Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

I heard of people with properties in Spain voting Leave because of bloody immigrants. There's no denying a lot of Brits thought they could go about their business in Europe unhindered because they were Brits and not because they were EU citizens.

[celedhring]

Surprised he got rejected if he'd spent 5 years living here regularly. I presume he's not telling the whole story. You only need 2 years of continued lawful residency to get granted permanent residency.

[Josquius]

Annnd he blames the Spanish. Pfff.

[Zanza]

Surprised he got rejected if he'd spent 5 years living here regularly. I presume he's not telling the whole story. You only need 2 years of continued lawful residency to get granted permanent residency.

They don't register in order to dodge taxes. And they can't afford private healthcare.

Rest of the story is here:
https://global247news.com/2021/03/26/tears-flow-for-brits-as-they-head-home-to-avoid-being-deported-as-illegals-in-spain/

A similar story here:

Your 90 days are up, Europe tells holiday home Britons

Charlie Devereux, Malaga | Tom Kington, Rome | Charles Bremner, Paris - Saturday March 27 2021, 12.01am GMT

John Price and Elaine Wilson may have to abandon their home in Spain after their post-Brexit residency application was rejected.

The couple were told that their claim failed because they had not bought private medical insurance before the end of last year, when the transition phase of Brexit ended.

Wilson, 53, a former paramedic, was waiting for the all-clear on breast cancer before buying insurance and the couple had been advised that they had until March 31.

Lawyers have told them that their appeal will probably fail. They are checking a Spanish government website daily to see if their appeal has been recorded. So far it has not, and they do not know if they will wake up on April 1 as illegal aliens.

"We're on tenterhooks," Price, 51, said. "We don't know if we face fines, a bad stamp in our passports and being banned from entering the Schengen area. A rock and a hard place springs to mind."

Britons across Europe are slipping into a post-Brexit limbo as red tape confounds their efforts to establish residency under new rules.

In Italy Britons who have residency are being refused jobs, healthcare, bank accounts and car purchases despite those rights and services being guaranteed under the EU Withdrawal Agreement.

In France like Price and Wilson in Spain, those living in their holiday homes since January 1 must leave the country by Thursday or face possible deportation and a ban on re-entering the country. April 1 marks the 90-day maximum that UK citizens are allowed to stay in any EU state within a six-month period without residence papers or a visa.

Before Wilson's illness the couple spent their time shuttling between Spain and Shropshire, were they manage properties and a bed and breakfast business. But she says the cancer both made up her mind that she wanted to settle in Spain but also to delay the permanent move to Spain in order to complete her treatment in the UK for the sake of continuity.

In Spain thousands of Britons have rushed to legalise their status. Confusion and misinformation about the rules, which are interpreted differently in each region, has left many fearing that they will be ejected from a place they consider home.

Spain's byzantine bureaucracy has spawned a parallel business of administrators or gestores to help foreigners to interpret the requirements. When Jeff Lunn and his wife, Deborah, applied for residency in August using a gestor recommended by friends they expected few problems. Seven months later they are h awaiting an appeal decision after their initial application was rejected.

The gestor had failed to include the terms and conditions for their medical insurance and the error has left them in limbo. They sold their home in Yorkshire and moved to a three-bedroom villa in Murcia.

The Lunns, who voted leave in the EU referendum, have had to hand in their British driving licences but will not get Spanish ones unless their residency is approved. They say they "have invested a lot of money here in Spain".

Liza Hartley got her residency in December but her daughter, Anya, 12, did not. Hartley moved to Marbella to give Anya a bilingual education. She has been told her daughter's application failed because of suspicions that she could have been kidnapped by her mother. The authorities need Hartley's partner, Jimmy, who runs a construction business in Lancashire, to come to Spain and sign papers saying he gives consent. He cannot make it before the March 31 deadline because of Covid restrictions.

Thousands more face becoming illegal aliens in Spain on Thursday. Many have been living under the radar to avoid paying taxes, Anne Hernández, the president of Brexpats, which advises Britons in Spain on how to navigate the bureaucracy Brexit has created, said.

"Now it's suddenly, 'Oh, what am I going to do? I may become an illegal immigrant,' " she said. "The scariest thing is they think they're going to do them for taxes. It's come back to bite them."

Others have simply been stumped by the bureaucracy. Spain chose the simpler form of withdrawal agreement, the declaratory system, which in theory reduced the bureaucratic load compared with other EU countries. But paperwork that is needed includes a copy of every page of a passport, a work contract, private health insurance and title deeds or a rental contract.

Britons also have to sit a driving test in Spanish if they did not swap their licence last year. That has been compounded by inconsistencies in the interpretation of the rules. "We have 17 autonomous regions in Spain and each one can interpret the rules differently," Hernández said. "When you're dealing with British who might not speak the language, they might be elderly, they get very confused and walk away totally upset thinking, 'that's it I've got to leave Spain'.

Steven Jolly, 65, a retired teacher from Yorkshire who owns a home in Normandy, said other Britons were returning to the UK. "Some are in their seventies and find it too much. Things like having to get health insurance with pre-existing conditions."

Jeremy Morgan, a former QC who retired to Umbria and campaigns for Britons in Italy, said Italian officials were unaware that residents' rights were protected under the Withdrawal Agreement. "We are often treated like third country migrants from outside the EU," he said.

[Tamas]

If they didn't vote Leave I feel sorry for them, but if they freeeedom-ed themselves into this, then they should enjoy reaping what they sowed.

[Josquius]

Yeah. There's purposeful tax evasion for sure, and less about not wanting to pay for private health care and more wanting to keep the nhs.

Though in large part I would be wary of attributing malice when ignorance works.
When I was in Sweden for 2 years I don't think I officially registered. Its just not something I was aware you had to do, we don't do that in the UK.
When I moved to Switzerland much later I had no idea how the health care system worked and that I had to pay for private insurance and there was no way out. I was working so I had to fit into the system but if I was just living off my savings... Then very believable I would not have registered if I could because there's just no awareness that this is necessary amongst Brits.

[Tamas]

Yeah. There's purposeful tax evasion for sure, and less about not wanting to pay for private health care and more wanting to keep the nhs.

Though in large part I would be wary of attributing malice when ignorance works.
When I was in Sweden for 2 years I don't think I officially registered. Its just not something I was aware you had to do, we don't do that in the UK.
When I moved to Switzerland much later I had no idea how the health care system worked and that I had to pay for private insurance and there was no way out. I was working so I had to fit into the system but if I was just living off my savings... Then very believable I would not have registered if I could because there's just no awareness that this is necessary amongst Brits.

That's a fair point, but IMHO there are limits to ignorance's valid use as an excuse. Going to a foreign country and just expecting one can continue the exact same procedures and customs is not something I can be sympathetic to, even though I fell victim of it on lesser stuff I guess.

[Admiral Yi]

Anyone know the criteria for being accepted?

[Tamas]

 

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/mar/28/after-assembly-i-cried-surrey-school-grapples-with-race-issues

School became scene of protest against perceived 'white privilege', though students say concerns are starting to be addressed

Nazia Parveen Community affairs correspondent
@NParveenG
Sun 28 Mar 2021 15.00 BST

5
The clip, which lasts just under a minute, shows a schoolgirl, blurred out to protect her identity, addressing a crowd of children – most in their school uniforms – carrying placards. Her voice echoes across the playground, shaking with emotion.

"After the assembly on Tuesday, I cried. I cried out of sadness because I felt the school had invalidated my feelings and experience as a black person. I cried out of frustration because I was told that instead of standing up for myself I should stay silent," the girl says.

The speech was made in the playground of Nonsuch high school for girls in Surrey. Though the degree of racial diversity at the grammar school has been described as "incredible", it found itself at the centre of a mass demonstration in October when hundreds of students from all backgrounds protested against perceived "white privilege".

While students there say the school is taking steps to address their concerns, it has been a bruising few months.

It all started when a student posted a comment online that some perceived as racist. The message, published on a social media platform during lockdown in May, allegedly included the phrase "all lives matter", belittled upset over use of the N-word, and maintained the deaths of George Floyd and other black Americans at the hands of police were accidents.

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Some pupils confronted the student behind the comments, but it was not until 9 October that the school was made aware of the incident, when an allegation of bullying was made by the student who posted the comments.

Four days later, the headteacher, Amy Cavilla, spoke to a group of students to understand what had happened and "stem the circulation of rumours". She held assemblies to reiterate and clarify the school's "stance against racism".

However, some pupils felt like they were being reprimanded for raising their concerns about the online comments. "A lot of students actively followed the Black Lives Matter movement and expected to see it reflected in the school's response. That assembly sparked so much anger within us. But that anger united us all in a way we never have been before," one student, Anise Sloper, told her local paper at the time.

Another student, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: "We should not be told, by someone who has never experienced racism, how we should react."

In the following days the situation escalated.

The protest took place on 15 October. More than 500 students, joined by some teachers, gathered together on school grounds after morning break, holding placards bearing anti-racist slogans such as "tolerating racism is racism" and the raised fist associated with social protest and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

"Standing there in front of that crowd – I've never felt so proud to be a Nonsuch student," Sloper said. "To be part of a student body that was able to pull together and do that in just two days? Nothing but pride for the students of Nonsuch at the moment."

Afterwards, pupils singled out the school's response to the BLM protests for criticism, claiming staff had taken down posters, with one reportedly saying "all lives matter" to pupils.

"The protest was about something bigger – we were frustrated at the way the school looked at race and racism," said another student, who wished to remain anonymous.

At the time the headteacher emphasised the school "does not tolerate racism" and was working internally with students, staff and external authorities including the police and council to ensure the concerns of students were addressed.

That week nearly 900 alumni of the school co-signed a letter urging the senior leadership team to take action.

"As alumni, we would ask what action Nonsuch is committed to taking to decolonise itself as an institution and become actively anti-racist, which should include the removal of racist staff and the hiring of people of colour in leadership and pastoral care positions," it said.

Emily Carewe, a theatre producer who studied at the school in 2002-08 and co-wrote the letter, said: "I was angry that off the back of hollow statements after the BLM protests, the school was immediately belittling the experiences of their students of colour."

Another co-author of the letter, Lorjah Raja,, a recruitment consultant, said: "During my time at the school I never suffered any racism from other pupils or teachers. We felt a responsibility as former students to somehow protect the children that are there now."

Since the protests and the letter, students have reported the school has taken steps to address the criticism and implemented training of staff.

"Fortunately, quite a few things have changed. Some teachers are undergoing training and we've heard micro-aggressions are covered in this," said the anonymous student. "We are on the right path but I want to make sure that this isn't just a token gesture and we will continue to address racism."

Cavilla told the Guardian the school, like many others, was trying to improve diversity and inclusion. She acknowledged there was a miscommunication on her part with the students but said she had been trying to crack down on behaviours that could cloud the investigation into the online post incident.

Allegations against staff were also followed up in accordance with the trust's safeguarding policy.

In response to the removal of the posters, the headteacher clarified that some were taken down by cleaners but that when she became aware of this, staff were told to leave them in place so students did not feel their voices were being silenced. In addition, some of the protest posters were now on permanent display in the school.

"This lack of understanding and awareness of the depth of feeling among our students led to a student protest to show their support for BLM in general and to protest against the handling by the school of a racist incident," Cavilla said. "[The protest] took on a momentum that was impressive and importantly cathartic for our students."

Last June, a race advocacy council was formed at the school, and a trust-wide race equality steering group.

"Our staff have been trained to hold supportive BLM drop-ins for students to be heard and ask questions; and we have engaged the charity Stop Hate to deliver PSHE [personal, social, health and economic education] on understanding hate crime and hate speech versus free speech. Our training programme is ongoing and sustained – we are in this for the long haul," Cavilla said.

So, in summary, one of the idiotic white students posted some derogatory, racist crap on BLM, ended up being harassed by the other children over it, had enough of that after a few months and told the school about it, the principal made some comments trying to stop it, and this in turn triggered an anti-racism protest. 

[Zanza]

Anyone know the criteria for being accepted?

Generally British citizens that legally resided in the EU before 31/12/2020 are entitled to stay indefinitely in their host country (Not the entire EU!). What constitutes legal residency is different in each member state though. Typically either job/income or sufficient funds to sustain yourself and health insurance.

The exact rules for British citizens in Germany are here for example:
https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/faqs/EN/topics/constitution/brexit/faqs-brexit.html

[Sheilbh]

The ECB started this policy a decade ago. It was one of the two events (along with the Fiscal Compact veto that wasn't) that I think moved Cameron to a "need" to renegotiate and the in-out referendum. It's a really key crystallising moment.

But it makes perfect sense from both sides - from the ECB perspective there are huge challenges in running a currency union but not having regulatory oversight of a significant part of business and trading in that currency; from a BofE perspective they can't effectively regulate London if a significant number of business and trading is happening somewhere else. This is inevitable - the costs of doing business will multiply, I am not sure how much that could ever have been avoided and I think this would be an issue even without Brexit because the ECB (underestandably) has wanted more oversight of Euro-denominated markets for a while. We'd probably see less duplication of functions without Brexit but I think we'd be talking about a different scale rather than a significantly different type of issue.

It's just another example of why I don't think the UK is going to be Singapore-on-Thames and I think that was always a fever dream of certain Tories that ignored both economic and political reality - unless there is a huge economic crisis I don't think there'll ever be enough support for radical deregulation (or radical nationalisations).

[Tamas]

The ECB started this policy a decade ago. It was one of the two events (along with the Fiscal Compact veto that wasn't) that I think moved Cameron to a "need" to renegotiate and the in-out referendum. It's a really key crystallising moment

The only event that moved Cameron to "renegotiate" was UKIP riding the wave of discontent up in the pols over alleged shape of cucumbers and the unbearable invasion of unwashed East Europeans.

[Zanza]

Sorry, I had deleted my post briefly after posting as I felt that repeatedly posting stories like this is not contributing much to the thread.

[Zanza]

Sheilbh had answered to me posting this:

The Bank of England is demanding that lenders seek its approval before relocating UK jobs or operations to the EU, after becoming concerned that European regulators are asking for more to move than is necessary for financial stability after Brexit.
The BoE has taken this stance — described by one senior banker as "increasingly curmudgeonly" — after hearing of several requests from the European Central Bank that it considers excessive and beyond what is required from a prudential supervisory perspective, according to people familiar with the move. Governor Andrew Bailey has taken a personal interest in the issue, they added.
UK politicians and regulators have long been concerned that their European counterparts are attempting to poach as much financial services business as possible under the guise of repatriating robust oversight of all euro-related financial activities. They fear the loss of associated jobs, tax revenue and prestige.
However, the BoE's new stance has been criticised as regulatory "over-reach" by international bankers, who feel that they are caught between the politicised demands of the UK central bank and the ECB's Single Supervisory Mechanism.

https://amp.ft.com/content/ba285268-e4ce-42dd-9118-bba24155664c?__twitter_impression=true

[Sheilbh]

The only event that moved Cameron to "renegotiate" was UKIP riding the wave of discontent up in the pols over alleged shape of cucumbers and the unbearable invasion of unwashed East Europeans.

I think that's a convenient/easy myth, like the whole British exceptionalism/imperial nostalgia - "party management" is an easy explanation that avoids any risk that there's any wider significance to Brexit

But I think it's nonsense and I think it's retrospectively explaining what happened based on the referendum and the campaign. But things that became important, weren't the important factors driving the decision four years earlier.

Cameron's Bloomberg speech didn't mention free movement or immigration once. It happens before UKIP won in the European Parliament and before they were even ahead in the polls. It looked like 2014 would be a standard EP result where the opposition wins. All of which makes sense because those became the key issues in the referendum, but they weren't the key issues driving Cameron's decision or renegotiation (not least because he knew there was very limited scope on free movement). I think it's only after 2015 when the renegotiation starts that it dawns on Cameron how key immigration is going to be - even then I don't know if it becomes the dominant issue without the refugee crisis - and he realises it's probably the area he has least flexibility on.

The key moment that shifts Cameron and Osborne (and witnesses at the time like Sir Ivan Rogers have said similar) is 2011-12 - and it's the response to the Eurozone crisis. In particular the ECB tries to force Euro-clearing from London to the Eurozone and the UK vetos the fiscal compact, but the Eurozone leaders get around it by an intergovernmental treaty. Since Lisbon and the difficulties in ratifying it, I think the UK assumption was that any further change/integration in Europe would be impossible because no-one wanted to re-open the treaties and if it came to re-opening the treaties then the UK would basicaly try to opt out of further integration or threaten to veto. Basically the British view was that if the EU wanted to do anything new it would mean re-opening the treaties which would create the opportunity for the UK to push for changes it wanted. That would be when they had leverage over the EU.

The fiscal compact summit exposes that half of that analysis is correct - no-one wants to re-open the treaties - but also presents a way where a Eurozone bloc could agree something without the UK and implement it as an intergovernmental treaty (not a European treaty) which then gets incorporated into EU law.

From an EU perspective it was a simple and necessary way to get round inexplicable British objections that were stopping Europe from dealing with the Eurozone crisis. From a UK perspective it was the moment it became clear they didn't have the leverage they thought they did and that the Eurozone especially could get around the UK. They did it over the fiscal compact and the ECB wanted to relocated Euro-denominated financial services into its control, so what was to stop that being the next step. Those twin events open up what was, for Cameron and Osborne, their biggest fears (because Brexit wasn't a realistic risk) of the ECB regulating the City or forcing it to relocate and the UK effectively losing its veto. Those are the key issues that Cameron raises in his Bloomberg speech and that the UK focuses on in renegotiations.

As it happens from the moment they start renegotiations it becomes clear that what the campaign will be about is immigration - not the rather wonky esoteric issues of financial regulation governance. I think it's a really important lesson in unintended consequences and risks once you open something up to democratic politics. It's a massive, massive miscalculation that goes catastrophically wrong - and I think if Cameron and Osborne had realised in 2012-3 how even the campaign would go, they would have gone for a different route. And the end result is something far worse than what they were trying to avoid. I think that whole aspect gets missed if we just interpret it as immigration and party management - because on those grounds, it worked: they personally lost power but UKIP/Brexit/Reform have been wiped out and Priti Patel is in charge of immigration.

Edit: Baiscally I think the key drivers for Cameron and Osborne were reasonable concerns about risks to the position of the City. They took decisions based on arrogance/over-confidence in my view - not unlike the decision to allow a Scottish IndyRef. Cameron and Osborne could definitely out-manouevre Miliband but I think were far less effective against Salmond or Farage. And the consequences of their decisions are far more significant in damaging the City than the fears they had. It's an unmitigated policy disaster in that respect - if your driver is immigration and party management it was successful.