Priti Vacant has a plan, a deal with migrants plan.

blueparrot said:
Doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t want. Freedom of movement and labour anywhere in Europe was a fact, and little different to freedom of movement and labour around the USA. There was no need to register or fill in paperwork so no reason for anyone to know.
Whether you I or anyone thinks that was good or bad or should have been continued is neither here nor there . It just was for many years, so there was no reason why anyone would know or be expected the numbers.
Click to expand...

This isn't quite right though. You are trying to blur the lines between freedom of movement and freedom of labour - you are even calling it 'freedom of movement and labour' & I don't know where you are getting that from. Also, it is not right to equate the pre-Brexit EU with the USA and you seem to be ignoring the passport issue altogether.

Even within existing EU rules the UK had powers to limit immigration:

The Freedom of Movement directive allowed for the "old" countries to restrict the rights of migrants from "new" countries for up to 7 years. For some reason Tony Blair chose not to. When I say for some reason, I know the reason: he thought nearly all the people who came would be Labour voters.

Next, EU citizens had to be self-supporting after 3 months in the UK. They needed to be either working, have a member of the family working or have sufficient funds to live (and have full sickness insurance). If not, then they could have been returned to their home country.

But the UK did not register migrants as they arrived and as such had no way of knowing how long they have been in the UK. There were no efforts to track or control this movement. This is not a new thing & it can't be blamed on just the Conservatives or just Labour, it is a cross-party fuck-up going back many years.

So, you were not right when you said "... there was no need to register or fill in paperwork, so no reason for anyone to know.". There was every right, they just didn't do it.

In contrast Belgium requires all migrants to register at their Town Hall within 3 months of entering the country and if they are not self-supporting, they are sent home. If the UK had taken the same approach as Belgium and if Tony Blair hadn't done what he did..... I bet Brexit wouldn't have happened.

I also bet we wouldn't have had ten years of Tory rule (either a Tory-led coalition or a Tory majority). When people wonder why Labour are still polling badly & why they only just scraped the Batley & Spen by-election even after all the cock-ups of the last 18 months, I would give them two words: Tony Blair. He caused Brexit and he has caused years and years of the Tories being in power, because this ain't ending anytime soon, is it?
 
generobinson said:
This isn't quite right though. You are trying to blur the lines between freedom of movement and freedom of labour - you are even calling it 'freedom of movement and labour' & I don't know where you are getting that from. Also, it is not right to equate the pre-Brexit EU with the USA and you seem to be ignoring the passport issue altogether.

Even within existing EU rules the UK had powers to limit immigration:

The Freedom of Movement directive allowed for the "old" countries to restrict the rights of migrants from "new" countries for up to 7 years. For some reason Tony Blair chose not to. When I say for some reason, I know the reason: he thought nearly all the people who came would be Labour voters.

Next, EU citizens had to be self-supporting after 3 months in the UK. They needed to be either working, have a member of the family working or have sufficient funds to live (and have full sickness insurance). If not, then they could have been returned to their home country.

But the UK did not register migrants as they arrived and as such had no way of knowing how long they have been in the UK. There were no efforts to track or control this movement. This is not a new thing & it can't be blamed on just the Conservatives or just Labour, it is a cross-party fuck-up going back many years.

So, you were not right when you said "... there was no need to register or fill in paperwork, so no reason for anyone to know.". There was every right, they just didn't do it.

In contrast Belgium requires all migrants to register at their Town Hall within 3 months of entering the country and if they are not self-supporting, they are sent home. If the UK had taken the same approach as Belgium and if Tony Blair hadn't done what he did..... I bet Brexit wouldn't have happened.

I also bet we wouldn't have had ten years of Tory rule (either a Tory-led coalition or a Tory majority). When people wonder why Labour are still polling badly & why they only just scraped the Batley & Spen by-election even after all the cock-ups of the last 18 months, I would give them two words: Tony Blair. He caused Brexit and he has caused years and years of the Tories being in power, because this ain't ending anytime soon, is it?
Click to expand...

Upshot of all that is we have a labour shortage in the UK - imagine that eh? Another Brexit benefit for UK industry
 
generobinson said:
This isn't quite right though. You are trying to blur the lines between freedom of movement and freedom of labour - you are even calling it 'freedom of movement and labour' & I don't know where you are getting that from. Also, it is not right to equate the pre-Brexit EU with the USA and you seem to be ignoring the passport issue altogether.

Even within existing EU rules the UK had powers to limit immigration:

The Freedom of Movement directive allowed for the "old" countries to restrict the rights of migrants from "new" countries for up to 7 years. For some reason Tony Blair chose not to. When I say for some reason, I know the reason: he thought nearly all the people who came would be Labour voters.

Next, EU citizens had to be self-supporting after 3 months in the UK. They needed to be either working, have a member of the family working or have sufficient funds to live (and have full sickness insurance). If not, then they could have been returned to their home country.

But the UK did not register migrants as they arrived and as such had no way of knowing how long they have been in the UK. There were no efforts to track or control this movement. This is not a new thing & it can't be blamed on just the Conservatives or just Labour, it is a cross-party fuck-up going back many years.

So, you were not right when you said "... there was no need to register or fill in paperwork, so no reason for anyone to know.". There was every right, they just didn't do it.

In contrast Belgium requires all migrants to register at their Town Hall within 3 months of entering the country and if they are not self-supporting, they are sent home. If the UK had taken the same approach as Belgium and if Tony Blair hadn't done what he did..... I bet Brexit wouldn't have happened.

I also bet we wouldn't have had ten years of Tory rule (either a Tory-led coalition or a Tory majority). When people wonder why Labour are still polling badly & why they only just scraped the Batley & Spen by-election even after all the cock-ups of the last 18 months, I would give them two words: Tony Blair. He caused Brexit and he has caused years and years of the Tories being in power, because this ain't ending anytime soon, is it?
Click to expand...
Tony Blair , bloody hell. He gets blamed for some stuff, but Brexit and the current tory government, that’s some reach.
 
blueparrot said:
Tony Blair , bloody hell. He gets blamed for some stuff, but Brexit and the current tory government, that’s some reach.
Click to expand...

Right, point 1: the current Tory Government won a bigger than expected victory in the election of December 2019 using the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’, agreed? Loads of people had voted for it and were frustrated that it hadn’t happened and might never happen.

Point 2: the actual referendum itself came about by mistake, in my opinion: David Cameron promised the electorate an in-out EU vote in the run-up to the 2015 election, when he probably expected another coalition with the Lib/Dems. But then he won a narrow majority (oops) and he felt he had to stick to his promise, so he called the referendum and arrogantly expected to be on the winning side.

Point 3: why did most people who voted to Leave vote to Leave? Because they felt that immigration was too high and whilst in the EU we had no control over this. Furthermore, many people looked at the influx from the new EU member countries and felt that they had been lied to: 10,000 or 20,000 may come, the politicians said, but it was many, many more, than that. Who decided to open the doors from day one, when other countries didn’t? Anthony Blair.

So to make a link between Blair 17 years ago and Brexit 5 years ago and the current Tory government is not such a crazy thing. He wasn’t the only person to cause Brexit, of course, see point 2: David Cameron, but he had a key part to play in the origins of the whole thing.

When 2016 came around I would blame two key people above all others: Dominic Cummings who ran such a clever campaign, especially keeping toxic Farage out of the limelight most of the time and Jeremy Corbyn, who basically went AWOL and wasn't in the limelight enough.
 
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generobinson said:
Right, point 1: the current Tory Government won a bigger than expected victory in the election of December 2019 using the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’, agreed? Loads of people had voted for it and were frustrated that it hadn’t happened and might never happen.

Point 2: the actual referendum itself came about by mistake, in my opinion: David Cameron promised the electorate an in-out EU vote in the run-up to the 2015 election, when he probably expected another coalition with the Lib/Dems. But then he won a narrow majority (oops) and he felt he had to stick to his promise, so he called the referendum and arrogantly expected to be on the winning side.

Point 3: why did most people who voted to Leave vote to Leave? Because they felt that immigration was too high and whilst in the EU we had no control over this. Furthermore, many people looked at the influx from the new EU member countries and felt that they had been lied to: 10,000 or 20,000 may come, the politicians said, but it was many, many more, than that. Who decided to open the doors from day one, when other countries didn’t? Anthony Blair.

So to make a link between Blair 17 years ago and Brexit 5 years ago and the current Tory government is not such a crazy thing. He wasn’t the only person to cause Brexit, of course, see point 2: David Cameron, but he had a key part to play in the origins of the whole thing.

When 2016 came around I would blame two key people above all others: Dominic Cummings who ran such a clever campaign, especially keeping toxic Farage out of the limelight most of the time and Jeremy Corbyn, who basically went AWOL and wasn't in the limelight enough.
Click to expand...

It's certainly not crazy.

Perhaps it would be more fair to say that Blair (and previous governments) created an opportunity for the right of British politics to exploit for their own gains.

If memory serves me right your average Joe Public had no real issues with the EU and if they did it was certainly way down their list. I saw Brexit as a internal tory issue/power struggle that spiraled out of control.

The past 10 years have seen Tory led austerity measures impacting those in the lower socio economic groups the most, the party were never going to hold their hands up to that. Much easier to point at the local Eastern Europeans and create an enemy out of the EU whilst providing a saviour from their own ranks.
 
ROCKET80 said:
It's certainly not crazy.

Perhaps it would be more fair to say that Blair (and previous governments) created an opportunity for the right of British politics to exploit for their own gains.

If memory serves me right your average Joe Public had no real issues with the EU and if they did it was certainly way down their list. I saw Brexit as a internal tory issue/power struggle that spiraled out of control.

The past 10 years have seen Tory led austerity measures impacting those in the lower socio economic groups the most, the party were never going to hold their hands up to that. Much easier to point at the local Eastern Europeans and create an enemy out of the EU whilst providing a saviour from their own ranks.
Click to expand...
The British public has always had an issue with the EU: the glee with which the Sun and Mail readers lap up any story about gunboats sailing off to bomb Pierre or Fritz over cod has always been embarrassing. The 'war story' headlines whenever there is an England football match, similar.
 
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