{"id":10867,"date":"2016-12-16T12:12:22","date_gmt":"2016-12-16T12:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=10867"},"modified":"2016-12-16T12:12:22","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T12:12:22","slug":"in-perilous-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=10867","title":{"rendered":"In perilous times"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s short.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sharp.\u00c2\u00a0 Fits a hashtag.\u00c2\u00a0 A headline.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s genius. And the remainers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have an equivalent to a single word that sums up the biggest decision we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve undertaken – Brexit.<\/p>\n

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In an age of renegade politics up against the establishment \u00e2\u20ac\u201cwhoever they may be – those who wanted to stay in the European Union who accepted the status quo for cultural as well as political and economic reasons, lost.\u00c2\u00a0 They weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t with the zeitgeist.<\/p>\n

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Now they are branded.\u00c2\u00a0 Remoaners. Remainiacs.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0How come Brexiters have escaped the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Brexit, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even original coming as it does from the Greek ‘Grexit’ coined by an economist in Citigroup.\u00c2\u00a0 Greece\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s economic crisis and the riots on the streets of Athens as a response to the economic battering by the Troika, the IMF European Central Bank and the EU, demanding ever greater austerity, was played out on our TV screens for weeks on end.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In an act of political theatre and even with an overwhelming No vote to a further euro bail out Greece\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s politicians ignored the vote. Grexit it would seem simply didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean Grexit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Despite the much smaller margin here – 52 per cent\u00c2\u00a0to 48 per cent\u00c2\u00a0– the Brexiteers rebuff any opposition in their relentless route march to Article 50 and the formality of setting the clock running to trigger negotiations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re exiting and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Theresa May has said there won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be a cliff edge.\u00c2\u00a0 Once Article 50 begins the Prime Minister and her troika (David Davies, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson) are unlikely to have a choice.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0If there isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a deal within two years the UK will go over the cliff edge with only the rules of the World Trade Organisation for support.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But May\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two years it seems doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean two years.\u00c2\u00a0 The EU\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s negotiator Michael Barnier, dealt the Prime Minister a blow claiming there would \u00e2\u20ac\u0098only be eighteen months for proper negotiations\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Backed by a virulently hostile press division over Europe within the Conservative Party have been apparent for decades and it still is divided.\u00c2\u00a0 The difference now though is that those Tory MPs who have made euro scepticism their life work are in the ascendancy.\u00c2\u00a0 The battle won it only leaves whether or not the exit is hard or soft, quick or slow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Plan<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As good democrats Labour accepts the referendum result.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0Using an opposition day the Labour front bench forced a debate and a vote in Parliament against May\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mantra of no running commentary.\u00c2\u00a0 There will now be a plan, it may be a meagre plan, but as the argument goes, it is at least a plan that has to return to Parliament to be scrutinised.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We have to ask however does the cost of the government forced U-turn mean the forty eight per cent have been abandoned?\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 In a country that is more polarised than ever before \u00e2\u20ac\u201c are we all Brexiteers now?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in perilous times.\u00c2\u00a0 In those\u00c2\u00a018 months will the unions get a look in?\u00c2\u00a0 Unite, Britain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s biggest manufacturing union has an international reach without parallel.\u00c2\u00a0 It has a strategic relationship with unions in Germany, Belgium, France, Southern Europe and Scandinavia.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And up against hard Brexiters who will readily sell workers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 rights ‘down the swannee’ it will defend its members\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 jobs, pay, conditions and employment rights.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In amongst this toxicity and Brexit uncertainty the Chancellor, Phillip Hammond stood at the despatch box to deliver his Autumn Statement.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0It was a statement that made no mention of essential public services, revised down economic growth forecasts, revised down wage forecasts and revised up borrowing and unemployment forecasts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Economic failure preceded the EU vote.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0There has been a failure to invest. Hammond\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s predecessor George Osborne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s March of the Makers quickly ran into the buffers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Failure is this Conservative government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s middle name as it was with the previous Conservative led Coalition.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 Job creation has been in the low pay sector with zilch certainty from one week to the next.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paul Johnson head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the day after the statement: \u00e2\u20ac\u015breal wages will, remarkably, still be below their 2008 levels in 2021\u00e2\u20ac\u0165.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, in a lecture to Liverpool John Moores University argued that globalisation victims must now get a share of the gains.\u00c2\u00a0 He warned that the UK had entered the \u00e2\u20ac\u0098first lost decade since the 1860s\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.\u00c2\u00a0 Policymakers across advanced economies, he told his audience, had to tackle the causes of a growing sense of \u00e2\u20ac\u0098isolation and detachment\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 among those feel left behind by globalisation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Welcome to our world.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0The one per cent in their jet stream having loyalty to no one couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care less either way. But for other bits of the establishment it has taken the No vote to the EU and the election of Trump, neither of which they saw coming, to trigger a nervous impulse.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This comment piece first appeared in Tribune, December 15, 2016. Joy Johnson writes in a personal capacity<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s short.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sharp.\u00c2\u00a0 Fits a hashtag.\u00c2\u00a0 A headline.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s genius. And the remainers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have an equivalent to a single word that sums up the biggest decision we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve undertaken – Brexit.   In an age of renegade politics up against the establishment \u00e2\u20ac\u201cwhoever they may be – those who wanted to stay in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[486],"wps_subtitle":"Brexit: Unions must be included","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10867"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10867"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10872,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10867\/revisions\/10872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}