Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

With the EU settled status deadline having passed, I wonder how this is going to look like in practice.

There will be I think a lot of services undocumented EU nationalities won't be eligible for anymore. But there are few official papers which normally need to be presented for, well, any business really, which would prove your citizenship status.

So, what's expected to happen? Like, say, somebody wants to rent a flat, now the agency/landlord must ask every single person to prove their citizenship / right to stay, so everyone, including British citizens, will be inconvenienced regularly?

Or, will they be making judgement calls, so e.g. somebody with a thick Liverpool accent wanting to rent will be fine, but if somebody like me claims they are British citizens they'll actually have to show a passport?

[Sheilbh]

With the EU settled status deadline having passed, I wonder how this is going to look like in practice.

There will be I think a lot of services undocumented EU nationalities won't be eligible for anymore. But there are few official papers which normally need to be presented for, well, any business really, which would prove your citizenship status.

So, what's expected to happen? Like, say, somebody wants to rent a flat, now the agency/landlord must ask every single person to prove their citizenship / right to stay, so everyone, including British citizens, will be inconvenienced regularly?

Or, will they be making judgement calls, so e.g. somebody with a thick Liverpool accent wanting to rent will be fine, but if somebody like me claims they are British citizens they'll actually have to show a passport?

So my understanding is there aren't normally papers and this is because for all immigration/visa documents the Home Office is now "digital by default" - but I think they are issuing certificates because people want them. In theory I can see why digital by default is possibly safer because one of the issues with the Windrush generation was people can't be expected to hold onto certificates for 60 years and, unforgiveably, the Home Office had got rid of their paper records for storage reasons. I can see the argument that a digital record is less susceptible to those issues, plus I think a lot of government services will be delivered increasingly digitally/through apps. But there are old people etc and I think they need to do a lot of work on getting people connected first.

The issues that seem to be happening at the minute are employers and landlords not knowing/not being arsed to check the online portal - or if there's any connectivity issues where the service is down. I think the government did pretty well in trying to reach as many EU citizens as they could before the deadline - I've seen adverts on TV, on streaming services, on podcasts, I believe they've been in newspapers and working with community groups like Polish churches to reach others. But they need an equally strong campaign especially for employers and landlords to explains people's rights and how they can access the portal - and make it clear that they'll be breaking the law if they're refusing people employment or housing because they can't be arsed.

My experience getting employed is that I've always been asked to bring my passport on the first day - or show it over Zoom - for their right to work check. I think the landlords point is newer and only came in the last 10 years or so as part of the hostile environment policies. But basically everywhere I've rented I've had to bring my passport etc to be checked. I've never not been asked for my passport when getting a job or a flat so there may be cases where people make judgement calls but it's not my experience - not least because the landlord/employer is personally liable if they fail to verify, so if they tick the box without checking they could be prosecuted.

[alfred russel]

Well Sheilbh, if I'd stuck with it I would have made $500 profit on a $100 bet. But I chickened out.

[Sheilbh]

  Sorry - never listen to me

[alfred russel]

Sorry - never listen to me

It definitely isn't your fault...I never would have looked at this if you didn't say Labour was going to win (and I saw odds of them at 17% to win). I chickened out a bit mostly because polling came out saying they would probably lose.

[Josquius]

With the EU settled status deadline having passed, I wonder how this is going to look like in practice.

There will be I think a lot of services undocumented EU nationalities won't be eligible for anymore. But there are few official papers which normally need to be presented for, well, any business really, which would prove your citizenship status.

So, what's expected to happen? Like, say, somebody wants to rent a flat, now the agency/landlord must ask every single person to prove their citizenship / right to stay, so everyone, including British citizens, will be inconvenienced regularly?

I'm worried.
My partner is registered, but she has nothing to prove this. There's no "Permitted alien" card or stamp in the passport or anything like that.

Or, will they be making judgement calls, so e.g. somebody with a thick Liverpool accent wanting to rent will be fine, but if somebody like me claims they are British citizens they'll actually have to show a passport?

Its the British way
On the bright side at least you're white. Stay quiet and you should be OK.

I should launch a poll: Will Sheilbh first vote Tory in 2024 or in 2029?

When are elections due to become a two horse race between the Tories and Norsefire?

[Sheilbh]

It definitely isn't your fault...I never would have looked at this if you didn't say Labour was going to win (and I saw odds of them at 17% to win). I chickened out a bit mostly because polling came out saying they would probably lose.

Given the margin of victory is less than 1% and around 300 votes - it feels like the key may have been when the Green candidate had to step down because of homophobic tweets he'd made when he was younger. Also amazing how a victory of that size has such a different impact - if it goes to the Tories then there would be a lot of calls (Owen Jones had already pre-emptively done this) for Starmer to resign. As it is all the pressure is lifted and, while noting the unique circumstances here, Starmer did what his goal is: he won back Lib Dem and Tory voters.

Meanwhile Galloway apparently already has his eye on Leicester East. The MP there, Claudia Webbe, is currently in court for harassing and threatening a woman. She's been suspended from Labour but so is now an independent, but it's possible she'll have to stand down depending on how the trial goes (their former MP was Keith Vaz who actually won re-election despite allegations of bullying plus cocaine fuelled rent boy orgies ).

But that would be a really nasty campaign. Leicester is probably about 40%+ British Asian - particularly in Leicester East. I think probably around 20% of the city is Muslim, about 15% is Hindu and about 5% is Sikh - again those communities are particularly strong in Leicester East. So I imagine Galloway would go in very hard on Kashmir and anti-Indian sentiment and basically provoke divisions and conflict between minority communities - which is incredibly grim

[alfred russel]

What seems odd about the conclusion of labour success is 2019 was an absolutely terrible year for them and the conservative/labour swing was negative -- though that is probably entirely due to Galloway.

[Josquius]

Something that is often forgotten is that its the trend that is important rather than the absolute numbers. The rate of change and in which direction. Going from -10% to -1% is a big step in the right direction. To manage to win whilst still in your turning circle is great.

[Sheilbh]

What seems odd about the conclusion of labour success is 2019 was an absolutely terrible year for them and the conservative/labour swing was negative -- though that is probably entirely due to Galloway.

Yeah I think that is the Galloway factor. There is an argument that it is a good result arguably for a government because government parties normally take a beating in byelections. But I think that doesn't work because the expectations management was bad - people expected the Tories to win and they didn't.

And as I mentioned before the Tory campaign played it very safe. They basically let Labour and Galloway kick two tonnes of shit out of each other while the Tories just ran a very low-key campaign, mainly on pork-barrel sort of politics. They didn't do any national media, they allowed local media in for about 5 minutes a day, it was a very subdued campaign and I expect that they possibly regret not putting more into it. Mark Wallace of Conservative Home was saying yesterday that he was hearing from multiple activists that the GOTV work yesterday was an "absolute clusterfuck" and GOTV is the biggest thing activists do in UK elections so if that was falling apart that's a big issue.

The other interesting detail is that the spin before yesterday was that Hancock only actually came up once on the doorstep and it wasn't an issue - which didn't really pass the sniff test. Their spin now is that Hancock has come up a lot in the last week and people they had down as Tory were suddenly saying they'd vote for Kim or just wouldn't vote. And I think there is a really valuable attack line for Labour if they want to use it there around one rule for the government and one rule for the rest of us. There is nothing that angers British voters more than a sense of hypocrisy/one rule for them - I don't know why it is such a trigger but it is and I think it's a seam Labour could mine endlessly with this government.

[alfred russel]

Yeah I think that is the Galloway factor. There is an argument that it is a good result arguably for a government because government parties normally take a beating in byelections.

Toss this one out because of Galloway, and even the anti government bias in by elections. Labour's baseline in the last election led to them winning 202 seats and the tories 365. They need to significantly outperform the baseline.

[Tamas]

Shocking. 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/02/johnsons-pick-run-greensill-inquiry-former-tory-member-nigel-boardman

This whole inquiry thing is such a ridiculous smoke screen, in general. If there is suspicion of corruption why is the police not involved?

[Sheilbh]

I think some of those links are a little tendentious.

He ran as Tory candidate for a council position 35 years ago and his dad was a Tory MP in the 60s and minister in Ted Heath's government before becoming Chairman of NatWest. That seems weak to me.

I think there is a conflict if he's still part of Slaughter and May. He's a former partner there and a very well-known corporate lawyer in the City. He was the lawyer who advised the UK government on the bailout of the banks in 2008 (for the Labour government). Back in the day he was famous for advising more FTSE 100 companies than any other lawyer in the City, he has won just about every award going from the legal press etc.

But the UK government is a big institutional client of Slaughters - they have a reputation as one of the best and cleverest law firms in the country. It's worth noting that relationship is with the Government Legal Department who do their own procurement rather than by ministers so that relationship goes back decades regardless of who's in power. So I think that is a conflict - it's a bit like if he was a partner at one of the big four. They get a lot of billings from government so it creates the appearance of a conflict even if he's nowhere near government work any more. If he isn't still involved with Slaughters, then I'm not sure it's an issue.

I'm less convinced by the fact that he's a non-exec for BEIS - I mean given his career he sounds like exactly the sort of person who should be in that sort of role.

Also a number of the complaints about this are coming from the wife of Jeremy Heywood - who says she's worried that basically the politicians will try to shift blame onto him, because he's dead so can't defend himself. And I get that she would want to defend him and she has just published called "What would Jeremy do?" about how his role when he was head of the civil service. I'm sure there's plenty of blame to go around, but from what I've read in the FT I don't think he's blameless - he was the person who makes the introduction and met Greensill when he was at Morgan Stanley.

I mentioned before when I was posting about this that from what the FT have reported there are real questions around Heywood and his role (and the head of procurement) - and perhaps this is a risk when you hire senior civil servants from the private sector. He was a senior civil servant in the Treasury directly advising the Chancellor under Norman Lamont, Ken Clarke and Gordon Brown, he then moved to head Morgan Stanley's UK investment banking division and was then brought back into the civil service by Gordon Brown who wanted him in Number 10.

This whole inquiry thing is such a ridiculous smoke screen, in general. If there is suspicion of corruption why is the police not involved?

The FCA and the Serious Fraud Office are investigating - they can both make criminal charges (and are who you'd expect to investigate financial crimes not PC Plod at the Met).

The bit Boardman is doing (and there are also multiple parliamentary inquiries) is more about the corporate governance.

[Sheilbh]

So it turns out Labour do this whatever the result of the byelection

Politics For All
@PoliticsForAlI
BREAKING: Keir Starmer's allies are calling for Angela Rayner to be sacked for disloyalty

Via @thetimes

Someone really needs to explain to Keir Starmer's allies that Rayner is directly elected deputy leader by the members so he can't sack her

[Josquius]

I wonder to what extent they actually are doing this and to what extent its the media.