This Tory Gang Is A Repressive Regime, Exploiting Britain For Its Own Gain

The British government's recent attacks on public sector workers' pleas for fair pay and the right to strike have shocked only those who have not followed the plans of Boris Johnson and a cabal of Conservative Party members, donors and cronies...

Since early 2016, when Johnson and Gove hatched their Brexit plans at a dinner with the wealthy son of a Russian KGB officer, Britain's Conservative Party has been transformed into a vehicle for bending Britain to the will and benefit of a far right cabal under a false banner of 'liberty' and other lies. At stake is power and the ability to allocate vast amounts of public money to their plans, starving everyone else of wealth and power in the process. This is the very opposite of 'liberty' and 'democracy' and has most in common with Orban's regime in Hungary and Putin's regime in Russia. There is hope for ordinary Britons, just as far right experiments have been defeated for now in the US, Australia and Brazil. Yet ultra conservative forces continue to lurk even in those countries. 

The first step was to persuade the masses to decouple Britain from the world's largest trade bloc, not only the UK's biggest external market for goods, services, labour and capital, but also a source of trade rules and standards - many designed by Britain itself - to protect consumers and workers and ensure a level playing field among members of the bloc: all standing in the way of this Tory cabal and their plans. The inevitable blow to Britain's economy (while their hedge fund donors made billions) was key to weakening potential sources of resistance to their plans.

As soon as this gang had a public mandate for destruction, they were able to root out from their ranks anyone who stood in their way. The 2019 election saw the removal of all centrist Tory Members of Parliament who were not prepared to kow-tow to the Enterprise Research Group and a web of conservative 'stink' tanks. 

Once country and party were fully in their hands, Johnson and his gang were free to unlawfully award vast fortunes in contracts to cronies, break international asylum and trade laws, behave as they wished even in the grip of a pandemic while requiring others to follow their rules, threaten any source of resistance in the media; and begin their assault on workers rights (proposing laws only seen in Russia and Hungary), food and other product standards, financial constraints and other checks on greed and corruption, recklessly introducing legislation to rip-out any laws adopted from the EU by the end of 2023 without adequate assessment of the impact. 

That process is still playing out before our very eyes under the false flag of 'liberty' and libertarian ideals that are actually authoritarian in nature and designed to bend Britain's economy and people to the Tories' self-serving whims.

Make no mistake. Sunak and his crew are of the same stamp as Johnson and Gove (mostly the same people). And as Sunak's failure to rein in Johnson's own lucrative speaking tour while still an MP has perfectly demonstrated, they are all in government purely and simply for themselves.

Yet none of the alleged benefits of leaving the EU has ever surfaced. Only the downsides for everyone but the Tories and their donors and cronies. 

It's the biggest electoral fraud in Britain's history, and the most repressive regime this country has seen in modern times.

Mis-selling Brexit

The British Parliament has finally had the chance to scrutinise the new UK-Japan trade deal that has been trumpeted for so long by Brexidiot Truss. Unsurprisingly, two committees found that the difference between the new deal and the terms available to the UK under the EU-Japan deal are not as extensive as the Secretary of State for International Trade had claimed. An opposition MP found that the government's own figures show the UK will be worse off than under EU terms.

The House of Commons International Trade Committee, did find some extra items on digital services and data (precedent-setting for future agreements) and financial services (including a ban on the need to store financial data in the host country).

The House of Lords International Agreements Sub-Committee pointed out that "exaggerating the gains ... courts unjustified scepticism about what is a respectable ... agreement". 

UK-Japan deal also depends on a trade agreement between the UK and the EU because, for example, "to secure existing trilateral trade flows between the EU, UK and Japan, the UK and EU would need to extend cumulation to Japan through their own trade agreement". 

The Committees want more effective scrutiny of future free trade agreements that are not based on existing EU arrangements, which are likely to be more controversial. 

Meanwhile, Emily Thornberry revealed the results of Opposition efforts to get to the bottom of the economic value of the UK-Japan deal relative to the UK's terms under the EU- Japan deal:

Yesterday in the House, I confronted Liz Truss with her own Department’s report on the question she’s repeatedly refused to answer: what’s the difference, in pounds and pence, between her Japan deal and the EU-Japan deal it replaces? She didn’t look happy. pic.twitter.com/PKuiYYlNnI

— Emily Thornberry (@EmilyThornberry) November 26, 2020

 

A European View of Brexit: Three Sources of Opportunities

Ironically, I was asked to give a European view of Brexit for an online conference this morning. I say, ironically, because it was in my role as an Irish lawyer for an Irish law firm, yet speaking from London as someone who's also qualified as an English solicitor and who left Sydney in 1994 as a 29 year old barrister. I guess that makes me one of Theresa May’s ‘citizens of nowhere’. At any rate, here's a summary of my view - which I tried to couch in terms of opportunities from a European standpoint.

How to view Brexit

I see Brexit as a set of international sanctions self-imposed by voters for emotional reasons - whether perceived 'lack of sovereignty', feeling 'left behind by globalisation', xenophobia or nostalgia. The hard facts never mattered. Trading rights to fish in UK waters to EU countries may have 'sent a shudder' through the House of Commons from a symbolic, nationalistic standpoint but fishing is the UK's smallest industry, employing 24,000 people and exporting 80% of its catch to the EU to help feed 400m people, as opposed to the UK's 65m.

And the hard reality is that the UK helped build the EU trade bloc, including advocating its expansion to 28 members; and contributing significantly to many of its rules, like EU financial services regulation and, ironically, anti-money laundering regulation. So I have little sympathy with the idea that Britain could legitimately expect the EU suddenly to change how it does deals with third countries just because Britain used to be a member state.

Opportunities?

Brexit may be a mess of the UK's own making, but every mess provides an opportunity for someone to clean up.

Looking for opportunities in this context is a bit like the final scene in "The Life of Brian". A lot of terrible things happen in that scene, including mass-suicide out of 'solidarity' with the poor unfortunates being crucified. But it's important to remember that the scene ends with everyone singing “Always look on the bright side of life”.  

To continue the idea that Brexit is a set of self-imposed sanctions, the opportunities really boil down to 'sanction-busting' – finding workarounds for the many problems Brexit creates. Aside from the potential for speculators and other 'disaster capitalists' to make money, there are three sources for these opportunities:

Any form of Brexit means ‘no deal’ for services: 

The end of Brexit transition period in December means the end of free movement of services from the UK into the EU (and the free movement of the labour needed to deliver them), as well as the end of mutual recognition of professional qualifications, licences and various types of certificates (e.g. veterinary, eIDAS identity certificates and so on).

That's a significant problem because services account for 80% of the UK economy, 80% of UK jobs and a third of UK exports, 40% of which go to EEA countries. 

This means UK firms need to set up EEA hubs, which will bring know-how, jobs and tax revenues to their new home countries. Ireland has a great opportunity here, being the only principally English speaking, common law country left in the EEA with a visa-free Common Travel Area for British and Irish workers. That's why I got my own practising certificate in Ireland and added a consultancy with an Irish law firm, since my UK practising certificate and legal qualifications won't be recognised in the EU after Brexit transition ends.

The perceived mishandling of Covid19 by the UK government compared to others (not to mention a trend toward xenophobic policy measures and right wing culture) might also feed into people’s sense of where is best to live, as could a trend toward remote-working as opposed to treating cities like London as essential hubs.

Britain is a consultant/client state:

Successive British governments have been relaxed about the sale of British businesses to foreign buyers, to the point where there aren’t really many major British-owned businesses anymore, and there seem likely be even fewer in future. 

In fact, Britain has evolved not only into an 80% service economy but also a consultant state - a sort of UK Consulting PLC. It majors in financial services, international dispute resolution, artificial intelligence, computing, construction, engineering and lots of other services (not to mention tax avoidance and money laundering) without actually owning the factories, output, buildings or in many cases even the land on which they're built. 

At the same time the British government apparently sees the job of serving its own citizens as something to be outsourced to private service providers. So the government operates like a procurement platform, paying service providers vast sums of tax money to deliver public services in remarkably autonomous fashion, while extracting taxes from the service providers' public sector income (as a kind of referral commission), as well as the taxes on the revenue from UK Consulting PLC. 

Needless to say, there are all sorts of opportunities for EU/UK service providers to import and export services using local UK/EU entities and locally qualified personnel, subject to dual qualifications and nationality/visas for those who need to move between.

Friction at the borders

There will be problems and delays at the UK borders, regardless of any deal or no deal. So Ireland, for example, is busy figuring out how to get its goods in and out by increased ferry services to and from the EU, and is planning how to open up markets beyond the UK. 

On both sides of the borders, customers who import from the EU into the UK or vice versa want to avoid 'customs risk'. That means the exporting suppliers must have a local entity/office in the EU/UK that takes on the responsibility and the liability for ensuring goods are delivered to importers. 

In each case, both European and British businesses can assist each other in embracing these challenges as opportunities, even if the ultimate result is a transfer of British business activity to the EU and a British economy that is smaller and produces less than if Britain had remained a member of the trade bloc.

You see, I told you there'd be opportunities!

 

EU Acts To Cut Fees For Cross-Border Payments In Non-Eurozone Member States

The pesky EU is at it again, this time trying to level the playing field for EU consumers and businesses by putting an end to the high cost of cross-border payments in currencies of Member States outside the Eurozone. Only Sweden took up the option to align the fees charged for those cross-border payments in Swedish krona with fees for krona payments within Sweden. Other non-Euro area countries, like the UK, did not oblige their banks to invest in the systems to do this. So, the European Commission is proposing a regulation to force banks in those Member States to cut their fees.

I've experienced the problems personally, as would anyone doing business across borders, travelling for business or pleasure, or shopping internationally online.

Business payments

Expecting the worst from Brexit (but hoping the whole fiasco will end with the UK remaining in the EU), I've added an Irish side to my business. That means getting paid in Euros and changing into GBP (if the funds are needed in the UK at all). To receive international payments to my GBP business bank account, my bank says I need an extra current account on its commercial banking platform (which I won't be able to see through the online access to my normal business current account). For that extra account, I'll have to pay £20 a month, plus their charge for converting each payment, plus their margin on the foreign exchange rate.

Compare that to £0 for receiving a UK payment in GBP to my existing, fee-free UK current account!

A study by Deloitte revealed other examples that punish small and medium sized businesses, as well as consumers.  It costs €24 to send €500 from Bulgaria to Finland, for instance, but sending €500 from Finland to France is like any normal payment within Finland or France - which is what the Commission wants to see in the non-Euro area.

Travelling or shopping

On a more personal level, you'll also be familiar with the tedious additional "choice" that everyone is forced to make when the currency of their payment card is different to the local currency. It's not so intrusive online, but a real pain for both you and the person serving you in a crowded shop, bar or restaurant. You have to be asked, or indicate on the card terminal whether you want (a) the "dynamic currency conversion" option, to pay in the currency of your card (at an unspecified rate that may include both margin for the local bank service provider and 'spread' for the retailer); or (b) to pay in the local currency, taking the risk that the conversion rate via the card scheme and your own bank's foreign transaction charge (if any) that you eventually see on your card statement will mean you're at least no worse off than whatever the local conversion rate was.

In this case, the Commission is proposing a short term cap on conversion costs, then a new model that shows you the actual cost of those options before you choose one.

After all, it's just data, folks! 

Cost Savings

The Commission found that extending the new rule from Euro transactions in the Eurozone to non-Eurozone Member States will save the affected customers €900m a year. That's because (a) the banks already have access to the modern system required, (b) at least 60% of cross-border transactions in the non-Eurozone Member States occur in Euros and (c) the cost of domestic transactions in those states is already low and couldn't be raised to subsidise the savings on the cross-border Euro transactions under competition rules.

It's worth noting that Eurozone banks did not raise fees when the first controls were imposed on cross-border payments in Euros - and in fact charges steadily decreased. Nor did Swedish service providers suffer when Sweden opted to extend the scheme to the krona.

Personally, I'm going to ignore the bank for my Euro payments until it gets its house in order - which might be never anyway. Even if the Euro/GBP conversion charge drops to zero, I'm sure it will still oblige me to take the commercial account on the more expensive platform and pay £20 a month for the privilege. It will argue that the move to a new current account does not relate to any single payment transaction or conversion, even though that's the only purpose I'd be taking the extra account.

No, what I'm going to do instead is open an account with one of the new foreign currency providers, so that a law firm can pay the provider in Euros, and the provider will pay me in GBP for a small, flat fee. 

FinTech wins again!

Ah, but Brexit...

Of course, all bets are off if the UK leaves the EU and decides to diverge from the EU trade rules relating to financial services.

In that case, banks - like telecoms companies who hate the EU's limit on roaming charges - will heave a sigh of relief.

Big business doesn't refer to the UK as "Treasure Island" for nothing!