s Hard Brexit Stance

Let us start with the constituency of Stoke in yesterday's by-elections, which at least the Labour Party managed to retain on Thursday. On a low turn-out of just 38%, Labour won with a 37.1% share of the vote, which is a fall of 2.2% of the vote share from the last general election in 2015. I suspect that most of the fall in support went to the Lib Dems who increased their vote share by 5.7%.

Labour were fortunate, that in a constituency that voted strongly to leave the EU at last year’s referendum, and where UKIP had finished second in 2015, the UKIP candidate and new leader, Eddie Hitler loolalike, Paul Nuttall, ran an abysmal campaign. Caught out telling lies about losing close friends at the Hillsborough football disaster, that he lived in the constituency, has a PHD and was a professional footballer, and making several policy gaffes, like wanting to privatise the NHS, he threw Labour a lifeline. Even then, Nuttall did manage to increase his party’s vote share by 2.1%, but it was not enough.

If UKIP can’t win a seat like Stoke, with their leader standing, then there is little hope for them anywhere else. Labour apparently, did manage an effective ground operation, with hundreds of party members doing the hard slog of door knocking in poor weather, but against a more credible opponent, they would probably have lost. The Tories also increased their vote share by 1.9% on 2015.

Which brings us to the other by-election on Thursday, Copeland in Cumbria, which the Tories won from Labour with a 6.7% swing from Labour to Tory. A seat held by Labour for 80 years and the first by-election loss by the main opposition party to the governing party since 1982, when the SDP split the left vote and the Tories won from Labour, with a 10.2% swing, in Mitcham and Morden in south London. The Tories went onto win a landslide victory in the 1983 general election.

So this was a historic loss by Labour and must be deeply worrying to the party. A national swing of 6.7% from Labour to Tory would see the Tories gain 52 seats from Labour, reducing the party to around 170 seats and a Tory overall majority of 114. And remember the constituency boundaries will likely change before the next general election, which favours the Tories by around 25 additional seats.

The increase in the Tories share of the vote at 8.5% is almost exactly the same as the 9% fall in the UKIP vote since 2015, and this will be the most troubling aspect for Labour, because it looks as though the Tories have stolen the UKIP vote, which is hardly surprising given the hard Brexit stance of the government. The Lib Dems also increased their vote share by 3.8%, which makes matters even worse for Labour, as they look to be in a pincer movement, with the Lib Dems picking up voters who wanted to remain in the EU and those wanting to leave, moving to the Tories.

Corbyn supporters have been quick to blame the two MPs who stood down and Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson for comments they made in the week leading up the election, but this is a weak excuse. Nobody really listens to Blair or Mandelson these days, they were not a factor in these results.

Corbyn’s critics have laid the blame at Corbyn’s doorstep, but are reluctant to launch another leadership challenge, after Corbyn’s easy win last year. They are putting pressure on Corbyn to stand down for the good of the party, but they tried this last year too. Corbyn strikes me as a stubborn individual and he is unlikely, now at least, to resign the leadership.

But the plates are shifting, Dave Prentis, leader of the second biggest trade union in the UK, UNISON, released a statement which implied that Corbyn was partly to blame for the Copeland defeat.   

The main difference though to last year is that Corbyn’s support amongst newer members appears to be falling. These members are overwhelmingly pro-EU and have been saddened by Corbyn insisting Labour MPs vote to trigger the Article 50 process which will formally see us leave the EU.

As we saw in these by-elections, Labour’s Article 50 debacle isn’t even popular with voters who want to leave the EU, or Labour would have held Copeland and done better in Stoke. History may conclude that the Article 50 vote in Parliament, was the beginning of the end for Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.

I think Corbyn is now beatable in a leadership challenge, and if he doesn’t stand down, I think one will come before the next general election in 2020, probably in 2018. If the opinion polls don’t improve, and worse if more seats are lost to the Tories (and Lib Dems), there will surely be an attempt to oust Corbyn.

And what of the Greens? Well, we did poorly in Thursday’s by-elections, but these areas are not fertile ground for the Greens. In the south of England we should concentrate on challenging the Lib Dems for the 48% of voters who voted to remain in the EU. There must be people who will not vote for the Lib Dems because of their part in propping up the Tories, and the Greens are just as pro EU as the Lib Dems.

We should look to widen the crack in Labour’s support from remainers, it could well be very fruitful come the general election.