Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Zanza]

Former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib draws 'parallel' between NI Protocol and Russian invasion of Ukraine

[...]

"The parallel between Ukraine and Northern Ireland seems to be lost on Mr Johnson," the ex-MEP for Nigel Farage's former party has written," Mr Habib wrote.

"Admittedly, the EU has not amassed a military force to get its way but its aim with the United Kingdom is the same as Putin's with Ukraine.

"Both actors wish to exercise influence and control over their targets. They wish to neuter their independence.

"Putin's approach is through military might. The EU's approach has been through the Protocol.

"If Russia prevails it will settle new laws and regulations on Ukraine. It will oversee those laws to ensure they are enforced. It will require Ukraine to align itself with Russia.

"This is precisely what the EU has achieved in the United Kingdom via the Northern Ireland Protocol. The only difference is we bowed to the EU without a single shot being fired."

[...]

https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/former-brexit-party-mep-ben-habib-draws-parallel-between-ni-protocol-and-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-41417164.html

[Josquius]

Former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib draws 'parallel' between NI Protocol and Russian invasion of Ukraine

[...]

"The parallel between Ukraine and Northern Ireland seems to be lost on Mr Johnson," the ex-MEP for Nigel Farage's former party has written," Mr Habib wrote.

"Admittedly, the EU has not amassed a military force to get its way but its aim with the United Kingdom is the same as Putin's with Ukraine.

"Both actors wish to exercise influence and control over their targets. They wish to neuter their independence.

"Putin's approach is through military might. The EU's approach has been through the Protocol.

"If Russia prevails it will settle new laws and regulations on Ukraine. It will oversee those laws to ensure they are enforced. It will require Ukraine to align itself with Russia.

"This is precisely what the EU has achieved in the United Kingdom via the Northern Ireland Protocol. The only difference is we bowed to the EU without a single shot being fired."

[...]

https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/former-brexit-party-mep-ben-habib-draws-parallel-between-ni-protocol-and-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-41417164.html

I guess its becoming clear to them supporting Russia wasn't cutting through so they have to try and twist things so up is down.

[Sheilbh]

I guess its becoming clear to them supporting Russia wasn't cutting through so they have to try and twist things so up is down.

Yeah I mean I don't know how much attention we should really give these guys. In this case I follow politics closely and I'd never heard of him - he was an MEP for 7 months for a now defunct party (whose successor party polls about 3-4%). He's a very wealthy man (property development) and now seems to spend his time funding failed legal challenges to the Protocol as well as backing Traditional Unionist Voice (the harder line challenger to the DUP).

I think what Farage is up to next is more important. As I thought might happen, it seems like he is planning to launch a right-populist challenge to net zero/environmental policies. But basically none of the alternatives or successors to UKIP have shown any success - except when Farage is involved.

An irony is that it will be more of a challenge for Farage because we're not in the European Parliament so the one election we had with PR doesn't exist any more. It'll be difficult for him to win councillors or MPs (he only ever had MPs through defection plus by-election) and without those it's difficult to see the strategy - or even a way to get coverage outside of the usual suspects.

[Valmy]

In other UK news...Seems we had a bielection I completely forgot about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Birmingham_Erdington_by-election

The new MP worked as a nurse for 25 years, sounds good.
Results are also promising, considering this was a seat which has held much the same way for years.

David Bishop was a satirical candidate. He said he was standing for serious policies, such as scrapping HS2 and saving public lavatories, as well as less serious ones, like legalising brothels with a 20% discount for pensioners.

I like how just matter-of-factly it says there was a joke candidate who wanted to legalize brothels. Is this a normal thing that occurs in British elections?

[Josquius]

I guess its becoming clear to them supporting Russia wasn't cutting through so they have to try and twist things so up is down.

Yeah I mean I don't know how much attention we should really give these guys. In this case I follow politics closely and I'd never heard of him - he was an MEP for 7 months for a now defunct party (whose successor party polls about 3-4%). He's a very wealthy man (property development) and now seems to spend his time funding failed legal challenges to the Protocol as well as backing Traditional Unionist Voice (the harder line challenger to the DUP).

I think what Farage is up to next is more important. As I thought might happen, it seems like he is planning to launch a right-populist challenge to net zero/environmental policies. But basically none of the alternatives or successors to UKIP have shown any success - except when Farage is involved.

An irony is that it will be more of a challenge for Farage because we're not in the European Parliament so the one election we had with PR doesn't exist any more. It'll be difficult for him to win councillors or MPs (he only ever had MPs through defection plus by-election) and without those it's difficult to see the strategy - or even a way to get coverage outside of the usual suspects.

Oh sure. They're increasingly a political irrelevance going forward.
But I do think it bares remembering that Russia bought the UK via these guys and set the country off on new downward spiral. This needs kept alive with at least a small chunk of the population in so the next government can release the Russia report.

Also there's a certain irony in how just a few weeks back they held the Russian line but now are trying to use the war to stir up jingoism.

[Sheilbh]

By-elections and prominent seats in a general election always attract loads of joke candidates. See Moira Stewart reading out a particularly extraordinary list of joke candidates for the Chesterfield by-election back in the 80s
https://twitter.com/Johnnypapa64/status/1495356441795911683?s=20&t=6jlJBvVTtRbSrSlBgB4HXw

They are normally deathly unfunny - although I kind of love that even a joke candidate is still a NIMBY

[Sheilbh]

Oh sure. They're increasingly a political irrelevance going forward.
But I do think it bares remembering that Russia bought the UK via these guys and set the country off on new downward spiral. This needs kept alive with at least a small chunk of the population in so the next government can release the Russia report.

Also there's a certain irony in how just a few weeks back they held the Russian line but now are trying to use the war to stir up jingoism.

The Russia report was released two years ago

[Josquius]

Oh sure. They're increasingly a political irrelevance going forward.
But I do think it bares remembering that Russia bought the UK via these guys and set the country off on new downward spiral. This needs kept alive with at least a small chunk of the population in so the next government can release the Russia report.

Also there's a certain irony in how just a few weeks back they held the Russian line but now are trying to use the war to stir up jingoism.

The Russia report was released two years ago

Iirc the one that came out was full of redactions except where basically said we didn't investigate a speicifc thing and can't prove Russian interference in that.

[Sheilbh]

It's definitely heavily redacted - as you'd expect from any report by the Intelligence Select Committee:
https://isc.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CCS207_CCS0221966010-001_Russia-Report-v02-Web_Accessible.pdf

But the key points are, I think, still relevant:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/21/just-what-does-the-uk-russia-report-say-key-points-explained

The key points on influence and money in particular:

The money was also invested in extending patronage and building influence across a wide sphere of the British establishment – PR firms, charities, political interests, academia and cultural institutions were all willing beneficiaries of Russian money, contributing to a 'reputation laundering' process. In brief, Russian influence in the UK is 'the new normal', and there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene, and accepted because of their wealth. This level of integration – in 'Londongrad' in particular – means that any measures now being taken by the government are not preventive but rather constitute damage limitation.
[...]
To a certain extent, this cannot be untangled and the priority now must be to mitigate the risk and ensure that, where hostile activity is uncovered, the tools exist to tackle it at source.
[...]
Several members of the Russian elite who are closely linked to Putin are identified as being involved with charitable and/or political organisations in the UK, having donated to political parties, with a public profile which positions them to assist Russian influence operations. It is notable that a number of members of the House of Lords have business interests linked to Russia, or work directly for major Russian companies linked to the Russian state – these relationships should be carefully scrutinised, given the potential for the Russian state to exploit them.

It's all the stuff we know and have known for years and have not fixed. The thing I found really striking was that GCHQ and MI6 basically admit that they stopped really paying attention to Russia until 2014 - given that by that point we'd already had Litvinenko and Georgia that seems like a big mistake (but counter-terrorism was the priority).

[Jacob]

It's good to hear that it's being taken seriously again (at least seemingly). Hopefully the scrutiny will increase across the West.

[Josquius]

I read something on the surface dull and uninteresting that got me thinking yesterday.

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/life-consett-semi-rural-town-23279827

Life in Consett - the semi-rural town that has become one of the most in-demand places to live
There is a high demand for properties in Consett with PurpleBricks suspecting more people want to 'move out to the country' without being too far away from a town

So yeah. Typical local news blah.
But I do wonder if there's anything to it.

This got me thinking. Pre-covid the UK was in a process of rearrangment. This was a huge factor in the 2019 election results. Many former working class towns have been dying with most people doing something with their lives moving out leaving their population disproportionately old and non-working class, perfect demographics for the tories flirting with the far right.
Consett was a key victim in this. Its notable it flipped Tory whilst just along the road the seat containing Stanley and Chester Le Street was held by Labour- in large part I believe due to CLS's better links to Newcastle and Durham meaning it is a place where more forward thinking people choose to live.

But...with covid and work from home moving forward so much it is a wonder whether we could see a big reversal on some of this with less well connected places being reclaimed from the tories, as who needs a train station when you only have to go to work once or twice a week if that.

Such a shame the 2021 census didn't take advantage of the situation to ask about pre covid and current work arrangements to try and dig into this a bit. Some really interesting things happening I reckon.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I see it is business as usual at the Home Office :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60652914

[Sheilbh]

I see it is business as usual at the Home Office :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60652914

It's monstrous. Sam Freedman commented on this - and I think it just needs to be burned to the ground and the earth salted after it. I genuinely think it's unreformable

Sam Freedman
@Samfr
The odd thing about the UK Govt's Ukraine refugee policy is I don't even think they're trying to be "tough on immigration" - they know there's huge public support for action - it's just the Home Office is very very broken.
Partly a competence thing. But also a cultural thing. They simply cannot conceive of letting anyone in with a Ukrainian passport (with security checks to follow). Their only model of action is setting up immensely complication routes for specific groups of people.
It was the same with Syria and Afghanistan. Just absurd levels of bureaucracy because they have a culture of hostility that they don't seem to be able to shift even for the worst humantarian crises.

It's extraordinary that we have actually liberalised immigration rules for most people and applications are processed quickly for those routes. For asylum it is always made more complicated, more difficult, more cruel and applications are processed glacially slowly (although the vast majority - something like 80-90% are actually accepted once they're finally reviewed).

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally for Brits - the Speaker's accepted a request from Zelensky to read a statement to the Commons tomorrow at 5 which might be worth watching.

Separately I'm just thinking about desire in Europe to move away from Russian gas - obviously in the long-term the solution is de-carbonisation but that is difficult especially where the gas is for domestic use as Zanza's pointed out about Germany. Is it possible or worth looking at whether we can extract more gas from the North Sea as a short/medium term option? I don't think it'd be enough to affect prices globally but it might be possible to offer some direct replacement through pipelines that already exist at least for the next few years?

Edit: Could the Norwegians? Are there any other bits of Europe with any gas fields that could help as a short/medium-term replacement?

[Syt]

The Telegraph via MSN:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/the-94-sanction-free-oligarchs-who-show-britain-is-giving-vladimir-putin-s-cronies-an-easy-ride/ar-AAUK5r2?ocid=msedgntp

The 94 sanction-free oligarchs who show Britain is giving Vladimir Putin's cronies an easy ride

Sanctioning oligarchs is "not a competition", a minister has insisted, as it emerged that 94 of Vladimir Putin's cronies have not been punished by Britain.

James Cleverly, a foreign office minister, made the remarks in response to a new analysis by Spotlight on Corruption, a campaign group, which found that 94 Russian individuals and 17 businesses have been sanctioned by the EU or US but not the UK.

Some have been the subject of international sanctions for half a decade, after the US as well as the EU and Canada sanctioned individuals believed to be close to President Vladimir Putin in 2014 when he annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula.

But several have been enjoying a luxury lifestyle in Britain, according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Daily Mail.

Ministers have spoken about targeting more than 100 individuals and companies, but have named only around 14.

The Prime Minister has come under pressure from his own MPs as well as Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, about why the UK has not sanctioned more oligarchs since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Cleverly said that the UK, EU, US and others had been "working closely on sanctions", adding: "It's not a competition".

Italy seized two oligarch yachts over the weekend worth £95 million in total. In the port of Imperia, the police seized the 215ft-long Lady M, a £54 million yacht that belongs to Alexey Mordashov, one of Russia's richest men, who is said to be worth about £22 billion.

The Telegraph revealed last week that human rights laws are being used by the lawyers of Russian oligarchs to argue against potential sanctions.

Solicitors fighting sanctions are using the right to a fair trial, enshrined in Article 6 in the European Convention on Human Rights, by arguing their clients must be presumed innocent until proven otherwise.

Legal changes will speed up sanctions

Last week the Prime Minister approved a host of legal changes to speed up the UK's ability to sanction Russian oligarchs after the United States and the European Union moved faster.

The so-called "appropriateness" test for sanctioning a person or company will be dropped, making it easier to prove links to the Kremlin.

Another change will make it easier to bring cases against oligarchs who have already been sanctioned by Washington and Brussels.

A third will mean that the true owners of properties must be revealed six months after a new law demanding such is brought in, down from the original 18 months.

Downing Street has said that a new "oligarch taskforce" is being created, with ministers and officials from four government departments working with the National Crime Agency.