Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Admiral Yi]

Jacob's conversion to the dark side continues!

[Admiral Yi]

Question for the britanicos: when an entertainer or athlete gets knighted, do you refer to him as Sir Elton John, Sir Nick Faldo.

I cringe every time CBS introduces Sir Nick Faldo.

I just saw something about Sir Patrick Stewart on Youtube.

Can't believe spellcheck still has problems with Youtube.

[Sheilbh]

It varies I think on what the person wants - unless you want to be rude. Patrick Stewart doesn't go by Sir Patrick. Sir Ian McKellen goes by Serena. But, say, Sir Ben Kingsley is famously a bit of a diva about it and does ask to be called Sir Ben.

I think the general view is if someone does that - they're probably a bit of a dick (or in Sir Ben's case - just a diva ).

Edit: And I think the fact I know that he's a diva about it indicates it's probably pretty rare that people ask for their title to be used.

[Richard Hakluyt]

The only title I use is when I'm talking about the Queen. Charles is just Charles, Patrick Stewart is Jean-Luc and so on.

Tend to do a doubletake when a journalist insists on using a title in an article.

There will be formal occasions when titles should be used; just like when we dress up.

[Valmy]

Isn't there some convention with the non-royal aristocrats where their title is their name? Like nobody calls Arthur Wellesly anything other than 'Wellington'. Isn't that still a thing? Granted you probably don't know those people personally

Though I always say Prince Charles in the rare occasion I talk about him, it is not like he is the only person named Charles.

[Josquius]

It varies I think on what the person wants - unless you want to be rude. Patrick Stewart doesn't go by Sir Patrick. Sir Ian McKellen goes by Serena.

Hes a character he is.

[mongers]

Johnson said in parliament yesterday, that the invasion reveals the true nature of Putin.

Has he only just discovered that, what about the chemical weapons attack in Salisbury three years ago, did it not outrage him?

Or was he doing something more important to him and the country to notice, say internal Tory party politicking?

[Josquius]

Away from Ukraine...a conspiracy has just come to me.
There's a lot of cuts happening to bus services. As expected the council is getting the blame despite this being due to central government.
Its a tried and tested tactic of the tory government to pass off their failures on labour by cutting the budgets of local councils in opposition hands.

....however not too long ago the government provided a lot of money to councils around the country to develop cycling infrastructure. The way local council budgets work meaning money given for cycling can only be spent on cycling.

The conspiracy now....was this a trap to build up the culture war the tories want?
"Look at the council spending all this money on cycle lanes for the lycra posho brigade to never even use whilst cutting the bus routes that us decent elderly folk really need!".

[Tamas]

Away from Ukraine...a conspiracy has just come to me.
There's a lot of cuts happening to bus services. As expected the council is getting the blame despite this being due to central government.
Its a tried and tested tactic of the tory government to pass off their failures on labour by cutting the budgets of local councils in opposition hands.

....however not too long ago the government provided a lot of money to councils around the country to develop cycling infrastructure. The way local council budgets work meaning money given for cycling can only be spent on cycling.

The conspiracy now....was this a trap to build up the culture war the tories want?
"Look at the council spending all this money on cycle lanes for the lycra posho brigade to never even use whilst cutting the bus routes that us decent elderly folk really need!".

This would require them to think longer than a week ahead which I don't think they do.

[mongers]

Away from Ukraine...a conspiracy has just come to me.
There's a lot of cuts happening to bus services. As expected the council is getting the blame despite this being due to central government.
Its a tried and tested tactic of the tory government to pass off their failures on labour by cutting the budgets of local councils in opposition hands.

....however not too long ago the government provided a lot of money to councils around the country to develop cycling infrastructure. The way local council budgets work meaning money given for cycling can only be spent on cycling.

The conspiracy now....was this a trap to build up the culture war the tories want?
"Look at the council spending all this money on cycle lanes for the lycra posho brigade to never even use whilst cutting the bus routes that us decent elderly folk really need!".

This would require them to think longer than a week ahead which I don't think they do.

Indeed, Johnson's focus are the weekend/next weeks headlines, a close 2nd it likely his wang.

[Sheilbh]

This would require them to think longer than a week ahead which I don't think they do.

Yeah I tend to be suspicious of the conspiracy theories about Johnson - or frankly the British state - because so much of it can be explained by incompetence etc which is in abundant evidence, while the planning and execution required for a conspiracy theory seem pretty rare.

I posted a few of these stats but interesting wider piece on immigration after Brexit:

Immigration after Brexit one year on: changing places?
DATE 25 Feb 2022
AUTHORS
Professor Jonathan Portes

On 1 January 2021, the biggest changes to the UK's immigration system in at least four decades took effect. Free movement between the UK and the EU ended (as well as with EEA member states and Switzerland) and a new post-Brexit system was introduced for work-related migration; this new system applies to both EU and non-EU citizens. Meanwhile, the existing immigration rules for students and family members coming from outside the EU now apply to EU citizens after Brexit.

There are two major exceptions: EU citizens who were living here before January 2021 and have registered for the EU Settlement Scheme have most of their existing rights protected, while the status of Irish citizens is essentially unchanged.

As I describe here in a more detailed assessment of the changes:
'The new system represents a very significant tightening of controls on EU migration compared to free movement. However, compared to the current system, the new proposals represent a considerable liberalization for non-EU migrants, with lower salary and skill thresholds, and no overall cap on numbers.'

We now have a full year's worth of data on the operation of the new system. So, what have we learned about immigration after Brexit?  Here are five key points.

First, the new system works; that is to say, visas are being processed reasonably quickly, and there are no major complaints about long delays, unreasonable denials of visas, or malfunctioning or unusable IT systems.

Given the magnitude of the changes described above, being made in the middle of a pandemic – and the past record of the Home Office in delivering major IT or change projects – this is both impressive and surprising. My expectations were considerably more pessimistic, and I'm glad to say I was wrong.

Second, work-related migration has recovered strongly. As with the broader economy – where worries about persistent long-term unemployment have been replaced with concern about skill and labour shortages – as yet there's no evidence that the pandemic has had any permanent negative impact on immigration. And the liberalisation of policy towards non-EU citizens is already evident. The introduction of the new Health and Care Visa (HCV) has had a big impact, with about 65,000 such visas issued in 2021.

Figure 1: Work-related visas granted by visa type, years ending by quarter between 2012 and 2021. Source: Home Office.


Third, the figures are even more dramatic for students. Student visa numbers have soared to above 400,000. Theresa May and Nick Timothy, driven by a combination of bad data and prejudice, particularly against South Asian students, were determined to use the pretext of abuse of the student visa route (which certainly existed, but on nothing like the scale of their baseless claims) to choke off the ability of international students to come to the UK; the collateral damage to the UK economy wasn't their problem.

Ten years on, that approach has been definitively binned. From my perspective, particularly welcome is the introduction of the Graduate Route – effectively the reintroduction of the Post-Study Work Route, which Treasury colleagues and I devised in the early 2000s, and which allows international students graduating from UK universities to remain here for up to two years and work. It's only been operating for six months; so far about 12,500 visas have been issued but expect the numbers to grow.

Figure 2: Sponsored study visa grants, year ending by quarter, 2009 to 2021. Source: Home Office.


Fourth, these increases are not primarily driven by the fact that EU citizens now have to apply for visas. They only make up a bit more than one in 10 of work visas, and five per cent of student visas.

In part, this may be because many EU citizens coming here had already acquired settled status based on a past period of residence here, and some of those intending to move here in 2021 would have tried to get here in 2020, so as to be eligible for settled status. The proportion of work and study visas going to EU citizens will certainly rise in the future – but how far remains a big unknown.

Finally: if it's not EU citizens, where are these increases in immigration coming from after Brexit?

As before the pandemic, India is by far the largest single source country for work visas, making up about 40% of the total. But there are big increases for Nigeria and the Philippines, probably reflecting the HCV; the Philippines is the largest source country for nurses in the world. [As an aside, for those who – not unreasonably – worry about the impact of skilled emigration on source countries, an important new paper shows that nurse emigration from the Philippines actually increases the domestic supply of nurses. Brain gain, not brain drain.]

For students, while China remains the largest single source country, the scale of the increases in those coming from India, Nigeria and Pakistan is very large indeed:

Source: Home Office.

There's a lot more in the data. I haven't discussed asylum, where applications are now at their highest level since 2003, and the backlog of unprocessed applications has now exceeded 100,000: an inexcusable act of what (given reasonably speedy performance elsewhere in the system) appears to be deliberate cruelty. Nor the new 'BN(O)' visa route for Hong Kong residents with British Overseas citizenship, where more than 100,000 applications have now been received. Nor the special routes for HGV drivers and so on, which have been widely derided and the impact of which appears to have been minimal.

But the current picture appears to be a UK immigration system rapidly (re)-orientating from Europe to the rest of the world, especially South and South-East Asia. How will that affect the UK labour market, and indeed UK economy and society more broadly? This is likely to be a central focus of the debate on the impact on immigration after Brexit over the years to come.

By Jonathan Portes, Senior Fellow at UK in a Changing Europe.

The asylum stats are particularly striking as the vast majority are accepted and given the rest of the system actually seems to function I agree that it can only be deliberate cruelty that there's such a huge backlog. As I say on current trend I think the UK is going to become more not less diverse and more rapidly.

[Sheilbh]

Obviously I have many objections to Johnson but I think this is the right message - in particular the little sections in Ukrainian and Russian directly at those peoples:
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1497318170671128584?s=20&t=lFHB2dearfjXrrZFTiCXhQ

[Iormlund]

It was a good message. But then eloquence and wit are Boris' only redeeming qualities, so I'm not surprised.

I'd be a lot more surprised (actually shocked) if he pushed for transparency in the banking/financial system. An area in which the UK has a fairly dismal track record.

[Sheilbh]

I'd be a lot more surprised (actually shocked) if he pushed for transparency in the banking/financial system. An area in which the UK has a fairly dismal track record.

The devil's in the details but he has - legislation to be introduced tomorrow or next week. Although as I say the issue isn't really transparency but the lack of verification, monitoring or enforcement - I could open a company in your name tomorrow for about a tenner and no-one would check any of it:

Measures to expose dirty money stashed in UK property fast-tracked to target Russian oligarchs
Boris Johnson has repeatedly promised to "open up the Matryoshka doll of Russian-owned companies" which are often set up offshore so the true owners are not identified.
Tamara Cohen
Political correspondent @tamcohen
Saturday 26 February 2022 14:29, UK
Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrives to record an address at Downing Street after he chaired an emergency Cobra meeting to discuss the UK response to the crisis in Ukraine in London. Picture date: Thursday February 24, 2022.

Measures to expose dirty money stashed in UK property are being fast-tracked in order to target Russian oligarchs, Sky News understands.

Boris Johnson has repeatedly promised to "open up the Matryoshka doll of Russian-owned companies" which are often set up offshore so the true owners are not identified.

These companies are used to buy vast homes in London's wealthiest areas, although MPs and campaigners have for years warned that this loophole can be used for money laundering by people linked to the Kremlin.

Number 10 is now planning to bring forward legislation as soon as next week to create a register for the beneficiaries of overseas firms, which would unmask the true owners and potentially subject them to sanctions.

Although the register would put offshore property owners "on notice", it is expected the measures could still take up to a year to enforce.

A No 10 source said: "Transparency is key to understanding who should be sanctioned. It's our ambition to do this early next week but there's a lot of work still to be done".

Measures going to take over 24 months to implement

Officials in the Business Department had advised earlier this week that the measures were more than two years from being fully implemented, Sky News understands.

New processes to verify the identities of the company owners - to be carried out by Companies House - were not expected to be introduced to parliament until the autumn, where they could then take months to pass.

The proposed implementation period for existing property owners was 18 months, but this may now be cut to 12 months.

Another government source said: "The PM is insisting we do it, it's now a top priority. But we would still be struggling to implement it this year.

"If Companies House can't verify who these people are, there's absolutely no point as people can just make up names and addresses."

Registering a UK company costs as little as £12 and can be set up within 24 hours. It is understood that some MPs have been shocked to find fraudsters using their names and addresses to set up companies.

Separate measures to beef up Unexplained Wealth Orders - a barely-used power created in 2017 to force people linked with serious crime to declare their assets - are also set to be brought forward.

The Russia report published by the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee two years ago, states that the UK offers "ideal mechanisms" by which illicit finance could be recycled through what has been referred to as the London "laundromat".

MPs on the Treasury Select Committee reported last month that Companies House - which was given £63m in last year's Spending Review to get ready for the checks, was essential to cracking down on money laundering.

David Cameron first committed to a register for overseas property ownership at an anti-corruption summit in London in 2016. But it was since kicked into the long grass.

Layla Moran, a Lib Dem MP who has campaigned for this register, said: "There's a geopolitical reason to bring the legislation now. Otherwise, the government is saying to Putin we will give you a good hiding, but first, we need to go and find the stick.

"We do need to do this internationally, but the US is already ahead of us, and the UK taking action would galvanise other countries to bring similar measures".

Research by campaign group Transparency International suggests there are 90,000 properties in the UK whose owners are unknown to the government and law enforcement.

An analysis they published this week suggests £1.5bn of property has been bought by Russians accused of corruption or links to the Kremlin, mostly in affluent areas of London.

Duncan Hames, director of policy at Transparency International UK told Sky News: "The government can only take action against assets it knows belong to those it now sanctions.

"Measures to reveal who really owns the companies that hold property assets here are needed urgently and should be implemented without delay."

Mr Johnson has already announced sanctions for 100 Russian individuals and companies which will need legislation to enforce in the coming weeks.

A government spokesperson would not comment on timings but said: "The government will establish a new beneficial ownership register of overseas entities that own UK property, in order to combat money laundering and achieve greater transparency in the UK property market."

Edit: Incidentally lots of chatter about quite how many threatening letters from London law firms journalists are receiving but also government over possible sanctions and who is and isn't sanctioned. That's another front of enablers that I think need to be looked at and reformed. Again there's misuse of libel, no doubt misuse of, say, Roman Abramovich's "reasonable expectation to privacy" and by the wounds of it misuse of judicial review (I'm not sure it would be justiciable - but placing individuals on a sanctions list is a decision by the executive, not parliament, so I certainly think lawyers would be able to make hay in that area).

[mongers]

Anything less that what the Johnson government is doing/proposing would be a dereliction of duty, given the crisis the world finds itself in.*





* posted to forestall/challenge any 'Johnson is doing remarkably well' type of posts.